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Inspired by true events, masterful storyteller Tom Grace delivers his most provocative novel yet. In The Secret Cardinal, ex-Navy SEAL Nolan Kilkenny returns in an adventure that races from the grandeur of the Vatican across the vastness of Asia, ultimately involving China, the Mafia, and the conclave of cardinals that will elect the next pope.
When Kilkenny is invited to Rome to consult on the functioning of the Vatican Library, he is still grieving the death of his wife and son and welcomes the distraction of the seemingly simple assignment. But Pope Leo XIV has a startlingly different task in mind for him. In a private audience, Kilkenny learns of an unreported atrocity committed against the underground Church in China and its link to Yin Daoming, the long–imprisoned Bishop of Shanghai who has served thirty years of a life sentence in a Chinese laogai for refusing to renounce the Church of Rome. The aging pope then reveals a dangerous fact about Yin that only he knows—twenty years earlier he had made the imprisoned bishop a cardinal in pectore—a secret cardinal. Decades of diplomacy have failed to end China’s persecution of the Catholics loyal to the pope, or to free Bishop Yin. The pope wants Yin free, and asks Kilkenny to devise a plan to accomplish this seemingly impossible task.
Kilkenny suddenly finds himself working hand-in-hand with the head of Vatican’s intelligence service to engineer a daring rescue operation. With help from the U.S. President, American Special Forces and the C.I.A., he assembles a team of ten men and one woman who will use some of the most advanced weapons, aircraft, and computer technology to execute this extraordinary mission.
Filled with fascinating detail about the history, politics, and people of China and the Roman Catholic Church, and the clever advanced technology and weaponry that have become hallmarks of a Tom Grace novel, The Secret Cardinal charges relentlessly toward an unexpected and unforgettable conclusion.
Other Books by Tom Grace:
Bird of Prey
In space, a technological nightmare orbits the Earth, stalking its prey. Sheathed in a black multifaceted skin, a secret all but invisible against the darkness of space, the killer satellite hunts with one of the deadliest weapons ever created. It is Zeus—and like the god of myth it hurls lightning from the heavens.
Astronaut Kelsey Newton and her crewmates aboard the International Space Station have just settled in for a six-month mission when they discover the existence of Zeus. Alone and defenseless in orbit, the astronauts report what they know, even at the risk of becoming a target themselves. The job of finding out who placed the weapon in space falls to Kelsey’s fiancé, ex-Navy SEAL Nolan Kilkenny.
Racing against time, Kilkenny must search through the wreckage of the past and find the key to disarming Zeus if he’s going to save the love of his life—and opposing him is an army of mercenary killers and a megalomaniacal tycoon whose craving for power will plunge the world into chaos.
Twisted Web
Deep in the frozen wasteland of Antarctica, a remote NASA research lab rests atop a two-mile thick glacier, covering a vast underground reservoir of water. But the true discovery isn’t the lake buried in ice—it’s what has been found within its boundaries. Something amazing. Something alive. And it may hold the answers to existence itself.
When the lab is attacked and its scientists murdered, ex-Navy SEAL Nolan Kilkenny realizes that there’s more than science at stake—there’s power, money, and what may be another step in evolution. Racing around the globe, Kilkenny must stop the machinations of a diabolical adversary and recover a priceless artifact of human existence—or die trying…
Quantum Web
In 1948, a young German émigré reaches the threshold of a scientific vision: a theory of everything—the very blueprints for the construction of the universe. Then his dreams for a future in America collide with the horrors of his past, and both he and his research are seemingly lost forever.
Now buried knowledge has been rediscovered—and whoever controls it holds the keys to the future. Two sides, American and Russian, are in a ruthless fight for the ultimate power of the new millennium—Quantum technology—and ex-Navy SEAL Nolan Kilkenny finds himself caught in the crossfire. To stop the fate of the world from being hijacked, Kilkenny must wage a war across two hemispheres as he races to solve a decades-old mystery—if the solution doesn’t kill him first. (Originally published in hardcover as Quantum)
Spyder Web
Code name: Spyder. It has already been put in place, sucking a U.S. corporation dry of its most important information. National security insiders know how dangerous the Spyder can be—and that someone has to unravel its secrets.
The government chooses Nolan Kilkenny: an ex-Navy SEAL turned computer expert who now leaves his laboratory behind for the killing fields of his past. Only this time, his prey are waiting for him.
In a duel of nerves, courage, and skill, he goes up against deadly covert agents and a network of intrigue that stretches from the Caribbean to China. Here Kilkenny’s enemies have carefully targeted him to die—for a weapon that isn’t a bomb, isn’t a missile, but is the greatest threat America has ever known.
