Purgatory

Walter Eekhaut, the veteran chief inspector from the Brussels police force who has a problem with authority, remains in Amsterdam, where he was dispatched to aid the Dutch security service. When his boss, Chief Superintendent Alexandra Dewaal, receives a tip from one of her informants, the two find themselves across the border in his home country, tramping in the Belgian Ardennes on a frigid January day. What they find is macabre and horrific: seven charred human bodies, attached to tall stakes with chains, in an almost perfect circle. From the look of it, these people were burned alive in some sort of ritual. On the wall of a cabin, Eekhaut and Dewaal find the enigmatic message: "This World seems to last Forever. But it is merely the Dream of a Sleeper."

Similar events occur elsewhere in Europe as well as Africa, where Eekhaut's new girlfriend has gone on temporary assignment for an international aid agency operating in Somalia. There have long been stories of an apocalyptic religious cult, The Church of Supreme Purification, along with a more shadowy militant offshoot. Are these events tied to them? Is this some sort of worldwide conspiracy to cleanse human society by fire, or is there a more sinister explanation?