“Besides, Ravi,” Laurent said, “Meyer’s men gathered DNA from Kishan’s remains before the police arrived. We can bring him back, I promise you that.”
Sehgal stopped loading the box of reagents he had gathered. He was in no mood to be placated.
“To raise him all over again, this time as an infant in diapers? I don’t think so,” he said. “It would be twelve years before Kishan was the boy I first knew.” Sehgal’s mind began to drift to the day he had found him, grinning, standing happily atop a trash heap with a single shoe for sale in his hand.
“That was not an issue for Jacqueline or me,” Laurent said consolingly. “We lost our Philippe when he was just minutes old. Now he’s almost two. You have never seen such a child.”
“What would it cost for me to see Kishan again?” Sehgal asked.
“How do you put a price on bringing back your only child, Ravi? Does it matter? I lost count. When it was over we had performed over a thousand cell transfers before it worked. Millions and millions of dollars. The hurdles were enormous. But we learned some things along the way with my son that helped us immeasurably with your Christ child soon to be born.”
“Yes, the Christ child,” Sehgal mused. In all the chaos, he’d almost forgotten what his quest was all about. The prospect of bringing to life a young soul that had the power to alleviate the suffering of so many was the only bright spot left in his life. “What price for him?”
They both stopped their packing. Laurent looked at him.
“You told me yourself, Ravi. ‘What price salvation for us all?’ That’s what you said. I will tell you this. It involved over two thousand attempts from the DNA you rescued. Believe me, the money from your famous prize would not come close to covering what this cost Meyer.”
Just the sound of Meyer’s name made Sehgal’s stomach churn.
“It’s ironic, isn’t it?” Laurent said. “You perfect a way to resurrect old genes, and the world rewards you with fame. I perfect a way to resurrect Jesus Christ to save the world and am on the run. Figure that.”
Laurent’s cell phone rang in three short bursts. Sehgal hoped it was the call they were expecting. Laurent listened for several seconds and nodded his head.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”
Sehgal looked at him anxiously. If this was the moment, he had to return home first to gather his things.
“No. Your Domenika’s not in labor yet, but she’s feeling some discomfort,” Laurent said as he placed his hands on Sehgal’s shoulders. “Patience, Ravi. It won’t be much longer.”
Sehgal put down the scissors and considered the forgone promise of the son he had lost forever. His only consolation now was the prospect of another very special son, the one he had been destined to create.
CHAPTER 45
Bruges, Belgium
March 2015
By the time their train slowly meandered into Bruges, the most preserved and beautiful of all the medieval towns of Northern Europe, they were late. They had taken the earliest plane possible from Rome that morning and spent the flight carefully rehearsing the plan they had hatched the previous night. Bondurant, usually the optimist, had tried to fight the forlorn feeling that had swallowed him on the last leg of their journey. He had slept little the night before, as he turned over in his mind one alternative scheme after another. By dawn he had discarded them all. He decided that even though Parenti’s plan sounded ridiculous, it was probably the only realistic chance they had to steal the sacred relic purported to carry the true blood of Jesus Christ.
They hurriedly made their way from the restroom off the train platform in Bruges Station toward Mariastraat, the road that led toward the city center and the Basilica of the Holy Blood. As they walked out into a brilliant, sunlit day, step one of their plan was complete. They had donned the priest’s vestments Parenti had “borrowed” from the Vatican’s central sacristy during their escape the night before. Their bright-blue robes bore the unmistakable crossed keys emblem of St. Peter, the coat of arms of the Holy See worn by only the most venerated. As they angled across the medieval city, they sped down narrow, tree-lined walkways and across a series of footbridges that arched like swans’ necks over the picturesque canals. The city was the most charming and inviting of all the ancient canaled towns of Europe.
In the distance, almost a mile farther on, they could hear the din of the parade already under way, the famous Procession of the Holy Blood. Each year since 1291, in the spring, the reliquary the Church professed to contain a cloth soaked in the blood of Christ was removed from the basilica on Burg Square and paraded through the center of Bruges. Normally locked inside the cathedral’s splendid silver tabernacle beneath a life-sized portrait of the crucified Christ, its appearance before the tens of thousands of pilgrims that lined the cobblestone streets was eagerly anticipated each year. The rock-crystal vial holding the bloodstained cloth was originally a Byzantine perfume bottle from the eleventh century. Its neck was threaded in gold and held a stopper sealed in wax. It had traveled from Constantinople during the twelfth century as a gift to the count of Flanders in recognition for his service during the Second Crusade. For protection, the bottle sat encapsulated inside a small gold cylinder sealed with end caps in the shape of angels. Traditionally held aloft by the bishop of Bruges along a nearly two-mile route, the parade itself was fantastical. More than a thousand residents of the city trailed behind the bishop on foot and on floats and dressed in character to portray scenes from the Bible or in medieval garb to reenact the delivery of the sacred relic to Bruges centuries before.
Bondurant figured they had about half an hour before the parade would end at the basilica where it had begun. By then it would be too late. Once the vial was returned to its tabernacle atop the ancient marble altar in the upper chapel, it would be under guard and impossible to reach. He could see that as valiantly as Parenti tried, his short, childlike steps would never allow them to make it to the parade in time. Bondurant reached down beside him and hoisted the surprised priest, as well as the dog who bounced along in his satchel. He doubled their pace and covered almost a mile relatively quickly. They rounded a corner in a full sprint and entered Philipstockstraat, the main thoroughfare for the parade. There, they joined the carnivalesque procession a quarter-mile from where Bishop van de Basil led the joyful revelers. Bondurant wound his way through costumed troupes and dodged past floats of Noah’s Ark, Moses and the Ten Commandments, and the parting of the Red Sea. Dressed in Vatican vestments as he was, Bondurant’s own costume helped to part the sea of actors and police officers keeping order along the way. All who looked on mistook Bondurant and Parenti for part of the official party that belonged at the front of the parade. Bondurant worked his way to within yards of the bishop, who was surrounded by a group of altar boys dressed in bright red and white. Then he lifted Parenti from his shoulders and set him gently down onto the cobblestone street.
He was nervous about their next move, but they had no other plan.
“You are certain, absolutely certain the relic is real?” Bondurant shouted to Parenti over the roar of the revelers. “Otherwise, we are risking our freedom for nothing.”
“Have you learned yet how to pray, my son?” Parenti asked. “If not, now would be the time.”
Parenti reached inside the small satchel he carried with him and quickly slipped a small, razorlike object up his sleeve. In his other hand, he held a large white envelope in plain view. He strode forward with confidence and broke into the ring of altar boys encircling the bishop. He began to skip along beside the towering figure to keep up with his long stride. Bondurant followed along, just outside the circle.
“A word with you, if I may, Bishop van de Basil!” Parenti shouted.
The bishop, a bearded giant with the girth of a large oak tree, festooned in full ceremonial regalia and a miter headdress, was briefly startled. Walking alongside him during the sacred Procession of the Holy Blood was a position of prominence offered only
by specific invitation of the Church. He looked dismissively at the tiny priest, like a cat deserving of a kick. Meanwhile, he kept his pace and held the sacred vial heavenward with both hands as the throng of onlookers applauded from both sides of the street.
“You are . . . ?” the bishop bellowed.
“I am Father Antonio Barsanti, and I have a message for you, sir.” Parenti displayed the sternest look he could muster.
Bondurant cringed at the pronouncement.
“Yes, and I am His Eminence Hans van de Basil, the Bishop of Bruges. I carry the blood of Jesus Christ. I must ask you to step aside,” the bishop said, clearly annoyed.
Bondurant knew his cue.
“Hear me now!” Bondurant shouted in order to be heard among the musicians and revelers nearby. He stepped directly in front of the bishop and blocked his path. Then he spread his arms open wide to reveal the emblem of the Vatican in bright white and gold, a symbol worn on the vestments of few. “We are here under charge by Pope Augustine, and we will be heard!”
The bishop looked shocked and stopped dead in his tracks. With that, a massive chain reaction rippled through the entire mile-long procession behind them. Dozens of wheeled floats, marching bands, and over a thousand surprised actors were brought to an unexpected halt. An eerie silence fell over the crowd that surrounded the leading edge of the parade.
“Speak!” the bishop thundered so the entire crowd could hear.
“I bear a letter from his most Holy Father on this solemn and joyous occasion of the Procession of the Holy Blood,” Parenti cried out. He glanced over at Bondurant as if to summon more courage. “It demands your consideration before this austere occasion is brought to a close.” He held forth the large, ornate envelope.
The bishop looked surprised and impressed. “Shall I take the letter, Father Barsanti?” he asked.
“You shall. And for the moment, I should relieve you of the burden you have carried all morning.” With that, the priest reached presumptuously out for the sacred vial to force an exchange for the papal message. The bishop was reluctant to make the momentary trade, but spying the gold seal of the pontiff clearly emblazoned across the envelope, he lowered his massive arms and placed the ancient vial delicately in Parenti’s hand.
“Mind him,” the bishop said as he glanced toward several of the taller altar boys. He carefully opened the envelope and pulled the tab gently away from the wax seal as though to preserve it for posterity.
Bondurant, having held his breath now for almost a minute, looked about them and marveled at the complete stillness of the enormous crowd transfixed by their every move. Then he watched as the priest’s tiny hands receded slowly into his vestments and took the vial briefly from view while the bishop got his first full glance at the Papal letter. The bishop read fragments of the communiqué aloud while Parenti fidgeted with the vial up his sleeve.
“. . . It was with great anticipation . . . our yearlong search . . . your efforts in Belgium . . . am pleased to invite you to the Holy City . . . in service of His Name . . . The Holy Father, Augustine III.”
A broad smile emerged through the bishop’s thick, red beard, wide enough to put a smile on Parenti’s face as well. He reached down for the little priest, lifted him off his feet like a doll and embraced him in a joyous bear hug. Bondurant thought he might squeeze the life from both Parenti and the tiny dog in his pocket. As he set Parenti down, the bishop threw his hands heavenward and proclaimed to the curious crowd: “By invitation of the Holy Father, I am called to Rome!”
The throng that surrounded them, clearly confused but happy to be caught up in the joyous moment, broke into a loud cheer at the bishop’s good fortune and began to rush to his side. Parenti extended his hand once again toward the bishop, this time ready to return the sacred vial. He stepped forward and delivered it.
“Godspeed and peace be with you, Your Eminence,” he said as he stepped aside and left the path clear for the bishop to continue the last few steps of the joyous procession.
Parenti worked his way outside the throng of altar boys and onlookers who congratulated the bishop and made his way toward Bondurant. As the bishop stepped forward and the parade resumed, Bondurant and Parenti drifted through the jubilant crowd as inconspicuously as possible and onto a side street that led away from the revelers. When they turned the first corner and were clearly out of sight of the celebration, they ducked into a small alley on the edge of a canal.
Parenti was effusive. “We had better lose these vestments,” he said gleefully as he shed his and tossed them into the waters of the canal below. “That pompous bear. To think that the Vatican would summon him.”
He carefully passed on the small piece of the bloodstained cloth he had taken from the vial. Bondurant could see Parenti had cut off but a tiny fragment of the ancient cloth and had left most of the original relic intact for the bishop and Church to keep. Parenti pressed it into Bondurant’s palm and looked at him in deadly earnest.
“You hold a miracle. It possesses the blood of Jesus Christ, my son,” he said. “Now run. Run like the devil.”
CHAPTER 46
Mumbai, India
March 2015
Out of the corner of his eye, Sehgal saw Bondurant coming at him, but it was too late. Bondurant’s flying tackle caught him off balance and knocked him to the driveway before he could make it to his car. The tip Bondurant had received from his old cabbie friend as to where Sehgal, his country’s famous hero, lived was solid. For another thousand extra rupees, his cabbie had even driven him to the spot where Sehgal could be found at home. Sehgal’s shoulder hurt from hitting the ground hard, but no one, including Bondurant, was going to stop him from witnessing what in just a few hours would be the second coming and the dawn of a new world.
His adrenaline pumping, he scrambled quickly to his feet away from Bondurant and made a run for it in the hope that he could lose him on the canyon trail just steps from his home. From there, he would figure out a way to make it to the convent of the Sisters of Mercy to witness the birth of the Christ child.
Sehgal wasn’t thinking clearly. A few hundred yards down the footpath, with Bondurant in a full sprint only steps behind, he had begun to tire. Another diving leap by Bondurant when they came to a sharp turn in the trail sent the two of them tumbling down a steep ravine. Locked in each other’s grasp, they somersaulted down a steep hillside together like a human boulder. Sehgal gripped Bondurant’s jacket collar in both hands as he watched the sky and then the ground circle past his field of view over and over again. The journey downward was filled with countless painful rocks and branches. When they finally reached the bottom of the gorge a quarter mile below the spot where Bondurant had tackled Sehgal, they slammed to a stop in the dry creek bed and fell apart from each other, like a stone broken in two. They lay several feet apart, completely spent, and stared blankly at each other.
“You’re a liar, Ravi!” Bondurant cried out.
Sehgal could see a trace of blood on the side of Bondurant’s mouth. Otherwise, he looked to be in one piece. The same was not true for Sehgal. “If you’re talking about my report on the Shroud, my friend,” Sehgal said, holding on to his leg, which he feared was broken, “I won’t deny it. I’m sorry. There was no helping it.”
“Yes, there was, you liar,” Bondurant fumed. He reached for a large rock to throw at Sehgal, but it was obvious he was too tired to lift it from his prone position. “You’re a scientist. You’ve an obligation to seek the truth.”
“Jon, I swear I meant no harm,” Sehgal said. He could tell the fracture in his leg was severe, and the sharp pain in his side meant he had probably broken some ribs as well. “I needed to create a distraction. And you were prepared to believe the relic was a fake from the start. I gave you what you wanted to hear anyway.”
He pushed himself up with his arms to rest his back against a log and tried to breathe deep to ease the pain. He sat across from Bondurant, who struggled to sit upright himself.
“No you
don’t. Don’t put this on me,” Bondurant objected. “I was willing to go where the evidence led. You obviously agreed to join the project because it’s the blood you wanted all along. And now you’ve got some insane idea to . . . to . . .”
“To what, Jon? To what?”
“To raise Christ from the dead. You and that madman, Meyer.”
Sehgal was afraid Bondurant had pieced together more of the puzzle than he’d suspected. He thought for a moment, rested his head against the log behind him, and stared upward toward the cloudless sky. He was angry at the spot he was in, but he felt sorry for himself as well. He was doing the world the magnificent service of a second coming, one that someone like Bondurant, a nonbeliever, would never be able to understand. He was the one who had lost his only son just weeks before. He was the one who had to contend with Bondurant, a self-righteous hero now clearly in the way. He decided to try to reason with Bondurant.
“What is so insane about wanting the living Christ among us once again, Jon? Have you looked around you lately? Have you seen the spiral of misery taking all of us with it? I have. And I vowed to use my gifts to do something about it.”
“Ravi,” Bondurant said with a scowl, “spare me. I find it hard to imagine that you actually believe it’s possible to reconstitute a life lived two thousand years ago so that this same man can somehow change the world today. It’s ridiculous.”
“You say ridiculous,” Sehgal said, shaking his head. “I say miraculous. God himself condoned human cloning in the Bible.”
“You’re losing it. You must have hit your head on the way down this hill,” Bondurant said.
“Eve from Adam’s rib. It’s right there in Genesis.”
“Oh, come on. Who are you kidding?”
“Who are we kidding?” Sehgal said. “You’ve been an atheist your entire life, Jon. Me? I was saved by Christ’s hands before you were born. So let’s agree to disagree, shall we? We’re only copying what nature’s already produced.”
The Shroud Conspiracy Page 31
