“Finally,” Domenika said. She angled gracefully from the tiny kitchen only a few feet away from the trailer entry and reached for the pizzas they’d anticipated for more than an hour. “I’m famished.”
She pressed a warm kiss on Bondurant’s lips and pulled him in close after placing the boxes on the counter. Her green eyes, set in the most angelic face Bondurant had ever seen, captivated him as much as they had the day they’d been thrown together in Italy a few years before. Bondurant playfully reached with his free hand for her long auburn ponytail and pulled it gently downward. The tug on her hair forced her chin up so that her lips interlocked perfectly with his own. He kissed her with considerably more warmth than the occasion deserved.
“Must you?” Father Parenti shouted from the little wooden booth, a small seating area beyond the kitchen. He spied the newlyweds in their warm embrace. “Get a room. Yes, that’s what they say. Get a room!” he protested as he set down the television remote.
Domenika smiled but turned toward the little priest to scold him. “Get a room? This is our room,” she said. She looked out the trailer window and pointed to the miniature mobile home parked just outside that served as Parenti’s own modest home. It sat like a shiny, misshapen drop of dew on the grass, hidden a few yards behind Bondurant’s larger rig. Inside one of its tiny rectangular windows, Domenika could see Parenti’s miniature dog and sidekick, Aldo, mesmerized in front of small TV. “I haven’t seen you in your own room all day,” Domenika said.
“I didn’t want to miss the pizza,” Parenti said. Even at sixty-five years old and balding, he was still strong and spry. He leaped up from the booth and quickly ensconced himself on one side of the small wooden table that served as the Bondurants’ dining room. He was only five feet tall—even after the miraculous healing of his severely deformed hunchback a few years earlier—and Parenti’s feet dangled from the bench where he sat, the floor beneath him just inches out of reach. Bondurant watched as the priest’s eyes grew wide in anticipation when Domenika gently set the pizza boxes before him.
Parenti quickly reached for a large slice where a school of anchovies seemed to swim atop a sea of red tomato sauce. Anchovies were his favorite, to be sure, but he paused to examine the slice warily before he took his first bite.
“Cold. Cold again,” Parenti muttered as he set the slice down disappointedly and looked up at Bondurant. “Just like this godforsaken place.”
Bondurant reached inside the small refrigerator for three bottles of beer and settled into the worn bench across the table from the little priest.
“Don’t start in on me again about the weather here,” Bondurant warned. It was early afternoon on Easter Sunday, a day that had settled on warm. His tan and chiseled handsome face glowed in the light from the sun. “I’ve found most hiding places by their nature tend to be cold, but you get used to them.”
“I still say if Meyer was really after us, he’d have found us by now,” Parenti said. He took his first bite of pizza and started to chew quickly. Bondurant knew the little priest well enough to know a weightier conversation was on the way. “I think it’s something else you’re hiding from,” Parenti said.
Domenika slid onto the bench and sat beside Bondurant. Bondurant watched as she shook her head pointedly at Parenti. It meant she wanted to steer the priest away from the conversational collision he was headed toward, one he knew she wanted to avoid.
“Go ahead, say it, Father,” Bondurant said. He raised his bottle of beer in a toast and then brought it to his mouth. He gulped more than half of it down before he looked at Parenti again.
Bondurant watched as Parenti reached for his own beer. The priest pressed his back against the wall behind him as if to strengthen his resolve for the argument to come. He knew the difficult issue was about to be as squarely on the table as the pizza before them.
“The truth!” Parenti said. “The truth. About the Shroud of Turin! The fact that it’s truly real, and that you know it is.”
“Father Parenti,” Bondurant said, “how many times—”
“It is the burial cloth of Jesus Christ himself,” Parenti said quickly. He’d already finished his first slice. “Your own investigation proved it. You know it. I know it. Domenika knows it. The Church knows it.”
“I’ve said it’s an authentic burial cloth from the time of Jesus Christ. I didn’t say it was—”
The little priest could not help but cut Bondurant off again. “You have the clear evidence, and now the world deserves to hear it from you. But you refuse to budge.”
“I—”
“You refuse to tell them the truth. It’s . . . it’s—”
“It’s what?” Bondurant demanded. He’d developed a sense of patience for the feisty little priest over the years but was wary of being interrupted. He finished the rest of his beer in another single gulp and slowly set his bottle on the table. Then he gritted his teeth as he did every time they’d had this argument before.
“It’s your damn pride, that’s what it is,” Parenti blurted out. “And pride’s a big sin. A B-I-G one,” the priest said, as if spelling it out would somehow strengthen his point. “In fact, it’s a big deadly sin.”
Bondurant tried to ignore his theatrics. He was no longer the avowed atheist he once had been, but he’d refused to accept the common trappings of man-made religions, including the concept of sin.
“You mean I should go public and admit I was wrong about the relic all along?” Bondurant said. He pushed his half-eaten piece of pizza away. They had only begun to get into his least favorite subject, and his appetite for lunch was already gone. He threw his empty beer bottle into the trash can behind him and relished the effect when it exploded against another bottle inside. It seemed to add force to his point of view. Bondurant could feel Domenika reach her arm around his shoulder to soothe him, but he playfully shrugged it off.
“Yes, that’s right. People make mistakes,” Parenti said. The priest squirmed his way into the corner of the kitchen’s booth as far as he could go. “Dr. Bondurant, even world-famous scientists—even Galileo—made mistakes. So what if you have too?”
“Galileo was never a laughingstock, at least not outside the Church,” Bondurant said. “But that’s exactly what I’d be in the entire scientific community, maybe even the world.”
“I think you’re exaggerating, Jon,” Domenika said.
“Admit that the Shroud of Turin is no fake after I’ve spent a lifetime proving it so? Excuse the comparison, hon, but I’ll be crucified,” Bondurant said. “And I’ll deserve it.”
“Oh, Jon, stop it,” Domenika said. “The world is forgiving. Yes, you were wrong. But you were deceived. It’s not your fault. You’re a scientist. The truth is the truth, and you can’t hide the truth from the world forever—especially from people of faith who need to know what you now know to be true.”
“It’s not the truth we’re hiding from, Domenika, and you know it,” Bondurant said, exasperated.
“I meant that—”
“I know what you meant. I’m sorry. But what exactly is the truth, Domenika?” Bondurant closed his eyes in anticipation of her answer. He loved her deeply but knew from experience that her response would sound as if it came straight from a passage in the Bible—not, in his view, the most reliable of books.
“That you, one of the best forensic anthropologists in the world, have authenticated the Shroud,” Domenika said. “And in doing so, you have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that our savior Jesus Christ died, was buried, and rose again in fulfillment of the scriptures. You have given hope to—”
“The Shroud is real! I admit it! Okay?” Bondurant cried out. He banged both fists on the table hard enough to nearly split it in two. Then he quickly checked his temper, something that, with Domenika’s help, he had only recently learned to do. “Yes, I admit it dates from the time of the purported life of Jesus Christ. But it—”
“Purported?” Domenika said, now clearly exasperated as well.
“Domenika, the Shroud of Turin is a burial cloth, stained with blood, that was once wrapped around a crucified man,” Bondurant said. He’d reached a reasonable calm. “Of that there is no doubt. And Father Parenti is right. Our investigation proved it. The Shroud dates from the time of a man you know and believe to be Jesus Christ. I admit that.”
Bondurant watched Domenika fix her eyes on the serene scene outside the window in what looked to be an effort to tune him out. He smiled. Marriage was among the most imperfect of institutions, Bondurant felt. They’d had this same dispute over and over since he’d rescued her from Meyer’s compound in India. He knew it was not an argument he’d ever win with her, most especially on Easter Sunday afternoon.
Bondurant looked up, surprised, to see Parenti, who now towered over both of them from across the table. The priest had climbed up on his side of the bench and stood erect as a statue. His speckled head nearly touched the trailer’s wood-paneled ceiling.
“You see this perfect specimen of a man standing here before you now, do you?” Parenti asked. His dog, Aldo, had left his pillowed perch next door and bounded up the steps of Bondurant’s trailer, as though anxious to catch the present scene. He began to bark.
“Perfect, I don’t know,” Bondurant said. He’d sometimes detested the priest for his high-minded stubbornness but genuinely adored him. He picked up Aldo and began to scratch Parenti’s companion behind the ears. “But I admit to seeing you standing there now.”
“Well, you see before you a man who may not rise tall in stature,” Parenti said. “But let there be no doubt, I was once a decrepit hunchback who now strides as straight as any other man, completely healed. You were there to witness that miraculous transformation.”
“Your healing, Father, is unexplainable,” Bondurant said. “I admit that as well. The cloth you brought forth, what you believe is the Veil of Veronica—”
“What I know is the Veil of Veronica,” Parenti said.
“What you know is the Veil of Veronica performed a miracle right in front of my eyes, the likes of which I have never seen nor will I ever be able to explain. It has had me question everything, it seems. But your healing by that remarkable cloth has no relationship to the Shroud of Turin.”
“Jon,” Domenika said, “how is it that you can bring yourself to admit that miracles like Father Parenti’s can happen but the miracle of Christ’s resurrection is nothing but a fairy tale, when the evidence has been right there before you all along? Your own studies revealed a perfect match between the wounds of our Christ and savior and those found on the Shroud. I don’t understand you.”
“I’ve never said it was a fairy tale,” Bondurant said. “I’ve said it’s something I don’t yet understand.”
A long pause ensued as all three merely stared down at their pizza in silence. A warm and welcome breeze blew through the screen of the large window beside them.
“Listen to me, both of you,” Bondurant said as he broke the calm. “I’ve thought about this a lot. There are some real problems if I come forward and tell the world what I know about the Shroud, regardless of who once lay wrapped inside it. Not the least of which is your safety,” he said as he pointed at each of them.
“First, there’s Meyer,” Bondurant said. “If any of us raise our heads above the waterline, he’ll find us. Believe me, a major event with the media to admit the truth—that my findings about the Shroud were wrong—will get worldwide attention. And that’s going to spell trouble. I’ll be painting a target on all of our backs the moment I come forward to reveal what I know. I’m worried about your safety. Meyer will find us, and he will kill us. We all know too much.”
“You can choose a very public place,” Parenti said. “A place where no one, particularly Meyer, will be able to get to you while you’re in front of so many others.”
“We could hire security to be there with us,” Domenika said. “There are ways to protect us.”
“Us? Us?” Bondurant said. He cringed. “If I step in front of the cameras and stand scientific opinion on its head by revealing that the Shroud is authentic to the time of Christ, and there’s even the slightest chance Meyer or his people will be there, you will not be within a thousand miles of me. I won’t risk it.”
“But I—”
Bondurant cut Domenika short. “But there is the other little matter that the three of us—and Meyer—know about. The bigger can of worms.”
“Yes, they still squirm, do they not?” Parenti said, as if fascinated, not frightened, by the mystery to which Bondurant had referred. Aldo, as if eager to join the conversation, jumped into Parenti’s lap.
“How I found two different sources of blood on the Shroud, not one. How one source of that blood has been used by some crazed French geneticist—that fool François Laurent—to clone a living human being. Who will believe that?”
“You have a point,” Parenti said. He massaged his balding head as if in search of the answer. “Not many will believe that.”
“And who is he? Who is the source of the child Laurent has cloned? Any guesses? We don’t know. That’s the question I lose sleep over every night. How am I to possibly explain it all?”
“Well, you might have to leave some parts out,” Parenti said. His hangdog look now replaced any previous hint of fascination.
“You think?” Bondurant asked.
Bondurant hadn’t a clue about just who the child he’d had to leave behind in India during his rescue of Domenika from Meyer really was, but he’d long ago taken responsibility for his existence. Given that the secret cloning had its very roots in Bondurant’s investigation into the Shroud of Turin, he’d vowed to answer the question. What he’d do if and when he found the clone-child’s true identity was another issue entirely. And now disjointed news stories about a terrifying epidemic exploding in India had begun to trouble him more each day. He suspected it was more than a coincidence the child-clone had been born there.
“Look, discredit myself because I was wrong to believe the Church’s most holy relic has been a fake for years? Fine. That’s one thing,” Bondurant said. “I could explain how I was deceived by Sehgal. And I can swallow my pride, my seventh sin.” He looked straight at his friend. “But then explain to the world that Laurent helped Meyer clone a human being from blood on the Shroud? And that you,” Bondurant said, nodding toward Domenika, “were tricked by Laurent into believing the cloned child of the Shroud you carried was mine?”
“It’s a bit much when you think about it,” Parenti said.
“But it’s all true,” Domenika whispered, as if to soften a blow.
Bondurant watched as tears welled up in her eyes. He felt terrible that he’d stirred memories of those incredible and difficult times.
“Yes, it is,” Bondurant said. He reached for her hand when he saw the familiar pained look on Domenika’s face. He knew she had relived the nightmare of her captivity by Meyer’s geneticist Laurent nearly every night when he too tossed and turned in search of sleep. Laurent had cleverly induced her to believe the child she carried to term was Bondurant’s and not a clone. It wasn’t until her rescue that she learned the truth. Bondurant knew she’d put on a brave face, but all she’d wanted from that terrible moment of discovery was to hide with him from what had become a strange and threatening world.
Bondurant stood up from the table, frustrated with their dilemma. There was no easy way out of their predicament, and he knew it. He stood in silence for a moment and thought about their year of hiding and how it had to come to an end in order for them to live normal lives again.
He got up, reached for his handgun on the counter, and made his way to the front door. The gun was anathema to him, but for the sake of their safety, he hadn’t left home without it in more than a year.
Domenika got up from the table and reached for him. “Where are you going?” she asked. Bondurant watched as she tried to dry her tears.
“For a swim,” he said, unable to look into her troubled eyes. “I just have t
o think.”
“But it’s Easter Sunday, Jon,” she said. “It would be so special for you to join us.”
Bondurant’s tolerance of religion had moved a little. He no longer criticized those who professed to be of faith. But he personally saw no real value in religious services and felt it would be hypocritical for him to attend Mass with them. He carefully wiped away the rest of Domenika’s tears with his shirtsleeve and pulled her in close. They embraced again as they had done only minutes before, this time with a tinge of sadness between them.
“I think I need some time alone, Domenika. I need to clear my mind,” he said.
“Come with us, Jon,” Domenika said. “It will do you good.”
“I’m not right with myself. I don’t feel right hiding. I don’t feel right not telling the truth about what I know. I don’t feel right about a lot of things. And right now, I know I wouldn’t feel right sitting beside you in a church.”
Domenika wrapped her arms around Bondurant’s neck, and his tone quickly warmed.
“You’re headed to St. Parenti’s, right?” he asked. A grin broke across his face.
“Of course,” Domenika said. They both turned toward the little priest of that name and laughed.
Parenti had received permission to marry the two in a private ceremony at a nearby church several months before. To the local community, it was known as St. Peter’s, but since Parenti had presided over their wedding there, the nickname for the little church had stuck for the three.
“We’ll be careful, like always. We sit in the back,” Domenika said.
Bondurant paused. He wondered if he should go along for protection as he had before, in the event that trouble might follow them there. He shook his head to lose the thought. Domenika and Parenti had made it safely to this same church on a few special occasions previously. He kissed Domenika once more. Then he turned and made his way down the narrow path that led through the deep woods to the dock on the cold river below.
The Second Coming Page 3
