The Shroud Conspiracy

by John Heubusch

  The early summer night air was chilly, and he could see she had crossed her arms as they walked along the ancient, tree-lined street. He slipped off his new sport coat and draped it around her bare shoulders. She smiled and nodded appreciatively as the jacket enveloped her. The nearly full moon that rose behind them lit their path and cast long, shadowy silhouettes before them. They turned the corner onto Via Pianezza. The street, normally a hive of traffic and pedestrians during the day, was deserted at night.

  “What I want to know,” Domenika said playfully as she glanced at a pair of shoes in a shop window they passed by, “is whether it was your preoccupation with science that led you to atheism, or your atheism that preoccupied you with science.”

  Not this again, he thought. He had enjoyed some small talk with her in the lab during the last few days. She had proven herself a lot smarter than he wanted to admit, and she had a wicked wit about her as well. But he was also wary of another debate over faith to set them back again. He knew that what could start out as a civil discussion with her on just about any religious topic usually fast turned into heated argument. He wanted to avoid another of those at all costs.

  “That’s an interesting question,” he said as he set down his briefcase. It cushioned the tiny fragments of the Shroud samples inside. He bent over to pick up a small rock from the side of the road. “But I’d like to ask you a question first. I have a stone in my hand right now.”

  “Jon, it was just a simple question—”

  “Yes, and I’ll answer it with a simple question as well. Do I have a stone in my hand or not?” he insisted.

  “Well, yes. Of course you do. You just said you did.”

  “And what evidence do you have that I am holding it in my hand?”

  “The fact that you told me you are.” She playfully grabbed for his wrist to wrest the stone from him, but he was too quick for her. He hid his hand behind his back.

  “Did you see me pick it up?”

  “No, but I saw you bend over, so I presume you did.”

  “Okay, so let me ask you again. Do I have a stone in my hand?” he persisted.

  “Yes. You said you did, so I believe you.”

  “Oh, I see. You believe me. But do you know I have it in my hand?”

  “No, I don’t,” she said, now agitated. “I’m taking your word for it. I believe you. Maybe that’s a mistake,” she said.

  He could see she regretted asking the question at all.

  “Maybe it was a mistake,” he said. Bondurant opened his hands. They were both empty.

  “And your point is?”

  Bondurant could sense another ugly argument before them. He stopped short and looked up at the stars that glimmered in the night sky. He thought for a moment and then looked toward her. “What drove me to science and what drove me to atheism were really the same thing, Domenika. A need to know, not to believe.”

  She stepped back and swept her hand skyward, as if to draw an imaginary line across the heavens.

  “Are you willing to agree that man cannot know everything about this universe? That there are some things that are beyond our ability to know or understand?”

  He shrugged.

  “Things like where we came from. We can never know—”

  “No, I don’t believe that. Domenika, I know where we came from. We’re all just bits of material, descendants of stars that exploded billions of years ago.”

  Domenika frowned and held a rock in her own hand. She placed it in his. “Oh, you believe that. But do you know it?”

  Bondurant let out a laugh and a long sigh. She was incorrigible. He reared his arm back and threw the rock toward a traffic sign at the intersection ahead. He missed it completely.

  “Domenika, let me ask you this,” Bondurant said. She was the one evangelist he had met who was worth saving from herself. “You are ascribing meaning to your life based on a biblical story, right? A story from a long time ago. It is powerful and wonderful and inspiring, I admit. But what evidence do you have beyond a tale from a hundred generations before you that your own resurrection is even remotely possible? You’re smarter than that, I know it. Does it seem right to live your whole life by some voodoo that others who lived primitively thousands of years ago once believed?”

  She kept her calm, and they resumed walking.

  “Why have you come here?” she asked as they approached the Via Pianezza Bridge, which was shrouded in pale yellow light from the streetlamps arching overhead. The ancient bridge towered over the Po River, flowing noisily below. “You have believed for many years that the Shroud is a fake, and now you need to know for sure?”

  “No. I’ve known it’s a fake. All of the evidence gathered before I arrived in Turin suggests that’s the case.”

  “But now?”

  He hesitated. What he’d seen so far was compelling, but it wasn’t strong evidence. In weaker moments, he’d been tempted to believe, but his rational side knew he needed to trust in his scientific training.

  “I’ll follow the evidence. I think the Shroud was made by natural means. But at this point, there’s no reason to assume we will find that that Shroud had anything to do with the historical figure of Jesus Christ. It’s you and your backward Church that need to know the truth, and I will confirm it one way or the other.”

  “I see,” Domenika said. “But are you willing to agree that science may never be able to grasp the divine?”

  “Now you want me to believe in miracles?” he asked.

  “What I want you to consider is that the image you are studying on the Shroud is of divine origin. That it was made by someone not solely human, and that it was produced by a life force that neither you nor science are equipped to comprehend.”

  “And where have you seen this life force before? Can you prove it?” he asked.

  “I can,” she said. “I know it when I am playing the violin and lose myself in time and space. It’s God’s grace playing through me. I know it when I look upon a masterpiece and marvel at what guided the artist’s hand. I have seen it in great works of literature, and even the marvel of your machines and what you would call scientific discovery.”

  “Domenika, I don’t want to have to break it to you, but—”

  Out of nowhere, something hit the back of Bondurant’s head and knocked him to his knees. Pain blinded him, and it took him a moment to see clearly. He was bleeding. He reached up and felt a gash at the back of his head. What had hit him? He wasn’t sure, but he grasped the briefcase with both hands and rolled sideways to avoid another blow. Lying back, he saw a brick sail toward him, this time headed directly for the left side of his face. He swung the armored briefcase into its path and managed to block the blow.

  Bondurant heard Domenika cry out for help. He rolled over again and tried to gain his footing. Another brick landed just in front of him, and he jumped back. He turned and saw someone no more than ten feet away, wearing a hood and a red ski mask, dressed all in black. His hands were empty, his store of bricks now spent. Bondurant staggered toward him. He towered over the assailant.

  “Domenika, get behind me,” Bondurant said.

  She ignored him and dashed toward a piece of broken brick that lay in the roadway. She picked it up and heaved it as hard as she could toward the hooded figure. She missed by several feet.

  “You throw like a girl,” was all Bondurant could think to say as he prepared to charge the attacker. He could see the assailant had edged far too close to Domenika for comfort.

  “That would be a mistake, Doctor,” said the hooded figure. He had a deep voice, and the accent was unmistakably Middle Eastern.

  “Do I know you?” Bondurant asked. His vision was blurry and blood dripped down his neck, but he was ready to charge.

  “Give me the case,” the voice said, pulling a large dagger from under his jacket. It glinted brilliantly in the moonlight. Bondurant took a step backward. As he did, the shadowy, catlike figure sprang from his fighting stance and leapt toward Domenika. He
was on her in an instant.

  Domenika screamed and tried to fight him off, but he overpowered her, wielding the knife with ease. He grasped her from behind and yanked her by her hair. He leveled the razorlike blade directly against her exposed throat.

  “Give me the case,” the assailant demanded.

  “Don’t do that,” Bondurant warned.

  “She will die, Doctor, I assure you,” the figure shouted. He stroked her delicate neck with the blade, taunting Bondurant.

  Bondurant hesitated for a moment and then reluctantly extended his arm with the briefcase. He wasn’t eager to hand it over in exchange for Domenika. He knew the most valuable evidence he’d ever gathered was inside the case, and if he lost it, his investigation would come to an end. But Domenika was in real danger, and he knew he had no choice.

  “He’s bluffing, Jon, don’t do it,” Domenika cried out. Barefoot, she dug her heels firmly into the pavement and pushed backward as hard as she could against her captor.

  “I swear I’ll kill her,” the hooded figure warned again.

  “Not if I can help it,” Bondurant said. He heaved the briefcase hard, directly toward him. It sailed toward the attacker, who dropped his knife to grab it. He reached up to catch the case, but was pushed off balance by Domenika’s thrust against his chest. As he stumbled slightly backward, he fumbled the catch and watched helplessly as the briefcase hurtled in an arc over his head. It sailed past the bridge railing on its way toward the rushing Po River below.

  “You idiot!” the figure shouted out. His back to the railing, he craned his neck to look behind him, gauging the distance to the water below. Then, lowering himself into a crouch, he sprang into a perfect acrobatic backflip over the railing and plummeted in silence to the darkness below.

  “Jon, what were you thinking?” Domenika cried out. “Your whole life was in that case!”

  Bondurant cut her short. “Shh,” he whispered. He listened intently. “One . . . two . . . three,” he counted aloud.

  On “three,” they heard a faint splash, the sound of their attacker plunging into the cold rapids below. Bondurant calculated the distance to the water. Then he climbed up onto the bridge railing, kicked off his shoes, balanced himself, and looked down. “It’s 144 feet,” he said. “I’ve done 150 before. Call the police.”

  With that, he leapt off the bridge and into the darkness below. In the brief time he had before he hit the water, he thought about the three things he knew for sure. First, his briefcase would float. It was designed to. It held the most important pieces of evidence for his investigation, and no one—and no river—was going to take that away from him. Second, although his head was aching from the blow, he had not yet met the man who could outswim him in a current. And third, as a collegiate diver, he knew how to enter water from great heights. He had taken some bad spills before. Striking the river with anything less than perfect positioning would be like hitting cement. He bent his knees slightly to better absorb the impact and locked his arms at his sides to prevent his shoulders from being dislocated. But Bondurant knew his entry into the water was going to be violent no matter how smart he was about how to strike it. He’d begun to count the moment he leapt from the rail.

  “One . . . two . . . three . . . four?” When he reached the count of four, all he could think was Oh, no.

  He’d miscalculated. At four seconds, he had traveled 256 feet, not the 144 he’d figured before. He broke the surface of the water at the brutal speed of 128 miles per hour. The pain and the shock absorbed from his feet to his hips were almost enough to knock him unconscious. He plunged twenty-five feet down into the cold and murky depths until his feet touched the muddy bottom. He kicked off the bottom with all his strength and knew immediately that he’d probably bruised his Achilles tendons when he’d hit the surface. He was in agony, and the extent of his other injuries remained to be seen, but he shot up like a torpedo and broke the surface of the frigid water. He was quickly swept up in the swift current.

  He had a lot of catching up to do. In the bright moonlight, he could make out the figure of a man flailing in the wide river, moving toward a shiny object thirty yards away. Bondurant’s metallic briefcase floated downstream ahead of the attacker, who had predictably dislocated one or both of his shoulders when he’d collided with the water only seconds before.

  Despite his injuries and the ice-cold water, Bondurant’s training took over, and he glided easily through the water. He began to gain ground on both of his targets quickly. He figured he had about twenty seconds before he reached his assailant. His adrenaline kicked in, and he freestyled his way forward in an all-out sprint. He breathed hard, closed in fast, and hit his attacker broadside like a shark. He scissor-kicked with his legs and lunged out of the water as high into the air as he could. As he did, he reared his arm back and punched the man’s masked face with all his might. His was sure his blow had broken facial bones the moment he struck. He punched again and again in quick succession, pummeling his attacker with his fist until all resistance was gone. Then he twisted the man into a headlock. With his catch in the crook of his arm, Bondurant began to tug him rescue-style toward the riverbank fifty yards away. But between the resistance from his captive’s dead weight and the fast-moving current that carried them both downstream, Bondurant had little to show for his effort. Meanwhile, his briefcase only drifted farther from sight.

  As he held the assailant in a viselike grip, Bondurant knew that at his pace and exhaustion level, the riverbank was going to be tough to reach. But he had no choice. He took a deep breath and yanked the man in the crook of his arm toward the nearest part of the shore. The assailant inhaled river water, choked, and struggled furiously for his life.

  Suddenly and unexpectedly, Bondurant’s work was done for him. A massive rock that jutted from the center of the river appeared out of the black directly in their path. Driven by the speed of the swift current, the attacker’s head slammed hard against the face of the rock and was instantly crushed. Bondurant released him and let the limp and lifeless body of his faceless attacker tumble away in the stream.

  Bondurant then surfaced again, swimming hard in an all-out pursuit of his briefcase. After another exhausting, minute-long dash, he finally caught up to it. He seized the sturdy handle of the case and began to sidestroke his way toward the riverbank, prize in hand. For the first time, he felt the frigidity of the rushing river surround his entire body. His arms and legs were numb, practically to the point of paralysis, as he dragged, then slipped, then dragged himself again onto the muddy hillside and up an embankment that led back to the bridge almost a mile away. His heels felt as though they were on fire, but he must have only bruised rather than torn the tendons in his feet. Still, merely walking would be a lesson in torture for a while.

  Bondurant stopped to catch his breath. As he did, he began to see the flash of blue lights from several police cars as they reached the center of the bridge span. There he also saw a solitary figure framed in the light of the moon behind her. It was Domenika, who peered out into the uncertainty of the darkness ahead for them both.

  CHAPTER 24

  Turin, Italy

  June 2014

  Bondurant stared down at the filthy, checkered tile floor of the interrogation room at the Polizia Locale substation in Turin and shivered. A large air-conditioning vent in the ceiling blew cold air over the spot where he was handcuffed to a steel table bolted to the floor. He was unable to move away from what felt like an arctic blast from above, though he knew his bodily tremors were the precursor to hypothermia. His adventure in the Po River two hours before had soaked him to the bone. The puddle of river water that welled beneath his bare feet had grown larger as the useless interrogation dragged on.

  “Listen, I am freezing to death here. If you would just get me a blanket or something, I’ll even cop to the Sacco and Vanzetti murders if you’d like,” Bondurant said. He jerked his handcuffs hard against the metal loop that fastened them to the table to accentuate his point
.

  After several more minutes of banter that went nowhere, Turin’s chief commissioner of the local police, Senor Botta, entered the room. He gestured to his deputy inspector, who’d been questioning Bondurant, to remove the handcuffs. Bondurant could tell the inspector, Senor Vitali, was unhappy. Botta had burst into the interrogation cell from the room next door when it was obvious his deputy had failed. Vitali had gotten nowhere in his attempt to glean something useful from Bondurant in the case of the dead man the polizia had just fished from the river. Freed from his shackles, Bondurant quickly took the opportunity to slide to the opposite end of the table, away from the cold wind tunnel he’d been trapped under before. Another inspector, this one a woman, hurried into the room and brought with her a large woolen blanket that Bondurant wrapped about his shoulders. Vitali was keen on relaying to his superior the one bit of useful information he thought he’d been able to get Bondurant to spill.

  “We finally have some names,” Vitali said. “He’s now just given two. I don’t know them from Turin. A Senor Sacco and a Senor Vanzetti.”

  Bondurant bit his tongue so he didn’t laugh out loud. He watched the commissioner do his best to contain his own laughter as well.

  “Vitali, go now,” the commissioner said. “Find everything you can for me on this Sacco, this Vanzetti. Then get in touch with Senor Bianchi at the morgue. Soon we will all need to pay him a visit.”

  Vitali was quickly out the door in pursuit of his assignment. It was now three a.m., and Bondurant was thankful someone with some smarts had taken charge.

  “Commissioner Botta, I know my history,” the young inspector who had brought Bondurant his blanket chimed in. “Sacco and Vanzetti were Italian anarchists who were executed almost one hundred years ago. They killed two guards during a robbery in America. But there was some doubt as to the real killers, I think—”

  “A gold star for you, Daniela,” the commissioner said. “The rest of the investigative team in the observation room and I have a bet. How long will it take my ambitious deputy to figure that out on his own? My bet is at least a day.”