Thanks for following me on this latest journey. As before, I wanted to take this last moment to separate fact from fiction. I also hope this spurs some further investigation by readers. To aid in this, I’ve listed some of the books below that inspired this storyline.
So let’s start at the beginning. The Prologue. The Magi relics are indeed stored in a golden sarcophagus at the Cologne Cathedral, and the caravan that transported the bones from Milan to Cologne was indeed ambushed in the twelfth century.
Moving on to the first chapter, Super Black is a real compound developed at the National Physical Laboratory in Britain. The Eight Ball is a real structure at Fort Detrick (sorry for knocking it over), and liquid body armor is, amazingly enough, real, developed by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.
I won’t go into such specific detail with the rest of the novel. I just wanted to use the above examples to demonstrate how what might seem wild in this novel may have some basis in fact. For those interested in more specifics, please check out my website (jamesrollins.com).
The Imperial Dragon Court is an actual European organization that traces its roots back to the Middle Ages. It is a ceremonial and benevolent society of aristocrats of varying influence. The bloody subsect described in this book is of my own imagining and not meant to disparage anyone currently in the Court.
As to the heart of this novel, it would take volumes to discuss the truth behind both m-state metals and the long trail they trace throughout history. Luckily, that volume has already been written, following in great detail the path from the Egyptians to modern times, including the strange effects of Meissner fields, superconductivity, and magnetism. I encourage anyone with even a slight interest in this topic to pick up Lost Secrets of the Sacred Ark by Sir Laurence Gardner. It was my own personal bible for this novel.
Speaking of bibles, if you were wondering about the conflict in the early Christian church between the followers of the apostles John and Thomas, a pair of great books on this topic were written by National Book Award — winning author Elaine Pagels: Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas and The Gnostic Gospels.
For those interested in more details of the Magi and a possible brotherhood that still exists today, I recommend Magi: the Quest for a Secret Tradition by Adrian Gilbert.
I also recommend and am indebted to Robert J. Hutchinson’s When in Rome, a Journal of Life in Vatican City. It is a great and entertaining source of insight into the Vatican and its history.
Finally, I hope my own novel entertains but also raises some questions in the readers. In that vein, I’ll end this discussion of fact and fiction by endorsing the primary adage of Gnostic tradition: to seek the truth…always and in all ways. It seems a fitting finish to this novel. So to quote Matthew 7:7,
“Seek, and you shall find.”