SYNOPSIS:

The essential theme of this story is that some criminals are better than others, and therefore the worst ones – child abusers and traitors to humanity – must be apprehended first. That is why there is a love story as well, involving the choice between a deceptive and an honest woman. The story contains a subtle element of horror and suspense by means of reflected images of characters in mirrors that look more sinister than the “real” ones. At the same time, the story makes an effort to educate the American and international audience about Ukraine’s culture, and educate Ukrainians about aspects of American – particularly Native American, and Scottish culture. There are presented deep insights, historically well supported, into the relations of Native American, Scottish, and Ukrainian and Polish warriors, going back to the First Crusade and earlier. That is why the Bloodline question is answered, in response to the spurious exaggerations of the “Da Vinci Code” craze – which has been exposed by legitimate religious historians as a farcical provocation, but a good yarn. A California forensic investigator, working on cases of murders of young women, learns of an organized crime slavery and child abuse cult that has its tentacles in the intelligence agencies of the USA and former Soviet countries. Official investigations are unproductive – hence, Dr. Rick Martin independently pursues the slavery cartel to Ukraine. He arranges to meet two Ukrainian women there, but unknown to him, a corrupt US intelligence agent working for Chinese and Ukrainian renascent Communists has sent one of the women his way as a “swallow” – a woman used as bait. In Ukraine, Martin and other agents fulfill a mission to disable a rooftop antenna facility, which is explained later in the story as an advanced technology of inducing pathology and hypnotic susceptibility from a distance. One of the agents is killed. Rick meets Tanya Babenko and her Stalinist family, but gives up on the swallow Tanya after finding papers in her photo album that link her to the Santeria cult in California and Cuba. He remains very concerned for her. Her best friend has recently been kidnapped and forced into prostitution by the Ukrainian mob. He takes a train for Sveta in Krivoy Rog, who was really his first choice. This relationship does not work out either, due to the great cultural and economic differences between them. Rick is lured by another woman into a restaurant run by an organized crime overlord who is an enthusiast of swords and sorcery. Rick gets into a swordfight with the restaurant owner, who is also a human trafficker. The tough guy hires a couple of corrupt cops to trail Rick and dose him with biological agents on the train out of town. Rick overhears their conversation, which confirms his suspicions about Tanya. Back in Florida, Rick seeks the advice of his old contacts in the police, and his South Florida Jewish and Sicilian friends, including his cousin Alberto – Rick carries the precarious burden of having worked for police, yet having organized crime in his family. At the gangland meeting is also Paulie Gags, who clearly has mistrustful tension with Rick. Rick unwittingly helps a humorous Persian truck driver deliver terrorist “watermelons” – small dirty nuclear bombs – immediately after the mob meeting. Returning to Kyiv, Martin finds a Chinese calendar game schedule at an Internet club. It refers to September Eleventh and the attempted hacking of the White House website in the preceding summer. Nikita Zamyatin – Rick’s new neighbor – and Bill Crove, the corrupt US agent (leader of the California cult and of the former Red Brigade in Italy), meet in Prague to decide how to counteract Rick’s investigative efforts to break up the criminal network, and his team’s temporary disabling of the antenna facility that can induce pathologies and hypnotic susceptibility from a distance. Dr. Martin is invited to the Ukrainian “big village” of Tarashcha. One little orphan girl latches onto him hopefully, and there is a wedding of her aunt, which accentuates Rick’s sense of lovelife futility. The headless body of a journalist had been found nearby the previous summer. The September Eleventh catastrophes occur, leaving him stranded for a while in the pastoral town. Dr. Martin is “strongly advised” by the authorities to return to Kyiv, but not before one of them tries to recruit him into espionage, working for Russia. In Kyiv he comes across evidence of possible biological warfare research using mycoplasma and dioxin. Rick visits the historic town of Bar, where he learns from an underground group of artists, priests, a rabbi, and a sheikh about the hidden history of his own royal knightly heritage, with roots in Scotland as well as Ukraine and Poland, dating back to the First Crusade, and why he has been manipulated by the organized crime cult. Paulie Gags from Florida arrives to plan a restaurant with Rick. Tanya invites Rick to view architecture, tries to shoot him, informs him of the kidnapping of the girl in Tarashcha, then commits suicide. Martin starts up the successful restaurant Rick’s Kyiv Cappellini. Unfortunately, he is kidnapped by the cult and taken to their private Black Sea island. There, women he knew from California seduce him to persuade him to become their leader, using his noble Scots/Sicilian/Cherokee/Ukrainian ancestry. Rick disrupts the Isle of Else, and escapes back to Tarashcha and Kyiv with clues about the cult – leading to Thailand, another center of slavery and child molesters. Martin makes it to the American Embassy and gets some connecting of the dots out of the bureaucrats. An occult hitman of unknown identity has a member of the Ukraine legislature, and source of female slaves, in his pocket. The Orange Revolution results in an arc of Russian and Ukrainian Werewolf special forces colluding against poorly-armed popular forces outside of Kyiv, near Tarashcha. One particularly corrupt group of soldiers within the Werewolf group, and the tough restarateur from Krivoy Rog, are using the confusion of the popular unrest to abduct as many young children and girls as possible. Rick and his squad rescue a group of kidnapped children and women, but fail to find the young girl from Tarashcha or Tanya’s kidnapped friend. Rick goes to Thailand, to find that cult leader Risir is really Gags, the hitman. A climactic swordfight ensues with Risir on Phuket Beach. Rick makes his underwater getaway as a tsunami wipes away the slain Risir’s private beach lair. But how will the mob feel about the loss of their ace hitman and significant cash flow source? A final restaurant meeting with Martin’s curiously connected cousin Alberto holds the answer. Rick meets him, even though he knows he is a probable target for a hit – he fears he is to be killed. However, he learns that he has earned honors and an envelope of cash for the unsanctioned action, and cousin Alberto is now the new head of the crime family. Rick telephones Sveta and we end with a hopeful reunion of the lovers.