“Thank you, Monsignor. I’ll handle it from here.”
“But I have a university degree in molecular biology. I can explain all the equipment to you.” Monza volunteered with concern.
“I’ll manage. Don’t worry,” Marc said.
“But you may have a problem with the instructions. Some of them are in Italian. I could help you.”
“If I need a translator, I’ll call you,” Marc assured him, then stepped inside, closing the door behind him and bolting it.
The interior of the chapel was cool and dark, lit only by the light filtering through the high, narrow windows. It took a moment for Marc’s eyes to adjust to the gloom. Then he was able to discern that the kneeling chairs had all been moved and stacked neatly against the rear wall. At the other end, the stone altar stood stark, divested of its altar cloth. A brand new x-ray machine stood in the center of the chapel, and nearby was a large worktable with a scanning electron microscope, a centrifuge, an autoclave and other equipment Marc had requested. He intended to examine the shroud with x-ray fluorescence, infrared spectroscopy, and ultraviolet spectrophotometry . . . for starters. He moved along the table slowly, glancing at the gear. Everything appeared to be in order.
Then he turned to an adjacent table, and there it was, an arm’s length away . . . under a thin sheet of clear plastic . . . the Shroud of Turin.
As he pulled away the plastic, Marc was totally unprepared for the chill that suddenly overcame him. The shroud—long and biscuit-colored—was spread flat along the length of the long, narrow table, and his eyes were drawn instantly to the face. Although the image was in reverse, like a photographic negative, there was no doubt—especially in this light—that it resembled a human face . . . a man with a beard.
He moved closer, unable to throw off the feeling of awe that held him. The image of the body was as clear as the face . . . the two crossed hands, the legs, the feet. At the other end of the cloth the image appeared to be the posterior side of the same man, as if the body had been laid on that portion the cloth.
His gaze was drawn back to the irresistible face. There were small rivulets of something that appeared to be blood, where the crown of thorns had supposedly pierced the flesh. Marc’s prejudice was shaken, and he felt a profound sense of reverence, an odd kinship with generations of believers who had looked upon this same piece of linen. He reached out his hand slowly, then laid his fingers gently on the roughly woven material. It was almost as if an electric current flowed through him, and he stayed there, transfixed, unable to move away.
“Doctor Solovino! Is there anything you need?” came Monza’s voice from outside the door.
The moment was altered, and Marc quickly withdrew his hand. “No, I’m fine,” he called out.
“You may send word through the guard if you require anything.”
“Thanks,” Marc responded, turning back to the cloth.
Damn it, he thought. What’s wrong with me anyway? Why the hell am I letting this thing spook me? Must be the eerie lighting, he concluded, then reached up to switch on the operating-room light overhead.
The intense, white blaze of the halogen bulbs brought him back to his normal scientific frame of mind, and the image on the shroud seemed less impressive. Among sindonologists there was no scarcity of theories about the cause of the imprint, but he had decided to ignore all the past investigations because many of them seemed to be tainted either by questionable techniques or by questionable motives. He was determined to make a totally fresh start, to proceed on what was actually observed—by him personally—about the shroud.
His research said that the shroud was made of hand-woven linen, measuring approximately fourteen and a half feet in length by three and a half feet in width. It had been nearly destroyed in 1532 by a fire that left singed holes along the edges where the cloth had been folded; these were accompanied by diamond shaped stains resulting from the water used to douse the fire. Looking down at the piece of cloth before him, Marc found it to be exactly as described. . . so far.
He pulled off his jacket, tossed it aside, then located a pair of surgical magnifying glasses. After maneuvering the light into a more advantageous angle, he pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, leaned over the shroud, and began a close, inch-by-inch examination.
As this tedious and methodical process continued, Marc’s mind was flooded with thoughts about the history of this relic. Its whereabouts during the first millennium were very fuzzy, the subject of much scholarly dispute based on no concrete evidence. There are, of course, those who even question its existence during that period of time, based on the carbon-14 test which was over ninety-nine per cent sure that the cloth originated between the years 1000 and 1500 AD. The one per cent of uncertainty was the fuel that kept the imaginations of many a syndonologists burning brightly. By his very nature, Marc found himself shying away from the syndonologists, leaning toward the more scientific approach, but he stopped and chided himself for being biased in any direction and determined to concentrate on what was actually known.
His research said that written records of the shroud began in the year 1204 when Robert de Clari, a chronicler of the Fourth Crusade, wrote that he saw it in Constantinople. After Constantinople was leveled, the shroud seemed to vanish for many years, and there is some reason to believe that it fell into the hands of the Knights Templar, a powerful religious and military order of the time. In any case, the shroud surfaced in 1356 in Lirey, France, and about a hundred years later was sold to the House of Savoy. It remained the property of that family even after they became the royal family of Italy. During World War II it was transported to the Abbey of Montevergine in the south of Italy and hidden to protect it from the bombing of the industrial north. After the war, it was returned to Turin, but since the royal family was in exile, it was turned over to the archbishop of Turin. Finally, when the exiled King Umberto II died in 1983 it was bequeathed to the Vatican, but it was allowed to remain in Turin’s black marble Royal Chapel that had been its home since 1694.
Marc’s careful examination of the shroud proceeded.
*
The sun had set a half-hour earlier, but his meticulous scrutiny of the cloth continued. He found it fascinating, confirming everything that he’d read about the shroud. The ancient material was woven in a herringbone twill pattern, but there were a number of patches of a different material along the length of the cloth, areas that had been repaired after the fire. It is normally kept rolled around a velvet-covered staff and wrapped in red silk, but zigzagging wrinkles extended the length of the cloth, presumably from the centuries of being stored in a folded state.
The image of the body was a sort of brown or rusty red. . . all of one intensity. However, Marc noted that it seemed to nearly disappear under magnification, and there appeared to be no paint involved, but of course he’d test that more closely later. Perhaps some sort of dye could have created it. He turned to the nearby worktable to make a note to perform that test first when he actually began analyzing the material chemically and molecularly.
As he turned and reached for a pencil, his eye was caught by something reflected from the shiny surface of the centrifuge. He stopped and looked more carefully. It was a little light reflecting off something above the altar. Some impulse told him not to turn and examine the light directly, so instead, he casually moved to the autoclave which was encased in chrome. . . almost like a mirror. And to his amazement, in the reflection he saw the light glinting off a tiny lens . . . the lens of a small TV camera that was discreetly attached to an ancient chandelier hanging directly over the altar.
The camera was directed at the table where the shroud laid . . . the precise area where he was working.
With a flash, he realized why the objections to his working alone with the shroud had been dropped. He wasn’t alone. He was being watched every second.
His face flushed with anger. He felt betrayed because, even though he had made no explicit prohibition of TV in his agreement, it was implicit
in his conversation with the Pope. The deal was that he was to work alone! Marc strongly suspected that the Pope was unaware of this compromise, but it was certainly possible—even likely—that Nani had a hand in it. Whatever the case, he had no intention of working with Big Brother looking over his shoulder . . . probably taping his every move. His first impulse was to walk out the door, go directly to Lucassi, accuse him of spying, and demand that the TV be removed. After all, this was Lucassi’s domain, and he was responsible for what went on here. But Marc quickly realized that the Cardinal would hardly admit to spying, or, for that matter, to instructing one of his minions to do it. Nor would he finger Nani if there were complicity between them. He could easily claim total ignorance. Or he could even claim that the TV was part of the chapel’s regular equipment and that it wasn’t even switched on.
Furthermore, Marc mused, if this sort of fairly unsophisticated skullduggery was going on, what other sort of subterfuge might be used to undermine his efforts? There was no doubt that many people were opposed to any new insight into the shroud’s provenance, in spite of the Pope’s dictate; they didn’t want this investigation to proceed, and there was no telling what lengths they might go to achieve their ends. Was Monza’s the only set of keys to the chapel door? Probably not. In fact, there could even be another door that he hadn’t noticed. Who was to say that his research might not be tampered with when he left the chapel at night? His findings could be juggled to skew his final report; it could be so distorted that he might be made to appear an incompetent fool.
A solution came to Marc, a way to out-Machiavelli whoever was behind this, and he acted on it instantly. He went to the door, spoke to the guard, and asked that Monsignor Monza be summoned right away.
While waiting, Marc made a quick survey of the portion of the chapel behind the altar, the area out of the camera’s range, but there was no other exterior door. A few minutes later, a breathless Monza arrived, under the assumption that Marc had finished working for the day. “Are you ready for your dinner, Doctor?”
“I’ve decided to stay here,” Marc informed him. “Could you send somebody to get my things from the hotel?”
“Of course,” Monza beamed. “The Cardinal will be most pleased. You can dine with him tonight.”
“No, you don’t understand. I don’t mean that I’ll stay in the Cardinal’s residence. I intend to stay here . . . in the chapel.”
Monza was totally nonplussed. “That would be impossible,” he gasped.
“Why?”
“You wouldn’t be comfortable here.”
“I don’t mind roughing it. And I’d get a lot more work done in a much shorter period of time. All I’ll need is a cot and some blankets.”
“But what about your meals?” Monza stammered.
“You can have something delivered to me occasionally. I probably won’t be eating much anyway. Is there a toilet anywhere around?”
“Why, yes, there’s a small WC and a basin in the sacristy, but that’s all.”
“That’s all I’ll need.”
“I’ll have to discuss this with the Cardinal first.”
“Fine. Or I can get in touch with Pope Gregory about it.”
Monza bowed to the implied threat and immediately changed his tone to something more conciliatory. “I’m certain it can be worked out.”
And in little more than an hour, it had indeed been worked out. Marc’s belongings from the Excelsior were delivered along with a small folding cot and all the linens he’d need. A nun delivered a tray of hot food to the door, presumably left over from the Cardinal’s dinner, and Marc bolted the door as she departed.
But instead of eating, he went directly into his luggage, rummaged around until he located a container of shaving cream. Next, he went to the altar, placed a kneeling chair on top of it, and climbed up. He was just able to reach the TV camera. One squirt of the foam obscured the lens.
“The old bank robbery trick,” he muttered to himself.
In a small room adjacent to his office, Monsignor Monza looked with dismay at a TV whose screen had suddenly gone black. “Il bastardo,” he snarled.
*
After working until two o’clock that night, Marc finally fell onto his cot and slept without stirring for four hours. As the sun began to rise the next morning, and, after applying another precautionary squirt of shaving cream to the TV lens, he returned to work with renewed gusto. Within an hour he had completed examining the backside of the shroud, and turned it over carefully to the position in which he’d found it originally.
Before beginning his chemical and molecular analysis, he decided to give more attention to the areas that were supposedly Jesus’ blood because these areas seemed to have a more opaque quality that the rest of the image which suggested that they might be derived from another source. These “bloody areas” appeared on the head, on the one visible wrist, the feet, and on the chest where the Roman centurion thrust his spear in the Biblical account. Marc rubbed his eyes, replaced the magnifying glasses, and began re-examining one of the dark spots on the forehead of the figure, slowly moving his gaze carefully along every centimeter of the area. Something caught his eye, something imbedded into the material between two grooves of the twill. At first look, it appeared to be a piece of dark thread. Marc adjusted the magnification on his glasses to get a better look, then nudged the object gently with a probe. No, it wasn’t a thread after all . . . it had more rigidity than thread. Was it a fragment of hair?
With a pair of tweezers he carefully removed the tiny object and placed it on a slide. He moved to the adjacent table and put it under the stereomicroscope. A moment later the image came into focus. It was indeed a hair. The inescapable thought sprang instantly to mind: Jesus’ hair?
“It couldn’t be,” escaped Marc’s lips.
He looked again through the lenses, then moved away from the microscope, his mind churning with the thought that he had stumbled on the ultimate relic . . . a fragment from the body of Jesus himself.
“My God . . .” he muttered, then caught himself as the irony of his words hit him. “No, it couldn’t be. No way.” He paced to the far end of the chapel, trying to clear his mind, to think more lucidly. “That would be impossible,” he concluded, then was drawn back to the microscope for another look. “Or would it?” he pondered.
A loud knock on the door startled him. It was the nun again.
“Doctor Solovino? Are you ready for your breakfast?”
“Yes. Yes, I am. Just a minute.” He hurriedly located a small glass vial, then with great care placed the fragment inside and capped it. He placed the vial in his pocket, then went to the door, took the tray from the nun, and thanked her. The tray was loaded with fruit, juices, pastries, honey, steaming hot coffee and warm milk, and, as a nod to his being American, two eggs fried in olive oil. It looked delicious, and as Marc dug in, he realized that he was ravenously hungry. Maybe that’s why I’m not thinking clearly, he mused . . . why I hid the hair like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He took the vial from his pocket and looked at it closely. He’d stumbled onto something that could be extremely important, of that he was sure, and, glancing up at the TV camera, he was glad that he’d covered its probing eye. Now he needed to take his time to think carefully about this discovery…very carefully.
CHAPTER 4
As Marc forced himself to keep working, the hair remained foremost in his mind, but eventually the passage of time brought some clarity to his thoughts, allowing him to ponder his discovery a bit more coherently. It was very possible, even likely, he reasoned, that his initial presumption—that the hair might have come from Jesus—was completely off the wall. Totally off the wall. And even if it were from the guy from Nazareth, there was no way to prove that. A bit of hair from any number of other people could have accidentally adhered to the cloth and become attached in its threads at some point over the centuries. And yet… he mused… back and forth. Still… and yet…
It was his damned Cat
holic upbringing that had brought the idea to mind in the first place, Mark reflected. I’m still Pavlov’s dog, trained to salivate at anything that even smacks of religion. And if anything could prompt such thoughts, certainly the Shroud of Turin would do the trick. Even a non-Christian might react with a certain amount of awe to such an historic and revered object. And he’d been brainwashed from an early age by some real experts in black garb with round collars. It made sense, from that perspective. And that was sheer bull, he knew.
And yet there was something about the recent series of events in his life that didn’t follow any logical progression. His scientifically trained mind and his gut reaction roiled his reason. Was there some sort of inevitability that had led him to this ancient chapel in Turin? An inevitability that wasn’t necessarily related to the Church? Wasn’t there such a thing as destiny? Was he possibly destined to achieve this overnight (and probably fleeting) fame in order to achieve some further goal in life that he couldn’t even imagine at this moment? Should he keep this discovery to himself? Why not share his thoughts with the world? Pursue his prominence to the next step, whatever that might be?
But, after going round and round with these thoughts for many hours, Marc finally concluded that although announcing the hair’s discovery would make a hell of a splash in the media and create a lot of publicity for both himself and the Church, it would be a messy controversy at best… not the kind of “hype” the Church was seeking. And from a personal angle, it would inevitably mire him in a debate that might well erode the considerable prestige he’d recently acquired in the scientific community. Since it would raise questions that could never be answered conclusively, why open up such a can of worms?
The Cloning Page 5