[The Gemini Contenders by Robert Ludlum begins in the dead] of night, Salonika, Greece, December 1939. A vault is being moved from its ancient monastic hiding place to protect it from the Nazis. It is loaded on a train for shipment to northern Italy. There, a rich and powerful padrone, Savarone Fontini-Cristi, one of the leaders of the anti-Fascist movement, will safeguard it. In the vault is a document that could rock the foundations of the civilized world and change the destiny of mankind. Its implications, it is hinted, could make the holocaust pale by comparison….

Three decades pass. A dying Victor [eldest son of the padrone] discovers the key to unlocking the secret. His deathbed charge to his [twin sons] is to find the vault. In so doing, he unwittingly pits the Geminis against each other and the secret is unleashed upon the world.

The secret? Absolutely within...