It is the swabbing that most inspires Dr Kirchweger's horror. Only when a hairdryer has been found, to burn off all traces of moisture left by the dampened cotton, does he allow the investigation to go ahead. Like a scenes-of-crime officer, the metallurgist dabs gently around the weapon's every nook and corner. Like a scenes-of-crime officer, he is looking for traces of blood. Rather less like any scenes-of-crime officer unaffected by drink or drugs, he has no thought for the due processes of law.
The blood he seeks is that of Jesus Christ.
To find the beginning of this story, we must turn to the gospel of St John. To bring it forward we must share the company of, among others, saints Longinus and Maurice, the emperors Constantine and Charlemagne, a clutch of scheming Dark Age kings, Napoleon, Richard Wagner, Pablo Picasso, Adolf Hitler and a waft of medieval warlords reincarnated as Nazis. After them will come General George 'blood-and-guts' Patton, a second-world-war US intelligence officer, an SS informer, Indiana Jones and a German U-boat captain heading for Antarctica.
It is a story that requires us to keep a tight hold on our credulity. Many of its protagonists are grail-seekers steeped in the occult, who want us to share their belief in magic. Some are imperial conmen. Others are cautious historians who believe the spear to be no older than the 8th century and see its journey to Vienna as little more than a process of hand-me-down through the Holy Roman and Hapsburg empires.
The legend has its root in St John's account of the crucifixion - specifically chapter 19, verses 31 to 36. To hasten the deaths of Jesus and the two crucified thieves, it was put to the Roman governor, Pilate, that their legs should be broken. This was done to the thieves but, when it came to Jesus, one of the Roman soldiers realised he was already dead. To prove it, he thrust his spear into Jesus's side and released a flow of blood and water (a phenomenon explained by the fact that blood after death separates into red cells and colourless plasma). Thus it happened that faith was kept in the Old Testament prediction that 'a bone of him [the Messiah] shall not be broken'.
Legend says that the soldier was a half-blind centurion called Longinus, who immediately fell to his knees and had his sight miraculously restored to him. Various accounts - some of them lurid and violent - exist of Longinus's subsequent life. Put simply, he seems to have retired from the army, become a monk, died under torture and become a saint. He does not convince everyone, however. Biblical accounts are inconsistent, and the Rev Sabine Baring Gould, in his magisterial Lives of the Saints, argued that the name derived from a Latinised misreading of the Greek word longche, meaning simply 'spear'. Be that as it may, various relics of the saint are scattered throughout Christendom, including a rival spear at St Peter's in the Vatican (for which no serious claim for authenticity is made), where there is also a fine statue of Longinus by Bernini.
But the veracity of St Longinus is not central to the issue. All that matters is that, as St John tells it, someone pierced the crucified Christ with a spear. You do not have to be a theologian, or a Christian of any kind, to understand the significance of this Christ-stained weapon as a holy relic. For those who believed in such things, its supernatural powers made it nothing less than an instrument of world domination. He who held the spear ruled the planet. Tyrants throughout history have either possessed or sought to possess it. Men have been paralysed by the sight of it, or thrown to the ground as if struck by lightning. No wonder Dr Kirchweger wants a hairdryer. The modern history of the spear is, if anything, even more obscured by lies and legends than its ancient origins. For all that the Kunsthistorisches' curators would like to play it down, one name dominates the later chapters of its story. The true extent of Hitler's involvement with the so-called spear of destiny is an issue as divisive as belief in the hereafter. Did the Nazis covet the spear only as part of their generalised greed for other people's art and artefacts? Or did Hitler himself have a deeper, specific interest in it? Was he even enslaved by it, driven to acts of literally satanic cruelty by its demonic power?
In Schillerplatz this January, the object that Dr Kirchweger lifts from its cushioned nest of Japanese tissue paper looks like what it is - a museum exhibit. It is fascinating in the way that old weapons always are, but wears its celebrity lightly. In one of the more flamboyant accounts of its history, the writer describes its effect on a visitor to the museum - a young soldier named Walter Johannes Stein - in 1915.
'Quite soon he became aware of its psychometric qualities ... Before he could summon the strength to cast it off, he was deep in the grip of an experience which overwhelmed his senses ... [He] was whisked through Time like some unwilling captive on a magic carpet bound for the unknown ... Above him in the distance he could discern a mighty figure leading an array of angelic hosts, a translucent Spirit girded around the breast in white raiment that fell in folds of living beauty ... He knew ... that he was standing before the Archangel of the Grailn ... His helmet shone with the consecrated fire of molten light in a cosmic forge. In his right hand he grasped a blade of light which he smote across the heavens ... lightning flashing from the blade forked down to strike clusters of demonic spirits ...'
Walter Stein bravely stifled the impulse to flee. 'Somehow he found the courage to remain. Searing pain and anguish arose in his soul as the lightning struck him. He felt as though he was being hollowed out as the evils of false pride and materialism were burnt out of his soul. When he could withstand the agony no longer, he swooned into unconsciousness.'
Strangely, the visitors now gathered in the Institute of Sciences and Technologies in Art seem to feel none of this. The metallurgist, Dr Robert Feather, measures and weighs and swabs. The radiographers take their x-rays. A crew from the award-winning film company Atlantic Productions, who are pursuing the true story of the spear for a BBC2 programme, The Spear of Christ, and who have themselves won permission for the forensics, roll their cameras while the Sunday Times photographer waits his turn. No sparks fly. No archangel appears. Nobody swoons.
Confusingly, the spear goes by a number of different names: lance of Longinus, lance of St Maurice, holy lance, spear of destiny. The museum nods to tradition in labelling it 'Holy Lance' but remains unshakably mundane in its description: 'Carolingian, 8th century'. Certainly there is little in its appearance to suggest that it merits anything more. The object is 20in long and seems to be made of steel, iron, brass, silver, gold and leather. It is of winged design with an ornamental iron pin fixed through the blade, and a number of small brass crosses laid into it. At some stage it was broken and the two parts bound together with silver wire. A gold sleeve, bearing the inscription Lancea et clavus Domini (Lance and nail of the Lord), which also covers the break, conceals an apparently older, silver band.
