''Sacred Stone'' is the second book in The Oregon Files series of novels by best-selling author

Clive Cussler Clive Eric Cussler (July 15, 1931 – February 24, 2020) was an American adventure novelist and underwater explorer. His thriller novels, many featuring the character Dirk Pitt, have reached ''The New York Times'' fiction best-seller list m ...

and Craig Dirgo. It was released on October 5, 2004 by Berkley. As with the rest of the series, the main character

Juan Cabrillo ''Juan'' is a given name, the Spanish and Manx versions of ''John''. It is very common in Spain and in other Spanish-speaking communities around the world and in the Philippines, and also (pronounced differently) in the Isle of Man. In Spanish, ...

is the captain of the ''

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...

'', an ultramodern warship disguised as a decrepit tramp steamer, and with a crew made up of ex-military and intelligence operatives.

Plot

Within the story are the separate plots that ultimately turn out to be connected to each other. One is the job of supplying security for the

emir Emir (; ar, أمير ' ), sometimes transliterated amir, amier, or ameer, is a word of Arabic origin that can refer to a male monarch, aristocrat, holder of high-ranking military or political office, or other person possessing actual or cer ...

Qatar Qatar (, ; ar, قطر, Qaṭar ; local vernacular pronunciation: ), officially the State of Qatar,) is a country in Western Asia. It occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it ...

, at a conference in

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

. The second is to find a missing nuclear bomb. The ''Oregon's'' crew also has to pick up a

radioactive Radioactive decay (also known as nuclear decay, radioactivity, radioactive disintegration, or nuclear disintegration) is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is consi ...

iridium Iridium is a chemical element with the symbol Ir and atomic number 77. A very hard, brittle, silvery-white transition metal of the platinum group, it is considered the second-densest naturally occurring metal (after osmium) with a density of ...

meteorite recently found in a mysterious ancient shrine, designed by Erik the Red and constructed by his crew. The Stone also holds primordial matter from another world, an oxygen eating microbe. There are also two different bands of fanatics. One is an Islamist group that wants to use the Stone to build a

dirty bomb A dirty bomb or radiological dispersal device is a radiological weapon that combines radioactive material with conventional explosives. The purpose of the weapon is to contaminate the area around the dispersal agent/conventional explosion with ...

to wipe out London. The other, an anti-Islamist, plans to swap the Stone with the

Black Stone The Black Stone ( ar, ٱلْحَجَرُ ٱلْأَسْوَد, ', 'Black Stone') is a rock set into the eastern corner of the Kaaba, the ancient building in the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is revered by Muslims as an ...

(referred to as ''Abraham's Stone'') and smash it on the Dome of the Rock.

Cultural references

There is also a restaurant in the small Victorian coastal town of Hunstanton, Norfolk, England called The Honeystone, which is referred to by locals as "The Sacred Stone".

References

* {{Clive Cussler The Oregon Files 2004 American novels American thriller novels Novels by Clive Cussler Collaborative novels