A reporter is killed before he can publish a story on arms smuggling; a geologist is murdered when he tries to hand over photographs that will reveal the person behind a secret terrorist network; a dirty bomb sits in a hotel room just blocks from the White House; and a wealthy industrialist wants to harm the west in a way that will be remembered throughout history. These might have remained unconnected except for the discovery of an artifact – a three-by-three-inch piece of silver that was found at a victim’s residence. In this third novel of the Mauro Bruno detective series the Italian detective, along with his new partners Elia Donati and Lisette Donais, try and stop an industrialist before he attacks a NATO summit attended by the President of the United States, and sets off a dirty bomb in Washington that will make a large portion of the capital uninhabitable for generations. Although security at both locations at first appear to be invincible, Bruno and his partners soon discover a chink in the armor that has gone unnoticed because of a bribe paid to someone high up in the government.

Milan’s chief prosecutor is killed when his car is pushed off a narrow mountain road, the city’s mayor is shot by an assassin on the steps of his office building, and an abbot and his librarian are killed in a monastery. This occurs days before Chief Inspector Mauro Bruno, whose father is one of the victims, comes to Milan to arrange for the funeral. Suspicious by nature and generally acknowledged within the Polizia di Stato as being the best detective in Italy, Bruno uncovers clues that lead him to believe that a man known throughout Italy as the patriarch, the head of the wealthiest and most powerful family in the country, is behind these murders. But he needs proof. He soon discovers that that the reason for these killings resides within centuries-old papers stored within the Vatican’s secret archives, to which only the pope has access. Hunted by the patriarch’s men, Bruno attempts to stay alive long enough to find out what the patriarch and the Vatican have been hiding for seven centuries, and why a multibillionaire is willing to risk everything to protect that secret.

For only the fourth time in two centuries, the French have allowed the Mona Lisa to leave the Louvre, this time at the request of the pope, who wants to exhibit it in the Vatican Museums. However, once on display, the Museums’ former curator notices a nearly imperceptible discrepancy in the painting, leading to the discovery that it’s a forgery. Faced with the crisis of losing the most valuable painting in the world, the pope turns to Mauro Bruno and his associates, who’d previously performed discrete investigations for the Vatican. As they begin, Bruno and his colleagues try to understand how the world’s most famous painting, which is kept inside an alarmed environmental enclosure fifteen feet from the nearest person and under constant visual and physical surveillance, could be stolen. Even in transit to the Vatican, it was under continual visual monitoring with a security team inches from the masterpiece’s enclosure, leaving the investigators bewildered about how a theft could have occurred. However, they soon learn that the Mona Lisa is one of many heavily guarded museum masterpieces that have been stolen and replaced with a forgery, the thefts having gone unreported. With only two weeks before the Mona Lisa returns to France, and not having a clue as to the identity of the mysterious person they call the Collector, they must find and retrieve the Mona Lisa.

A young girl escapes her kidnappers; the US embassy compound in Athens comes under a devastating missile attack; a US Navy amphibious carrier, returning from a goodwill tour, engages hostile aircraft over the Adriatic Sea; and an abandoned Soviet submarine base in Bulgaria is secretly refurbished. These are the seemingly unrelated pieces of a puzzle that Matt Moretti and Han Li encountered while on vacation. It started innocently enough when the two agents from the off the books White House organization known as Nemesis were walking back from dinner and saw a young girl being chased by three thugs. After dispensing their own brand of justice on her pursuers, and on hearing that she and others like her were kidnapped and being sold into slavery, they decide to get involved. However, they soon find that the tables have been turned and they’re being hunted by someone with seemingly limitless resources. Needing to survive long enough to take down the human traffickers, they receive help from where they least expect it.

Gunter Wayan is again in over his head, accepting an assignment from the Indonesian Minister of Defense that sends him, Eka, and Persik to Russia to rescue a defecting scientist and his wife from the FSB. Before they leave, the Minister makes clear that if they’re captured, the government will deny any involvement and say they acted alone rather than create a diplomatic incident. The defector, a Ukrainian scientist on the brink of achieving the holy grail of camouflage technology, which is making a moving object invisible, was kidnapped from his lab near Odesa and brought to a facility in downtown Moscow. To motivate the scientist to complete his work, his wife is taken to Oymyakon, the coldest inhabited settlement on earth, and placed under FSB guard. If he's unsuccessful in delivering the technology, she’ll live the remainder of her life there without him. With the Indonesian embassy across the street from his lab, he finds a way to communicate with an official, offering his technology in exchange for getting him and his wife out of the country. To accomplish this nearly impossible task, they decide to first rescue the wife from the Siberian settlement, which has no airport and is a fourteen-hour drive over snow-covered roads from the nearest town, then evade capture on their thirty-three hundred mile trek across the Russian Federation to retrieve the scientist. As if things couldn't get more complicated, soon after entering the country, they learn that the Minister’s plan for getting the couple out of Russia has fallen through and that once they rescue the couple, it’s up to them to find a way to get them out of a country which has the tightest border security in the world.

A military drone attacks a small boat off Bali and leaves a disgraced former police detective turned private investigator adrift in the Indian Ocean; an Indonesian attorney is tortured and killed delivering his client’s documents; the head of North Korea’s money-laundering clearinghouse is murdered when his car is forced off a mountain road; a Chinese army lieutenant colonel appears to die of a heart attack while on a flight to Beijing; and a server is taken from what is believed to be an impregnable office on the 101st floor of a building. These are the events that Gunter Wayan and his assistant Eka Endah must piece together if they are to stay alive and solve the mystery handed to them by a client who was on the receiving end of a sniper’s bullet moments after they were hired. Now, whoever killed their client is after them. But Wayan and Eka have no intention of going down without a fight and decide to take the battle to their pursuer. Bodies soon pile up in Indonesia, China, Hong Kong, Macau, and North Korea. As the forces that are after them close in, Wayan encounters an unlikely person who can provide the information necessary to bring down The Organization, the international money-laundering enterprise which they discover is after them. The only problem with convincing this person to help is that she just tried to kill them.

In this latest Matt Moretti-Han Li thriller the clandestine unit known as Nemesis, a joint Chinese-American off-the-books organization, is faced with its first challenge just minutes after it’s activated by the presidents of the United States and China. Their first assignment is to find and retrieve two aging Soviet nuclear weapons that were smuggled into China to destroy its major cities and are on a countdown to detonation. They soon learn that the face behind this act of terror is Awalmir Afridi, the former leader of the Protectors of Islam, who the world believed to be dead following a US and China cruise missile attack that decimated his strongholds. Helping Afridi is a wealthy Saudi businessman and member of the royal family. When the Saudi government discovers what’s happening, they fear the retribution that would follow. Lacking the resources to retrieve the weapons on their own, they inform the Russian and Chinese governments separately that they’ve uncovered a terrorist plot to smuggle former Soviet nuclear devices into China. Because China is economically critical to Russia, Putin is determined to retrieve the weapons and deny that former Soviet nuclear devices were ever held by terrorists. To accomplish this, he sends a war-hardened colonel, Vasily Kvachkov, to do whatever it takes to get them back from fanatics who’d rather die than surrender them. The problem is, he no idea where they are. As Kvachkov and his men covertly enter China, President Liu of China turns to Nemesis to retrieve the nuclear devices, thereby unknowingly placing them on a collision course with a Russian colonel who has a reputation for never coming in second.

The Cabal has secretly expanded its grip on world economies, governments, corporations, and other centers of influence for decades. Founded by a mysterious person known as the thin man, its goal is to create a new world order—an authoritarian and borderless world under one government. With its members in strategic positions within global technology and social media companies, senior government positions, and enormous investment funds, they’ve pushed its narrative to billions of users until their beliefs have become mainstream. Those within the Cabal don’t want to change the world for altruistic or egalitarian reasons. Instead, they want to establish perpetual global monopolies that would ensure extreme generational wealth while advocating that centralized government control creates greater economic stability, ratchets down global tensions, and establishes a society of equals. Standing in the way of this seemingly unstoppable juggernaut is Nemesis, an ultra-secret off-the-books organization that doesn’t follow a rulebook. In this latest Matt Moretti-Han Li thriller, when the Cabal discovers Nemesis is after them, it uses its considerable global influence and piles of cash to frame them as terrorists. Hunted by several governments, including their own, and with time running out, they must stop the Cabal before it initiates a world-unifying event that will forge its global consolidation of power and create a new world order.

Following a gala, the presidents of the United States and China disappear after retiring for the night within their heavily guarded palaces inside the Forbidden City. After an intense investigation ensues, no one can determine how the dignitaries were abducted while under constant surveillance. When an internet video is released that shows the heads of state kneeling before the flag of the Protectors of Islam, the question of who abducted them and what they want is answered. The Islamic terrorists threaten that unless their demands are met within seventy-two hours, both men will be beheaded live on the internet. With each countrys intelligence agencies paralyzed by a lack of clues, Matt Moretti and his Chinese agent counterpart, Han Li, work outside their organizations bureaucracies to find the leaders. After they uncover a conspiracy focused on attaining a singular objective at any cost, Moretti and Li are arrested for interfering with the investigation. Now they must outrun the army, make sense of complex clues, and race to find the presidents before their abductors carry out their evil plan. In this thrilling story of intrigue and murder, an American civilian intelligence officer and Chinese agent must do everything in their power to stop the beheading of two international leaders by Islamic terrorists.

General Lin Bogang, Chinas highest-ranking military officer, has a plan that will force the government into naming him his countrys leader. And theres a strong likelihood hell succeed, thanks to secret documents written by Mao Zedong. The general has two problems. He only has copies, which could be discounted as forgeries, and he doesnt know the exact location of the originals. Soon he discovers that the key to finding them lies with Matt Moretti, an alcoholic former Army Ranger currently working as an archivist for the US government. Hunted by the general, a Chinese assassin, European police, and his own government, the archivist goes on the run across Europe as he tries to unravel the clues that will reveal Maos long-kept secret. Along the way he meets Han Li, a beautiful Chinese agent and assassin in her own right who is also seeking the original documents. Only time will tell, however, whether they will manage to keep them out of the hands of the general. In this thriller, an alcoholic former Army Ranger joins forces with Chinas top assassin to recover secret documents that could topple the Chinese government.