The Fifth Gospel(58)

            Today I was put in touch with an Orthodox scholar who claims to know where the Shroud was brought after the Crucifixion. He says there is an ancient tradition about a mystical, Shroudlike image in a Byzantine city called Edessa. Despite my skepticism, I am meeting tomorrow with the priest who put us in touch. Can’t say no, since he’s H.E.’s nephew.

            His Eminence’s nephew.

            Simon.

            My eyes rise from the pages. An unpleasant, antic feeling buzzes through me like a fly trapped on the inside of a window. Something is wrong.

            There’s an unmistakable description in the next entry.

            He’s the quintessential Secretariat priest: handsome, blue-eyed, elegant. Very tall and thin. He acts so solicitous about my exhibit that I know he has some private investment in it. He wants to have dinner tomorrow. I see no way out of it.

            The unlikely first meeting of two future friends.

            Yet on my first visit to Ugo’s apartment, he and Simon told the story of how a Vatican curator collapsed in the Turkish desert and was saved by a young embassy priest. The entry in this diary is nine months older than that.

            Ugo and Simon lied to me about how they met.

            I put the book on my chest, feeling rattled. They had no reason to hide anything from me.

            And yet there was always something awkward about the story they told me. Simon seemed to recoil from it even as Ugo told it. The details were real enough—Ugo’s sunburn, his broken glasses—but if their encounter in the desert really happened, it may not have been their first meeting. So why the selective memory? What could they have felt they needed to dance around?

            I reopen the diary. In the next entry, the whole logic of Ugo’s exhibit surfaces for the first time.

            The disciples discovered the Shroud and carried it to Edessa, whose king had once invited Jesus to visit him.

            Ugo, however, is full of doubts.

            Don’t these Orthodox recognize a medieval legend? They really believe our most precious relic was kept for centuries in a second-rate Byzantine border town?

            The irony of this question seems to have escaped him. More than a thousand years later, it was in a no-name French village that the Shroud first surfaced in western Europe. Like its maker, the relic was never in a hurry to visit the great cities.

            But Ugo continues:

            Had dinner again with Andreou. Confronted him with my suspicions. No surprise: it’s political. He didn’t even bother to deny it. He doesn’t care where the Shroud came from. Only how we got our hands on it. If the relic’s past can be brought to light, he says, it will be a rallying cry for all Christians. A stepping-stone in our relations with other Churches.

            I’m stung. These few sentences conjure the essence of Simon: the familiar agenda; the lack of guile; the breathless assurance that the future of Christianity could be at stake. My brother comes off as utterly candid—which makes it harder to understand how he and Ugo both withheld this information from me for months. A stepping-stone in our relations with other Churches. Surely Simon was referring to the Orthodox, in which case Michael may have been right. Simon might’ve found it irresistible to finish the work our father left behind sixteen years ago in Turin.

            Then there’s this:

            He doesn’t care where the Shroud came from. Only how we got our hands on it.

            Michael Black said the priests who attacked him believed Ugo had found something. They wanted to know what it was. I fan the pages forward, searching for entries from around the time of Ugo’s final e-mail to me.

            They come near the end, where his notes are shorter and less personal. The Diatessaron seems to preoccupy him. Then, one week before the e-mail, a familiar diagram appears. The caduceus of entwined gospel verses. Below it is the disturbing hint I’ve been looking for.