The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud

  One of Marco’s team interrupted his musings.

  “Boss, the cardinal’s here; he just got in from Rome and he’s really upset by all this…. He wants to see you.”

  “Upset? I’m not surprised. He’s on a bad run—not ten years ago the cathedral almost burned down, two years ago there was a robbery attempt, and now another fire.”

  “Yeah, he says he’s sorry he let himself be talked into doing the renovations and that it’s the last time—this cathedral’s been here for hundreds of years, and now, with all the sloppy work and the accidents, it’s practically ruined.”

  Marco entered the cathedral through a side door bearing a small sign designating the church offices. Two older women who shared a small office looked very busy. Three or four priests paced about, clearly agitated, as agents under Marco’s orders moved in and out, examining the walls, taking samples and photographs. A young priest, somewhere in his early thirties, approached Marco and extended his hand. His handshake was firm.

  “I’m Padre Yves.”

  “Marco Valoni.”

  “Yes, I know. If you’ll come with me, His Eminence is waiting to see you.”

  The priest opened a heavy door that led into a large, luxurious office paneled in dark wood. The paintings on the walls were Renaissance—a Madonna, a Christ, various saints. On the desk was a heavy embossed silver crucifix. Marco realized it must be at least three hundred years old.

  The cardinal’s normally friendly face was clouded with concern.

  “Have a seat, Signor Valoni, please.”

  “Thank you, Your Eminence.”

  “Tell me what’s happened. Do we know who died?”

  “We don’t know for certain who the man is or what happened, sir. It appears that there was a short circuit, due to the renovations, and that’s what started the fire.”

  “Again!”

  “Yes, Your Eminence, again. And if you’ll allow us, sir, I want to investigate this thoroughly. We’ll stay here for a few more days; I want to go over every inch of the cathedral, and my men and I will be talking to everyone who’s been in the cathedral over the last few hours and days. I would ask for your full cooperation.”

  “Of course, Signor Valoni, of course. We are entirely at your disposal for any questions you may have, as we have been in the past. Investigate whatever and wherever you need. What’s happened is a catastrophe, truly—one person is dead, irreplaceable artworks have been burned or ruined beyond repair, and the flames almost reached the Holy Shroud. I don’t know what we would all do if it had been destroyed.”

  “Your Eminence, the shroud…”

  “I know, Signor Valoni, I know what you’re going to say—radiocarbon dating has determined that the shroud cannot be the cloth that Our Lord was buried in. But for millions of believers, the shroud is authentic, regardless of what the carbon-fourteen says, and the Church has allowed it to be worshipped. And of course, there are those scientists who cannot explain the figure that we take to be Christ’s. Furthermore—”

  “Excuse me, Your Eminence, I had no intention of calling the religious importance of the shroud into question. It made an unforgettable impression on me the first time I saw it, and it still impresses me today.”

  “Ah. Then, what?”

  “I wanted to ask you whether anything out of the ordinary had happened in the last few days, the last few months—anything, no matter how insignificant it might seem—that was unusual or that you noticed for some reason.”

  “Why, no, honestly nothing. After that last scare two years ago, when they broke in and tried to steal objects from the high altar, it’s been very quiet in the cathedral.”

  “Think hard, sir.”

  “What do you want me to think about? When I’m in Turin I celebrate Mass in the cathedral every morning at eight. Sundays at twelve. I spend some time in Rome; today I was at the Vatican when I received the news of the fire. Pilgrims come from all over the world to see the shroud—two weeks ago, a group of scientists from France, England, and the United States came to perform some tests and—”

  “Who were they?”

  “Ah! A group of professors, all Catholics, who believe that despite all the studies and the categorical verdict from the radiocarbon dating, the shroud is the true burial cloth of Christ.”

  “Did any of them draw your attention in any way?”

  “No, not really. I received them in my office in the episcopal palace, and we talked for about an hour. I had had a small lunch prepared. They told me about some of their theories as to why they believed the radiocarbon studies aren’t entirely reliable…. There was very little else.”

  “Did any of these professors seem different in any way from the others? More driven, more aggressive…?”

  “Signor Valoni, for many years I have received scientists studying the shroud; the Church has been most open and has given them excellent access. These particular professors were very pleasant, very ‘nice,’ shall we say; only one of them, Dr. Bolard, seemed more reserved, less talkative than his colleagues, but I attributed that to the fact that it makes him nervous when we do work on the cathedral.”

  “Why is that?”

  “What a question, Signor Valoni! Because Professor Bolard has spent years helping us with the conservation of the shroud, and he is afraid—as well he might be, it turns out—that we might be exposing it to unnecessary risks. I have known him for many years; he is a serious, rigorous scientist, a world-renowned scholar, and a good Catholic.”

  “How often has he been here?”

  “Oh, countless times. As I said, he works with the Church on the conservation of the shroud. He is so much a part of our effort, in fact, that when other scientists come to study it, we often call him in so he can ensure that the shroud won’t be exposed to any possible deterioration. We also have files on all the scientists who have visited us, who have studied the shroud, the people from NASA, that Russian—what was his name? I don’t remember…. Anyway, and all the famous scholars—Barnett, Hynek, Tamburelli, Tite, Gonella—all of them. Oh, and Walter McCrone, the first scientist to insist that the shroud was not the cloth that Christ was buried in; he died just a few months ago, God rest his soul.”

  “I’d like to know the dates this Dr. Bolard has been here and to have a list of all the teams of scientists that have done studies on the shroud in recent years, plus the dates they were in Turin. You might include any other noteworthy groups as well.”

  “How far back should we go?” the cardinal asked.

  “The last twenty years, if possible.”

  “My word! Just what are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know, Your Eminence, I don’t know.”

  The cardinal gazed at him steadily. “For years you have insisted that the shroud is somehow connected with all these accidents, that it is the object behind them, but I, my dear Signor Valoni, simply cannot believe that. Who could possibly wish to destroy the shroud? And why? As for the robbery attempts, you know that much of the art in the cathedral is priceless, and there are many unscrupulous men who have no respect even for the house of God.”

  “You’re right, I’m sure, Your Eminence, but you have to concede that these incidents cannot be random, unrelated events, given the bizarre circumstances—the repeated involvement of these mutilated men. This is a sustained effort of some sort, and it seems to me that only an object of singular renown, such as the shroud, could be at its center.”

  “Yes, of course it’s disturbing, as you say, and the Church is very, very concerned. In fact, I have gone several times to visit that poor wretch who tried to rob us two years ago. He sits there in front of me and doesn’t respond in any way, as though he doesn’t understand a word I say.”

  Marco sensed that there would be no more concrete information forthcoming from the cardinal, so he gently tried to steer the discussion back to the information he needed.

  “So, Your Eminence, will you get that list ready for me? It’s just routine, but I have to f
ollow up on it.”

  “Yes, certainly, I’ll tell my secretary, the young priest who showed you in, to gather the material for you as soon as possible. Padre Yves is very efficient; he’s been with me for seven months, since my previous aide passed away, and I must say that his presence is a boon. He’s intelligent, discreet, pious, he speaks a number of languages….”

  “He’s French?”

  “Yes, that’s right, but his Italian, as you’ve seen, is perfect; he speaks English, German, Hebrew, Arabic, he reads Aramaic….”

  “And who recommended him to you, Your Eminence?”

  “My good friend, the aide to the acting Under-Secretary of State for the Vatican, Monsignor Aubry, a remarkable man.”

  It struck Marco that most of the men of the Church he’d known were remarkable, especially those who moved through the Vatican. But he remained silent as he gazed at the cardinal—a good man, he thought, wiser and more intelligent than he sometimes let people see and very skilled at diplomacy.

  The cardinal picked up the telephone and asked Padre Yves to come in. Almost instantly the young priest appeared at the door.

  “Come in, padre, come in. You’ve met my good friend Signor Valoni. He’s asked that we prepare a list of all the scientific delegations and other important groups that have visited the shroud in the last twenty years and when they were here. Will you get to work on that, please? He’d like it right away.”

  Padre Yves looked at Marco a moment before asking, “Forgive me, Signor Valoni, but could you tell me what it is you’re looking for?”

  “Padre Yves, not even Signor Valoni knows what he’s looking for, but he wants the name of anyone who’s had any relationship with the shroud over the past twenty years, and we are going to provide him with that information.”

  “Of course, Your Eminence. I’ll try to get it to him as soon as possible, although with all this commotion it won’t be easy. I’ll have to go through the files personally; we have a long way to go in computerizing them.”

  “Don’t worry, padre,” Valoni replied, “I can wait a few days, but the sooner you can get me that information the better.”

  “Your Eminence, may I ask what the shroud has to do with the fire?”

  “Ah! Padre Yves, I have been asking Signor Valoni that same question for years. Every time something like this happens, he insists that the objective is the shroud.”

  “My God, the shroud!”

  Marco studied Padre Yves. He didn’t look like a priest, or at least most of the priests that Marco knew, and living in Rome meant he knew a lot of them. Padre Yves was tall, quite handsome, athletic; more than likely, he played some sport regularly. There was not a trace of that softness that resulted from mixing chastity and good food—a mixture indulged in widely by the priestly population. If Padre Yves weren’t wearing his ecclesiastical collar, he’d look like one of those executives who work out in the gym every morning and play squash or tennis every weekend.

  “Yes, padre,” the cardinal was saying, “the shroud. But fortunately the Lord protects it. It has never been severely damaged.”

  “I’m just trying to follow up on anything that might shed some light on what’s been happening,” Marco assured them, “and to chase down any loose ends. There have been too many incidents connected with the cathedral. It’s time for them to stop. Here’s my card and my cell phone number, padre. Let me know when you have that list, and if you think of anything that might help us in the investigation, please call me, anytime.”

  “Yes, of course, Signor Valoni. I will,” the young priest assured him.

  Marco’s cell phone rang as he left the cathedral offices. The coroner’s verdict was short and sweet: The deceased was a male around thirty years old, average height, five foot eight, five foot nine, thin. And no, there was no tongue.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m as sure as I can be with a corpse turned to charcoal. The body had no tongue, and it wasn’t the result of the fire—it was removed by surgery. Don’t ask me when, because given the state of the body it’s just too hard to tell.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I’ll send you the whole report. I called as soon as I finished the autopsy.”

  “I’ll stop by and pick it up, if you don’t mind.”

  “Come and get it. I’ll be here all day.”

  Back at Turin’s carabinieri headquarters, where the Art Crimes unit maintained a small office, Marco met with one of his senior men.

  “Okay, Giuseppe, what do we have so far?”

  “In the first place, nothing’s missing. They didn’t steal anything. Antonino and Sofia have done pretty much a whole inventory—paintings, candelabras, sculptures, everything. It’s all there, although some things have varying degrees of smoke or water damage. The flames destroyed the pulpit on the right and the pews, and all that’s left of the sixteenth-century statue of the Virgin is ashes. Pietro’s been interviewing the guys who were working on the new wiring; the fire apparently started from a short circuit.”

  “Another short circuit.”

  “Yeah, like the one in ’97. He’s also talked to the company in charge of the renovation work, and he asked Minerva to get on her computer and find out everything she can about the owners of the business, and also about the workers. Some of them are immigrants, and it’ll be tough to get any information on them, but she’ll try.”

  Giuseppe paused and gazed at his boss. “And I’ve asked her to find out whether there’s some sect that cuts out its followers’ tongues. I know it’s probably a stretch—but we’ve gotta look everywhere, right? And Minerva’s a genius with this stuff.” When Marco nodded after a moment, Giuseppe went on.

  “Between Pietro and me we’ve interviewed everybody on staff. There was nobody in the cathedral when the fire started. At three it’s always closed, since that’s when they all are at lunch.”

  “We have the body of one man. Was he working alone?”

  “We aren’t sure, but we don’t think so. It would be tricky for someone working alone to prepare and carry out a major theft in the Turin Cathedral, unless maybe it was a job for hire, a thief somebody paid to come in and grab a specific piece of art.”

  “But if he wasn’t alone, where are the others?”

  Giuseppe didn’t answer, and Marco fell silent. He had a bad feeling about this fire, and a hollow pit in his stomach to prove it. Paola had said he was obsessed with the shroud, and maybe she was right: He had always felt that there was much more to the periodic events in Turin than they had been able to uncover—something “underneath” that connected them all. The bizarre factor of the mutilated men was only the tip of it. He was sure he was missing something, that there was a thread to follow somewhere, and that if he could find it he’d find the solution. He decided to go to the Turin jail and pay a visit to the perp from the last incident. They had been unable to ferret out anything about him; they weren’t even sure if the guy was Italian. Two years ago Marco had left him to the carabinieri after weeks of futile interrogation. But the mute was the only lead they had, and like an idiot he’d dropped him.

  As he lit another cigarette, he decided to get in touch with John Barry, the cultural attaché to the United States embassy. John was actually CIA, like almost every cultural attaché in foreign embassies around the world. Governments didn’t have much imagination for working out covers for their agents. Even so, Barry was a nice guy. He wasn’t a field operative; he worked for the CIA’s Office of Intelligence Assessment, analyzing and interpreting the intelligence that came in from field agents before it was sent on to Washington. The two men had been friends for years—a friendship forged through work, since many of the pieces of art stolen by the art mafias wound up in the hands of wealthy Americans who—sometimes because they were in love with a particular work, other times out of vanity or to turn a quick buck—had no scruples about purchasing stolen art. It was a dark area of international commerce, where many interests often intersected.

 
Barry didn’t fit the stereotypical image of the American or of the CIA agent. He was fifty-something, like Marco, and he had a doctorate in art history from Harvard. He loved Europe and had married an English archaeologist, Lisa, a charming and fascinating woman. Not beautiful, Marco had to say, but so full of life that she radiated enthusiasm and charisma. She’d hit it off wonderfully with Paola, so the four of them had dinner together once in a while, and they’d even spent weekends together in Capri.

  Yes, he’d call John the minute he got back to Rome. But he’d also call Santiago Jiménez, the Europol representative in Italy, an efficient, very likable Spaniard with whom Marco also had an excellent working relationship. He’d buy them lunch. And maybe, he thought, they could help him in his search, even if he wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for.

  At last, Josar’s eyes beheld the walls of Jerusalem. The brightness of the sun at dawn and the light’s reflection off the desert sand made the stones of the wall seem to shimmer in a golden haze.

  Accompanied by four men, Josar made his way on horseback toward the Damascus Gate, where at this early hour men who lived nearby were beginning to enter the city, and caravans seeking salt made their way out into the desert.

  A platoon of Roman soldiers, on foot, was patrolling the perimeter of the walls.

  How Josar longed to see Jesus, whose extraordinary figure radiated strength, sweetness, firmness, and deep piety.

  He believed in Jesus, believed that he was the Son of God, not simply because of the wonders he had seen him work but also because, when Jesus’ eyes fell on him, he could feel something more than human in them. He knew that Jesus could see within him, that not even the smallest and most hidden thought could escape him.

  But Jesus did not make Josar feel ashamed of what he was, because the Nazarene’s eyes were filled with understanding and with forgiveness.

  Josar loved Abgar, his king, who had always treated him like a brother. He owed the king his estate and fortune. Yet Josar had decided that if Jesus did not accept Abgar’s invitation to come to Edessa, he would present himself before his king and ask leave to return to Jerusalem and follow the Nazarene. He was prepared to give up his house, his fortune, his earthly comforts and well-being. He would follow Jesus and try to live according to his teachings. Yes, he had reached that decision.