The workers raced to the edge of the rooftop to peer below. The bikers and the trucks broke off immediately and fled in the opposite direction, toward the down ramp of the garage.
Medics eventually removed the dead bodies of Kishan and his date. She had died instantly, her head and helmet crushed completely in the fall. Kishan’s chest was impaled on a length of thick steel rebar. It appeared that he had survived for several minutes after the fall, because he had reached out his hand toward hers and held it in his own.
CHAPTER 40
Outside Mumbai, India
March 2015
Domenika awoke in the dark, surrounded by the Sisters of Mercy at vigil near her bedside. They looked on in silent earnest while she slept, just as they had each evening for months. Their faces, narrowly obscured by their traditional white-and-blue habits, glowed faintly in the light of the candles they held. Domenika glanced over at the clock on her nightstand and could see it was five o’clock in the morning. An hour before the sun would rise. Their helping hands reached out as she strained to roll from her side onto her back to reach a more comfortable position. Late in her pregnancy, she was relieved the time was finally near.
Confined to strict bed rest on the orders of her doctor for her entire pregnancy, she had not ventured outside the walls of the small room in the quiet convent since being transported there by ambulance the previous fall. She was not allowed to move, with the exception of careful trips to the bathroom across the hall, but she had never grown used to the confinement she had to endure for the safety of her baby. She understood the reasons for the extraordinary measures her doctor, Dr. Laurence, had ordered.
He explained to her the graveness of her condition. Placenta previa, where the placenta is abnormally positioned in the uterus, was relatively rare, but it accounted for a significant percentage of miscarriages and stillbirths and placed both her and the baby at high risk. Had her condition gone undetected, she would have been at risk of badly hemorrhaging, creating a blood loss that would both endanger her life and severely threaten the baby with oxygen deprivation. She was told that the slightest wrong movement could end her pregnancy in an instant.
So here she lay. The guarded isolation was a small price to pay for a healthy newborn. But regardless of the remarkable care she had received from the overly attentive sisters while in the primitive convent, and the visits of encouragement from Dr. Laurence, his nurses, and Dr. Sehgal, it was the loneliness that hurt her most.
A strict Catholic, she had saved herself throughout her twenties because it was church teaching, and it was simply the right thing to do. When she entered her thirties, her vow remained, but her reluctance to give herself to a man was based more on a promise to herself to find the right one. Someone for a lifetime. And for Domenika, surrounded at work with good and decent men who had taken their own vows of celibacy through the priesthood, the right ones were few and far between.
Her pregnancy, while obviously unplanned, should have been one of the most joyous times of her life. Instead, she was alone, with no one to share the wonder of pregnancy and birth. She had always imagined her mother and sister giggling over the changes in her body. She’d imagined them picking out names together and shopping for a layette. Her daydreams included her father’s gruff excitement as preparations for his grandchild commenced. Never did she imagine she would be in solitary confinement with only the company of strangers. The constant fear of losing the baby hung over her every moment. While she yearned to exercise and walk about the town, the nuns were fiercely protective. In fact, she felt more like a prisoner than a patient.
The convent, located several miles outside Mumbai, adhered to its strict procedures and primitive ways. There was no access to the Internet, no phone or cell service, and no television. She had to resort to old-fashioned letter writing and to Dr. Sehgal’s kind offer to post them for her. She poured her heart out to her parents and begged them to forgive her for the accidental pregnancy. She knew they would be disappointed, but it had never crossed her mind they would greet her news with total silence. She was sure her father would never forgive her. And her mother, irate over the circumstances of her pregnancy, had probably renounced her for good. Her sister’s silence, while a disappointment, was not surprising. She had changed addresses like they were outfits in the last three years, and it was unlikely her letters had ever been forwarded.
All of these letdowns were one thing. But what was truly a shock to her very soul was the lack of response from Bondurant. She blamed no one but herself. Of all the men to choose to break her vow, Domenika had chosen Bondurant, the very definition of a serial monogamist. What was she to expect? Domenika thought. He was long gone before her hangover had even set in.
Still, she wrote to him. It was a long, heartfelt letter telling him of the pregnancy and confessing her deep and abiding love for him. “I know you didn’t choose this, but I take full responsibility for the baby. I’m not asking you for anything except to give you the option to be in both of our lives. Our daughter or son will know and love you if it is your will. If I have my way, we will be a family,” she wrote. It was painful to admit her feelings so freely and to open her heart to potential rejection by a man with his reputation. A man she had only known for weeks. But it didn’t matter. She loved him and was convinced he loved her, even if he didn’t know it.
Her last words to him on the phone the previous summer had been bitter, and she now wished she could change them. While their two short weeks together had proven they had little in common, she had left Turin unable to get him off her mind. She tried to reason why. She could not have met a man more in contradiction to her beliefs. He had no capacity for faith, and no interest in finding it. He was an American, after all, and carried with him an undeserved sense of confidence wherever he went. It grated on her. A “head case,” as her sister had claimed? No, but prone to dysfunction? Absolutely. Emotionally disconnected at times? Definitely.
In most ways, he was the veritable square peg, she the round hole. Yet strangely, while she’d had too much wine and could remember almost nothing from her last intimate moments with Bondurant in her hotel room in Turin, she had chosen him, of all men, to be her first. For all his flaws, she had found him to stand above and apart from every other man she had ever met. He was smart, and challenged her thinking at every turn. He was kind, honest, and generous and had the courage of his convictions. He had the character of a man but sometimes displayed the vulnerability of a boy. Her attraction to him was so powerful that she had bought a ticket to fly to Baltimore to surprise him a week after they said good-bye to each other in Turin. At the last minute, she found herself unable to board the plane, afraid of how foolish she would look flying halfway around the world to chase him. Now she regretted staying home.
And soon he was to be the father of her child. She was proud of that. She wondered what that meant to him, and why, even given their falling out, he had ignored her letter asking him to come. She could tell from their brief time together that he was taken with her, but knew that was a far cry from wanting to become a father. But still, she’d thought he would understand his responsibility, whether they were ever to be together or not. She wondered if she had misjudged him, just as she had misjudged Ravi Sehgal.
She found herself in India as the guest of the Nobel Laureate, who had called her in Rome after the disastrous conference call to explain his findings. He wanted to make amends. While she knew very little about DNA, she was certain the results he had reported months before concerning the Shroud had to be wrong. The Vatican held the evidence of its authenticity in its codex, yet he had launched a giant myth to dispute that the Shroud was genuine. There had to be a reason for him to invent such a lie. She had accepted his invitation to travel to Mumbai to demand an explanation. She traveled there knowing that if she sorted out the mess and brought forward the truth, the job she’d once had in Rome might await her again.
It was at Sehgal’s elegant home on the outskirts of the city where
she had discovered the truth. There had been a terrible mistake, he said, one he was ashamed to admit to his colleagues. While his explanation was complicated, the erroneous findings were the result of the work of an incompetent lab technician. According to Sehgal, the technician’s error had contaminated the blood sample from the Shroud that Sehgal had received. The mistake had been discovered just days after their conference call to discuss the team’s findings, and, plainly worried about his reputation, Sehgal was beside himself about what to do. He vowed to her that he was prepared to rerun his tests, correct the record, and provide his findings to Bondurant. Over some calming tea, he begged her to understand.
It turned out that her meeting with Sehgal was her last conscious memory before she awoke in the tiny convent of the Sisters of Mercy. She had been told that she had passed out on Sehgal’s living room couch and had been transported, unconscious, to the emergency room for observation, where doctors made the remarkable discovery that she was pregnant. However, given her high-risk factors discovered in routine tests at the hospital, the attending physician had ordered her to immediate bed rest. Sehgal had used his close relationship with the sisters of the convent to make the arrangements necessary for her to convalesce there in their capable hands. She learned all this when she awoke.
Soon, she would learn so much more.
CHAPTER 41
Rome, Italy
March 2015
Bondurant pounded on Parenti’s apartment door well past midnight. When the priest finally let him, he burst through the doorway in desperation.
“Where’s your bathroom?” Bondurant cried out.
“Right there,” Parenti said. He looked disoriented from being awoken. He pointed to the door behind him.
Bondurant dashed toward the tiny bathroom and slammed the door shut.
“That’s it?” Parenti said as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “I’ve not seen you in months. You come unannounced in the middle of the night. Not a hello, not a how are you?”
“Hello. How are you?” Bondurant groaned from behind the bathroom door.
The priest poked his head out into the empty hallway. “No pursuers?” he said.
“It’s my stomach,” Bondurant replied. “I just landed. I’ll never eat Indian food again as long as I live. I swear it.”
“I see,” the priest said.
“I’ll be just a minute. You’re a lifesaver, Father.”
Parenti sat down on his bed and rubbed his eyes. After several minutes had passed, Bondurant emerged. He looked pale and weak. He pulled up the lone chair in the apartment and sat down beside the priest, exhausted.
“Why didn’t you call to say you were coming?” Parenti asked.
“Because you don’t have a phone,” Bondurant said. He looked around the small, sparsely furnished apartment. It resembled a prison cell more than a home. He could tell the priest was still in a sleepy haze. Bondurant had traveled all day from India to talk to him.
“That’s true,” Parenti said as he smiled, rolled back into the bed, and reached for the covers. “Have a wonderful evening.”
Bondurant kicked the side of the bed to rouse the priest and prevent him from falling back to sleep. He caught sight of Aldo in his cage on the floor next to the bed, reached down, opened the latch, and set the dog on the bed. Aldo immediately scampered to Parenti and began to lick his cheek.
“Father,” Bondurant said. He hesitated for a moment and looked toward the bathroom, concerned that he might need to make another trip. He took a deep breath to let his stomach settle for another moment. “I’m sorry I had to wake you, but it’s for good reason. We need to talk.”
The priest slowly turned on his side and propped a pillow under his arm. He cradled the dog in the crook of his arm and looked up at Bondurant. “Continue,” he said.
“First, have you heard from Domenika? Anything at all?” Bondurant asked.
“Not a word.”
“I haven’t either. But I’m certain she’s in real trouble now. I’ve turned Mumbai upside down again for the last two weeks, and there’s still no sign of her anywhere.”
“When you left Rome to look for her before, we thought her destination might be Mumbai, but there was no evidence of trouble. Why do you think she’s there now?”
“Sehgal’s still missing too,” Bondurant said. “And if what one of Sehgal’s people told me over the phone is true, it’s possible she’s involved.”
“Involved? What do you mean, involved?”
“Cloning comes to mind, Father.”
Parenti sat upright and his eyes widened. He was now fully awake. “You’re saying she’s in league with those madmen, those cloning people with the tattoos? Sehgal as well?”
“Sehgal’s got what he thinks is the blood of Christ. He fought for as much as he could get. We know that. He lied about the blood’s source. And he has the means to reconstruct the DNA,” Bondurant said. “If he’s fallen in with Laurent and the Demanians, they might be close to an attempted cloning. I can’t be sure, and I know it’s a long shot. But if he’s got Domenika, as a prisoner or even a volunteer, the circle’s complete.”
“What do you mean by that?” Parenti asked.
“He’s got his Virgin Mary,” Bondurant stated flatly. He didn’t want to believe what he’d said, especially about Domenika’s possible complicity, but he’d grown weary of the endless chase for her and was frustrated. He hadn’t slept in two days.
“You’re wrong about her. She would never be involved in such a thing. Never,” Parenti said.
“You’re right. At least, I hope you’re right. But she’s making it awfully hard to find her. Too hard. It’s like she’s hiding,” Bondurant said. He’d never been more frustrated, and as much as he cared about Domenika, he’d grown frustrated with her over time for vanishing without a word. “She disappears. She tells no one. She takes my side against the Vatican when they fight against taking blood from the Shroud. It wouldn’t surprise me if she and Sehgal—”
“Nonsense, Doctor. You need some rest.”
“And there’s another problem, Father,” Bondurant said. “A big one.”
“Bigger than an attempt to clone the Son of God? With Domenika somehow involved? Try me.”
“Okay, I will,” Bondurant said. “It’s a long story, but I’ve come to find there are two sources of blood on the Shroud. It’s definitive. These Demanians, Sehgal, they’ve no clue who they’re trying to clone.”
“You’re certain of this?”
“Absolutely. They’re playing Russian roulette with a droplet of blood. Son of God? Son of Sam? I’m telling you, they just don’t know.”
Parenti immediately closed his eyes and pressed his hands over his ears. “LA-LA-LA-LA. LA-LA-LA-LA,” he chanted.
“What are you doing?” Bondurant asked.
“I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear it,” the priest said. “If I lie down now and fall back to sleep, in the morning when I wake you will be gone, and this will all have been a dream.”
“I wish it were so,” Bondurant said.
Parenti closed his eyes and folded his arms together, saying nothing. After a minute had passed, he opened his eyes again.
“I know of a book,” the priest said.
“Yes?”
“It is in the Vatican Archives. It’s a special book. I’ve not studied it closely before, but I believe I know where it can be found in the shelves. If we can get to it, it will solve the mystery.”
“What do you mean?” Bondurant asked.
“It will reveal whether there are any other true relics in existence beyond the Shroud that may bear the blood of Jesus Christ. That way you can compare the sources of blood, Doctor.”
Bondurant shook his head in disbelief. “First, there is no such book. I would know it.”
“You are insufferable at times,” the priest said. “No wonder it took some time for Domenika to fall for you.”
“Father, even if I were to believe—”
/> “Believe me, Doctor. Believe me. For all of our sakes, believe me. There is such a book. You are faced with a riddle, are you not? One Shroud. But the blood of two persons on it. Which is Christ? Which is not?”
“You want me to match the DNA I have from the Shroud with another relic that might be named in a book and might possess the blood of Christ. Is that it?”
“Exactly. You must. How else will you know the origin of the DNA these ridiculous Demanians are trying to resurrect? You have no choice.”
“On the contrary, I do,” Bondurant said as he got up from his chair. “No more wild-goose chases.”
“Where are you going?” Parenti asked.
“To find a hotel. Hopefully I’ll feel better in the morning and can think more clearly then about a plan.” As Bondurant turned toward the door, Parenti grabbed him by his sleeve and tugged him backward. Bondurant was surprised to see the sudden look of desperation on the priest’s face.
“Dr. Bondurant, I have a confession to make,” Parenti said.
“Here? Now?”
“You’re the only one I can trust with this,” Parenti said.
“I think you’re talking to the wrong man, Father. Isn’t this supposed to work the other way around? The priest hears the sinner?”
“Normally, yes. But at this time of night, you will have to do.” The priest took a deep breath, and Bondurant could tell there was something seriously wrong.
“You must know that I possess something I acquired—forgive me—stole a long time ago. Before I met you.” He got up from his bed and reached for the bottom drawer of his dresser. He produced a small plastic bag, opened it up, took out a worn cloth, and sat back down on the bed. He spread the cloth on his lap.
Bondurant looked at him curiously. “What is this?”
“I need you to assist me in a brief sacrament. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It’s the ‘anointing of the sick.’ Very simple.”
The Shroud Conspiracy Page 28
