explained.
She recalled hearing these things in the news. Even given Conte’s ruthlessness, which she’d witnessed firsthand, his involvement in such a huge
heist came as a complete surprise. Wrapped in thought, Charlotte caught
herself tailgating a semi that was chugging up the steep grade. She checked
the mirrors, flipped on the turn signal, and maneuvered around it. “Then he brought the ossuary to the Vatican,” Donovan said. “And,
well . . . you know the rest.”
Trying to process the unbelievable story, Charlotte was silent for a solid
minute. “I guess I should be thanking you,” she finally managed. He raised a hand to dismiss any idea of it. There was no glory in what
he’d done. Especially since he still wasn’t certain if Conte’s murder had
incited what had happened today.
“At first I thought these men might have known that Conte was working for the Vatican,” Donovan explained. “Perhaps he hadn’t paid them
for their services in Jerusalem. But they spoke about Conte as if he were
a stranger. And no mention of money . . . or the ossuary, or the nails, or
the book. Just the bones,” he grimly replied. “The
disbelief. “I can’t imagine why. Even if I were to give bones to them, how
would they know they came from inside that ossuary? I suppose I could
give them any skeleton . . . ,” he said, hands cast up.
But Charlotte knew that was not the case. Those bones hid a one-ofa-kind imprint. And if these men knew what made them so special . . . A
cold chill ran over Charlotte’s body.
There was a more direct answer she was hoping for. So she just needed
to go for it. “That skeleton I studied ...It belonged to
She’d thought it impossible. But Dr. Bersei had been the first to suggest
this, finally convinced after deciphering the strange relief carved into the
ossuary’s side—a dolphin wrapped around a trident.
Charlotte’s hands clamped harder on the wheel as she awaited Dono
van’s slow reply.
A trembling hand went loosely over his mouth while he tried to formulate a response. “You saw the bones and the relics with your own eyes.
If archaeologists had found them first, the evidence would have left little
doubt—”
“Was it
Exasperated, Donovan swallowed hard. “Yes.”
16
******
“And you have no doubts about that?” Charlotte said. After seeing the incredible genes hidden in the bones, their healing powers . . . Could there be any doubt that it had been Jesus’s remains she’d studied in secret at the Vatica n Museums ?
“There’s always room for error, but . . .” Donovan shook his head.
“You . . . a priest . . . ,” she said, stalling. “You’re basically telling me that there was no resurrection or ascension?”
“Not in a physical sense.”
“Then what about the Gospels?” Charlotte bitterly replied. “Is it all just made up?”
“The biblical accounts of events immediately following Christ’s burial are highly suspect, dare I say . . . falsified.”
“How so?”
The proof was fairly complicated, but he started at the easiest point. He explained that the oldest Gospel— Mark—originally ended with the empty tomb and that verses 16:9 through 16:20, where Jesus makes His appearances to Mary and the disciples, then ascends into heaven, were an addendum, written by a completely different hand. The Vatican’s oldest manuscripts from the fourth century, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, didn’t include the long ending, but by the fifth century Mark had
Charlotte could tell that Donovan was calm about all this but also felt somewhat cheated. To her, it seemed too big a conspiracy to have been kept under wraps for so long. “And nobody figured this out?” she asked, incredulous.
