Read Online Bermuda Schwartz by Bob Morris - Free Book Online Page A

of those holy relics that people are always trying to find, like the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant. Then again, some folks might lump it in with searching for the Lost City of Atlantis. Or signs of aliens in the pyramids.”
    â€œYou sound like a skeptic,” she says.
    â€œAbout most things.”
    â€œThat include religion?”
    â€œOn most days,” I say.
    Janeen smiles.
    â€œLet’s leave religion out of it then.”
    â€œAlways a good idea,” I say.
    â€œFrom a purely historical perspective, the whole Son of God thing aside, would you agree that someone named Jesus Christ really did exist and that he really was crucified on a wooden cross in Jerusalem, roughly in the year AD 33?”
    â€œYeah, I can go with that. I mean, it’s been fairly well proven as historical fact.”
    â€œEver wonder what happened to that cross?”
    â€œNo, not really. I mean, that was two thousand years ago. I’d guess it had long since disintegrated, turned to dust.”
    â€œYeah, you’d think. Still, there are cathedrals all over Europe that claim to have pieces of the True Cross, tiny slivers of wood enshrined in jeweled cases for the faithful to worship. They had to come from somewhere, right?”
    â€œThe faithful tend to worship some pretty wild things,” I say. “The image of the Virgin Mary in the windows of a bank. The face of Jesus on a piece of burnt toast. There’s lots of bogus stuff out there.”
    Janeen laughs.
    â€œNo doubt about that,” she says. “And there’s reason to believe that many of those so-called pieces of the True Cross are bogus, too. Back during the Crusades era, plenty of pilgrims returned from the Holy Land with bagfuls of fake relics that they sold to unsuspecting believers. Chips off the rock that sealed the tomb of Jesus. Thorns from the crown of thorns. The early Christians, especially the rich ones, used to pay big money for that sort of thing.”
    â€œBuying their way into the kingdom of heaven, a noble tradition. Make your faith pledge now, brothers and sisters. Our operators are standing by.”
    A long look from Janeen.
    â€œI take back what I said before,” she says. “You’re really more of a cynic than a skeptic, aren’t you?”
    â€œAs far as I’m concerned, there’s not a lot of difference between organized religion and organized crime. At least the Mafia is honest enough to admit that it’s only in it for the money.”
    â€œI’d have to agree with you,” she says. “And Richard Peach probably would have, too. He was a scholar, not a cleric. Yet, he was utterly convinced that the True Cross really did exist. And he believed that a sizable chunk of it had survived the ages.”
    â€œExactly how sizable a chunk are we talking about?”
    â€œWell, according to various sources that I’ve read, it was ten centimeters by sixteen centimeters and five centimeters thick.”
    â€œYou mind doing that conversion for my nonmetric brain?”
    Janeen smiles.
    â€œRoughly four inches by six.” She shapes it with her hands. “About the size of a paperback book, although not at all uniform. It was just a fragment, a piece that had broken off the original cross.”
    â€œWhat kind of wood?”
    She shrugs.
    â€œThat’s up for speculation. Some accounts say it was olive. Others cedar. And still others say it was gopherwood, probably a form of cypress, like Noah used to build the ark.”
    â€œYou mean to tell me that a piece of wood like that survived two thousand years?”
    â€œHey, it’s a piece of the True Cross. It has supernatural powers. It can survive anything.” She smiles. “You know what a reliquary is?”
    â€œI’ve heard of them. They’re used to store holy relics, right? The hair of John the Baptist, the bones of St. Paul, stuff like that.”
    â€œUh-huh. Something very