you, Charlotte.” He could still hear the mercenary’s words clearly in his
mind: “Did the cardinal tell you she skipped off with her laptop . . . loaded
up with all the data? . . . I’ve got to fix that too and her blood will be on your
hands ... if a freak accident should happen to befall the lovely geneticist . . . the authorities would be none the wiser... Of course, I’ ll be sure to show her a good time before she goes.” “I couldn’t handle another loss . . . after Dr.
Bersei . . . the Israelis.”
Mute, Charlotte couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“I had a gun,” he went on. “There was a struggle . . .”
For a moment, Donovan was back at the misty grove atop Monte Scuncole, peering down at the ossuary he and Conte had dropped into the pit
they’d dug. He remembered fixating on the crack that had snapped the
stone lid in two—wide enough to reveal the sacred bones beneath. Conte
intended to drop Donovan’s body in right behind the relic and use C-4 to
finish the job.
“I managed to run from him . . . out onto the roadway. He was right
behind me when the car came.” The images reeled through his mind,
making his pulse drum. He needed to take a breath before continuing.
“By the grace of God, it swerved and took him down—like the Angel of
Death . . . but even with that, he was still breathing.” He shook his head
in disbelief. “Only the devil himself could have kept him alive. But Conte
was breathing. Had he somehow lived, there’s no telling what—” Trembling fingers went to his lips to repress the surge of emotion. The next
words came fast: “So I took the gun and finished him.” He quickly crossed
himself. God, please have mercy and forgive me for these deeds. No matter what the consequences, airing the confession felt good—
cleansing. The Irish way of “stuffing it down” simply wasn’t good for the
soul. However, Donovan still wasn’t prepared to offer up that when he’d
stripped Conte’s body of its personal effects, he’d found a syringe filled with
clear serum, which he’d snuck past the Vatican metal detectors to eliminate what he thought had been the final threat—the Vatican’s secretary of
state. Otherwise Santelli would have stopped at nothing to complete what
he’d set out to do: eliminate any trace of the Vatican’s involvement in the
church’s greatest cover-up.
He allowed a few moments for the air to settle.
“Then Conte did kill Bersei?” She’d suspected that all along. Donovan nodded. “Many others too.” Though he felt he’d already said
too much, Charlotte would need to know the whole story. “There’s more,”
he said. “I suppose there’s nothing to lose now,” he said, and sighed. He went on to tell her how just weeks before she’d been summoned to
Vatican City, he’d been given a book by an anonymous contact (“The book
I showed you during our meeting with Cardinal Santelli,” he reminded her), how it had actually included a map showing the ossuary’s hidden burial vault beneath Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. How when he realized the implications of what would happen if the ossuary was discovered by Israelis, he’d convinced Santelli to take action. Though he’d advocated a peaceful solution, the pragmatic cardinal immediately sent for Salvatore Conte. Upon assessing the job Conte had used untraceable Vatican funds to employ a team of men to forcefully extract the ossuary—an elaborate plan involving guns, explosives, even a stolen helicopter. Many Israelis had been killed during an ensuing firefight at the Temple Mount, Donovan
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 bones,” he repeated in
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 Jesus, didn’t it?”
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 him?” she firmly insisted.
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 ?