In His Image

by James Beauseigneur

  “Really, I’d like to go,” Decker insisted. “Actually, that’s why I came here. I may be a little rusty, but I read the article in Science and I’ve got experience with most of the equipment you’ll be using.”

  “What you read was just the beginning.” Goodman paused long enough to frown and then continued, “Well, I’m not going to refuse help, but you know that you have to pay your own way: airfare, hotel, food, transportation?”

  “Yeah, I know,” Decker answered.

  “But why?” asked Goodman. “You haven’t gone and gotten religion, have you?”

  “No, nothing like that. It just sounds like an interesting project.” Decker realized it wasn’t a very convincing answer, so he turned the question around. “Why are you going?” he asked. “You don’t believe in any of this stuff.”

  “Of course not! I just want a chance to debunk this whole thing.”

  Decker refocused the conversation. “So, can I come along or not?”

  “Yeah, well, I guess so; if you’re sure about it. I’ll just need to talk to Eric,” he said, referring to one of the team’s de facto leaders, Eric Jumper. “We’ll have to get your name added to the list of team members. The security on this thing is really tight.”

  So, just that quickly, Decker was in. “The right place at the right time,” he whispered to himself. It would take forty-eight years for him to realize it had been far more than that.

  After breakfast the team moved to a conference room. Decker stayed close to Goodman so that as they passed through the security check, Goodman could make sure Decker’s name was added to the list of those allowed in.

  Inside, team leader John Jackson called the meeting to order. “In order to get approval to work on the Shroud,” Jackson began, “we’ve had to promise the authorities in Turin that we would maintain the strictest security. Obviously, our biggest problem is going to be the press.” Decker struggled not to smile. “The best approach is simply not to even talk about the Shroud to anyone who’s not on the team. As far as anyone outside of this room is concerned, we’re still waiting for permission to do the testing.” 3

  Eric Jumper took the floor when Jackson finished. “Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for coming. It’s really a thrill to have a chance to be associated with such a distinguished group of scientists. Now, we’ve gotten most of the protocols for the proposed experiments, but those we haven’t received need to be in by the end of this coming weekend.” Jumper turned on a slide projector in the middle of the room. The first slide was of a full-scale mockup of the Shroud that had been manufactured by Tom D’Muhala, one of the scientists. Superimposed over this pseudo shroud was a grid. “Each of you will be given a copy of this,” Jumper said. “The purpose of the grid is to help organize the experiments we’ll be doing. Because of the time limitations, we’ll want to do as much simultaneous work as possible. What we have attempted to do is to lay out the work to take the best advantage of the Shroud within the environmental, time, and space parameters required for each experiment.” 4

  The slides that followed detailed the experiments that would be conducted. Most were designed to determine whether the Shroud was a forgery or possibly the result of some natural phenomenon. Every type of nondestructive test that Decker could imagine was included. One experiment that had been rejected was Carbon 14 dating, because the then-current method would have required that a large piece of the Shroud be destroyed to yield an accurate measurement.

  When Jumper was finished, he introduced Father Peter Rinaldi, who had just returned from Turin. Rinaldi, Jumper said, had come to explain the politics involved in Shroud research. Decker wasn’t sure what this meant, but it soon became clear that many fingers were wrapped very tightly around the ancient cloth.

  Rinaldi was part of something called the Holy Shroud Guild, which had been formed in 1959 for the purpose of propagating knowledge about the Shroud and supporting learned investigation. He began with a brief history. The first verifiable ownership of the Shroud, Rinaldi said, was to a French knight named Geoffrey de Charney sometime prior to 1356. For reasons that have never been explained, the de Charney family gave the Shroud to the House of Savoy, in whose possession it remained for the next four hundred years. In the late sixteenth century the House of Savoy became the ruling family of Italy and in 1578 the Shroud was moved to Turin, where it has remained ever since in the Cathedral of San Giovanni Battista.

  Additionally, Rinaldi explained, there is a group called the Centro di Sindonologia, or the Center for Shroud Studies, which is itself part of another organization, the four-hundred-year-old Confraternity of the Holy Shroud. Neither of these groups has ever had any official standing in regard to the ownership of the Shroud, and neither of the groups really does anything. But after so many years, and with the names of so many bishops and priests attached to their rosters, no one dares question their right to exist.

  The point of Father Rinaldi’s talk was that many personalities, most of whom were quite impressed with their own importance, would have to be taken into account and many egos would have to be stroked in order to gain access to the Shroud.

  When Rinaldi finished, Tom D’Muhala, the creator of the pseudo shroud, went over the logistical details. Immediately following the gathering, a trial run of the planned experiments was to begin in a warehouse at D’Muhala’s plant in the nearby town of Amston. The next two days would be spent choreographing the entire sequence of experiments. All of the team’s equipment would be taken out, tested, and replaced in crates, ready for shipment to Italy. It would be a full-scale attempt to debug the scientific procedures prior to going to Turin.

  As the team left the conference room they were swarmed by a dozen reporters. Ignoring shouted questions, the team members moved quickly to a bus waiting to take them to D’Muhala’s plant. One reporter—a bearded man about twenty-five years old with a misshapen, protruding forehead—moved along the side of the bus, trying to get a closer look at one of the passengers. Decker watched his fellow members of the press. As far as he knew, it was just dumb luck he had gotten on the Shroud team. Still, he found it hard not to be a little smug.

  His attention was drawn to the stare of the bearded man outside the bus. As their eyes met, Decker recognized his friend, Tom Donafin from the Waltham Courier. Tom’s lower jaw dropped in a brief gaping stare that changed quickly to a friendly and congratulatory smile. Obviously impressed, he shook his head in what was only slightly exaggerated disbelief while Decker smiled back like the proverbial cat that had just swallowed the canary.

  Entering the warehouse at D’Muhala’s plant where the team would work, Decker was impressed and a bit surprised at just how much planning, labor, and expense had gone into this effort. Around the room sat scores of wooden crates carefully packed with several million dollars’ worth of cutting-edge scientific equipment on loan from research institutes around the country. In the center of the room, the pseudo shroud was spread out on a steel examination table that had been specially designed and constructed by D’Muhala’s engineers to hold the Shroud firmly in place without damaging it. The surface of the table was constructed of more than a dozen removable panels to allow inspection of both sides of the Shroud at the same time. Each of the panels was covered with one-millimeter-thick gold Mylar to prevent even the tiniest of particles from being transferred from the table to the Shroud.

  For a moment no one spoke. All eyes scanned the equipment and the pseudo shroud. Finally, Don Devan, a computer and image-enhancement scientist from Oceanographic Services, Inc., broke the silence, “Not bad!” he said. “This looks like real science!” 5

  The individual members of the team spread out to the crates and sought out equipment that each would be using in his experiments. Decker found ample opportunities to make himself useful. A few hours into their work, as he was helping to place a large microscope back into its crate, two scientists—Ray Rogers and John Heller—stood by an adjacent crate, discussing their experiment. Their work would involve the o
nly true sampling from the Shroud, which would be done by placing strips of tape onto the ancient cloth. When the tape was pulled up, small fibers would be removed with it.

  Decker listened as Ray Rogers explained the plan to Heller. “To obtain samples for the chemical investigation, including your blood work, we’ll be using a special Mylar tape with a chemically inert adhesive developed by the 3M Corporation. We’ll apply the tape to the Shroud using a known amount of force—” 6

  “How will you do that?” Heller asked.

  “Well,” Rogers said as he reached into one of the packing crates, “our friends at Los Alamos have designed an ingenious little device that measures applied pressure.” He unpacked the device and demonstrated it to Heller.

  “Nice, but how will you know how much pressure to apply?” Heller asked.

  “Well,” said Rogers, “that’s why we’re here.”

  Decker followed the two men as they squeezed in around the crowded table. After the necessary preparations Rogers made some guesstimates. “We know the Shroud is at least six hundred years old,” he said, “so it’s probably quite a bit more fragile than this. I’d guess to be safe we should probably use, oh, about ten percent of the pressure we’re using here.” The decision, Decker realized, was a just a guess, but he wasn’t about to utter a discouraging word at this point. “Next, I’ll remove the tape from the Shroud,” Rogers continued, “and mount each piece on a slide. Each slide will be numbered and photographed, and then it will be sealed in a plastic case to ensure it remains uncontaminated.”

  For the next two days the team continued to work, rehearsing their procedures. Decker tried to prove himself a useful member of the team, and at times he forgot all about being a reporter. He even began to wonder if choosing journalism over medicine hadn’t been a mistake after all.

  2

  The Shroud

  Northern Italy

  BARELY MORE THAN MISPLACED STARLIGHT, the lights of Milan peeked dimly through the window as the jet flew over northern Italy. Decker studied the outline of this landlocked constellation as he considered the consequences of the job ahead. Like Professor Goodman, Decker was certain the team’s research would prove that the Shroud was nothing more than a cheap medieval forgery. The problem was he knew there were a lot of people who would not appreciate having their bubble of faith burst by the truth, including Elizabeth’s mother, a devout Catholic. So far his relationship with her had been pretty good. How would she take all of this? I guess we’ll be spending Christmas with my mom for the next few years, he mused.

  Father Rinaldi, who had gone directly from the meeting in Connecticut to Turin, had chartered a bus to take the team the 125 kilometers from Milan to Turin. By the time the bus pulled into their hotel it was midnight and though it was only 7:00 P.M. in New York and 4:00 P.M. on America’s West Coast, everyone decided to go to their rooms to try to get some sleep.

  The next morning Decker, who was never very good at adjusting to different time zones, got up before the sun. Because of the time difference going east, he should have wanted to sleep in. But it made no difference; he was ready to get up and logic was not involved. As the morning sky grew light, he looked out from his hotel window down Turin’s long, straight streets, which intersect at nearly perfect ninety degree angles. On either side of the streets were homes and small stores occupying one- and two-story buildings, none of which appeared to be less than two centuries old. Beyond the city, to the north, east, and west, the Alps pierced the atmosphere and clouds on their way to the sky. Elizabeth would love this, he thought.

  Decker left the hotel for some early morning sight-seeing. Despite the city’s proximity to the mountains he encountered very few hills on his walk. About a quarter of a mile from the hotel he came to the Porta Palatina, an immense gateway through which in 218 B.C. Hannibal, after a siege of only three days, drove his soldiers and elephants into the Roman town of Augusta Taurinorum, or ancient Turin. As he walked, the wonderful smells of morning began to drift from the open windows of houses along his path. The sounds of children playing followed. And then, suddenly, the timeless atmosphere of the city was crowded into the present by the droning of a television in someone’s kitchen. It was time to head back to the hotel.

  As he entered the hotel lobby, Decker heard the voices of team members. The breakfast meeting had already begun, and the conversation centered around a problem with the equipment that the team had brought from the United States. Without interrupting, Decker tried to piece together what was going on. Apparently the equipment had been sent in the name of Father Rinaldi with the intention of avoiding exactly the sort of problems with customs that the team was now experiencing. Unfortunately, though Rinaldi was an Italian citizen, he had been in the U.S. too long and back in Turin too short a time to be eligible to bring the equipment into the country without a sixty-day impoundment. Rinaldi and Tom D’Muhala had already been sent to the customs office in Milan for some face-to-face diplomacy and arm twisting.

  After breakfast, several members of the team decided to walk the half mile from the hotel to the royal palace of the House of Savoy, which for centuries had been the residence of the kings of Italy. It was in a suite of rooms in the palace that the team would be conducting its investigation of the Shroud. When they reached the palace they were stunned to find tens of thousands of people standing several abreast in lines that stretched for over a mile to the east and west. The lines converged at the Cathedral of San Giovanni Battista, which is adjacent to the palace. In the cathedral, in a sterling silver case sealed within a larger case of bullet proof glass filled with inert gasses, the Shroud is kept. Two or three times a century the Shroud is taken out and put on public display, drawing pilgrims from all over the world. The crowd that day represented only a small fraction of the three million people who over the past several weeks had traveled from all over the world to see what they believed to be the burial cloth of Christ.

  The team was escorted through a courtyard into a restricted part of the palace. At every corner were guards armed with small European-made machine guns. The team paused as they entered, awestruck with the size and splendor of their surroundings. There was gold everywhere: on chandeliers, on picture frames, on vases, inlaid into carvings in the doors and other woodwork. Even the wallpaper was gold-gilt. And everywhere were paintings and marble statuary.

  At the end of a long, opulently decorated hall was the entrance to the princes’ suite, where the team would conduct their experiments. Beyond the ten-foot doors was a fifty-by-fifty-foot ballroom, the first of seven rooms that made up the suite. The second room, which is where the Shroud would be placed for examination, was as magnificent as the first. Crystal chandeliers hung from ceilings painted in classical frescos of angels and swans and biblical scenes.

  Somewhere in the life of ancient buildings that remain in use comes a point at which time and progress can no longer be ignored. Whether it is the carriage house that becomes a garage or a closet that is converted to a phone room, some aesthetics ultimately yield to the demands of modern convenience. In the princes’ suite the evidence of compromise was a bathroom and electricity. The bathroom was a strange arrangement of two toilets and five sinks. This would double as the team’s photographic darkroom. The only electricity was provided by a wire just slightly thicker than a standard extension cord, which led to a single outlet about an inch away from the baseboard. The team’s equipment would require far more power than that.

  “We’ll need to run electric cables up here from the basement,” said Rudy Dichtl, the team member with the most hands-on electrical experience. “I’m going to see if I can find a hardware store.”

  Decker told Dichtl that he had noticed a hardware store while walking that morning. He wasn’t entirely sure of the location, but thought he could find it again. “Great,” said Dichtl. “If they have what we need, I could use some help lugging it back.”

  For the next two days there was little to do but sightsee. Despite Father Rinaldi’
s best efforts, customs in Milan simply refused to release the team’s equipment. Decker took advantage of the time to get to know some of the other team members. His intent was both to be friendly and to gather background information for the series of articles he planned to write. Everyone spoke freely of their thoughts about the Shroud and how each had become involved in the expedition. Decker was confident he’d be able to sell the story to the wire services. An exclusive like this could really boost his career.

  All of this, of course, was based on the assumption that the team got their equipment. Finally, Decker decided they’d waited long enough. If Milan didn’t release the equipment soon, this expedition really was going to end up as a wild goose chase. Wednesday morning, when Father Rinaldi came into the hotel lobby to report on his progress, Decker was waiting for him. “Any luck, Father?” Decker asked.

  “None,” responded the priest.

  “Well,” Decker said, “I think I know how we can break this logjam.”

  “Please, go on,” Rinaldi encouraged.

  “Now, this might not be the way you like to do things, but right now Turin is crawling with reporters covering the Shroud exhibit. If you held a press conference and announced that we can’t do our research because a bunch of petty bureaucrats won’t let us have our equipment, you could cause quite a bit of embarrassment for our friends in customs.”

  By now Eric Jumper and John Jackson had come into the hotel lobby where Decker and Father Rinaldi were talking. “Anyway,” Decker said, “if you embarrass these guys a little, I bet they’ll come through with the equipment.”

  After talking it over, Rinaldi, Jackson, and Jumper saw the merit in Decker’s idea but modified it to be somewhat less confrontational. Rinaldi called the minister of commerce in Rome and pointedly explained that if the problem was not resolved and the equipment delivered immediately, the American scientists would not be able to begin their work. If that happened, Rinaldi continued, he felt it likely that the international press would be quite interested and would probably hold the minister of commerce personally responsible for preventing the scientific testing of the Shroud of Turin. Rinaldi was put on hold for about five minutes; obviously the threat had some effect. When he returned to the phone the minister agreed to have the equipment shipped to Turin.