Domenika, now hysterical, finally wrestled free from her captor and collapsed on top of Christopher to protect him from another blow. She called out to her son over and over, but he only lay motionless beneath her.
Bondurant knew it was his time to die. He rose painfully, this time using Parenti as a crutch. He paused for his last breath of life as he readied himself to pounce on the devil that still held his triumphal weapon high. But as Bondurant stumbled forward toward the evil force, ready to take another bullet, he watched a tiny spot of light appear on the forehead of the Watcher. Soon that beam of light became a red laserlike dot. It glowed bright as a fire and then fixed itself right between the eyes of the beast.
The Watcher child’s head instantly exploded before him, followed immediately by the sound of a high-powered rifle. Before Bondurant could turn to find where the shot had come from, the torso of the beast remained standing for a split second and then dropped like a lifeless sack to the blood-splattered ground. A pool of blood began to surround the body of the Watcher. It grew into a giant puddle and spread across the bridge until the Watcher’s entire body had seemingly melted away. Meanwhile, the red veil that had covered the moon was lifted to reveal a bright evening, crystal-clear as far as the eye could see. Meyer and all three of the armed men, obviously worried that they were next in line to die, turned and ran from the gruesome scene.
When Bondurant reached Domenika and the lifeless body of his boy, he collapsed to the ground beside them. It was only then that he could hear the whispers between the two.
Christopher, his eyes half shut, took Bondurant’s hand. “Faith, hope, and love,” Christopher said to them. Bondurant could already feel the boy’s grip go limp. With his other hand, he reached for Domenika’s hand and held it tight. “And the greatest of these?” Christopher said.
“Is love,” Bondurant said with all the conviction he had inside him. “Love.”
With those words, Bondurant and Domenika watched Christopher summon a last smile for them both and quietly pass away.
Bondurant, not knowing whether the hidden sniper was preparing to set his sights on any of them, looked about him for the origin of the deadly shot. With Parenti’s help, he rose and stood. He stared out into the shadows. He searched for any sign of movement he might find. As Christopher lay dead on the ground behind him, Bondurant half hoped he might be next.
“There,” Parenti said. He pointed to the clock tower in the distance. “Galerkin.”
“Who?” Bondurant asked.
“A long story,” Parenti replied.
Bondurant turned and looked down at Domenika, who held Christopher’s lifeless body in her arms. As she wept uncontrollably over their son, Bondurant dropped to his knees once more beside her. He cradled Domenika, Parenti, and the lifeless boy in his arms.
Bondurant had never before believed in heaven. He didn’t still. But as he wept, he closed his eyes to the world and hoped his son had reached such a place in the care of angels’ wings.
Chapter 52
Chesapeake Bay
Twilight approached. It was Bondurant’s favorite time on the water, but he was ready to turn for home. Given that it was late summer, he knew the dark would descend quickly once the sun had fully set. It had been almost a year since Christopher’s death, and their quiet respite on the bay was, like so many other days before it, an attempt to move on.
As he spun the wheel of his vintage pilot cutter hard to the left, the sleek wooden boat turned windward. It made its way past the picturesque Thomas Point lighthouse that guarded the mouth of the South River where it flowed into the bay. Domenika emerged from the cabin below with two glasses in her hands. One was filled with Scotch for Bondurant, the other with Parenti’s beer. Bondurant smiled appreciatively as she handed him his drink.
“Home now?” she asked as she looked about them. The water around them took on an inviting glow as the last vestiges of sunlight played across the horizon ahead.
“Home,” Bondurant said as he pointed toward shore.
Aldo lay beside Bondurant, sound asleep. Parenti sat ahead of them near the bow and dangled his feet over the side of the antique boat.
“Have you thought about it?” Domenika asked.
“A little,” Bondurant replied. He’d received a letter the week before, and it now sat in the pocket of his jacket on the seat beside him. It was addressed to him from the pope.
Parenti, having seen his beer arrive, made his way to the stern to join them.
“Hasn’t given you an answer yet either, I see,” the priest said as he looked toward Domenika and reached for his drink.
“Still thinking,” Bondurant said.
“I brought something along with me that might help you make up your mind,” Parenti said.
Bondurant watched as the priest left them to duck below. He pulled Domenika toward the helm and placed her hand on the wheel. Then he put his hand on hers and leaned in close behind her.
They’d returned to Maryland’s eastern shore. They’d started out together there years earlier, before there was Christopher and before they’d been on the run for so long. Bondurant liked the bay. It helped to recapture moments and a place in time with Domenika when life was simpler and safe.
With Meyer in jail in Switzerland for a long list of fraud-related crimes, they could breathe easier. Meyer might languish in prison for years. The Demanian Church was in a state of collapse worldwide. The promise of eternal life through cloning had never materialized for a single one of its converts, and once the miraculous healing events that involved the boy had ceased, so did the conversions and contributions. The church’s stadiums had fast become the weed-infested monuments of a dying cult, converted to public soccer stadiums once they’d gone into neglect.
For his part, Bondurant had returned to the Enlightenment Institute he’d founded years before. He was anxious to occupy his mind with projects that would pass the time and help him overcome the immense sadness of losing his son.
He also knew that no matter how far his life’s adventures took him in the future and no matter what fantastic tales might unfold, one of the greatest mysteries for him to consider would involve an exploration of faith from within.
For Parenti’s part, Bondurant could tell the little priest had never been more content. Assigned by the pope himself, Parenti had become the pastor of St. James Catholic Church in nearby Crofton, Maryland. While he could be found there three times a week preaching the Lord’s word or regaling his congregation with stories of his recent adventures, his heart was in exploration. He often made time to visit with the young graduate students Bondurant employed at the Enlightenment Institute. There he could trade tales and dream of discovery for hours on end.
When Parenti emerged from the cabin to rejoin Bondurant and Domenika, he had a small duffel bag in hand. He took a seat on the bench across from where Bondurant stood near the helm and reached for the papal letter he’d shoved into Bondurant’s jacket to ensure that he would discuss the subject on their sail. Until now, Bondurant had done all he could to avoid it.
“It says here ‘unfettered access to all church records’!” Parenti called out so as to be heard above the sound of the mainsail flapping noisily in the wind.
“So I’ve read,” Bondurant said.
“You realize that’s unprecedented,” Parenti replied.
“I know.”
“Where is the explorer I once knew?” Parenti said, obviously frustrated. “The pontiff himself promises all the Church’s resources to find the Sudarium and seek proof it’s genuine. That’s all you can say? ‘I know’?”
“It’s a bone,” Bondurant said. “He wants to make amends. A few years ago, I’d have given my right eye for this chance. Now I don’t know.”
The letter Parenti held was an extraordinary request from the pope for Bondurant to locate and return to the Church the famous Sudarium of Oviedo. It was the celebrated cloth mentioned in the Gospel of John said to have covered the face of Jesus Christ be
fore he was wrapped in the Shroud and laid to rest in his tomb. Unbeknownst to the world, the bloodstained Sudarium had recently been stolen from the Church. It had sat for centuries inside the Arca Santa, the reliquary chest kept within the Cathedral of San Salvador in Oviedo, Spain, displayed only three times a year. The pope’s visit to Oviedo to view the sacred artifact on Good Friday the previous Easter season had been secretly canceled when it was discovered the cloth had mysteriously vanished.
“Stolen or not, recoverable or not,” Bondurant continued, “it’s a fake. Others have claimed to possess versions of it over time. That’s a telltale sign.”
“I seem to recall you saying something similar about the Shroud,” Domenika chimed in. She elbowed Bondurant lightly in his ribs.
“Well, as the pope has decreed, ‘unfettered access,’ ” Parenti said. “Let the access begin.” He yanked the drawstring of his duffel bag loose and pulled from within it a large book. He began to thumb through it quietly.
“What’s that?” Bondurant asked.
“Nothing. You’ve seen it before,” Parenti responded. “It held your interest at the time. But obviously you have no interest in it anymore.”
Bondurant looked down at Parenti to see what he was missing. He instantly recognized the ancient cover. “Is that the same—”
“It is,” Parenti said, and smiled. “The same book I took—I mean, I borrowed—from the Vatican’s shelves the night you and I were chased from the library by Barsanti long ago.”
The little priest now had Bondurant’s full attention. Bondurant placed both of Domenika’s hands on the boat’s steering wheel. He pointed to a buoy off in the distance. “Steer us that way,” he said. He took a seat next to Parenti, who now had his full attention.
“You’ll recall,” Parenti said, “that this book is a truth teller of sorts. It contains more than a thousand years of documentation by the Church on which of our venerated relics are real and which are not.” Parenti reached down and grabbed Aldo so that he could see the ancient text. He too was now wide awake.
Bondurant leaned in close to examine the worn, yellowed pages.
“You see here, as I told you before,” the priest continued, “this section contains the relics that have been proved false. There are too many to count.” He then opened the book to a spot near the middle. “Now, these, my friend, are counted as real.”
The stories of the magnificent artifacts, a veritable treasure trove of historical information, had never been made available to scholars, scientists, or the public over the centuries. Bondurant had a photographic memory and did his best to retain every word he saw as Parenti flipped casually through the pages that documented some of the Church’s best-kept secrets.
“Here, you see,” Parenti said. “Veronica’s Veil. Authentic, but, as we know, now sadly lost to the world.”
“And here, look,” Bondurant said. “The holy blood in Bruges!”
“Now, that was an adventure, was it not?” Parenti said with a smile. “Here we are!” he cried out as he pointed his finger at the center of a page. He read from the book beside the entry for the Sudarium.
“ ‘While blood tests have yet to be conducted to compare the source found on the Sudarium with that of the Shroud of Turin, the likeness of the facial image and the stains captured on the cloth at Oviedo and those that appear on the Shroud are identical. Further tests to compare the two should prove conclusively that the cloth bears the facial image of Christ Jesus, one even more vivid than that found on the sacred Sindon.’ There, you see?” Parenti said as he turned excitedly toward Bondurant. “We need only track down the thief of the Sudarium, retrieve the relic, authenticate it, and return it to the Church where it belongs. What could be more rewarding? What could be more fun?”
As they passed by the red buoy on their starboard side, Bondurant got up from his seat, leaned in toward Domenika, and pointed out the next buoy for her reference, closer to shore and another mile away. They were nearly home, and would barely beat the dark.
“It’s tempting, Father, to be sure,” Bondurant said.
And it was. But fun? There were other important adventures to be considered much closer to home—one in particular that Bondurant and Domenika had decided to pursue after Christopher was gone. Bondurant wrapped his arms around Domenika as she angled the boat toward the point, where nightfall lay around the next bend. He looked at his new “life watch,” the one Domenika detested but that he still wore. It was generous. It gave him twenty more years, much more than it had granted before. Then he slid his hands toward Domenika’s waist and gently pulled her in close to him. The slight bump protruding from her belly seemed to grow more pronounced by the day. He smiled. Soon another child would be born who was sure to change their world forever again.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, my thanks to Beth Adams, my editor at Howard Books. I would say “words cannot express,” but she has proven time and time again that they can. Praise to my agent, W. Scott Lamb, as well. He helped me earn my start. A tribute is owed to Dorothea Halliday too. She skillfully guided my very first words onto page after page in the early going.
I won’t ever forget the encouragement of Carolyn Magner-Mason, whom I’ve known for many years and was so fortunate to rediscover as a wonderful writer and friend. I owe much to my pal Gary Sinise. He was at my side for the launch of my first novel and has been a motivational force ever since. I’m also grateful to my longtime friend Ted Waitt. We shared some wonderful adventures over the years, some that served as inspiration for my storytelling here.
There are good friends and colleagues whom I want to thank for their kindness, interest, and advice along the way. They include Craig Engle, Craig Shirley, Fred Ryan, Mark Jaffe, Tom Kelso, Al Frink, John Barger, Norma Zimdahl, Sean McCabe, Margeaux Appel, Giovanni Navarria, and the indomitable James R. Wilkinson.
About halfway through the writing of this book, I was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and given just six months to live. From the bottom of my heart, and the other vital organs that remain, I want to thank Linda Bond, Dr. Gary Dosik, Dr. Jaffer Ajani, Dr. Ken Hepps, and Dr. Jeffry Glaser for saving my life and, indeed, making this book and more possible in the years ahead.
When it comes to family, I spent some time away from mine while writing this book. I hope that my incredible wife, Marcella, my talented sons, Brock and Max, and my fearless, darling daughter, Jordana, know that all my efforts in life, including this book, are dedicated to them.
About the Author
In a career that has spanned philanthropy, politics, public service, and the Fortune 500, John Heubusch served as the first president of the Waitt Institute, a nonprofit research organization dedicated to historic discovery and scientific exploration.
In 2007, working with a team of scientists and underwater-exploration experts, he spearheaded the organization’s first deep-sea expedition to solve one of the last great American mysteries: the disappearance of pilot Amelia Earhart during her famed attempt to circumnavigate the globe in 1937. Since then, successive efforts to locate Earhart and her airplane have failed, and the mystery remains.
In partnership with the National Geographic Society, John’s efforts at the Institute also helped lead to the discovery, authentication, and preservation of the famed lost Gospel of Judas, the ancient text deemed heretical and ordered destroyed by the early Christian Church. The Gospel purports to document the last conversations between Judas Iscariot and Jesus Christ, as well as the true rationale for history’s most famous betrayal.
His involvement at the Waitt Institute also helped lead to National Geographic’s launching of the Genographic Project, the largest-ever effort of its kind to chart the migratory history of mankind using DNA donated by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. The project is informing the world about our ancient migratory history.
Cited often by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, John has also been a contributing writer for the
New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, Forbes, the San Diego Union Tribune, and other leading national publications.
Currently the executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, he oversees the activities of the largest and most visited of the nation’s presidential libraries. He resides with his wife and children in Los Angeles, California.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
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