Father Thomas Steele was putting the final touches to his speech before the Pontifical Swiss Guard regiment on medieval combat tactics, when Sister Donna Giovanini interrupted to say Father Ricci, Cardinal Roncalli’s assistant was on the phone and needed to see him immediately.
Minutes later Fr Ricci staggered into the office with a crate of ancient relics. One would touch off Steele’s next adventure.
It wasn’t a clock or a time piece. The startled Monsignor had only seen one before, and that was copy. This was an original tool used to predict celestial movements of the Sun, Earth’s Moon and the five known planets known to exist at the time. They called this an Antikythera mechanism named for the island off which the original was salvaged from a sunken ship. This was taken from a plundered roman nobleman’s Tomb.
At noon the next day he, Gato, Brother Pendragon and a survey team left for the ancient city of Venosa in southern Italy to explore the find, speak with the local Priest and Georgio Accardi grounds supervisor for the Abbey of the Most Holy Trinity, and the ruins of an ancient amphitheater who showed them the partially plundered memorial of Roman General Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who’d faced Hannibal in battle.
Steele didn’t need Esmeralda or Gato to tell him other things had been taken from the tomb. While Pendragon was arranging for the survey teams arrival, He demonstrated his paranormal powers discovering a hidden compartment in the back of the tomb. Steele began questioning nervous Georgio before giving him two options: Confess what he had taken and return them, or face prosecution for the theft. Steele pointed out that as a Catholic his confession was protected by the sanctity of the confessional. Georgio agreed but admitted his brother was also involved in the theft. Steele replied he could nothing for the other unless he made the same agreement.
After Pendragon’s return Steele made 2 discoveries in the smaller room; the first was a transposition cipher (scytale) used to send messages on the battlefield, the second was a simple wooden crucifix. Both presented mysteries: The 1700-year-old scytale was still sealed and designed to destroy the message within, if improperly opened, but the crucifix … General had died in 208 B.C., over 200 years before the birth of Christ and Christianity … how had it come to be in a double sealed tomb? They found a 3rd object they could not identify till later.
Weeks later a fan named Francesco Accardi the supposed brother of of Georgio appears; he wishes to confess as well, but it seems there is a slight complication. He isn’t Georgio’s brother. Francesco Accardi claims to be Judas Iscariot, Christ’s betrayer.
The rest of the book concerns opening the scytale, reading and reacting to the message, the origin of the cross but you’ll have to buy the book for that.
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Staarbaads Universe 