Gray understood the implied request and hoped that description still applied to him.
“But I’m not the only one who would like to enlist your help,” Painter said, reminding Gray about their earlier discussion.
“Who are you talking about?”
“I told you before that the photos taken by the geologist were distributed to his employers and likely spread far and wide.”
“Reaching the wrong eyes. Got it. But what did you mean by these images reaching the right ones? You mentioned another agency getting wind of all of this. Who?”
Before Painter could answer, Kat knocked on the door frame behind him and entered. “Now that our esteemed guest is gone,” she said, “I’ve reestablished the videoconference call.”
She crossed around to Painter’s computer and raised a questioning eyebrow at the director, who nodded permission for her to use his desktop. She typed rapidly, and the flat-screen behind him flickered, an image juddered, then firmed into the features of a man. The figure appeared to be leaning on a desk, his face near the webcam on his end.
His green eyes twinkled with amusement. He wiped a fall of black hair aside, a match to his priestly frock. The white of his Roman collar flashed on the screen.
It was Finn Bailey—Father Finn Bailey.
Gray immediately understood who had requested his involvement.
“I see our prodigal son has returned,” the priest said with a distinct Irish brogue, clearly having a full view of Painter’s office on his screen. “Welcome back, Commander Pierce.”
Gray ignored Bailey and turned to Painter. “The other entity that heard about the discovery, that saw the geologist’s photos . . . it was the Vatican.”
“Not in its entirety,” Bailey answered from the screen. “Only those of us in its intelligenza.”
Gray sensed a much larger story about to unfold. Few were aware that the Vatican had its own intelligence agency, its own spy network. For decades—if not centuries—it secretly sent out operatives to infiltrate hate groups, secret societies, hostile countries, wherever the concerns of the Vatican were threatened. Basically, they were James Bonds in clerical collars—but without the license to kill.
Gray’s history with this organization went back eleven years, when he’d first met Monsignor Vigor Verona, a former member of the intelligenza, an honorable man who would go on to save Gray’s life and whose niece had once captured his heart. Both were now gone, sacrificing themselves to save the world.
Just seeing Father Bailey woke that old pain. The priest—who was no older than Gray—had been a former student of Monsignor Verona at the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology in Rome and eventually recruited into the Vatican’s intelligenza. Due to this past connection to his dear friend, Gray was willing to hear this priest out, but a part of him still found the man grating, too full of himself, too assured that he filled out the shoes of his former mentor.
Never, Gray thought. You’ll never be Vigor.
Aloud, he asked, “What does any of this have to do with the Vatican?”
“Ah,” Bailey said, “that’s a long story, one too long to relate at the moment. I think it’s best if we start with the present. A week ago, our organization was alerted to a set of photos circulating about a discovery in Greenland. We recognized the importance of this find, specifically the gold map and silver astrolabe, and how it tied to a mystery going back centuries here at the Vatican.”
“What mystery?” Gray asked.
Bailey raised a hand. “Suffice it to say, we wished to have the discovery authenticated and the treasure brought here. That was our priority, but as you can imagine, there are not a lot of Catholic churches in Greenland, let alone a member of our intelligenza.”
“So they asked for our help,” Painter filled in.
“We believed this matter needed to be addressed quickly,” Bailey explained, “especially as word was likely to spread.”
Kat straightened up from the computer. “Which tragically proved to be the case.”
“Do you know anything about the ones who stole the map?” Gray asked. “Who kidnapped Dr. Elena Cargill?”
“Unfortunately, we do not. But we do know those thieves were not entirely successful in their pillaging of the site.”
Gray frowned. “What do you mean?”
Painter answered, “The climatologist on site, Douglas MacNab, was able to secure the spherical astrolabe after it was accidentally dislodged from the map. The man said the group that attacked them wanted it, called it the Daedalus Key.”
The Daedalus Key?
“We don’t know why they call it that,” Bailey admitted. “But one of our members—a colleague at the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology—is familiar with such devices, these spherical astrolabes. They are a rarity. And we can guess why those thieves wanted it so desperately.”
“Why?” Gray asked.
“I’ll let the monsignor explain.”
Bailey reached forward to his keyboard, and the webcam image widened, revealing a figure standing to his left. Gray stiffened in his seat. His reaction was not only because Bailey had failed to mention anyone else was in the room, listening in on the conversation. It again went to this priest’s brash nature.
Even Painter looked perturbed. Kat simply went cold-eyed.
Gray leaned forward, doing his best to cover his initial shock. Maybe it was Bailey’s use of the title monsignor. But for the briefest moment, Gray thought it was Vigor Verona standing there, some ghostly apparition, but as the man stepped closer, Gray recognized it was only a resemblance. The monsignor wore the same formalwear of his station. He was also roughly the same age as Vigor had been—maybe late sixties, early seventies—with a similar fringe of gray hair framing his bald tonsure.
“This is Monsignor Sebastian Roe, a professor at the university and a longtime member of our intelligenza. You may speak freely in front of him.”
Like we had any choice prior to this moment.
The monsignor took Bailey’s place and smiled shyly. “From your expressions, I see Father Bailey had not informed you all of my presence.” He cast a scolding look at the priest. “I think I remember someone once telling me that young men think old men fools, and old men know young men to be.”
Gray could not help but smile. The guy even talked like Vigor.
Monsignor Roe turned his attention back to those on his screen. “You’ll also have to forgive if I’m a bit didactic. I’ve been teaching for four decades and I think I can’t help it when I’m speaking to a group.”
He cleared his throat and began to explain. “To understand the importance of what was secured from that frozen ship, you must first understand its rarity. No one knows who invented the first astrolabe, a device that’s part cosmic map and part analog computer, capable of determining the position of stars and constellations, the rising and setting of the sun, even nautical directions. But most believe the first astrolabe was invented by the Greeks during the second century B.C. Maybe by Apollonius or Hipparchus.”
Roe waved this last detail aside. “Anyway, it was a crude version. Later, astrolabes were refined to their finest form in the Middle East during the Islamic Golden Age. Still, even then, these astrolabes were flat, planar in nature. Let me show you.”