The Relic is the first novel in a trilogy. It is set in Frankfurt, Germany in late 1956 during the Hungarian uprising and Cold War. A retired World War II OSS hero, Jim Wafford, hires a young intelligence analyst, Edward Blakely, to find the whereabouts of pieces of a 3,000 year old Minoan relic. The relic holds the key to solving the mystery of where a fortune in Habsburg gold and jewels cana be found on the island of Crete. Unfortunately for Wafford and Blakely, a former SS Major, Eugen Horst, is also attempting to find the relic fragments and is willing to kill anyone who gets in his way.