A Templar cryptogram has eluded scholars for centuries.
Is it a ticking cipher bomb just hours away from detonating a global war?
Rookie State Department lawyer Jaqueline Quartermane was never much good at puzzles.
But now, assigned to investigate a ritual murder of an American in Ethiopia, she must solve the world's oldest palindrome-the infamous SATOR Square-to thwart a religious conspiracy that reaches across the centuries to the Age of Discovery and a secretive order of Portuguese sea explorers.
Separated by half a millennium, two espionage plots dovetail in this breakneck thriller, driven by history's most closely guarded mystery..... the shocking secret that Christopher Columbus took to the grave. If you dare join the search for The Virgin of the Wind Rose, you may end up questioning everything you were taught in history class.
