The Shroud

by Harold Robbins

  He held his finger up to his lips. “We must be very quiet.”

  Suddenly I was standing before the Shroud.

  The long linen cloth on a large table in front of me was being gently fussed over by nuns.

  The cloth itself was more than twice the length of an average man and about three feet wide. It bore the life-size image of an unclothed man with his hands folded across his groin area.

  I realized I had to stop thinking of the Shroud as a piece of cloth. It was not the linen that was important, but the image, the bloodied impression, of a man who had been crucified.

  Goose bumps broke out on my neck and back and I felt as if I were being blown back by its aura as I stood before the grayish-brown cloth with its faint, slightly yellowish imprinted image.

  I tried to focus on his words as Victorio whispered about the mysterious figure on the Holy Shroud.

  “He has a beard, a mustache, and hair down to his shoulders,” Victorio said. “Those are bloodstains.”

  The stains were reddish brown.

  “They correspond physically to wounds from crucifixion.”

  Rocking on my heels, ready to pass out, Victorio took my arm and led me out.

  In the reception area I took deep breaths and got control of myself. I had never felt so moved by anything in my life.

  “I’m sorry. I suddenly felt … faint, I guess.”

  “I understand,” he said. “The first time I saw it I fell on my knees and cried.”

  I asked about stains and other marks I had noticed on the Shroud.

  He nodded. “Water stains and burn marks and holes from the fires that have attacked it over the centuries.”

  Victorio paused at the exit door.

  “The Shroud has resisted many attempts to destroy it over the centuries. It’s as if Satan himself has come from Hades and attacked it with the fires from hell. Yet, each time, the Shroud has survived.”

  He stared at me, his eyes wet from emotion. “A miracle.”

  Yes, it was a miracle.

  45

  I was quiet and light-headed when we came back outside. I rubbed the cold chills off my arms as we stood in front of the chapel.

  Feeling like a hypocrite for all the times I missed Sunday school, my poor church attendance, and other sacrilegious deeds, I avoided Victorio’s gaze.

  Viewing the Shroud had not only awed me; it made me feel guilty and scared the hell out of me.

  The most important question in human existence has always been one fraught with uncertainty for most people, including me: Is there another realm after we leave this life—or is this all there is?

  Seeing the Shroud had made me fear for my soul.

  “Yes,” Victorio said, “that’s also how I felt when I saw it the first time.”

  He hadn’t asked me how I felt, but I guess it wasn’t necessary—one look at my face was enough.

  “Victorio, I really appreciate the viewing, but we have some unfinished business to attend to.”

  “Would you have dinner with me?” Victorio asked. “We can discuss the matter then.”

  “I’d love to,” I lied.

  I would have rather gone to my hotel lounge and had a glass of wine while I pondered over whether I could rehabilitate my soul after a couple of dozen years of being less than devout.

  He walked me out to the street.

  My thoughts were facetious, but they only hid deep fears of the unknown. Being sarcastic to myself was a defense mechanism. Like most people, I occasionally agonized over the eternal questions—who I am, where did I come from, and that business about whether there was anything beyond my mortal existence.

  I had a sudden fear that I was on the wrong path. That I had taken many wrong paths. How many mortal sins did I have stacked up against me in the archives of heaven? I realized it would be a list a mile long.

  “Scared shitless.”

  “Did you say something?”

  “Sorry. I was thinking out loud. Where do you want to have dinner?”

  “What are you hungry for?”

  “Pasta.”

  “Ah … easy enough. All restaurants in Italy serve pasta, but I will take you to one that makes it for the angels.”

  Even the pasta had religious connections in Turin.

  I was beginning to worry that I might end up in hell, or purgatory, or wherever they send kids who skip Sunday school classes or who spend their entire adult lives engrossed in creations from Greece, Rome, Babylonia, and other pagan cultures.

  “Do you mind if we drop by my place so I can change my clothes?” Victorio asked. “I have a car and my house is not far.”

  “That’s fine.”

  He kept up a steady stream of conversation on the way. He obviously didn’t want me asking any questions about him and Lipton.

  I decided that before dinner was over, I would make Victorio come clean about what Lipton was up to.

  I suddenly wanted to get out of Turin and away from whatever primeval, preternatural fears the Shroud had awakened in me.

  46

  Victorio told me he lived less than thirty minutes away. The Basilica was not far from the Po River, which snakes through the city along with several other channels.

  Victorio seemed to be seized by some gripping thought as he drove.

  The ecstasy that had been on his face when we were in the presence of the Shroud had reverted back to the agonized struggle with demons—a struggle the demons were winning.

  He broke the silence when we took a street that paralleled the river.

  “Did you say that you’ve been in Turin before?”

  “Yes, about ten years ago. To visit the Egyptian museum.”

  He nodded. “A very good museum.”

  I knew he had something else to say, that he seemed to be building up to it, and I kept my mouth shut to give him the opening.

  “Have you ever thought about the fact that it’s all based on sin? Sin and redemption.”

  I had no idea what prompted his remark.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Religions, all of them, or at least all the major ones, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus. You sin, but there is a path of forgiveness. “

  He gave me a look. “It would be hell on earth if there wasn’t deliverance from sin, a path of redemption.”

  “Isn’t there another way of looking at it?”

  “What is it?”

  “Don’t sin in the first place.”

  I don’t know if what I said penetrated. He clammed up again, wrestling with those demons.

  While I couldn’t fathom what had prompted his remarks, they left me with an uneasy feeling. That “waiting for the other shoe to drop” feeling.

  * * *

  THE RESIDENCE TURNED out to be one in a long row of similar three-story structures backed up to the river.

  “The house belongs to my parents,” he said, “but they’re rarely here. They’re retired and spend most of their time now at their vacation house in the south.”

  The living quarters were built above a garage, but he parked his car in front of the driveway rather than in the garage.

  We went up the stairs and to the front door. He unlocked the door and stepped aside with a gesture for me to enter.

  As I stepped into an unlighted vestibule, the door opened in front of me and Karina Nevsky smiled at me.

  “Come in.”

  I whipped around to run and Victorio stepped aside as a man came at me.

  “You!”

  I sensed a motion behind me and started to turn as a familiar blur came at me.

  My brain registered that Karina had swung a stun gun at me at almost the same time that a shock hit me that turned my limbs into rubber.

  Yuri caught me on the way down.

  47

  I don’t know how long I was out, but when I came to I was in hell—hell being a prisoner in a room with Lipton.

  The only thing worse than being controlled by Lipton was being caught
up in one of his schemes that had gone sour.

  A man who cheated on a world-class scale, also crashed on that level.

  And I always seemed to be standing underneath him when he came tumbling down.

  Lipton gave a big sigh. “To put it crudely, my dear, we are fucked.”

  I took it to be an accurate assessment of our situation.

  We were on the floor in a bedroom of the house, sitting with our backs to the wall. We weren’t alone—an aloof and rather surly looking individual sat nearby on a chair and endlessly surfed channels on the TV.

  The man muttered occasionally in a language Lipton said was Chechen. My impression was that the Chechen man, whose purpose was to guard us—he had a stun gun on his lap—was frustrated by the fact the TV didn’t speak his language.

  Maybe it would if he gave it a zap with the stun gun.

  I had most of my feeling and coordination back. I’m sure my adrenaline, spiked by pure fear, aided my recovery. And once again I had to admit that the use of stun guns was inspired. The damn things were debilitating at the minimum and could be deadly. But unlike getting shot by a bullet, you were back in action in a short time.

  Just in time to do whatever tasks your capturers had in store for you.

  I soon found out I was wrong about Nevsky. He was bad, but his daughter was even worse.

  “Tell me in simple terms what is going on,” I told the swine who had gotten me into this mess. “Don’t keep lying to me. If I’m going to die, I want to know why.”

  He sighed. He did it well, as if he really regretted what he had done to me instead of just regretting that he had gotten himself entangled in his own scheme.

  “Your tone suggests—”

  “That I’d like to murder you. Stop the bullshit. Try to focus on that quality you find so elusive—the truth. Maybe if I knew what was going on, I could help us get out of whatever they have planned.”

  Another sigh. He looked as if he had aged years—hard years—since I saw him in Venice just yesterday. Definitely not a good sign for what they might have in store for me.

  “You’re right. No need for secrets now, is there?”

  “Start from the beginning.”

  “It appears that the prodigal daughter has plans of her own,” Lipton said.

  “Meaning she’s been one crooked step ahead of you. Go on.”

  “Such cynicism for one so young. But I suppose it’s a modern thing with young women.”

  “Henri—”

  “Okay, yes, let’s say it began with one of those happy coincidences. Finding myself persona non grata in most of the civilized world after that frightful misunderstanding about those Iraqi artifacts—”

  “That were looted.”

  “I contacted Nevsky in Russia, knowing that the Russkies often march to a different drummer than the rest of Europe.”

  “In other words you had a crooked scheme and needed backing.”

  “Yes … and no. Nevsky had talked to me about the Shroud many times in the past. He was incensed that the Vatican refused to turn it over despite the fact that it had obviously been stolen from the Eastern Church. However, there was nothing that could be done because the Shroud’s provenance had been so clouded. Deliberately so, as I’m sure you now know.

  “Anyway, when things were going so extremely well for me, I had no interest in the Shroud. But when I contacted Nevsky, that was all he would talk about. He had arranged to be present for the viewing that was planned for the new cardinal and told me that he would give anything if he could just pick up the Shroud and carry it out of the chapel, back to Russia, where it now belongs.”

  I got it.

  “Oh, yes, I can see how those words would affect you. Pick it up and carry it out. That meant only one thing to you—stealing it. So you decided to fulfill Nevsky’s wildest dreams for him. At a price.”

  “I suppose there is some truth in that analysis. And that’s where the coincidence comes in. When I was in Beirut a couple of months ago, visiting an acquaintance I had once done business with—”

  “A smuggler who hid you when you were on the run from the police in your own country.”

  “I learned he had a passion for … shall we say photographs of a particularly vulgar nature?”

  I could only think of one type of photograph that would be considered vulgar in the sexually permissive world we live in.

  “Child porn. Is that what you have on Victorio?”

  He shook his head. “You always amaze me with that quick mind and sharp tongue of yours. It’s too bad you can’t keep a leash on either. You remind me of a barking dog when you attack me. One of those small, annoying ones with a loud, annoying bark and sharp little teeth.”

  “It’s not my cleverness that gets my mind working in your presence. It’s the fact that being around a crook like you has sharpened my wits about crimes and perversions.”

  He patted me on the knee. “My dear, let’s not throw rocks about perversions.”

  I blushed with false modesty and shut up and listened.

  “As I was saying, I learned that my friend in Beirut had exchanged e-mail files with our friend Victorio.”

  “So, with Nevsky hot to walk away with the Shroud, you decided to blackmail Victorio into helping you steal it.”

  “Yes, it was god-sent, if you will excuse the pun. Nevsky wanted the Shroud. Victorio had a weakness that could be exploited. I had a connection to both of them. It was all a perfect fit.”

  “And where do I come in? Why did you send me on a wild-goose chase that led to the Shroud?”

  “Bread crumbs, my dear, bread crumbs.”

  Comprehension exploded in my head. “Oh, you son of a bitch. You were setting me up.”

  “You understand, of course, it’s not personal. We simply needed someone to temporarily mislead the police. More as an assurance to Victorio that he would not be the fall guy once an investigation was launched. Naturally, you’d be provided an alibi so that when the police came knocking, you wouldn’t be arrested.”

  I gaped. “You expect me to believe that you’d incriminate me and then make sure I had an alibi? Before you even lured me into this mess, last year you helped to completely destroy my reputation, sending me crashing to the bottom—”

  “That was a different matter.”

  “Then instead of giving me a helping hand, you set me up to take the rap for what would be the most incredible theft of art in history.”

  “Not in all history—merely since Crusader knights sacked Constantinople about eight hundred years ago.”

  “You worthless, conniving, miserable—”

  “Please, all true, I’m sure, but at the moment recriminations are unnecessary. I suspect we may be counting our life span in hours, not days. Perhaps we should focus more on the situation we are confronting and spend less time crying over spilled milk.”

  Spilled milk? He called destroying my own damn life spilled milk?

  If I’d had a gun …

  I got control of myself. He was right—we had to deal with the present. I’d kill him later.

  I dropped my head to my chin and covered my ears with my hands. Unbelievable. I had walked right into his scheme to steal the Shroud. They had me asking questions about the Shroud in three countries and then show up at the chapel. Bread crumbs. I dropped them all the way to the Shroud itself. Victorio had stepped in and seen to that.

  I had been lured to Turin so I would be photographed by the chapel’s security cameras.

  Victorio was filmed alongside me. But what had he said? He told his superiors I was a wealthy woman who was talking about making a significant endowment to the Shroud’s maintenance.

  Ah, yes. That would be the story he gave the police after the heist: That I had lied to him to get access to the Shroud. Why? So I could learn the security setup and come back later …

  “How did you plan to steal it?” I asked.

  “An excellent plan, I can assure you. I seem to have a knack for such thing
s. Quite simple, really. I actually learned the technique from the Russian police. When Chechen terrorists took over a building in Russia, the police used the building’s air-conditioning to pump in a gas that rendered everyone inside almost instantly unconscious.”

  “I read about it.” I recalled it occurred when terrorists took over a theater full of people. Unfortunately, the gas killed a lot of people, too.

  “Victorio has attached a small, pressurized tank of gas, no bigger than a personal oxygen tank, to the chapel’s air system. He merely goes in, puts on his mask, opens up the tank’s valve. There are only two guards on duty at night. When both are asleep, he will turn off the security system and remove the Shroud from its box. Folded, it’s small enough to be carried out in a gym bag.”

  “Does Victorio know he might kill the guards with the gas? Isn’t that what happened in Russia?”

  “My dear, what kind of beast do you take me for?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “The gas being used will put the guards to sleep, not kill them. You have my word of honor on that.”

  “Well that’s certainly reassuring. What about me? How did you plan to frame me?”

  “Actually, I wasn’t going to frame you, my dear. I was going to invite you to participate and receive—”

  “You liar! You weren’t inviting me into anything. You needed someone to put the blame on, period. What I don’t get is how you planned to have me go through with the theft. Besides being filmed by the security cameras today, you need me to be picked up by the cameras when the actual theft—

  “Wait a minute. I get it. It’ll be nighttime. When the heist is coming down, you’ll have someone walk in wearing my clothes, maybe with a hat on and a wig. Maybe even you, Henri? We’re about the same size, aren’t we?”

  I was on a roll. “That’s what you were going to do. After Victorio put the guards to sleep, you would show up—dressed in my clothing and wearing a wig so the security camera could once again get a shot of me.”

  “Preposterous.”

  I could tell from his face that I had nailed it. At nighttime, wearing my overcoat with hood, it would be easy for him to pull it off. But my analysis of the scheme had a glaring omission.