The Shroud Key Read online

  We stand before the great stone cathedral. But instead of climbing the stairs to its heavy wood doors, we make our way around a perimeter surrounded by an iron fence until we come to a guard shack and the two armed guards who protect it.

  “This is it,” I whisper under my breath. “Don’t say anything you don’t need to say.”

  “You’re the expert, Ren Man,” Anya whispers. “It’s what I’m paying you for.”

  “Good evening,” I say standing before the first guard. He’s taller than me, slimmer, younger. Meaner looking too.

  “Buono sera,” he utters, but I’m not so sure he means it.

  I smile, even if it’s the last thing I feel like doing on earth.

  “Please,” I say. “Our Italian is not so good. I am Father John Crews and this is my associate Sister Rosaire de Maria. We are here to see the shroud.”

  The guard turns to gaze over his shoulder at the shorter, but meatier second guard.

  Then, turning back to me.

  “Do you have an appointment at this late hour? No one sees the shroud without a special appointment.”

  “But of course,” I say reaching into the interior pocket of my leather coat, producing the forged documentation. “Natalia is expecting us.”

  The guard gazes down at the documentation. In Italian, he asks the second guard if he knows anything about our arrival. The second guard shakes his head.

  “Wait here,” orders the first guard.

  We do as he says.

  He steps into the guard shack, picks up a phone receiver, presses it to his ear. He speaks something into the phone all the while keeping a careful eye on us through the glass wall, as if the burly second guard watching over us with his automatic weapon isn’t enough.

  After a few weighted seconds, the first guard hangs the phone up, steps out of the shack.

  “Let them pass,” he directs the second guard.

  The electronic operated gate opens, and as Anya and I step on through, a woman emerges from out of the dark mist. She’s coming towards us at a light jog.

  “Father Crews!” she bellows. “Sister Rosaire de Maria! How wonderful that you have made it here safely.”

  She’s the tall blond that Checco described for me. The same woman I recognize by the many multi-media text photos he’s sent my way detailing their recent love affair. She’s taller than the both of us and voluptuously built, like so many Russian women. Especially Moscovites. While eyeing the guards, she takes Anya by the hand like they are intimate friends.

  “That will be all for now gentlemen,” she says, in her Russian accented English. Then, leading us up towards the rectory. “Come, come … You must be hungry and tired. Let’s rest a bit and eat something before you see the shroud.”

  We walk until out of earshot of the guards. That’s when Natalia changes her tone.

  “I’m not sure what your mission here is,” she says, her mood suddenly unfeeling and direct, “and why it’s so important that you must come here tonight and upset everything. But I owe Checco a special favor. This will be the favor.”

  We face a solid metal door that’s operated by a key-code and a retinal scanner. Looking up, I can see just one of what, no doubt, are many wall-mounted security cameras that are eyeing both Anya and I in real-time. I try not to look directly into it.

  Natalia positions her right eye before the retinal scanner so that it’s able to pick up her ID in a quick flash of ultraviolent light. Stepping back, the door unbolts. The Russian woman pushes it open, steps inside.

  “Follow me,” she insists.

  Unlike the exterior of this Cathedral which is hundreds of years old, she leads us down a corridor that is constructed of concrete, steel, and glass. Illuminating it are ceiling-mounted sodium lamps. The walls, ceilings and floor are painted white so that it gives off the feel of heaven. That is, if heaven turns out to be part house of God, part reinforced concrete bunker. I had always been under the impression that a team of Franciscan monks had been assigned by the Vatican to watch over the shroud. Thus far anyway, I have yet to see a single monk.

  Natalia leads us down the length of the corridor to a hallway that’s situated perpendicular to it. We hook a right and follow her for a few feet more until we come to another solid metal door. This one belonging to an office.

  Like Natalia was required to do for entry into the sacristy, she punches in a key-code on the wall-mounted device and once more scans her right eye. When the door unlocks she holds it open for us, asks us to enter into the room before her.

  We do it.

  If the corridor looks and feels like an underground bunker, this room definitely serves as the war room. A high-tech room you might find in the basement of the White House. The walls are black, the lighting canned and dim. The far wall supports a row of large LCD monitors that not only portray every possible angle of the shroud, but every conceivable pathway to it. The monitors not focused on the shroud, are focused instead on the cathedral’s exterior. There’s even a satellite image of the rooftop. A uniformed guard sits in a leather-backed swivel chair. He’s obviously in charge of controlling the monitors.

  “This is our operations center,” Natalia begins to explain. “As you can plainly see, there is no possible way for anyone to get near the shroud without being spotted. The cathedral is armed with only the tightest security, and despite our holy mission, they do maintain an order of shoot-to-kill and ask questions later. Am I understood?”

  “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 r
each 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?”

  She grins, almost sadly.

  “I’m carrying his child,” she reveals.

  She closes the door, locks it. For a brief moment we are bathed in a darkness so thick, I cannot make out Anya who crouches only inches from me. Then a light comes on. Correction … A series of caged light fixtures that are mounted to the concrete wall and that seem to run the length of the tunnel.

  “Next stop, Cairo,” I say to Anya.

  She begins the climb down the narrow staircase. I can’t help but think about Natalia’s words. About praying without knowing it. About believing in something for which I have no proof. About having faith, even if I question my belief in God.

  My heart in my throat and apparently, my soul beside it, I make the climb down the concrete stairs.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Once down the stairs, it’s a straight shot through a narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel. The dimly lit tunnel runs for maybe a half mile before it ends at another staircase, this one shaped like a corkscrew that wraps around a concrete pilaster. When we reach the top, we face yet another steel door. The door is not only closed, it bears no opener.

  Anya turns to me, her smooth, tan face beginning to show the first signs of physical stress. Judging by the newly formed creases around her almond-shaped eyes.