The Fraternity of the Stone

Drew Maclane was a star agent until the day the killing had to stop. He withdrew and for six years lived the life of a hermit in a monastery. But someone has tracked him down, leaving a trail of corpses. Someone who knows all about him, who knows how to draw him back into that electrifying world where no one is as he seems, and where life's most horrifying and harrowing game is played....
"The Roman Empire, dangerously fragmented, made a desperate bid for unity by choosing Christianity as its sole official religion. A few Christian fanatics, disillusioned by this contamination of politics into their religion, retreated from society, venturing into the desert of Egypt, where they lived in caves to seek a mystical conjunction with their God. As word about these spiritual hermits spread, other disillusioned Christians soon joined them, establishing an austere religious community based on fasting, prayer, and physical mortification. By 529, the severe traditions of what some called these "holy madmen" had begun to drift northward through Europe."