The Testimonium (39 page)

The reporters roared back in amazement, anger, and disbelief. Antonio Ginovese spoke loudest and first. “Doctor Tintoretto!” he shouted, and she nodded. His cameraman stuck the mike closer to her as Ginovese repeated his question. “I know you are aware one of the victims of this attack is a respected and powerful Cardinal of the Church. Surely you cannot be proposing that the Vatican ordered the murder of one of its own princes?”

“Why not?” she sneered. “The Church has always been eager to pave its path to power with the blood of its own believers. Martyrdom, they call it, don’t they?”

Guioccini was livid with rage. “That BITCH!” he roared. “I am going down there right now! This cannot be allowed to stand unanswered! I will send a car for you later, Luke!” He literally ran from the apartment.

The rest of them continued to watch the press conference in disbelief and outrage. The American, Andrew Eastwood, was asking another question. “Dr. Tintoretto,” he said. “Can you tell me how you know for certain that the ‘
Testimonium
’ is a fake when the rest of the Antiquities Board seems to accept it as an authentic and ancient manuscript?”

“Because it describes events that did not and could not have possibly happened!” she snapped.

“What events are those?” asked the American reporter.

“The same ones chronicled in that fourfold fairy tale known as the Gospels,” she replied. “That this obscure carpenter was in fact a deity who rose from the dead!”

“So your problem with the scroll is not with its condition or the circumstances of its recovery, but with the fact that it confirms the Gospel narrative?” he pressed. Josh mentally blessed the dogged young reporter for his persistence.

“I have many problems with the circumstances of its recovery!” she shot back. “For example, why did the team include both a representative from the Vatican AND an American evangelical? Why were the two of them left alone on Capri while Dr. Sforza returned to the mainland to meet with the board? There was ample opportunity for a substitution to have been made inside the chamber!”

Josh groaned and rolled his eyes, and then felt his cell phone vibrating in his pocket. He glanced at the Caller ID and saw that it was Father MacDonald, then answered.

“Father!” he said. “I am glad to hear from you.”

“You won’t be, laddie,” said the voice of the priest. He sounded a hundred years old. “I have bad news. Rossini . . .” For a moment MacDonald could not go on, and Josh heard him stifle a sob. “Giuseppe is with the saints now, lad.”

Josh didn’t even remember hanging up. He looked at Isabella, and she started crying anew at the expression on his face. He slowly nodded, and then went to her and held her as she sobbed bitterly.

Luke Martens got up and placed his hand on Josh’s shoulder for a moment in silent prayer, and then he and Alicia made their exit. Josh waited till they were gone, scooped Isabella up in his arms, and carried her to her bed. She never quit clinging to him and weeping. He laid her down gently and pulled the blankets over her, then sat on the edge of the bed. Finally she spoke.

“First Marc,” she said. “Then my papa . . . and now Giuseppe. Every man I have ever loved has been taken from me, Josh!”

He pressed his lips gently to her bandaged forehead. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said gently.

Her gaze fixed on him. So much love shone from his eyes that she finally managed a tiny smile. “You know,” she said, “this is not the way that I hoped to finally get you here!”

He laughed. “It wasn’t something any of us expected,” he said. “But I will stay here tonight and keep an eye on you. I don’t want to be alone, either. Let me get you one of those painkillers, and I will stay with you till you can go to sleep.”

“You won’t leave then?” she asked plaintively.

“Only as far as the couch,” he promised.

He walked back into the den and turned to the television, which was still on. Dr. Guioccini had gotten to the front of the museum in a matter of minutes, and was now addressing the reporters as Tintoretto tried to interrupt. “This press conference is the most gross and disrespectful breach of professional ethics and personal integrity I have ever seen!” he thundered. “The forensics teams are still picking up pieces of Simone Apriceno from the ruins of her lab, and this vile woman calls a press conference to denounce our beloved colleague as a fraud? For shame, Doctor Tintoretto! Even your anti-religious mania should allow for more decorum than this!”

Tintoretto snarled back, “I cannot stand by and see the Board of Antiquities squander its scientific credibility to support this obvious forgery!”

He glared at her. “If it is such an obvious fraud, then why are you the only person to condemn it as such?” he asked. Before she could answer, he turned to the reporters. “Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” he said. “I regret that this woman could not put her prejudices on hold for a single day to let us mourn our dead. But we will not let hatred from rigid atheists or religious fanatics silence the truth of our findings. The Pilate scroll was, in fact, spared from the blast because it was being transferred to the main museum at the moment the suicide bomber struck. We are still determined to share both the scroll and its contents with you tomorrow, to show that the enemies of scientific truth and professional integrity will NOT be allowed to win! I invite you all to be here at three PM tomorrow to see the ‘
Testimonium Pilatus’
for yourself. At that time we will reply to all the objections made by Dr. Tintoretto in detail. And as for you—” He rounded on the former board member in fury. “You, madam, are trespassing on museum property. You will vacate the premises immediately or I will have you physically removed!”

She paled. “You would not DARE!” she snapped. “I am an employee of this museum!”

“Not anymore,” he said. “I spoke to the board on the way over and they have just unanimously agreed to terminate your contract. Now, I would politely ask you to depart!”

Tintoretto stormed off the steps and disappeared into the crowd of journalists as the reporters’ cameras clicked furiously. Guioccini watched her depart and then walked into the museum, ignoring their shouted questions. Josh turned the TV off, picked up the bottle of pills, and went back to Isabella.

Her tears had stopped, but her eyes were still red with grief. He gave her a Percocet and sat on the edge of the bed. She took his hand in hers and pressed it to her cheek, closing her eyes for a moment or two. Then she looked at him directly.

“I don’t get it, Josh,” she said.

“What don’t you get?” he asked.

“You say that God loves us so much that He sacrificed Himself for us in the person of his only Son. You say that He hears and answers prayer. You say He deserves our absolute love and devotion,” she said.

“I believe all those things to be true,” he said calmly.

“Then why is there so much shit in the world?” she asked bitterly. “Why do children starve, and good people die of cancer, and innocent girls get raped and evil clerics blow up innocent people in the name of Allah? Why is Giuseppe dead?” Unable to contain her emotions, she broke into fresh sobs.

Josh looked at her long and hard. “If you expect that my faith somehow gives me all the answers to the unfairness of life, you are going to be disappointed,” he said. “I don’t know all the answers. I have asked the same questions of God that you just asked me. But I do know a few truths that might just help you understand a little,” he said.

“Right now I need all the help I can get,” she said.

“OK,” he said. “Here goes. There are two things that keep this world from being the perfect place God made it to be. The first of these is what has cursed man from the beginning—the fact that God made us with free will. Since the garden, every man and woman has been free to choose their own path. There are people in the world who voluntarily choose to do evil. God usually does not stop them—not because He is complicit in their evil, but because He will not force someone to behave as He wishes them to. Secondly, and hand in hand with that, there is the presence of sin. Sin is the cancer that eats up everything that is good in people and replaces it with bile and hatred. Sin is what twisted Dr. Tintoretto’s life and filled her with anger and misery. Sin is what drives fanatics to murder in the name of a supposedly compassionate god. Sin ties us in knots and keeps us from reaching for the good and perfect life that God has waiting for us.”

She nodded, understanding but not convinced. “And there is something else,” Josh added. “That is the fact that God is omniscient and we are not. When something like today happens, all we see is the short-term pain and anguish and not the eternal consequences. Sometimes great evil can be turned into an even greater good. And sometimes pain is the way that God draws us nearer to Himself. Did I ever tell you about my cat, Lovecraft?”

Isabella actually laughed a bit. “You named your cat after a writer of Gothic horror stories?” she asked.

Josh sighed. “I told you I was a total nerd,” he said. “Lovecraft was a pretty Siamese, friendly and approachable. Far and away the best-natured cat I have ever owned! Of course, she had to be, given that I was a very typical mischievous teenager. But one evening, we went off to Wednesday church services, and Lovecraft the cat found her way into our garage. Dad had been bass fishing that Saturday, and left a rod and reel leaning in the corner with a lure still on it. The lure was something called a ‘Devil’s Horse’—about three inches long, shiny, and with three treble hooks attached to it. I guess the lure was hanging free and the cat batted at it with her paw. The treble hook bit in and got hold of her. The more she yanked and pulled, the deeper it went. So, being a cat, she tried kicking at the lure with her back claws to make it let go—and she got a hook in her back leg as well. By now the rod was broken and the garage has got fishing wire everywhere. When panic and flight did not work, Lovecraft tried aggression again. She BIT the lure to make it let go—and got a third treble hook through the cheek!”

Isabella looked at him, laughing and crying at the same time. “I think I know that feeling!” she said. “Everything you do makes the situation worse!”

“Exactly!” Josh said. “So we get home from church and Dad’s fishing rod is smashed, there is fishing line all over the garage, stuff is strewn everywhere, and in one corner, tangled in a huge ball of fishing line and miscellaneous things that had gotten caught up with her, was my poor cat, yowling, hissing, and ready to claw the eyes out of anyone who got close!”

Isabella was giggling now, as the Percocet took hold. “So what did you do?” she asked.

“I wasn’t able to do anything,” Josh said. “I was only ten years old. But my Dad got a beach towel and threw it over the cat, wrapping her up tight. Then he uncovered one pierced cat member at a time, pushed the hook through the wound until the barbs came out the other side, used wire cutters to cut the barb off the hook, and then pulled it back out. You should have heard the cat howl! It sounded like she was being disemboweled! And despite the towel and two pairs of hands helping, she still managed to claw my dad up pretty good. After he got the last hook out and cut her free of all the fishing line, she bit him for good measure, went streaking out of the garage and under the house, and did not come out for two days!”

“Poor kitty!” Isabella said.

“The thing is,” Josh continued, “to her limited understanding, Dad was just torturing her. There was no rhyme or reason to his actions that she could understand. All she felt was the pain. But the whole time, he was actively working to free her from the mess she had gotten herself into. And she clawed and bit him for his troubles!”

Isabella was quiet now, her rich brown eyes staring up at Josh.

“That’s us,” he said. “That’s our whole world. We are so caught up in our own sin, our own misery, and their consequences that we can’t even begin to see a way out. And when God tries to help us, we fight back because we can’t see the situation from his perspective. All we see is more pain, so we lash out at Him. But the whole time He is just patiently trying to extricate us from the mess we landed ourselves in by our own stubbornness and pride.”

Isabella was quiet for a very long time, and he thought that perhaps she had gone to sleep. But when she spoke, her voice was soft but very clear. “Thank you, Joshua,” she said. “It doesn’t make everything better—but it helps me understand. A little. I still wish Simone and Giuseppe did not have to die.”

Josh’s own tears started up again, surprising him. “Me too,” he said softly.

“I love you,” she said as she faded off to sleep.

“I love you, too,” he breathed softly. He held her hand for a long time, and then limped in to the couch to call his parents.

* * *

Hundreds of miles away, Ibrahim Abbasside watched the evening news with disgust. The fool Hassan had blown himself up and let the very thing he was seeking to destroy get away! The scroll would be read to the press tomorrow and there was nothing anyone could do to prevent it.

Abbasside stepped outside and paced under the light of the moon for a while. The sobs of his fourth wife could still be heard from their bedroom. She was only fifteen, and pleasingly proportioned, but had made the mistake of talking to him during the news broadcast. The bruises would heal soon enough, he thought, and perhaps she would have a better understanding of a junior wife’s place when they did.

So the scroll was going to be read and publicized, he thought. The infidel Italian woman, Tintoretto, had already created a narrative of fraud and disbelief around it—may Allah grant her mercy! he thought. Of course, the authorities would then announce that the scroll itself must be tested to verify its age. That meant that, at some point, it would have to be moved, he mused. That could present an opportunity—to do what?

If the scroll were destroyed before it could be tested, then its claims would lose much validity. In time, it would be forgotten, and the religion of truth could continue to grow and thrive, while the heresy of Christianity would continue its slow decline. That was it, he nodded. He would have to get close enough to the museum to be ready to strike the moment the scroll left the grounds there, which would mean abandoning his long-time sanctuary. But, he decided as he strolled back into the small cinderblock building he called home, this time there would be no intermediary to carry out the job. Sometimes, he thought as he walked past his cowering child bride, if you want a job done, you just had to do it yourself.