When the Russians Wouldn't Play takes place six years after Towner's brush with the mysterious Illuminati-like cult that murdered a man from afar in the first book, When There Was No Pope.
Towner is in L. A. in 1984, not to see the Olympics where the Russian stars won't be competing anyway, but on a consulting job for the Bank of America.
An odd series of events leads him to a breakfast with a dead man and then to help plan the biggest bank robbery of all time.
If you ever had a desire to rob the cash vault of the Bank of America (and had a time machine which could take you back to 1984) this is how to do it.
Secrets start to unfold when Towner discovers a cache of papers belonging to The Otter, a friend he encountered in Volume I. The papers actually come from the organization Towner tried to unmask years ago. In Volume II, friends become suspects, the meaning of The Whirlwind is finally uncovered and Towner confronts the realities of "The Whirlwind" and the people who are fighting for and against it.
When the Russians Wouldn't Play refers to those two weeks in 1984 when the Russians, in payback for Jimmie Carter's boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Russia, boycotted the Los Angeles Olympics in return. This volume delves deeper into the origins of Mid East troubles, going back to the Middle Ages and beyond to the time of Christ.
The "secret cache" of papers is as mysterious as the central mystery itself. Instead of simple explanations of the organization and its aims, the papers are a series of allegorical stories that contain, obliquely, the central truths behind the wall of secrecy.
Conspiracies "R" Us
