A pope, a king, and a banker, dead for nearly 500 years, hold the key to finding a relic stolen from the Holy Land, a relic that has killed more than once―year 541, Justinian Plague, 500 million dead―and one man, with the help of a beautiful assassin, can stop the coming apocalypse. It’s 1930, Yale University Anthropology Department, Dr. Fox Marshall is a young epidemiologist, an expert in plagues and the sixteenth century Italian Renaissance. His latest conspiracy theory links the Medici banks with a Neapolitan king and an indulgent Renaissance pope. While in his office one August evening, an intriguing yet mysterious woman, Tatya von Daliás, confronts him; her enticement, seven Medici Letters, letters which validate his Medici-King-Papacy triangle theory and also lead to a valuable Christian relic. She beguiles him into chasing the letters and boarding the freighter Jenny Rae for Europe, where he discovers he is not the only one seeking the Medici letters and the Holy Land relic.