The Shroud Key Read online

  We’ve beaten the bastards already.

  In broad daylight. Beaten them back.

  It’s only a matter of a few short hours until I come face to face with my maker and his remains. When that happens, it might be better if my conscience and my soul are clean.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Driving through the pass, I pound my fist against the pickup truck’s metal roof, signaling Manion to stop at the designated rallying point which is located at the base of the hill.

  He stops.

  I look one way, then the other. Sameh and Anya are nowhere to be found. I pull my radio from my belt once more.

  “Sameh,” I speak into the transmitter. “Speak to me.”

  Releasing my thumb, I get nothing other than more static. Until the sound of static is broken by a voice. But the voice isn’t coming from the radio. It’s coming from on high.

  I turn, look up.

  Sameh is standing at the top of the hill, Anya right beside him.

  “Coming down!” he shouts.

  When he gets here, he shows me his radio which has been impaled with a bullet. He holds the palm-sized radio up like it’s a sacred talisman.

  “I am the luckiest man alive,” he exhales. “The radio took a bullet meant for me.”

  I slap his back, knowing that Anya should have been equipped with a radio also.

  “Thank Allah for small miracles,” I say. Then, shifting my focus to Anya. “You okay?”

  But she isn’t looking at me. She is gazing into the eyes of her ex-husband.

  “Hello Andre,” she whispers in a hoarse voice no doubt choked with memory and desert sand.

  “Hello Anya,” he says. “I never…” He allows the thought to drop, as if the words need not be spoken. Truth be told, I’m feeling a little jealous of their reaction to seeing one another. What I sense is not hatred or indifference, but a man and a woman who genuinely care for one another. Two people who might even be surprised at their own reactions now that their physical separation has come to an end in the most unlikeliest of places.

  “We should go,” I say after a weighted moment. “The bandits will be coming after us as soon as they regroup.”

  “Everyone pile into the truck,” Sameh says.

  “I’m driving,” I say. “Professor, you sit in front with me. We’ve got some talking to do. Sameh and Anya, you get on that 30 cal., case we need it.”

  “How do I work this thing?” Anya asks.

  “Just point and shoot,” I answer.

  Without another word, I get behind the wheel, start the truck up. After a few seconds, Andre opens the passenger side door, slips inside. He’s as tall as I remember him, if not gaunt, with a graying beard and a face tanned to almost leathery proportions from constant exposure to the sun.

  I shift the gear stick into first and begin the drive in the direction of our Land Cruiser.

  “I know where the bones are buried, Professor.”

  He turns to me, quick.

  “You saw the shroud,” he says. “It’s the only way you would know.”

  “I saw the shroud. And nearly got myself and your ex-wife killed in the process.”

  “They know.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “’They are everyone, everywhere. Everyone, everywhere who matters. Scholars, Rabbis, Priests, Imams … They all know about the mortal Jesus. The people who make religion. They are the real Gods. The people who guard the secrets of the past in order keep the money flowing in the present and in the future.”

  “People like the Vatican,” I say.

  “Belief in a divine Jesus is about control. Religion has always been about mortal man trying to make some sense of his existence. It’s as instinctual as the need to breathe. The ‘they’ whom I talk about, feed on this instinct, and they gain a tremendous amount of power and money doing so. Most of our wars are fought over religious beliefs. Therefore, what might happen when you take one of the most steadfast beliefs away from them? The belief that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day ascended, physical body and soul, into paradise?”

  “You crush them,” I say. “And at the same time, empower other religions. Like Islam for instance. Radical Islam.”

  “The Jews don’t believe in the divine Jesus,” the professor adds.

  “The Jews don’t behead people.”

  “Neither do most Muslims. They are peaceful people who abhor those who tarnish the name of Allah with radical beliefs, hatred, and violent evil.”

  “But people will kill over what we are about to discover.”

  “Which is why our quest is so dangerous. Not to just our life and limb, but to the world. We have to be careful, Chase. If the bones of Christ are there to be found, it’s our responsibility to find them. That’s what I do. That’s what I live for. It’s why I exist.”

  “But what do we do if we really find them?”

  I feel him looking at me. Driving over the bumpy, sand-packed terrain, I steal a glance over my shoulder, look into his deep-set eyes. I know then that he’s not going to answer my question, because there is no real answer. Not yet. Because who can contemplate the profound moment that the body of Christ rests in your hands?

  But then, after a time he says, “Thank you for what you did back there.”

  “You’re welcome. But I’m getting paid for this, and who knows, I might just get a good book out of it too, especially if we find the remains. For now, we need one another’s help.”

  “Do you still have your half of the mirror, Chase?”

  “I have both parts. And a CAD blueprint lifted from the shroud that dates back to 1978.”

  I can feel him smiling without having to look for evidence of it.

  “Does Anya know about us? About our past?” he says. “About having worked together to find the bones once before.”

  “She knows some. But not everything.”

  “Such as?”

  “She knows the part about me sandhogging for you. But not the part about me drinking my way into oblivion over a bad divorce.”

  “She trust you?”

  “I think so,” I say. “But she already suspects that I’ve been setting my sights on the Jesus remains from the get-go. But I somehow managed to convince her that in order to find you … her ex-husband … we first must find the path of the bones. That one would lead to the other.”

  “Brilliant,” he says. “But what are your true motives, Chase?”

  “You gotta ask?”

  “You want to find the bones as much as I do.”

  “Can’t help it,” I say. “But when we do, we hand them to the right people. Not a private collector. Agreed? Those remains must be kept out of the hands of the extremists.”

  “Amen,” he says. “Now, back up a bit and tell me how it is that you, of all people, have become my rescuer?”

  “Long story,” I say. And then I begin filling him in.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  During what’s left of the short drive over newly formed wave-like dunes of sunbaked desert back to the Land Cruiser, I fill Andre in on the highlights of what’s transpired since I was nearly arrested back in Florence for balling my fist in the mouth a client whose wife had just balled me the night before.

  “And now here we are,” Manion says, as the Land Cruiser comes into view. “You and my ex-wife.”

  “Ex being the key prefix here, Professor.”

  He’s quiet for a moment while we pull up on the Land Cruiser’s tailgate.

  “You having sex with my ex-wife, Chase?”

  I steal a look at him while behind me, Anya and Sameh climb down from the bed.

  “Let’s put it this way, Professor,” I say. “You’re divorced and she’s a free agent. Now that I’ve completed my mission and safely rescued you, I’m going to focus on finding the Jesus remains and I need you front and center to partner in the search.”

  Sameh knocks on the window.

  “It’s time to leave,” he says through the glass.
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  “Coming,” I say.

  I feel Andre’s hand on my leg.

  “Chase,” he says. “The shroud.”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s the third pyramid isn’t it? The Menkaure’s House of Eternity.”

  “Like you’ve always said.”

  “I would like to see the Shroud map as soon as possible.”

  “When I’m good and ready. And like I keep saying, it’s not a map so much as a blueprint.”

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  “You ran out on my last time.”

  “You were drunk. Licking your wounds from a marriage gone bad. You were a mess. A dangerous mess. I needed a partner, not a drunk sandhog.”

  “Things have changed.”

  “I can see that.”

  Sameh waves at us to hurry along.

  “Let’s go,” I say. “I’ll tell you more on the way to the House of Eternity.”

  We make the transfer to the Land Cruiser. With Sameh back behind the wheel, Andre and Anya occupy the back seat. Before I assume my usual shotgun seat, I tell Sameh to wait one moment. Approaching the pickup truck with its mounted 30 cal., I pull a grenade from my belt, pull the pin. Holding down the arming mechanism with my thumb, I open the vehicle’s driver’s side door, toss the grenade in. As I jog my way back to the Land Cruiser, the grenade explodes, turning the pickup and the machinegun it houses into so much burning scrap metal.

  Slipping back inside the Land Cruiser, I give Sameh the hand signal to go.

  “Yallah,” I say.

  “Back to the Giza Plateau,” he says.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The Third Pyramid of Giza is different from its two bigger siblings in several important respects, not the least of which is its far more solid construction. It’s better built, as if its owner, the Pharaoh Menkaure, made a conscious decision to choose quality over quantity. Surrounding its entrance, which is nothing more than a five-by-five square opening at the base of the pyramid’s north face, are the original granite casing stones. The stones were worked over by ancient stone masons so that they became rounded around the edges, then fitted together irregularly, unlike the other larger pyramids in which the stones were set in neat rows.

  In truth, the stonework of the Menkaure pyramid resemble in great detail, the stonework that can be found at Machu Picchu in Peru. It’s often left me feeling as if the pyramids occupying the Giza Plateau are not the work of human hands, but of an intelligence far more advance than ours could have possibly been five thousand years ago. Aliens don’t come to mind here. But the descendants of the lost city of Atlantis most definitely do. It’s not as far out a notion as one might think. More than one civilization has been lost to rising tides and changing geographies. Atlantis might very well be only one of them.

  Legend has it that when the tomb was opened for the first time in 1830 by Colonel Howard-Vyse of her Majesty’s Royal Navy, the sarcophagus of Menkaure was discovered. But tragically, the ship that was carrying the mummified remains back to mother England sank off the coast of Spain in very deep water, perhaps forever eliminating the opportunity to confirm the true identity of the mummy housed in the tomb.

  For centuries the tomb has remained a source of great mystery. While the narrow and low-ceilinged passages that lead down into the roots of the mountainous pyramid will most definitely lead you to a wide, cathedral-ceilinged burial chamber, it is no secret that many more undiscovered passages exist. More than a few of these passages are false and simply lead to dead ends. Other passages are said to lead to chambers that access a great system of aquifers or underground rivers that run beneath the pyramids and connect directly to the Nile, which is no doubt the source of their flow. It is also said by some that these rivers once provided the power-source for the electricity which was generated by the pyramids in ancient times, making the indestructible stone giants not only tombs for the dead Pharaohs, but electrical powerhouses for Egypt’s massive ancient civilization. More evidence of the Giza pyramids having been designed by ancient Atlantians? Maybe.

  There are, of course, other dangers that exist inside the Third Pyramid, along with false doors, floors, walls and pits. And it’s these mortal dangers that no doubt persuaded the Vatican to choose this sight to bury the bones of their most beloved Messiah. To say the pyramid posed real threats to those who attempted to seek out its treasures or, in this case, the bones of Christ, is as understated as saying human beings require oxygen to breathe.

  I’ve been here before. So has Dr. Andre Manion. To the desert, I mean. We got as far as working in some of the false chambers located outside the third pyramid. We worked the quote, “mysterious pit,” unquote under the cover of darkness and found only passages the led to nowhere, one of which became so gradually narrow as I descended as to be unnoticeable until it was too late, and I found myself hopelessly and relentlessly stuck. If it weren’t for the quick thinking of Andre who pulled me out by my booted feet, I might never have made it out alive.

  This was all happening during a time when I was not of the most sound mind and soul. Back in New York, my wife had left me for another man and taken my infant daughter with her. Her infidelity had been provoked, or so she claimed in the divorce papers, due to my infidelity with my travels, my writing, my treasure hunting, my search for “the goddamned meaning of my goddamned life.” Once my marriage was officially dead and buried, I proceeded to spend the better part of two years bathed in booze, loose women, plane tickets, guiding, and sandhogging. Somehow I managed to write a couple of novels revolving around my adventures as well, although I only have a vague recollection of sitting down long enough to do the actual writing.

  We scored nothing on that first dig simply because we were digging in the wrong place. But I did uncover something of value. Rather, something that, according to Andre and his extensive research, might help us uncover the precise space in which the bones of Christ might have been hidden by Vatican experts back in 1978. That item was a mirror that I discovered buried in the pit. It wasn’t as if it had been left there by some ancient architect or grave robber. But as if it had been purposely tossed into the pit as recently as ’78 by one of the men who buried the bones and who now, wished to make sure the mirror and its direction-finding capabilities were lost to all mankind forever.

  I lifted the two pieces of mirror from the rubble in the mysterious pit, not long after Andre had rescued me from sure death inside the third pyramid. For a time I kept the find to myself, until one night, after a particularly good drunk in the bars of Cairo, I came home to my tent and passed out. While one half of the mirror remained securely stored in my cargo pants pocket, I had stupidly left the other half sitting out on my portable desk where I had been conducting research on it over what was then considered the newest digital research wonder of them all: the Internet. In the morning, the mirror was gone, and although I had no definite proof of who precisely had stolen it, I could only surmise that the guilty party was one of the many Arab diggers we’d hired as cheap labor.

  I kept the news of the mirror pieces from Andre for as long as I could. Until the failed dig was long over and he had left Egypt one night totally unannounced and entirely under the cover of darkness, as if he were afraid I would somehow try and stop him or worse, hit him, in my inebriated state of constant rage. In the end, it was his further research that would decide the importance of the mirror, it having been written about in scholarly papyrus texts as old as ancient Egypt itself. The mirror was said to reveal the true location of the last and deepest burial chamber in the Third Pyramid, but only when you fit the mirror into a certain area of stone wall precisely at dawn when the virgin sunlight would shine in through a long, man-made vertical shaft constructed into the rock wall. Andre and I both knew then, and we know now, that under no circumstances would we have a chance of locating the bones of Jesus without that mirror. Now, we not only have a map showing us the home of the bones, we have the mirror which will, God willing, reveal their preci
se location within the home.

  By the time we come upon the pyramids at Giza, it’s getting close to dusk. Which suits us just fine.

  “Park it here for now, Sameh,” I say, far enough in the distance so as not to bring any kind of unwanted attention from Giza security guards or the military police constantly pacing the place with their automatic weapons and sneering faces. I can only surmise that the lights that shine off the pyramids at night will be extinguished soon as a money saving concession to a new government that also shuts off the water and electricity every other day in order to pinch badly needed pounds.

  Turning, I face the Land Cruiser’s back seat.

  “Anya,” I say, “think you can manage to mix us up something to eat with the food supplies we have left?”

  “So long as Sameh shows me how to use the gas stove,” she says, “I’m sure I can manage something.”

  Then to Andre. “Professor, you and I have some studying up to do, starting with the shroud blueprint.”

  “I’m dying to see it,” he says.

  “Let’s hope that’s not the case,” I say.

  We all exit the Land Cruiser and go about the work of changing the world.

  Forever.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Enlarged photos of the shroud CAD blueprint are laid out on top of a map of the Giza pyramids. Also included in the mix is a map of the Mankaure Third Pyramid and its previously known interior chambers. “Previously known,” being the key words here.

  Manion is using a good old fashioned magnifying glass to examine both the blueprint and the maps, going from one to the other and back again. A long weighted minute ticks by before he straightens up and smiles.