The Barbarossa Covenant

“Author  O’Connor…has written a nifty thriller that…holds reader interest with  his breakneck plot…The end result fits nicely in the Tom  Clancy–meets–Dan Brown canon.”                             — Kirkus Review

                                           HISTORY COLLIDES WITH THE PRESENT

Past and present collide in the opening pages of The Barbarossa Covenant   when  retired FBI agent Justin Scott becomes a target for assassination while  en route to Rome at the behest of the Vatican’s secretary of state.  Before learning why, the reader is whisked back to 1940 wartime London  where British Intelligence is working feverishly on an audacious plan to  thwart the imminent cross-channel Nazi invasion. With England’s fate  hanging in the balance, a papal emissary hand-delivers a sealed letter  to Adolf Hitler from a source no mortal would dare ignore or disobey.  The letter is lost to history in 1945 with the fall of Berlin—only to  surface without warning in the Vatican seven decades later. A very  troubled pope wants Justin to authenticate or disprove both message and  messenger—an admitted all but impossible task as the Doomsday Clock  readies to strike midnight.

                                                                      THE PRESENT 

                                                   Day 1.  Rome.  Monday morning

Justin Scott stood next to a Japanese foursome on the cold, windswept pavement of Rome’s  Leonardo da Vinci Fiumicino Airport.  Winter had bullied its way into  the capital city under the cover of darkness this sixth day of January,  leaving in its wake temperatures more suitable to Oslo.  Now, in the  dawn’s meager light, he thought the two men and two women seemed lost  and confused as they shivered inside expensive, ankle length, leather  coats.

Justin  swung his garment bag up to his shoulder, stepped off the curb and  headed toward the line of idling white taxis at the stand across from  the International Arrival and Departure Building.  Suddenly, a  terror-filled scream split the air.  Heeding time-tested instincts, he  ducked while pivoting to face the unknown, only to see the building’s  massive plate glass façade crack, then disintegrate into a million  shards.  The scream died mid-octave, immediately replaced with a surreal  staccato-like chatter.

Justin  threw himself to the ground, using his bag as a cushion to absorb the  impact.  Once down, he abandoned the carryall and began rolling toward  the curb, a singular thought crowding all others from his mind: Take cover behind the row of taxis!

His  heart pounded in concert to the rhythm of the chaos around him.  The  firing continued unabated, filling the air with the pungent smell of  gunpowder.

The  racket ended abruptly.  After a long moment, Justin peeked over the  trunk of a Fiat, taking in as much of the scene as possible in one quick  scan as he had been trained to do at the FBI academy more than a  quarter of a century earlier.  The seemingly lost and confused tourists  of moments ago were now anything but.  They had formed a solid phalanx  and, with Micro Uzi SMGs drawn from inside their coats, had laid down a  withering fusillade into a group exiting the terminal.  Bodies lay atop  bodies.

Justin  reached for his holstered weapon only to remember he wasn’t armed.  He  jerked backward, startled, as a police car fishtailed to a stop a couple  of yards from where he crouched.  Godallmighty, I could have been run over!  No siren, no warning, no nothing.  Two Polizia di Stato officers jumped out, drawing their Berettas as they tried to size-up the impossible scene.

 “Get down!” Justin yelled at the top of his lungs.

The  smallest Japanese woman wheeled, drew a bead on the two men and fired  on full automatic.  9-millimeter Parabellum brass casings cascaded from  her weapon like so many shiny trinkets, clinking as they hit the  pavement and bounced into the gutter.  The officers collapsed in  unison.  One Beretta went airborne, turning end over end before striking  the ground and skidding to a stop within inches of Justin’s feet.  Out  of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of what looked like a hotel  courtesy van as it slammed into the rear of the police car, propelling  the cruiser headlong into the side of a taxi, which in turn struck an  aluminum light pole.

Pandemonium reigned.

Then,  as if on some silent cue, the four lowered their weapons and sprinted  in lock step towards the van.  Suddenly, the smaller woman stopped  mid-stride.  She expertly ejected the magazine from her Uzi, slid her  right hand inside her coat pocket and extracted a fresh 25-round  magazine, all the while keeping her eyes riveted on a badly wounded, but  still-alive officer.

Justin  immediately understood her intention.  In one seamless move, he scooped  up the Beretta, held his breath, took aim at an invisible bull’s eye in  the center of the woman’s chest and squeezed off two shots.  The  would-be executioner let loose a long groan as she crumpled to the  pavement, her weapon falling from her left hand, the unspent magazine  still clutched in her right.  Her companions piled into the van and  slammed the door.  Because she was either dead or dying, she was  expendable.  Three pairs of hate-filled eyes glared at Justin through  dingy windows and, as the van lurched forward, one of the men drew a  finger angrily back and forth across his throat in a wild, slashing  motion.

Justin  became aware of the yelping and whooping from scores of sirens, all  getting louder.  He glanced at the gun in his hand then threw it down,  knowing he didn’t want to face an army of enraged Italian police  officers.  He hobbled over to the nearest downed policeman and probed  the neck for a pulse.  Open and lifeless eyes stared off into eternity.   He made his way painfully to the second.  Also dead.  Ashen-faced, he  straightened and turned toward the woman.  She was on her back, limbs  akimbo but her eyes were wide open, gazing up at the pewter-colored  sky.  Slowly, almost imperceptibly, her left arm moved, stopped, moved  again.  She was alive and searching for her weapon.

Ignoring  a searing pain shooting down his left leg, Justin covered the distance  in less than three seconds and kicked the Uzi out of her reach.  She  slowly turned her head and looked up at him, her powdered face an  inscrutable mask.  Satisfied she no longer posed a threat, Justin turned  his back on her and went to offer help to the other victims.

“Welcome to carefree, not-so-damn-sunny-Italy,” he muttered as several police cars converged on the corpse-strewn battlefield.

                                                                          * * * * *

Throughout  this brief reign of terror, a tall, regal blonde dressed in a  three-quarter length Persian lamb coat followed Justin’s every move from  behind the safety of a new Volvo parked at the end of the line of  taxis.  She held a cell phone close to her ear.

“Make  sure Tel Aviv understands that the civilian shooter is definitely  Justin Scott,” she said in a carefully modulated voice so there would be  no misunderstanding by whoever was listening.  She spoke in a Yiddish  dialect that had not been in vogue for more than a century and, even  now, was only understood by a smattering of people in Israel, Russia,  Switzerland, and the Balkans.  She hesitated for a moment, eyes riveted  on Justin.  “You know, of course, this changes everything, because his  presence confirms our worst fears.  War is now imminent, and either Rome  or Moscow will survive, but not both.”  She severed the connection,  climbed into the car, sat back against the cold leather seat and  continued to study Justin as he limped toward to the expanding knot of  police officers.

Oh,  Mister Scott, she found herself lamenting, you should have just said no  when Cardinal Kettering summoned you to Rome.  But you didn’t, and now  you, too, will soon die, as will many others.

A  sense of despair washed over the woman.  No longer able to contain her  emotions, she lowered her head and allowed the tears to silently flow.   After a full minute, she wiped her swollen eyes and whispered prayerlike  to the ghost of a man long dead.  “Szűrös, you always insisted Winston  Churchill had done something long ago which would one day compel Moscow  to declare war on the Holy See, yet we all chose to dismiss that  warning.  What happened here moments ago proves you were right all  along, and now the world is about to reap a terrible whirlwind.

 To learn more about The Seventh Seal: A Justin Scott Thriller Book 1 click here.