Nicolae

Nicolae is a novel by Tim F. LaHaye, published in 1997. It belongs to a sequence of end-times thrillers and is set two years after millions of people vanished in an instant and the world's institutions were left with no explanation for it.

A new world order has risen in the interval. Nicolae Carpathia, its leader, is consolidating power over the Global Community and is described as strangely enthralling to the people who meet him, so that presidents, financiers, religious leaders and broadcasters end up serving his regime rather than negotiating with it. The world has been rebuilt without any accepted explanation for the disappearances, and the leaders who now run it are the ones Carpathia has gathered around himself.

Only a handful of people understand his intent. Rayford Steele, a pilot, the journalist Buck Williams and the rest of the Tribulation Force believe Carpathia is a dictator using peace and unity as instruments, and the novel follows their attempt to act on that belief while the Global Community's forces shatter American cities and the military vows to destroy them.