The Babylon Contingency

Investigating a burglary at an English country house, DI Robbie Peele comes face to face with one of the most mysterious objects in world archaeology, the Phaestos Disk - and with a Middle Eastern terrorist cell determined to steal it. Why - and why are Mossad involved?.

The vital clue is a long abandoned Muslim village in Crete, where terrible things happened more than a century ago, witnessed by a Victorian gentleman explorer who recorded what he saw in coded diaries.

Seeking the truth about the Phaestos Disk, Peele and his assistant, Sarah Shipton, are on the cusp of solving the mystery when they are caught in an ancient Egyptian burial chamber during an earthquake.

In the end Peele has to ask far harder questions than simply who did the original burglary - the answer to which infuriates him.

What does the Phaestos Disk really say, in what language, and who made it? And why is the answer so dangerous to peace in the Middle East?

Clifford Longley is an author, broadcaster and journalist who has specialised since 1972 in the coverage and analysis of British and international religious affairs.

For 20 years he wrote a weekly column in The Times.

He now contributes to Thought for the Day (R4) and appears regularly on The Moral Maze.