The Christ Clone Trilogy: IN HIS IMAGE
(Revised
and Expanded with Study Guide and Prophecy Cross Reference)
James BeauSeigneur
Copyright 1988, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2012 by James BeauSeigneur
ISBN: 9780965694803
Published by SelectiveHouse Publishers, Inc. Publishing at Smashwords
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are taken from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
Scriptures noted KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, incidents, and dialogue, except for incidental references to public figures, products, or services, are imaginary and are not intended to refer to any living persons or to disparage any company’s products or services.
Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ChristCloneTrilogy
Webpage: http://selectivehouse.com/
About the Author
James BeauSeigneur is a former intelligence analyst for the National Security Agency (NSA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM). As an author, he has worked with the Department of Homeland Security as a participant in Terrorism Red Cells to speculate on possible terrorist targets and tactics. He has been a newspaper publisher, taught political science at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and in 1980 was the Republican nominee for U.S. Congress running against Al Gore. He is a member of Mensa and the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.
The Right Place at the Right Time
When in the Woods and Meeting Wild Beasts
The Power Within Him — The Power Within Us All
Dedication
For Gerilynne, Faith, and Abigail, who sacrificed so much to allow this trilogy to become a reality.
But most of all for Shiloh, who sacrificed far more. May it serve you well.
Acknowledgments
While writing The Christ Clone Trilogy, I called upon the support of specialists in many fields of endeavor to ensure the accuracy and plausibility of my work. Others provided editorial direction, professional guidance, or moral sustenance. These include: John Jefferson, Ph.D.; Michael Haire, Ph.D.; James Russell, M.D.; Robert Seevers, Ph.D.; Peter Helt, J.D.; James Beadle, Ph.D.; Christy Beadle, M.D.; Ken Newberger, Th.M., Ph.D.; Eugene Walter, Ph.D.; Clement Walchshauser, D.Min.; Col. Arthur Winn; Elizabeth Winn, Ph.D.; Ian Wilson, Historian; Jeanne Gehret, M.A.; Linda Alexander; Scott Brown; and Mike Pinkston.
Sincere appreciation to poet Nguyen Chi Thien for his unfaltering spirit; and to the staff of the Library of Congress; the Jewish Publication Society of America; the Zondervan Corporation; Yale Southeast Asia Studies; and the hundreds of others whose work provided background for this book.
Author’s Note
This novel is a work of historic and prophetic fiction. Many of the events described in chapters one and two of In His Image actually occurred and have been reported in numerous nonfiction works and publications. I have endeavored to portray those events accurately and have used the names of the actual participants — those being, in order of appearance: John Jackson, Eric Jumper, John Heller, Rudy Dichtl, Monsignor Cottino, Roger Gilbert, Marty Gilbert, Sam Pellicori, and Allan Adler.
Other well-known public personalities and widely reported historic events are referenced, but only those events that have been widely reported by reliable nonfiction sources should be assumed to be true; all others should be assumed to be the product of imagination. Additionally, the names of several “public persons,” institutions, and organizations such as the Catholic Church, the United Nations, and numerous world governments are incorporated into this work. References to events involving any such persons, institutions, organizations, or governments following the publication date of the first printing of the first edition of this book are entirely the product of the author’s imagination.
With the exceptions noted above, all other names, characters, and incidents are either the product of imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
“Are these the shadows of things that will be, or are they the shadows of things that may be, only?”
— Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Prologue
It was the worst of times.
Twice in twenty years, nuclear war had engulfed large regions of the planet. A mile-wide asteroid struck the Pacific Ocean south of Japan, fracturing the Earth’s mantle, and creating massive earthquakes that killed tens of thousands. Mountain-like tsunami submerged hundreds of Pacific islands, stripped the coastal regions of four continents to bare stone and steel, and left the ocean’s eco-system uninhabitable. The fractured mantle ignited eruptions throughout the “Ring of Fire,” and volcanoes spewed ash and poisonous fumes into the atmosphere.
And now, a demonic homicidal madness has left one third of the world’s remaining population dead — brutally murdered by their own family members.
Truly, it was the worst of times.
Never before had the world been so ready, so eager for a savior.
And all of it was premeditated 2000 years before.
Chapter 1
The Right Place at the Right Time
45 years earlier
Knoxville, Tennessee
Decker Hawthorne — He typed out the letters of his name and his hands paused on the keys as he quickly scanned the editorial for reassurance he had made his point convincingly. It would have to do. The deadline had passed, the newspaper was waiting to be put to bed, and Decker had a plane to catch.
As he left the offices of the Knoxville Enterprise, he paused just long enough to straighten the hand-lettered placard that hung outside the door. It was a weekly paper, small by any standard, but it was growing. Decker had started the paper with a short supply of money and an abundance of naïveté. The upside was that with his aggressive — sometimes reckless — approach, the Enterprise frequently scooped the two local daily newspapers, including once with a story of national significance. It didn’t always work so well, however, and he had also printed a few stories that turned out to be scoops of a different sort. He had always been a risk taker, and while he lost at least as often as he won, he liked to believe he had a knack for being in the right place at the right time. Right now though, he was supposed to be at the airport, and he wasn’t.
“You’re going to miss your plane,” called Decker’s wife, Elizabeth.
As the plane left the runway, Decker looked out over the city of Alcoa on the southern outskirts of Knoxville. Below, he could pick out his small house on the edge of one of Alcoa’s many parks. The steadily receding sight recalled disquieting emotions. He had spent most of his life traveling. As a boy it was with his family, moving from one army post to another. Later he had spent a year and a half hitchhiking across the United States and Canada; then four years in the army. Partly he felt a little cheated: He had never really had a home. But partly he felt blessed. He hated leaving, but he loved going.
Decker’s flight arrived late into New York and he had to run to make his connecting flight to Milan, Italy. Nearing the gate, he looked for a familiar face but saw none. In fact, at first glance, there was no one at the gate at all. He saw the plane out the window, but at that instant he heard the engines begin to whine. Thundering down the red-carpeted incline of the jetway, he almost collided with a ticket agent.
“I’ve got to get on that plane!” he told the woman, as he put on the sweetest “help me” look he could muster.
“You have your passport?” she asked.
“Right here,” he answered, handing it to her along with his boarding pass.
“What about your luggage?”
“This is it,” he replied, holding up an overstuffed and somewhat oversized carry-on bag.
The plane hadn’t actually moved yet, so after notifying the pilot, it was an easy task to move the jetway back into place. After a quick but heartfelt thank you, Decker boarded the plane and headed to his seat. Now he saw a sea of friendly and familiar faces. On his right was John Jackson, the team’s leader. A few seats back was Eric Jumper. Both were from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Jackson had his PhD in physics and had worked extensively on lasers and particle beams. Jumper, also a PhD, was an engineer specializing in thermodynamics, aerodynamics, and heat exchange. In fact, almost everyone around him had a PhD of one sort or another. Altogether there were more than forty scientists, technicians, and support staff. Though he knew most only by sight, many paused long enough from their conversations to offer a smile of welcome or to say they were glad he hadn’t missed the flight.
Decker found his seat, stowed his luggage, and sat down. There to greet him was Professor Harry Goodman, a sloppily dressed, short man with gray hair, reading glasses half-way down his nose, and thick bushy brows that blazed helter-skelter above his eyes and up onto his forehead like a brush fire. “I was beginning to think you’d stood me up,” Goodman said.
“Just wanted to make a big entrance,” Decker answered.
Professor Goodman was Decker’s link to the rest of the team. Goodman had taught biochemistry at the University of Tennessee, and during his junior year Decker had worked as his research assistant. They had many conversations, and though Goodman wasn’t the type to get very close to anyone, Decker felt they were friends. Later that year though, Goodman had grown very depressed about something he refused to discuss. Through the rumor mill Decker discovered that Goodman was going to be denied tenure. Primarily this could be traced to his policy of “Do now, ask permission later,” which had gotten him into hot water with the dean on more than one occasion. The next semester Goodman took a position at UCLA, and Decker hadn’t seen him since.
Though Decker had changed his major from pre-med to journalism, he was still an avid reader of some of the better science journals. So it was that he read an article in Science magazine[1] about a team of American scientists going to examine the Shroud of Turin, a religious relic believed by many to be the burial shroud of Jesus Christ. He had heard of the Shroud but had always dismissed it as just another example of religious fraud designed to pick the pockets of gullible worshipers. But here was an article in one of the most widely read science journals reporting that credible American scientists were actually taking their time to examine this thing.
At first the article had aroused only amused disbelief, but among the list of the scientists involved, Decker found the name Dr. Harold Goodman. This made no sense at all. Goodman, as Decker knew from his frequent pronouncements, was an atheist. Well, not exactly an atheist. Goodman liked to talk about the uncertainty of everything. In his office at the university were two posters. The first was crudely hand-printed and stated: “Goodman’s First Law of Achievement: The shortest distance between any two points is around the rules” (a philosophy that obviously hadn’t set well with the dean). The second poster was done in 1960s-style psychedelic print and said: “I think, therefore, I am. I think.” Mixing the uncertainty of his own existence with his disbelief in God, Goodman had settled on referring to himself as “an atheist by inclination but an agnostic by practice.” So why was a man like Goodman going off on some ridiculous expedition to study the Shroud of Turin?
Decker filed the information away and probably would have left it there had it not been for a call from an old friend and classmate, Tom Donafin. Tom was a reporter for the Courier in Waltham, Massachusetts, and had called about a story he was working on about corruption in banking — something that Knoxville had plenty of at that time. After discussing the banking story, Tom asked Decker if he had seen the article in Science.
“Yeah, I saw it,” he answered.
“I just thought you’d be interested in what ‘Old Bushy Brows’ was up to,” Tom laughed.
“Are you sure it’s him? I didn’t see him in any of the pictures.”
“I did a little checking, and it’s him,” Tom confirmed.
“You know,” Decker said, thinking out loud, “there might be a story here. Religion sells — especially here in the south.”
“I tried to dig into the particulars, but hit a brick wall,” Tom said. “They’re limiting coverage of the expedition to one reporter: a guy from National Geographic.”[2]
“Sounds like a challenge,” Decker said.
“I’m not saying it can’t be done.”
Decker began to toy with the question of how he might, if he wanted to, go about getting the story. He could take the direct approach of trying to reason with whoever was making the rules. After all, why should they have only one journalist? On the other hand, what possible reason could he give to convince them to take someone from a tiny unknown weekly in Knoxville, Tennessee? Clearly, his best bet was to work through Goodman.
Over the next three weeks Decker made several attempts to reach his old professor, without success. Goodman was doing research somewhere in Japan and even his wife, Martha, wasn’t sure exactly where he was. With little to depend on beyond luck and determination, Decker arranged to fly to Norwich, Connecticut, and booked a room in the hotel where he had learned the Shroud team was scheduled to meet over the Labor Day weekend to plan their research. He arrived the day before to look things over.
The next morning Decker found that a private dining room in the hotel had been prepared for about fifty people and reasoned that this was a good place to start. A few minutes later the first of the team members walked in. The eyebrows were unmistakable. “Professor Goodman,” Decker grinned, as he approached Goodman and extended his right hand. Goodman looked puzzled. “It’s Hawthorne,” Decker offered. It was obvious that Goodman was struggling to place the face. “From the University of Tennessee,” he added.
A gleam of recognition began to show in the pale green eyes beneath the massive clumps of hair. “Oh, yes, Hawthorne! How are you? What are you doing in Connecticut?”
Before Decker could answer, someone called out, “Harry Goodman!” and came over to where they were standing. “So, where were you last night?” the new arrival asked. “I called your room, hoping to have dinner with you.”
Goodman didn’t respond but proceeded instead to introductions. “Professor Don Stanley, allow me to introduce Decker Hawthorne, a former student and research assistant of mine from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.”
Professor Stanley gave Decker a quick once-over, then shook his hand while looking back at Goodman. “So Hawthorne here must be the research assistant that I heard you’d suckered into helping out. What a shame,” Stanley added grimly, as he looked back at Decker and finally released his hand. “I’d have thought you looked too intelligent for that.”
“He is,” responded Goodman, “and, unfortunately, so is the young man you’re referring to.”
“Oh,” Stanley said, quickly recalibrating his assumptions as well as his assessment of Decker’s sagacity. “So he jumped ship on you, did he?”
Goodman shrugged. “It is quite a lot to expect a young man to pay his own way on a wild goose chase,” he reasoned. “It hardly enhances one’s curriculum vitae.”
Decker was ready to pounce. The possibility of replacing the missing research assistant provided a much better chance of getting on the team than did any of the alternatives he had considered.
“If you’re so sure it’s a goose chase,” Stanley asked, “why do you insist on going?”
“Somebody’s got to keep the rest of you honest,” Goodman grinned.
By now several other members of the team had filed into the dining room and were gathering in small groups for conversation. One of the men caught Professor Stanley’s attention and Stanley walked over to greet him.
“What is it that your research assistant was going to do on this trip?” Decker pressed.
“Oh, everything from collection of data to general gofer work. We’ve got hundreds of different experiments planned and we may have as little as twelve hours to do them all. It’s the kind of environment where an extra pair of trained hands can be very helpful.”
“I don’t suppose you’d be interested in a substitute?” Decker asked. He was counting on the fact that Goodman didn’t know he had switched his major from pre-med after Goodman left Knoxville. Decker felt a twinge of guilt, but this wasn’t the biggest omission of fact he had used to get a story. Besides, he could certainly qualify as a gofer.
“What?” Goodman responded. “After what I just told Stanley?”
“Really, I’d like to go,” Decker persisted. “Actually, that’s why I’m here. I may be a little rusty, but I read the article in Science and—” here he stretched the truth beyond recognition, “—I’ve got experience with most of the equipment you’ll be using.”
Goodman frowned and shook his head, then continued, “Well, I’m not going to refuse help. But you know that you have to pay your own way?”
“I know,” Decker answered.
Goodman squinted as he studied his former student intently. “You haven’t gone and gotten religion, have you?”
“No, nothing like that,” Decker assured him. “It just sounds like an interesting project.” He realized it wasn’t a very convincing answer, so he quickly turned the question around. “Why are you going?” he asked. “You don’t believe in any of this stuff.”
“Of course not!” he said defensively. “I just want a chance to debunk the whole thing.”
Decker refocused the conversation. “So, can I come along or not?”
“If you’re sure,” Goodman agreed at last, shaking his head.
So, just that quickly, Decker was in. “The right place at the right time,” he whispered to himself.
It would be forty eight years before he understood that it had been something else entirely.
Chapter 2
The Shroud
Northern Italy
Barely more than misplaced starlight, the lights of Milan peeked dimly through the window as the jet flew over northern Italy. Decker studied the outline of this landlocked constellation as he considered the consequences of the job ahead. Like Professor Goodman, Decker was certain the team’s research would prove that the Shroud was nothing more than a cheap medieval forgery. The problem was he knew that there were a lot of people who wouldn’t appreciate having their bubble of faith burst by the truth, including Elizabeth’s mother, a devout Catholic. So far his relationship with her had been pretty good. How would she take all of this?
The team had chartered a bus to take them the 125 kilometers from Milan to Turin. By the time they arrived at their hotel it was midnight, and though it was still early in the U.S., everyone decided to go to their rooms to try to get some sleep.
[Photo
Caption: Porta Palatina, Turin]
The next morning Decker, who was never very good at adjusting to different time zones, got up before the sun. Because of the time difference going east, he should have wanted to sleep in, but it made no difference; he was ready to get up. Hurrying from the hotel to enjoy some early morning sightseeing, he walked down Turin’s long, straight streets, which intersect at nearly perfect ninety degree angles. On both sides were homes and small stores occupying one- and two-story buildings, none of which appeared to be less than two centuries old. Beyond the city, to the north, east, and west, the Alps pierced the atmosphere and clouds on their way to the sky. Elizabeth would love this! he thought. About a quarter of a mile from the hotel he came to the Porta Palatina, an immense gateway through which in 218 B.C. Hannibal, after a siege of only three days, drove his soldiers and elephants into the Roman town of Augusta Taurinorum, as ancient Turin was known. A mile or so farther and the wonderful smells of morning began to drift from the open windows along his path. The sounds of children playing soon followed. And then, suddenly, the timeless atmosphere of the old city was intruded upon by the droning of a television in someone’s kitchen. It was time to head back.
After breakfast, several members of the team decided to walk the half mile from the hotel to the royal palace of the House of Savoy, which for centuries had been the residence of the kings of Italy. It was in a suite of rooms in the palace that the team would be conducting its investigation of the Shroud. When they reached the palace they were surprised to find tens of thousands of people standing several abreast in lines that stretched for more than a mile to the east and west, and converged at the Cathedral of San Giovanni Battista, adjacent to the palace. In the cathedral, in a sterling silver case sealed within a larger case of bullet proof glass filled with inert gasses, was the Shroud. Two or three times a century the Shroud is taken out and put on public display, drawing pilgrims from all over the world. The crowd that day represented only a small fraction of the three million people who had traveled from all over the world to see what they believed to be the burial cloth of Christ.
The team was escorted through a courtyard into a restricted part of the palace where heavily armed guards stood at every corner. They paused as they entered, awestruck at the size and splendor of their surroundings. There was gold everywhere: on chandeliers, on picture frames, on vases, inlaid into carvings in the doors and other woodwork. Even the wallpaper was gold-gilt. And everywhere were paintings and marble statuary.
At the end of a long, opulently decorated hall was the entrance to the princes’ suite, where the team would conduct their experiments. Beyond the ten-foot doors was a fifty-by-fifty-foot ballroom, the first of seven rooms that made up the suite. Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, which was painted in classical frescos of angels and swans and biblical scenes. The second room, where the Shroud would be placed for examination, was as magnificent as the first.
Somewhere in the life of ancient buildings that remain in use comes a point when time and progress can no longer be ignored and aesthetics ultimately yield to the demands of modern convenience. In the princes’ suite the evidence of compromise was a bathroom and crude electrical wiring stapled to the wall. The bathroom, a strange arrangement of two toilets and five sinks, would double as the team’s photographic darkroom.
“We’ll need to run electric cables up here from the basement,” said Rudy Dichtl, the team member with the most hands-on electrical experience. “I’m going to need to find a hardware store.”
Decker told Dichtl he had noticed a hardware store while walking that morning. He wasn’t entirely sure of the location, but thought he could find it again. “Great,” said Dichtl. “If they have what we need, I could use some help lugging it back.”
* * * * *
Delayed in customs for five days, the team’s equipment finally arrived at the palace on Friday afternoon. Soon the public viewing of the Shroud would end and it would be brought to the palace for examination late Sunday evening. There were seven days of setup and preparation to be done in little more than two. Some of the tests required bright light, while others required total darkness. The first part would be easy, but the latter required sealing off the eight-by-ten-foot windows with thick sheets of black plastic. Maze-like light baffles made of more black plastic also had to be built for the doorways. In the Shroud room the team assembled its steel examination table that had been specially designed and constructed to hold the Shroud firmly in place without damaging it. The surface of the table was constructed of more than a dozen removable panels to allow inspection of both sides of the Shroud at the same time. Each of the panels was covered with one-millimeter-thick gold Mylar to prevent even the tiniest of particles from being transferred from the table to the Shroud. The adjoining rooms were established as staging areas for testing and calibrating the scientific equipment.
Finally, on Sunday night at about midnight, someone in the hall said, “Here it comes.”
[Photo
Caption: Shroud being laid out on the stainless steel table built for
examination.]
Monsignor Cottino, the representative of Turin’s archbishop-cardinal, entered the Shroud testing room accompanied by seven Poor Clare nuns and followed by twelve men carrying a sheet of three-quarter inch plywood, four feet wide and sixteen feet long. Draped over the plywood, a piece of expensive red silk covered and protected the Shroud. The testing table awaited the transfer. Silence fell over the room as the men lowered the plywood sheet to waist level and the senior of the nuns began to carefully pull back the silk, revealing a sheet of off-white herringbone linen. Decker waited for a moment for this second protective covering to be removed, until he understood that it wasn’t a covering at all. It was the Shroud itself. He squinted and stared at the cloth, struggling to make out anything resembling an image.
Even though he believed the Shroud to be a fraud, he discovered that from a strictly emotional point of view he really wanted to feel something — closer to God, awe, perhaps just a twinge of the strangely religious excitement he used to feel when looking at a stained glass window. Instead he had mistaken the Shroud for nothing more than a protective drapery.
Disappointed, he stepped away, and to his amazement, the image became much more distinct. Surprised and confused, he rocked back and forth, studying the strange phenomenon of the Shroud’s appearing and disappearing image. Why, he wondered, would an artist have painted it so that it was so hard to see? How could he have done it at all, unless he used a paintbrush six feet long so he could see what he was painting? Few, if any, of Decker’s drives were greater than his curiosity. He wanted to understand this puzzle.
He watched as Monsignor Cottino walked around the Shroud, stopping every couple of feet to remove thumbtacks that held it to the plywood. Rusty and old, their stains defaced the fabric with iron oxide that spread well beyond where the tacks had pierced the cloth. So much planning and effort had gone into keeping even the tiniest foreign particles away from the Shroud, only to find that the centuries, perhaps millennia, that preceded them had been far less careful.
* * * * *
During the 120 hours allotted, three groups of scientists worked simultaneously — one at each end of the Shroud and one in the middle. Despite the sleep they had already lost in their rush to set up and prepare, over the next five days few would sleep more than two or three hours at a time. Those who weren’t involved in a particular project stayed near at hand to help those who were, or simply to watch.
[Photo
Caption: First day of formal examination]
Thirty-six hours into the procedures, as husband-and-wife team members Roger and Marty Gilbert performed reflectance spectroscopy — a method of using reflected light to identify chemical structure — something highly unexpected happened. Starting at the feet and moving up the image, the spectra suddenly changed.
“How can the same image give different spectra?” Eric Jumper asked. No one had an answer, so they continued. As they moved the equipment up the legs, the reading remained constant. Everything was the same except the image of the feet, and more specifically, the heels.
Jumper left the Shroud room and found team member Sam Pellicori, who was trying to sleep on a cot in another room. “Sam! Wake up!” he said. “I need you and your macroscope in the Shroud room right away!”
Pellicori and Jumper positioned the macroscope over the Shroud and lowered it until it was just above the heel. Pellicori focused, changed lenses, focused again, and looked, without saying a word. After a long pause, he reported, “It’s dirt.”
“Dirt?” Jumper asked, surprised. “Let me see.” He looked through the macroscope and agreed. “Okay. It is dirt,” he said. “But why?”
It seemed to Decker a strange thing to get so excited about.
As the next shift of scientists came on, everyone met for a review and brainstorming session to determine the direction and priorities for the next set of tests. “Here’s what we know,” Jumper started. “The body images are straw yellow, not sepia, as all previous accounts indicated. The color is only on the crowns of the microfibers of the threads and doesn’t vary significantly anywhere on the Shroud in either shade or depth. Where one fiber crosses another the underlying fiber is unaffected by the color.
[Photo
Caption: Debriefing the team between shifts]
“The yellow microfibers show no sign of capillarity or blotting, which indicates that no liquid was used to create the image, which rules out paint. Further, there is no adherence, meniscus effect, or matting between the threads, also ruling out any type of liquid paint. In the areas of the apparent blood stains, the fibers are clearly matted and there are signs of capillarity, as would be the case with actual blood.”
“Tell ’em about the feet,” Marty Gilbert prompted. For those who had just come on duty, Jumper explained what had happened with the reflectance spectroscopy test.
“Of course there’s dirt,” one team member said after Jumper’s explanation. “What could be more natural than dirt on the bottom of the feet?” That was Decker’s thought exactly.
“Yes,” said Jumper, “but that hypothesis assumes this is an authentic image of a crucified man.”
Decker had missed that entirely and was stunned by its implications.
Still, the obvious was becoming harder to deny, for not only was there dirt on the heel, but the amount of dirt was so minute that it wasn’t visible to the naked eye. As startling as the whole question was, more startling still was that it was Professor Goodman who put it into words. “If the Shroud is a forgery,” he posed, “why would a medieval forger go to the trouble to put dirt on the image that would require a modern macroscope to see it?”
* * * * *
It had now been three days since Decker had slept and he resolved at last to return to the hotel. Drawn to the hotel dining room by the voices of other team members, he sat with Roger Harris, Susan Chon, and Joshua Rosen, unwinding with a slowly stirred cup of decaf coffee heavily laced with Irish cream. He entertained little thought of interviewing anyone. Over the past few days, he had come to see himself much less as a reporter and much more as a member of the team. Habitually, though, he continued making mental notes.
One of his companions, Dr. Joshua Rosen, was a nuclear physicist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who worked on laser and particle-beam research for the Pentagon. Rosen was one of the four Jewish members of the team, and Decker couldn’t resist the opportunity to ask him about his feelings on examining a Christian relic.
“If I weren’t so tired I’d lead you on a bit,” Rosen smiled. “But if you really want an answer on that you’ll have to ask one of the other Jewish members of the team.”
“You don’t have an opinion?” Decker queried.
“I have an opinion, but I’m not qualified to answer your question. I’m Messianic,” he said. Decker didn’t catch his meaning. “A Christian Jew,” Rosen explained.
“Oh,” said Decker. Then after a moment added, “This isn’t something that happened in the last few days, is it?”
Rosen laughed.
Roger Harris snorted, barely managing to force down a mouthful of coffee.
Decker’s remark hadn’t been that funny, but the pained look on Roger’s face caused Susan Chon to erupt and soon the four overtired, punch-drunk team members were laughing uncontrollably.
On the other side of the room, a woman watched intently as they talked, building up her courage to approach. Their laughter made them seem somehow more approachable and human, while its infectious nature seemed to brighten her own dark mood. Finally, she rose from her seat and walked slowly but decisively toward them.
“You are with the scientists examining the Shroud?” she asked when their laughter passed.
“Yes,” Susan Chon responded.
On the woman’s face Decker saw lines of worry; on her cheeks, the evidence of recently blotted tears.
“Is there something we can we do for you?” Joshua Rosen asked.
“My son — he’s four — is very ill. The doctors say he may not live more than a few months. All I ask is that you allow me to bring flowers to the Shroud as a gift to Jesus.”
None of them had gotten much sleep in the previous four days, and no one could speak to reply to the woman’s modest request. Rosen was the first to manage more than a nod. It would be impossible for the woman to bring flowers to the Shroud herself, Rosen explained. However, if she would bring the flowers to the palace the next day, he would take them to the Shroud himself.
In his room, Decker fell quickly asleep and felt totally rested when he awoke at noon the next day. When he arrived at the palace an hour later, Rosen was talking with the woman from the hotel. The cloud of depression that had covered her the night before was replaced by a look of hope. She smiled in recognition at Decker as she started to leave.
Rosen started up the stairs with the vase of cut flowers but, spotting Decker, turned and waited.
“Pretty neat, huh?” Rosen said.
“Pretty neat,” Decker responded. But to himself he wondered what would happen to the woman’s faith if her son died.
Chapter 3
Body of Christ
Ten years later
Alcoa, Tennessee
It was cold outside. The usual warm autumn weather of East Tennessee had given way to a cold snap that sent the local residents scurrying to their wood piles for added warmth and atmosphere. Decker and Elizabeth lay a bit more than half asleep, snuggled together before a waning fire, dreaming to the sounds of the crackling hardwood embers. One-year-old Hope Hawthorne slept soundly in her crib in the bedroom.
The fire’s warmth and glow offered more than enough reason for not getting up when the phone rang. But by the third ring all were awake — Decker heading toward the offending instrument in the kitchen, while Elizabeth went to comfort the baby.
“Hello,” Decker half growled, half mumbled, not yet fully alert.
“Decker Hawthorne?” responded the voice on the other end.
“Speaking,” Decker answered, now accomplishing the full growl he had been going for.
“This is Harry Goodman.”
“Professor?” Decker asked, a little dumbfounded.
“I have something you’ll want to see.” Goodman said. His voice was excited but controlled. “It’s a story for your newspaper. Can you come to Los Angeles right away?”
“Whoa. Wait a second. Professor. I . . . This is quite a surprise. It’s been . . .” Decker paused to reorient and attempted to count the years. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” Goodman answered hastily, not at all interested in small talk. “Can you come to Los Angeles?” he asked again, insistently.
“I don’t know, Professor. What is this about?”
“If I tell you over the phone you’ll think I’m crazy.”
“Try me.”
“It’s about the Shroud.”
“What more is there to say about it?” Decker said. “They did Carbon 14 dating. It’s not old enough to be the burial cloth of Christ. It was on the front page of The New York Times.”
“You think I live under a rock or something? I know all about the Carbon 14 dating.” Goodman was obviously not pleased at having to explain himself. “Decker, this may be the most important discovery since Columbus discovered the New World. Please, just trust me. I promise you won’t be disappointed.”
Decker knew that Goodman wasn’t given to gross exaggeration. So obviously, whatever it was must be something pretty important. He did a quick mental check of his schedule and agreed to fly to Los Angeles two days later.
“Who was that?” Elizabeth asked when Decker joined her by Hope’s crib.
“Professor Goodman,” he replied, as he leaned back against the wall in thought.
Elizabeth gave Decker a puzzled look. “Henry Goodman, your old professor, the one you went with to Italy?”
“Yeah,” Decker replied without much enthusiasm. “Only it’s Harry, not Henry.” Decker stroked Elizabeth’s back and gave her the bad news. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to skip the drive up to Cade’s Cove on Saturday. I have to fly out to Los Angeles to see him about a story.”
Sadly resigned to Decker’s axiom that work always came first — though he would never have put it quite that way — Elizabeth sighed and snuggled the baby but didn’t object.
That night Decker and Elizabeth lay in bed puzzling over what Goodman had found. Decker hadn’t even talked to Goodman since three years after the Shroud team had formalized the findings in a published report. In short, the report said that the image on the Shroud was clearly not the result of a painting or any other known method of image transfer. Based on thirteen different test measures and procedures, the scourge marks and blood around the nail holes and side wound were, indeed, the result of human blood. Fibrils beneath the blood showed no evidence of oxidation, indicating that the blood was on the cloth prior to whatever process caused the image. Finally, the report said that while the material of the Shroud may be old enough to be the burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth, it is impossible to even guess at its age without Carbon 14 dating, and that could not be done without destroying a large portion of the cloth.
But that was old technology. As science advanced it became possible to perform accurate Carbon 14 dating using a sample the size of a postage stamp. And soon afterward the Catholic Church announced that it would permit the Shroud to be Carbon 14 dated by three laboratories. The labs found that, with a combined certainty of 95 percent, the Shroud was made of flax grown sometime between 1260 and 1390, and therefore, the cloth was simply not old enough to have been the burial cloth of Christ.
“What was it he said?” Elizabeth asked. “That it was the most important discovery since Columbus discovered America?”
“Yeah,” Decker responded, shaking his head as it rested on the pillow.
“If the Shroud is a forgery, then what could he be talking about?”
“The only thing I can think of is that he’s discovered how the image was made. But if that’s what this is about, he’s blowing this way out of proportion.”
“Then he must have discovered some way to prove it’s real,” Elizabeth concluded.
“Nah, that’s crazy,” he concluded. “Even if the dating was wrong: proving the Shroud is a forgery is something science can do; trying to prove it’s really the burial cloth of Christ would be nuts.” Decker paused and then added, “Not to mention totally out of character for someone like Goodman, who’s not even sure of his own existence, much less the existence of God.”
Los Angeles, California
Harry Goodman met Decker at LAX, and once in his car, wasted no time getting to the subject at hand. “You remember, no doubt, the effect it had on me when we discovered the minute particles of dirt in the heel area of the Shroud,” Goodman began. He presumed too much — ten years had passed since Turin — but Decker politely nodded assent if not recollection. “It made no sense,” Goodman continued. “No medieval forger would have gone to the trouble of rubbing dirt into the image unless it could be seen by the naked eye. It was then that I began to question my assumption that the Shroud was a forgery.”
Decker was confused. Could Goodman actually be suggesting he thought the Shroud was authentic?
“You, of course, recall that some of the most conclusive work on the Shroud was done by Dr. John Heller using the samples gathered on strips of Mylar tape.” Decker did recall. Heller and Dr. Allan Adler had used the samples to prove that the stains were human blood and had also determined that the images were the result of oxidation.[3]
“Yeah,” Decker replied. “But how can any of that matter now that we know the Shroud’s not old enough?”
“I wanted to examine the samples from the heel and foot more closely,” Goodman continued, ignoring Decker’s question. “You’ll recall that each slide was cataloged by where it came from and then hermetically sealed in a case. Unfortunately, that was like closing the gate after the horses have already gone. In Turin, I counted more than a dozen different contaminated articles that came in contact with the Shroud: the silk covering, the plywood, the rusty thumbtacks.” Goodman shook his head. “I saw two team members and three priests kiss it — it seems that’s been going on for centuries. Even our procedures to prevent contamination introduced some contaminants. The cotton gloves we wore surely carried American pollen.
“The point is that the tape picked up all sorts of garbage that had nothing to do with the origin of the Shroud or the creation of the image. In his report, Dr. Heller noted finding both natural and synthetic fibers, fly ash, animal hairs, insect parts, beeswax from church candles, and a couple dozen other assorted materials, not to mention spores and pollen.[4] Because of all this clutter, Heller decided that most of his examination should employ levels of magnification just powerful enough to examine substances that could have been used to create a visible image and to ignore the smaller, irrelevant materials.
“For his purposes, he did exactly what he should have done, but his procedures would have missed what I was looking for. That’s why I decided to have a second look. I believe that what I found will explain the whole Shroud mystery.” Goodman paused. “And there’s more.”
Decker waited but Goodman was silent. “Well, what is it?” he asked.
“Where’s your sense of drama, Hawthorne? You’ll see, soon enough.”
Goodman drove to the William G. Young science building on the east side of the UCLA campus and parked in the tenured faculty parking lot. His office was on the fourth floor and looked out over a courtyard westward toward the engineering building. It was arranged very much the same as the office he’d had at UT, including the ragged but now framed “I think, therefore, I am. I think.” poster and Goodman’s First Law of Achievement, now engraved on a plaque.
Motioning to the plaque before sitting, Decker laughed, “I see some things never change.”
“No need to change when you’re right,” Goodman asserted. “Now before we go any further, I need your assurance you won’t release this before I’m ready.”
Decker frowned. “Then why was it so important that I come out here right away?”
“Because,” Goodman answered, “I need a witness now. And the way I figure it, you owe me. You could have gotten me in a lot of trouble with my colleagues when you ran your story about the Turin project. The only reporter that was supposed to be there was Weaver from National Geographic. We weren’t even supposed to talk to anyone from the press. And then a week after we got back, the whole world reads wire reports of a story in a Knoxville paper by some jerk reporter who managed to pass himself off as a member of the team. And that jerk reporter just happened to decide to pass himself off as my jerk assistant!
“If anyone thought that I had knowingly helped you get onto the team, I’d have been blackballed forever as a security risk.”
“Hey, I was just following Goodman’s First Law of Achievement,” Decker responded. “‘The shortest distance between any two points is around the rules.’” But Goodman was right and Decker knew it. His conscience had always bothered him a little about the way he’d gotten onto the Shroud team. “Okay,” he said at last in response to Goodman’s disapproving stare. “It was a lousy thing to do. I do owe you. I’m here. So what is it you want to show me that I can’t tell anyone about?”
“Good!” the professor said in a self-congratulatory way. “In time, I’ll want you to report it. Just not yet. Right now I need a witness, and you know I can’t stand reporters. Truth is, you’re just barely tolerable,” he added, trying to lighten the mood a little. “You’ve covered the Shroud story from the beginning. People will believe you when you report what I’m going to show you, but if the story comes out too soon, it could doom the whole project.”
“If this is about some research you’ve done, why don’t you just publish it yourself in a scholarly journal?” Decker pressed.
“Later, of course. But . . . I’m afraid I need to break the ice with the public before I reveal the exact nature of my research to my peers.”
Decker squinted apprehensively but with growing curiosity.
“It’s just, well, I’m afraid I’ve applied a little of Goodman’s First Law myself. And there are those in the scientific community who, because of their narrow-mindedness, might condemn my methods.”
Decker frowned. His interest was now piqued.
“My hope,” Goodman continued, “is that as the story evolves and once the benefits of my work are known, public opinion will be too strong in my favor for my peers to object.”
There was a lot packed into that statement. “What do you mean, ‘as the story evolves’?” Decker asked.
“I expect that there will be several installments along the way before you can report the overall story.”
“And what ‘benefits’ are you talking about?”
“I’m getting to that,” Goodman deferred.
Decker nodded for Goodman to continue.
“In short, if you provide me with confidentiality, I’ll provide you with exclusivity.”
Decker nodded again, this time indicating agreement with Goodman’s terms.
“On the other hand,” Goodman warned, “if you report the story before I say to, I’ll deny every word of it, and you’ll make a total fool of yourself. You’ll never prove a thing.”
“I thought you just said that people would believe me.”
“Yes, if I back you up and you back me up. But by yourself, and with my denial, they’ll think you’ve lost your mind. Look, I’m offering you the biggest exclusive of all time on the greatest discovery — scientific or otherwise — in the last five hundred years. But it’s also the most bizarre.”
“Okay,” Decker half relented, half implored. “Let’s hear it.”
Goodman leaned back in his chair, his elbows on the arm rests, placing his fingertips together, and gazed off into space, apparently considering his words. “Consider the following hypothesis,” he began, professorially. “The image of the man on the Shroud of Turin is the result of a sudden burst of heat and light energy from the body of a crucified man as it went through an instantaneous regeneration or ‘resurrection,’ if you will.”
Decker didn’t move. There was a long silence as Goodman awaited his response, then at last Decker began to laugh. He couldn’t believe that Goodman would go to such lengths, but there was no other explanation. And he had fallen for it hook, line and sinker. “This is all payback, isn’t it?”
“I assure you, I am entirely serious.”
Decker still laughed, while trying to read Goodman’s face for any hint that despite his denial, he was, in fact, playing a practical joke, inflicting his revenge for Turin. Decker really didn’t want to be played any further, but finding in Goodman’s expression only a sincere look of confusion at Decker’s jocular response, he continued, “Professor, that’s not a scientific hypothesis; that’s a statement of faith.”
“On the contrary,” Goodman insisted. “It’s based entirely on science and sound reasoning. As with any hypothesis, it can be tested and proven to be true or false.” Decker had stopped laughing, which Goodman took as his opportunity to proceed. “By way of explanation, what do you know about Dr. Francis Crick?
Decker now had no idea where this was all leading, but decided to go along for the ride. “I know he won the Nobel Prize in medicine back in the early sixties—”
“Sixty-two,” Goodman interrupted.
“—for his discovery with James Watson of the double helix structure of DNA.”
[Photo
Caption: Life Itself by Dr. Francis Crick]
“Good! And are you familiar with Crick’s book, Life Itself”?[5] Goodman asked, rising to take a copy of the book from his shelf.
“You can't possibly take that thing seriously,” Decker objected. “It’s an embarrassment. It made Crick a laughingstock.”
Goodman ignored Decker’s protest — a practiced talent, which Decker now recalled, he had honed while teaching at the University of Tennessee. “You’ll recall,” Goodman continued, “that in the book, Crick examines possible origins of life on this planet. He raises the question of why, with the exception of mitochondria, the basic genetic coding mechanism in all living things on Earth is identical. Even in the case of mitochondria the differences are rather small. From what we know of Earth’s evolution, there’s no obvious structural reason to explain this. Crick doesn’t entirely discount the possibility that life originated and evolved naturally on Earth, but he offers a second theory: that perhaps life was engrafted on this planet by a highly advanced civilization from somewhere else. If all life on Earth had a common origin, that would explain the apparent bottleneck in genetic evolution.”
Decker was familiar with Crick’s theory and again grew suspicious that this was an elaborate practical joke.
“Crick argues,” Goodman continued, “that if these intelligent beings wanted to colonize other planets they wouldn’t start by sending members of their own species. Instead, they would first prepare those planets for habitation. Without plant life, there wouldn’t be sufficient oxygen for intelligent life to exist. And of course there wouldn’t be food for the colonists either. To establish the needed plant life, they would only have to place some simple bacteria, such as blue-green algae, on the planet and let evolution and the eons of time do their work.”
“Professor,” Decker interrupted, throwing up his hands and now demanding to be heard, “I’ve read the book. What’s the point?”
“The point is, what if Crick is right? What if life was planted on Earth by an ancient race from another planet? The obvious question is: Where are they now? Why have they never come to check on their work? ”
Decker wasn’t going to play, so Goodman answered his own questions, “Maybe they all died. Maybe they lost interest in space travel. Or maybe they have visited, but they didn’t find Earth suitable for their particular needs.”
Decker scooted down in his chair and looked at the ceiling. Certainly, this wasn’t what he expected when he agreed to come to Los Angeles. He could have been at Cades Cove right now with Elizabeth and Hope.
“But certainly,” Goodman went on, oblivious to Decker’s body language, “Earth wouldn’t have been the only place where they planted life. They would have seeded planets throughout the galaxy. So, what if when they finally got to this particular planet, they found that it was already populated, and not just by plants and animals. What if, through some set of parallel twists of evolution, they found that it was populated by beings not far different from themselves? Would they simply invade and colonize it anyway? Or might they instead decide to observe it and let it evolve naturally?”
“Professor,” Decker interrupted again, “what has all this got to do with the Shroud of Turin?”
“Think about it, Decker. Somewhere in the galaxy there may be a civilization of beings, billions of years advanced to us, who are responsible for planting life throughout the galaxy, including Earth!” And then finally, Goodman revealed where he had been leading. “I believe that the man whose regeneration caused the image on the Shroud was a member of that parent race, sent here as an observer: a man from a race so far advanced to us that they are capable of regeneration, possibly even immortality. Not true gods — but not far from it.”
Decker concluded at last that this wasn’t a practical joke. Goodman simply wasn’t capable of it. Which left only one other possibility: he was losing touch with reality. Closing his eyes, Decker took a long breath to gather his composure. “Professor, look, you’re a scientist. You know a reasonable hypothesis from a—”
“I am not crazy!” Goodman shot back.
Decker stood up, ready to leave. “I’m sorry, Professor. You don’t want me. You want someone from the National Enquirer!”
Quickly, Goodman placed himself between Decker and the door. “When you see what I’ve found on the Shroud, you’ll understand.”
Decker stopped and decided to give the professor just a little more rope.
Goodman opened a locked cabinet in his lab and pulled out a plastic case containing several dozen slides. Decker recognized it as the case of tape samples taken from the Shroud of Turin. “As I told you earlier,” Goodman explained, “I borrowed the slides in order to examine further the dirt particles that were found in the left heel area of the image. I wondered if it might be possible to determine the specific makeup of the particles and perhaps see if any unusual characteristics could rule in or rule out given points of origin. In other words, was there anything about the dirt that would indicate it had originated in the Middle East or, conversely, was there anything that would instead indicate that it was from France or Italy or perhaps even somewhere else?
“If it was from the Middle East, or even from Jerusalem itself, it wouldn’t necessarily prove anything, of course. A forger who went to all the trouble of putting dirt on the Shroud in such tiny amounts might just as well have thought to import the dirt from Jerusalem. It makes about as much sense, which is to say: none at all. I just wanted to get another look at it.”
Goodman sat down in front of a microscope, turned on its lamp and placed a slide on the scope’s stage. “In the car I told you that Dr. Heller had avoided using too much magnification because of what it was he was looking for.” Goodman paused, looked through the eyepiece lens, and adjusted the scope’s objectives and focus. “In my case,” he continued as he looked back at Decker, “I used between a 600x and a 1000x.” Goodman stood and motioned for Decker to look through the scope. “This first slide is the sample taken from directly over the left heel.”
Decker moved the slide around on the stage, refocusing as necessary. “Nothing unusual,” he said, still scanning the slide.
“Certainly not enough dirt particles for the kind of tests I had in mind,” Goodman said. “I checked the grid, but the only other samples from the feet were from the nail wounds in the right foot.” Goodman took the slide from the microscope and carefully placed it back in its designated slot.
“You remember that the right foot actually had two exit wounds, suggesting that the feet had been nailed left over right. The right foot was nailed down first, with the nail exiting through the arch. The left was then nailed on top of the right with the nail passing through both feet, leaving an exit wound in the arch of the left foot and the heel of the right. Neither of these samples seemed very promising, though, because any dirt that had been in the wound areas would likely have been bonded to the cloth by the blood.”
Goodman took a second slide from the plastic case. “This is from the blood stain of the right heel. I really didn’t expect to find any dirt there, but I looked anyway.” Goodman paused.
“That’s when I found it.”
Goodman reached around Decker, shut off the microscope’s lamp, and handed him the slide. Decker placed it on the microscope’s stage, adjusted the mirror to compensate for the loss of light from the lamp, and focused the lens. Goodman rotated the objective to 800x. On the slide before him, Decker could see a cluster of strangely familiar disk-shaped objects surrounded by and imbedded into crusty blackish-brown material that he assumed to be blood.
After a moment, he looked up at Goodman. His eyes had grown wide and his mind raced in disbelief and confusion. “Is that possible?” he asked finally.
Goodman flipped opened a textbook to a well-marked page and pointed to an illustration in the upper left corner. What Decker saw confirmed his suspicion. The caption below the picture read, “Human dermal skin cells.”
Decker looked back through the microscope to be sure. Inexplicably, despite hundreds or even thousands of years, they appeared to be perfectly preserved. He felt Goodman reach around him again, this time to turn the lamp back on. The brighter light made the small disks appear transparent and Decker could clearly see the nucleus of each cell. Within a few seconds the lamp began to gently warm the slide. Decker looked away to rub his eyes and then looked back.