Already acknowledged by the time of his election as a geopolitical genius in his own right, the Slavic Pope has been chosen by destiny and divine providence to preside over the liquidation of the once monolithic and all powerful Roman Catholic hierarchical institution that has held sway for over 1500 years. Surrounded by iniquity, banality, and criminal indifference, and hemmed in by tawdry webs of scandal and organized abuse of sacred trust, he sees the biblical "hour and power of darkness" approaching. Largely abandoned by a once muscular hierarchy whose faith has now been diluted, and aware that many of his bishops want to run with the builders of a "post-Christian" civilization, he is aware too that papal control is a piece of baggage they cannot carry with them. Still, the Pontiff is determined to put off the evil day as long as possible. "As long as I am Pope," he has vowed, "we will never simply acquiesce. Many may not understand my way of fighting. But I will fight."

A fiery-tempered, passionate young priest who hails from the premier Roman Catholic family of the American southwest, Christian Gladstone is baffled by a sudden and mysterious call to work full time in Rome with the Vatican's Cardinal Secretary of State. Gladstone's work for the Secretariat leads to his discovery of protected networks of unimaginable clerical corruption that seem to include virtually every diocese in the United States, and that reach all the way to the Apostolic Palace in Rome. Convinced that he is helping to improve the unity and solidity of the Church, Gladstone discovers instead that he and his family are being used as unwitting gulls in a deadly international game of anti-papal politics. Trapped in an old and very dangerous dilemma, he sets out to discover the whole truth as a double agent among the wiliest and most experienced hands in the Vatican.

Tiny Cardinal Maestroianni is a giant in global power and influence. Aware that the Slavic Pope himself had tapped the hidden geopolitical forces that started the rush of nations into a new alignment, the little Cardinal has set his face not only against papal dominance in general, but against this tenacious interloper of a Pope in particular. Long since won over to the goal of a new society of nations -- to the creation of a new earthly habitat, a truly new world order -- Maestroianni devotes himself to a profound change in the control and direction of the Church Universal. Of course, he knows the transformation can't be too obvious, too abrupt, too shocking for the backward-minded. A certain illusion must be preserved. One of his most important tasks, therefore, is to preserve that illusion like a decorous curtain drawn over a stage, while he and his powerful associates in and out of the Church change all the scenery.

A simple and insignificant priest who has lived through four papacies, Father Carnesecca is treasured by his Vatican superiours as "a man of confidence." Unwilling to compromise his principles on the one hand or to cross the threshold of disillusionment and bitterness on the other, he has acquired a detailed knowledge of significant facts, friendships, incidents and decisions in the Rome of the popes. An expert in the rise and fall of the greats, he acts as a valued and intimate advisor to the embattled Slavic Pope, and becomes a valued and intimate friend to Christion Gladstone. Ultimately, his knowledge of hidden things leads not only to a maniacal scheme against his life, but to the unraveling of the darkest mystery lying at the heart of papal Rome.

Head of the Order of Friar Preachers -- the famed Dominicans -- Father Damien Duncan Slattery is a man of extraordinary appetite, and the dimensions to go with it. A grandiose speciman of manhood who appears for all the world like a lumbering archangel astray among mortals, he has been taken to heart by the Italians as il nostro colosso, our colossus. Slattery is Irish to the core, and the staunchest of the staunch among the small band of supporters dedicated to the papacy and to the Slavic Pope. No friend of Cardinal Maestroianni, Slattery warns Christian Gladstone against "the barracudas" in the Vatican. But, engulfed as he is in the see-saw of Roman power politics, it is Slattery who falls prey to the sharp teeth of his adversaries as he and Gladstone plumb the depths of clerical scandal in the United States and Rome.

A watchful, quick-witted man who looks out on the world from a face that seems to gather toward the end of his nose the way a pencil gathers toward its tip, Aureatini is a young Cardinal of international accomplishment and huge ambition. Protected by his close association with Cardinal Maestroianni and by his role in the Vatican's powerful Christian Adult Renewal Rite, Silvio Aureatini has advanced his reputation as a mover and shaker in the grave matters of foreign policy supervised by the Second Section of the Vatican Secretariat. Always resourceful, always angered by failure, always certain of his significance among significant men, always adept at the life of a Judas-priest par excellence, Aureatini is charged with the task of enlisting Christian Gladstone as a political simpleton into the campaign against the present authoritarian papacy.

An American by birth, and the head of an immensely powerful transnational law firm based in London, Cyrus Benthoek is the prototype of the transnational man and a long time intimate of Cardinal Secretary of State Maestroianni. Benthoek's standing among those at the highest reaches of world power, his deep personal involvement in the workings of the European Community, and his lifelong dedication to the exclusively secularist brand of globalism now guiding the EC, are magnets that draw not only the powerful Cosimo Maestroianni himself, but Christian Gladstone and his ambitious brother Paul, into collaboration with forces that none of them, including Benthoek, has even begun to imagine.

Exceptionally tall but otherwise forgettable - a useful trait in his line of work - Appleyard has earned his reputation in the U.S. State Department as a man who can plunge into any blazing trouble spot in the world and emerge intact with all the irons pulled out of the fire. Tapped as an international trouble shooter for the President of the United States and his special ad hoc committee of industrialist advisors, it falls to Appleyard to see that the EC's planned Greater European Market doesn't form so quickly as to outstrip the United States. Resourceful and pragmatic, Appleyard has learned that the workings of politics and politicians don't change just because they take place on a transnational level. But at this most volatile moment in world affairs, his assignment to keep the geopolitical policies of the Slavic Pope from clashing head-on with American policy leads him into a world where everyone plays by different rules, and where nothing is as it appears to be.

Head of the fabled Gladstone family of Galveston, Texas, mistress of the Gladstones' fabled Windswept House, the inheritor of fabled and official family privilege in Rome, the commanding, excessively graceful, immensely wealthy Cessi Gladstone is known far and wide as a force to be reckoned with. She not only lives in the presence of God, but often gives Him a piece of her mind. In her unfailing faith, and whether ministered to by a faithful or unfaithful priesthood and hierarchy, she is the living embodiment of tradition. With the Gladstone family motto of No Quarter as her banner, she has fought fiercely to protect her two sons and her daughter from what she sees as the hurricanes raging through the house of God the way Galveston's storms rage around Windswept House itself. Cessi Gladstone has taken on prelates and politicos alike, and has sent them scurrying for cover. She has known the Maestroiannis and the Benthoeks of this world all her life, and has found them to be men who understand the mechanics of everything and the meaning of nothing. Faced with the suddenly intimate involvement of her two sons with such men, Cessi allows herself no illusions. Approached for help in yet another in a string of financial scandals in Rome, she is determined to exact a steep price of her own. This time she intends to take on no less powerful a figure than the head of the Vatican Bank, and the Slavic Pope, to boot.