The Shroud Codex (22 page)

Castle filed away that information, pleased to know Father Middagh was not the only person who could cite the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project to suit the needs of his argument.

“Besides, it doesn’t make any difference if the Shroud was created by the methods I am using,” Gabrielli said. “All I need to prove is that I can produce today something that looks very much like the Shroud of Turin by using only materials that were known to exist when the carbon-14 tests show the Shroud was created, around 1260 to 1390
A.D.
”

The comment caused Castle to challenge Gabrielli on the carbon-14 tests. “I’ve been show evidence by the Vatican that the samples for the carbon-14 tests were taken from a corner of the Shroud that had been rewoven with cotton after the 1352 fire that damaged the Shroud.”

Gabrielli shot back derisively. “The Church has gone to great lengths to discredit the carbon-14 tests. First the Shroud
defenders attacked the carbon-14 process itself, claiming it could be inaccurate. But three different labs, all very credible, came up with about the same result. The problem is that carbon-14 dating is a very accurate scientific process. Then the believers claimed the samples were contaminated with biological debris from the Middle Ages. Now the argument is that the carbon-14 dating samples were from a rewoven part of the Shroud. Once we show that argument to be false, the Shroud defenders will come up with another one. The truth is that the carbon-14 tests were done correctly and the Catholic Church just can’t stand it.”

“How about the blood on the Shroud?” Castle asked. “Will your Shroud contain blood?”

“That’s easy, especially since the Shroud of Turin Research Project proved a lot of blood on the Shroud came from direct contact. I could easily saturate parts of the linen with blood to look just like the Shroud. All I would have to do is get some blood samples. If you want, I can even get some samples from fresh corpses, to make sure I include the serum albumin on the Shroud, evidence the Shroud believers say proves Christ’s dead body rested in the Shroud.”

“Are you confident your Shroud will get world attention?”

“Most of my work does,” Gabrielli said boastfully. “I have an international audience that follows my work debunking miracles, just as you are followed worldwide for the books you write attacking religion. When my duplicate shroud is ready, I plan to hold a press conference here at the university. I’m sure it will draw a crowd, especially with your Father Bartholomew drawing global attention on television and on the Internet. Here in Italy, I saw the report on RAI last night. It even included a clip of you at the press conference with the archbishop.”

Castle was not surprised. “How did I look?” he asked jokingly.

“Good,” Gabrielli said, “but I think you’ve gained about ten
pounds since I saw you last. You need to come over here to Italy and do some walking around Rome and Florence.”

Castle laughed, appreciating that Gabrielli probably had a point. Castle thought a trip to Europe would be a welcome idea right about now. “When are you going to show your shroud handiwork to the world?”

“That’s what I called to ask,” Gabrielli answered. “When would you like me to show it?”

“How about next week? I’m planning a trip to Princeton tomorrow to meet one of Father Bartholomew’s advisors from when he was a physicist. Then comes the weekend. You’ll get more attention if you wait until the middle of next week. How about next Thursday? We will get coverage on Friday that will carry us through the weekend news cycle. That should give us the chance to get maximum news coverage worldwide.”

Gabrielli thought for a minute. “Sounds good to me,” he agreed. “Next Thursday it is. I will start preparing the press release right away.”

Friday morning

Trip to Princeton University

Day 16

Dr. Castle had his limo swing by the Waldorf Towers to pick up Anne Cassidy. It was a beautiful fall day and Castle looked forward to the trip to see Dr. Horton Silver at Princeton University. He thought the ride would give him time to find out more about Anne and he looked forward to whatever insight Silver could give him about Paul Bartholomew’s career as a physicist.

Castle wore a camel-hair sport coat he particularly liked and a blue button-down oxford shirt with no tie. In the pocket of the sport coat he had neatly arranged his trademark four-point linen handkerchief. Anne looked fresh in a light blue linen dress suit, highlighted by an Italian designer scarf she tied around the open collar of her tweed dress jacket. Under the jacket she wore an attractive black silk shirt. Castle noted how well Anne’s outfit set off her blond hair and deep brown eyes. Once Anne was comfortably
in the backseat of the car next to Castle, the driver set out for the Lincoln Tunnel and New Jersey.

“What did Paul have to say when you introduced yourself to him?” Castle finally asked as they headed down the New Jersey Turnpike.

“At first, he couldn’t believe it,” Anne said. “He thought I was his mother come back to life. He said I looked exactly like she did when she was my age.”

“Was he right?” Castle asked.

“I don’t know for sure,” Anne said with some hesitation. “When I was growing up, I never really knew much of anything about my real mother. I would ask my father to tell me about my mother, but he always put me off, saying something like ‘That was a long time ago.’ My father was not the most talkative man, especially when it came to personal matters.”

Castle probed. “Certainly you must have wanted to see photos of your mother. You must have had some idea about who she was.”

“Like I said, my father told me that my mother had died giving birth to me. He had one or two photos of them together that I remember seeing, but over the years even those photos got lost, probably in one of our many moves.”

“So you didn’t always live in Montreal?” Castle asked.

“No,” Anne said. “My father was a lawyer and he worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway. I grew up in western Canada, in Calgary, where the Canadian Pacific is headquartered. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that my father got a promotion by switching to the Canadian National Railway. That’s when we moved to Montreal, when I was in high school. The Canadian National is headquartered in Montreal.”

“Your father never remarried?”

“No, I think he was always very much in love with my mother.
I can’t remember him even dating when I was a child. He was always there at home for me, playing the role of both mom and dad as I was growing up.”

Castle began to see strange reverse parallels in Anne’s life and the life of her half brother. Anne was told her mother died giving birth and Paul was told his father died in a work-related accident three months before he was born. Anne and Paul had the same mother, though Anne knew almost nothing about her mother and Paul was equally in the dark about his father. Anne Cassidy claimed never to have known her mother and Paul Bartholomew claimed never to have known his father, though they both had the same mother in common. Neither Anne Bartholomew, their mother, nor Matthew Cassidy, Anne’s father, ever remarried. Over the years, Castle had become used to sorting out complex family histories. Discovering Anne, he believed, added an important piece to this puzzle.

“I’m sure I’m not the only person ever to be separated at birth from a mother,” Anne said.

Castle agreed. “Still, you are one of the lucky ones. Very few people separated at birth ever get a chance to reconcile with a lost brother, or to find out the truth about their parents. After your father died, you learned the truth about your mother and now you are back together with Paul.”

“I know it’s hard to believe,” Anne finally said, “but I think Paul is right. I feel surprisingly close to my mother now that I have met Paul. When Paul first saw me, he almost passed out. Judging from Paul’s reaction when he first saw me, I guess I do look a lot like my mother did when she was my age. I understand how hard it must have been for Paul to accept he had a half sister he had never heard about. Yet, after we had a chance to get acquainted, he embraced me and I felt like we had never been separated at all.”

“Why do you think you mother never told Paul that he had a half sister?” Castle asked.

“Since I never spoke with my mother, I’m only speculating, but my guess is that she did not want Paul to know her first husband was still alive, or that she had divorced him in order to marry Jonathan Bartholomew when he returned from Vietnam.”

“So, you think your mother might have been embarrassed about the divorce with your father?”

“I’m not sure,” Anne answered. “From the way I put the story together, my mother would never have married my father if she still thought Jonathan Bartholomew was still alive in Vietnam and coming back to her.”

Castle admired how willing Anne was to accept the truth. It took some courage to come to New York to be with her brother after all these years. She obviously did not want her brother to suffer alone, not when she knew he shared her flesh and blood.

“Are you deeply Catholic like your brother?” Castle asked.

“No,” Anne said. “My father was a Lutheran and I was raised Protestant.”

“How about now? Do you believe in God?”

“Yes, I do,” she said, “though I have to admit I’m not much for attending church regularly. Still, I can’t accept that everything happens by accident. I have to believe there is a reason I found my brother and deep down I believe that reason has to do with God.”

Castle saw no point in arguing with Anne about religion. He increasingly suspected she might help him better understand her brother.

As the limo entered Princeton, Castle enjoyed seeing once again how an Ivy League town looked. The open greens of the campus reminded him of Cambridge and his days at Harvard University. Finding the Physics Department headquartered in the modernistic Jadwin Hall, completed in 1968, was a bit of a shock.
But despite the sweeping windows and central open spaces of Jadwin Hall, Professor Horton Silver’s office was pretty much what Castle had expected—floor-to-ceiling books and papers with one lonely window in the back that struggled to blend the ambient sunlight with the glare of Dr. Silver’s slick widescreen monitor. Once the chairman of the Physics Department, Dr. Silver was now an emeritus professor.

Dr. Silver looked every bit the eccentric Dr. Castle expected to find. Silver’s hair was just that—silver, and largely unkempt. His thick glasses seemed to protrude a quarter inch from their wire frames. Silver was comfortably attired in a loose-fitting sweater that looked as though it had reached its prime twenty years ago, complementing his baggy jeans and well-worn sneakers. Castle and Anne sat in straight-backed wooden chairs in front of the professor’s desk, while Silver sat in his armed swivel chair positioned at the desk’s helm so he could easily watch the monitor while they talked, moving the mouse and clicking at will even as he was conversing with his two guests.

“As I mentioned to you on the telephone, this is Anne Cassidy, Father Bartholomew’s half sister,” Castle said, introducing Anne.

Silver stood up and shook Anne’s hand cordially. “I didn’t know Paul had a sister,” Silver said.

“It’s a complicated story,” Anne said. “But we have different fathers and my mother divorced my father before Paul was born. Paul never knew he had a half sister and we have just now been reunited.”

“That’s good,” Silver said, obviously not interested in probing the details.

“As I understand it, Paul Bartholomew was one of your undergraduate students,” Castle said, getting to the main purpose of the conversation. “Paul evidently was one of your protégés. You encouraged him to become a physics graduate student and you
supported his appointment to the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Silver said. “Bartholomew was one of the most promising physicists ever to work at Princeton or at the Institute for Advanced Study and we’ve had more than our share of Nobel Prize winners over the decades. In my estimation, Paul was well along his way to adding his name to that list, before he decided to quit.”

“Why did he quit?” Castle asked.

“His mother died. She was sick for quite a while, as I remember. She had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.”

“She was sick for some time,” Castle said.

“That’s how I remember it. At any rate, when she died, Bartholomew wasn’t the same. He lost his interest in physics. I couldn’t figure it out at the time, but I remember him telling me he had despaired of the possibility of finding God in an equation.”

“Did you ever meet Paul’s mother?” Anne asked, anxious to see if he could supply her with any memories of their mother.

“I met her a few times,” Silver recalled. “But, you’ve got to understand, I was Paul’s academic advisor and then I was chairman of the Physics Department when he was a graduate student. I try not to intervene too heavily in the personal lives of my students. I’m a physicist, not a psychologist, and I built my career on knowing my limitations.”

“As I understand it, you tried to discourage Paul from leaving his career as a physicist. Is that right?” Castle asked.

“Yes, I did. I could see he was emotionally crushed when his mother died. Paul had only two things in his life: his love of physics and his love of his mother. He was devoted to both. I had given up thinking Paul would ever get married. As I recall he had a few girlfriends, but relationships were hard for Paul. Women were too emotionally demanding and Paul was afraid of marriage. I’m
sure, Ms. Cassidy, you will agree with me that a man who can’t make a commitment to a woman is not a very good prospect for marriage.”

“Maybe that’s why I’ve never been married,” Anne said, with a knowing smile. “Men like my brother marry their jobs and his attachment to our mother would not be very promising to a woman looking to be the center of his life as his wife.”

“It was his commitment to theoretical research that consumed Paul,” Silver said, wanting to be precise. “That’s why I recommended him to the institute. The institute is a separate organization, not part of Princeton University. We are very close and the faculty here at the Physics Department typically works closely with the physicists at the institute. But the faculty at the institute have no students and they are not required to teach any classes. The faculty are not even required to write any books or articles, unless they want to. You might say that getting an appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study is one of the best academic jobs in America. You get paid handsomely and you are free to pursue whatever studies you want. Paul’s devotion to theoretical research in physics fit right in.”