Novels
The Omega Scroll
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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 civilisation and the coded number the Vatican fears the most. 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 him: Cardinal Giovanni Donnelli has started an investigation into the Vatican bank; journalist Tom Schweiker is looking into Petroni's past; and the brilliant Dr Allegra Bassetti, one of the world’s foremost authorities on archaeological DNA, is piecing together fragments of the Omega Scroll. While they fight for their lives in a deadly race for the scroll, the Vatican will stop at nothing to keep the prophecy hidden.
At the CIA's headquarters in Virginia, Mike McKinnon suspects a number of missing nuclear suitcase bombs are connected to the warning in the Omega Scroll.
In the Judean Desert a few more grains of sand trickle from the wall of a cave. The countdown for civilization has begun.
The Beijing Conspiracy
‘We will strike you when you least expect it, beneath Eternity where the windmill has been stolen. This is the first of three warnings.’
- the opening lines from The Beijing Conspiracy
From China’s western-most province of Xinjiang, near its border with Pakistan, comes the threat of a devastating biological attack and a coded ultimatum. In the White House Situation Room, the President and his cabinet dismiss it. But CIA agent Curtis O’Connor isn’t so sure. The warning comes from Dr Khalid Kadeer, a brilliant Muslim microbiologist. O’Connor, an expert on bioterrorism, knows Kadeer isn’t bluffing. So does Australian-born Kate Braithwaite. She works in a deadly hot-zone laboratory, on the U.S.A’s own top-secret biological weapons program, genetically engineering Ebola, Marburg and Smallpox to create a super virus. If the results of Dr Braithwaite’s research fall into the wrong hands, millions of people will die.
As Curtis O’Connor and Kate Braithwaite work to unravel the riddles of Kadeer’s warning, the begin to uncover a threat more sinister than they had imagined – a threat from within, from a man whose lust for power drives him to orchestrate a plan that will devastate the human race. The clock is ticking …
If you are going to combine the ‘hard-to-catch’ but deadly Ebola RNA virus with the ‘easy-to-catch’ but not so deadly airborne Smallpox DNA virus to produce a super virus with no known vaccine, it helps to have a background in microbiology and biochemistry – compulsory subjects in a Bachelor of Applied Science in Oenology – the chemistry of wine. I spent some time at the Pepper Tree winery in Australia’s Hunter Valley, learning to make wine under the tutelage of Chris Cameron, Pepper Tree’s Chief Winemaker, who also trained as a chemist. Their laboratory was superbly equipped.
The Maya Codex
From the Back Cover: ‘Deep in the Guatemalan jungle lies the Maya Codex, an ancient document containing a terrible warning for civilisation. Archaeologist Dr Aleta Weizman is desperately searching for the codex, but powerful forces in Washington and Rome will do anything to stop her. When CIA agent Curtis O’Connor joins Aleta in her dangerous quest, he also becomes a target … from the corridors of power in Nazi Germany to modern-day Washington, from the secret archives of the Vatican to the Temple of the Lost
World pyramid in Central America, The Maya Codex takes us on a heart-stopping journey.’
The research (more on the tab below) took me to Vienna – one of my favourite cities and the setting for more than one of my novels – and on to the jungles of Guatemala. While I was taking a break in Antigua, the lovely old capital of present day Guatemala, my guide, Roberto Rodas, and I climbed a nearby active volcano. We were standing at the top when the ground started to rumble beneath us, causing us to make a very quick break for safety. In his words, ‘when an active volcano starts to whisper in your ear, it is better to retreat.’
The search for the Maya Codex, which also contains a chilling warning, takes the reader deep inside the Nazi Party, Reichsführer Himmler’s Schutzstaffel-SS (Hitler’s Praetorian Guard) and the eerie Wewelsburg castle. In 1934, Himmler took over the triangular-shaped castle which towers over the village of Wewelsburg near the Westphalian forests in the Alme valley in Western Germany (today it is a museum to its grisly past).
The Inca Prophecy
From the back cover: ‘An eerie clue to the Inca Prophecy lies heavily guarded beneath the Vatican. Another is hidden near the famous Inca ruins at Machu Picchu. Archaeologist Aleta Weizman and rogue CIA agent, Curtis O’Connor must unearth both clues if they are to decode the prophecy, but time is not on their side. The Iranians are building a nuclear bomb. Israel has an itchy trigger finger. The world has never been closer to destruction, but a powerful few are doing all they can to ensure the Inca’s fabled warning will never be heard. And the CIA is hunting down Weizman and O’Connor, hell bent on silencing them forever.’
‘A crystal skull lay at the feet of the mummified king. It glistened in the flickering light of the oil lamps hanging on the walls of the Inca tomb, deep inside the snow-covered Andes.’ The opening lines give the reader an inkling of what is to come. Located not far from the famed Machu Picchu, the burial chamber of Pachacuti Yupanqui, has been undisturbed since the ninth ruler of the Inca was entombed on a solid gold throne in 1472. Undisturbed that is, save for the visits of a very select few shamans who know how to avoid the deadly pitfalls awaiting anyone trying to access the passage into the mountain. Carlos Huayta is one such shaman. A direct descendent the Inca Q’ero people, Huayta sits quietly in the tomb amongst the untold riches glinting ‘from the niches carved into the granite walls: gold statues and figurines, silver chalices, vases full of emeralds, and priceless filigreed gold face masks and necklaces.’ An unassuming pottery urn stands in a niche in the furthest corner of the tomb, but Huayta knows that what appears to be of little worth holds the most valuable objects of all – and it is the most heavily protected.
‘Huayta pondered again the ancient Inca prophecy that had been passed down from shaman to shaman. When the Eagle of the North and the Condor of the South fly together, the Earth will awaken.’
The Alexandria Connection
From the back cover:
In the shifting desert sands of Egypt, rumours abound of a lost papyrus that will reveal the true purpose of the Pyramids of Giza. Could these ancient monoliths be the source of a new kind of energy, one that comes at no cost to the planet? CIA agent Curtis O'Connor and archaeologist Aleta Weizman are determined to find out.
Close by, a shadowy and powerful group known as Pharos meets in Alexandria, its membership a closely guarded secret. Its first order of business: to orchestrate chaos on international financial markets with a series of spectacular terrorist attacks on the world's fossil-fuel supplies.
And in Cairo, amid the anarchy of Tahrir Square, thieves have broken into the famed Museum of Antiquities and stolen one of the world's priceless artifacts: the mask of Tutankhamun. Is the audacious theft linked to the Pharos Group?
Conspiracy theories about a New World Order abound, but what, I wondered, if those massive gyrations on the world stock markets were being orchestrated? What if a small, powerful group were making money from those precipitous rises and falls because they knew in advance?