Braun had been quite sincere and very convincing in his insistence that the existence of a second shroud made little real difference to the faithful. What was important was the symbol of resurrection and salvation and the belief in God. People weren’t ready… couldn’t, wouldn’t accept a second Messiah.

The revelation of her existence would shake their faith in the church, causing untold emotional suffering. The truth would not make them free, only unhappy.

And of course they talked about the sectarian violence and unrest that would follow such a revelation, how Zhirinovsky’s people would use the situation to expand and consolidate his influence in Russia and beyond. Zhirinovsky’s followers were madmen, more in the mold of Idi Amin than Stalin, but both had slaughtered more innocent people than Hitler. Popular dissatisfaction since the fall of official communism had made Zhirinovsky and his followers in power the perpetual runners up. And if he or his followers ever assumed control, the question would be where the first bloodbath would happen.

The American stared deeply into the darkness, searching for answers—answers that remained as elusive as the pinpricks of light arcing their way across the night sky.

His mind, his intellect, everything he had lived for so far, told him they were right. No truth was valuable enough if it would cause the violence, death, and upheaval that this would cause.

But his heart refused to listen.

The American turned away from the darkness, walked back into his room, and closed the door. He stood there for a moment, looking at the thick volumes covering the desktop and resting on the floor. The complete history of Sophia: the transcripts of the interviews with her and the people of her village, the decrees of Emperor Constantine, and the travels of the box with its explosively credible proof as could best be reconstructed, until it disappeared from a Bavarian mansion in the mid-1930s.

He rubbed the fatigue from his eyes and looked at his watch. It was after midnight yet he was not sleepy He sat back in the desk chair, picked up the yellow legal pad, and began to review his notes.

Following the murders, Sophia’s burial shroud and the documentation of its authenticity were placed in a large box made of gold and inset with precious stones. The top was placed on the golden box and its edges sealed with molten gold impressed with the imperial seal of Constantine and the holy seal of Pope Sylvester I.

The box was then placed in a vault beneath what would later be Saint Peter’s Basilica. And there it and its secrets rested in peace for seven hundred years.

It was monstrous, the American thought, as he read through the notes for what seemed like the thousandth time. It was like watching an old midnight horror movie where the archaeologist and his beautiful assistant open the mummy’s tomb and set the curse free on the world. Only now, it was an ancient truth about God and murder that had come back to haunt them. He read on, trying to make sense of the nightmare.