The Shroud Key

by Vincent Zandri

  Then it’s my turn.

  I too have something held tightly in my arms. But it’s not a loved one exactly. What is wrapped in my arms are none other than the bones of Jesus. The surreal color of the situation boggles even my mind. I am about to be sucked under this raging vortex of violently spinning underground river water hundreds of feet beneath an ancient pyramid and wrapped inside my arms is the body of Christ. Literally.

  I enter into the center, spinning so fast I can almost feel my brain pressing against my skull. And then, as if it’s God’s will, I am sucked under.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  How does one describe being pulled rapidly through a smooth tube of rock so fast you can barely keep your mouth shut and your arms from opening and losing the one treasure that is more important than anything you have ever touched. Maybe even more important than your own child.

  You don’t try and describe it. You just ride the wave, as they say, and wait for it to end. Hope for it to end. And when it does, you are literally spit out the side of stone cliff face that empties one hundred or more feet below into the swift moving Nile River.

  I fall through the air and hit the water with a painful burning slap to my right side. But at least I’m alive to feel the pain. The pull of the current is swift in the springtime, and I’m having almost as much trouble keeping my head above water as I did inside the whirlpool. The box still wrapped in my arms, I am searching frantically for Anya and Andre. But I can’t seem to locate them.

  I travel another twenty or thirty feet. Or is it another one hundred feet? The river is moving so fast it’s hard to tell just how much distance I’m covering at any given time. But soon enough the river’s current slows. The water begins to pool into a kind of placid lake, the bright morning sunshine gleaning off its smooth and almost serene surface. Floating along, bobbing in the slight wake, I gaze over my right shoulder to see Anya kneeling on a sandy riverbank. She’s kneeling over a prone Andre. My heart begins to slide south, and I sense what’s happened even before I begin to paddle, one-armed, over to the shore.

  When I finally make it, I can hear the gentle cries and sniffles of a distraught woman. Setting the box down onto the sand, I go to her.

  “He hit his head on a rock as we were pulled down river,” she says. “He hit his head and never woke up. It was all I could do to pull him ashore.”

  Gazing down at Andre, I can easily make out the egg-shaped portion on his forehead directly above the right eye that’s been cracked open. A steady stream of blood runs down from it. I would check his pulse just to make sure he is dead, but I’ve seen way too many dead men in my life to know one when I see one. And Dr. Andre Manion’s soul has most definitely exited this world.

  I set my hand on Anya’s shoulder.

  She wipes her eyes with the back of her hands and stands.

  “What will we do now?” she says, turning to me.

  In the distance, the skyline of Cairo looms large over the troubled, congested city. To our left, the Giza plateau and the pyramids look as solid and majestic in the sunshine as they will continue to look for another five thousand years. Maybe twenty thousand years. Long after human beings have killed themselves off.

  “We can’t go back there,” I say. “It’s far too hot.”

  “Where will we go then, Chase?” She’s crying, wiping away her tears as she speaks.

  Out on the river now, a feluka is slowly making its way downriver, which in Egypt means that it is flowing in a northerly direction. We’ll go north to Alexandria, I say. From there we’ll grab a boat across the Mediterranean Sea since we can’t very well baggage-check the bones of Christ on commercial airliner. We’ll go north to the boot heel of Italy and hop a train to Florence. From there we will enlist the help of Checco. He’ll know how to handle the bones from there.

  We both find our eyes drifting down at the padlocked box.

  “When are we going to open it?”

  “Even if we could open it, I wouldn’t do it here. Not until we are far away from this danger zone.”

  She looks up into a brilliant blue sky.

  “They could be watching us right now,” she says. “The Egyptian government. Even the Vatican. The Israeli Antiquities Authority. Satellites are all powerful.”

  “God is more powerful,” I say. “And he’s telling me to not even think about opening the box until we are far away from here.”

  “Are you becoming a believer amidst all this death?” she whispers, the words sounding like they’re tearing themselves form the back of her throat.

  “I hold in my hands the body of Jesus,” I say. Then, with my eyes on Andre. “I hope that Jesus was worth saving.”

  She steals another look at her former husband and quietly weeps. But then, as if determined not to dwell on her past, both immediate and long ago, she sucks in a breath and stops crying.

  “How can anyone not believe at a time like this?” she says.

  “Yes,” I say. “How can I not believe?”

  Raising up my right arm, I wave at the feluka. After a moment or two, the pilot catches sight of me, and knowing he’s just found himself a fare, he begins sailing for shore.

  The time to get the hell out of Egypt has arrived.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  My smartphone is still operable. I use it to call Checco, who arranges for us to be picked up by a fishing vessel off the Alexandria coast. The boat will be waiting for us so that we don’t have to waste time hiding out in the busy and bandit-filled port. But before all that, we find a quiet place along the river. A place where the river runs deep and still. A place where the river is bordered by riverbanks of sand dunes, palm and olive trees, and open sky. It’s there we bury Andre “at sea,” slipping his mortal remains over the side.

  With my hand pressed against the box of bones, I say a small prayer for the man I barely knew, but for whom I was a sandhog years ago when he first went after the remains of Jesus. I remember thinking how absurd the mission was, but then, I wasn’t entirely convinced of its absurdity either. When our digs came up with nothing other than an ancient mirror that I took for my own and I began to drink myself over a marriage gone horribly wrong back in New York, the dig in the desert came to an end, and Andre ran out.

  But I can’t say I ever held his actions against him.

  Even now as I watch his prone body sink beneath the river’s surface, his face disappearing into a clear watery obscurity, I can’t say I harbor any anger for him. I can only thank him for having come back into my life, and for him to have known the joy, however briefly, of having his theories about the Shroud of Turin, the Third Pyramid at Giza, and the present day location of the bones of Christ, proven true.

  “Rest in peace, Professor,” I whisper, while Anya looks on tight-lipped, refusing to shed anymore tears. “You now belong to the history you so loved.”

  _ _ _

  With a brisk wind behind us, we rode the river for as far as the feluka would take us. From the riverbank, we hiked it up to the highway where we were able to hail down a truck driver who had no problem allowing us to hitch a ride in the back along with a few crates of live chickens. In the end, we arrived in Alexandria some four hours later as the sun was setting on the western horizon.

  The commercial fishing boat Checco promised was waiting at the quay. It was an old, rusty boat, filled with maybe a half dozen fisherman who spoke no English and who sported full beards, leathery skin, and barrel chests. We tried to stay out of their way as much as possible and with the captain having given over his quarters to us, it wasn’t that difficult. Anya slept most of the way while trying to recover not from the adventure in the desert, so much as digesting the sudden death of her ex-husband. I gave her as much space as I possibly could manage aboard a vessel that wasn’t much larger than your average school bus.

  Arriving in Calabria, we took the high speed train north through Rome all the way to Florence. We went straight to my apartment on the Via Guelfa which by then had been cleared
and cleaned of all traces of the Vatican soldier who lay bleeding on the floor after I shot him in the leg and relieved him of his cross.

  Which brings us to the present …

  Now, on the big wood table in the brick and wood-beamed dining room off the kitchen, sits the red strongbox. Locked and padlocked, as if to expose its contents without proper ceremony will cast a plague on the earth. Behind it is a window that looks out onto the back terrace and the grape arbor, the bright afternoon sun shining down on it, almost peacefully. With the French window panes wide open, I can feel the spring breeze and smell the sweet air.

  “How do you plan on getting it open?” Anya asks. “Shouldn’t we call Checco? Or Detective Cipriani?”

  “We need to let them know we’re back,” I agree. “But not yet. Right now I prefer that no one knows we’re here.”

  “Do you think we’ve been followed?”

  “I don’t know. It’s possible.”

  “Back to my original question. How are we going to get the box open?”

  “I’ll take care of that,” says the man who steps out of the kitchen and into the dining room.

  “Guess that answers the question about being followed,” I say.

  The man smiles. The smile beneath his closely cropped salt and pepper beard is a pleasant one. If he wasn’t holding a gun on me right now, I just might smile back. But I’m not in a smiling mood as a man whom I considered a friend is now proving that friendship doesn’t mean shit when it comes to greed.

  “Sorry I have to do this, Chase,” says Detective Cipriani, “but business is business.” Then, gazing quickly over his left shoulder. “Boys!”

  Out from the kitchen come two men. Both dark-haired, clean shaven and dressed entirely in black. Both look big enough to bench press the Duomo. Former cops maybe. Or maybe cops in real-time, moonlighting for their corrupt day boss.

  Anya steps up beside me. Takes hold of my arm.

  “It’s okay, Anya,” I say, attempting to reassure her. “The detective might be a back stabber, but he won’t kill us.”

  I feel her hand sliding inside my Pharaoh Productions safari jacket.

  “What are you doing?” I say, my heart skipping a beat but at the same time, my soul feeling a slow burn.

  She steals my 9mm from out of its holster. Back-stepping, she points the business end of the piece at my face and smiles. Pressing herself up against Cipriani’s bulky shoulder, she exhales, and sighs.

  “Chase ‘Ren Man’ Baker,” she says, as if scolding one of her freshman English 101 students. “When will you ever learn? Naturally I knew from the start that you’d worked with Andre eight years ago on the first failed dig. How could I not know? It’s why I chose you to locate him in the first place.”

  “I kept telling him his dick would get him into big trouble one day,” the detective says in his smooth, low-toned Italian.

  The two goons take their respective places beside me, one on each side.

  “Hey, what’s a dick for?” I say. “You weren’t very good in the sack anyway honey.”

  I see Cipriani’s face drop as Anya’s eyes go wide.

  I smile.

  “Oh Cip, you didn’t know? Oh, well, I’m sure your girlfriend would have gotten around to telling you the truth about our sleeping bag adventure in the desert eventually.”

  “Tie him up,” the detective orders.

  “Oh good,” I say. “We’re gonna play some games now.”

  It’s the last thing I remember saying before the goon on my left balls his fist in my face.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  In the dream I’m floating above a cemetery. I know it’s a cemetery because I can see the headstones, the mausoleums and the green, rolling, rural pastures from high up in the friendly skies. In fact, it’s a cemetery that I know from a long time ago. The three-hundred year old Albany Rural Cemetery. The same cemetery that I would sneak into at night back when I was kid when and I would go in search of buried treasures with my Radio Shack metal detector. Most people don’t know it, but old cemeteries are ripe with all sorts of artifacts from hundreds of years back. Old belt buckles, coins, even musket balls took a special place of honor on my childhood bookshelves.

  Soon I begin to fall.

  Not rapidly as first, but slowly, gently. The closer I come to the earth, the more a single burial plot captures my attention. It’s an ornate plot that is made up of a square granite stone. Set where a headstone should be is a cross. A massive cross, I should say, maybe twenty feet high, its cross beam no less than seven feet in diameter. The cross is fashioned in the traditional manner of the Knights Templar, with half-moon-shaped edges. A Maltese cross. Situated before the cross and directly behind the stone, is a life-sized statue of a woman. A woman veiled in flowing robes, her hands hanging down at her sides, her eyes raised to the heavens. She is not the Virgin Mary, but she is somebody else entirely. Only, I can’t exactly tell who she is. Not yet. I’m too far up in the sky to know for certain.

  But then something happens.

  I stall, and I feel myself begin to drop. Hard, like a rock.

  I see the cross and the face of the stone woman coming at me fast, see her mouth opening up, the lids on her eyes raising up, see the blood pouring out of them and down onto her cheeks…

  And then I’m awake, the bright sun now shining directly into the open window above the table, stinging my eyes.

  “Good to have you back with us, Chase,” Cipriani says, having tossed a glass of tap water into my face. “I wouldn’t want you to miss this for the world.”

  One of the goons has already removed the padlock from the box and is now toying with the box’s built-in lockset. He’s using an electronic tool to pick the lock. The cordless tool sounds not unlike a dentist’s drill. My head hurts. Bad. My vision is cloudy and a steady but loud pulse pounds in my brain. I take slow, short breaths. Try not to talk while I attempt to gather my wits back about me.

  Then, a distinct click fills my ears, like metal breaking away from metal, as the lockset drops to the wood floor. There’s the coppery taste of blood in my mouth that I only just noticed, and my left eye is partially closed, swollen. I tongue my front teeth. One of my molars feels loose. Did the goon continue to beat me while I was out? It’s entirely possible if not probable.

  “Keep your good eye on this one, Chase,” Cip says, his smile glowing brighter than the Duomo’s golden cupola on a sunny Tuscan afternoon.

  He steps over to the box, shooing away the second goon with a carefree wave of his hand. I glance at Anya who has her hands cathedraled at the knuckles and pressed up against the underside of her chin. She’s on pins and needles awaiting the true contents of the box. Behind me stands the other goon. The one who punched me out. He’s teasing me by flicking my right earlobe with his sausage thick index finger. I try and shrug him off, but it only makes him do it all the more.

  Cipriani approaches the box, stands before it with his back to me, blocking my view entirely. Good eye or no good eye. He uses both his hands to lift the attached lid on the strong box. Its rusted hinges squeak as he slowly lifts. When the squeaks stop, I know he’s opened the lid entirely. Most of the oxygen is sucked out of the room then. An overwhelmed Anya is crying real tears. Even the goons are transfixed, the one behind me no longer flicking my ear lobe.

  The detective reaches in with his hands, pulls something out, sets it down onto the dining room table. It’s a brown, leather bag. Large enough to fit the bones of a human being, including a skull. Or a partial skull anyway. The bag is bound together with leather shoelace-like straps. Cipriani carefully unties them, proceeds to unwrap them. When he’s done, he sets the straps onto the table beside the bag. Then, inhaling a deep breath, he slowly opens the bag wide. Reaching inside with a thick, naked, trembling hand, he comes back out with something.

  It’s not a bone.

  It’s a piece of wood. A rounded piece of wood that might make up the seatback of an old harvest chair. He slaps the wood down onto
the table, then reaches in again. He comes back out with another piece of wood, and another.

  “What is this merda?” he barks, the desperation in his voice painfully evident.

  “It’s not the bones,” Anya cries, lowering her hands. “After everything we went through to get them.”

  He dumps the out the entire contents of the bag. It’s merely a pile of wood scraps and, just for laughs, the plastic head of a bald, baby doll. I can’t help but thinking the doll must have been made in China. Back in the 1970s. I also can’t help but smile at the sight of it all. After everything we went through, fought over, died over… the bones were never inside the Third Pyramid after all. It was all a ploy fabricated many years ago by someone, somehow, somewhere, to throw us off. To throw all of the seekers of the Jesus remains off.

  My face might be so much hamburger right now, but I feel lighter than air inside.

  “Man, Cip,” I say. “That really sucks.”

  He turns, his big brown eyes alight like super pissed off Chariots of fire. He points an accusatory finger at me.

  “You,” he says. “You did this. You opened the box and took out the real bones of Jesus and replaced it with this…this…junk.”

  He takes a step towards me, the second goon by his side looking like Frankenstein on steroids, the goon behind me now having resumed his ear flicking. Cipriani raises up his hand, back slaps me. My head rings. My left eardrum feels like it’s just exploded.

  “Where did you hide the bones, Chase?”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about, Cippi,” I mumble.

  Another back hand … More ringing in my head … More ear flicking.

  “Tell me where you’ve hidden the bones?” he presses.

  “Take a look at the box and that old padlock on the floor. Look at that leather bag. It hasn’t been opened in thirty five years. If I had opened it, it would be obvious.”