eBook
Related collections and offers
Overview
A woman has been arrested in the streets of Rome. She’s young. She’s beautiful. She’s covered in blood. And she claims to be an ancient prophet in search of a mystical amulet hidden somewhere within the city. Ex-priest Tom Shaman teams up with a headstrong policewoman to unravel the mystery. But within Rome’s churches and corridors of power, stealthy enemies are conspiring against them. And soon, the woman’s deadly visions begin to come true. Tightly plotted and relentlessly suspenseful, The Rome Prophecy is a satisfying, electrifying thriller, which will continue to build Christer’s name in the hit-thriller genre.
Praise for The Venice Conspiracy
“[A] suspenseful religious conspiracy thriller . . . A solid entry in the post-Da Vinci Code subgenre.” —Publishers Weekly
Praise for The Stonehenge Legacy
“A self-assured first novel.” —The Wall Street Journal
“A non-stop delight of a read complete with history, secrets, conspiracies, and adventure. Christer matches wits and wiles, holding you in a tight grip from page 1 to the end. Fiercely intelligent and curious, take a walk on the perilous side and enjoy The Stonehenge Legacy.” —Steve Berry, New York Times–bestselling author
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781468309249 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | ABRAMS, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 05/15/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 368 |
| Sales rank: | 500,120 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Rome
The Carabinieri's newest captain slips out of her crisply pressed uniform and into the shower in her cramped low-rent apartment.
The Vanity Fair photo shoot went well –'warm but not too hot' was how the male photographer mischievously described the shots. One in her captain's uniform. One on the rifle range, shooting in a flak jacket, and her favourite, one in a short sparkling silver cocktail dress that fitted so well they let her keep it.
The force press office is happy, the magazine is happy and even Valentina Morassi is happy.
The perfect end to a perfect first week in her new job.
The twenty-nine-year-old tilts her newly promoted head at the steaming jet. Her long dark hair feels like wire wool as she shampoos away the spray they insisted on using, 'to hold its shape and give it depth'. She also hates the make-up they made her wear. They trowelled it on. Though admittedly, in the shots it looked good.
She looked good.
It makes her smile to think that. Until recently it was hard for Valentina to see anything positive about herself or her life. The death of her cousin Antonio in Venice all but broke her. They both came from a big extended family, the kind that always holidayed together and shared weekly Sunday lunches. The type of family that was together so much you could barely work out which kid belonged to which parent. They went to the same schools. Attended the same parties. Even opted for the same profession. Antonio was a lieutenant, working undercover on a drugs job when he was killed.
Valentina couldn't believe it.
She tried to carry on working. Managed to see out the murder case she was on, and then her life collapsed. She fell into a huge depression, and had she not passed her exams and moved to Rome, she's sure she'd still be trying to wriggle free from the teeth of the proverbial black dog.
Valentina turns off the shower, steps out on to a frayed mat, snuggles into a thick white towelling robe and shakes her hair like a sheepdog. Her mother used to scold her for it. Antonio used to laugh like a drain when she did it after they'd been swimming.
She still thinks of him.
Often.
But it doesn't hurt as much any more.
She towels her hair dry and sits on the edge of a saggy bed. The walls of the boxy room are a faded white, the filthy window only a little larger than a convict gets. This is not a place where her soul will grow, but it will do for now. At the end of the month she will search for somewhere more colourful – more her. An old Disney clock by the side of the small single bed clunks. It's pillar-box red, has black Mickey Mouse ears and has woken her since she was four.
Mickey's hands tell her it's exactly eleven p.m.
Her thoughts turn to tomorrow and the man with whom she'll be having dinner.
An unusual man.
Most unusual.
She met him – and last saw him – in the strangest and most dangerous of circumstances. Had things been different – and had another woman not been part of his life – there might well have been something romantic between them. Despite all of these ifs and buts, he's still probably the one guy she trusts more than any other.
Valentina's cell phone rings and almost gives her a heart attack.
The number on the display is that of her new boss, Major Armando Caesario. She expertly pitches her 'Pronto' somewhere between friendly and coolly professional.
'Sorry to disturb you so late on a Friday night,' he says, not sounding sorry at all. 'Control has just had a case called in that I'd like you to supervise.' He pauses, covers the mouthpiece and says something as an aside. 'It's a potential homicide, with ... how shall we put it ... an unusual twist. Lieutenant Assante will give you a hand; he's already at the barracks.'
Valentina thinks she hears muffled laughter in the background. She doesn't yet know her new boss well enough to be sure that someone isn't imitating him and playing a prank on her. 'Sir, forgive me, but is this some kind of joke?'
Caesario clears his throat. 'No, no, not at all. Please forgive us. I'm here with the colonel and he has something of a dark sense of humour. If you call Assante, he'll give you the full details and then you'll understand. Good night.'
Valentina thinks the call's genuine. She could all but smell the cigar smoke in the officers' club as they swilled brandies in big glasses. She was hoping for an early night. Maybe a glass of red wine before a good long sleep.
She knows she's not going to get either. She calls Homicide and holds the receiver between ear and shoulder while pulling her uniform back on. As soon as the details come out, she understands the black humour, and why the case has been batted her way.
The new girl is being taught a lesson.
She's being given a heads-up by those who think her promotion is purely political, a token gesture of equality.
She's heard it all before.
Morassi must have slept her way to the top. Screwed the examiner in charge of promotions. Blown the boss to get the easy cases. And those are just the things female officers say. Those of course who haven't made the rank she has. Granted, twenty-nine is unspeakably young for anyone to make captain, but she deserves it. Her last case had made her, and the man she's going to have dinner with tomorrow, the talk of Italy.
Valentina shuts the front door and heads for her three-year-old white Fiat Punto. It doesn't go nearly as fast as she'd like, but in the Eternal City, where parking is an eternal problem, the tiny Fiat is king.
By the time she's in fourth and has finished cursing its sluggishness, her mind is back on the new case she's just been given.
It's certainly a strange one.
A cleaner at the Chiesa Santa Maria in Cosmedin has discovered a highly unwelcome gift in the portico. The severed hand of a woman.
CHAPTER 2Paris
Tom Shaman is staring at the clear wintry night sky, playing join the dots. He wonders whether he's spotted the Great Bear or the Little Bear. From what little he can remember of childhood astronomy, on a night as clear as this you should be able to see more than two thousand stars. Given his unique viewpoint, it might just be possible.
Tom is at the top of the Eiffel Tower.
He's on a wind-blown workers' platform, way above the Michelin-starred Jules Verne restaurant. The man who brought him here is Jean-Paul Marty, his best friend in France and the head of one of the many construction companies employed to do near-constant maintenance on the giant structure. Tom and JP have completely different lives but share the same basement gym and passion for boxing. They've even sparred together. A mistake the Frenchman won't make again. The thirty-three-year-old American is as big as an oak and throws a punch that could derail a freight train.
JP puts his hands on the cold steel of the workers' cradle and stares proudly out over the city of his birth. 'I cannot believe that you spend a year in Paris and have never seen the magic of the City of Light from the Tower.'
'C'est la vie.' Tom sits on the rough boards and dangles his legs over the edge. He enjoys the childish thrill of knowing there's more than three hundred metres of air between him and the ground. 'I guess that's what happens when you spend half your time working as a grunt at Eurodisney and a dishwasher at Robuchon.'
JP laughs. 'The restaurant I know about, but you were one of Mickey's mouses? This you keep a secret.'
'No, not at all. I was proud to be a mouse. It was how I learned my Mickey Mouse French. It was how I kept alive for the first six months.' He ticks points off on his fingers. 'First a garbage guy, sweeping Main Street, morning, noon and night. Then acting. I was Disney's best-ever Goofy and I didn't have to speak, so that was kind of perfect too. Then I worked both Planet Hollywood and the Rainforest Café as a kitchen porter.'
'All of France is grateful for your cultured contribution to our society; we will miss you so much. And Robuchon?'
'When I was moused-out, I blagged a cleaning job at L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon and lived on the best leftovers in the world. Not much got tossed, I can tell you.' Tom looks up at the final shining zenith of the tower. 'Thanks for fixing this; it's a good way to go out.'
JP runs a finger down the steelwork. 'You are welcome, mon ami. It is my pleasure to show you around, but don't tell anyone.'
'I won't.'
The Frenchman turns his back to the wind and tries to light a cigarette. 'I'd get you to swear to that on the Bible, but I'm not sure such an oath counts if it comes from an ex-priest.'
'It counts.' Tom points off into the darkness and the wind flaps the sleeve of his black cotton jacket. 'What's that?'
His friend glances, unlit cigarette still in mouth. 'The Champ de Mars. You know the Champ de Mars?'
'The big park where they do the military stuff?'
JP laughs and abandons his tobacco for a moment. 'Aah, oui, the military stuff. Tom, the Field of Mars is the largest open space in Paris and perhaps the most respected. It is almost sacred. Much food has been eaten on this land and much blood drunk by its earth. During the Revolution, the Fête de la Fédération was held there, and two years after the storming of the Bastille, many people were massacred.'
Tom senses his friend's passion. 'I'm sorry.'
JP finally succeeds in lighting his cigarette. He takes a couple of deep draws and holds it out for Tom to see. 'War and military stuff, as you call it, are engrained in our nation. Like my father – and his father – I smoke Gauloises. We do it because it is patriotic. Marketers will tell you Gauloises are forever linked with the French infantrymen – the poilu. Even the brand slogan is "Freedom Forever".'
'Good slogan, bad place to put it.'
'Oui.' He blows grey smoke into the night sky. 'My mother says if the cigarettes do not kill you then the slogan will.'
Tom smiles and looks out over the twinkling lights of the city below. His thoughts drift to his flight tomorrow, his meeting with Valentina and the circumstances that first brought them together. Painful memories surface of how he left his job as a priest in Los Angeles. A very public end to his vocation. His name plastered across every newspaper and news channel in the country. Every person in his parish pointing him out on the sidewalk. Venice seemed the perfect place to run to. A picture postcard of a city to hide in. Somewhere time seemed to have stood still.
Only it hadn't.
Journalists and news crews turned out to be every bit as cruel there as they had been in America. Tom's dark secret didn't stay secret for very long. He'd misjudged Valentina at first and she'd probably done the same with him. Only over the course of the case that they worked together did they find common respect and affection, and by then Tom wrongly thought his future lay with someone else. It all seems so long ago now. Like another lifetime.
JP lowers himself on to the boards alongside his friend and catches his eye. 'You seem so very far away. Somewhere wonderful?'
'Just thinking of the past. Moments like this make you reminisce.'
'Aah, that is not good. Not tonight. Tonight is about making memories, not recalling them. When you are old and your bones will not let you climb the Eiffel Tower, then you have time to remember.'
Tom gets to his feet. 'You have a point.' He peers out over the safety barrier and waves into the distance. 'Goodbye, Paris.'
'Aah, non.' Jean-Paul throws his arms wide. 'We do not say goodbye, you know this; we say au revoir, it is less permanent.'
Tom turns his back on the city and faces his friend. 'I know, but I really think this may be more of a goodbye than an au revoir. I don't think I'm going to be coming back from Rome.'
'You have the wanderlust again?'
He nods. 'A little.'
'Or is it more a womanlust than wanderlust?' JP studies Tom's eyes, 'Are you planning to make a home in her bed?'
He laughs. 'I'm planning no such thing.'
'But it is possible, yes?'
'Jean-Paul, as a Frenchman, you know that when it comes to matters of the heart, anything is possible, but — '
'So,' he jumps in again, 'maybe you do have a little plan, yes?'
'Maybe I have a little plan, no. Listen, Valentina and I go back a long way. We met in Venice soon after I left the priesthood in Los Angeles. She was a lieutenant in the Carabinieri and —'
'And she was the first love of your life. The first one to introduce you to the magical intimacy of womanhood?'
Tom frowns. 'No! No, she was not. And no, we were not intimate in any way. Valentina was —'
'But you would like to have been.' He leans close to his friend's face, a sparkle in his eyes, 'This Valentina, I sense she is a Roman beauty who has stolen your heart, and now, like a brave Gaul, you will swim oceans and climb mountains to be with her again.'
'What a hopeless Casanova you are.' Tom shakes his head in amusement. 'Are you in the least bit interested in the true version, or do you just want to make up your own romantic fantasy?'
'Oui. I am very interested. Though I am not sure the truth will be as satisfying as the fantasy.'
'I'm sure it won't be. Valentina is a friend. A good friend. We've kept in touch – phone calls, email, that kind of thing. She's just been promoted in the Carabinieri, so I'm going over to celebrate with her.'
'I understand.' JP fights back a grin. 'An Italian woman invites you to stay with her and celebrate. This is as good as a proposal of marriage.'
'Only if you're a crazy Frenchman.'
'To that I plead guilty.' He flicks the last of his cigarette into the black abyss and watches it fall like a firefly. 'You didn't say how you met her.'
'You didn't ask.'
'Come, it is a long way down, you can tell me as we go.' JP leads the way to the lift. 'A woman in uniform! Just the thought of it is exquisite.'
Tom hits the call button and hears great winding engines clunk and whirr below them. 'She locked me in one of her cells and interviewed me in connection with a murder.'
He frowns. 'A murder? I cannot see anyone imagining you to be a murderer. Though you fight well enough – for an American.'
'She had good cause, Jean-Paul. I'd just told her how I'd killed two men in LA. And she had every reason to think I'd killed again.'
CHAPTER 3I lie in the dirt of the square.
The last of my blood drips slowly like warm red butter oozing from my butchered wrist.
My life is ebbing away.
Perhaps I will even die before the sun reappears from the grey, melancholic clouds above me.
I hope not.
I pray to see the great god's face one final time before I pass.
Voices swirl above me.
They are not those of the soldiers – they are all gone now and are no doubt drawing rewards for their public chore. Some will already be bedding whores in the Aventine while telling stories of my demise.
No matter.
My dignity is preserved for eternity. I have a place in history.
One day, when my secret is out, I will be respected and honoured for both my silence and my sacrifice.
Without the guards, I am at the mercy of the mob, and they have no compassion. I see the plebs staring down their noses at me. Some scoff and spit in my face. Others loot the last of my jewellery and cloth. The hands of crude boys explore my cooling flesh.
I feel nothing.
Certainly no pain.
The agony engendered by the sword is thankfully too great for my mind to interpret. I do not scream. Nor do I cry or whimper. I cloak my suffering in a blanket of noble silence.
In the haze of faces above me there are none I recognise. No sign of my brutish husband. No tears from my shamed parents. Not even a last farewell from my friends.
But I am not alone.
My sisters are gathering. They are reaching out from the afterlife and wrapping their arms around me. I am ready to join them and to rejoice.
I am ready to be reborn in the spirit of another sister.
Ready to live beyond the grave.
CHAPTER 4Rome
The Fiat splutters its way south-west down Viale della Piramide Cestia, then right on to Via Marmorata, running parallel to Circus Maximus.
Cars are strewn at angles across the middle of the road near the Piazza dell'Emporio. An argument is heating up. Irate drivers are fencing with fingers around a steaming bonnet and busted trunk.
Once Valentina squeezes through the bottleneck and the cacophony of blaring car horns, it's plain sailing along the banks of the Tiber, down the Lungotevere Aventino and Via Ponte Rotto.
She checks her street map as she turns right on to the Piazza della Bocca della Verità and promises herself that tomorrow she'll find time to buy a sat nav.
She knows she's arrived when the famous Romanesque bell tower of the chiesa comes into view.
Valentina slides the Punto into an envelope-sized space opposite the church and parallel to a spectacular fountain that on another occasion she'd love to linger around. She locks up and walks across to a young officer guarding the taped-off scene. He watches her every step and gives her shapely form an approving smile.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Rome Prophecy"
by .
Copyright © 2011 Michael Morley.
Excerpted by permission of Abrams Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
What People are Saying About This
Praise for The Venice Conspiracy
“Dramatic . . . Fans of Dan Brown and Steve Berry will be enamored.” —Booklist
“A leisurely paced yet suspenseful religious conspiracy thriller.” —Publishers Weekly
Praise for The Stonehenge Legacy
“A self-assured first novel.” —The Wall Street Journal
“A non-stop delight of a read complete with history, secrets, conspiracies, and adventure. Christer matches wits and wiles, holding you in a tight grip from page 1 to the end. Fiercely intelligent and curious, take a walk on the perilous side and enjoy The Stonehenge Legacy.” —Steve Berry, author of The Amber Room
“The Stonehenge Legacy is a creepily compelling tale that deftly mixes the near-Satanic activities of an ages-old pre-Christian cult with an entirely modern kidnap plot . . . This is one of those very rare books that is capable of both thrilling and chilling the reader.” —James Becker, author of The Moses Stone
“Long-buried secrets, a dangerous cult, and lots of twists and turns. Sure to appeal to fans of Steve Berry and Dan Brown!” —C.S. Graham, author of The Archangel Project
“Intriguing . . . Christer does a nice job integrating secret diaries, codes, hooded monks, and historical detail into the abduction plot.” —Publishers Weekly
