Sign of the Cross

by Glenn Cooper

  There were other Holy Nail relics, of course, and Rahn did not dare ignore any of them. In Germany, there were relics in Trier, Essen and Cologne. In France, there was the reliquary of the Holy Nail in Paris at the Notre-Dame Cathedral and another in Toul. Poland had a Holy Nail relic shown within a jeweled monstrance at Wawel Castle.

  His disappointments began when he tested the Holy Nails with the best provenance to Empress Helena. At Monza and Siena, the thorns remained cool. He had the highest of hopes for the bridle relic in Milan because of Eusebius’s reference. But sadly, neither the thorns nor the bridle glowed.

  Before leaving Italy, he journeyed to San Giovanni Rotondo in Foggia to pay his obligatory visit to the young stigmatic, Padre Pio, and following that brief but interesting diversion, with notes in hand, he resumed his travels and headed to France. Germany was next and, when he found nothing illuminating, he made his way to his last stop, Wawel Castle on a bend of the Vistula River in Kraków, home to a highly decorative nail reliquary. Repeating his timeworn routine, neither the thorns nor the nail threw off color or heat.

  Rahn glumly returned the thorns to their metal box and stared at the reliquary.

  A man addressed him in Polish.

  Rahn turned to see that a young fellow with a museum badge on his lapel was addressing him.

  Rahn replied, ‘Sorry, German.’

  The man smiled and continued in German. ‘I was saying that it is marvelous, is it not?’

  ‘Yes, quite.’

  ‘I am a guide here,’ the man said. ‘This is our most popular exhibit.’

  ‘Do historians believe this is really a True Nail?’ Rahn asked.

  ‘Who is to know about these things?’ the man said. ‘Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Well, that’s the official line. I think it’s not a true relic.’

  Rahn didn’t know why he lingered to chat. Perhaps it was because he was travel-weary, perhaps because the man was quite dashing and handsome and he was lonely.

  ‘I’m a scholar from Berlin,’ Rahn said. ‘I’ve been on a mission to catalogue all of the known Christ relics throughout Europe.’

  ‘Only Holy Nails?’ the man asked.

  ‘No, all of them, but I’m especially interested in nails.’

  ‘An interest of mine, as well,’ the man said, beaming. ‘I’m studying for my degree in history, the history of the Church, in particular. My thesis work involves holy relics. I work here as a guide to make some money.’

  Rahn thought he detected a spark of sexual chemistry and was emboldened to ask,

  ‘When you’re finished with work, could I buy you a drink? I would love to pick your brain.’

  They started in a café at the city center, continued over supper at Rahn’s hotel and then repaired to Rahn’s bed, where they paused only to make love before resuming their equally passionate discussion of relics.

  Glistening with sweat the man asked, ‘So, you’ve been to all the usual places in Italy, France, Germany and Poland. I’ll bet you haven’t been to Romania.’

  ‘You’re right about that,’ Rahn said, breathing hard and reaching for a cigarette.

  ‘It’s not so well known, but a small church in the town of Cluj-Napoca has a fragment of iron thought to be from Helena’s third nail. I’ve never seen it but if you intend your paper to be thorough, you might add the place to your itinerary.’

  ‘I might do just that,’ Rahn said, ‘although I’m enjoying Kraców more than I anticipated.’ He offered the young man a puff of his cigarette. ‘I suppose it would do little harm to linger here a day or two longer.’

  Rahn was whisked into Himmler’s office the moment he presented himself to his staff. Himmler had been conducting a meeting with party officials and, as they were unceremoniously being shown the door, they must have wondered about the identity of the small man with a black fedora.

  Himmler refused to engage in small talk. He furiously waved Rahn’s telegram and said, ‘I haven’t received a single communiqué from you since this obtuse wire from Vienna. As far as I knew, you’d fallen off the face of the earth. Where the hell have you been?’ Rahn’s serene expression and insouciant attitude seemed to fan Himmler’s flames.

  He casually dipped into his satchel while saying, ‘I have traveled throughout Europe, Herr Himmler. I have seen great cities and middling towns, magnificent cathedrals and humble churches. There are only two venues that will be of interest to you, Vienna and Cluj-Napoca in northwest Romania. Great interest.’

  ‘Out with it, Rahn,’ Himmler hissed. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

  Rahn theatrically placed the two thorns on Himmler’s desk, told him the story of his time at the Imperial Treasury, and showed him the scars on his fingers.

  ‘I am confident in my conclusion that both these thorns were present in the actual crown of thorns thrust onto Christ’s head by the Romans on his day of execution.’

  Himmler refused to touch them, even with Rahn’s tweezers.

  ‘Now you will understand why I didn’t dare to communicate with you directly,’ Rahn concluded.

  Himmler’s eyes were burning as brightly as the thorns had that day in Vienna.

  ‘Where did you go after Austria?’ he asked.

  Rahn laid out a map he’d prepared with all the sites visited and the relics tested.

  ‘Alas, all the most famous relics I tested were negative and I must conclude they are fakes,’ he said.

  Himmler was impatient. ‘Romania! What about Romania?’

  ‘A source in Poland told me of a church said to have a relic, a piece of one of the three nails that Empress Helena discovered in Jerusalem. This particular church and this relic were unknown to me. To my knowledge, there are no recorded mentions of the Romanian site in any reference materials on Holy Relics. Nevertheless, I decided to extend my journey and venture to Romania. I felt there was nothing to lose. The church of St James is an unassuming church in a quiet sector of the city. When I visited, there were no visitors and no worshippers. I circled the interior of the church twice without finding the relic and eventually knocked on the rectory door. The rector was a genial fellow who was happy to show me what I had come to see. I understood why I had missed it. There was a plain urn in a chapel nook that had no labels or inscriptions. He explained to me that no one really believed that the object in the urn was a relic of any importance, certainly not a piece of a True Nail. Its provenance was lost to time. It had simply always been there. He showed it to me. It was no more than a fleck of iron sitting on a wad of cotton. Just then, a parishioner entered and engaged the man in conversation, allowing me the opportunity to test the iron with a thorn. Look.’

  Rahn held up the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. Both were scarred.

  ‘What did you do?’ Himmler asked.

  ‘When the rector returned, I told him I was a collector of relics and even though this piece of iron was a nonentity it interested me and I would pay for it. Well, he took me on a tour of the church, showing me the state of disrepair. The roof leaked, there was damp, the windowsills had rot. So I made him an offer, a generous offer of hard currency.’

  ‘And? And?’

  ‘And here it is!’ Rahn said, opening a small box.

  Himmler squinted over his wire-rimmed spectacles and had to remove them and pick up a magnifying glass to have a good look.

  ‘It’s tiny,’ he said.

  ‘Tiny but important. Please observe.’

  Rahn had come prepared. He used his tweezers to lift the iron fleck from the box and place it on the Himmler’s desk, on the obverse of a silver five Reichsmark coin, specifically on the inscribed steeple of the Potsdam Church. With a pair of insulated tongs – he had learned his lesson – he picked up one of the thorns and held it over the coin.

  Immediately the thorn changed color from brown, to orange, to fiery red and so did the iron fleck. When he moved the tongs away, the natural colors returned.

  Himmler was awestruck. ‘May I try?’

  Himmler repeate
d the experiment then went quiet. He rose, paced and sat again.

  ‘This is astonishing, Rahn. You’ve done well.’

  ‘Thank you!’ Rahn said, his chest swelling.

  ‘I will need to inform the Führer but not yet. I need a more dramatic demonstration. You will return to Vienna immediately. Here is what I want you to do.’

  Rahn listened to his orders and protested. ‘Clearly, Herr Himmler, I cannot do this by dint of stealth or subterfuge.’

  ‘I realize that,’ Himmler said. ‘I will contact the Austrian foreign minister, Egon Berger-Waldenegg, and introduce you as an official newsreel journalist for the Reich. I will tell him that this kind of cultural outreach will demonstrate that the German and Austrian peoples have common interests that transcend our political differences. It will be a gesture of our peaceful intentions. He is not a strong man. He’s an optimist. I think he’ll go for the bait.’

  He told Rahn to be prepared to receive further instructions, but when Rahn saluted and turned to leave Himmler told him there was one more item to discuss.

  ‘You haven’t told me about the Italian monk, Padre Pio?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Rahn said. ‘Our contacts in Mussolini’s government were able to secure an audience in Foggia. My time was brief but I came away with a distinct point of view on the matter. I do not believe the monk is a genuine stigmatic. Therefore I would say that any further inquiry with respect to the Greek book I discovered at the Vatican Library, the one I referred to in my report by the code, VAT. GR. 1001, is not warranted.’

  ‘Could you be mistaken?’ Himmler asked.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Rahn said, ‘but even if I am wrong, the monk vehemently denied any relevant exposures as described in the book. I consider the case of Padre Pio to be closed.’

  Rahn could hardly believe that he was holding the Holy Lance in his hands. It felt heavy and powerful. The director of the museum, Herr Mueller, had insisted he wear cotton gloves before handling it. Had Mueller not been hovering like a mother hen, he might have been emboldened to remove the gloves to feel the sharp Roman steel against his bare skin.

  They were in a museum storeroom, behind the Imperial Treasury curator’s office, preparing for the newsreel shot. Rahn was posing as the presenter. He had brought a camera operator and a lighting man from Berlin. Rahn gently placed the lance on its red velvet wedge on a plain worktable. With a flick of a switch, it was bathed in the strong incandescence of the lighting rig.

  ‘If you could stand just here, Herr Mueller,’ Rahn said, ‘I will conduct an interview and we will capture it on film.’

  ‘What will you ask?’ Mueller asked.

  ‘Typical questions about the artifact. However, your precise answers do not matter. We will add a soundtrack later, with your approval, of course.’

  ‘And this will be shown throughout Germany?’

  ‘Indeed it will.’

  With the lance as a backdrop, Rahn went through the motions of an interview with Mueller until the cameraman said he was satisfied.

  ‘Is that all?’ Mueller asked.

  ‘Yes, this was quite satisfactory,’ Rahn said. ‘We shan’t keep you longer, Herr Mueller. You must be a busy man. We will pack our equipment and leave.’

  Mueller checked his watch. ‘It’s time for lunch. You and your men must join me in my private dining room.’

  Rahn politely tried to get out of it. All he wanted to do was film a demonstration for Adolf Hitler, a powerful demonstration of the lance glowing in the presence of the thorn and the nail fragment he had brought with him. Then he would leave.

  But Mueller was like a hungry dog with a bone. He insisted and Rahn had to capitulate.

  ‘Very kind of you. Very well,’ he said, ‘can we leave the lance here while we dine? We will need to film some close-ups before we are done.’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ Mueller said. ‘We will keep the door locked. The curator will keep an eye on things.’

  Rahn went for his satchel but Mueller assured him with a laugh that if the lance was safe, his bag too would be safe.

  Some thirty minutes later the curator unlocked the door and entered the storeroom to look for a box of artifacts he wished to catalogue. The lance was where they had left it. But he clucked disapprovingly when he saw that Rahn’s satchel was sitting on top of the specimen box he needed. He picked it up and looked around for a new place to put it. There was a bit of room on the worktable beside the Holy Lance. When he placed it there it touched the tip of the relic.

  Rahn was placing a forkful of roast pork in his mouth when he heard the blast and felt the shudder of the explosion.

  Mueller sprang up, throwing his napkin aside and went to the hall where museum workers were running in the direction of the blast.

  Rahn and his men followed along and as he hurried toward the curator’s office he knew in his heart what must have happened.

  The curator’s office was blackened with smoke and strewn with rubble. The door to the storeroom was blown out. Rahn stumbled through the office and into the storeroom. There he found Mueller sobbing in the corner, standing over the curator’s bloody, severed head. Rahn tried to maintain his composure but it was difficult. He was unaccustomed to carnage and destruction but knew he would have to make an accurate report of what had happened. The storeroom windows and most of the exterior wall were obliterated. The camera and lighting gear were twisted and wrecked. His satchel was nowhere to be seen. The wooden table upon which the lance had rested was a smoldering pile of sticks and splinters.

  And there in the rubble was a glint of gold.

  Rahn still had the gloves in his pocket. He put them on, reached down and hesitantly lifted it. It was still hot. He approached the director.

  ‘Herr Mueller, the lance is safe.’

  Another museum worker pointed toward the fractured radiator separated from the broken wall and shouted, ‘Gas!’

  Clutching the Holy Lance, Mueller ran out of the room with the others following on his heels.

  ‘So they thought it was a gas explosion?’ Himmler asked Rahn.

  Rahn had left the Imperial Treasury only hours earlier, having proceeded with haste to the airport in Vienna for a flight to Berlin.

  ‘That was their conclusion, yes.’

  ‘But we know the truth,’ Himmler said.

  ‘We do.’

  ‘The thorn was lost in the blast?’ Himmler asked.

  ‘It was. The nail fragment too.’

  Himmler held up the box with the second thorn. ‘So this is the only true relic we know of.’

  ‘That and the lance.’

  ‘The lance isn’t ours, yet. One day it will be.’

  ‘I don’t doubt you, Herr Himmler,’ Rahn said.

  ‘When we do come to possess it, I also want, no, I demand we also possess a Holy Nail. Not merely a tiny piece of a nail, but a whole relic. Imagine the deadly power of combining a Holy Thorn and the Holy Lance and a Holy Nail! Then we’ll have something that can do far more than blow up a few rooms in a museum, Rahn. We’ll have something the world can only imagine.’

  Rahn nodded grimly.

  ‘You, Rahn, you will have no other tasks within the Ahnenerbe than finding me a True Nail. Forget about the Grail. Forget about all else. Succeed and you will prosper. Fail and your well-known peccadillos will be the death of you.’

  Rahn licked his dry lips, bowed slightly, and left Himmler alone.

  The small man immediately went to his side table and removed the cover from his typewriter. He inserted a sheet of paper and began to type.

  Heinrich Himmler

  Reichsführer-SS und Chef der Deutschen Polizei

  7 Dezember 1935

  An den

  Adolf Hitler

  Führer und Reichskanzler

  Mein Führer!

  We, at the Deutsches Ahnenerbe, have made a discovery of great importance concerning the extraordinary power of certain historical artifacts associated with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. In short, it
may be possible to create a weapon of unimaginable power that the Reich might use to change the course of human events. In this report I shall endeavor to describe our findings along with a proposed plan of action.

  SIXTEEN

  Cambridge, Massachusetts

  Cal unlocked the door to his office at Divinity Hall, opened the blinds to let sunlight in, and deposited a box of mail on his table. He scanned the desk and credenza; his Aquinas papers and books were where he had left them in precise piles and stacks.

  ‘Miss me, St Thomas?’ he asked the inanimate objects, settling happily onto a chair armed with a letter opener.

  Before long, Father Murphy went past the open door and did a theatrical double take. ‘As I live and breathe,’ he exclaimed. ‘The professor returneth.’

  ‘I was afraid if I was gone any longer your idleness would have turned to sloth,’ Cal said. ‘Come on in.’

  ‘You’re confusing me with your other students. I’ve been a lean, mean, thesis machine.’

  ‘What do you have to show me?’

  ‘Chapter eight. Complete and uncensored.’

  ‘Shoot it to me and stop by at three.’

  ‘Don’t you want to get your bearings first?’

  ‘What I want is to get back in the saddle and blot out unpleasant memories of the Vatican.’

  Murphy returned in the afternoon and plunked himself down across from Cal who was reading the last page of his new chapter.

  ‘What do you think?’ the priest asked.

  ‘It’s what I expect from you, Joe. Excellent scholarship, original insights, good writing.’

  ‘Only good?’

  ‘Well, more than good for someone with English as a second language.’

  ‘Watch it,’ Murphy cracked, ‘or I’ll send chapter nine in Gaelic.’

  ‘I do want to drill down on your passage from Gregory’s Dialogues, book two, chapter four, paragraph …’

  ‘Paragraph two, I expect you’re driving at,’ Murphy said, ‘where Benedict says, “Do you not see who it is that draws this monk from his prayers?”’