The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud

  He walked for several minutes, sitting down when the pain became unbearable, praying to God that he might live and be saved. He wanted to live—he no longer was willing to give his life for the community, or for anyone. He had given his tongue and two long years of his life locked up in prison.

  Marco glimpsed the figure of the mute staggering along. He and his detail stayed well back, as they had while they tailed the SUV. It was clear the man was wounded and could hardly walk. They caught sight of the two Turkish tails again, keeping a good distance away. Marco had kept men on them when the main group split off to follow the mute and his hostage.

  “Stay sharp—we have to take them all,” he cautioned everyone. “If the tails decide to separate or break off, you know what you have to do—divide up, some of you with them, the others on our man.”

  None of them was aware of the others silently monitoring them all, blending seamlessly into the surroundings.

  A reddish glow appeared on the horizon as the sun began to set. Mendib tried to walk faster; he wanted to get into the cemetery before the guard closed the gate. Otherwise, he’d have to jump the wall, and he was in no condition to do that. He was bleeding again, and he held a scarf he had taken from the woman against the wound. At least it was clean.

  The guard’s figure was silhouetted against the cypresses at the cemetery entrance. He looked expectant, as though he was waiting for someone or something.

  Mendib could sense the man’s fear, and indeed, when the guard saw the mute struggling toward him, he rushed to close the gate. Mendib, marshaling his last strength, reached the entrance and managed to slip inside, shoving the guard aside. He lurched toward tomb 117.

  Marco’s voice came over the network to all personnel.

  “He pushed his way into the cemetery, past the guard. I want you men inside. Where are the Turks?”

  A second voice came over the line: “They’re about to come into your view. They’re headed for the cemetery too.”

  To the surprise of Marco and his watching men, the tails opened the gate with a key, carefully closing it behind them.

  When they reached the gate, several of the carabinieri clambered over the wall to keep the Turks within striking distance, while another worked on the lock. It took him several minutes to open it, as Marco paced impatiently.

  “Giuseppe, find the guard,” Marco ordered once inside. “We haven’t seen him leave, so he must be inside somewhere.”

  “Right, boss. Then what?”

  “Report back to me with what he says, and then we’ll decide. Take some backup.”

  “Right.”

  “You, Pietro, come with me. Where the fuck are they?” Marco asked the carabinieri through the walkie-talkie.

  “I think they’re heading toward a mausoleum—a big one, with a marble angel above it,” a voice said.

  “Good. Where is it? We’re on our way.”

  No one was in Turgut’s apartment—Padre Yves and his friends seemed to have vanished. Ana stood quietly, listening for any sounds, but absolute silence reigned.

  She scanned the modest rooms, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Nothing stood out. Tentatively pushing at the door to a bedroom, she peered inside and found it empty too. Back to the living room, the kitchen, even the bathroom. Nothing. But Ana knew they had to be here, because the front door was bolted from the inside and that was the only other way out of the house.

  She went over the house again. In the kitchen was a door that opened into a pantry. She tapped on the wall, but it seemed solid. Then, down on her knees, she examined the wooden floor, looking for a trapdoor or an opening…anything. There had to be some sort of secret passage that led out of the house.

  Finally, she found a place where the floor sounded hollow. And there it was—the faint outlines of a trapdoor. Using a knife, she managed to lift it up enough to get a good grip and then forced it all the way open. A stairway led down into darkness. Not a sound came up out of the dungeon, or whatever it was. They had to have gone this way.

  It took her awhile, but finally she found a penlight in a kitchen drawer—it didn’t give much light, but it was all she had. She also put a big box of kitchen matches in her purse, just in case. She looked around to see if there was anything else she might need down there, and then, with a little prayer to St. Gemma, patron saint of the impossible—with whose help, she was certain, she had been able to graduate from the university—she started down the narrow stairway that would take her God only knew where.

  Mendib groped his way along the tunnel. He remembered every inch of that wet, sticky wall. The old guard had tried to stop him from getting to the tomb, but had finally taken off running when Mendib picked up a thick stick, ready to hit him with it if he had to. When at last he managed to reach the mausoleum, the key was there, hidden under the planter, just as it had been all those years ago. He unlocked the mausoleum entrance, went in, and found the spring behind the sarcophagus that opened the door to the stairway. The narrow steps descended into the tunnel that led ultimately to the cathedral.

  It was getting increasingly hard to breathe. The lack of oxygen and the darkness of the tunnel made him woozy, but he knew that his only chance to survive was to reach the house of Turgut. Fighting the pain and summoning the last measure of his dwindling strength, he pushed on.

  The light from his old-fashioned cigarette lighter wasn’t enough to illuminate the tunnel, but it was the only light he had. His greatest fear was winding up in the darkness and losing his sense of direction.

  Bakkalbasi’s men had entered the cemetery a few minutes after Mendib. They ran to the mausoleum, opened it with a key Turgut had provided, and in a few seconds they were underground, on the trail of their dying brother.

  “They went in there.” A carabiniere pointed.

  Marco looked up at the life-size angel—it was wielding a sword and seemed to be warning them off.

  The cop with the pick went to work again. This lock was harder, and while he played with the mechanism, Marco and his men smoked and made their contingency plans, unaware that they, too, were under observation.

  Turgut and Ismet paced nervously back and forth in the underground room off the tunnel. Three of the men from Urfa were waiting with them. They had managed to evade the carabinieri and had been in the secret room for several hours, waiting. The rest of Bakkalbasi’s men should be coming in at any minute. The pastor had warned them that Mendib might, against all odds, make his way there, too, and that they should calm him down and wait for the other brothers to come back. After that, they knew what they had to do.

  None of them ventured far into the shadows that enveloped the tunnel. If they had, they might have seen the three men crouched in a nearby alcove, who had been listening to them for some time. Their collars hidden, their faces grim, Yves, David, and Joseph had abandoned any trappings of the priesthood.

  They heard halting footsteps, and Turgut felt a shiver run down his spine. His nephew gave him a pat on the back to try to raise his spirits.

  “Calm down. We have our orders, we know what to do.”

  “Something terrible is going to happen,” the porter muttered.

  “Uncle, stop worrying! It will be okay.”

  “No. Something is going to happen. I know it.”

  “Quiet, uncle, please!”

  Ismet’s grip tightened on the old man’s shoulder as Mendib staggered into the room. His burning eyes held Turgut’s for just a moment, and then he collapsed senseless to the floor. Ismet knelt beside him to take his pulse.

  “He’s bleeding. He’s got a wound near the lung—I don’t think it’s punctured or he’d be dead by now. Bring me water and something to clean the wound with.”

  Old Turgut, his eyes as wide as saucers, scurried over with a bottle of water and a towel. Ismet ripped the filthy shirt off Mendib’s body and washed the wound carefully.

  “Wasn’t there a first-aid kit down here?”

  Turgut nodded, unable to speak. He went for
the first-aid kit and handed it to his nephew.

  Ismet cleaned the wound again with hydrogen peroxide, then swabbed it with gauze soaked in disinfectant. It was all he could do for Mendib, whom he had looked up to as a child in Urfa. None of the others made a move to stop him, although they all knew he was only temporarily fending off fate.

  “No need for that.” One of Bakkalbasi’s men stepped out of the shadows of the tunnel—one of the policemen from Urfa, who had waited behind to trail the mute from the piazza. Another man followed him. For several minutes they filled the others in on the pursuit. Their conversation masked subtle new sounds from the dark passageway.

  Suddenly Marco, accompanied by Pietro and a clutch of carabinieri, burst into the room, pistols drawn.

  “Don’t move! Don’t move! You’re all under arrest!” Marco shouted.

  MARCO HAD NO TIME TO SAY MORE. A BULLET FROM OUT of the shadows hissed past his head. Other shots hit two of his men. Bakkalbasi’s men seized advantage of the sudden chaos to take cover and open fire themselves.

  The carabinieri took cover as best they could. Marco crawled along the floor, attempting to get behind the Turks, but he was cut off when someone shot at him again from the shadows. He twisted around, trying to spot where the shots were coming from. Then, almost immediately, he heard a woman shouting: “Watch out, Marco, they’re up here! Watch out!”

  Ana had come out of hiding. For what had seemed forever, she’d concealed herself, almost unmoving, from the three priests, whom she’d seen—with the grace of God and St. Gemma—before they saw her, after following the tunnel from Turgut’s rooms. Padre Yves whirled around, his eyes wide: “Ana!”

  The young woman tried to run, but Padre Joseph caught her. The last thing she saw was a fist aimed at her head. He hit her so hard she lost consciousness.

  “What are you doing?!” exclaimed Yves de Charny.

  There was no answer. There couldn’t be. Shots were coming from every direction, and the priests turned back to their targets, pouring gunfire into the chamber beyond.

  It was only minutes before yet more men—those who had pursued the pursuers all along—burst onto the scene. They soon killed old Turgut, his nephew Ismet, and two of Bakkalbasi’s men; they did not intend to stop until all their adversaries were dead.

  The echoing reports of the gunfire were so loud that pebbles and rubble began to fall from the ceiling and walls, but the firing continued unabated from all sides.

  Ana began to regain consciousness. Her head felt as though it had been split open. She staggered up and saw the three priests right in front of her, still shooting. Picking up a good-size rock, she crept forward toward them, and when she was close enough she lifted the rock over her head and brought it down hard on the head of one of Yves’s comrades. She had no time to do anything else—the other turned to shoot her. But as he did, stones rained down from the ceiling and knocked him to his knees.

  Yves de Charny had rounded on Ana with unconcealed rage, and now he, too, was hit by falling rocks. The reporter started stumbling, running, trying to put distance between herself and the priest and also get out from under the debris falling now in terrifyingly huge clumps and boulders. The blasts of the gunshots and the growing rumble and crash of the collapsing roof disoriented her—she couldn’t tell which way she’d come in. She felt panic rising, threatening to engulf her, as she heard Padre Yves right behind her, shouting, and Marco’s voice, too, but their words were drowned out by a deafening roar as a whole section of the tunnel came down.

  She stumbled and fell. Darkness overtook her.

  Ana shrieked as she felt fingers close on her arm.

  “Ana?”

  “My God!”

  She didn’t know where she was, but the absence of light was total, all-encompassing. Terrifying. Her head hurt and her body felt bruised all over, as though she’d been beaten. She knew that the hand grasping her arm belonged to Yves de Charny; he offered no resistance as she pulled away. She could no longer hear Marco’s voice or the sound of shooting; the silence was absolute. What was happening? Where was she? She screamed, and screamed again, louder, and then sobbed.

  “We’re lost, Ana, we’ll never get out of here.”

  Yves de Charny’s voice broke, and Ana realized that he was hurt.

  “I lost the flashlight following you,” the priest said. “We’re going to die in darkness.”

  “Shut up! Shut up!”

  “I’m sorry, Ana, truly sorry. You didn’t deserve to die, you didn’t have to die.”

  “You people are killing me! You’re killing us all! So just shut up!”

  De Charny was silent. Ana groped in her purse, miraculously still strapped across her body, and pulled out the penlight and box of matches. She was overjoyed to find them, and then her fingers touched her cell phone. She turned on the small light and saw the handsome face of Padre Yves contorted in pain. He was badly injured.

  Ana got up and inspected the cavity they were trapped in. It was not very big, and she could see not the smallest chink in the wall of rock that had buried them. She shouted, and her voice boomed back at her within the small space. Nothing else. It struck her then that indeed she might not get out of there alive.

  She propped up the light and sat down beside the priest. Realizing that he had accepted his fate, she decided to play her last card as a reporter. In the shadows that surrounded them, Padre Yves didn’t see her take her cell phone out of her purse. The last call she’d made had been to Sofia. God, she hoped she’d answer this time. And she hoped there was a signal that could take their voices out beyond the walls of this otherwise mortal cave they were in. All she had to do was hit the redial button….

  With a kitchen towel she’d taken from Turgut’s apartment, she pressed hard against a wound she saw just below Yves’s rib cage. The priest grimaced and looked up at her with glassy eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Ana.”

  “Yeah, so you said. Now tell me why—what’s behind all this insanity?”

  “What do you want me to tell you? What difference does it make, if we’re both going to die?”

  “I want to know why I’m going to die. You’re a Templar, like those friends of yours.”

  “Yes, we are Templars.”

  “And who were the others, the ones that looked like Turks, the ones with the porter?”

  “Men sent by Addaio.”

  “Who’s Addaio?”

  “The leader, the pastor of the Community of the Shroud. They want it….”

  “Want the shroud?”

  “Yes.”

  “Want to steal it?”

  “They think it belongs to them. Jesus sent it to them.”

  Ana thought he was delirious. She brought the light to his face and could see the hint of a smile on his lips.

  “No, I’m not crazy. In the first century A.D. there was a king in Edessa, King Abgar. He had leprosy, but he was cured by the shroud Jesus had been buried in. That is what the legend says. And that is what the descendants of that first community of Christians believe, the Christian community that came together in Edessa. They believe that someone brought the shroud to Edessa and that when Abgar wrapped himself in it he was cured.”

  “But who brought it?”

  “One of Jesus’ disciples, according to tradition.”

  “But the shroud has been through so much since then—it left Edessa hundreds and hundreds of years ago.”

  “Yes, but since the shroud was stolen from the Christians in Edessa by the troops of the emperor of Byzantium—”

  “Romanus Lecapenus.”

  “Yes, Romanus Lecapenus—they swore they would not rest until they’d recovered it. The Christian community in Edessa was—is—one of the oldest in the world, and they have not spared one day in trying to recover their sacred legacy, as they see it, just as we have never stopped trying to prevent them from doing that. The shroud no longer belongs to them, and we are sworn to protect it for all the faithful.”

  ?
??And these men without tongues—they’re part of this community?”

  “Yes, they are Addaio’s soldiers, young men who consider it an honor to sacrifice themselves in order to recover the shroud. They have their tongues cut out so they can’t talk if they’re captured by the police.”

  “That’s horrible!”

  “They believe that was what their ancestors did, to protect the shroud in their time. They’ve been after it for centuries, and we’ve been there to stop them. It’s funny—we could wipe them out overnight, but we never have…. They’re Christians, too, devout in their way, and we ourselves know too well the evils of such persecution…and now our fates have become intertwined.” De Charny’s head was spinning, and he could barely see Ana’s face in the darkness.

  He sighed with pain and went on. “Marco Valoni was right. The fires, the accidents in the cathedral—all staged…mostly by the community to cause confusion when they go after the shroud, sometimes by us to attract the authorities before they can succeed. We’ve always stopped them, but we try to protect them too. They know too much about us now….”

  Ana had propped the cell phone next to him. She didn’t know whether Sofia had answered, whether someone was hearing their words. She didn’t know anything. But she had to try—she couldn’t let the truth die with her.

  “What do the Templars have to do with the shroud and this community?” she pressed him. “Why do you care about it so much?”

  “We bought it from Emperor Balduino—it’s ours. Many of our brothers…many…died to protect it.”

  “But it’s a fake! You know that carbon-fourteen dating has proven that the cloth dates only to the thirteenth or fourteenth century.”

  “The scientists are right, the cloth is from the late thirteenth century, to be exact. But what about the pollen grains stuck to the cloth—grains exactly like those found in two-thousand-year-old sediment in the area of Lake Genezaret? The blood is authentic too—both venous and arterial. Oh, and the cloth, the cloth is Eastern, and on it scientists have found traces of blood albumin around the outline of the marks where Jesus was scourged.”