The Shroud Key (5 page)

“I’m worried about him. About his…let’s say health.”

“Why not leave it to the police? To Interpol? Doesn’t make sense to pay me when they can do it for free.”

Me, still playing hard to get. To perhaps up my price. Maybe considerably so.

“No,” she says. “I would prefer to keep the police out of the loop as much as possible. Andre’s work is very sensitive.”

“So are the people he’s working for, no doubt.”

She stares at the wood plank floor.

“Yes,” she says. “It’s possible that if the police were to become involved by making themselves plainly visible, grave harm could come to my husband.”

“Better to hire me and put my head on the chopping block,” I say. “I don’t come cheap. Neither does my head.”

She says nothing for a heavily weighted moment. Just as well. I use the time to drink a little more beer. It’s while drinking the beer that it hits me. Professor Manion didn’t just get up one morning, get dressed, head to the airport and fly away on his own. He had a little help in the matter.

“Anya,” I say. “Is it possible your husband was kidnapped?”

She looks at me hard. Not at me, but into me.

“It’s not only possible, Renaissance Man,” she sighs. “It’s the sad truth.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“I’m gonna come clean,” I say, straightening out the shoulder strap on my black, Tough Traveler writing satchel. “I know your husband. Or, used to know him. I worked as a sandhog for him eight years ago in the Giza Plateau.”

“I had no idea,” she says, shooting me a look of suspicion. But I’m listening to my insides and they are telling me she could be putting on an act. “Why did you wait until now to tell me?”

“I didn’t want you to think I’m some opportunist who wants to find your husband only to ultimately find the treasure he’s no doubt seeking.”

She works up a grin that makes me want to press my lips against hers. But not yet.

“Seems strange your not knowing about my past relationship with your husband,” I say recalling my conversation with Cipriani. “You just happen to call on the one man in all of Florence to try and find your husband and it turns out I’m very familiar with him.”

“Stranger things have happened, Renaissance Man,” she says, brushing back her lush hair with her hands. “Do you still want the job?”

“Give me the rest of the truth,” I say, shifting the weight of my satchel over my shoulder. “Straight, no bullshit.”

The apartment has grown too cramped, too tense. What I want is for Anya to tell me everything about her husband … everything I don’t already know, that is … and do so over a drink at a nice quiet bar down the road in the less touristy Via Guelfa, American University area not far from where Manion was supposed to be teaching. It’s precisely why I’ve put Lu back outside on the terrace and locked up the apartment.

Now walking side by side on the cobbled Via Guelfa, Anya goes on with her story: “My husband has been researching the remains of Jesus and his family for years. Most people, including scholars thought him crazy. Because even if the remains somehow exist, it’s likely they would never be found. The desert, even around the Giza plateau, is just too massive. Or perhaps they’ve already been found and now reside in a secret chamber in the Vatican. Or perhaps they have turned to dust like so many ancient bones. But then Andre found the Joseph remains, and the world took notice. So did the church. From there on in, the greater possibility that Christ’s bones could be found, took on a greater reality.”

I’m aware of most of this. It was what attracted me to Andre in the first place in the early years of the new century. Not only his knowledge about the possible resting place of the Jesus remains, but his utter belief in their existence.

Up ahead is the DaVinci Bar. The exposed brick building is mostly frequented by art students and professors drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. It’s also quiet, dark and cavernous enough that we can talk in privacy while fading into the far shadows.

We enter and take a table in back. Setting my satchel onto the table, I go to the bar, retrieve us both a glass of vino rosso a piece. I bring the wine back with me to the table, set it down and sit across from her.

“But I thought the Joseph bones were found to be frauds,” I say, continuing where we left off. “You telling me the Joseph bones were real?”

“The Vatican did it’s best to debunk them,” she says. “And the media sided with the Pope. But Andre knew different. He knew he was on the trail of finding Jesus now that he had Joseph’s bones and evidence of a Jesus family crypt outside the Jerusalem walls. He was also gathering the attention of some pretty serious investors, which made him nervous, of course.”

“Such as?”

“One man in particular. A wealthy Egyptian from Cairo and a friend of their new, rather radical President.”

“What’s his name?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know his name because he never would tell me. Something about the less I knew the healthier it would be for the both of us. But I do know this: The wealthy man is an oil tycoon by trade and in the possession of infinite resources.”

“Do you think it’s possible he is the one who kidnapped Andre?”

She sips her wine. Nods.

“You have to ask? The wealthy man is no doubt a part of the Muslim Brotherhood which worked so hard to push their party into absolute power after a revolution which promised freedom.”

“I don’t get it,” I say. “Why would a Muslim be interested in Jesus?”

“Power,” she says. “The ultimate act of crushing the Roman Catholic Church and tipping western belief onto its side.”

I steal a sip of wine. I also take a look over my right shoulder at the small crowd gathered around the half dozen tables that fill the place. At one of the tables near the front entrance sits a solitary man. Not an unusual situation for this place. A dark-haired man, with a salt and pepper beard, black leather coat, reading glasses. He’s gazing at a newspaper.
The Florentine.
Florence’s English newspaper. Probably a professor, if I had to guess. No doubt from the same school where Andre was teaching before his abduction.

I turn back to Anya.

“I’m still not making the connection between the bones of Christ and the Muslim Brotherhood, other than their tremendous monetary value to the right investor.”

She straightens herself up, runs her hand through her thick hair.

“Don’t you see, Chase?” she says. “Islam reveres Jesus. They believe him to be a great miracle maker. The Koran speaks almost as highly of Jesus as they do Mohamed. But they also believe in something that the Vatican would rather we not know about.”

“And that is?”

“They believe that the man crucified on the cross somewhere around 30 AD was not Jesus, but a double. A fill-in if you will. They believe that the disciples protected the real Jesus and slipped him out of Jerusalem to protect him from his enemies.”

“The Jewish Sanhedrin and the Romans.”

“Once he was condemned and put to death, the movement Jesus started would be over. That’s the way the Sanhedrin and the Romans saw it anyway. That way they could maintain their way of life. All self-proclaimed Messiahs were dealt with this way. But, Jesus of Nazareth was different. He wasn’t a quack screaming his head off about doom’s day. He was the real deal.”

“A real threat, in other words.”

I feel something cold run up and down my spine. It’s the same ugly feeling I would often experience eight years ago when I first accompanied Andre in search of the mortal Jesus. I knew then, as I know now, that you don’t undertake a task like that lightly. I also glance once more at the man reading the paper. He’s staring at us in between glances of all the news that’s fit to print.

I add, “I’m beginning to see why this wealthy Egyptian, whatever his name is, would be so interested in acquiring the bones. If they are proven to belong to the historical Jesus and if it’s also proven that he was not crucified but lived to be an old man, it would inevitably show that the Koran is right and the Bible is wrong.”

“It would empower the Muslim Brotherhood and perhaps even factions like Al Qaeda like never before and it would effectively destroy the foundation upon which the Catholic Church has been established.”

“How badly does this wealthy man want these bones?”

“Very badly. Enough to kidnap my husband and do so under Egyptian government authority.”

I drink some more wine, look once more at the man. He’s staring back at us. I pull a ten Euro note from my pocket, set it down onto the table, slide it under the empty glass.

“Let’s go,” I say, under my breath.

“I haven’t finished my wine,” she says looking up at me with those stunning pools.

“You’re finished. We’re not safe.”

Gazing over her shoulder, she says, “That man is staring at us.”

“There’s a toilet in back. There’s also a door that leads to the outside right beside it. Go now. I’ll be right behind you.”

She hesitates.

“Go. Now.”

She gets up, walks to the rear of the bar.

I wait a full minute, then get up, grab my satchel, tossing the strap over my shoulder, and follow. I haven’t yet reached the back door before I make out the heavy footsteps of a man running after me.

CHAPTER SIX

Anya is standing outside the door, her face a patina of panic and confusion.

The door is solid wood and locks from the inside, but swings open onto the outside. Behind us exists a sort of gravel-covered, fenced-in no man’s land which surrounds two small, blue plastic and metal dumpsters. One for refuse and another for recyclables. There’s some concrete blocks and some two-by-fours set beside the dumpster.

The door opener rattles and begins to open. I push it shut with my arm and shoulder.

“Grab that two-by-four,” I bark.

She does it.

I take hold of it with my left hand, jam one end into the gravel, then shove the other end under the brass closer. Pulling myself away from the door, I search for a way out of that small yard.

“This won’t hold for more than a few seconds,” I say, taking her hand.

“Where will we go?”

The man behind the door might have been following Anya for a while now. He might have followed her to my apartment earlier. In fact, it’s very likely he followed her.

Behind us in the near distance, the ugly gray walls of the American University. A short chain link fence separates us from the school grounds.

“Your husband was teaching at the university. I assume they gave him the use of an office?”

“Yes,” she says.

The man is pounding on the door, the two-by-four about to give way.

“Now’s the time to show me.”

She looks over her shoulder at the university building.

“This way,” she says, and together we make our way over the fence and to the school.

The American University was built back in the 1960s. It is as uninteresting and sterile as the rest of Florence is beautiful, historic, and inspiring. Anya leads us through throngs of young students to a multi-storied concrete building marked “Science and Science Labs.” Entry to the facility requires a key-code which you must punch into the keypad set right beside the metal and glass door.

“I don’t know the code,” Anya confesses.