Blood Symbols Read online

  The coroner was not amused: ‘Yes, Colonel. Because how you did it isn’t how it happened. You just demonstrated how someone with military training would inflict the same wounds in the same areas. The average person wouldn’t hold a knife with the blade protruding from the back of his fist. Change that and you have an entirely different result. Try it again, this time holding the knife like a lay person.’

  As an expert in hand-to-hand combat, Schreider knew exactly what would happen. His moves would be the same, but slower. Letting the blade protrude from the top of his fist, he repeated the moves.

  ‘Stop!’ With the knife tip inches from Weber’s chest, the coroner held Schreider’s hand. ‘Now compare this with the probe sticking out of our priest over there.’

  ‘I sliced in the opposite direction and finished to his left,’ Schreider said, not needing a second glance.

  ‘So now, Colonel, this can’t be what happened either.’

  The coroner had the two officers repeat the demonstration, but this time he let Schreider hold the knife in his left hand and like an amateur. As a final analysis, he had the colonel hold Weber’s throat with his right hand. He then had him stab at the captain as an amateur would, with the blade protruding from the front of the fist. Inflicting the neck wound in the same way was impossible because of his right arm which was in the way. That meant there was only one possible explanation: the killer was an amateur who first stabbed with his left hand, while clutching his victim’s throat with his right hand. He then let go of the neck and with the right hand slammed the priest on the chest.

  ‘As a last act of savagery,’ the coroner said, ‘our killer slit the Father’s throat.’

  Schreider handed the coroner the knife and returned to Yilmaz’s corpse. The coroner was spot-on. The thumbprint and bruising was clearly visible to the right of the neck and the chest.

  The coroner looked grave. ‘The killer made sure Yilmaz died instantly,’ he said. ‘You don’t slice a man’s throat after you’ve stabbed him in the lung. By then he is already drowning in his own blood.’

  Chapter 34

  Jennifer stood with her feet planted on the cobbled path, her arms at her sides. Her heart pounded in her chest, forcing bursts of blood richly charged with oxygen to her limbs—the result of her dash to the Cave Church. Before her was a twelve-foot-high, sandstone building with a gated entrance; beyond that, one of Christianity’s oldest landmarks. With the Apostolic succession now in question, what better place to start looking for the truth than at Apostle Peter’s first church?

  She tried to see a way past the building which possibly consisted of an ablution and box-office, but to its left it had a three-hundred-foot rock face, and to the right a hundred-foot drop fell to the road and parking lot below. She thought of shimmying up the wall-mounted lamp at the entrance, but she could not even do that on her own. She felt like screaming in frustration, and the energy drained from her.

  ‘What a paradox,’ she thought. ‘Here is a site dedicated to Apostle Peter’s church, yet there’s no proof he ever ministered in Antioch.’

  The only person known to have ministered there was Saint Paul. Perhaps the time had come to place these biblical characters under the microscope. Interestingly, the only reference to Peter’s presence in Antioch came from Paul himself. His Epistle to the Galatians stated that he had asked Peter to visit the area so they could clarify their differences. Their famous meeting was known as the ‘Incident of Antioch.’

  Saul, not Paul yet, first appeared in the Bible when Stephen Martyr was killed in Jerusalem. Of course, it was true that scripture depicted Saul as merely a bystander, but maybe he did have a hand in the stoning. At the very least though he must have incited the crowd, because soon after this, the Bible said, he set out to massacre other Nazarenes. The rest of the story was familiar to most people: his persecutions caused many to flee—some as far as Antioch. On his way to Damascus, Saul was reputedly visited by the resurrected Christ. He then disappeared and only resurfaced years later in Antioch where he attempted to convert the local Jews to his teachings, but they rejected him, saying he was preaching blasphemy because some of them had known Jesus.

  Saul, on the other hand, had not met Jesus. He angered the Antioch Jews so much they expelled him from their midst. No matter where Saul preached, the Jews would try to stone him. Hellbent on establishing a ministry, Saul turned to the gentiles. Ignoring the Apostles’ teachings, the Turk from Tarsus converted Antiochenes to his newly founded faith. His ministry led to a protest from Peter, whose practice was to accept gentiles only if they were baptized in the name of the Lord, kept the Law of Moses and were circumcised.

  Peter’s requirements were non-negotiable.

  Saul later wrote: ‘If ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.’

  It appears that conflicting ideologies had yielded different denominations early on, and there was no evidence that these two opposing factions were ever reconciled. Clearly, Peter’s Jewish denomination, the Nazarenes, and Saul’s gentile church, the Christians, were two distinct groups. But Peter had not ended up the founder of gentile Christianity because, if he had, all those who believed Jesus was the Messiah, Jews and gentiles alike, would still be keeping the Law of Moses.

  There was no actual record of Peter ever preaching to the gentiles.

  Saul on the other hand, immediately changed from being Saul to the Romanized version of his name, Paul, and started ministering only to the gentiles.

  When a voice behind Jennifer spoke, she felt a jolt in her chest, and her heart contracted violently. She had heard this voice all morning, but now it sounded different. It no longer asserted authority but was soulful. Simon approached her, and she glanced up at him.

  ‘Nothing makes sense anymore,’ she said. ‘I’ve spent more of my time exploring spirituality than anything else, and for what?’

  ‘It’s really important to you. That’s obvious.’

  ‘Well, yeah. our spiritual destiny is the most important thing anyone can focus on. It is the core of our existence. For a long time, I believed blindly like a child, and then it was all shattered. How do you walk away from that?’ She began to sob and turned aside. Rarely had she been so emotional. ‘I don’t know what spirituality is anymore,’ she whispered.

  ‘I’ll help you.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Find answers.’

  ‘I can’t get you into trouble over this,’ she said sniffing. ‘You have already done enough.’

  ‘I got you into this, remember?’

  Now, Rabin was lumbering towards them with a gait so lethargic it seemed to belong to a man twice his age. It was already past six, and between work and rushing off to the airport earlier, it was to be expected for him to be exhausted. Stopping beside Jennifer, he said, ‘You know, no matter how many times I’ve been up and down this mountain, it’s always a new experience.’

  Although an earthquake had made entering the site unsafe for the public, the Turkish government had given him a set of keys in case access was needed for his research.

  Jennifer beamed as he unlocked the gate. She rushed past the professor. For her, visiting a place where the Apostles had preached felt more intimidating than visiting the Vatican Library. She crossed the empty terrace. Despite having studied photographs of the site, she had no idea what to expect. Squares of hundreds of smooth cobblestones were set at regular intervals about two feet apart, and between them were tufts of grass and yellow wildflowers. Within the wrought-iron fencing cypresses climbed up the rock face, shading a handful of empty park benches. A steel balustrade atop a wall served as protection from the hundred-feet drop to the front, and opposite her was another sandstone wall. Then, she saw it: set into the cliff face on the far-left side of the terrace was the Cave Church of Saint Peter.

  Simple yet beautiful, the sandstone-block facade measured around thirty feet across and twenty-three feet high—hardly a third of the size of the main entrance to Saint Peter’s Basilica. As wit
h the Basilica in Rome this church stood on its own portico. The structure itself simulated two Roman-arched aisles flanking a central nave, a design feature Jennifer had seen replicated in numerous other basilicas. Outside, each of the three arches was bricked up, had its own simple entrance with a stone lintel to support the weight of the masonry above, and included its own decorative window directly above its doorway. The main entrance, slightly larger than the adjacent two, had its own barrel vaulted motif giving it prominence over the side entrances.

  Studying the facade reminded Jennifer of her father. After her mother, had died and she had accompanied him onto countless jobsites, he had taught her to review the buildings with him. It had taken her some time to learn the field jargon, but as the daughter of an architect, she had a natural eye for the differences in features and forms and had even worked as a part-time architecture tour guide.

  Now, she called on those memories to understand what she was looking at; whether anything looked odd or out-of-place. The customary crucifix found at Christian landmarks was missing, but the central window featured a cruciform symbol with short, equilateral arms radiating diagonally. Oddly, it represented a circle- or sun-cross. She stared at this and was about to mention it to Simon and Rabin, when she noticed something even more fascinating.

  ‘Is it just me, or is the central window an optical illusion,’ she said, gazing upwards.

  Simon turned away from the front-perimeter railing to join her. Other than the circle-cross, he could not see anything unusual.

  Likewise, Rabin squinted upwards, and to him it was merely a circle-cross as well. ‘I think it’s just you,’ he said.

  She was not letting up: ‘No, I mean, seriously. It’s in the negative. The circle has eight segments, four with clover motifs resembling primitive fleur-de-lis. Each of these points up, down, left and right, representing north, south, east and west. Following the line around the upper fleur-de-lis and down to the first diagonal, you’ll see it extend to and curl around its symmetrical counterpart on the bottom, crisscross the center of the circle and extend back up again, to form a vertical beam. And, if you do the same thing with the left and right fleurs-de-lis, the whole form is a perfect Maltese cross.’

  ‘Ha!’ Rabin exclaimed. ‘That’s genius.’

  ‘The side windows are the same,’ she said. ‘Their eight-pointed stars are also stylized Maltese crosses—and together, with the ovals above them, they represent Knights with lances.’

  Rabin was astounded that he had not noticed this before or made the connection, and to his knowledge, neither had anyone else. ‘It could also be Knights Templar. Both orders served here during the crusades.’

  Jennifer could not agree about the Templar connection. She had already spotted the most convincing evidence yet, and though she was not sure if she was right, it would not hurt to point it out. ‘Did you bring a pen and paper with you, Professor?’ she asked.

  He drew a pen from his shirt pocket and searched his pants for a slip of paper. In his wallet, he found a folded leaflet. Passing it to her, he said, ‘It’s an outreach letter from a local mosque. You might as well make use of it.’

  Crouching and using her thigh as support, Jennifer sketched the facade’s outlines, including the doors, arches and windows. She placed twelve dots at key points in the drawing, and using only two continuous zigzag lines, connected the dots. When she had finished, she stood up. She held the sketch up before the facade.

  Rabin clapped his hands. ‘A Maltese cross to the centimeter. To-the-centimeter.’

  ‘How the hell did we miss that?’ Simon asked, puzzled.

  Stumped that no one had previously picked up on the design, he checked over Jennifer’s sketch. He needed to make sure her proportions were not just a fluke and that the points she had chosen were not arbitrary because, really, a person could draw dots on anything and connect them with lines. It did not take long to confirm what Jennifer was seeing.

  ‘My guess is also for the Hospitallers,’ Rabin agreed. ‘They sprang up in Jerusalem during the crusades and cared for destitute pilgrims to the Holy Land but soon, like the Knights Templar, they became powerful, enriching themselves with territory and revenue. When Islamic forces drove them from the region, they operated from Rhodes and later Malta—hence the name Maltese Cross. Their strength as a Catholic order became somewhat diminished by the time of the Protestant Reformation, and only during the early nineteenth century did the order resurface, performing humanitarian and religious work. Presently, they are headquartered in Rome and Malta. Like the Vatican, their enclave is extraterritorial from Italy, which means a significant amount of political pull. In fact, to this day they maintain their own military in Rome.’

  Jennifer shuddered. The peculiar blend of pagan symbolism made it impossible to equate this site with Christianity or with Apostle Peter’s ministry.

  ‘This must be some kind of temple,’ she said. ‘Maybe to serve as a small hospice. The Templars used their eleemosynary mission to accumulate wealth covertly, but—and correct me if I’m wrong—didn’t the Hospitallers’ wealth come from land and banking, while the Templar made their fortune by trading in relics?’

  Rabin nodded slowly. ‘There are stories to that effect, but it’s hard to say what secret organizations do and don’t do, especially when they’re a millennium old. At any rate, some scholars believe the Templar might have dug up something under the Temple Mount during the crusades; medieval legend would have it that they found the Holy Grail, the Arc of the Covenant and John the Baptist’s reanimated head, but then, the great thing about secret organizations is that you can make up all kinds of nonsense about them.’

  Jennifer listened with rapt attention as Rabin made his point, and waited for him to finish, before asking her next question: ‘Didn’t the Cave Church once have graves in front of it.’

  ‘As recently as the last century,’ Simon cut in. ‘It even had graves inside it.’

  She looked up at the entrances in the cliff wall overhead. ‘And the site sits right in the middle of the catacombs you’re excavating. …’

  Rabin was about to complement her on her observation when Simon put his hand up to stop him. ‘I hate to say it again, Jennifer, and I realize you’re likely to stay till we’ve got bullets in our heads, but seriously, we have to go now. The gendarmes must be landing as we speak.’

  ‘But, Simon, …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, I just can’t leave.’

  ‘Because you want to get us caught?’

  ‘No, I. ... I just feel like I’m missing something.’

  Chapter 35

  The temperature had reached twenty-eight degrees Celsius on the landing strip when Verretti approached the terminal building at Antakya’s Havaalani Airport. He had tried to nap during the flight, but with his men shouting above thrusting turbines and his mind racing every time he closed his eyes, he had settled on reading a magazine instead. Before disembarking, he had had his men synchronize their watches to Turkish time. He checked his watch again to make sure he had rewound the chronograph button. His chest tightened. It was nearing seven o’clock.

  Driven by his desire to see Schreider completely shamed, he hurried into the arrival terminal. The inspector’s eyes scanned the hall for Friar Brian Malone, but there was no sign of the monk. Then, stepping from a coffee shop, arms outstretched in welcome, Malone approached. Verretti wanted to give the man a dressing down right there. Their mission required discretion. Advertising the gendarmes’ arrival could jeopardize the entire operation.

  Malone was the only Capuchin in Turkey, personally assigned to his post by the pope; it would not be a stretch of the imagination, then, for anyone watching to suppose the friar’s greeting a group of men at the airport might indicate an unsanctioned envoy. Originally from London, the friar belonged to the evangelical brotherhood of Capuchins, an order that lived in austere, simple conditions. Malone had joined the Capuchin order in Detroit, Michigan, and had since spent his days in pr
ayer and contemplation, while also taking part in missionary activities and engaging in pastoral work.

  The footsteps of Adjutant Lioni and the rest of the men clattered behind Verretti, and he quickened his stride towards the terminal exit.

  Sensing he had perhaps done something to offend his guests, Malone sped after the inspector.

  Verretti also knew Malone from his numerous visits to the Vatican. His meteoric rise in the order, combined with a four-year stint as chaplain in the British Marine Corps, had made the friar an obvious choice for the Vatican’s special ‘outreach’ in Turkey. Verretti had often run into him at the Governatorato, where Malone was attending meetings with high-ranking members of the Holy See. For some time now, word had it that he played a clandestine role in Antioch. To maintain its position at the head of a world religion, the Holy See had commissioned him to keep an eye on the new discoveries made at an archaeology site above the Cave Church of Saint Peter. Managing a parish fulltime, in addition to constantly monitoring the archaeology site, claimed most of Malone’s time. His parish now comprised around ninety souls, and with the Holy See ever anxious for news from the site, he worked tirelessly to perform all his duties with equal fervor.

  Verretti paused briefly to let Malone catch up. As the monk reached him, the inspector began walking again.

  ‘How far to your parish, Friar?’

  ‘It’s a thirty-minute drive, Inspector.’

  ‘You can stop calling me by rank, Malone. We have to be taken for civilians.’

  Engaging with Vatican officials on a first-name basis made Malone uncomfortable, and though he knew the inspector’s first name, he would not call him by it. As a monk, his esteem for the Holy See and the Holy Father would not permit it—not even to ensure security.

  Verretti crossed the road to the parking area taking the lead. ‘I believe you know why we’re here, yes?’