The Secret Price of History

Paolo Pochettino, Gayle Ridinger

Description

1850s Rome. Goffredo, Sandor, and Eleonora, selfless idealists fighting for Italian unification, find a medallion after a violent face-off with French soldiers on the last day of battle for the new Italian Republic. The medallion is connected to an elusive treasure which, if found, could help the French Emperor Napoleon III secure his place in history. Ignorant of these connections, and desperate for money, the three friends consider having the medallion melted down; but circumstances have it otherwise. Meanwhile, Eleonora, Goffredo, and Sandor continue their fervent fight for freedom: first in Italy, on the side of Garibaldi, Margaret Fuller and Cristina Belgioso, and then in America in the Civil War wherein they re-find themselves years later. Meanwhile, Eleonora and Sandor fall in love; but only Eleonora and Goffredo get married. And through it all, they keep finding themselves in strange moments of danger which connect them to the medallion. They live the rest of their lives in an uncertain truce masked in the mystery contained in the medallion—a mystery finally resolved in the twenty-first century by their great-great granddaughter, Angie Cebrelli. The source of the mystery goes back to a caste of Northern Italian merchants who specialized in moving trade-route gold and silver from one place to another, and in lending credit at trade fairs in Europe between 12th and 15th centuries: What town or city, in the Western World today, doesn't have a Lombard Street to remember them by? And yet they were not from Lombardy but from Piedmont—a peaceful Barolo-wine-producing area, the casane and the Monferrato; that dynasty once ruled the world, achieving its zenith of power under Pope Boniface I, the benevolent ruler of Constantinople in the immediate aftermath of its brutal sacking by Crusaders in 1204. Previously, only Boniface I and the casane were aware of the existence of an ancient treasure—a fragment of Alexander the Great's last treasure buried nearby with the Roman Emperor Aurelian. This is the treasure that comes to light in Rome in the 19th century. 2008s America. Angie Cebrelli, wearing her inherited medallion during a Gettysburg Civil War reenactment, receives a bullet in the arm. A photo of her medallion is found a few days later in Rome next to the mutilated body of Father Kevin, a priestly scholar of Ancient Art and a student Mithraism, a lost religion. She joins forces with the unconventional Italian police detective, Filippo Dardanoni, who has been tailing her for clues about the priest's murder. Moving in on the treasure for reasons of its own, Dardanoni has to also deal with the dangerous and powerful Vatican Bank. Questions: Who will find the treasure? Can it be right under our noses and us not able to touch it?

Sujets

• Fantastique
• Fantasy historique
• Médiéval-Fantastique
• Policier & Thriller
• Policier
• Historical
• Fiction
• Fantasy

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 24 juillet 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780937832226
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE SECRET PRICE
OF HISTORY
 
Gayle Ridinger, Paolo Pochettino
 
Searching for the Treasure
behind Alexander's Medallion

The Secret Price of History
by Gayle Ridinger and Paolo Pochettino
 
Copyright 2014
All rights reserved
 
Published in eBook format by Dante University Press
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
 
ISBN-13: 978-0-9378-3222-6
 
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

The names, dates, and adventures of most of the historical figures in this book are based on fact and, in the authors' intentions, reflect reality.

In memory of the thousands of European patriots who in the 19 th century left their families, work, and possessions behind to go off to fight for liberty wherever it was being suppressed in the world, and who with their sacrifice believed they were creating a better world for all humanity.
PROLOGUE
 
Victoria Falls Bridge, Zimbabwe – September 1989
 
On top of one of the two green mountains hemming in Victoria Falls, Arne Anderssen watched mesmerized as the thundering water plummeted into the narrow gorge between them. Once the curtain of water split asunder, it shot up in the air in a mist that resembled smoke and created first one, then another and another rainbow for his enjoyment, .rainbows that evaporated and were replaced by still others and then others, as Arne lost all sense of time.
Then he felt a hand touch his.
"Arne, we have to go. We have to cross back into Zambia and we're on foot, my darling."
He was 'darling' to Cindy, the woman of his life. He, a poor Swede from a farm in Minnesota, was very proud of having been able to pay for this week together in Africa. He had done very well on the first assignment given him by IPCO Interpol—an investigation into the spread of counterfeit medicines in southern Africa, and when he'd received his letter of merit his first thought had been that he wanted to celebrate with Cindy in high style. She'd been so happy when she'd received the air ticket he sent that she'd cried on the phone. And now she was here with him. In this paradise.
When they'd paid the Zimbabwean guards to dispense with the endless border formalities, Cindy and Arne found themselves back where they'd been that morning: in the "no man's land" between Zambia and Zimbabwe where the Victoria Falls bridge spanned the first of the downstream gorges. When they were halfway over the bridge, Arne noticed that the two guys running the bungee-jumping business were still at their kiosk. What dedication, he thought. It was certainly after five o'clock.
"The last customer of the day gets a special price," one said with a smile to them. 'The Best Bungee Jump in the World' was hand-written on their sign.
Arne leaned over the bridge hand-rail for a look. Damn, what a drop.
"Viking, you're not getting the funny idea of leaving me up here all alone while you take a bungee jump, are you?" Cindy pushed her blond bangs from her eyes.
"All this water makes me feel like diving in…" He kissed her.
"But you're not really going to dive in, right? The rubber cord…stops you?" said Cindy apprehensively, and Arne knew at that moment that he could have things his way.
 
At the end of the short flight, while the elastic cord was jerking him up and down, Arne felt his heart pounding like a wild drum. Those few seconds had been fantastic. Blind to all but rushing light, he had felt one with the air and the water.
Too bad it couldn't have lasted longer. It was hard to fix such an experience properly in your mind but that was the way it was, he thought; it would return to him in its proper dimension later. Any moment now one of the two fellows would be descending in a harness with the recovery rope to attach to his legs to right him; then they'd winch him back up to the bridge.
Four or five minutes passed. Dangling head down as he was, the enthusiasm over his jump rapidly gave way to a disagreeable sense of cold—for there was wind blowing now—and dizziness.
Why were they taking so long?
Arne tried shouting but the noise of the water covered his voice.
He guessed there was some mechanical problem. He should have listened to Cindy and foregone this adventure. He didn't want her getting frightened. He could imagine her reaction if it turned out that the winch motor was broken. He could already hear her protesting with the two attendants. He knew that she would lean over the bridge and try to signal to him. He personally had nerves like steel but a normal fat tourist here would be risking a heart attack here. He tried to pull himself head-up again—an enormous strain on his stomach muscles. If he moved too quickly, the cord started to dance and jerk about and he with it. After several useless attempts he finally managed with a hand to grab the cord fastening around one of his ankles. 'Mustn't give up now,' he thought. With immense effort he righted himself, and then hanging on to the cord, he rested. The worry that his arms and hands would soon feel too strained started him climbing. His goal was to pull his weight up the rope to the bridge, and the anger he felt towards the two guys on the bridge was helping. Those assholes and their Best Bungee Jump in the World'; he'd demolish them.
What made it really a bitch was not being able to use his feet, immobilized in the padded ankle webbing; yet after an eternity, Arne made it to within a couple of meters from the bridge. He was completely soaked in sweat. "Hey! HEY HELP ME!" he called. Couldn't Cindy hear him? And where were the two guys, fuck it? He'd had to do everything by himself.
Then he heard the crack of gunfire.
On a sway maneuver that nearly sent him spiraling downwards, he came level with the bridge's steel girthing and pulled himself up its crisscrossing bars, hopping with his bound feet.
"CINDY!!" He grabbed the base of the launch trampoline and heaved himself up on it. He was in time to see soldiers arriving from the Zambian side, firing as they ran. They had old rifles from God knew where and their shoes kept flopping off their feet.
"NO!" he yelled at them. 'No' to what? He wrenched open the clamps and knots on his ankles, writhed free of the harness, and wobbled off the trampoline. In the middle of the bridge road lay the two Bungee-jumping guys with their throats cut. One of them was still having muscle spasms in his legs. Beyond there were more Zambian soldiers standing around something. He charged over to them, karate-chopping at their arms to divide their line. NOOOOOO! NOOOOO! He kicked the soldiers to dent his way in, but they pinned him to the ground. An officer bent over him. "There's nothing that can be done," he said. "They're mercenaries from the Congo at the service of Mugabe's ZANU party. They kill women for sport. I saw who they work for. The White Devil. But they have escaped back into Zimbabwe and we can't follow them."
"What White Devil?"
"They say he's American."
"I want a name."
"He has no name."
The officer told the soldiers to release him, and he caught glimpse of blonde hair on the ground between their feet. Then in the instant before the light of Africa changed to darkness, Arne saw Cindy. The four pieces of her body drawn by a machete.
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania - July 5, 2008
 
We can't quite believe that others may covet some small thing we own. We might realize they are envious of our lifestyle, our spouse, bank account, good looks, career, well-brought-up kids, pleasant personality, resourcefulness, solid faith in something bigger...but envious to the point of obsession with some little object we possess? With such determination to have it that they might try to kill us?
Well, jewelry is small, you object. You are thinking of gold or diamonds. Let's forget diamonds: many of us have never had so much as a diamond engagement ring or we've divorced and sold it. And gold? But how many old wedding bands or christening bracelets are sitting undisturbed at the bottom of countless jewelry boxes without a shot being fired?
No, there is something strange going on. Something twenty-one-year-old Angie Cebrelli isn't aware of as she crosses the sunny field to the grandstand filled with people waiting to watch the Gettysburg Civil War battle re-enactment. When she asks one of the men wearing a baseball cap if the place next to him is taken, he moves his big butt a few more inches towards his child. She sees his eyes go to her breasts under her tank top—the same thing happened with some jerk at lunch. When the man obligingly swings his little boy up on his lap to make still more room for her, Angie feels a small foot kick her knee-cap. A pudgy hand reaches towards her neck piece. "No, honey," she mouths at the toddler with a smile.
She's in an excellent mood. It all started two months ago, when suddenly a way presented itself, like a tunnel into a magic mountain, which allowed her to stop flitting around at college, changing majors and being a financial strain on her mother. Her mother's friend Stan offered her a bit of temp work at his rural Virginian TV station—one of those down-home-folksy channels that auctions off dish sets, watches, and rugs day and night, and instead of thinking it would be embarrassing to work there, as she might have once, she had instead the miraculous understanding that she should say yes. She wasn't going to ever have a Ivy League-style career—no memory of encouraging words from her mother—or from her father before the accident eight years ago—was going to change that, for she simply lacked the drive or focus for it, and to make it all worse there was an economic crisis on. No, she had nothing ahead of her but a dark mass called the Future, and whatever tunnel opened into it was the one to take. Who was she to say, ' N