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

  THE TYNDALE CODE

  by Daniel Patterson

  www.facebook.com/DanielPattersonAuthor

  An Action-Packed Christian Fiction Thriller Novella

  Main Menu

  Start Reading

  Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Epilogue

  Read an Excerpt From The Codex

  Also by Daniel Patterson

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  To Dina

  Thank you for always being there.

  Author’s Introduction

  If you’ve read any of my previous books, you know I like to combine a little history with a little mystery—The Tyndale Code is no different.

  I’ve been fascinated with the life of William Tyndale for years. He’s been called the architect of the English language, yet few people know his name.

  William Tyndale was the first person to translate the original Greek and Hebrew Scriptures into English and it’s estimated that 83% of the King James Version of the New Testament and as much as 76% of the Old Testament is from Tyndale’s original translation work.

  Despite beginning condemned as a heretic, degraded from the priesthood, imprisoned for eighteen months, strangled, and then burned at the stake, the power of Tyndale’s translation of God’s Word into English lives on.

  A surprising number of Bible phrases, first introduced into the English language with Tyndale’s translations, are still commonly used today, including: “Let there be light (Genesis 1:3),” “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil (Matthew 6:13),” “Eat, drink, and be merry (Luke 12:19),” “The powers that be (Romans 13:2),” “The apple of his eye (Deuteronomy 32:10),” “Signs of the times (Matthew 16:3),” “It came to pass (Matthew 7:28),” “Fat of the land (Genesis 45:18),” “My brother’s keeper (Genesis 4:9),” “In the twinkling of an eye (1 Corinthians 15:52),” “Cast the first stone (John 8:7),” “The salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13),” and “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak (Matthew 26:41).” Plus words like, “beautiful (Matthew 23:27),” “brokenhearted (Luke 4:18),” and “viper (Matthew 3:7),” to name a few.

  Once referred to as “the world’s most dangerous book,” Tyndale’s 1526 printing of the New Testament was the first Bible printed in English using the Gutenberg movable-type press. Of the 3,000 copies printed, three are known to have survived.

  St. Paul’s Cathedral in London (the same site where the other copies were once burned) owns one and is missing 71 folios (pages).

  A second copy was purchased by the British Library in 1994 from the Bristol Baptist College for a little over one million pounds and is missing its title page.

  The third and only complete copy, the “Stuttgart Copy,” is owned by the Wuerttemberg State Library and was miscataloged until its discovery in 1996.

  Ideas for my stories usually originate from questions asked by many historians.

  Questions like . . .

  Why is the St. Paul’s Cathedral copy missing 71 pages?

  Why is the British Library copy only missing its title page?

  Was there a reason these pages were removed?

  Are there other copies out there waiting to be discovered?

  In the Tyndale Code, a fictional fourth copy of the Tyndale Bible is found, stolen, seized, returned, and stolen a second time. This chain of events sets our adventure in motion.

  I hope you enjoy reading The Tyndale Code as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  Their blood is shed

  In confirmation of the noblest claim—

  Yet few remember them. They lived unknown,

  Till persecution dragged them into fame

  And chased them up to heaven. Their ashes flew—

  No marble tells us whither. With their names

  No bard embalms and sanctifies his song,

  And history, so warm on meaner themes,

  Is cold on this.

  — William Cowper

  The Task: Book V - The Winter Morning Walk (1785)

  PROLOGUE

  One

  October 1, 1525, 4:35 a.m.

  Cologne, Germany

  The need for secrecy demanded they work at night. If they were caught they’d be arrested, charged with heresy, and burned at the stake.

  William Tyndale kept a watchful eye as his dream came to fruition. His translations of the Greek Scriptures into English were being printed, and soon all of England would be able to read the Word of God.

  The printer, Peter Quentell, pointed to the drying wire and spoke in German, “Those folios should be dry, Sir Tyndale, if you’d like to inspect them.”

  Quentell did not speak English, nor did he understand the language. Any errors needed to be spotted immediately, which demanded Tyndale’s constant presence.

  As he examined a page from Matthew chapter three, Tyndale ran a finger lightly over the printed words in reverence and read aloud, “‘O generation of vipers who hath taught you to flee from the vengeance to come?’”

  Quentell remained silent as he spread the black ink onto the metal letters that would become Matthew chapter twenty-two. He offered little in the way of speech when the press demanded his full concentration.

  Fluent in eight languages, Tyndale addressed the man in his native tongue, “I do believe, herr Quentell, that this is some of your finest—”

  The shop’s back door crashed opened, and the two men froze.

  An instant later Friar William Roye, Tyndale’s assistant, burst into the print room, his face flushed and his eyes filled with fear. “Sir Tyndale, thou art in danger. We must leave at once!”

  “Slow down, William. What danger?”

  “They know what we do hither . . . they know of the printing of the Bible in English.”

  Tyndale’s heart plummeted.

  Since fleeing England in 1524, Tyndale had gone to great lengths to remain anonymous. He knew that he would soon be England’s most wanted man, and pursued across Europe by agents of King Henry VIII. His crime would be translating the Bible into English. An offense punishable by death . . . and a price he would willingly pay. Had the King’s men found him? He’d been so careful.

  “Tell me everything,” Tyndale said to Roye. “Leave nothing out.”

  “I overheard a few drunkards at the tavern this eve. They said there was news of two Englishmen printing a translation of the Bible in English. They said the Senator was planning to raid the print-house of Quentell in the morrow!”

  “This cannot be,” Tyndale cried out. “How could they have learned of what we do hither?” He turned his gaze to Peter Quentell.

  “I have not spoken of what we do to a single soul,” the printer assured him.

  “I fear it may have been I,” Roye said. “I must confess I have erred. I boasted that there is something we do hither that will change the world.”

  Tyndale paced the room. “How couldst thou? Canst thou not hold thy tongue?”

  Roye’s flushed face darkened. “Forgive me, Sir Tyndale. I did not think anyone understood that of which I spoke.”

  “Thou didst not think, indeed,” Tyndale said. “When was this?”

  “Two nights past.”

  Tyndale turned to Quentell. “I offer thee mine apologies for placing thee in this perilous position.”

  Quentell gave a quick nod and said, “I will take care of the Senator and his men. But we must gather all the sheets at once.”

  “My translations!” Tyndale said.
“William, I must ask thee to return to our lodging and retrieve my translations. We shall depart upon your return.”

  Two

  For the next hour, Tyndale and Quentell bundled the printed sheets and loaded them onto a pack-horse.

  When the light of dawn glimmered on the horizon, Roye returned, and the two men prepared to flee on horseback.

  “Farewell, my friends,” Quentell said. “A boat awaits your arrival at the shipyard. The captain is a friend, and he will take you up the Rhine to Worms.”

  “Thy help is greatly appreciated, herr Quentell,” Tyndale said. “Thou hast helped us with the work of the Lord and for that I am eternally grateful. Mine only regret is that we must leave thee so soon.”

  Tyndale and Roye rode in silence toward the docks, the light of a new day leading the way.

  Once the precious cargo was loaded, and the men were safe aboard the ship, Friar Roye begged for Tyndale’s forgiveness, “I am sorry Sir Tyndale. My loose tongue hath put us in terrible danger and thy life’s work at risk. Couldst thou ever forgive me?”

  Tyndale nodded and a resolve settled inside of him. “I forgive thee, my dear friend. ‘O the deepness of the abundant wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out.’”

  “I am not familiar with that passage.”

  “It is from the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans,” Tyndale said. “The Lord worketh in mysterious ways. Worms shall offer us two great advantages. It hath become friendly to the Lutheran cause and home to some of the finest printers in all of Germany.”

  “But soon King Henry and Cardinal Wolsey shall know of thy printing.”

  “So be it. They shall be looking for the larger quarto editions,” Tyndale said, patting the stack of printed sheets on which they sat. “So we shall reprint in a smaller octavo size, so that the Bible may be carried in thy coat pocket.”

  “But what of the trade routes? The King’s men will surely have a watchful eye.”

  “Then with the help of Humphrey Monmouth and the Christian Brethren we shall establish new routes. We shall smuggle the Word of God into England in bales of cotton and barrels of grain if need be.”

  Roye nodded. “That just might work. But how will we correspond without fear of our letters being intercepted and read by spies?”

  Tyndale was silent only for a moment.

  “We shall find a new way to communicate. A way in which the King’s spies cannot read.”

  “Like a different language?” Roye offered.

  A mischievous smile illumined William Tyndale’s face. “Yes. Something like that, my friend. Something exactly like that.”

  PART I

  SEEK AND YOU SHALL FIND

  — Luke 11:9 (TYN)

  A phrase that was first introduced into the English language with William Tyndale’s translation of the Bible

  Chapter 1

  May 2, 2012, 8:36 p.m.

  Somewhere over Guatemala

  On the heels of an echoing peal of thunder, a flash of lightning ripped a jagged path in the night sky, and the single prop de Havilland DHC-2 lurched to the side.

  Not Zack Cole’s idea of a good time. He needed to get his mind off the queasy feeling in his stomach.

  Another flash followed, and the winds buffeted the small plane left and right, dropping it down a hundred feet only to push it back up again.

  He turned to the only other passenger and said, “Please tell me your pilot has flown in this type of weather before.”

  Frank Waterson, a slightly older, thin and lanky man with dark brown hair, sat in the seat next to him as calm as could be, sipping from a silver flask. “Like this and worse. He’s one of the best in the business.”

  Another hard jolt and Zack cinched his seatbelt tighter. “You couldn’t have found a plane from this century?”

  “Not a lot of planes to choose from when you’re smuggling something out of a country.” Waterson paused and took another swig from his flask. “This baby is a classic.”

  Zack wiped the sweat from his brow and ran a hand through his short brown hair. “No. It’s a death trap!”

  The plane was old, like something from his grandfather’s time. But this type of job meant using off-the-books transportation services like the ones Waterson provided.

  This job was a little out of the ordinary, but nothing Zack did for a living was what you would call ordinary. His day job was founder and chief technology officer for a non-profit Internet company that brought clean drinking water to people in developing nations. But he was also a well-respected biblical archaeologist.

  Like his grandfather before him, Zack had developed a reputation as a covert artifact recovery specialist. He helped individuals, institutions, and even countries, recover stolen biblical antiquities.

  Companies paid him well for his services, but Zack wasn’t in it for the money—he had plenty of that. For him, the real reward came from reuniting family heirlooms with their rightful owners and the gratitude he received. You couldn’t put a price on feelings like that, and that’s what drove Zack.

  That’s why people like his good friend Father Salvatore Giovanni, curator of the Chicago Museum of Biblical Antiquities, came to him for jobs like this one.

  “Where’s your sense of adventure, old buddy?” Waterson laughed. “Look, you said so yourself, ‘this is a cake run.’ We fly into Guatemala, and we liberate the Bible from the National Police, and then we fly back to Belize in time for breakfast—longanisa, fry jacks and eggs. From there we hop on your private jet back to New York. I still can’t imagine the police here actually doing their jobs and arresting smugglers. I don’t get it. Maybe there’s still hope for Guatemala after all.” The plane bounced Waterson hard in his seat. He smiled and raised his flask to Zack. “Just our luck the thing was in the seized goods, right?”

  Zack preferred to work alone, but he’d needed someone at the last minute and Waterson had been available. He usually was. Plus it didn’t hurt that Frank knew Central America better than Zack. Waterson’s willingness to jump when Zack said leap didn’t hurt either.

  Geronimo!

  Chapter 2

  Zack finally had to use a barf bag just before landing. The two-hour flight from Belize City to Guatemala had been like a long ride on a vibrating bed strapped to the back of a bull. Not one that he was in a hurry to repeat. That had been the worst of it, though, and they were on the ground and safe now. The storm let up, and the plane brought them to a concealed landing strip that was little more than a dirt track cut through the middle of a field. They were on the outskirts of a town so small it wasn’t even on local maps, let alone the ones used by the American government. For all intents and purposes, it didn’t exist.

  Zack leaned back against the rough bark of a Ceiba tree and checked the time on his phone. “Your transportation is late.”

  Waterson sat on top of their backpacks, whistling a Beatles song that was hideously out of tune. “What time do you have?” he asked.

  Zack’s associates knew all about his penchant for planning everything down to the last detail. But Waterson was throwing the whole trip off schedule. “We were supposed to leave half an hour ago.”

  “Come on, Zack. It’s not like that Bible is going anywhere. Why is the thing so important, anyway? You still haven’t told me that part.”

  A month ago, the Guatemalan National Police seized a priceless 1526 Tyndale Bible in a smuggling raid. Religious artifacts were big business in Central America, and the sixteenth-century Bible was just one of hundreds of artifacts recovered in the seizure.

  Before thieves stole the Bible two years ago, the Chicago Museum of Biblical Antiquities had made arrangements for the rare text to be on permanent loan. Father John Ferguson, a missionary to San Pedro, Guatemala, and close friend of Father Giovanni, had discovered the mislabeled Bible in his church library.

  With its recent recovery, the National Police were being difficult about returning the Bible. Father Fe
rguson had exhausted the official channels, and Father Giovanni suspected the police were looking for a payoff. Zack’s mission was to assist Father Ferguson in the negotiation and ensure the safe return of the Bible to the museum. Father Salvatore Giovanni had been a friend of his grandfather and was one of the few people Zack trusted in the biblical antiquities business. So when the priest asked for Zack’s assistance, he didn’t hesitate. The journey and acquisition sounded well worth the risks involved. The promise of viewing something as rare as a 1526 Tyndale Bible was reason enough for Zack.

  But not everyone shared his appreciation of rare religious artifacts, and Frank Waterson was one of those people. Waterson was in it for the paycheck and Zack wasn’t in the mood for sharing the significance of this particular Bible, especially when he referred to it as “the thing.”

  “You know the mission. You don’t need to know the details,” Zack finally said. “You wouldn’t care anyway.”

  Frank looked hurt. He even put his hand over his heart. “I’m here in the middle of nowhere putting my life on the line for this thing, aren’t I? I don’t have a need to know?”

  “You have a need to get us transportation.”

  As if on cue the dull growl of a vehicle’s engine caught Zack’s attention. From the makeshift runway, a dirt track led away through the trees toward civilization. Or at least, toward some place that wasn’t here.

  “There, you see?” Waterson said as he stood up and stretched and scrubbed both hands through his dark hair. “Ask and it shall be given.” Waterson’s angular face crooked into a twisted smirk.

  Zack couldn’t help but see the humor. Waterson probably wasn’t even aware he’d used the phrase coined by William Tyndale.