The pope is dead - but the papacy lives on. Already, from all corners of the globe, grizzled, scarlet-suited cardinals are gathering to elect a successor. Within the hushed confines of the Vatican, the air is alive with intrigue. Then in the midst of the most frenzied canvassing, comes a surprise result. The new Pope, Kiril I, is the youngest cardinal - and a Russian, recently released from seventeen years in the labour camps.

The jeep skidded perilously on the icy surface and Sergeant Willis stopped to put on the chains. While he fitted them, Major Mark Hanlon stepped out into the road and looked through his field glasses at the mountains. Then he saw the skier, a tiny black puppet, motionless. A moment later he began to move, gathering speed, in a flurry of snow - a wild, suicidal plunge down the dazzling hillside. Hanlon watched him, breathless, waiting for the fall. But he came onward, faster and faster, until they could see the grey of his uniform and the green flashes of the Alpenjager regiment and the rifle slung between his shoulder blades and the gleam of his polished pistol belt. An Austrian soldier, armed and in battle dress. Yet the war had been over for months now......

Kurt Sonderfeld: a man who will stop at nothing in his pursuit of power, a manipulator who will use even sorcery and murder to achieve his goals. Gerda: Sonderfeld's beautiful wife, who has seen how implacably ruthless he can be. Kumo: the powerful young villager who knows the ancient ways of killing by sorcery. Curtis: the young Patrol Officer faced with an unsolved murder and tribal unrest.