The Black Monk by Rick Jones

Author:Rick Jones [Jones, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rick Jones
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Central Command Center of Vatican Intelligence

The Vatican, Vatican City

The lights of the Vatican Intelligence Command Center hummed with a constant, low drone, a stark contrast to the flurry of activity at the consoles. Brother Matteo, sitting at the main console, scanned the ever-shifting streams of data flowing across his screen. Lines of code scrolled by, punctuated by the occasional blip of an intercepted message. Here, in the heart of the Catholic Church's hidden nerve center, Brother Matteo’s keen eyes analyzed the digital shadows for anything out of the ordinary.

Just yesterday, an encoded message that originated from a secure line within Vatican City, had been relayed to a remote region deep within the Făgăraș Mountains of Transylvania. The message itself was brief, a cryptic string of numbers that defied immediate decoding. It had been a one-off, an anomaly in the usually predictable flow of Vatican communications. Yet, here he was again, a mere twenty-four hours later, staring at another transmission following the same path.

This time, the message wasn't as terse. A voice, strained and hushed, crackled through the speakers. The words, in heavily accented Italian, were barely audible over the static. “. . . I-I-I don't . . . knows something . . . sure . . . neutralize Father . . . Preferiti . . ." Then the transmission cut out abruptly, leaving Brother Matteo troubled.

The process of intercepting the signal wasn't as straightforward as flipping a switch. It involved a complex dance between technology and human ingenuity. Hidden within the walls of the Command Center, a sophisticated array of dishes pointed toward the heavens, their parabolic surfaces constantly seeking whispers in the electromagnetic spectrum. These dishes were tuned to intercept specific frequencies used by Vatican-issued satellite phones. When a call was initiated, the signal bounced off a Vatican satellite in geosynchronous orbit, and then back down to Earth, where it would be picked up by one of the receiving dishes. However, due to the curvature of the Earth, the signal was faint at best by the time it reached the receiving station.

Intercepting the message itself was only half the battle. Deciphering the content required a different set of skills. Brother Matteo, however, who was a whiz with cryptography, quickly went to work on the encoded message. He fed the string of numbers into a decryption program, its whirring fans a low hum mixed in the sounds of the room. The program itself employed a combination of algorithms and code-breaking techniques to crack the message's encryption. And though it would take time, perhaps hours, Brother Matteo was confident he would eventually pry open the message's secrets.

Armed with this data of a second transmission from Vatican City to the mountains of Transylvania, Brother Matteo insistent on the presence of Father Auciello.

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