In the wake of a Munich writer's assassination, Mossad agent Gabriel Allon and Vatican priest Pietro embark on dangerous journeys that reveal long-buried secrets affecting the fates of millions of people.

A Russian Pope attempts to avert a conflict between Russia and Red China by declaring that the Church's total wealth should alleviate the world's starving and challenges other institutions to do the same. By this gesture to achieve world peace he wants to give religion a new role in the modern world.

It's spring in Burgundy. The flowers are out and so are the cardinals-of Pope Urban's renegade papacy, now on the run from the Vatican's would-be usurper Borja. Most of the Church's senior leaders have converged upon the city of Besancon, where the Pope plans to offer an ecumenical olive branch to the other Christian denominations with which Rome has been at war. Fortunately, Urban has up-time help. He can rely upon Cardinal-Protector Larry Mazzare's...