Free The Shroud Key by Vincent Zandri Page A

mystery how this miracle of positioning came to be or an even more remarkable coincidence. Even the Sphinx temple is laid out in the same position as the spear wound, the three tiny pyramids reserved for the wives of the Pharaohs representing the crown of thorns. Yet the pyramids were constructed thousands of years prior to Jesus’s crucifixion.
    Once more, I feel the fine hairs on the back of my neck rise up.
    So Manion was right all the time. The bones of Christ must presently be buried inside the Giza Plateau. We were closer than we thought eight years ago. But at the same time so very far away. After all, the Giza plateau is a massive place. There are literally hundreds or even thousands of chambers, tunnels, passageways, and vaults that have yet to be unearthed.
    “It’s quite the theory isn’t it?” Anya goes on. “It’s one that Andre was even banking on. But, he needed to see the Shroud for himself to know if it was true. He was convinced that not only would there be symbols giving him clues to where the bones are buried, but an actual map or blueprint made by the men and women of the 1978 Shroud inquiry, which is hopefully what we’re going to find. A blueprint that would be far too small or too well concealed to show up on the average photo you can pull off of Google or Picassa.”
    I find myself tracing the triangular position of the pyramids and then tracing the triangular position of Christ’s hands and ankles in the shroud image. Relatively speaking, they are nearly identical in position. Geometrically speaking, that is.
    “Remarkable for certain,” I say. “But it could all just be an amazing coincidence.”
    “All I can say is maybe,” Anya admits. “But keep in mind that thirty-four years ago the Vatican allowed the first modern scientific examination of the shroud to occur, after centuries of stiff resistance. They even allowed samples of the shroud to be removed for the purposes of carbon dating. Don’t you see? They weren’t examining the shroud for authenticity. They were providing the cloth with yet the latest in the Jesus burial locations.” She inches closer to me, so that her chin is nearly resting on my black leather coat-covered shoulder. “But here’s where things get interesting, Chase,” she goes on. “At the very same time the shroud examination was happening in Italy, an excavation in Jerusalem was also taking place under the cover of darkness.”
    “Excavation,” I say. “Jerusalem…You’re losing me.”
    “Allow me to back up. In the late seventies, while foundation excavation was commencing for a new apartment complex being built in the territory between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, a tomb was unearthed. Construction immediately halted and archaeologists were called in to examine its contents. Inside the tomb were uncovered nine ossuaries. All of them purportedly belonging to the family of Jesus.”
    The high speed train speeds along the rails and the sky continues to grow darker, as if we were driving into the darkness and not the other way around. Anya’s words are indeed incredible, but they are not altogether shocking. Anyone having anything to do with archaeology … even an old sandhog like myself … has heard about the supposed Jesus tomb uncovered in the Holy Land many years ago. It’s just that no one ever took it seriously. No one except Manion, that is. After all, he himself uncovered what he claimed was the Joseph ossuary and bones, in Egypt of all places.
    “But I thought all the ossuaries were considered fabrications?” I add.
    She shakes her head, vehemently.
    “The find was so stunning, Chase, so insanely out of this world and, if I dare say it, so frightening, that no one knew how to handle it. Especially the member of the Israeli Antiquities Authority, the organization in charge of the dig.”
    “Ancestors of the very religious sect responsible for putting Jesus to death in the first place.”
    She nods in the affirmative. “Yes, under Caiphus