The Brotherhood Of The Holy Shroud

53

MARCO HAD NO TIME TO SAY MORE. A BUL-let from out of the shadows hissed past his head. Other shots hit two of his men. Bakkalbasi's men seized advantage of the sudden chaos to take cover and open fire themselves.

The carabinieri took cover as best they could. Marco crawled along the floor, attempting to get behind the Turks, but he was cut off when someone shot at him again from the shadows. He twisted around, trying to spot where the shots were coming from. Then, almost immediately, he heard a woman shouting: "Watch out, Marco, they're up here! Watch out!"

Ana had come out of hiding. For what had seemed forever, she'd concealed herself, almost unmoving, from the three priests, whom she'd seen-with the grace of God and St. Gemma-before they saw her, after following the tunnel from Turgut's rooms. Padre Yves whirled around, his eyes wide: 'Ana!"

The young woman tried to run, but Padre Joseph caught her. The last thing she saw was a fist aimed at her head. He hit her so hard she lost consciousness.

"What are you doing?!" exclaimed Yves de Charny.

There was no answer. There couldn't be. Shots were coming from every direction, and the priests turned back to their targets, pouring gunfire into the chamber beyond.

It was only minutes before yet more men-those who had pursued the pursuers all along-burst onto the scene. They soon killed old Turgut, his nephew Ismet, and two of Bakkalbasi's men; they did not intend to stop until all their adversaries were dead.

The echoing reports of the gunfire were so loud that pebbles and rubble began to fall from the ceiling and walls, but the firing continued unabated from all sides.

Ana began to regain consciousness. Her head felt as though it had been split open. She staggered up and saw the three priests right in front of her, still shooting. Picking up a good-size rock, she crept forward toward them, and when she was close enough she lifted the rock over her head and brought it down hard on the head of one of Yves's comrades. She had no time to do anything else-the other turned to shoot her. But as he did, stones rained down from the ceiling and knocked him to his knees.

Yves de Charny had rounded on Ana with unconcealed rage, and now he, too, was hit by falling rocks. The reporter started stumbling, running, trying to put distance between herself and the priest and also get out from under the debris falling now in terrifyingly huge clumps and boulders. The blasts of the gunshots and the growing rumble and crash of the collapsing roqf disoriented her-she couldn't tell which way she'd come in. She felt panic rising, threatening to engulf her, as she heard Padre Yves right behind her, shouting, and Marco's voice, too, but their words were drowned out by a deafening roar as a whole section of the tunnel came down.

She stumbled and fell. Darkness overtook her.

Ana shrieked as she felt fingers close on her arm.

"Ana?"

"My God!"

She didn't know where she was, but the absence of light was total, all-encompassing. Terrifying. Her head hurt and her body felt bruised all over, as though she'd been beaten. She knew that the hand grasping her arm belonged to Yves de Charny; he offered no resistance as she pulled away. She could no longer hear Marco's voice or the sound of shooting; the silence was absolute. What was happening? Where was she? She screamed, and screamed again, louder, and then sobbed.

"We're lost, Ana, we'll never get out of here."

Yves de Charny's voice broke, and Ana realized that he was hurt.

"I lost the flashlight following you," the priest said. "We're going to die in darkness."

"Shut up! Shut up!"

"I'm sorry, Ana, truly sorry. You didn't deserve to die, you didn't have to die."

"You people are killing me! You're killing us all! So just shut up!"

De Charny was silent. Ana groped in her purse, miraculously still strapped across her body, and pulled out the penlight and box of matches. She was overjoyed to find them, and then her fingers touched her cell phone. She turned on the small light and saw the handsome face of Padre Yves contorted in pain. He was badly injured.

Ana got up and inspected the cavity they were trapped in. It was not very big, and she could see not the smallest chink in the wall of rock that had buried them. She shouted, and her voice boomed back at her within the small space. Nothing else. It struck her then that indeed she might not get out of there alive.

She propped up the light and sat down beside the priest. Realizing that he had accepted his fate, she decided to play her last card as a reporter. In the shadows that surrounded them, Padre Yves didn't see her take her cell phone out of her purse. The last call she'd made had been to Sofia. God, she hoped she'd answer this time. And she hoped there was a signal that could take their voices out beyond the walls of this otherwise mortal cave they were in. All she had to do was hit the redial button……

With a kitchen towel she'd taken from Turgut's apartment, she pressed hard against a wound she saw just below Yves's rib cage. The priest grimaced and looked up at her with glassy eyes.

"I'm sorry, Ana."

"Yeah, so you said. Now tell me why-what's behind all this insanity?"

"What do you want me to tell you? What difference does it make, if we're both going to die?"

"I want to know why I'm going to die. You're a Templar, like those friends of yours."

"Yes, we are Templars."

'And who were the others, the ones that looked like Turks, the ones with the porter?"

"Men sent by Addaio."

"Who's Addaio?"

"The leader, the pastor of the Community of the Shroud. They want it…"

"Want the shroud?"

"Yes."

"Want to steal it?"

"They think it belongs to them. Jesus sent it to them."

Ana thought he was delirious. She brought the light to his face and could see the hint of a smile on his lips.

"No, I'm not crazy. In the first century a.d. there was a king in Edessa, King Abgar. He had leprosy, but he was cured by the shroud Jesus had been buried in. That is what the legend says. And that is what the descendants of that first community of Christians believe, the Christian community that came together in Edessa. They believe that someone brought the shroud to Edessa and that when Abgar wrapped himself in it he was cured."

"But who brought it?"

"One of Jesus' disciples, according to tradition."

"But the shroud has been through so much since then-it left Edessa hundreds and hundreds of years ago."

"Yes, but since the shroud was stolen from the Christians in Edessa by the troops of the emperor of Byzantium-"

"Romanus Lecapenus."

"Yes, Romanus Lecapenus-they swore they would not rest until they'd recovered it. The Christian community in Edessa was-is-one of the oldest in the world, and they have not spared one day in trying to recover their sacred legacy, as they see it, just as we have never stopped trying to prevent them from doing that. The shroud no longer belongs to them, and we are sworn to protect it for all the faithful."

'And these men without tongues-they're part of this community?"

"Yes, they are Addaio's soldiers, young men who consider it an honor to sacrifice themselves in order to recover the shroud. They have their tongues cut out so they can't talk if they're captured by the police."

"That's horrible!"

"They believe that was what their ancestors did, to protect the shroud in their time. They've been after it for centuries, and we've been there to stop them. It's funny-we could wipe them out overnight, but we never have…… They're Christians, too, devout in their way, and we ourselves know too well the evils of such persecution… and now our fates have become intertwined." De Charny's head was spinning, and he could barely see Ana's face in the darkness.

He sighed with pain and went on. "Marco Valoni was right. The fires, the accidents in the cathedral-all staged… mostly by the community to cause confusion when they go after the shroud, sometimes by us to attract the authorities before they can succeed. We've always stopped them, but we try to protect them too. They know too much about us now……"

Ana had propped the cell phone next to him. She didn't know whether Sofia had answered, whether someone was hearing their words. She didn't know anything. But she had to try-she couldn't let the truth die with her.

"What do the Templars have to do with the shroud and this community?" she pressed him. "Why do you care about it so much?"

"We bought it from Emperor Balduino-it's ours. Many of our brothers… many… died to protect it."

"But it's a fake! You know that carbon-fourteen dating has proven that the cloth dates only to the thirteenth or fourteenth century."

"The scientists are right, the cloth is from the late thirteenth century, to be exact. But what about the pollen grains stuck to the cloth-grains exactly like those found in two-thousand-year-old sediment in the area of Lake Genezaret? The blood is authentic too-both venous and arterial. Oh, and the cloth, the cloth is Eastern, and on it scientists have found traces of blood albumin around the outline of the marks where Jesus was scourged."

"So how do you explain that?"

"You know how, or have been about to discover it. You went to France, you were at Lirey."

"How do you know that?"

'Ana, do you think there is anything you've done that we don't know about? Any of you? We know it all, everything. You're right-I am a descendant of the brother of Geoffroy de Charney, the last precept of the Temple in Normandy. Mine is a family that has given many of its sons to the order."

Ana was fascinated. Yves de Charny was making a sensational confession-one that might well die with them in their stone tomb. But whether or not she would ever publish it, at that moment she felt a surge of pride, knowing that she had managed to disentangle the mystery.

"Go on."

"No… No, I will not do that."

Ana felt a rush of power and utter certainty as she clasped the priest's hands, almost as though someone else was speaking to the Templar through her. "De Charny, you are about to stand before God. Do it with a clear conscience; confess your sins, bring the light to bear on the shadows you have lived behind, the mysteries that have cost so many lives."

"Confess? To whom?"

"To me. I can help you unburden your conscience and give sense to my own death. If you believe in God, He will be listening."

"God has no need to listen to know what is in the hearts of men. Do you believe in Him?"

"I'm not sure. I hope He exists."

Padre Yves said nothing. Then, grimacing, he wiped the pearls of sweat off his forehead and squeezed Ana's hand.

"Francois de Charney, spelled with an e at that time, as you've discovered, was a Templar knight who lived in the East for many years, since the time he was a young man. There is no need for me to tell you all the countless adventures of this ancestor of mine-just that a few days before the fall of Saint-Jean d'Acre in the Holy Land, the Grand Master of the Temple charged him with safeguarding the shroud, which was kept in the fortress along with the rest of the Templar treasures.

"My ancestor wrapped the shroud in a piece of cloth very similar to that of the shroud itself, and he returned with it to France as he had been ordered. To his amazement and the amazement of the master of the Marseilles Temple, when they unwrapped the original shroud, they found that the cloth it had been wrapped in also had the figure of Christ imprinted on it. Maybe there is a, shall we say, 'chemical' explanation for this, or we can believe that what happened was a miracle- whatever the case, from that moment on, there were two holy shrouds, with the true image of Christ on both of them."

"My God!" breathed Ana. "That explains-" "That explains that the scientists are right when they say that the cloth in the cathedral in Turin is from the thirteenth or fourteenth century-even if they can't understand the appearance of those pollen grains or blood residue-but it also means that those who believe that the shroud contains the true image of Christ are correct as well. The shroud is sacred; it contains residues, 'remains,' if you will, of Jesus' calvary and his image-that is what Christ looked like, Ana; that is His true image. And that is the miracle with which God honored the House of Charney, although later another branch of the family took our relic-history records this-and sold it to the House of Savoy. And now you know the secret of the Holy Shroud. Only a handful of the elect in the entire world know the truth. This is the explanation of the inexplicable, of the miracle, Ana, because it is a miracle."

"But you say there are two shrouds: the authentic one, which was bought from Emperor Balduino, and the other one-this one, I mean the one that's in the cathedral-which is something like a photographic negative of the authentic one. Where is that one? Tell me."

"Where is what?" The Templar's voice was growing weaker, much of his remaining strength expended in relating the remarkable story.

"The authentic shroud, the one the shroud in the cathedral is a copy of."

"No, it's authentic too."

"Yes, but where's the other one, the first?" cried Ana.

"Even I, a de Charny, do not know that. Jacques de Molay sent it off to be hidden. It is a secret known by only a very few. Only the Grand Master and the six masters know its location now."

"Could it be in McCall's castle in Scotland?"

"I don't know. I swear it."

"But you do know that McCall is the Grand Master, and that Umberto D'Alaqua, Paul Bolard, Armando de Quiroz, Geoffrey Mountbatten, Cardinal Visier-"

'Ana, quiet, please… the pain is terrible… I'm dying.".

But she wouldn't-couldn't-stop. "They're the masters of the Temple, aren't they, Yves? Which is why they never marry or engage in any of the other activities of men with as much money and power as they have. They stay out of the spotlight, avoid publicity. Elisabeth was right."

"Lady McKenny is a very intelligent woman, like you, like Dottoressa Galloni."

"You people are a sect! A dangerous, deadly sect."

"No, Ana, no. Strong measures are taken, yes… but only when absolutely necessary. Measures that we-I-sometimes question. But you should know the good of it too. The Temple survived because the accusations made against it were false. Philippe of France and Pope Clement knew that but they wanted our treasure for themselves. And along with the gold, the king wanted to own the shroud. He thought that if he could get it, he would become the most powerful sovereign in Europe. I swear to you, Ana, that down through the centuries, we Templars have been on the side of good. We have played a role in many fundamental events- the French Revolution, Napoleon's empire, Greece's independence, and the French resistance during the Second World War. We have helped move democratic processes forward around the world-"

Ana shook her head. "The Temple lives in the shadows, and there is no democracy in the shadows. Its leaders are extremely wealthy men, and no man gets wealthy without paying a moral price."

"They are wealthy, but theirs is a fortune that does not belong to them-it belongs to the Temple. They administer it, manage it, although it's also true that their own gifts have made them wealthy in their own right-but when they die, everything they own goes to the order."

"To the order?"

"To a foundation… at the heart of the Temple's finances, of everything we are and do. We are everywhere… we are everywhere," Padre Yves repeated, his voice now little more than a whisper.

"Even in the Vatican."

"May God forgive me."

Those were the last words that Yves de Charny spoke. Ana cried out in terror when she realized he was dead, his eyes staring sightlessly into infinity. She closed them with the palm of her hand and began to sob, asking herself how long it would take her to die as well. Maybe days, and the worst thing would be not dying but knowing that she was buried alive. She brought the telephone to her lips.

"Sofia? Sofia, help me!"

The telephone was dead. There was no one there.

'Ana, Ana! Hang on! We'll get you out!"

The connection had been broken just seconds earlier. The battery had probably run out on Ana's phone. Sofia had heard the shoot-out in the tunnel over the walkie-talkies, then Marco and the carabinieri shouting that the tunnel was going to come down. She hadn't hesitated a second-she ran for the street. But she hadn't reached the downstairs door when her cell phone began to ring; she thought it was Marco. She froze when she heard the voices of Ana Jimenez and Padre Yves. With the telephone held tight to her ear so as not to miss a word, she stood stock-still, hardly aware of the men rushing past her, racing to save the others trapped in the tunnel.

Minerva found her sobbing, cell phone in hand. She put her arms around her and shook her gently. "Sofia, please! What's happening? Calm down!"

Sofia was barely coherent, able to blurt out only a small part of what she had heard.

Minerva led her outside. "Let's go to the cemetery-we can't do anything here."

There were no official cars in sight. The two women waved down a passing taxi. Tears continued to stream down Sofia's face as Ana's cries rang in her mind.

The taxi stopped at a light. Just as it started up again, the driver shouted. They looked up to see a massive truck headed straight at them. The noise of the crash shattered the silence of the night.