The Tyndale Code: An Action-Packed Christian Fiction Thriller Novella (An Armour of God Thriller Book 1)

by Daniel Patterson

  Getting out of Guatemala was a lot easier than getting in. The local man gave him a ride to the airfield for another twenty dollars, and the pilot had waited as agreed. Once Zack had arrived in Belize City he’d made arrangements for the de Havilland pilot to fly back to Guatemala and wait an additional day for Waterson.

  Zack unzipped his backpack and removed the Tyndale Bible. “A lot of trouble for a little book,” he said to the inanimate object. “Why were the gangs of Central America so desperate to get their hands on you?”

  It couldn’t have been for the money or the Azquatels would have sold it. Did the Azquatels think it held some mystical power? La Cobra and El Tigre seemed to think so. But who had removed the title page . . . and why? Was it because of the numbers? Is that what the gangs were after?

  The pilot’s voice echoed over the plane’s intercom and brought Zack back to the present. “We’re ready to roll, sir. We have clear skies between here and Chicago. Our flight time is four hours eighteen minutes. We should be landing at O’Hare International at seven o’clock Chicago time.”

  Zack sank into his chair as the plane took off and gave in to inertia. The thrill of escaping and getting back to Belize in one piece began to wear off. What remained was a cross between the relaxed feeling of peace and the fatigue of running on adrenaline for hours.

  When the plane reached cruising altitude, Zack poured a cup of coffee from the well-stocked galley and unwrapped the soft cloth from the Bible. For the first time since securing the Tyndale Bible, he had time to examine the rare artifact meticulously.

  He ran a gentle hand over the soft red Moroccan leather cover. “How many people have handled you over the years?”

  A warm nostalgia came with ancient artifacts, knowing that something had survived the ages. He unfastened the two golden clasps and opened the book in front of him. The pages were beautifully illuminated much like the British Library copy and had similar marginal notes. This copy had belonged to someone of importance.

  Zack began flipping through the pages but stopped when he remembered the picture of the title page he took with his phone. He opened the images and zoomed to inspect the folds—they appeared too worn, as if the page had been carried in a pocket and read frequently. Next he examined the binding edge—it looked frayed, and the outer edges of the page were dog-eared. There was no way to know for certain if Father Ferguson had found the page with the Bible or not.

  He focused on the numbers. There had to be some correlation between the two sets. If this was a code, there was going to be a lot of trial and error.

  Zack removed a pen and notepad from his pack and converted the Roman numerals into regular numbers, following the same double-set structure.

  4, 19, 4, 4, 29, 12, 19, 6, 21, 7, 20, 10, 11, 24, 23, 9, 26, 32, 11, 11, 32, 12, 2, 15, 20, 1, 7, 14, 12, 22, 12, 20, 26, 14

  * * *

  91, 214, 175, 131, 280, 79, 104, 14, 306, 237, 77, 209, 202, 309, 111, 48, 185, 281, 304, 309.2, 13, 31, 288, 255, 110, 25, 83, 236, 204, 96, 213, 273, 131, 162

  It had to be a cryptogram. But for what, and for whom?

  It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that William Tyndale himself had written the code. For more than ten years he was England’s most wanted man. He lived in exile, pursued across Europe by King Henry VIII’s spies and bounty hunters. Everything he did had to be in secret.

  Other historical figures had used coded messages to communicate. Julius Caesar, Sir Francis Bacon, Mary Queen of Scots, and Thomas Jefferson came to mind.

  Tyndale was a scholar, and he had made it his life’s mission to get the Word of God into the hands of as many people as possible—and in a language they could understand.

  Zack thought about the risk of getting the Tyndale Bible out of Guatemala. It seemed like nothing compared to what William Tyndale did for the people.

  Chapter 36

  For the next two hours, Zack went from the simple number letter substitutions, to page and word counting, to solutions that became more convoluted.

  He was getting nowhere, and a dull headache thumped between his temples. He pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, closing his eyes. “What am I missing?”

  His mind whirred, trying to think how William Tyndale would have created the code, and feeling like a complete novice.

  He was halfway through the flight, and he had to try a different approach. He powered up his laptop, opened a browser, typed ‘William Tyndale’ into the search box, and waited for the results.

  Links about William Tyndale, his work, the Bibles, and more information came up. But they weren’t telling him anything he didn’t already know. He scrolled through the results, clicking on the second and third pages before giving up.

  He clicked on the ‘images’ search for lack of anything better and started scrolling through the pictures.

  A stained glass image of Tyndale caught Zack’s eye.

  It was a window that hung in the Chapel at Hertford College commemorating Tyndale. The man himself stood dressed in his doctoral robe. He held an open Bible in his left hand while his right index finger bookmarked a page. Below the panel of Tyndale was another panel with the words, Everyman in his own language—Tyndale’s life goal.

  Zack clicked back to the image results and spotted another stained glass of Tyndale. This one was by the artist Arnold Wathen Robinson and hung in Bristol’s St. Matthew Church. Robinson represented Tyndale in similar garb as the Hertford College stained glass, with a Bible in his left hand and his right index finger pointing heavenward. The Bible he held was very similar to the Bible that sat in front of Zack now.

  He clicked back to the images and scrolled through the results again. He clicked on a picture of a bronze statue that stood in the Victoria Embankment Gardens in London. It showed Tyndale’s right hand resting, palm up with his index finger extended, on an open Bible. The artist was said to have based the sculpture on a painting at Hertford College.

  He typed ‘William Tyndale Painting’ into the image search box.

  He was onto something, but he was careful not to get too excited. With the thrills and disappointments of the past two hours, he was about ready to lose his mind.

  The results came back, and he didn’t have to study the painting long before he had his answer.

  It was painted by an unknown artist, at an unknown date—possibly the sixteenth century. The artist painted William Tyndale seated. In his left hand he held an octavo edition of the Bible, while his right index finger pointed directly at the book.

  Suddenly everything made sense.

  It couldn’t be that obvious, could it?

  But it was.

  Of course . . . the answer was staring him in the face this whole time. The key to unlocking Tyndale’s code was in plain sight for anyone to see.

  If the clue he’d spotted in the image search were actually a clue, one of the sets of numbers would correspond to the folio numbers.

  The Tyndale Bible didn’t contain page numbers—in the sixteenth century pages were still referred to as folios or leaves. Each folio was numbered and had two sides. So what would have been page one and page two in a modern book was folio one, side one, and folio one, side two in the Tyndale Bible.

  Zack tested his theory with the first number from each set—4 from the first set and 91 from the second set.

  There was nothing on folio 4 so he flipped to folio 91.

  “Yes!” He knew he had seen it.

  He picked a random number from the second set, 309, and turned to that folio. It was there too.

  He was now positive the second set of numbers corresponded to a folio number.

  William Tyndale was pointing the way.

  It was the simplest kind of code.

  Simple but effective.

  Chapter 37

  Zack dialed Father Salvatore Giovanni’s number and waited impatiently.

  “Pick up. Pick up,” he mumbled under his breath.

  “Zack, my boy, I’ve been worri
ed sick. Where are you? The last thing I hear from you is about Father Ferguson . . .” he swallowed hard enough for Zack to hear it over the phone, “and then you disappear!”

  “Don’t worry, Father,” he said in a calm voice. “I’m safe and on my way to see you and I’ve got the Tyndale Bible.”

  He waited for Father Giovanni to react. It took two seconds for his words to sink in before the Father responded. “I don’t understand,” he breathed into the phone. “How?”

  Zack sighed inwardly. He didn’t want to tell the father what he’d been up to since they last spoke.

  Looking back, going up against El Tigre and La Víbora Mara with a nun at his side sounded crazy. But Zack explained what had happened—giving Father Giovanni a condensed version, and toning down the life-threatening bits, but the father knew Zack better than that.

  After the scolding was over, Zack added, “There’s more.”

  “More?” the priest asked with a slight hesitation in his voice.

  “Sister Grace gave me an envelope addressed to the museum. Father Ferguson had asked her to mail it before he died, and she thought I should have it.”

  “A letter?”

  “No, a page from the Bible. The title page.”

  “From the Tyndale Bible?”

  “I think so. I don’t know who removed it or when, but it has some mysterious numbers along the bottom of the page.”

  “Like what? A code?” Father Giovanni asked.

  Zack could hear the father’s interest was piqued. “I think so.”

  “Well, what are they?” he asked, not even trying to compose himself now.

  “Two sets of thirty-four numbers. Roman numerals. I had Sister Grace mail you the original as Father Ferguson requested, but I took a few pictures. I’m emailing them to you now.”

  “Got it. Any idea what they mean?”

  “I’m almost certain it’s a book cipher.”

  Zack briefly told Father Giovanni the methods he’d tried to solve the code and what he’d discovered on the Internet. Father Giovanni duplicated the searches and mumbled in agreement when Zack explained the pattern he saw in the pictures.

  “I see it now,” the father said. “In each one of the images the artists have Tyndale pointing.”

  “Right. He’s either pointing at the Bible or toward heaven. Now here’s the exciting part. On each one of the folios from the second set of numbers, there’s a tiny hand pointing to a row.”

  “Are they hand-drawn?”

  “They are.”

  “Like a manicule?”

  “Exactly like a manicule.”

  Manicules were popular in medieval times as a way of highlighting sections or passages. They were hand-drawn by the reader and usually in the margins of the book.

  “So, you’re thinking the second set of numbers is folio numbers? Does each one of those folios have a manicule on it?” the father asked.

  “Each one I’ve checked so far.” Zack flipped to another random folio from the set of numbers. “Yep, here’s another one on folio 131.”

  “This is exciting, Zack!”

  Zack started deciphering the message, flipping through the pages with Father Giovanni patiently waiting on the other end.

  But something wasn’t right.

  Chapter 38

  “What is it?” Father Giovanni asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “The fourth word on folio 91 is them, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “The second set of numbers. 214 and 19 . . . there is no nineteenth word on that line of folio 214.”

  “The finger could be pointing to the line to start counting from,” the father offered, “and could go multiple lines.”

  Zack counted to the nineteenth word. “That gives us, honor. Them honor. I don’t think that’s right.” Zack fought the frustration that welled up, pushing it away as far as he could. Patience. It would just take time. He was so close now he could taste it. “I think the first set of numbers is referring to letters and not words. So the nineteenth letter on that line.”

  “Give it a try.”

  Zack tested that method, but ended up with a bunch of random letters.

  A, C, S, E, E, D, and V.

  Zack fought the urge to punch or throw something. “This isn’t working!”

  “We’ll get it, Zack. We just have to look at it another way. I think you’re on the right track though,” the father continued. “If you were Tyndale you’d want to keep the code simple so the person receiving the message could decipher it.”

  “Right,” Zack agreed. “But not so simple that it could be figured out by a spy if they got a hold of it.”

  “Correct. Just because you know the numbers to the combination of a lock, as an example, doesn’t mean you can open it. You have to know the correct sequence in which to use those numbers. Let’s try something.”

  “I’ll try anything at this point.”

  “Starting from the beginning of the book, turn to the very first folio with a manicule on it, which would be—”

  “13,” Zack answered, turning to the folio.

  “Our first number from the first set is 4. Look for the manicule and find the fourth letter on the line it’s pointing to.”

  “T. But what about the second set of numbers?”

  “Let’s ignore them for now. On a piece of paper, I want you to write down the number 13 and right below it put the letter T.”

  “Got it. Same thing for the next manicule?”

  “Yes, the very next one.”

  “That’s on folio 14 and the letter I.”

  Zack nodded, and they worked through the letters one by one. It was tedious work, and Zack fought a range of emotions. He was an archaeologist. Ancient artifacts and messages and the like were his life. If this didn’t work out, he would be a whole new level of disappointed.

  “Okay, that gives us T, I, A, E, C, L, R, T, S, A, V, M, E, P, A, I, M, C, N, R, A, M, E, U, I, R, D, E, I, A, P, G, S, and I,” Zack said.

  “Great. Now let’s put them in the correct order.”

  “The second set of numbers!”

  “Precisely. What letter do we have for folio 91?”

  “S“

  “How about for 214?”

  “E. Then M for 175, and P for 131, and E for 280, and then—”

  R for 79,” Father Giovanni finished.”

  “Yes!”

  “Semper. It’s written in Latin. Keep going.”

  Like a blurred picture, the rough meaningless shapes suddenly came into focus showing the smiles of loved ones. Zack’s palms began to sweat, and his heart beat in his throat. He could hear Father Giovanni’s excitement, too, and it was contagious. As they continued, Latin words formed, and they all made sense.

  Chapter 39

  “I can’t believe this!” Zack cried out. They finally had the full message. “Semper Vigilans Accipite Armaturam Dei.“

  “Always watch over the whole armour of God,” Father Giovanni translated. “Or always protect God’s armour. My Latin is a bit rusty.”

  “Watch over the armour of God? I always thought the armor of God was meant to keep people safe, not the other way around.”

  “It is,” the father said. “I could be translating the Latin wrong.”

  “No, I think you got it right. Was Tyndale part of some secret society or something?”

  “I don’t think it’s anything as secretive as that. His work was partially funded by Humphrey Monmouth.”

  “The wealthy cloth merchant that gave Tyndale room and board while he worked on his translations in London?”

  “Correct. Monmouth was part of a group of merchants that called themselves the Christian Brethren. But there is no evidence that they were a missionary society. They only seem to have existed to fund the dangerous but profitable trade of smuggling holy texts into England. They provided Tyndale with the financial support he needed to get the Bibles printed in Germany. Then they helped him smuggle the books into England.” The fa
ther paused for a moment and then added, “I think what we’re looking at is a keyword cipher.”

  A keyword cipher used the alphabet to encrypt messages. The person creating the message would first write down the alphabet, A through Z. Below that they would write down the keyword—omitting any duplicate letters—followed by the remaining unused letters of the alphabet.

  ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

  SEMPRVIGLANCTUDBFHJKOQWXYZ

  With the keyword Semper Vigilans Accipite Armaturam Dei, A would become S, B would become E, C would become M, and so on. That new alphabet was then used to encrypt any correspondence. Only the person that knew the keyword could decipher the message.

  “So you think Tyndale might have used the Bible to hide a keyword that may have been used in a variation of a Cesar Cipher?”

  “It’s just a theory. But it’s what I would have done.”

  “It would have offered him a double layer of protection.”

  “Exactly,” the father agreed.

  “That could also explain why the title page was removed,” Zack said.

  “That would be my guess,” the father said. “Tyndale could have provided a copy of these special coded Bibles to his printers, distributors, and merchants. Then he had them remove the title page in case the book ever fell into the wrong hands.”

  “One without the other was useless,” Zack added. “You know . . . This could also explain why the British Library copy is missing just its title page.”

  “You might be right. I’ll call over there later today and have them check for manicules in the margins.”

  “Of course, there is another possibility.”

  “What’s that?” Father Giovanni asked.

  “Semper Vigilans Accipite Armaturam Dei could be the message, and only the intended recipient would know its true meaning,”

  “That’s true. Unless we discover an encoded message sent by Tyndale to test our keyword cipher theory, it’s all speculation.”