June 30th, 1908 — In the trackless wastes of Siberia’s remote Tunguska river basin, the most devastating cosmic collision ever recorded flattens hundreds of square miles of ancient forest with a blast a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Yet, after more than a hundred years of international scientific investigation, the cause of the cataclysm remains shrouded in mystery.
Maverick astrophysicist Jack Adler thinks he’s fingered the culprit: the impact with the earth of a submicroscopic black hole, smaller than an atom, more massive than a mountain, older than the stars. What’s more, Jack believes that this fantastic object is still down there, deep inside the Earth, burrowing through its mantle in an ever-decaying orbit that will end only when it has devoured the entire planet. Small wonder if the Russians refer to the voracious black hole by their word for vampire — Vurdalak.
Rookie secret agent Marianna Bonaventure is tracking three missing Russian scientists suspected of involvement in weapons of mass destruction research. The trail leads her to the luxurious megayacht Rusalka, floating corporate headquarters of billionaire Russian industrialist Arkady Grishin. Determined to prove herself, Marianna creates an elaborate ruse in order to infiltrate the enormous vessel — a dangerous gambit that requires the coerced cooperation of a rather special civilian ...
Jonathan Knox is one of the country’s most sought-after management consultants; his knack for intuiting hidden relationships among seemingly disparate events serves his Fortune-50 clients well. But when Marianna compels the reluctant Knox to join her undercover on Rusalka, he must grapple with puzzles of a wholly different order of magnitude.
Together, these three must battle a globe-spanning conspiracy intent upon capturing Vurdalak and exploiting its awesome power, a power that can transform the world — or end it.