Globusz^® Publishing 

Vano and Zurab were in the hole underneath the cathedral working their way down to box that they hoped would bring them riches. One of the men used a pick while the other used the vacuum to pull the freshly dug dirt out of the hole and spray it into another section of the crawlspace. They switched positions most of the night because the man using the pick had the harder of the two jobs.

Before long they had a four-foot square hole and were burrowing down about two feet per hour. They would lose time when they would encounter a large stone that they had to lug out of the pit by hand.

“How big was the box that we saw on the screen?” Zurab asked.

Not having thought of this before, Vano did a mental calculation and said, “I guess that it may be five feet by two feet, probably the size of a medium casket.”

“They said that we don’t have to take the box out of the hole, right?”

“Yes, the old man said that if we could get it out, then take it, because it may be worth something, if we can’t get it out, then don't worry about it, you’ll get paid the same even if the casket stays down there.”

“How could he sell the cloak if he can’t prove that it’s real.”

“Well, this is what he told me, if it is real, it should be able to do a miracle, like cure a sick person, or something like that. If it can’t do that, he figures it was still worth the money and the risk just to prove it. That’s it, pure and simple, end of the story.”

“The only thing that matters is that we’re gonna get paid for busting our asses out here every night.”

“Don’t you worry about that, the old man knows better than to stiff us.”

“I’m not worried about him, it’s his crazy ass nephew, Tafar, that scares me.”

On the next swing of the pick, it bounced back up at Zurab like it hit a drum. The two men looked at each other excitedly.

“That must be it.”

“Let’s clear all around it so we could take the lid off.”

The two men kept digging into the early morning until the entire top of the coffin was exposed.

At 5:30 A.M., in his room at the embassy, the alarm on Henry Carr’s wristwatch sounded like it was as big as the bell on top of a church. He fell asleep on the couch in his suite again, and the four hours of sleep invigorated him. He took a quick shower, got dressed, and thought about the poem on the back of the picture the whole time. He plugged in his laptop and used his sat phone to uplink into the main server in Langley where he searched for the word twelve associated with the Republic of Georgia. He scrolled down the listings and saw nothing significant, until it almost jumped off the screen at him, ‘The Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles.’ He next searched for the word ‘Sidonia’, and that pulled up a list of cities in all parts of the world. He matched Sidonia against Georgia and found the story of the Rabbi Elioz and his sister Sidonia and easily related the cloak to the warm heart of the Lord. He sat back in his chair and thought, ‘under the floor, tenth pew,” and thought that he’d better check this for himself. He ran to the Embassy garage, hopped in his car and sped off to the Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles that was located in Mtskheta, about fifteen miles north of Tbilisi.

Thirty minutes later, Henry was sitting in his car in front of the cathedral, still running the words of the poem through his mind. The early morning air was cool and the southern fog was slowly rolling in from the Black Sea.

He asked himself once again, “What the hell am I doing here’, and thought for a moment about going back to the Embassy. The picture and the poem bothered the hell out of him, but he didn’t have much more to go on except the fact that Tafar Rasulon was engaged in some business in Tbilisi around the time of the cesium heist. For all he knew, all of this information might be unrelated and meaningless. Still feeling the high from the previous night’s bust, Henry got out of the car.

He walked up to the cathedral’s front doors, tried to open them, but found them locked as he expected they would be. He walked around the cathedral and tried a side door that was also locked. When he saw the old style lock, Henry pulled out his knife and quickly picked the lock and went inside the cathedral. The only light that penetrated the darkness was from the few candles that burned in various sections of the church. He quietly walked past the altar and worked his way down to the area of front door. At the front door, he turned around and walked toward the altar and took a seat in the tenth pew on the right side. He sat there for a few quiet minutes before he decided to move to the tenth pew from the altar. ‘Maybe the altar was considered the front of the church,’ he thought. It was only a few minutes later when he began to feel foolish and started thinking about the well-deserved sleep he could be catching up on. ‘Enough was enough’ he thought as he got up from the pew and started walking back up the main aisle to the side door where he entered.

As he was walking out, he stopped dead in his tracks when he heard a muffled click that briefly echoed from the high ceilings of the cathedral. It sounded like a hammer hitting a nail that was rapped in a cloth. He just stood there patiently waiting to see if the sound reoccurred. He looked around and realized that it could have came from anywhere in the building, and then he heard it again. This time he was reasonably certain that it came from the right side of the church. He pleaded for the noise to continue so he could home in on it and then he got his wish. The muffled clicks appeared to be resonating from under the floor on the right side of the cathedral from the front door. Henry repeated the lines in the poem again,

Blessedly lying beneath the cold floor.

From the front tenth pew find rest on the right

In the middle go down and you will find the light.

A strange chill ran down Henry’s spine, other than the bastardly nightmares, nothing on this earth has ever really scared him. When you have enough crazies pointing weapons at you or throwing long, sharp knives at you, fear is something that you keep under control. Henry thought that he’d test the words in the poem and went back up to the tenth pew from the front door to see if the noise originated from the ‘Front tenth pew on the right’.

He sat down in the pew and he hoped that it wasn’t his imagination, but he was convinced that the muffled clicks that beckoned him were definitely emanating from under the tenth pew.

Henry shined his flashlight into the pew and surveyed the floor area under it and saw the cut marble pieces. He pulled out his knife and tried to pry up the heavy marble, and realized that the only outcome from this would be a broken knife. He walked back up to the side door, went out and walked around the outside of the cathedral to see if there was a basement entrance. It quickly became evident that there was no basement at all. Henry went back inside the church and locked the door from the inside to make sure no one surprised him from the outside and to keep whoever or whatever was under the floor from leaving the building. He walked back down and picked the twelfth pew as a good place to wait and see what happens. He took off his coat to use as a pillow as he lay down on the pew to get some rest.

In less than an hour, it was either the morning sun shining through the stained glass window onto his face, or the sound of the marble square sliding on the floor that woke him, but Henry quickly sat up with his pistol ready. He slouched down in the pew and waited to make sure that everyone came out of the hole in the floor before he made his move. With his legs and feet on the pew, Henry looked under the pew and could see two sets of feet. One of the people bent over and started to cover the hole back over with the marble square.

“Stop right there,” Henry’s voice echoed in the cavernous cathedral, scaring the hell out of Vano and Zurab.

“Who are you?” they both stuttered when they saw Henry in the pew with his gun pointing at them.

“Never mind who I am, what were you doing down there?”

They looked at each other and Vano said, “We’re going to be rich, if you help us, we could give you part of our share.”

Henry pulled a silencer out of his coat and tightened it on his pistol and said, “I’ll give you ten seconds to tell me what you’re doing down there before I kill you and bury you in there.”

Again Vano and Zurab looked at each other, but this time they were too scared for their lives, so they did not say anything. Henry decided to take a chance and said, “Relax boys, you did good, Tafar knows how to pick good men, you passed the test.” Henry put the gun back in his coat and Vano and Zurab exhaled a sigh of relief and started laughing.

“I’m sorry if I scared you, but Tafar sent me here to check up on you guys, is everything going okay?”

“Let’s take him down and show him what we found,” Vano said.

“Sure, as soon as my heartbeat gets back to normal.”

Vano pulled the marble square back off the hole and climbed back under the floor with Zurab right behind him. Henry followed Zurab in and quickly wished he didn’t when he saw the two men crawling through the dirt on their hands and knees like a couple of rats. He soon saw them disappear into a larger hole about ten feet ahead. He looked down into the dirt pit and saw both men standing at the bottom and staring at the thick wooden coffin that they uncovered.

“You’re not going to believe this,” Vano said with a wide smile as Henry climbed into the pit with the men.

Zurab unlatched an old locking hinge and lifted the top of the coffin and carefully slid it halfway off. Henry moved in to take a closer look at the contents and was nearly floored.

Inside the coffin was a young woman whose body has not yet decomposed. Her face was young and pretty, only slightly pale and ashen, and her hair, while fragile looking, was still thick and auburn colored. She was wearing a long white robe and she was clutching a thick crimson wool blanket or article of clothing.

Henry was completely awestruck as he took his time to gather in and comprehend exactly what he was looking at.

“How long has she been down here?” Henry asked to the amusement of Vano and Zurab.

“I don’t know, but I would guess maybe two thousand years,” Vano said while laughing.

Henry looked at the two men quizzically.

“Sure, look at the robe she is wearing, it’s ancient,” Zurab said.

“Why didn’t her body decompose in a leaky wooden coffin after two thousand years?” Henry asked.

“That’s because she’s holding the cloak of Christ,” Vano said, “She’s protected forever.”

“Henry stared at the two men quizzically.

“Watch this,” Zurab said as he grabbed onto the cloak and tried to pull it out of the dead woman’s hands but it would not budge, as if the woman’s hands were steel vises.

“It is said that she died the minute she took it in her hands,” Vano said.

Henry still couldn’t believe what he was seeing, but quickly pulled himself together and said, “You did good, you will be rewarded far beyond your wildest dreams, let’s cover the coffin and get out of here before it gets too light outside.”

The three men sealed the coffin, climbed out of the hole in the floor and covered it back up with the marble square. Vano and Zurab quickly cleaned up around the area and put the cleaning tools away. As soon as they went out the side door, Henry said, “Come over to my car with me, we’ll call Tafar and give him the good news.”

After the two men got into the back seat of his car, Henry pulled out his cell phone and made a call.

“I need to speak to Tafar.”

“I don’t care, tell him I’m with his men, he told me to call when I get here.”

“No, I cannot tell you who I am or where I am, just get him for me now or I’ll tell him to cut your nuts off.”

“Okay then, you tell him to call me before 7:00 A.M. or I’m out of here, he has my number.”

Henry put his cell phone away, and said, “The stupid guard is afraid to wake him before 6:30.” Henry said, “But I’m very impressed with you guys, you did good, real good, but how the hell are you going to get that coffin out of that hole?”

The two men looked at each other and laughed.

“The coffin isn’t worth anything, nor is the body, all we want is the cloak that’s in the woman’s hands,” Vano said.

Henry looked at the two men hoping they would continue their explanation.

“We’ll be finished tomorrow night,” Zurab said, “All we have to do is go back down, cut the poor lady’s hands off at the wrist, and deliver the cloak of Christ to the old man.”

‘Warms the pure heart of the Lord’, Henry thought to himself as he let the men talk, and hoped to find out who the old man was.

“Tafar told me you were going to give the cloak to him, and that he was going to give it to the old man,” Henry said.

“No, that was the old plan, Tafar had to go to Azerbaijan on business, so he told us to deliver it to the old man and seal up the pit.”

“I don’t know if that’s wise,” Henry said as he continued to lead the men on.

“Why?” Vano asked, “You don’t think that Tafar trusts his own uncle.

“Well, they say that most murders happen within families,” Henry said, “If Tafar doesn’t get paid, then neither do I, and I have to look out for myself.”

“By the way,” Vano said, “Where is that crazy woman at?”

Henry looked at him searching for an answer and thought that things might take a turn for the worse.

When Henry didn’t answer quick enough, Zurab said, “Ella, Tafar’s woman, we expected her to come sneaking around the corner at any time, but not you.”

“Damn, for a moment there, I thought you were asking about my ex-wife,” Henry said, “Tafar told Ella to meet him in Baku, Azerbaijan,” Henry said, hoping he was right.

To change the subject, Henry said, “I don’t want to hold you guys up, I know you probably need to get some sleep, let me try to reach Tafar one more time, hopefully I’ll get someone who won’t be afraid to wake him up.”

Henry placed another call and said, “The damn line is busy now.”

He slammed the phone down, and as if on cue, automatic rifles were pointed at Vano and Zurab through all of the car’s windows as Henry’s team had the car completely surrounded.

“What the hell is this,” Vano said nervously as Zurab slumped frightfully down in his seat.

“This is your one and only chance to reduce your prison sentence by cooperating with us, all you have to do is tell me who the old man is,” Henry said looking Vano directly in the eyes.

“We can’t tell you that,” Vano said.

Henry fired two silenced shots that put two holes into the seat between the two men that sent them hugging the car doors.

“Don’t screw with me, or I’ll kill you as easily as I killed Tafar,” Henry said as he threw Tafar’s big knife on the seat between the two men.

“Vano and Zurab just looked at each other frightened and confused.

“Come on, guys, I could put a camera in the church and catch the old man eventually, but if you tell me right now, I won’t have to kill you in front of a church, that’s something that I don’t believe in doing.”

“How do we know that you won’t kill us anyway?” Vano asked.

Henry nodded to one of his men who brought a local policeman over to get a first hand view of the activities in the car.

“I promise that you’ll get a fair trial, and I’ll do everything I can to help you, the old man is the one that I want. You probably don’t even know that he was involved in something far deadlier than grave robbing, and it’s my job to stop him.”

The two men looked at each other and Vano finally said, “Okay, we’ll tell you.”