The Shroud Key (12 page)

“Thought you said we were going to eat something?” I say.

She cracks a hint of a smile.

“Do not test my patience, Mr. Baker,” Natalia warns. “I owe Checco a favor for a very good reason. I am providing it for him.” Now looking at her watch. “However, that favor runs out in precisely fifteen minutes. Do we understand one another?”

I glance down at my watch. It’s 7:45 PM.

“I guess at eight o’clock we all become pumpkins,” I say.

“We’ll try our hardest to be quick,” Anya interjects.

Natalia nods.

“One moment,” she says.

Turning, she goes to the uniformed security guard who is manning the monitor controls. She whispers something into his ear. When she’s through, he stands, pushes back his chair, and without offering us so much as a sideways glance, leaves the room. That’s when Natalia sits down at the controls, places both her hands on the keyboard. Typing in a series of commands, the LCD monitors go dead.

She stands.

“Let’s move,” she demands. “Fifteen minutes and counting.”

We follow her out of the room, back into the corridor. She turns to the left and quickly begins making her way to the corridor’s opposite end. We come upon yet another steel door with a light embedded in the upper center. The door is protected with more security cameras and entry devices. Natalia punches in her code and scans her right eye yet again. The door opens onto a cool, dark, and musty room.

It’s the sacristy to the Chapel of the Shroud.

“Behold the most cherished relic of the holy Roman Catholic Church,” she says. Then, with one more glance at her watch. “Thirteen minutes.”

The second most cherished relic
, I wanted to say.
That is, the mortal remains of Jesus actually exist
.

I step inside, Anya on my heels. The door slams shut behind me. I look directly ahead at the vague, one-dimensional image of a man positioned horizontally on his right side and quickly come to realize this isn’t a man at all.

This is God.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Time is not luxury at present,” Anya says approaching the illuminated rectangular, gold-rimmed glass box that houses the 4.4 meter by 1.1 meter linen cloth bearing the blood-soaked image of the crucified Jesus. She has the smartphone Checco provided for her in hand, and she immediately begins using its camera app to snap away at the body, starting with the feet on the left-hand side and making her way along the length of the body.

I, on the other hand, look for something else. Look for it with the naked eye.

Inscriptions. Drawings. Symbols. Maps…

“I need something to stand on,” I say, looking over both shoulders.

I spot some black chairs pressed up against the sacristy wall. I grab hold of one of the chairs, position it in front of the faint image. With the naked eye I scan several medallion symbols and some calligraphy. All of which were included in Manion’s collection of photographs. But nothing that would lead me to believe it describes the location of the remains.

“How we doing on time?” Anya begs, while snapping away, knowing that if we don’t find what we’ve come for she might at the very least uncover something with her camera.

I glance at my watch once more.

“Seven minutes,” I say, my eyes never leaving the image.

I focus my search on the triangular shapes and patterns that Manion was so suspicious of. I examine the center of Christ’s body, the triangle formed by his wrists. I examine the triangle that’s formed by his right arm, the fingers on his left hand, and his spear-pierced side. Then I examine the triangle formed by his crucified ankles, his long legs and his waist.

I take a step back and look at the cloth as a whole and try and picture the layout of the Giza Pyramids, how their topographical layout matches that of the Christ wounds almost precisely. But even if they do match, I’m still not getting anything that suggests a specific resting place of the bones within the confines of the Giza Plateau.

“I’m not seeing anything in the triangles,” I say.

“Ignore them,” Anya says. “Focus outside the triangles.”

I search the perimeter of the long cloth. I run up one side and down the other, gazing at areas damaged in not just one fire over the centuries but if my history serves me right, two fires, both of which nearly threatened to destroy the sacred relic. I decide to once more start at the feet and work my way sideways. That’s when I catch it at the very bottom of the shroud. A series of angular lines and circles that haven’t been sewn into the linen cloths, but that appear to have been tattooed right beside Jesus’s left foot. The faint blue lines and circles can’t possibly take up more than the width of a couple of thumb prints, and there’s no way in God’s holy heaven you would notice them if you weren’t looking for a map of some kind. But if you had grown up in the excavating and sandhogging business like I did and you knew what a blueprint looked like, you would know that you just struck pay-dirt.

“I’ve got it, Anya.”

She comes to me.

“Lean down,” I say, pointing to the blue lines and circles. “You see it?”

“I’m straining my eyes,” she says.

“Just take a picture of where my finger is positioned,” I say. “Do it now. We only have two minutes left.”

She does it.

“Now let me see your phone,” I add.

She hands it to me.

I stare down at the digital photograph. I enhance and enlarge it by pressing my finger-pads against the screen and moving them outwards. The photograph enlarges. These are most definitely the lines of a miniature computer-generated blueprint. An early generation CAD rendering, most likely originating from the late 1970s. That’s when it begins to make sense. I see what could very well be the base of a pyramid and several chambers that extend underground. Inside the bottom-most room is contained a symbol.
The
symbol. It’s a bottomless triangle with a circle in the center. The location of Jesus’s body. Or so I can only assume.

“Time,” Anya says. “Ten seconds at most.”

“We’ve got what we came for,” I say, grabbing her hand. “Let’s move.”

We go to the door. I grip the closer, try and turn it.

That’s when the peace and sanctity of the chapel sacristy explodes in automatic gunfire.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

There’s comes a scream that’s followed by a dreadful silence.

A dead silence.

When I peer out the door’s safety glass, I see a man lying on the corridor floor in a pool of his own blood. It’s the uniformed guard who until moments ago, had been operating the monitors. I see another man come around the corner, walking at a stride and gate that seems as if he owns the joint. It’s the hairless man from the train. Einhorn, the IAA man. He must have gotten away from the police and followed us here on the same train. How he managed to dodge the Milan police and make the train, I have no idea. I only know that he is here. Here now. He’s got an automatic gripped in both hands, combat position, and he’s approaching the door with it.

I take a step back as he raises the weapon up, triggers off a burst of rounds which embed themselves into the metal door.

“Stay down!” I shout at Anya.

She pulls off her veil, tosses it to the sacristy floor.

“We need guns,” she says.

“We’re S.O.L.” I say. “Until we get out of here, grab the ones I hid under the dumpster.”

Another burst of gunfire. Another series of rounds bury themselves into the steel door, cracking the safety-glass light. Then comes another shot. A single shot that sounds far different from the automatic. I make out the deadweight slump sound of a body as it drops to the concrete floor.

The door opens.

It’s Natalia. She’s a big, beautiful blonde apparition gripping an AR15 like she knows how to use it. And she does. There’s a swirl of white smoke rising up from out of the barrel.

“Come with me,” she orders.

She goes past the shroud, to a thick, ornately carved, dark wood door. Unlocking the door, she waves us on through. We enter into the main chapel and become immediately surrounded in a gaseous cloud of smoldering incense. We’re standing on the back altar, but there’s a protective glass screen or shield that will prevent us from simply making our way out of the old cathedral through the front wood doors. I can only assume the glass shield is bullet proof. Probably grenade proof considering the relic it guards.

“You aren’t seeing this,” Natalia says, approaching the ornate, two-story, gold-guilded high alter piece. Placing her security card into an almost invisible slot on the alter-piece, a secret door of approximately five feet by three feet slowly opens. It’s the kind of thing you only see in Hollywood.

“What is this?” I say.

“It’s a secret tunnel for transporting the shroud should the church be attacked by pirates looking to steal it or by fanatics who wish to destroy it for the secrets it bears. The Vatican maintains a tunnel just like it for the Pope. A tunnel that leads from the depths of Saint Peter’s Basilica all the way to Hadrian’s castle. The tunnel was utilized constantly all the way up through World War Two.”

“My guess is the Vatican possesses more than one secret tunnel.”

“It’s also a safeguard against something like a fire breaking out which it did in this very sacristy in 1978 by an unnamable arsonist. If this tunnel wasn’t here at that time, the shroud would have been lost forever.”

“1978,” Anya states. “That year seems to resonate an awful lot as of late.”

“I’m thinking the soldiers of the Vatican,” I add. “Soldiers who might not represent the Pope and his wishes, but who nonetheless are willing to go to extreme lengths to keep the divine mystery of Jesus a true mystery. They might fit the bill as the arsonists. They and/or the IAA.”

“These stairs will lead you to a tunnel,” she says. “Follow it until you come to a second set of stairs. Climb the stairs. You will know what to do when you get to the top.”

“You first Anya,” I say.

“Nice time for you to start being a gentleman, Ren Man,” she quips.

The door is small, so that she is forced to enter into it at a crouch. I enter behind her. So close I am touching her back-side.

“You’re not coming?” I say, turning to Natalia.

“My job is to protect the shroud at all costs,” she explains. “I also have a body to dispose of. These are not matters for the police, as you can imagine.”

I reach out my hand.

“Thank you,” I say.

She takes the hand, squeezes it gently but firmly.

“I hope you found what you were after. The shroud has many secrets and many answers. It can be a dangerous object in the wrong hands, but a source of illumination in the right hands. It rarely reveals anything to anyone, other than to those who are the most devout.”

“I haven’t said a prayer in thirty years,” I confess.

“Prayers don’t always have to be spoken to be heard and answered.”

I release my hand.

She goes to close the small door.

“Natalia,” I say. “One more thing.”

The door opens again.

“Quickly,” she says.

“The favor you owed Checco,” I say. “It must have been one hell of a favor to do what you did for us. To place yourself and the shroud in such danger. Do you mind my asking why you owe him so much?”