The Shroud

by Harold Robbins

  “You frame me … okay … now what happens to me?”

  “I had no intention of—”

  “Stop it.” I held up my hand to ward off another lie. “It won’t work, Henri. I can see it. You weren’t just going to frame me … you dirty bastard, you were going to kill me.”

  I stared at him in disbelief.

  “You don’t really believe that I would—”

  “My God, you are a monster. You had to kill me to protect yourself. You couldn’t leave me alive to tell the police the truth. That’s what was supposed to happen here tonight.”

  He wouldn’t look me in the eye.

  I shook my head. “You’re not just a monster, but the devil himself, aren’t you. Does Victorio know I’m to be killed?”

  No answer, but I could fill in the blanks.

  Victorio wouldn’t know I was to be killed. Killing me would simply have been a surprise he dropped on Victorio. That would make the man all the more pliable since he’d be facing a murder charge along with his other sins.

  The more I thought about it, Lipton also wasn’t the type to leave loose ends like a witness … or share gains. Ultimately, after he had the Shroud in his hands, he would stop killing Victorio slowly with mental anguish and finish him off quickly.

  “I have one last question, Sir Henri.”

  I was surprised at my calmness. Maybe it was because I had used up all my facility to be enraged. Or maybe I had just given up, period.

  “How did Nevsky plan to deal with the fact there would be a worldwide uproar when he suddenly started displaying the Shroud?”

  “You underestimate the Russian boldness for pure audacity. First, he was not going to advertise the fact he had the Shroud. He would keep it hidden and present it later at an opportune time. No doubt with some babble about having rescued or ransomed the Mandylion from thieves. You understand, of course, once it crossed back to the East it would revert to its original name.”

  “I see. He’d suddenly pull the Image out of the bag at an opportune time. Maybe at the time he planned to take over the Russian government? Using the Shroud as his banner in front of his army as Russian czars once did with the Image?”

  “I believe it’s safe to arrive at that conclusion.”

  “The man is crazy.”

  “Of course, it’s all pure insanity, but look at Hitler, Stalin, Saddam. They were all madmen.”

  The bedroom door opened and Yuri entered.

  I stared at him and fought to keep back the tears. I should have wanted to rip out his heart. Instead, I was hurt.

  “Our executioner has arrived,” Lipton said.

  48

  Yuri grabbed my arm and took me into the bathroom. We stood facing each other.

  “You make me curious,” I said, “curious about human nature … about your nature. We made love. Didn’t that mean anything to you?”

  He had left a part of himself inside me. I hoped that I had given him something, too—an emotional attachment, a feeling that what had happened between us was something special.

  I locked eyes with him and refused to let him look away, refused to let him avoid the terrible reality.

  “Why are you going to kill me?” I asked.

  He shook his head. He appeared agonized. I didn’t have any sympathy for him.

  “You look distressed, Yuri. I hope the idea of killing me isn’t upsetting you too much.”

  “Maddy … you don’t understand—”

  “Understand what? That you’ve lied to me? Betrayed me? That I’m going to be murdered by some crazy Russians with a grudge against the world? What part of that am I supposed to understand?”

  “Listen to me. We’re not Russian; we’re Chechen. We are a small nation held captive by—”

  “Stop it! I don’t want to be a victim of your damn politics. No one does. It’s your war. Go kill your enemies; kill each other, not innocent people.”

  He grabbed my arms and held me. “Listen to me. These others. They want to … to—”

  “Murder me.”

  “I won’t let them do it.”

  “Then why don’t you just let me go?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t do that. But I won’t let them hurt you.”

  “Let me go. I won’t call the police.”

  “Yes you would. You’re compulsively honest. I’ll do—”

  “Isn’t this sweet.”

  Karina stood at the doorway. She was smiling—the kind of sadistic grin you get from an executioner with a grudge.

  “It’s party time,” she said.

  49

  The chapel of the Shroud.

  I was brought back to it, along with Lipton, prisoners to a gang of terrorists who thought they were patriots—and maybe they were, to their own people back home. To me they were just murderers and I was to be one of their victims. Collateral damage, the terrorist experts call it. There was nothing collateral about it to me.

  Lipton didn’t enter into my thoughts. He could rot in hell as far as I was concerned, but I didn’t waste any energy thinking about him.

  Until he interrupted my thoughts.

  “His name is actually Ramzan,” Lipton said.

  “Who?”

  “Your friend, the one you call Yuri. His real name is Ramzan.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I realized very soon that it wasn’t Nevsky who was having me watched, but his daughter. I turned the tables on her, had her watched, spread around some money, found out she was involved with the Chechens and had a lover named Ramzan. I must admit, you surprised me when you began a relationship with him.”

  “That’s why you tried to kill me in Urfa.”

  He shrugged off the guilt. “Of course. You appeared to have become part of whatever Karina and her Chechen group had planned. You met with a man who had gone to the Urfa scholar earlier and tried to get information.”

  “Yuri was the man who pretended to be British?”

  “If not him, one of his people. I decided to cut my losses at that point.”

  He made it sound like I was a bad business investment. He was a swine, but I no longer had the energy to remind him. My mind was working overtime on the issue of staying alive. Yuri’s statement that I wouldn’t be killed didn’t help. Despite any good intentions on his part, Karina wasn’t going to let me live and neither would the other terrorists. And when it came down to it, I wasn’t sure he would—or could—either.

  From what Lipton told me, the Chechens had a strict code that justified the death of others when their existence threatened the goals of the organization. The man sent to kill me in New York had been one of their own people but still was set up to be killed instead for violation of their code. Getting rid of me would be much easier to justify.

  Lipton and I sat outside the chapel in the back of a van with our hands cuffed and a Chechen guarding us. Victorio had gone in earlier wearing a gas mask. I assumed he went in to get the Shroud, but Lipton said I was wrong.

  “They won’t remove the Shroud until they turn back on the security cameras and parade us past them so there is evidence we were the thieves.”

  Naturally, he knew infinitely more about their plans than I did—they were working off of his scheme.

  Victorio came out of the chapel and joined us in the back of the van. He was just about as much a prisoner as we were, but I don’t think he realized it. I had to get him on my side. Despite the lay brother’s moral failings, he was still religious—and protective of the Shroud.

  “They’re going to kill all of us and destroy the Shroud,” I told him.

  He stared at me, slack-jawed. “What? No, they’re going to take it back to Chechnya—”

  “They’re Muslims, Victorio.”

  “Jesus is one of their prophets. It’s sacred to them, too.”

  “It’s more important as a strike against the West. They want to make a statement about it to the world, to bring attention to their cause.”

  I was lying, of cours
e. I presumed the “statement” to the world they were going to make was the publicity for stealing it. But Victorio wasn’t in any state to think rationally.

  He looked to Lipton.

  “Yes, they’re going to destroy it.” Lipton nodded.

  Lipton was no fool—his devious eyes had already taken on a new shine. “The ultimate act of terrorism, striking at the most precious symbol of our Savior. They are first going to commit acts of infamy upon it.”

  The Chechen guarding us didn’t understand our English but he picked up on the fact that something was wrong. He snapped something at us in Chechen and pointed his gun at my head to get across the fact that I should shut up.

  I did.

  But I hoped I had at least woken Victorio up to the fact that the Shroud was in danger as well as his own life. He had probably given up on life, anyway. He had struck me as rather suicidal. But he was a true believer in his faith and the Shroud was the most sacred icon of it.

  The Shroud was very important to me, too, although I admit that my devotion to my faith had always been weak.

  I felt an intimate connection with the Shroud after studying it and learning how it had survived two thousand years of pagans and war and greedy Crusaders. It had a serene resting place where it was safe and should be left there, both for its own protection and so future generations could give it the reverence it deserved.

  Another fifteen minutes went by before the door of the van opened again.

  Yuri nodded at Victorio. “The air is okay; the guards have been cuffed. We’re going back in, this time all the way to the Shroud.”

  We were uncuffed and it was obvious why—it wouldn’t do to parade us past the security cameras as prisoners.

  “Don’t try to run,” Karina said. “Our stun guns are set on full charge. They will fry your insides and you’ll die in agony.”

  As we got out of the van, I brushed against Victorio and hissed, “Judas.”

  It had the same effect as if I’d slapped him.

  We were escorted into the chapel, Lipton, Victorio, and me bareheaded, the others wearing hoods and looking down to avoid exposing their identities to the cameras. Besides Karina and Yuri, two Chechens went with us.

  I assumed that I would be killed in the chapel so the police would find my body and conclude I was killed by my coconspirators. I didn’t have any real hope that Yuri could save me.

  As we entered the chapel, Victorio stared at me, his face a mask of agony.

  I had really gotten to him with the Judas accusation. I didn’t know if there was anything he could do—if any of us broke and ran, we’d just be killed sooner, but he was the one they were relying on to use the codes that would keep the alarm from activating and going off.

  When Victorio got to the door, he swung around and asked Karina, “What are you going to do with the Shroud?”

  “Open the door.”

  “You’re not Christians. Tell me what—”

  She hit him in the face with the stun gun, not with an electric shock, but a physical blow.

  “Put in the code.”

  He hesitated, then tapped in a code. The red door light flashed three times instead of turning a green color to signal the door was unlocked.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  “I-I-I forgot the c-code,” he stuttered.

  “Bastard. Hold him.”

  The two Chechens held Victorio. She reduced the charge in the stun gun to less than lethal and told them, “Release him.”

  As soon as they did, she poked the stun gun into his groin and pressed the trigger. He screamed and went down.

  “That’s just a sample,” she said. “Get up and open the door or next time I’ll fry your balls.”

  The Chechen guards got him to his feet and walked him around for a moment before taking him back to the door. This time the code he entered worked.

  We went into the sanctuary, past the displays of photographs, the gold statue of Saint George fighting the dragon.

  “Is there any alarm attached to the Shroud container?” Karina asked Victorio.

  “The police are coming,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I can’t let you destroy it. I put an emergency code in the first time. The police will be on their way.” He spoke calmly.

  “You’re lying!”

  I could tell he wasn’t lying. Victorio had a look of serenity on his face, the first expression of being at peace I’d seen on him.

  Karina realized it, too. She screamed something in Chechen to a guard and the man put his pistol to the back of Victorio’s head and fired.

  She swept her hand at Lipton and me and shouted again.

  I didn’t need a translator to tell me that she’d ordered them to kill us.

  Yuri shouted, “No!”

  He turned, drawing his gun and fired as the guard pointed his pistol at me. The other Chechen stared in surprise at Yuri. The surprise only lasted a second before they started firing their weapons, exchanging shots with Yuri. Both men went backwards as bullets hit them.

  Yuri went down and started back up, holding his stomach.

  Screaming like a wild animal, Karina went for Yuri as he started up. She touched him with the stun gun on full power as I was grabbing the gold statue of Saint George.

  I hit her with the statue as hard as I could when she turned around to face me with the stun gun. It was a solid blow, directly across the forehead.

  I rushed to Yuri and knelt beside him.

  “Please don’t die,” I silently whispered.

  I was begging him to come back to life when the police barged in.

  50

  “You are an embarrassment to my country, my church, and my faith in humanity,” prosecutor Angela Palma said.

  I couldn’t disagree with the assessment. The slender, dark-haired, fortyish woman with the Turin prosecutor’s office had my persona nailed perfectly.

  I was her prisoner—and I wasn’t feeling very good about myself, either.

  I had been in custody for the two days since the police had come into the chapel and forcefully torn me away from Yuri. I had held on to him, not believing he was dead. After that, I had cried a lot—in between interrogations in which I tried to brave it out.

  My eyes were red and puffy now as I sat in the woman’s governmental office—a dull room with gray-white walls, an old-fashioned gray steel desk, and hard, uncomfortable chairs—to hear my sins. I’m sure I looked like hell even without the crying bouts, anyway—I hadn’t showered or combed my hair since I’d been arrested.

  “Your partner Henri Lipton has disappeared. We can’t find him.”

  “Lipton got away?” I shook my head in wonder and disgust. “He’s not my partner. He set me up. He—”

  “Stop!” She waved both hands in front of her as if she were warding off bees. “I’ve heard it from you repeatedly. You are either the biggest liar in the world or the most naïve and stupid—”

  “All that and desperate. So broke I didn’t listen to my common sense. Haven’t you ever been desperate?”

  She gave me a smug face. “Only since I’ve been assigned to this case.”

  “I demand to see the American ambassador.”

  More hand waving. “You don’t want to see anyone. It would only complicate your situation.”

  That threw me.

  I was facing charges of having broken into a cathedral to steal the most hallowed religious object on the planet, drugging guards, probably even murder because of the shoot-out, and she thought I could complicate things by asking my country for help?

  She was probably right—the response from the embassy would no doubt be “hang her.”

  I knew I should be on my feet shouting my innocence and demanding my rights, whatever they were in Italy, but I just sat there and stared at her because I was too tired, too hurt and empty inside to fight back.

  She stared at me for a long moment and I broke the silence.

&nb
sp; “Just hang me. I don’t care. Nobody will believe me anyway. I wanted to protect the Shroud, not steal it. If it hadn’t been for me, the theft would have gone through.”

  “This is what the security cameras indicate.”

  I wasn’t too tired to hear that.

  “Then you know I’m innocent.”

  She raised her eyebrows and I modified my stance.

  “Innocent of wanting to steal the Shroud,” I said. “I’m sure that I’m no different than you and about everyone else on the planet, I’ve committed a few sins. Lipton lured me into doing research about the Shroud because I was desperate and he’s the devil, but even if I had been part of the scheme to steal it—which I wasn’t—I would never have gone through with it after standing before it.

  “I can’t really explain it, but when I saw the Shroud I felt this aura emanating from it.” I shook my head. “I can’t explain it.”

  She nodded. “I was fortunate to see it at the last public display. It truly radiates a glow that brings one closer to God.”

  I leaned forward in my chair and tried to get up the energy to fight back. “Look, if you know I saved the Shroud and didn’t plan to steal it in the first place, why are you still keeping me a prisoner?”

  “We know you helped stop the actual theft of the Shroud; we don’t know that you didn’t scheme with your partner—”

  “He’s not—”

  “Whatever.” She waved. “For all we know, the dispute between you and Signore Lipton may have been a falling-out between thieves. Whatever it was, it no longer matters.”

  “Why doesn’t it matter?”

  “You are an embarrassment,” she said, leaning forward to glare at me. “For you, that is an advantage.”

  “Okay.”

  I had no idea as to what she was talking about, but nodded my head as if it made great sense to me.

  “You will have to sign an agreement.”

  “Ah … of course.” What the hell was she talking about?

  “It is in a sense what Americans would call a plea agreement.”

  My head nodded again. “A plea agreement.”

  That made absolutely no sense to me. As far as I knew, a plea agreement was an agreement to confess to a crime in return for some benefit.