The Omega Scroll

the long version

"A Dead Sea scroll has lain undisturbed in a cave near Qumran for nearly two thousand years. The Omega Scroll contains both a terrible warning for civilization and the coded number the Vatican fears most ... The Pope's health is failing and the Cardinal Secretary of STate, the ruthless Lorezo Petroni, has the Keys to St Peter within his grasp. Three things threaten to destroy him : Cardinal Giovani Donelli has started an investigation into the Vatican Bank ; journalist Tom Schweiker is lokking 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. Donelli, Schweiker and Bessetti must fight for their lives in a deadly race for the scroll. The Vatican will stop at nothing in its quest to keep the prophecy hidden. 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 Judean Desert a few more grains of sand trickle from the wall of the cave. The countdown for civilization has begun."--Back cover.