Interview

James Rollins discusses Map of Bones and also answers a multitude of questions relating to his other books, his life as a writer and much else.

Truth or Supposition: the Vatican employs an elite cadre of spies around the globe?
That would be true. Like any government, the Vatican does indeed maintain a sophisticated intelligence-gathering operation, even employing full-time agents. One of its most notable and heroic missions took place during the Cold War, when the Vatican attempted to smuggle priests into the Soviet Bloc to act as spies.

And even today, such clandestine operations continue. During the Iraq war, the Vatican maintained detailed intelligence of conditions on the ground -- gleaned not from individual spies, but from its community of two hundred thousand Iraqi Catholics. And perhaps therein lies the Vatican's greatest strength: Between its diplomatic ambassadors, its worldwide charitable organizations, and its millions of parishioners and lay persons, the Vatican certainly maintains a sophisticated global network of eyes and ears.

How did you learn of this, if indeed true?
Despite the Vatican's code of silence on this matter, painstaking research by David Alvarez resulted in a detailed treatise on this subject: Spies in the Vatican: Espionage & ...