SECRET HISTORY (2009)

"(W) Jean-Pierre Pecau (A) Leo Pilipovic The Eagle and the Sphinx. 1793, Toulon: Aker saves the life of a young Corsican artillery officer, and finds a man able to demolish the old tyrannies. Six years later, Napoleon leads the French army into Alexandria in Egypt. Lascari, an old knight of the order of Malta, is dispatched on an archeological expedition in search of a forgotten temple, but an ancient curse reappears from the desert."

"(W) Jean-Pierre Pécau (A) Igor Kordey Our Lady of the Shadows. 1914: Almost a century has passed since the death of Napoleon at St. Helena. Though believed defeated, the archon Dyo and the revenant William reappear in Sarajevo, guiding the hand of a terrorist who will plunge Europe into flames. What are the true aims of the red brethren and the Archon of the Chalice? Will World War I mean the end of the world or the birth of another?"

"(W) Jean-Pierre Pécau (A) Igor Kordey 1918: William of Lecce, the Fifth Archon, triggers the First World War, and so three of the four original houses - the Shield, the Lance, and the Sword - join forces. They succeed in holding disaster at bay, but for how long? A rumor spreads that in the sands of the Arabian Desert exists the mythical city of Kor, mother of all cities, said to house the powers of all runestones combined!"

"(W) Jean-Pierre Pécau (A) Igor Kordey The Thule Society, 1919. The ashes of the Great War still smolder across Europe. Civil war rages in the Ukraine, where Makhno's anarchists fight Reds and Whites alike, and despite himself, Itsak is swept into the hellish Russian revolution. In Munich, another revolution dies, and Baron von Sebottendorf and the black mages of the Thule Society use the occasion to set in action their diabolical plan. Once more, Europe's fate dims and darkens."

"(W) Jean-Pierre Pécau (A) Igor Kordey The Black Stone. 1926: Curtis and Lawrence try in vain to recover the black ivory, but the Road to Kor is closed to them thanks to Ibn Saud, the new master of Arabia. Meanwhile, in Soviet Ukraine, Itzhak fights alongside the partisan anarchists, and then flees to Siberia. He moves along the Tunguska River, on the same track followed seventeen years earlier by Rasputin, with Baron Sebottendorff on his trail."

"(W) Jean-Pierre Pécau (A) Igor Kordey Nadja. 1940: The Second World War is underway. While Curtis, in command of a squadron of Spitfires, is plunged in full into the Battle of Britain, the Archons attempt to combine forces to fight against the men of William of Lecce. But it seems the Fifth Archon is about to win the game and bring Europe under his yoke!"

"(W) Jean-Pierre Pécau (A) Igor Kordey Lucky Point, 1942. After years of war, fate seems to finally turn in favor of the Allies. But William of Lecce has not said his last word. After defeating the archon Aker, William begins to work with the mysterious Nazi factory T4, whose raw materials seem to come directly from the concentration camps, while his agents seek some secret in Beirut. Meanwhile, in the U.S., Curtis joins the top secret 'Manhattan Project' at Los Alamos."

"(W) Jean-Pierre Pécau (A) Igor Kordey Götterdämmerung. 1943: SS officers in the service of William of Lecce try to recover the Ark of the Covenant. Despite the opposition of the Mafia, they manage the feat, but too late: Fate begins to play its final hand, and the war appears lost for the Axis Powers. In desperation, William plays his last card trying to derail the Normandy landings, and takes refuge in Japan."

"(W) Jean-Pierre Pécau (A) Igor Kordey The Watchers. 1945. The two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem to have put an end to the evil plots of William of Lecce. In liberated Paris, Daniel Rosenthal, a survivor of the death camps, learns how to live again. He owes his survival to a 'star,' a strange tarot card given to him by the surrealist poet Robert Desnos in the Terezín concentration camp, who also told him about the mysterious cabaret, L'Arcane 17. Daniel begins a descent into a world he did not know existed and into a story that the textbooks do not teach: the secret history."

"(W) Jean-Pierre Pecau (A) Igor Kordey The Amber Room. 1946. The world is licking its wounds. At the border of the two Germanys, a group of Jewish partisans are trying to move to the West to reach the promised land, aided by Erlin's protégé, Curtis Hawk. In Princeton, a scientist opens a door to a parallel dimension. And in the ruins of Nuremburg, the Cold War begins, as the grand alliance between the Houses is shattered, and Erlin sides with the Allies, and Dyo with the Soviets."

"(W) Jean-Pierre Pécau (A) Igor Kordey (C) Manchu, Olivier Vatine Zion. 1946. The Navarro woman Nimue gives birth to a baby girl she names Pandora. 1948. The United Nations votes to create the modern state of Israel, sowing the seeds of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In Jordan, Curtis Hawk crashes his old Messerschmitt and runs across an odd group of confederates destined to seek the archaeological site of Qumran: Joachim, an Ashkenazi Jew; Moshe Dayan, in the service of the Zionist Haganah paramilitaries; and Reka, who reveals secrets of divided Jerusalem."

"(W) Jean-Pierre Pécau (A) Igor Kordey Operation Kadesh. 1956: In the Egyptian desert, Curtis settles accounts and conducts his personal crusade to avenge the death of this wife Nimue, the mother of Pandora, putting him on a collision course with General Nasser and the Condor as they try to retrieve the secrets buried in the Red Fort, where it all began. But the Archons do not control events they way they once did. Meanwhile, in Budapest, a new player arrives and changes the course of history."

"(W) Jean-Pierre Pécau (A) Igor Kordey The End of Camelot. California, 1960: The millionaire Howard Hughes convenes a meeting of the Cosa Nostra to offer them a contract on President John F. Kennedy. At the other end of the earth, Curtis is on the trail of John Philby, the murderer of his wife, hunting him in Saudi Arabia, intent on ending him once and for all but the game changes constantly!"

"The Age of Aquarius: 1968. It's the end of illusions for the Archons as the world sinks into disenchantment. Dyo intervenes to suppress the Prague Spring, sending his best man, Kim Philby. Curtis sees his chance, and aims to finally wreak some vengeance. At the other end of the Earth, Erlin discovers in the ruins of a Mayan temple strange correspondence from his old friend, Nostradamus. What if the Archons had never really understood the meaning of their destiny?"

"Since the dawn of time, Dyo, Reka, Aker, and Erlin, the four Archons who headed the Four Houses, have fought each other to control the fate of humankind. While Archons have risen and fallen, the world continues to change and time remains their constant antagonist. In the middle of the Vietnam War, the CIA decides to get rid of a strange smuggler, a German former legionnaire whose knowledge of the cards is worrisome. Meanwhile, Reka disappears. But who'd be crazy enough to kidnap an Archon? And to what end?"