Sign of the Cross

by Glenn Cooper

  They made nearly a full circuit of the piazza in silence. Outside the Church of Sant’Agnese in Agone, a little boy lost control of his rubber ball and his father ran after it. Cal stopped it with his shoe and tossed it to the young man. When he caught it, Cal noticed a tattoo of a compass on his right arm, bisected and half-obscured by his T-shirt sleeve.

  ‘Thanks,’ the man said.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Cal muttered. As the man withdrew he whispered to Irene, ‘Look at his right arm.’

  ‘Yes, so what?’ she said.

  ‘Look at what his sleeve is half-covering.’

  ‘Christ almighty,’ she said. ‘Giovanni’s been looking at someone’s tattoo.’

  They returned to the Penta boardroom and threw themselves into sorting through more boxes of photos. While they worked they talked about what to do with their new information.

  ‘Maybe we should show our drawing to Cecchi,’ Irene said.

  ‘And tell him what, that we’re getting psychic messages from your brother?’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll take it as actionable intelligence, do you?’

  She thought about it and said, ‘For sure he’ll say we’re crazy.’

  ‘Let’s try to get more data before we risk blowing our credibility. Here’s what I’ll do. When we get back to the hotel I’ll go online and see if I can find an image match to the insignia of some SS unit during the war or afterwards. If we come up with something, maybe we can figure out a way to bring it to Cecchi’s attention, without invoking mysticism.’ Then he picked up a stack of photos and said, ‘Come on, only twelve boxes to go.’

  By the time they had to leave the Penta offices for the evening, they had found not a single one of The Secret History photos. There were still five unopened boxes so they arranged to return in the morning to finish the job.

  They walked back to the hotel in dazzling sunshine and immediately went to Cal’s room where he got out his laptop and Irene first called her mother in Francavilla and then Sister Vera in Monte Sulla to see if there was any news from the police. When she was done she asked Cal if she could turn on the TV news.

  The coverage of the search for Giovanni was relentless but unrevealing. A local police spokesman only confirmed that there had been no investigative leads and that the Carabinieri ROS unit had been consulted. To expand their thin reportage, the camera crew camping out in Monte Sulla had to resort to interviewing people on the street to elicit all too predictable expressions of concern for the welfare of their priest.

  ‘Anything?’ she asked, clicking off the TV.

  ‘Nothing yet.’ Cal said. ‘Lots of spears, lots of SS lightning bolts, nothing that combines them. Help yourself to a beer, wine, something stronger, from the minibar.’

  ‘I don’t really like alcohol but I’ll have a juice if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Sure. You know, you’re the second woman I’ve met in a month who doesn’t drink.’

  ‘You find that unusual?’ she asked.

  ‘In my experience, yes. It’s probably a sample bias. I don’t tend to gravitate to teetotalers.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint.’

  ‘Didn’t mean it that way. It’s more of an indictment of me. Does your dislike of alcohol extend to handling it?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then could you pour all the little vodka bottles in there into a glass?’

  She made a face and had a look. ‘There are three of them.’

  ‘That’s a disappointment but three will have to do for now.’

  She handed him a half-full tumbler.

  ‘I hope your liver doesn’t fail before we find Giovanni.’

  He wasn’t sure she was joking.

  After a while he cursed his screen and pulled out his mobile phone to take a picture of his drawing of the spear.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve got a phone app for a reverse image finder. You compare a target image to the Google image database. Worth a shot.’

  In under a minute he was groaning. ‘Nothing. Not even close,’ he said. ‘Want to get a bite to eat?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m tired. Maybe I’ll get a salad from room service and go to sleep early.’

  He showed her to the door. ‘Have a good rest. Meet you in the lobby same time tomorrow.’

  Irene’s room was on the fourth floor overlooking the small, bustling piazza behind the Pantheon. She had turned in early with the windows open, but she awoke just before nine at night because of the noise. She closed the windows, climbed back into bed and soon drifted back to sleep, but minutes later she began to gasp for air.

  She sat bolt upright, her heart beating out of her chest, fighting for her breath.

  ‘What in God’s name is happening?’ she sputtered.

  The small man was holding a thrashing Giovanni down on his bed while Gerhardt poured water over the towel covering the priest’s face.

  ‘Where is it?’ Gerhardt demanded. ‘Tell me where it is.’

  He pulled away the towel and allowed Giovanni so sit up, choking and coughing and frothing at the mouth and nose.

  ‘It’s unpleasant, yes?’ Gerhardt said. ‘I will do it again and again and again until you talk to me. Be reasonable. It’s so easy to tell me what I want to know. Will you?’

  ‘Go to hell,’ Giovanni rasped.

  ‘Such language from a man of the cloth. Let’s go for another swim, shall we?’

  Irene ran up the hotel stairwell in her nightdress and robe, coughing all the way. Outside Cal’s door she could hear that he too was coughing. Clad only in jogging shorts he responded to her urgent banging. They stared at each other’s florid complexions for a moment before he pulled her into the room.

  ‘You too?’ he asked.

  ‘It was awful. I was choking,’ she sobbed. ‘What are they doing to Giovanni?’

  He sat her down and poured her some water but she seemed to instinctively fear it.

  ‘They probably want something from him,’ he said. ‘They’re trying to get him to talk.’

  ‘We’ve got to help him.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m scared to go back to my room,’ she said.

  He had two beds and pulled back the cover on the unused one.

  ‘You can stay here,’ he said. ‘I’ve been told I don’t snore.’

  In the morning, Irene awoke before Cal and tiptoed back to her own room to dress. In the hallway a maid saw her leaving in her robe and heading to the stairwell. Irene cast her eyes downward and blushed. Cal met her later in the lobby and on the way to Edizione Penta they stopped at a café for a coffee.

  ‘Did you sleep ok?’ he asked.

  ‘Not very. You?’ she said sheepishly.

  ‘Not very.’

  Two hours later, they were in the Penta boardroom on the second-to-last box with hope fading.

  ‘This box has quite a few photos of Greek manuscripts,’ Irene said, interrupting a long silence.

  Cal got up to look over her shoulder and snatched one out of her hand.

  ‘This is it,’ he said triumphantly. ‘VAT. GR. 1001. Procopius. Keep going. It’s the right box.’

  Cal was proficient at Medieval Greek calligraphy and he scanned the photographed plates quickly. Every other page or so had marginalia, mostly the Latin scribblings of the librarian, Alamanni, who primarily seemed to be concerned with omitting the pornographic references to the Empress Theodora, a woman whom Procopius clearly detested.

  Irene could tell from the appearance of the calligraphy which ones were from The Secret History. She announced that there were only five photos left in the series.

  ‘They didn’t photograph every single page,’ Cal mumbled. ‘We need to get lucky.’

  And then they did.

  The very next photo caused Cal to emphatically strike the table with his fist.

  ‘Yes!’

  She came over to sit next to him and he pointed to the
passage that had him so excited.

  ‘It’s here,’ he said. ‘Book Seventeen. Procopius is writing about the crimes of Empress Theodora. Here’s the passage:

  When she confined him in Egypt, after he had suffered such humiliations as I have previously described, she was not even then satisfied with the man’s punishment, but never ceased hunting for false witnesses against him. Four years later, she was able to find two members of the Green party who had taken part in the insurrection at Cyzicus, and who were said to have shared in the assault upon the bishop.

  See here? Next to the word, bishop, this is the marginalia in Greek that could be a fourteenth-century transcription of a note Procopius might have added to the original edition.

  Eusebius, bishop of Cyzicus, who showed the wounds of Christ when he held in his hands the holy nail of Empress Helena.

  ‘Giovanni,’ she whispered. ‘My poor, poor Giovanni. They’re torturing him to find the relic. But why do they want it so badly?’

  Cal shook his head and said, ‘I wish we knew.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  They found a quiet restaurant and sat at a rear table, a copy of the marginalia photo lying next to the plate of bread.

  ‘What should we do now?’ she asked.

  He told her about an idea he’d had while sleepless in the middle of the night. Someone he knew might be able to help with the identification of the SS symbol. Before they’d left for the publisher that morning, he’d placed a call and he was waiting for a response.

  ‘I was also thinking in the middle of the night,’ she said.

  ‘I thought you were sleeping,’ he said.

  ‘I thought you were sleeping too.’

  ‘I wish you would have said something,’ he said. ‘I wanted to talk.’

  ‘I’m not in the habit of spending the night in the room of a stranger,’ she said. ‘I suppose I don’t know how to conduct myself.’

  He broke a bread stick. ‘How can you consider a guy you’re sharing visions with a stranger?’

  She laughed. ‘An excellent point.’

  ‘So what were you thinking about?’

  The waiter came to take their order and when he left she answered.

  ‘I’m not a scientist, Cal, I’m a science teacher. I teach young people a basic science curriculum: biology, chemistry, physics. To be sure, I know many things about a variety of scientific topics, but my knowledge is not deep enough to understand highly technical subjects, particularly in the realm of physics.’

  ‘Why physics?’

  ‘When I saw Giovanni walking down the street in Francavilla – at the same time I knew he was in Monte Sulla – I did some research on bilocation and I found that Padre Pio was also said to bilocate. I didn’t spend a lot of time on it but there were some things I read that caught my attention. There were articles proposing that bilocation and other psychic phenomena could be explained using principles of quantum mechanics. Have you ever heard of something called entanglement?’

  ‘I’ve been more than a little entangled a few times in life.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘This is clearly not what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Then no. What is it?’

  ‘I could try to explain but I might not do it justice. I know someone who is better qualified to answer questions and help us decide if we can find an explanation for what’s been happening to Giovanni and us.’

  ‘You think it’s worth our time?’

  ‘Seeking knowledge is always worthwhile, don’t you think?’

  Cal had been to the Sapienza University of Rome before but always to visit the department of history, culture and religion. He never imagined he’d have a reason to set foot in the physics department.

  Irene had been a student at the university for two years at a point in her life when she wanted to be a research biologist. But her aspirations had bumped against her conscience and she decided to abandon the university and return to Francavilla to be attentive to her lonely and morose mother. A career as a science teacher in Abruzzo would have to suffice. During her time at the university she had taken a physics course with Professor Enzo Calipari. When she called he hadn’t remembered her of course – there had been so many students over the years – but he responded to her phone call with a gracious and immediate invitation.

  Calipari was bald with a head shaped like a bullet and the wiry body of a cycling enthusiast. As it happened, he had done a postdoc in theoretical physics at Harvard many years earlier and Cal quickly established that they had a few faculty acquaintances in common.

  He apologized for the crammed quarters of his office and took a few minutes to complain about the way professors were treated in Italy. Once he moved his bicycle into the hall, there was room for the three of them to sit.

  ‘I apologize for not recalling you, Signorina Berardino,’ he said.

  ‘How could you?’ she said. ‘I was a student who sat in the middle of the lecture hall and never asked questions.’

  ‘I have to say, when you called this morning, I was intrigued by your question and after I searched your name and discovered your connection to Padre Gio, I’m even more intrigued. Of course, I’m aware of what happened to your brother and I sympathize with your plight.’

  ‘Thank you. It’s been a difficult time.’

  ‘But you’ve come to learn about quantum entanglement,’ the physicist said, ‘and I’m happy to serve as your humble guide.’

  ‘It’s probably a crazy notion that my brother’s situation is related to quantum physics but it never hurts to talk.’

  ‘So true, so true,’ Calipari said. ‘We talk for a living. Now, a little background. Quantum entanglement is much talked about lately, but it isn’t a new principle. It derives from the equations at the center of classical physics and quantum mechanics. It concerns the behavior of subatomic particles, such as electrons or photons that have interacted in the past and then moved apart.

  If two quantum particles are entangled, they become, in effect, two parts of a single unit. What happens to one entangled particle happens to the other, no matter how far apart they are. Let’s say there were two particles, electrons perhaps, which were once near each other and are now separated. And maybe that separation isn’t a micron or a meter, but maybe it’s a light year, maybe it’s across the entire universe.

  Furthermore, let’s imagine that these two particles have a combined spin of zero: one spins clockwise and the other spins counterclockwise. If you were to influence one particle, say by measuring its spin to be clockwise, then quantum entanglement says that its partner should instantaneously spin counterclockwise, no matter how far away the second particle has traveled. And I mean instantly. Even if it’s across the galaxy, the far-off twin will be set spinning in the opposite direction, faster than light could have traveled between them.’

  Cal piped up that, as a layman, he was having trouble wrapping his head around the concept.

  ‘Well, Cal, you’re not alone. In fact you’re in excellent company. Seventy years ago Albert Einstein famously said that if the equations of quantum theory predicted such nonsense, so much the worse for quantum theory. He called the idea of entanglement, “spooky actions at a distance.”’

  ‘I thought Einstein was never wrong,’ Cal said.

  ‘Almost never wrong,’ the physicist said. ‘This was one of his rare mistakes.’

  Irene politely interjected, ‘But Einstein also said that nothing could go faster than the speed of light.’

  ‘Well, he certainly wasn’t wrong about that; he proved that information can’t travel faster than the speed of light. But in 1964, the Irish physicist, John Bell, proved mathematically that quantum theory requires entanglement and that particles can still affect each other instantly even when they are far apart. It speaks to the fundamental weirdness of the principle that Einstein could be simultaneously wrong and correct about never exceeding the speed of light.

  I’m a theoretical physicist. The only thing I do with my hands profe
ssionally is write on a whiteboard. But my colleagues around the world, who are experimentalists, have devised some fantastic experiments lately to absolutely prove that quantum entanglement is a real phenomenon. And it’s not just for pairs of particles. For example, a recent paper describes the experimental entanglement of three thousand atoms with a single photon. And another experiment confirmed entanglement when photons were separated by over one hundred kilometers. This is real, my friends.’

  ‘Three thousand atoms isn’t a lot,’ Irene said. ‘What about larger things?’

  ‘Ok! How about something as massive as black holes? Einstein showed that two black holes could be connected through far reaches of space by so-called wormholes. Now, it seems that this connectivity may be a manifestation of entanglement, a quantum form of communication between vast objects separated by space and even time. Quantum entanglement – the ‘spooky action at a distance’ that so troubled Einstein – could be creating the spatial connectivity that sews space together.’

  Cal watched Irene take a deep breath and hesitate before posing her next question. When it came out, she had an apologetic tone as if she was embarrassing herself in front of an esteemed scientist. ‘May I ask this: do you think human minds can become entangled?’ she asked.

  ‘So, signorina, I knew this question was coming and I have to say that, as far as experimental physics is concerned, the field of quantum entanglement is too young to do more than speculate. But isn’t the mind just a collection of subatomic particles arranged into a complex biological structure? In theory, I would say that minds could absolutely be entangled. Certainly, researchers into extrasensory perception or PSI, as they call it, have invoked entanglement to explain premonitions, shared experiences between twins who are separated by distance, those types of things. I take it from our phone call earlier that you’ve had some experiences related to your missing brother.’

  She nodded. ‘We both have. Cal and I.’

  ‘May I ask what they were?’

  Cal answered with another question. ‘We would love to share them with you, but can we have an assurance that you’ll keep this conversation private?’