by Glenn Cooper
He turned towards the window and began walking towards the wooden table just as a flame rose higher and caught a gauze curtain.
It would soon be over. He wanted to go home so badly, back to his family, back to his church in Monte Sulla, back to the life of a humble priest.
‘Giovanni!’
It was coming from the hall.
It got louder. ‘Giovanni!’
He recognized the voice.
‘Irene?’ he said softly.
The speakerphone came to life. Schneider sounded alarmed. ‘What did you say? Is someone there?’
There was a pounding on his door.
‘Giovanni! It’s me, it’s Irene! Open the door!’
Schneider heard the calls and seething, he pounced on the mute button. ‘I thought you killed her!’
Gerhardt shrugged and said, ‘I thought I did too. Maybe I should have checked the news from Munich.’
Schneider shot him a vicious glance and got back on the line shouting at the priest. ‘Under no circumstances are you to open the door before you place the nail. Do you understand me?’
Cal was beside Irene at the door when the security guards and the manager caught up with them.
‘Giovanni!’ Cal shouted. ‘This is Calvin Donovan. I’m here with your sister. Please let us know you’re in there.’
They all heard it. Faintly, but they heard it. ‘Yes, I’m here but I can’t open the door.’
The security guards were about to pull Cal away when the manager told them to stop.
She sniffed and whispered, ‘Smoke,’ and hurriedly took out her passkey.
Cal was first in.
He stopped in the entry and drank in the scene through the smoky haze. Giovanni had one shoe on, one shoe off. Blood was streaming down his hands. He was holding the Holy Nail in a terry washcloth. There was a burning table near the window on the verge of collapse and on it was the Holy Lance.
A disembodied Germanic voice was calling out in English.
‘Who’s there? Tell me what’s happening!’
Giovanni looked at Cal and then he looked at the speakerphone. Then he saw Irene and began to weep.
‘Giovanni, we’ve found you,’ she cried in Italian.
‘Where’s mama?’ he asked in a daze.
Cal too spoke in Italian. ‘The police are looking for her. She and your aunt and your nephew are going to be found.’
Schneider couldn’t understand what they were saying but he seemed to grasp the situation. ‘I’m the only one who knows where Giovanni’s family is located. I’m the only one who can save them. I’m the only one who can kill them. Giovanni, finish the job and I will release them immediately.’
Cal took a step forward and when he did, Giovanni took a small step backwards towards the burning table.
Cal stopped dead and addressed him as calmly as he could. ‘What do they want you to do?’
‘I’m to place the nail so that it touches the lance and the thorn.’
Cal wheeled around and said to the manager and security guards, who were at the threshold of the room, and spoke quietly but urgently in English, ‘Don’t come in, there’s a bomb. You need to evacuate the hotel.’
‘My God,’ the manager said, fleeing with the guards. Cal could hear her screaming in Hebrew into her walkie-talkie as she ran down the hall.
Schneider filled the brief silence. ‘This is a lie. There’s no bomb. Don’t believe this rubbish, Giovanni. Finish the job and you can speak to your mother immediately. She’s in the next room.’
‘Can I speak to her now?’ Giovanni asked.
‘That is not possible. Finish it.’
Giovanni took another baby step toward the table and the nail began to glow. The terry cloth fibers of the towel began to smoke and singe.
‘No, don’t, Giovanni,’ Irene said. ‘Please don’t.’
Schneider sounded desperate. ‘Your nephew is here too. I am told he is a fine young boy. Federico is his name, I believe. He has a long, white neck. My man has a sharp knife against the skin. He will be a sacrificial lamb if you don’t immediately finish.’
‘Irene …’ Giovanni said robotically moving closer to the table, his arm outstretched.
The nail was orange, the washcloth was smoking.
Irene’s phone rang. She instinctively pulled it from her bag but she didn’t look at, let alone answer it.
‘Cut the boy’s throat in ten seconds!’ Schneider yelled. ‘He’s got ten seconds to live, Giovanni.’
The priest’s hand hovered over the table, centimeters away from the lance and thorn. The cloth was flaming now and the pain made Giovanni’s eyes water.
The phone was still ringing in her hand.
Cal yelled at her, ‘Who is it, Irene? Maybe it’s Cecchi.’
She looked at the caller ID and said, ‘My God, yes,’ but dropped it on the floor.
Cal dove for it and caught it on the last ring.
‘It’s Donovan,’ he said.
‘We’ve got them!’ Cecchi said. ‘They’re safe.’
THIRTY-TWO
‘Professor Donovan, how may I be of assistance?’
The long-bearded bishop, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, was dressed in a heavy black robe adorned with the chunky regalia of his station. He seemed supernaturally cool and collected inside his sweltering, humid office in the Armenian quarter of the city.
‘Your Beatitude,’ Cal said, ‘I must thank you for granting me an audience on incredibly short notice.’
‘I know of your work, professor,’ he said in a thick Greek accent. ‘I may even have some of your books in my library.’
Cal simply thanked him. One didn’t engage in small talk with a laconic prelate like Nectarius II so he got to the point.
‘The reason I’m here today is that I have something to donate to the Church, specifically to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which you administer with the other custodians.’
‘A monetary donation?’
‘No, an object, Your Beatitude. A relic to be precise.’
A bushy gray eyebrow arched.
‘What sort of a relic?’
‘Objectively, I can characterize it as an important one, perhaps one of the most significant relics in Christianity. It’s a relic with a clear provenance directly to Christ.’
‘Are you speaking of a Holy Relic?’
‘I am.’
‘Do you have a photograph of this relic?’
‘No, but you can see it with your own eyes.’
The patriarch, a man wholly unaccustomed to games, was clearly enjoying this one. He watched Cal don a pair of gloves and dip his hand into his bag. He held up the lance.
‘The Holy Lance,’ the prelate said. ‘The Spear of Destiny. I have seen it with my own eyes when I visited Vienna. Surely this is a facsimile.’
Cal laid it on the desk. The patriarch couldn’t peel his eyes away.
‘The one in Vienna is a fake, commissioned by Heinrich Himmler. The Nazis kept the real one in a hiding place.’
‘What hiding place?’
‘That I don’t know.’ He’d already decided he wasn’t going to talk about the potential destructive power of the relic or the cataclysmic plans of the Knights of Longinus. There was no need for that. ‘But it recently surfaced,’ Cal said. ‘A neo-Nazi group was going to use it for propaganda purposes. I was involved with an effort to stop them and I’m pleased to say, we were successful.’
‘I do not understand. Is the relic stolen?’
‘The Nazis stole it from Austria. The Austrians stole it from the Germans in the eighteenth century. Ever since it was used on Calvary it was stolen over and over. I haven’t had the time yet, but I’ll be preparing a written document for you that will explain what I know about the provenance of the lance and how I came to possess it. Your Beatitude, I’m sure there will be controversy. If you choose to accept the relic, I’m sure there will be loud denials from the Austrian government concerning its authenticity, perhaps followed by dem
ands for its return if they come to accept the truth. You will put forward counterclaims. It will be a messy legal process but a worthy one, in my opinion. This is an immense treasure of Christianity and my colleagues and I believe it belongs in the traditional place of Christ’s crucifixion and his tomb, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.’
‘May I examine it?’ the patriarch asked.
‘Of course. But you should use these gloves.’
‘Why is that?’
‘I’m told that holding it in one’s bare hands can cause a certain discomfort.’
The patriarch ignored the warning, donning his spectacles and reaching across his desk. He cradled it in both hands and inspected one side, then the other.
Suddenly he gasped in pain. But then his face melted into a puddle of pleasure.
Cal decided to say nothing, but to bear silent witness.
The patriarch gently returned the lance to his desktop and slowly reached with his left hand to touch the right side of his chest. It was hard to see the wet spot against the blackness of his robe. He hesitantly looked at the tip of his pointer finger then held it up for Cal to see. It was red with blood.
‘My dear God!’ the patriarch said. ‘This truly is the Holy Lance.’
When Cal returned to the Hotel Seven Arches, Giovanni was finishing the last of his many interviews with the police and the Italian ambassador was leaving for his office in Tel Aviv.
Armed with fire extinguishers, the hotel security guards had put out the small blaze in Giovanni’s room. The hotel manager summoned the police but before they arrived, Cal and Irene had hastily prepared themselves for the inquiries that were bound to follow. Giovanni and his family had been victims of a plot, that much was evident. The explanation for why they’d been taken hostage was going to be tricky.
They quickly rejected the idea of handing the relics over to the police. The thorn was a moot point. It was so brittle from heat that it had disintegrated into dust when Giovanni tried to save it from the charred table. But the lance and the nail, if placed next to one another, were potentially dangerous and they had no desire to tell the authorities the truth. It would be like letting the genie out of the bottle. What if another Holy Thorn were found? There was more than one extremist group in the world that might try to finish what the Knights of Longinus had started.
Cal proposed an alternative fate for the relics and Irene and Giovanni endorsed the plan. As the authorities arrived, Irene was spiriting the nail and the lance, wrapped in bath towels, to her room.
Cal had insisted on being present during Giovanni’s initial interview with the police, arguing that the young priest was in no shape to endure questioning on his own. He was bleeding and in shock – that much was clear – and while the medics were bandaging his wrists and giving him oxygen, Cal had answered the first wave of questions, spinning a tale on the fly and giving Giovanni a roadmap for subsequent statements.
Cal had presented himself as a consultant to the Vatican, commissioned to investigate the priest’s stigmata. He had become friendly with the family and had volunteered to help find Giovanni when he’d been abducted. He had told the police inspectors that a neo-Nazi group had been responsible, kidnapping his family to pressurize him into acting as their agent. Cal had said that they were trying to force the revered stigmatic to detonate a suicide vest at a holy site in Jerusalem, as a high-profile act of provocation and terror aimed at Israel. When Cal saw the fire in the room, he had warned the hotel staff about a bomb without knowing if the vest had already been delivered. A man on the speakerphone had been giving orders. After the hotel staff had left the room to evacuate the building, Cal said that he heard the man telling Giovanni to go to the Via Dolorosa, where someone would pass him the vest and give him instructions where to set it off. When he’d accomplished his suicide mission, his family would be released.
Why had there been a room fire? Cal had furiously racked his brain for an explanation, then blurted out that he thought Giovanni might be silently trying to draw attention to get help. And from his bed, Giovanni, who had been listening carefully to Cal’s inventions, had removed his oxygen mask and had said, yes, that was so.
On his return from seeing the patriarch, Cal found Giovanni in his new room on a different hotel floor. Irene was sitting at his bedside.
‘How did it go?’ she asked.
‘Mission accomplished. The lance has a new home. Any problems with the police?’
‘They asked the same questions many times,’ Giovanni said weakly. ‘I gave the answers you gave. The Italian ambassador was very nice and very helpful. He gave me a temporary passport in my real name. He was able to connect us to mama at the hospital in Rome where they took her with Carla and Federico. They’re shaken but in good health. They witnessed bloodshed, I’m afraid. Two policemen were shot. One died. Both the men who held them were killed by the police.’
‘Lieutenant Colonel Cecchi was the hero,’ Irene said.
‘I’m sending that guy a case of good wine,’ Cal said.
‘They wanted to take Giovanni to the hospital but he wouldn’t go,’ Irene said. ‘I’m very cross at him. They say he needs a transfusion.’
‘I’ll go to the hospital after I see mama. I just want to go home.’
‘I’ll go see the manager, take care of the bill and book us on a flight to Rome,’ Cal said. ‘But we’ve got one more thing to do before we get on a plane.’
The sand was hot to their bare feet but the waves were dancing in the evening light and the water was beckoning. The three of them walked straight to the shoreline and into the surf. The beachgoers who saw them could only come to one conclusion as they moved from the promenade to the sea. The tall, well-built man was wearing swimming trunks and carrying a small metal box in his bandaged hand. The dark-haired woman in a T-shirt and shorts walked between the other two. The shorter, rotund young man was the least beach-ready with khaki trousers, a long-sleeved button-down shirt and baseball cap. His right hand too was heavily bandaged and he walked unsteadily, helped along by the woman. The inescapable impression was that this was some sort of family unit, or friends perhaps, on a somber mission to scatter a loved one’s ashes into the sea.
With the water lapping their ankles they stopped and contemplated the setting sun. Behind them was the city of Tel Aviv, modern and vibrant. From the promenade, the music of a dozen bars carried down to the water.
‘It seems like a pity,’ Irene said. ‘Something so precious.’
‘It’s more than a pity,’ Cal said, stripping off his polo shirt. ‘The archaeologist in me is crying like a baby.’
Giovanni was the only one who didn’t waver. ‘It has to be done. When something good can become perverted into something so evil then the path is clear.’
‘This will be our secret,’ Cal said. ‘There’s not a single person beyond the three of us who needs to know about this.’
Cal was a strong, athletic swimmer, even with a box in one hand. He alternated between a side and breaststroke. Soon, Irene and Giovanni were but small figures on the shore, amidst waders, beach-tennis players, families and lovers. The sun got lower and redder and began to quench at the watery horizon. He stopped, treaded water and looked around to make sure he was the only one so far out. At first, he had an urge to gauge his distance from the shore and his relative position to the tallest buildings on the skyline, but then he stopped himself from attempting to triangulate. He would never try to come back to this spot.
He didn’t engage in a special set of thoughts. He didn’t say a prayer. He opened the hinged lid of the ten-shekel pencil box and tipped it upside down.
The Holy Nail, one of the two carpentry spikes the Romans had used to impale Christ’s wrists to a wooden cross, splashed into the sea and began its plunge to the ocean floor, never to be seen again.
THIRTY-THREE
The papal gardens were in full summer bloom and the fragrant perfume of the linden trees filled Cal’s nostrils. Under the watchful eyes of men fr
om the Swiss guards and the Vatican Gendarmerie, Pope Celestine and Cal were taking in the sun, walking and talking.
‘So that’s what I know,’ Cal said. ‘Our contact at the Carabinieri tells me that the man, who was trying to get Giovanni to do this terrible thing, hasn’t been identified. He was using a disposable phone.’
‘A burner,’ the pope said, his lips curling upwards. When Cal expressed surprise that he knew the expression, he replied, ‘Even the pope watches Hollywood movies sometimes.’
‘I hope the ringleader is found and found soon,’ Cal said. ‘I know first-hand that he and his men are ruthless killers.’
The pope’s smile was gone. ‘There is much evil in the world, so much evil,’ he said shaking his head. ‘We can only truly combat the forces of darkness with the forces of light. Faith, love and charity: these are our weapons.’
‘What will happen with Giovanni?’ Cal asked.
‘Happen? He will continue on with his good work. We will let him remain with his flock in Monte Sulla. If more people wish to attend mass in his church than in my Basilica of Saint Peter then so be it. This does not upset me. I feel I can talk to God and that God can hear my prayers. But the connection between the Lord and Padre Gio, well, this is something truly special. You may invoke the mysteries of quantum mechanics. I invoke the mysteries of faith. Perhaps we are referring to the same phenomenon.’
‘Perhaps we are.’
The pope stopped walking and turned to face Cal. ‘Now professor, you have suffered and endured much in your quest to save this priest and to serve the Church. The pope would like to do something for you. Some token of our friendship and admiration.’
‘There’s really nothing I require,’ Cal said. ‘It’s been my honor to have been at your service.’
‘Please, there must be something.’
Cal thought for a moment and said, ‘Well, there is something I would truly treasure.’
‘Tell me, please.’
‘I’d like to be able to do something that I don’t believe has ever been granted to an outside academic. I’d like to have unrestricted access to browse the Vatican Library and the Vatican Secret Archives.’