by Daniel Levin
He turned off Via del Corso into a small alleyway, not three feet wide. The pay phone’s proximity to the morning scooter traffic was intentional: the unmuffled blare would make any carabinieri-model listening device useless within the booth.
His instructions were to dial collect, using the foreign prefix provided him. The number was Egyptian, most likely Cairo, but of course he knew it was merely a switchboard. He stood nervously in the half-booth, his short breaths frosting the metal of the receiver. The tone brayed irregularly before steadying, and then grew silent as the number routed elsewhere. A sudden click interrupted the tones. Someone had answered.
“You blew up the warehouse,” Rufio said furiously, incautious about his volume. “I was still in there.”
10
Maurizio Fiorello returned to the lectern, where he began his direct examination. “Magistrato, it has taken generations for these fragments of the Forma Urbis to cycle through the black markets of the Arab world and western Europe before recently resurfacing in the Capitoline Museum on anonymous loan. Dulling and Pierce will offer a provenance for this artifact as shopworn and fabricated as any other unscrupulous dealer would do. Their briefs will try to convince you that this artifact slumbered safely in an anonymous Geneva estate or in a private French collection coincidentally having left Italy just before our antiquities law came into effect in 1902. But this time you must not believe them, Magistrato . These fragments of the Forma Urbis, at last, have returned home to Rome. Unlike the brave UN official, Dr. Sharif Lebag, they survived their voyage across violent waters of the illicit antiquities trade. We must not allow them to chance that sort of trip again.”
As Fiorello sat down, the magistrate leaned forward in his chair, taking some brief notes. Emili surveyed the courtroom from the witness stand. Lifting her head, she noticed in the upper level of the gallery an old man sitting alone. He sat in the last row of the balcony wearing a shabby brown coat and tweed cap. He was barely visible as he watched the courtroom proceedings below.
From the bench, the magistrate nodded to Bruce Tatton. Tatton pushed himself to his feet to begin his cross-examination. He allowed the silence to settle as he approached the witness.
“These custodians of the Temple Mount, the ‘Waqf Authority,’ is it? For how many years has this Islamic trust administered the Temple Mount?”
“As I said, since the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in 1187. Salah ad-Din’s defeat of Richard the Lionheart.”
“And you said you did not have their permission to enter the cavern you discovered.” Tatton paced. “Is that correct?”
“We attempted to contact—”
“It’s a yes-or-no question, Dottoressa.”
“We received no formal permission from the Waqf.”
“So you were trespassing, then?”
“Objection, Magistrato!” Fiorello said. “Is any of this relevant to Dr. Travia’s identification of this fragment?”
“Very relevant, Magistrato. This witness violated countless jurisdictional laws by crossing beneath the Temple Mount. According to the UN, the Temple Mount may lie in the heart of Jerusalem, but it remains under Jordanian administration. By crossing from East Jerusalem into the subterranean chambers of the Temple Mount, the witness flagrantly disregarded international law. Her behavior presents issues regarding her credibility.”
“Proceda,” the Magistrate said. Proceed.
“Dr. Travia, you have accused the Waqf Authority of illegally excavating beneath the Temple Mount. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“And that this room you discovered somehow relates to those excavations?”
“We saw topographical maps displaying various strata of the Temple Mount’s archaeological layers.”
“How then do you explain the presence of Forma Urbis fragments? We should expect a marble carving of ancient Jerusalem, not Rome.”
“I am merely reporting what I observed.” Emili breathed out, frustrated. “And what I observed were those two exact fragments,” she said, pointing at the easel’s photograph in the center of the courtroom. Fiorello nodded, satisfied with the dramatic effect. “I saw them in perfect lighting, under an examination lamp, lying there.”
“For how long?”
“I’m sorry?”
“For how long were you in this subterranean room?”
“I gave all the details to the UN officials investigating Dr. Lebag’s death.”
“Ah, yes,” Tatton said. “Right.” From the Dulling table, he lifted up materials from the internal UN investigation tabbed in a thick binder.
“By your own calculations, Dottoressa”—Tatton took a little tour around the witness stand—“less than four minutes and then”—Tatton’s voice lowered as he was quite close to her—“BAM!” he shouted. Everyone in the courtroom jumped.
“Sudden, wasn’t it? The gunshot that ended your examination?”
Emili said nothing, her eyes staring, as if through Tatton.
“One single gunshot, then chaos in the marketplace, the souk, which was above you. The UN investigation of Dr. Lebag’s death suggested that the murder of the shopkeeper was retaliation for assisting you. Whoever killed him, and later Dr. Lebag, did so to retrieve the items in the cavern you claim to have seen. Is that your belief?”
“Yes.” Emili stiffened. “I believe word got out that the shopkeeper assisted us.”
“And you’re sure you saw these fragments of the Forma Urbis? There are so many fragments of this ancient map still at large.” Tatton approached the witness box, his tone flat. “Isn’t it true that there are many fragments of the Forma Urbis that would have looked”—here he protracted each syllable for emphasis—“just”—he paused—“like”—and paused again—“these?”
“But the inscriptions on the fragments,” Emili replied from the stand. “They are identical to what I saw in Jerusalem.”
Jonathan leaned forward in his seat, a subconscious, protective reflex, as if she were his own witness. Emili had misstepped. She should not have used the word identical.
“Identical?” Tatton said, leaning on the word, as though the world depended on it. “But it is not identical, even by your own admission, is it, Dottoressa? The piece you described bore an inscription.” Tatton theatrically looked down at his folder. “‘Archivio di Stato,’ did it not? This piece has no such inscription.”
Fiorello shot out of his seat, trying to save his witness.
“Magistrato, we have entered expert testimony that the sanded portion along the fragment’s reverse side is recent and intentional. Is this sophistry necessary?”
Emili shifted in the witness box, her first sign of unease.
“Entirely necessary, Magistrato.” Tatton’s baritone was pleasant, almost friendly. “Forgive me for being simpleminded, but I am suggesting the witness has confused these artifacts with similar ones. It is, indeed, a strange enough thing to think of a fragment of an ancient map of Rome beneath Jerusalem to begin with, and now, not to have physical proof of it?”
The magistrate nodded, signaling that it was an acceptable line of inquiry.
Tatton raised his hands, as though he were willing to demur. But Jonathan knew this was a show of false grace. He had already won the point in the magistrate’s mind.
“One last line of questioning, Dr. Travia.” Tatton moved closer, in the arc of a circling shark deciding where to inflict the deepest wound. “Tomorrow is the World Heritage Committee meeting here in Rome, yes?”
From this question alone, Jonathan knew a bad moment awaited Emili.
“Yes,” Emili said, looking to Fiorello.
Fiorello nodded, indicating that her candor was good strategy.
“And you have submitted a proposal before the committee to investigate alleged illegal excavating beneath the Temple Mount?”
“I have requested permission from the committee to send archaeological inspectors beneath the Temple Mount, given the facts that we gathered in Jerusalem.”
&nbs
p; “But what facts are there?” Tatton said. “You don’t have a single piece of evidence of the Waqf’s archaeological destruction—” Tatton stopped suddenly, looking at her directly. “Except perhaps one?”
“If you’re suggesting I’m using this incident to—”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” Tatton said with great deliberation. “I intend to tell you directly.” Tatton leaned against the witness rail as though giving advice. “Sometimes what we yearn for is not the truth, but the mystery of something bigger.” His voice increased in volume. “A larger conspiracy on which to blame our own tragic mistakes. The fact is these pieces are not the ones you saw in Jerusalem, are they?” His avuncular manner faded as he pressed on. “One of our colleagues, a former Rome Prize winner like yourself, has researched these fragments and concluded that, for all we know, fifty or a hundred pieces of this ancient map could be mistaken for these two. He shared with us that there are hundreds of pieces scattered across museums all over the world.”
Emili’s gaze moved slowly to Jonathan. Her look of disgust was so casual, so immediate, that it startled him. After a moment, her glare returned to Tatton, saying nothing. Fiorello had warned her. She must not lose her composure.
“Not one piece of evidence of illegal excavation.” Tatton frowned, his disappointment visibly pretended. “So you crafted a grand theory, didn’t you? A theory that our client somehow obtained a stolen artifact from those who killed your colleague.” He walked back toward his seat. “But there is no conspiracy here. No great alliance of illicit antiquities cartels.”
He leaned over, resting his knuckles on the table. “There was only a decision.” He was silent for a long moment. Jonathan knew he was preparing to deliver his deathblow. “A decision made by you to trespass beneath the Temple Mount, and it cost the life of an innocent shopkeeper and a UN official who was also your friend. And now, in order to forgive yourself, your emotions have created—”
“I am not being emotional, Mr. Tatton,” Emili interrupted calmly. “I have explained the facts as best I can reconstruct them.” Her tone took a sharp edge.
Fiorello raised his hands above his table, signaling her to back down. He sensed her rising frustration. Do not fall into the trap he is setting, his gesture warned.
“You are being emotional,” Tatton replied. “So emotional that you’ve made up a theory that some lost meaning lies beneath this fragment’s surface.” His expression was now deadly serious, watching her suspiciously, “All to vindicate your own emotions!”
“Emotions?” Emili said, simmering. “What I have told you are facts!” But by now, her pitch was too loud for the decorum of the courtroom, proving exactly the point Tatton set out to make from the start. “And no, I have not made up a theory. Someone on my team is dead, and there is nothing theoretical about that!” Her shrill voice echoed against the courtroom’s back wall. The magistrate banged a gavel. Fiorello exhaled audibly at the UN table.
“Decorum, Dottoressa,” the magistrate whispered to her in a gentle rebuke, but understanding the pain that Tatton had managed expertly, with devastating subtlety, to expose.
“No further questions, Magistrato,” Tatton said.
11
Walking deeper beneath the Temple Mount, Salah ad-Din and Cianari stood on the narrow stone aqueduct with the darkness of an abyss on either side. A thin trickle of water moved down the trough.
“An aqueduct,” the professor said, touching the water. “Just as described in biblical texts. An aqueduct used in the daily purification and sacrificial duties carried out by the priests on the altar.”
At the end of the aqueduct bridge, the ground widened to a tunnel lined with ancient columns the size of redwood trees.
“These columns are older than the Second Temple built by Herod,” the professor said. “Look at the Assyrian design and the rough, chipped trowel markings.” The professor turned around, the glint of excited disbelief in his eyes. “They are from the First Temple built by Solomon, dating to the eighth century B.C. Herod must have used these pillars to support the foundation of the Second Temple, which was built overhead.” He knew the find of these columns alone was career-making. There were notoriously few archaeological remains from the Solomonic era, especially after the Israel Museum’s only relic from the First Temple, an ivory pomegranate-shaped top of a scepter, was deemed to have a forged Aramaic inscription. Professor Cianari knew the Waqf had used the lack of evidence to challenge that there even was a biblical temple.
In front of them, huge sections of stone rubble lay on either side of the tunnel, allowing only a small passageway between.
“These stones are from the Assyrian siege of the First Temple in 715 B.C.,” Professor Cianari said, his voice straining as he lifted himself over a large column lying across the corridor. Clumsily, he rolled over the column, dropping the large sketches he carried in his arms. He marveled at the massive stones lining the corridor and tried to match up his surroundings to the hypothetical sketches of what archaeologists suggested lay beneath the Temple Mount. His colleagues still debated whether these secret passages even existed, and here he was walking through them. At a moment like this Cianari remembered why he journeyed to Jerusalem. Without permits or a budget, Salah ad-Din’s secret excavations beneath Rome and Jerusalem allowed the professor to defy the Roman archaeological superintendent’s bureaucracy that had relegated him to a library as if to a prison.
Beyond the stones, the subterranean tunnel came to an abrupt end in a high dirt-packed wall.
Cianari consulted a parchment map and then looked up at the wall. “This tunnel collapsed in the earthquake of 1202, blocking the entrance to the Royal Cavern.”
“The Royal Cavern,” Salah ad-Din said. “You will be the first archaeologist to confirm its existence.”
“The cavern has been forgotten for a thousand years,” the professor said, exhilarated. “Josephus described an enormous subterranean cavern beneath the Temple Mount used as a quarry of limestone to build the entire Temple. It supposedly stretches one thousand feet in diameter.”
Salah ad-Din motioned for Ahmed to move in front of them. With the full swing of a metal pickax, Ahmed stabbed the wall, removing a large divot of dirt. He swung again and more packed dirt crumbled off the wall.
“It could take weeks to excavate through this wall,” Cianari said. “The cavern must be filled with thousands of years of rubble.”
“Again,” Salah ad-Din said.
Ahmed kept swinging at the wall, his arms moving like a flywheel as he hurled one blow after another, making little progress. He stopped only to catch his breath.
“Again!” Salah ad-Din yelled.
The young man swung the pick again and the metal stuck in the wall as if it had penetrated. He struggled to remove the implement, and when he did, the small hole in the wall beamed a bright ray of white light through the tunnel.
“We are one hundred feet underground,” Cianari whispered. “What is that?”
“Again!” Salah ad-Din said.
Ahmed swung the pick at the wall, each stab revealing another fleck of intense brightness, shooting through the tunnel like tiny sunbeams. The professor squinted, moving closer, trying to peer through the holes into the radiance on the other side.
“What in God’s name is behind there?”
12
The hearing adjourned, but Jonathan remained in his seat at the Dulling lawyers’ table. Without so much as a word, Tatton glided out of the courtroom and Mildren dutifully carried his briefcase behind him.
The courtroom emptied and Jonathan sat alone, staring at the witness stand as though, with enough concentration, he could undo what Tatton had just done.
The leather-padded door at the back of the courtroom swung open. Jonathan turned and watched Emili walk toward the front of the courtroom. She passed through the gallery rail in silence and grabbed a folder she had left near the witness stand. She turned around without looking at him and walked back down the courtroom’
s aisle.
“Emili,” Jonathan said.
She stopped and turned around slowly. The expression on her face brought another snapshot of their past back to Jonathan. It was in the Piazza di Spagna seven years ago at semi-dusk, and Emili was sitting for a local sketch artist. She agreed to it only because of the three drinks they had just had during a boring cocktail lecture at the French Academy. The artist, reading glasses on the tip of his nose, was hard at work, his broad strokes grazing the sketchpad. Suddenly big drops of rain began to fall. The artist hurried to collapse his easel and handed them the unfinished drawing, Emili’s face partly drawn as though floating on the sketch paper. The picture captured something hauntingly beautiful in its incompleteness. Her blond hair drawn in gray lines above a small, beautifully arched brow, and light sad eyes hovering in the gray of the sketch. “Oh, I look so sad,” Emili said, laughing in the rain. She called after the artist, a playful tone of challenge. “It looks nothing like me!” she said.
And now years later, almost eerily, her sad gaze captured precisely the expression the artist had drawn.
“I’m sorry,” Jonathan said. “I didn’t know Tatton was going to say any of that.”
She walked toward him, saying nothing. Her lips parted, as though she had begun to speak and decided against it. She glowered at him, and standing close Jonathan remembered her green-gold eyes—the patina of ancient bronze, he always thought. But they were not that color now. Now they had darkened with her mood.
“Sorry?” she said, watching him carefully. “You think I hadn’t heard that you represented the Sicilian antiquities pirate Andre Cavetti? Or how you brilliantly defended a Greek sarcophagus so it could be used as a fountain in some Las Vegas hot spot? You think I didn’t know you became a lawyer defending the people from whom we protected these artifacts? You think I didn’t know you went from gamekeeper to poacher?”
