Historical Fiction Thriller
Date Published: 12/10/2025
Publisher: Manhattan Book Group
When the Prince of Denmark is murdered in the Florida Keys, an unlikely
duo of American and Irish diplomats in Copenhagen becomes embroiled in a
deadly game of espionage, ancient conspiracies and high stakes diplomacy as
they confront one of the West's most dangerous enemies. In Reign of Secrets,
Colonel Whit Ransom and Irish attaché Aisling Kelly race across Europe
to stop the Russian President and his assassins as they chase the Danish
Crown’s most guarded treasure, a thousand-year-old secret that could
threaten the royal houses of Europe and return the Russian empire to glory.
In Reign of Secrets, diplomacy meets danger, and the past may be the deadliest
weapon of all.
Praise for Reign of Secrets
"A gripping, timely story... that masterfully blends that warrior ethos with
today's geopolitical reality, as Whit Ransom confronts Vladimir Putin's
ruthless ambition to resurrect an empire."
- Lt. Col. James Reese (Ret.), US Army Delta Force Operator
"Through this historical thriller, Reign of Secrets offers a captivating
glimpse into the essence of what it means to follow in the footsteps of
legends..."
- Morten Andersen, "The Great Dane", Member, NFL Hall of Fame
"A masterfully crafted tale that explores how the West's adversaries subtly
challenge the narratives of history - reshaping symbols, exploiting
weaknesses, reframing legacies, and testing the resilience of democratic
values and the international order."
-Lt. General Ed Cardon (Ret.), former Commander, US Army Cyber Command
Excerpt
Reign of Secrets; Excerpts
1.In Reign of Secrets, diplomacy meets danger, and the past may be the deadliest weapon of
all…
2.There is a secret within the royal houses of Europe; an ancient secret that has kept the
same bloodline on the throne of Denmark for over 1000 years.
The President of Russia will stop at nothing to get it.
3.Roskilde Cathedral, Denmark:
Her body had lain undisturbed in its royal crypt for almost a century; but when the
man in the front row discovered the letter sewn in the lining of her murdered
granddaughter’s nightgown, he knew the long dead Empress had to return to
Russia, to fulfill his destiny, and change the course of history.
Whit Ransom studied that man. From his seat in the balcony of Roskilde
Cathedral he had a clear view of the back of the man’s bald head, square
shoulders, and dark blue suit. The skill of observing small details had been
part of his Delta Force training. The bald man seemed a bit smaller in
stature than media photos suggested. And the man clearly wasn’t paying
attention to the homily the bishop was delivering. Instead, he was glancing
around the interior of the cathedral, studying the architecture, the
multiple monuments, and the recesses in the walls as if he were looking f
or something. What?
On one side of the aisle sat the royal family of Denmark, headed by Her
Majesty the Queen. On the other side of the aisle, in seats surrounding
the bald man, the political leadership of Denmark sat stoically. Ransom
scrutinized the face of Prime Minister Ida Samuelsen for any sign of what
she was thinking as she sat next to the man. But the Prime Minister sat
unmoving, betraying no discomfort except for one brief instant when
Ransom saw her eyes dart to the left, at the man who most of her
counterparts considered the most dangerous person in the world,
a man who had recently brought Europe to the brink of an unthinkable
war, a man who tonight would be flying back to Moscow to resume
his duties as the President of Russia. …
…What Ransom was unaware of, what only the man in the front row
knew of, was the tattered letter sewn in the hem of the nightgown of
the nineteen-year-old Grand Duchess Maria; a letter from Maria’s
grandmother to Maria’s father. And other than the man in the front
row, neither Whit Ransom nor the Queen of Denmark nor anyone
else present in the cathedral that afternoon could have guessed the
contents of that letter, or the secret buried therein, a secret the man
in the front row was determined to unravel. A secret that would
allow the new Russian empire to rule all of Europe, with him
on the throne.
4. The Kremlin, Moscow
The president of Russia sat alone in his office. He reached inside
his left coat pocket and removed the letter he had now read at least
a hundred times. The message, sewn in the lining of the undercoat of
Czar Nicholas II’s youngest daughter, must have reached the czar in
exile, sometime in 1917, before the Bolsheviks seized power and
captured Nicholas and his family. The letter had been discovered
when the children’s bodies were being prepared for reburial in the
cathedral in St. Petersburg two years before. Its message, written
from the czar’s mother and intended for her son, had become
an obsession. It was more than a message of hope from a mother
to a son. It was a message promising eternal empire based on a
secret known only to her family. He had hoped that bringing the
mother’s body back to Russia would provide more clues, but so
far the examination of the casket of Empress Maria Feodorovna,
who the Danes called Dagmar had yielded nothing. Hopefully
the team from Cuba would provide more information. They
should be reporting in soon. He unfolded the three yellowed
pages and once again read the faded, cryptic message. What
secret were you trying to get to your son, Empress?
5. U.S. Embassy Copenhangen, 8:00 am
The Bubble was large enough to hold the embassy’s senior staff, who
were all assembled and stood when Arthur entered. Sanders introduced
the dozen men and women, all of them Americans, in rapid order
without regard for seniority. Like Conrad Arthur, Ransom had met
a few of them earlier, but it was the first time he had laid eyes on
a couple of them, the staff from the National Security Agency and
Central Intelligence Agency in particular. Following the brief
introductions, Sanders got to the point.
“Sir, we have a situation. The President is waiting for your call.”
6.Kastrup Airport, Copenhagen, 5:45 pm
Niels Sørensen watched as the military escort removed the flag-draped
coffin from the cargo bay of the Citation CJ4. The Crown Prince was
to his left, huddled under an umbrella with the crown princess. They
had agreed that the arrival of Prince Axel’s body should be a
private affair, no media, no cameras. The absence of an audience
left the royals free to exhibit their emotion, and Sørensen understood
the silent tears flowing down the face of the Crown Princess. He
would take charge of the body and ensure that a full autopsy was
conducted. The results of the American and Danish autopsies
would then be compared. If the Ambassador’s information was
accurate, that Axel’s attackers had drugged him, that was a
real problem. If those drugs were designed to elicit information,
and if before he died, Prince Axel had shared the information he
and his predecessors had devoted their lives through the centuries
to protecting, all could be lost. And that was not only a threat to the
existence of the royal family, it could shatter the stability of the world order.
7.Fredensborg Palace, the Library, 5:45 pm
“The American ambassador asked me if the family has any enemies,”
said the crown prince. Beck stood and began pacing. “We have
had this same discussion for years. If we bring the Americans in,
we cannot trust that the truth will stay with us. Besides, the enemy
could be anyone, including the Americans.”
The lord chamberlain spoke next. “Two centuries ago, at least
one of America’s leaders knew of, or at least suspected, our secret—and
they understood and complied with our wish for silence on the matter.”
“True,” replied Beck, “but the leadership of America at its founding
is not the leadership of today. We cannot be certain that America today
would protect and respect a secret that has been in this family
for a thousand years.”
“As insensitive as this may sound,” said the Crown Prince,
“let’s hope that my brother’s heart seized up before his interrogators
could get that secret out of him.
8. Trinity College, Dublin, 12:19 pm
None of the three spoke as the curator continued to turn pages. It
occurred to Ransom that he had run out of adjectives to describe
the artistic beauty in front of him. As the curator was beginning to
turn the eleventh page, Ransom held up his hand for her to pause.
“Do you know anything about that symbol?” he asked, pointing to
the marking in the left margin that he had seen in the Stag’s Head.
McKinsey moved closer to look through the magnifier.
“It seems a bit out of place, there in the margin by itself,” Ransom said.
“It looks like the right half of a cross with a spiderweb attached to the arm.”
“Or like something I might have drawn as a kid when I was playing
‘hangman,’” said Morgan, now peering over McKinsey’s shoulder.
“No, I don’t personally know anything about that mark”
McKinsey replied, “but there has been extensive scholarly work
done on each folio of the Book, so I will see if I can find anything
about it. I will make a note of it, on folio 301r.”
As the three carefully perused the remaining pages of John’s gospel,
Ransom noticed that the Book ended before the completion of
the gospel’s twenty-one chapters.
He looked at Rochel McKinsey. “Where is the ending?”
“When the Book was stolen by Vikings a thousand years ago,
the thieves not only ripped off the Book’s jeweled cover, but
they also removed several pages.”
“So, there are pages from John’s gospel that are missing?” Ransom asked.
“Yes. For some reason the last folio page from John’s
gospel was removed a thousand years ago. For what reason, we have never known.”
9. Konstantinovsky Palace, St. Petersburg, 2:10 am local time
Vladimir Putin fingered the letter, turning it over and over in his hand.
The party committee leader in Crimea was right to have sent it directly to
him a year earlier when the bodies of the remaining two Romanov children,
Grand Duchess Maria and the Czar’s only son,
Alexei, had been finally autopsied. The bodies had been discovered in
2007 in the forest outside Yekaterinburg. The letter, bearing the date
November 21, 1917, had been sewn into the fabric of the nightclothes
of Grand Duchess Maria, who would have been nineteen when she
was murdered. For the one hundredth time, Putin unfolded the letter
and read its contents: a message from a mother to a son, a son who
she was convinced would return to reclaim a throne.
“My Dearest Nicky: As I write this letter, I no longer hear the guns. But
I hear that the guns have come for you and that they have taken you
from the palace. You know that my thoughts and prayers never
leave you. I think of you day and night and sometimes feel
so sick at heart that I believe I cannot bear it any longer.
But God is merciful. He will give us strength for this terrible ordeal.
As for me, I am not fearful of what is to come. I know that our family
will survive and that you will soon return to rule our people. Nicky,
should the day come that you need to call upon it, you need to know
that our family in Denmark harbors a secret, not a terrible secret,
as is harbored by so many of the royal families of Europe, but a
magnificent and ancient secret, in our family for a thousand years,
as described by the Son of Thor.”
Putin looked up from the letter and pondered how much they had
learned since his Patriarch, Ilya Mikhailov, had connected the reference to the
“Son of Thor” with the Gospel of John in Dublin’s Trinity Library. Putin
had puzzled over that reference for weeks, knowing that the empress’s Viking
ancestors believed in many gods and goddesses, the three primary deities being Odin,
Thor, and Frey. Thor was Odin’s son and the most popular god who protected
humans from evil. But the patriarch had thought the reference to “Son of Thor”
was odd, because in Viking lore Thor was not known to have had sons.
The patriarch knew that Thor’s name in Viking lore meant “thunder,” and
to Vikings the sound of thunder was caused by the god’s chariot riding
across the sky. So the patriarch reasoned that Dagmar’s reference
must have been a clue to something else. Translating Dagmar’s reference
as “Son of Thunder,” Mikhailov immediately recognized the reference
to the New Testament and the Apostle John, who the early church nicknamed
the “Son of Thunder.” The patriarch knew that the most well-known
copy of the Gospel of John had existed “for a thousand years,”
as the letter referenced, and it was in Dublin, within the Book of Kells.
Putin returned to reading the letter. “With the secret lies the key to
your return to the throne, and indeed to ensuring Russia’s
predominance among the empires of the world. To call upon it,
you need only come to me. Or if I am gone, then to your cousin
on the Danish throne, to the home where we enjoyed such
wonderful Christmases in years past. My thoughts are
with you always, my dear Nicky, just as the arms of God
are wrapped around you. With Love, Mama.”
He put the letter down. “I know we are close, Empress.
I know we are close, and that the secret you tried to share
with your son will soon be mine.”
About the Author
James P. Cain’s remarkable career has spanned the fields of law,
business, politics, sports and international diplomacy. From volunteering on
Ronald Reagan's first Presidential campaign, being featured on CBS's 60
Minutes at the age of 27, to becoming a partner in an international law firm,
serving as President of the NHL Carolina Hurricanes, and later as U.S.
Ambassador to Denmark, Ambassador Cain has operated at the highest levels of
leadership and public service for over five decades.
A personal encounter with Islamic terrorism in 2016 became the catalyst for
writing Reign of Secrets.
Reign of Secrets is the first in a series of Whit Ransom novels.
His first book, The American, written during the last few months of his
diplomatic service, was a Bestseller in Denmark.
Ambassador Cain and his family live in North Carolina.
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