Sign of the Cross

was going to say. ‘I’m not happy. Not happy at all.’

The director ignored her comments. ‘You’re on in three… two… one.’

The image of the falling cross popped onto television sets around the world. ‘I’m standing outside the Forbidden City in Beijing, where a moment ago a parachute was spotted high above the city… As you can see, it appears that we are looking at the fourth victim in a bizarre string of crucifixions that has captured the world’s eye.’

Graphics detailing the other cases scrolled across the bottom of the CNN broadcast.

‘The victim appears to be a white male in his thirties. He’s been attached to the cross with a series of spikes, similar to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.’

The director shouted into her earpiece. ‘Goddammit! Don’t make this religious!’

Collins gathered her thoughts. ‘Blood can be seen pouring from the victim’s hands and feet, dripping down the wood like a grisly horror movie.’ Farley zoomed in closer, trying to get the best shot possible. ‘I can see blood pouring out of his side, gushing from his wound in little bursts like… Oh God! Look at his face! He just opened his eyes! Jesus! He isn’t dead!’

‘Fuck!’ shouted the director. ‘Don’t use Jesus in vain! You’ll piss off the Bible Belt.’

Collins tried to stay calm. ‘Soldiers are filling the streets around me, unsure of what to do. I don’t know if they realize the victim is alive, that there might be a chance to save him and find out information about the killer.’ She glanced at her monitor, searching for something to describe. ‘I’m scanning the sky for a plane, but I don’t see or hear one. That only adds to the mystery. Where did it come from? Why did the killer choose China? What is he trying to say?’

The cross continued to fall, drifting slowly toward the inner courtyard of the Forbidden City.

‘We’re about to lose contact with the parachute due to our vantage point. Right now he’s about five hundred feet above the great palace, a place where the media are not allowed to enter. We’ll stay with the victim as he continues to fall. Troops are rushing toward the closest gate, each of them carrying rifles just in case this is an attack… Right now I don’t see any medical personnel. I’m hoping they’re already inside the City’s massive walls, waiting for the parachute to land.’

Farley followed the chute until it fell out of view, then quickly panned back to a shot of Collins standing on the sidewalk. Her blue eyes were staring directly into the camera.

‘I’ve been in the news business for many years, but I’ve never seen anything as bizarre as this… And thanks to the magic of television, you got to see it, too.’

In his Boston hotel room, Nick Dial nodded at her comment. ‘Talk about reality TV.’

He turned down the volume and walked over to his bulletin board. Four red pushpins marked his crime scenes. Four different continents, four different victims. All of them connected on the world map by two straight lines. Lines that formed a giant cross. Lines that intersected in Italy.

But where in Italy? That was the question.

The geographical cross missed Rome and Vatican City by over fifty miles. That surprised Dial, since both places fit the criteria of the other cases. Famous cities and tons of tourists meant plenty of attention. Yet as far as Dial could tell, the center point of the cross was somewhere in the Umbria region, smackdab in the middle of nowhere.

Dial leaned in for a closer view but realized he needed a detailed map of Italy to find the precise town where the longitude and latitude lines met, because something was going to happen there. Something big. He didn’t know what, but he knew the location was the key to everything.

He knew that X marked the spot.

64

Boyd and Maria fanned out on the upper floors of the library, searching for information about the laughing man. This gave Jones the perfect opportunity to spend some alone time with Maria. He found her near the manuscript collection on the second floor. ‘What are you looking for?’

She whispered, ‘A needle in a haystack.’

Jones did a three sixty turn, soaking in all the books and artifacts that surrounded them. ‘Big haystack… What’s your needle look like? Maybe I can help.’

She shrugged. ‘I have no idea… Absolutely none.’

‘Great! That narrows it down for us.’

Maria moved toward him, gently rubbing her fingers over the spine of the books. ‘You have to admit there’s some irony to being here. I mean, of all the places in the world, we’re at the Hofburg looking for proof of Christ’s death. That seems so fitting because of the spear.’

‘Spear? What spear?’

‘The Spear of Destiny. The lance that pierced Christ’s side. It’s here at the Hofburg.’

‘Oh. That spear.’

She nodded. ‘Did you know the first thing Hitler did when he claimed Austria in 1938 was to come here and get the spear? Historians say it was the thing that motivated him to rule the world. He saw it as a young student and had a vision that the spear would make him invincible.’

But Hitler wasn’t the only one who believed in the weapon. According to legend, whoever possessed the lance was granted the power to conquer the world. But it was also said if the owner ever lost the spear, he would die a swift death — a fact that played out when Hitler took his own life a mere eighty minutes after American troops seized the bunker where he was safeguarding the relic. Some attribute this to coincidence while others ascribe it to fate.

The history of the Holy Lance (aka the Spear of Destiny) can be tracked through the centuries, even though no one knows for sure if it was actually used by Longinus, the Roman centurion who supposedly pierced the side of Christ. Some historians believe that the twenty-inch blade was forged several centuries after the death of Christ and is nothing more than a hoax.

Some biblical historians are willing to go one step further. Not only do they feel that the Lance is fictional, but they also claim that Longinus is fictional as well, since no records or texts mentioned his name until the Gospel of Nicodemus appeared in 715. Furthermore, since ‘Longinus’ is a Latinized version of longche, the Greek word for ‘spear,’ they feel the name was created by the Church to attach a name to an otherwise faceless man.

Maria said, ‘The Gospels say the spear proved that Christ had died. Now here we are, where that mythical spear is kept, and we’re looking for proof that Christ didn’t die on the cross. The irony is staggering.’

Jones paused, considering her statement. ‘What if it isn’t irony? What if there’s a reason that the lance and the laughing man are both here? What if Longinus was the laughing man?’

Maria laughed. ‘You’re joking, right?’

‘Not at all,’ he stressed. ‘Longinus was involved in the crucifixion, right? Yet no one can describe what he looked like, and he never appeared in the history books until after the fall of the Empire. That seems pretty strange, considering how anal the Romans were about record keeping. Well, maybe his identity was being protected by Tiberius. Maybe he had it removed from the history books.’

‘What about the P? The statue’s ring had a P on it. That has to stand for something.’

‘Maybe it does. What if Longinus’s name was fictionalized by the Church like some people claim? His real name could’ve been Peter or Paul or whatever. I mean, Longinus was standing right next to the cross during the crucifixion, so he could’ve slipped Christ the mandrake. Plus he told the crowd that Jesus had died, then proved it by stabbing him in the side.’

Maria stood there, silent, comparing Jones’s theory to the knowledge she possessed. Deep down inside she sensed something didn’t fit, that something was missing from the big picture.

She would learn what that was a few hours later.

Nick Dial flipped through his atlas until he came across a map of Italy. He carefully drew two lines across the colorful surface while constantly glancing at the red pushpins on his bulletin board. He knew if he was off as little as a quarter inch, he could miss his target by fifty miles.