Sign of the Cross Read online

  Himmler mumbled, ‘Disappointing,’ several times as he thumbed through Rahn’s report.

  Rahn could only watch him and hope that the police chief’s disappointment didn’t lead straight to the Eldorado and Rahn’s doom. Then Rahn’s gloom lifted when Himmler smiled.

  ‘Now this, this, is interesting,’ Himmler said.

  ‘Which topic are you referring to?’ Rahn asked.

  ‘The Armenian business. What is your explanation for the disparity between the two texts?’

  ‘Presumably, both of the early-centuries’ translators had access to Eusebius’s original Greek texts and worked independently, perhaps separated in time by a hundred years or more. There were multiple discrepancies between the earlier, partial text and the later, complete one. These differences went beyond the passage I highlighted in my report. It may be that the first translator was more skillful, possessing a better command of Greek. Alternatively, the underlying Greek manuscripts might have differed, reflecting the copying errors or omissions of a scribe.’

  ‘And why is it that the texts we have today in Latin, English, German, what have you, are all missing this key phrase: “the Holy Lance glowing like fire whenever it touched his bridle”?’

  ‘I can only assume that in the absence of a surviving Greek original, the completed Armenian translation was the one used for subsequent Latin translations. Probably, the earlier, fragmentary Armenian manuscript was not consulted because it was woefully incomplete and thus, what it contained was lost to time.’

  ‘Until you found it, Herr Rahn.’

  Rahn’s chest swelled with pride.

  ‘Thank you, sir!’

  ‘But what does it mean: “the lance glowed like fire”?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ Rahn confessed.

  ‘No theory?’

  ‘Perhaps it was a metaphor.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Himmler said, pensively. ‘I took the opportunity to telephone one of our physicists, Werner Heisenberg, in Leipzig. I asked him for his views on this. He was dismissive that the interaction between two metals could cause one to glow. I asked about the phenomenon of radioactivity as a cause but he brushed this off. He did volunteer to study one or both metals if I could provide them.’

  ‘Can we take possession of the lance in Vienna?’ Rahn asked.

  ‘Not at this time, I’m afraid. But I suggest to you an exciting alternative explanation to the physical ones that Heisenberg seems to reject: what if there is a supernatural explanation? What if the true relics of Christ are imbued with a supernatural power that transcends the scientific and rational? And, if true, what if the Fatherland could harness this power to vanquish our enemies?’

  As Himmler talked, Rahn watched the small man’s eyes grow wilder. Rahn chose his next words carefully. ‘That is indeed a fascinating theory! I compliment you. But I wonder how it can be tested?’

  ‘Do you? Isn’t it obvious?’ Himmler asked. ‘You will travel to Vienna immediately, Herr Rahn. You will take this motley collection of relics with you. I hesitate to attempt to secure permission from the Austrian foreign minister, Berger-Waldenegg, to allow you to handle the Holy Lance. He will be suspicious of our intentions with respect to this and other Imperial Treasures. One day, we will come to possess the lance, but it will not be today. You will have to use your ingenuity to conduct a test. If any of your relics cause the lance to glow like fire, then you will have proof of their authenticity and I will have something new and powerful to present to the Führer.’

  Words like, ludicrous and preposterous rolled through Rahn’s mind but the word that he uttered was, ‘Brilliant!’

  ‘Now as to this other item of interest in your report. It concerns the other book you found in the Vatican,’ Himmler said. ‘Before you return from Vienna, I want you to go to Italy. I want you to see this Italian monk who claims to have the stigmata of Christ. I want you to interrogate Padre Pio.’

  Berlin, present day

  Schneider carefully placed the onionskin pages into their envelope and returned it to his safe. He was no fan of homosexuals. He supposed there were some, perhaps many of them, inside his bank but he didn’t want to know about it. In his view, Rahn had been foolish and had gotten what he deserved. In 1937, after repeated warnings about his openly homosexual activities, Himmler finally refused to look the other way. The Gestapo delivered the ultimatum to Rahn: either do the honorable thing or face deportation to a concentration camp with his fellow deviants. Rahn, a dedicated trekker, took control of his own fate. He made his last trip to the Tyrolean Mountains where, on a frigid March morning, he went for a hike without a coat. He was found some days later, frozen solid. Despite his loathing of Rahn’s lifestyle, whenever Schneider read Rahn’s report to Himmler he found himself saddened at his demise. After all, without Otto Rahn, the Knights of Longinus would only be a bunch of old men getting together to drink and complain about the rotten state of current affairs.

  Two fingers of his right hand slipped in between the buttons of his dress shirt and probed the special scar on his chest, which he’d had since his expedition to Antarctica. It was a slender, heaped-up ridge of tissue, three-centimeters long where a thorn had gotten hot as a fireplace poker and burned through the pocket of his parka.

  He silently thanked Rahn as he often did. Because of him, Schneider and his friends were more than a band of foolish old men. They were potent patriots who had a real shot at changing the world.

  THIRTEEN

  Cal’s attempts to communicate with the monastery of St Athanasius were unsuccessful. They had no telephone and his email, sent to the address on the St Athanasius website, was answered by a webmaster at a Croatian web-hosting company who said he had no way of contacting the monks.

  Cal felt strongly that his report on Padre Gio would be incomplete without interviewing the Croatian monks, so he booked a flight and traveled to Dubrovnik directly from Naples. At the airport he picked up his hired Peugeot and navigated the three-hour drive to the Dinaric Alps with his phone.

  At the turnoff to the monastery, Cal corkscrewed up the long, narrow road to the mountaintop sanctuary. At the car park he got out, stretched and breathed in the cool, late-afternoon air. There was but one other vehicle parked there, a school minivan.

  The ancient stone chapel occupied the highest point on the mountain. He headed up the dirt path past some low outbuildings and sheds and a rambling, ramshackle stone cottage where he presumed the monks lived. The party of school children was coming toward him from the chapel, running and laughing as if the school bell had rung the end of the day. Two adults lagged behind and when they passed, Cal asked them what they thought of the place.

  One of the women replied in fair English, ‘Very old church. Very nice. Very holy.’

  ‘Were the monks there?’ he asked.

  ‘No monks. Church is empty.’

  Cal headed toward the cottage but before he got there he spied a solitary figure working a plot of land with a garden hoe. When he got closer he saw the man was wearing the brown tunic of a monk.

  ‘Hello, there,’ Cal called out in English.

  The monk looked up then continued hoeing.

  Cal came closer and shifted to Italian.

  The monk shot him an irritated glance and replied in English with a pronounced Croatian accent.

  ‘Can you not see I am working?’

  Cal said he was sorry to bother him but that he was there on official business from the Vatican.

  ‘I have never been to the Vatican,’ the monk said, shifting a heavy clod of soil.

  ‘Are you Brother Augustin?’ Cal asked.

  ‘I am not. I am Brother Ivan.’

  ‘He’s the one I needed to see. Is he here?’

  ‘He is not. He is over there.’ The monk pointed in the direction of the chapel.

  ‘I was told there was no one in the church.’

  ‘He is not in the church. He is in the graveyard near the church.’

  Cal showed his su
rprise. ‘When did he die?’

  ‘Recently.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘He had an accident. He fell down the well, drawing water.’

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear that. Perhaps I could trouble you with some questions. I’ve just flown here from Italy. There was no way to contact you by phone.’

  ‘What do you wish to know?’

  ‘I want to talk about the day two seminary students from Italy came to visit the monastery. One of them, Giovanni Berardino, was shown the crypt by Brother Augustin.’

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘February, I believe.’

  ‘We have many visitors from Italy and elsewhere. I cannot remember them.’

  ‘I see. Maybe you’ve heard about this young Italian who is now a priest. People are calling him Padre Gio.’

  ‘How would I hear about an Italian priest?’ Ivan asked.

  ‘He’s been in the news a lot.’

  The reply was gruff. ‘We receive little news here.’ The monk began working again and Cal thought he might ignore him but suddenly he turned and asked, ‘Why is he making news?’

  ‘Because he’s developed the stigmata of Christ.’

  Minutes later, Cal was drinking a cup of herbal tea at Brother Ivan’s kitchen table and commiserating with a sad, lonely old man.

  ‘It is sobering to know that one is the last in a long line of monks that reaches back to the early days of our faith.’

  ‘When was the last time you had a novice at the monastery?’ Cal asked.

  ‘At least twenty years. He seemed like he had a good soul but he did not last long. We have no heat in the winter other than our wood fires and there is no hot water unless we boil it. We use electricity sparingly. It is a hard life unless one can take comfort in prayer, meditation and hard work. When Augustin and I were younger we did all the gardening and repairs ourselves. We had cows and chickens. Augustin made a passable apple and elderberry wine and I could brew beer, not that we ever overindulged. We were self-sufficient. When we became old men we needed help. Women from the village bring milk and eggs and cheese. And meat for Augustin. I do not eat meat. We have a handyman we pay with the donations we receive from visitors and pilgrims. He fixes what is broken and helps with the vegetable garden. When it snows he plows and shovels.’ Ivan rubbed at his scraggly beard. ‘I always knew the day would come that I would be alone. You see, Augustin was older and in poor health.’

  ‘Was it you who found his body?’ Cal asked.

  ‘No, it was Jan, the handyman. He had not been in the well for very long. When the firemen retrieved him and laid him out on the grass he looked serene, as if asleep. I can show you his grave if you want.’

  Cal had talked with the monk long enough to think that he might now entertain questions about Giovanni’s visit.

  ‘Forgive me, but you do remember the Italian seminary students, don’t you?’

  Ivan nodded apologetically. ‘It has been a long time since I told a lie.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘You see we told no one.’

  ‘Told no one what?’ Cal asked.

  ‘How did the Vatican know that Brother Augustin also had the stigmata of Christ?’

  Cal held his breath for several seconds before he said, ‘I’m not sure the Vatican or I knew about this. The present investigation concerns the young priest, Giovanni.’

  The monk turned pensive. ‘I wonder if I’ve betrayed a confidence.’

  ‘Betrayed whom?’

  ‘Augustin, of course. The monks of St Athanasius have always been cloistered. We do not turn pilgrims away but we do not take our spiritual sustenance from the outside world. We are private in our faith and none was more private than Augustin. The fact of his stigmata was a matter between him and God. It did not involve anyone else, not even me, his brother, even though often I bore witness to his suffering. Yes, he suffered greatly for his faith.’

  ‘How long? How long did he suffer?’

  ‘Since he was a young man until months before his death.’

  ‘Where were his stigmata?’

  ‘His wrists. Only his wrists.’

  ‘Not ankles, not his right side.’

  ‘No, only the wrists. They were always painful, always weeping blood. He had to eat liver and red meat to restore his blood.’

  ‘Do you know the circumstances of precisely when he developed stigmata?’

  ‘I know he did not have them when he came here as a novice. He developed them at St Athanasius in the secret tradition of the monastery.’

  Cal almost dropped his pen. ‘I’m sorry, what did you just say? A tradition?’

  Ivan rose to refill the kettle. ‘More tea? If you do not like chamomile I have green tea.’

  Cal said only a quick yes, not wanting to sidetrack this critical moment with a discussion about tea. The monk stayed silent, waiting for the whistle of the kettle.

  When he rejoined Cal at the kitchen table he said, ‘It is over now. With the passing of Augustin the tradition has ended. There is nothing more to protect. We did not want the outside world to know about our miracle. It would have changed our way of life and violated our spiritual mission. The tradition has passed from monk to monk, generation to generation in an unbroken chain extending, we believe, to the earliest days of the monastery. Only a single monk at a time had the stigmata. When he grew very old or became ill, it was for him to choose a young monk to pass along the miracle.’

  ‘How did he do it?’ Cal asked.

  Ivan looked at Cal’s writing hand and asked with a pained expression, ‘Must you write this down?’

  He pocketed his pen. ‘I’ll stop. Please, go on.’

  ‘I only know this,’ the monk said. ‘When the time came, a young monk was invited to join the old monk in the chapel. No one else was present. The two men descended into the crypt. What happened there, I do not know. It was not my place to ask and Augustin never talked of this. Yet he told me later that night – the day the seminarians arrived – that he decided on the spot to act.’

  ‘Why then?’

  ‘I believe he sensed his mortality.’

  ‘Why didn’t he pass the tradition to you?’

  ‘I am old and it was clear there would be no one to succeed me. Augustin cried that night, joyful tears that his ordeal was over, bitter tears that the miraculous chain of St Athanasius had ended with him.’

  ‘Tell me what you mean about his ordeal being over?’

  ‘That very night his stigmata began to heal and within days his skin was smooth. He bled no more and suffered no more.’

  ‘Why do you think he chose Giovanni and not the other young man, Antonio?’

  The monk grasped Cal’s forearm. ‘Augustin held onto me the way I am holding onto you when he told me this: he saw something spiritual in the young man, some quality of holiness and piety that led him to decide as he did.’

  ‘And he told you nothing of what transpired in the crypt.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Were you in the chapel when it happened? Did you see Giovanni afterwards?’

  ‘I was here in the cottage. Nor did I see the young man depart. Augustin and I never spoke of it again and I did not know what happened to him until this day. How is he bearing his burden, this Giovanni?’

  ‘I believe it’s hard for him.’

  The monk nodded knowingly. ‘I suppose you will wish to see the crypt now.’

  Dusk darkened the mountain as Cal began his return journey to Dubrovnik. As he drove he thought about the crypt. In his line of work, visiting churches and crypts was about as common as a kid visiting a toy store and these at St Athanasius were remarkable only for their antiquity. The crypt itself was small and dank. It had a smooth stone floor embedded with a dozen or so marker stones of medieval bishops and a few esteemed abbots, from a time when the population of the monastery was large enough to support a hierarchy. The stone walls were bare, with no evidence of early plasterwork or frescoes. Th
e only embellishment was a nook, with a shelf carved into the wall located directly beneath the church altar. And on that shelf was a simple bronze reliquary. He had asked about the urn and Ivan had replied that he had long known it was there but had never known if it held anything. It was not his place to ask, the monk had said. Cal had gotten permission to inspect it. There were no inscriptions. He had shaken it gently before removing the lid.

  It began to rain and Cal clicked on the wipers.

  An empty reliquary in a seventh-century church.

  With a long tradition of miracles.

  A veritable stigmata factory.

  He grumbled a few choice words. The front that was bringing rain to the mountain blotted out the last good light of the evening and the slick mountain switchback road was going to be that much more challenging. He slowed and used his brights but the rain began to pelt down and he found the low beams less refractive.

  The rearview mirror seemed to explode with light.

  He instinctively squinted hard to deal with the pain of someone’s high beams reflecting directly into his dilated pupils.

  ‘Son-of-a-bitch!’ he shouted.

  He pumped his brakes a few times as a signal to the jackass on his tail that he didn’t appreciate the light show.

  The reply was a jolt that snapped his skull against the headrest.

  The sound of the rear bumper caving in and the taillights shattering drowned out his curse. The car rocketed forward and the flimsy guardrail was coming up fast, filling his windshield. He hit the brakes hard and cut the wheel to the left.

  If there were a choice, he’d rather hit the mountain than fly off it.

  The Peugeot was a new model with good brakes and a tight suspension. He was able to get the car under control and slow it to a crawl.

  The crash must have knocked out the headlights of the vehicle behind him because he didn’t see the next hit coming.

  Again, his neck snapped back and again, the trunk of his Peugeot crumpled. The car lurched forward and glanced the rocky face of the mountain, deforming the front bumper. The impact was oblique enough that his airbag didn’t deploy.

  ‘Mother …’