Sign of the Cross

by Glenn Cooper

  Gerhardt got up and declared his intention to have a second breakfast.

  ‘Doesn’t the ideology mean anything to you?’ Schneider asked.

  ‘If you’re happy, Lambret, I’m happy. I’ll leave the ideology to you.’

  Giovanni’s phone rang again. He felt his gut knot up as he went to answer it. He couldn’t bear speaking to the disembodied Germanic voice a second time in the day. But it was only the hotel front desk informing him that he’d received another FedEx. The package was left at his door per his instruction and he retrieved it shortly after the clerk departed.

  The box was heavy. The postage was over one hundred euros. The customs declaration read: Decorative Items – Interior Design. Value – 250 euros.

  He peeled the flap open and reached in.

  His hand settled on something flat and angled. When he pulled it out he saw it was a filigreed brass bookend. Then, its matching pair. The next item was wrapped in bubble wrap, an ornamental magnifying glass with a carved bone handle. The last item, the largest, was also done up in bubble wrap.

  He knew what it was before he began to remove the tape. The shiny gold sleeve showed through the plastic bubbles. He’d never seen the artifact in Vienna and he wasn’t even sure if he’d even seen photos of it. But he’d been told what to expect. Again, he found the anticipation overwhelming. In his humble hands, he’d be holding another relic of Christ.

  When the bubble wrap fell away onto the floor, he felt the heft of the Holy Lance. He allowed his finger to dance along its sharp, black edge to the tip of the spear. The very tip that had pierced Jesus’s flesh.

  The pain hit him hard and fast.

  At first he thought it was a cramp or a pulled muscle affecting one of the muscles between his ribs.

  But it was worse than that, far worse.

  The vision also came hard and fast. The face was so serene that it distracted him from the agonizing pain.

  When the vision passed, he put the lance down on the bed and went to the bathroom mirror where he lifted his shirt.

  There was blood.

  Blood dripping from a wound on the right side of his chest.

  He dropped to his knees on the bath mat and began to pray as fervently as he had ever prayed.

  By the time they landed at Ben Gurion Airport, Cal and Irene were exhausted. They had spent another fitful night in Rome and on the El Al flight both of them had their naps interrupted by the same stabbing pain in their ribs. They hadn’t been able to sit together but Cal had half-stood to seek Irene’s attention at the height of the pain. He had seen her, three rows back, holding her right side, her face contorted. Later, when the pain had subsided, he had met her for a brief exchange by the galley.

  ‘Did something happen to him?’ she had asked desperately.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘Do you think someone hurt him?’

  ‘Not necessarily. It might be …’

  ‘Might be what?’ she had asked.

  He had wished he’d kept quiet but her pleading eyes had forced him to continue.

  ‘The next stigmata,’ he had said. ‘Jesus was pierced on the right side of his chest. Giovanni may have just taken possession of the lance. He’s getting the relics one at a time. Someone’s probably bringing them to him. You saw the way our bags were checked when we left Italy. He couldn’t have been carrying them himself. Israeli security is too tough. Once he gets the Holy Nail the game’s over.’

  When they landed and cleared passport control and customs, Cal picked up his hire car. Soon they were speeding along the same route to Jerusalem that Giovanni had traveled. Arriving at the hotel forecourt they left the car with the valet and hurried inside.

  At the reception desk the clerk, a prim middle-aged woman began to ask for their names and passports, when Cal thrust a photo of Giovanni in her face.

  ‘This man is staying at the hotel,’ he said. He looked at the clerk’s name badge. ‘Do you recognize him, Magda?’

  ‘A priest,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen any priests here recently. When they come they come in groups. We have no groups.’

  ‘He might not be dressed like as a priest,’ Irene said.

  ‘What’s the name?’

  Cal said, ‘Giovanni Berardino, but we don’t think he’s traveling under that name.’

  ‘To check in you need a passport. Are you saying someone checked into our hotel on a false passport?’

  ‘Possibly, yes.’

  ‘Then you should talk to the police.’

  More people arrived at reception and began queuing behind them.

  ‘Could we speak to the manager?’ Cal asked.

  The clerk shot him a sour look. ‘Maybe you can come back a little later. I’ve got guests to check in.’

  ‘We’ve got reservations,’ Cal said.

  ‘Why didn’t you say so? Passports, please.’

  The hotel manager wasn’t much more accommodating. She told them she didn’t recognize the man and questioned why they were so sure he was a guest.

  Cal lied. ‘He said he was going to stay here.’

  ‘But there was no one by that name in our register.’

  ‘He may have other identity papers.’

  ‘That would be a crime. As Magda told you when you checked in, if you have reason to think a criminal act has been committed you should see the police. I can give you their address.’

  Irene’s eyes were filling with tears. Cal and she had talked about contacting the police but it was impossible. Their story was too bizarre. If the Italian security services hadn’t been able to gin up Mossad’s interest in the case, what chance would they have? He squeezed her hand.

  This act of tenderness coupled with Irene’s apparent distress must have touched the manager because she said, ‘My dear, what’s the matter?’

  ‘Giovanni is my brother. He’s gone missing and we’re very worried about him.’

  ‘And you really think he’s here.’

  ‘We do,’ Cal said.

  ‘But not under his real name.’

  ‘Like I said, we don’t think so.’

  The manager looked at her watch in an obvious show of impatience.

  ‘Tell you what. Let me make copies of the photo. I’ll leave them at the front desk, at housekeeping, in the restaurant kitchen. That’s all I can do.’

  THIRTY

  Cal and Irene repeatedly walked every inch of the hotel public spaces until they had to return to their rooms out of weariness. Their windows were facing north, overlooking the hills of Bethlehem; the wrong direction to see the Old City. But the view from the hotel restaurant was identical to the one in their visions. In the middle of the night, after an intractable bout of tossing and turning, Irene got dressed and walked the halls again. There were two hundred guest rooms, all of them occupied according to the manager, and she lingered before each door, straining to hear Giovanni’s voice, perhaps in prayer, perhaps in despair.

  What would happen, she thought, if she were to knock on doors, swiftly apologizing for waking up guests? She and Cal had discussed the option and had concluded that the hotel would have thrown them out in short order. Then where would they be? In any event, she lacked the courage to confront angry guests.

  In the morning, they met as planned at six a.m. outside the restaurant and sat there, nursing coffees, until breakfast service ended four hours later. Every time new people entered their heads jerked up, but Giovanni was not among them.

  ‘What now?’ Irene asked.

  ‘One of us can hang out in the lobby and the other can walk around and try to get a look into the rooms getting serviced,’ Cal said.

  She told him about her night prowl and volunteered for lobby duty.

  ‘Be on the lookout for anyone coming in with a parcel for a hotel guest or a package from a courier or a delivery company.’

  She nodded but first she said she wanted to call Cecchi.

  He answered straight away on his mobile. The reception was poor. />
  ‘Is there any news?’ she asked.

  ‘I told you I would call if there were any developments,’ he said.

  ‘So there’s nothing?’

  ‘Nothing that I can speak about, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I have to tell you, I’m frantic,’ she said.

  ‘I can appreciate that. Did you arrive in Israel?’

  ‘We’re here.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We haven’t found him yet. It would be much easier if we had the support of their police or their government.’

  ‘I tried,’ Cecchi said. ‘The Italian government tried. There were too few facts, too many soft speculations to get the attention of the Israelis.’

  ‘Even though we think their country is in danger.’

  ‘What can I say?’

  ‘But you believe us, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m a good Catholic, signorina. I believe in the miracles of the Church. My mind was always going to be open once sleight of hand or fabrication was excluded.’

  ‘Thank you for that.’

  ‘Now I must get back to work to find your family. Please try to stay safe.’

  Cecchi pocketed his phone. Bathed in sweat he rapped on the partition between the rear of the surveillance van and the driver’s cab.

  ‘For God’s sake, turn up the air conditioning,’ he said.

  At mid-afternoon, Giovanni’s phone rang while he was rewrapping his oozing wrists. The wastebasket in the bathroom was already half-filled with bloody dressings. He ran to the phone, leaving a trail of blood spots on the carpet.

  It was the Germanic voice.

  ‘Do you have it?’

  ‘Have what?’

  ‘The third package, man. The third package!’

  ‘It hasn’t arrived.’

  ‘But it has. We’ve received the delivery confirmation from FedEx.’

  ‘Then the hotel hasn’t delivered it yet.’

  ‘Call down immediately. I will call you back in five minutes.’

  ‘You’ll release my family soon?’

  ‘Five minutes.’ The phone went dead.

  Giovanni called the front desk and asked if a package had arrived for Mr Egger.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he was told. ‘Would you like to come down for it?’

  ‘Could you please bring it up?’

  Cal had been sitting across the lobby. He’d relieved Irene and let her return to her room for a rest. After a few hours of pretending to read the newspaper he felt a need to stretch his legs and get a few minutes of sun. He stepped outside into the heat of the Jerusalem summer just as the front desk clerk called over a bellman and handed him a FedEx box for Room 208.

  Giovanni collected the box outside his door and the moment he picked it up his wrists began to ache terribly.

  He left it on the dresser and sat on the bed, staring at it, afraid.

  The phone rang.

  He let it ring until it stopped.

  What if he never answered it again? Would they simply leave him alone? Would they send someone to his room? He assumed they had people nearby. He’d been warned time again that they knew his every move. But if he went incommunicado, would they make good on their threat and hurt his family? He couldn’t risk that, could he?

  Slowly and hesitantly, he approached the box, enduring a crescendo of wrist pain. Like the previous delivery, the box was heavy and had a declaration form describing Iron Decorative Items – Interior Design. With the package on his lap his hands seemed to fail him. He struggled mightily with the gummed flap until it was free.

  All he could do was turn the box upside down and let the contents slide out onto the bed, each item in bubble wrap. He didn’t need to unwrap them to know which one was precious and which ones were worthless pieces of metal. He fought through the pain to pick up one of the tubes of bubbles, ripping the tape with his teeth and slowly unwrapping it.

  The warm, rough metal was heavy in his hands for only a moment or two, before the pain became so great he cried out loudly enough so that if any guests had been in the adjoining rooms, they surely would have sought help.

  Then it happened.

  His wrists erupted and like a spray of volcanic magma, blood shot up, splashing the ceiling.

  The phone was ringing again but it seemed like the sound was coming from a great distance. The ringing persisted as Giovanni slipped into unconsciousness.

  The only light came from a single, naked bulb and Giovanni was scared he would lose his footing on the narrow, stone steps.

  The old monk, Brother Augustin, was having no problem navigating the run of stairs even with his cataract eyes and flopping sandals.

  ‘Follow me, young man, follow me.’

  The crypt was smaller than Giovanni had expected. It was also quite dark since the light from the staircase bulb didn’t penetrate into the whole of the chamber. He was about to use the flashlight on his mobile phone, when the monk hit a wall switch and two wall fixtures winked on, casting a sickly yellow glow.

  ‘What was your name, again?’ the monk asked.

  ‘Giovanni.’

  ‘Giovanni,’ the monk repeated. His grin showed the black gaps between his teeth. ‘I have a gift, young man. Do you want to know what it is?’

  Giovanni swallowed hard and he wondered if it had been a good idea to accept the monk’s invitation. He wanted to run up the stairs or call out for his friend, Antonio, to come down.

  ‘I have the gift of reading a man,’ Augustin said. ‘I can tell what a man holds in his heart. Do you know what you hold in yours?’

  ‘I’m not sure I do.’

  ‘Why did you decide to become a priest?’

  ‘I’m not a priest yet.’

  ‘So you said, but soon you will take your Holy Orders.’

  Giovanni had been asked the question countless times. His responses had typically ranged from, ‘I want to devote myself to serving God,’ to ‘I would like to help my fellow man.’ But now, under the withering gaze of this old man he couldn’t seem to come up with a response.

  ‘Do you know why you are hesitating?’ the monk asked. Before he could reply, Augustin supplied his own explanation. ‘It is because the answer is in your heart rather than your head. That is true spirituality. I saw it in your eyes. I saw it in the way you carry yourself. You have great humility. You have a gentleness of spirit. I was that way too when I was your age. That is why I was chosen.’

  ‘Chosen for what?’

  ‘Come.’

  They walked across the smooth stones. Although Augustin trod right over the stone markers of medieval burials, Giovanni couldn’t bring himself to step on them. So he zigzagged his way to the nook that was located directly below the stone altar of the church. The nook had a stone shelf and on it was a small bronze box, green with oxidation.

  The monk took the box down from the shelf and said, ‘I was chosen a long time ago and now I choose you. You see, Giovanni, this monastery has a very ancient tradition, perhaps one of the most ancient traditions in all of Christendom. There is no written or oral history of how St Athanasius came to possess what is in this box, but possess it we did. It came to us from the Holy Land in the early times of the Church. The tradition is this: one monk and one monk alone, was chosen to be its keeper. One monk and one monk alone, was chosen to be devoted to its care – with all the attendant pleasure and pain of that responsibility. I am now a very old man and I will not live much longer. When I dine, I turn to my left and I turn to my right. I see no novices, no young monks. I see only my dear Brother Ivan who is not much younger than me. I always knew, no, I always hoped that this day would come when a young priest would arrive as a tourist and leave as the keeper of what is inside this box.’

  Giovanni felt a lump form in his throat. Was it from fear or some vague sense of pride at having been singled out?

  ‘What’s inside?’

  ‘This.’

  The monk lifted the lid. There was just enough light from the nearest wall fixture for Giov
anni to make it out.

  It was a rough black spike with a broken flat head.

  ‘A nail?’ he said.

  ‘Not just a nail, Giovanni, but a Holy Nail, one of the Roman spikes used to nail the wrists of our Lord, Jesus Christ, to his cross.’

  ‘But how do you know it’s real?’ the young man asked.

  The monk grinned again and reached for it.

  And when it was firmly in his palm his face changed showing an expression that Giovanni couldn’t fathom, but would come to understand all too well. It was a perfect mixture of horrible pain and exquisite pleasure.

  Then something else happened.

  Blood began streaming down the monk’s hands, not in a trickle. A torrent.

  Cal was by the hotel parking lot, admiring the views when his face convulsed in pain and his hands balled up in some kind of a reflex. The pain in both wrists was so intense he thought he might black out. It seemed almost incredible that his skin remained smooth and unblemished.

  ‘You ok, mister?’ the attendant asked.

  Cal had only one thought – Irene – and he began to run back to the lobby. Inside, he bounded up the stairs to the first floor and banged on her door.

  ‘Irene? It’s Cal. Open up!’

  He heard moaning through the door and would have put his shoulder to it if she had taken longer to answer.

  She held up her hands and said, ‘The pain, it’s terrible. Something’s happened to him, something bad.’

  ‘He’s got the nail,’ Cal said. ‘We’re out of time.’

  It was as if their thoughts were twinned. They both ran from her first-floor room and sped down the corridor, pausing at each guest room to shout out his name and to kick at the bottom of the door because their hands were too painful to knock.

  ‘Giovanni! Giovanni!’

  Soon some guests were opening doors, others, scared of a terror incident were cowering in place, calling the operator to report a disturbance.

  ‘What?’ an elderly man said, calling after them. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Cal called back. ‘We’re looking for someone.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ the guest said. ‘Giovanni. I heard your shouting. I’m not deaf.’