And now the curtains do at last draw back. Carl Ring, imagining himself the fictional ghostly statue of a dead officer threatening Don Giovanni with doom, does not relent...convinced he is the instrument of law and order in the world, Ring now invades all of Turkey, and then attacks Iran. With nukes, with madness, with hatred, with venom. And he does not stop there. He divides his forces and hits both Syria and Armenia at once. Like Lawrence of Arabia, he is enraged by what he sees has happened to the people of old Syria, indeed to the Arabs his fellow Englishman Lawrence once fought to free and save. And, still wounded by the memory of his dead wife Liv and beloved mother Klara-who he still remembers as Germany's jewel beyond compare-he drives into Armenia, where he announces to the world that abuse and mistreatment, especially of women, will have no place in his "Western Alliance." The public executions continue, the odd blend of hate-filled violence-including Vlad-like impalings...Dracula still haunts him on a frequent basis-along with enlightened liberation continue too. Meanwhile, largely because of Ring's military exploits, the Muslims who live in both the Holy Land and elsewhere are enflamed with rage and lash out at Israel and the Jews. When it seems as though Ring will continue on to Israel himself, he thinks better of it and turns back, much in line with Lawrence...much in line with Edward Longshanks too, who triumphed in the desert but then decided to head home to England. But then another evil player makes his way onto the scene and changes things forever. He is Pope Urban IX, and he is the final Holy Father of the Roman Catholic Church. He imagines himself another Urban II, who announced the first Crusades...and what's more is this: he imagines himself another Gregory X, who convened the Second Council of Lyons that brought the world together for the purpose of an even bigger Crusade, except it didn't happen. But now, 800 years have passed, and Ring and Urban plot it again. Urban, maddened by an esoteric and heretical Bible book called Jude that corrupts Saint Peter's words into a legalistic rant against the libertines of Earth, seduces Carl Ring-by way of power and pleasure and war-to join him in the fight against both real and imagined enemies worldwide. Because of Urban's meddling, because of Urban's Lyons-like council at Kazan in Russia, Ring will have his desire, his plan, but far more his will, to wage world war rekindled. The council at Kazan convenes, and its aims are dreadful. It wishes, in the name of peace and liberty and law, to heighten penalties for those, especially Jews and Christians, who dare to question not just the world order but, even more pivotally, the nationalist agendas of the men like Ring and Preston-and their Eastern enemies like Pushkin of Russia and Chiang of China-who wish to see their power increased. And, while only Ring seems to notice it at first, the Kazan Treaty grants great leeway to the warriors of Earth like Ring who are still hell-bent on conquest. Fortunately for love and truth, there are men like Braeden Darcloch and Keaton Tempus, the eventual Two Witnesses of Christ, who see through all this and call the world's attention to it. By way of prayer, by way of miracles, Darcloch-eager to see the world itself awakened-prays for the Kazan Treaty to be judged, and soon, a request that will be answered. And Tempus? His charge is Israel. He prays for Haifa, Israel's treasonous northern city, to be punished...his prayer, just like Loch's, is answered, and the result is truly terrifying.And still, as will be the case until the very end, there is Ryan Preston-America's last president, the False Prophet. His war with China fizzles, Hu Chiang does not forget, Preston wrestles with his agony over Kazan, and Preston's wife Joanna draws ever closer to her doom as her Russian lady liaison pulls her, her husband, and the world into heresy, witchcraft, and destruction.