Q

The year is 1517, and Martin Luther has nailed his ninety-five theses, which demand reform of the Catholic Church, to the door of Wittenburg Cathedral. What follows is a long stretch of upheaval, war, civil war and violence that later generations call the Reformation.

A young theology student takes the side of the heretics and the disinherited. He becomes a radical Protestant Anabaptist, a self-styled Survivor who moves through the era under many names.

His opponent is a loyal papal spy and heretic hunter known only as "Q". The two pursue each other across a Europe laid out like a chessboard: the German plains, the thriving Dutch cities, and Venice, the gateway to the East.

Each man tries to uncover who the other really is, in a game where no move is off limits. The true size of the stakes stays hidden until the end, and the contest points toward a death.