The Turin Shroud Secret (25 page)

‘The man will not be a problem.’

‘Don’t make the mistake of underestimating him. He is from Homicide and has crossed continents to be here. He will not want
to go home without a result.’

‘Is that all?’

‘It is.’

The monk finishes the call and waits patiently for an image to materialise on the screen of the phone.

Moments later, the face of Lt. Nic Karakandez appears. Ephrem takes a long look at it. It is the face of the man who called
the cell phone in Craxi’s lodge – the face of his enemy. He closes his eyes and imagines the man in front of him. Visualises
what must be done to complete his mission. He takes one final look at the detective’s eyes – the window to his soul – then
he deletes the photograph.

Ephrem will meet Nic Karakandez, he is sure of it – and God will guide his hands as he kills him.

CORONER’S OFFICE, LOS ANGELES

Amy Chang sits in her office chair, herbal tea in hand and listens to the very English voice of Professor Alexander Hasting-Smith
on the other end of the line. She tries to picture him. Maybe public-schoolboy neat and tidy like the British Prime Minister
or perhaps crazily hairy like that big bearded bishop who married Kate and William?

Professor Alex is nothing like either. He’s late forties and barely five-nine, lives in baggy shirts and corduroy trousers
and despite being an expert in anatomy and biology, is only a fried breakfast away from being clinically obese and a year
or two away from being bald.

‘Dear lady,’ he says, stretching out the
lay-dee.
‘The comparable tests I undertook were exhaustive. I can categorically assure you the marks on the Shroud are not only consistent
with having covered a man who suffered the ignominious end of crucifixion but are also identical to those endured by the body
of Jesus Christ.’

What do you mean?’

‘Well, take the iconic spear wound. The cloth shows blood staining in alignment with a wound in between the right fifth and
sixth ribs. The lower and inner part of this wound is approximately two-fifths of an inch below the tip
of the sternum and about two and a half inches below the midline. Entirely consistent with the hole made by the spear that
the Roman soldier plunged into Christ. The staining on the Shroud is also corroborative in that it contains clear fluids as
well as blood.’

‘I didn’t see any fluid markings.’

‘You won’t have done. Not unless you inspected the cloth itself. But it is there. I assure you.’

It’s been a long day and she takes the point without rancour. ‘And the fluid flow?’

‘Down across the body. Consistent with the wound from the spear being made on a person in the upright – crucified – position.’

She puts her tea on a desk coaster and opens a folder on her Mac containing the high-definition Shroud photographs. ‘Forgive
my ignorance but exactly
what
tests did you do, Professor?’

‘Goodness. What tests
didn’t
I do? Are you aware of Pierre Barbet’s work in this field?’

‘I’m afraid not.’ She suddenly feels out of her depth. ‘Until very recently I hadn’t even seen pictures of the Shroud. This
really isn’t my normal area of interest.’

‘Oh, I see.’ He sounds disappointed. ‘Then why was I called and asked to contact you by the FBI?’

‘Dr Quentell thought your knowledge about the Shroud could help with an ongoing investigation here in Los Angeles.’

‘Ah, very well – then I’m happy to elucidate.’ A little energy seems to return to his voice. ‘Barbet was a French
surgeon interested in the Shroud and had the good fortune to examine it in pure daylight. I’m going back to the 1930s now.
Thirty-three, I think. Anyway, being a surgeon he had access to cadavers and amputated limbs, so he reconstructed the crucifixion
of Christ. He nailed a dead body to a giant wooden cross and found the marks on the corpse perfectly fitted those found on
the Shroud.’

‘And you did the same?’

‘Yes. I wish to be unambiguous about that.’

‘Could you talk me through exactly what you did – and what you found?’

‘With the greatest of pleasure. Some of it was debunking filmic myths. In Hollywood crucifixions you see nails hammered through
the palms of hands. A completely inadequate way of holding a man upright. The movement and weight of his sagging body would
soon tear the flesh. That certainly wasn’t the method employed in the case of the Shroud.’

‘It wasn’t?’

‘Not at all. Barbet discerned that the suspension nails had been driven through Destot’s Space.’

Amy knows he means the gap in the wrist bounded by the hamate, capitate, triquetral and lunate bones. ‘I can see that could
certainly be strong enough.’

‘It is. I assure you.’ He sounds almost offended. ‘If you look at the Shroud, you’ll notice that the thumbs are not visible.
Can you see that, do you have a photograph to inspect?’

Amy enlarges the shot she has onscreen. ‘Yes, yes I have one onscreen.’

‘Good. Well, as a pathologist, you’ll know that a nail driven through Destot’s Space would damage the Median nerve and that
would almost always result in the thumbs turning inwards.’

Amy glances at the photograph and it seems to comply. ‘What about stigmata marks – they’re always in the palms of hands, aren’t
they? I’ve never seen religious paintings of people showing their wrists bleeding.’

‘Not a question for me, Doctor, I am not a theologian, I am a scientist. Though I do believe stigmata take various forms and
are not confined only to Catholicism.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Indeed. You’ll find evidence of stigmata in Buddhism and
even in polytheistic religions, particularly ones with tutelary deities.’

‘Professor, I’ll have to take your word for it.’ Her eyes go to the HD prints again. ‘I’m looking at the feet and I can’t
see any images indicating how they were nailed to the cross.’

‘An excellent observation. You can’t see any because it’s very blurred. There is a possibility, a thin one I believe, that
the nails were inserted between the metatarsal bones.’

‘Would that have been sufficient to hold a grown man?’

He becomes animated again. ‘I think not, which is why I pinned my cadaver through the ankles. Entirely adequate. Again, if
you examine any good stills, you will see dark patches indicating a spillage of blood around the ankle regions.’

Amy’s not sure she can discern such detail but she doesn’t want to debate the matter. ‘Professor, is it possible for you to
mail me a summary of your findings?’

‘Certainly, Quentell gave me your details.’

‘Thank you. One thing, though, before you go – I’ve been wondering about blood spillage and decomposition. Hours after death,
wounds don’t bleed enough to transfer perfect outlines of their shapes onto cloth. A body kept in the open air for days will
putrefy and there will be signs of loss of body fluids and matters. The Shroud shows no evidence of that. How can you explain
it?’

‘Easily,’ he says. ‘It’s a miracle.’

TURIN

It’s 2.30 a.m. Saturday when Nic and Fabio Goria have settled Erica Craxi in a safe house guarded by the investigator’s men.
As they leave, rain beats hard on the windshield of Goria’s speeding Fiat – too hard for the worn wipers to make clean sweeps
of the heavy downpour.

The lateness of the hour, the warmth of the car and the rhythm of the rain are testing the detective’s ability to stay awake.
Boy, does he need some shut-eye. He drifts off as he listens to the repetitive rasp of the tyres on the wet
road and the rain hitting the windows. He’s miles away. Out on the open sea, his old boat cutting white water as it picks
up speed towards the sun shimmering on the horizon. He turns towards the laughing voices on the back of the boat. Carolina
and Max are there in red life-jackets, wind in their hair, the joy of life all over their wonderful faces.

Nic wakes. His heart is hammering with the pain of remembering them. He winds down the window and lets the cold air and beating
rain pound his face. Not long now. Not long until late nights and murder cases like this are problems for other people. Gradually,
familiar city centre sights smear themselves across the rain-streaked window. Goria kills the engine and headlights as he
draws up to the kerb around the corner from Nic’s hotel. ‘Here you are. Now you can have a proper sleep.’

He yawns as he unbuckles his seat belt. ‘Thanks, I certainly need it. Given the circumstances, Fabio, you and your guys did
okay tonight. Erica Craxi certainly gave us plenty to follow up on.’

‘Grazie.
I will come for you at eight. I’m sorry we lost her husband. My men will find him, I promise you.’

‘I hope so – for his sake and hers.’

Goria grabs Nic’s arm as he reaches for the door handle. ‘Be careful. The Carabinieri may be watching your hotel. They could
have night sights on you from a kilometre away and we would not know. I will stay here until you get inside and have settled.
If they are around, they will move
closer and I will see. It is better we are safe than sorry.’

Nic steps from the car, nods goodnight and turns up his jacket collar against the rain. Save for the cars parked at odd angles
all over the place, the streets are deserted. The neighbourhood’s shops and bars are filled only with blackness.

He shakes off the downpour as he heads past reception and rides the lift to his room.

He freshens up in the bathroom and notices his toothbrush and razor have been placed neatly in a glass on a shelf by the sink.
The maid must have been in. It’s the kind of thing he’d expect in a four-star hotel but not this dive. He turns off the light
and walks back to the main room. There’s something different, maybe something wrong. He can sense it, in the same way he senses
clues at a crime scene.

The bed has been turned back for the first time since he checked in. And it’s not been done in the professional, neat way
a maid does. It’s been done by someone wanting to make it look like a maid’s done it. Someone poking around.

There’s been a stranger in his room.

CORONER’S OFFICE, LOS ANGELES

Amy Chang had been hoping to go home early – end her Friday night by cooking a light dinner and sinking a glass of
crisp white or two, maybe even put her feet up on the couch, play a little soft music and forget a week’s worth of cold flesh
and sterile steel.

But it’s not to be. What’s pinning her to her office chair is the Shroud of Turin. Alexander Hasting-Smith’s call and the
subsequent reports he mailed have left her head buzzing so she may as well try to finish the report she promised Mitzi. Amy
spends a good hour trawling the internet, pulling up pages, searching through dedicated Shroud websites, diving deep into
religious discussion groups and social network blogs. She discovers Shroud universities, multiple Shroud shops and dozens
of different video streams dealing with not only the carbon dating of the Shroud but also 3D renderings of its image, microscopic
analysis and digital enhancements. Along with all the pictures come countless conflicting opinions about the cloth’s authenticity.

Around 6 p.m. her tummy grumbles a reminder that all she had for lunch was coffee and a salmon bagel. The ME sits back from
her Mac, twists her head from side to side to ease the tension from being hunched and reviews the notes she’s made.

HISTORY (dates are approx)

AD 30: The Death of Christ. There are no immediate independent and indisputable reports of a shroud being discovered and being
imprinted with Christ’s image. There are similarly no such reports of it being stored, guarded or transported to a place of
safe-keeping.
Seems strange that something so important wasn’t acclaimed at the time!

AD 40: Reports of a King Abgar V of Edessa (now Sanliurfa, eastern Turkey) viewing a cloth (no dimensions) imprinted with
the face of Jesus. Said to lead to conversion to Christianity (there are also later reports of a letter Jesus sent to Abgar
promising to protect his country from foreign invaders).

AD 50–500: No reliable mentions of Jesus cloth, then suddenly stories about it resurface.

544: Persian army repelled at Edessa’s walls. The Jesus cloth and letter are credited with affording protection to the city.

679: Edessa hit by earthquake. The cathedral where the Jesus cloth was allegedly kept is damaged – cloth said to be moved
to Jerusalem.

690: Iconic bearded images of Jesus, identical to that on the cloth start appearing throughout Middle East.

944: Jesus cloth is said to have travelled length of what is now Turkey and is afforded its own feast day (16th Aug). Interestingly,
there are no reports of public showings, only private ones. Cloth is said to have been stored in the Pharos Chapel of Constantinople’s
Imperial Palace.

1130: Reports in Western Europe (including monks in Normandy) about the Jesus cloth and how it contains an imprint of Christ’s
body.

1146: Edessa conquered by Turkish Muslims – mass
slaughter of its citizens (so much for the protective cloth and letter!)

1203: Reports attributed to French Crusader Robert de Clari say he saw a cloth in which Christ had been wrapped in the Church
of St Mary in Constantinople.

1204: French crusaders ransack Constantinople and churches are looted. Robert de Clari denies the French took it.

1287: Reports say a knight called Arnaut Sabbatier, on being received into the Order of the Knights Templar in Rousillon in
France, was taken to a secret place by the brothers and shown the shroud of Christ.

1307: Friday the 13th October (allegedly this is where the legend of the date being unlucky springs from) King Philip the
Fair issues orders to arrest all the Knights Templar on heresy charges for worshipping the image of Christ. Many, including
the grand master Jacques de Molay, are burned at the stake.