LA MENACE OMEGA

The Pope's health is failing and the Cardinal Secretary of State, the ruthless Lorenzo Petroni, has the Keys to St Peter within his grasp. Three things threaten to destroy Cardinal Giovanni Donelli has started an investigation into the Vatican Bank; journalist Tom Schweiker is looking into Petroni's past; and, even more dangerously, the brilliant Dr Allegra Bassetti, one of the world's foremost authorities on archaeological DNA, is piecing together fragments of the Omega Scroll in war-torn Jerusalem. At the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Mike McKinnon is investigating a number of missing nuclear suitcase bombs and suspects they are connected to the warning in the Omega Scroll. In the Judaean Desert a few more grains of sand trickle from the wall of a cave. The countdown for civilisation has begun.