The Shroud Key Read online

  “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.

  “Just wait a moment,” I say, shifting myself to the side of the door. “Someone will come along. In the meantime, keep an eye out for the man in black.”

  We wait for a beat or two, all the while, my eyes shifting from the door, to Anya, to the road behind me. When a man and a woman emerge from the door, the two of them engaged in deep academic conversation, I take hold of Anya’s hand and slip us both inside.

  “Slick,” she says, as we enter into the wide open vestibule.

  “What did you expect from a guy named Chase?” I say, smiling.

  “Guess this means you’re officially working for me … Ren Man,” she says as we approach the elevator.

  “What the hell is Ren Man?”

  “Short for Renaissance Man,” she says. “That’s a mouth full. Ren Man just rolls off the tongue a hell of a lot easier.”

  “You sure you want me to work for you?” I say. “You haven’t heard my rates yet. What floor?”

  “Second,” she says. “Whatever the rates are, I’ll pay them.”

  I hit the button containing a light-up arrow that points towards heaven.

  “I’m beginning to like you, Mrs. Manion,” I say, recalling how my dog Lu growled at her. “Even if I do suspect you’re nothing but trouble.”

  “You have no idea, Ren Man,” she says smiling wryly as a bell chimes and the doors to the elevator slide open.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The office of Dr. Andre Manion is located midway down a brightly lit concrete corridor on the right hand side. When I grip the opener, I find that it’s locked. No surprise there. I step back from the door, look over one shoulder, then the other. Mounted to the exterior walls just inches below the concrete panel ceiling is a series of security cameras.

  “Don’t look now but we’re being filmed,” I point out.

  Anya cocks her head over her shoulder.

  “We are most definitely not being filmed,” she says. “Those cameras are decoys meant to look like the place is secure. From what I’m told the American University constantly runs in the red.”

  “How do you know all this stuff if you and the missing hubby are split up?”

  “First thing Detective Cipriani did when he found out my hubby, as you call him, was missing was to check the university security surveillance film. Stood to reason that if my husband simply walked out of here or worse, that he was kidnapped right out of his office, than it would be caught on film.” She sighs. “Sadly, no such film exists since these cameras are for show only.”

  “What about a video of him leaving through the front door? Those cameras have got to be real.”

  She shakes her head.

  “They’re real enough,” she says. “But no Andre to be seen on film.”

  “Then he was picked up off the street,” I add. “Or maybe outside his apartment. Cipriani claims to have seen video of the professor at both the Florence and Cairo airports.”

  “Maybe. But what difference does it make at th
is point, Chase?”

  She’s got a point. This isn’t a criminal investigation I’m running here. It’s a rescue…More or less.

  Reaching into the interior pocket on my worn leather bomber, I grab hold of a twenty-some year old Swiss Army knife. A gift from my dad before I disembarked for the first Gulf War back in ’91. “Keep this where you can get at it quickly,” he whispered into my ear before kissing my cheek and pressing his face against mine. I remember feeling the wetness of his tears as I stepped onto the Amtrak train that would take me to New York City and JFK, not wanting to look back into his big weeping eyes and risk seeing him like that. People die in wars. Young people. What if that was the last time we would ever see one another in this life?

  Using the fingernail on my index finger, I pull out the metal pick option and slip it through the narrow hole located in the center of the closer. By pushing and twisting the pick, I feel the spring release on the closer’s locking mechanism. With my free hand, I twist it counter- clockwise. With a pleasing metal-separating-from-metal snap, it opens.

  “We’re in,” I say, opening the door wide.

  I step in and Anya follows, closing the door behind her.

  “Lights,” I say.

  I hear her fumbling against the wall for a switch.

  “Got it, Chase.”

  The room fills with bright white lamp light, thanks to the ceiling-mounted fixtures. The small, cramped, square office is filled with cardboard boxes that rest up against the wall to my right while to my left, numerous volumes occupy a steel bookshelf. Directly ahead of me, a metal desk is covered with scattered papers and photos.

  I go to the desk and immediately see that maybe a half dozen eight-by-ten color glossies have been placed on top of a map. At closer inspection I can see that it’s a map of Egypt. The Giza Plateau in particular. I slide the map out from under the pictures. It’s covered in scribblings made in red Sharpie. So many lines, circles, and nonsensical doodles that I can’t begin to make sense of it.

  The photographs however leave nothing to interpretation. They are representations of the same white-on-black, photographic negative-like image.

  “The Shroud of Turin,” I whisper aloud.

  “The Jesus burial cloth,” Anya confirms, stepping beside, so close I can feel her leather-covered shoulder rubbing up against my own. Her touch, no matter how slight, doesn’t feel unpleasant. “Another one of my husband’s obsessions.”

  I scan the photos which too are veined in red marker, as if Manion were searching for something he was convinced must be contained in the shroud, but not quite seeing it yet.

  A map…He was looking for a map. Or a blueprint…

  There are full body shots, head shots, arm and leg blow ups, even a zoom in on Christ’s apparently blood-soaked hair.

  “Question,” I say turning to Anya, hoping to squeeze a little more information out of her. “Why would a man concerned with looking for Christ’s bones waste his time studying a crusade era forgery?”

  She looks me in the eyes.

  “It’s true the shroud was finally proven beyond a doubt that it dates back to 1352. That the pigment covering the cloth is not blood but paint. Vermillion and madder to be precise.”

  I was a bit struck by her obvious knowledge of the shroud. But then, I could only guess that she was able to pick up quite a lot about her husband’s work by living with him for all those years.

  “My question stands then. Why study it at all?”

  “Because the shroud is more than a depiction of the body of Jesus as he was laid to rest in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea immediately following the crucifixion. Andre was convinced that it was a giant map which was created in order to keep a precise and running record of the Jesus remains locations.”

  “Locations?” I ask. “As in the plural usage?”

  “Yes, take it from a Freshman English Comp 101 teacher…Locationssss.” She exaggerates the s at the end of “locations” making it sound like an extended Z.

  I feel the light hairs on the back of my neck stand up at attention. Feel my blood begin to flow faster. So Andre had been onto something all along. Eight years ago whenever he’d bring up the subject of the shroud and its map-like possibilities, I would laugh and shrug it off as a nutty professor’s overactive imagination. But now it appears his theory had some real validity to it.

  She goes on, “For centuries people have been trying to make sense of the shroud, wishing and praying that it was the true cloth that wrapped Jesus’s remains when he was pulled down from the cross. Proof of the mortal corpus and the divine resurrection incarnate. But in all their zeal to confirm their faith, they never stopped for a second to consider that the shroud could actually be a guide in disguise. A way for the disciples, the bloodline of the disciples, and eventually, Holy Roman Catholic Church to keep track of the Jesus remains once he died.”

  “The cloth has been guarded over by Franciscan monks for centuries,” I point out.

  Anya nods.

  She says, “The Vatican only allows limited testing every twenty years and even then by a handful of scientists they hand pick. For the rest of the time it’s locked in an impenetrable vault. It’s not even available for public display in its bullet-proof glass case expect for once every dozen years.”

  “Why give something that much protection if in essence it’s just another 14th century painting that might be hung in the Uffizi or the Louvre?”

  “Precisely because the Vatican is aware of its true meaning as a map. A purpose and a meaning that would disprove the essence of Christianity.”

  “A purpose shrouded in the form of a fake image undergoing a false transformation.” I burst out laughing. “A brilliant deception. The shroud is really the ultimate proof of Christ’s mortality while at the same time masquerading as ultimate proof of his divinity. Talk about sheep in a wolf’s clothing.”

  “Andre knows all this of course, and for years he’s been begging the Vatican for close inspection of the shroud. It’s part of the reason for his coming to Florence to teach within the proximity of the shroud in the first place. If he could get a serious look at it, he might discover not one map of the present whereabouts of the Jesus remains, but many maps detailing many different resting places. Andre firmly believed the bones were always on the move because they were always being hunted.”

  “Like now,” I say. “He must have the map hidden somewhere.”

  “No,” she says, once more shaking her head. “There’s one major problem with my husband’s map theory.”

  “And that is?”

  “Whoever created the shroud wasn’t foolish enough to simply draw detailed maps on the back and front of the Christ image. They hid them somewhere within the body itself. Existing photographs haven’t been helping Andre find a precise location. They only offer tidbits of information. He needed to see the entire thing, face to face, in real-time.”

  “So you’re telling me Andre never actually uncovered a precise map.” It’s a question.

  “Portions…Suggestions, but not a full map. A few lines and squiggles which were most definitely added in recent decades that, in this case, match up to specific locations in the Giza Plateau. While these recent map-like additions rule out previous locations or any other location for that matter, they still only spoke to Andre in generalizations.” Raising up her hand, pointing at the map. “Thus the photos and the map occupying the same desk.”

  “This tells me two things,” I say. “First: Your husband only knows the approximate location of the burial site. And two: The people who kidnapped him have yet to steal the goods.”

  Wide-eyed, she nods.

  “It might also mean that while the bones are still out there awaiting discovery, Andre is still alive.”

  “Yes, they will need him alive if they have any hope in unearthing their precious bony relics.”

  A bump on the office door. Not like a knock or a kick with the foot. More like someone or something trying to get in.


  “Lock the door the door,” I say.

  Anya immediately jumps over to the door, locks the closer. That’s when whoever is on the other side begins twisting the opener. Hard.

  The man in black…

  “What do we do, Chase?”

  I grab up the photos, stuff them in my satchel. I fold up the Giza Plateau map and stuff that too into the satchel. Giving the room a scan, I look for a way out.

  “There’s no windows,” Anya says.

  “I’m well aware of that,” I say looking for something, anything that will provide us quick egress.

  Then I see the HVAC diffuser mounted to the top of the concrete block wall. Neither Anya nor myself are particularly big people. It might be a tight fit, but we just might be able to slide ourselves through the duct and down into the next room.

  The person on the other side of the door is yanking on the closer, the door violently slapping against the metal frame. I pick up the desk chair, position it under the wall-mounted duct. Stepping onto the chair, I once more pull out the Swiss Army knife, this time fingering out the blade. Using the tip, I break off the heads of the old screws, then pull out the grill, dropping it to the floor.

  “You first,” I say, jumping down from the chair.

  “Through there?”

  “Yeah, this always works in the movies.”

  For the first time since I’ve known her, Anya truly smiles. She steps up onto the chair, sticks her head and shoulders into the duct.

  “A little help please,” she says.

  I place one hand on her firm butt while wrapping my right arm around her legs.

  “Pleasures all mine,” I say, heaving.

  “For a Ren Man, you’re a real pig, Chase Baker,” she says, before disappearing into the darkness.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I’m right behind her.

  I drop down into the next room onto my black booted feet just as I make out the sound of Manion’s office door being kicked in. We’re standing in the dark inside someone’s office. An office that appears to be empty, if not for an odor. Not a foul odor but a pleasant one. Aftershave maybe. Like Old Spice. Stuff my old man used to splash on his face before church on Sunday. I’m picturing the face of my old man when the body hits me like I’ve somehow stepped in front of a speeding truck. I go tumbling back against the wall.