The Mithras Conspiracy

by M. J. Polelle

“Wait a minute.” Fisher ran his hand over his face. “I saw a mural of Helios or Sol, as the Romans called him, in the mithraeum below the church. The sun god in the mural had a yellow-orange complexion, eyes uplifted to the sky, and rays shooting out from the head.”

  “Just coincidence.”

  “I wish I had the certainty you did.”

  Leone took two Perugina hard-mint candies from his pocket.

  “Why? You academics thrive on uncertainty.”

  He offered one to Fisher.

  Fisher wondered if Leone had detected alcohol on his breath. He plopped the mint into his mouth.

  “By the way,” Fisher said, desperate to turn the conversation away from himself, “have you turned up anything on the San Clemente bombing?”

  “Yesterday my men found an untraceable burner cell phone in a warehouse, not far from San Clemente, where the perpetrators dumped the corpse. In place of the corpse, they substituted explosives in the closed casket before the service began.” The commissario’s face looked puzzled. “On the cell, someone calling himself the Pater Patrum, Father of Fathers in Latin, left a message: ‘Take care the explosion does not damage the mithraeum under the church.’”

  “That phrase referred to the highest post in the Mithraic mystery cult.”

  “Still trying to sell me a Mithras connection?”

  “Look, Commissario, I’m not trying to sell anything.” He pointed to the church behind him. “Two churches, this and San Clemente, both attacked and both built over mithraeums. An anonymous Pater Patrum doesn’t want the mithraeum harmed.” Fisher placed an arm on his hip. “And you’re telling me there’s no connection?”

  “If one swallow doesn’t make a spring, then neither do two.”

  “How about a third swallow?” His friend Jack told him it was time to stand up for himself. The professor ripped off his sunglasses and fixed eyes on the commissario. “The numbers three, six, five on Abramo Basso’s forehead and also in the Ardeatine Caves where they discovered a new mithraeum . . . I figured out the meaning of the numbers.”

  “Don’t stop now.”

  “Those numbers are an ancient code for the name of Mithras. I found the same numbers in the Villa of the Papyri under a mural containing Mithras.”

  “You’re also going to suggest the bull’s blood in the Ardeatine Caves is another connection to the ancient cult of Rome.”

  “What do you think?” The professor smiled. “The facts speak for themselves.”

  “You’re invited to my office.” Leone threw up his hands. “Who knows? Maybe you can convert me . . . but bring more facts.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “I wasn’t hallucinating.” Nicole Garvey clutched the art book to her chest in the battleship-gray office of Commissario Leone. “I saw them enter the sanctuary with masks just like this.” She opened the book and tapped a photograph. The picture depicted Sol the sun god in the mithraeum under Santa Prisca.

  “Professor Fisher influenced you. He showed you this after the gas attack.”

  “I do my own thinking.”

  Her red hair flared like his mother’s had when she was young.

  “What about the power of suggestion in traumatic situations? A crime victim often assumes the perpetrator must be one of the suspects in police mug shots.”

  “I know what I saw.”

  Like Saint Prisca, who would not renounce Christianity, even though reportedly imprisoned, whipped, starved, set afire, doused with boiling fat, set before uninterested lions, and finally beheaded out of exasperation, this woman was stubborn.

  Isn’t that what they said about him behind his back?

  The flashing blinker on his desk phone indicated an incoming call. He picked up the receiver. “Commissario Leone, we found a mask in a dump site . . . just like the one she described, the sun god . . . and two pressurized cylinders disguised as incense burners.” He hung up the phone.

  “If you consider me a hysterical female, let me know.” She rose partway as if to leave her chair. “I’d be happy to go.”

  “Please, Dr. Garvey.” He waved the palms of his hands toward the floor. “Calm yourself. Patience.”

  “I only came because Professor Fisher requested I meet him here.” She sat down. “For the Mithras briefing he set up with you.”

  “You were right, Dr. Garvey. My men found the gas cylinders and one of the masks . . . like you described to Professor Fisher.” Though he disliked being wrong, he liked her spunk even more. “Facts are facts.”

  “Where’s Professor Fisher?”

  “Late.”

  Heedless of past admonitions to knock before entering, Leone’s secretary burst in to report the professor had just arrived. The way Garvey looked at Fisher when the secretary showed him into the office did not escape the commissario’s eyes. Was something going on between them?

  The professor set up the laptop for his PowerPoint presentation on Mithraism. Leone felt an impulse to protect Garvey from Fisher. From what, he did not know. As though she were his daughter. Women with broken wings touched him.

  “The followers of Mithras,” Fisher started, “were organized into small congregations. Equality prevailed inside the mithraeum, whether a slave or senator. Only religious ranking made a difference.”

  “Except for women,” Garvey said. “They shut out women.”

  “Excluding half the population,” Fisher said, “helps explain why Christianity survived and Mithraism did not.”

  He fiddled with his defiant laptop.

  “The similarities to Christianity have intrigued scholars, including Dr. Martin Luther King, who did a theological paper on the similarities. The Mithraists had ritual meals, a form of baptism, seven stages of spiritual growth, ethical principles, and a savior who mediated between divinity and humanity before ascending into the heavens. The belief in the struggle between good and evil no doubt appealed to the many soldiers who joined.”

  “That’s why the good Cardinal Furbone fears the Callinicus letter.” Leone pushed the papers on his desk to one side so the professor would have more room for his laptop. “He’s afraid Mithraism undermines Christian belief.”

  “So did some early Church fathers, like Tertullian and Justin Martyr.” Fisher’s laptop started percolating signs of life. “They felt threatened enough to claim the devil invented similarities so that when Christianity arrived, the faithful would be deceived.”

  “In fairness,” Garvey said, “no one really knows for certain who, if anyone, copied from whom. Every religious movement, whether Buddhism or Christianity, has to speak in the symbolic language of the culture it’s trying to convert.”

  His technological tussles rewarded, Fisher opened the PowerPoint slideshow illustrating the Mithras cult in an order of dramatic perfection he had honed over years of teaching. He skipped over the less relevant slides of how initiates might have marked their foreheads.

  “Behold the seven grades of spiritual development in the cult of Mithras.”

  At his introduction, the laptop blinked and sputtered as though it were about to expire, but then the monitor revived with a healthy glow.

  Corax = Raven

  Nymphus = Bridegroom

  Miles = Soldier

  Leo = Lion

  Perseus = Persian

  Heliodromus = Courier of the Sun

  Pater = Father

  Pater Patrum = “The chief of the fathers, a sort of pope, who always lived in Rome”—Catholic Encyclopedia

  “Seven?” Garvey asked. “Like the seven sacraments you Catholics have?”

  “Some see a connection.” Fisher adjusted the monitor image. “Others say the seven stages correspond to seven heavenly gates souls passed through to reach the highest heaven.”

  “The men who gassed me at Santa Prisca. They could have represented Heliodromus, the courier o
f the sun god.”

  “And don’t forget the shooter on the motorcycle who attacked us at Cindy’s wedding,” Fisher said. “He wore a veil over his face like this.” He clicked his way to slides showing an image of the Nymphus.

  “Some think the Nymphus rank symbolized the love of Mithras, the way a bride loves her husband, or the way Catholic nuns were said to be brides of Christ. Or maybe the veil just means that until the veil of the flesh is lifted, no one can see the truth.”

  “The veil of a bride? Doesn’t make sense to me.” Garvey shook her head. “The Nymphus had to be a male, a bridegroom, not a female. Mithraism was a fraternity, no women allowed.”

  “Good point.” Fisher rubbed his chin with thumb and finger. “That’s why it’s a mystery religion,” he joked. “We have few answers.”

  “And my lion-masked attacker on the road to Amalfi, are you saying—”

  Leone’s secretary interrupted his statement as she doddered into his office again without knocking. Stared at, she justified her intrusion with welcome news. The vet had called. Mondocane only suffered from an ear infection, nothing more serious.

  She atoned for her disruption by volunteering to pick up Mondocane from the vet and reminding the commissario to take his medication before she closed the door on her way out. Leone forgave his office mother, whose good heart compensated for her more than occasional lack of discretion.

  “Are you saying”—Leone downed a hydrocortisone pill with water for his Addison’s—“that the lion mask of my attacker represented the Leo rank on your chart?”

  “Possibly,” Fisher replied. “A twisted version of Mithraic symbolism.”

  “And you’d have me further believe the raven-masked abductors of Don Perugino also flaunted the disguise of Corax, the Raven rank.”

  “Worth considering . . . unless you have a better theory.” Fisher played other slides showing archaeological images of the Raven rank. “This rank probably symbolized the death of an initiate’s prior life. Going back to ancient Persia where some say the cult originated, the custom was to place dead bodies on funeral towers so ravens could eat them and—”

  “Please, Professor Fisher.” The commissario’s face grew pained. “I just had lunch . . . I get the idea.” He checked the time on his cell phone. “Fourteen minutes after two. I must leave in a few minutes.” He slid the current issue of Corriere della Sera across the desk to Garvey and Fisher. “It says here the Egyptian Phoenix plans to protest around the obelisk at the Palazzo Chigi. The prime minister fears they will storm his residence in the palazzo.” He tapped his middle finger on the desk. “Anything else?”

  “One other thing.” Fisher turned off the presentation. “On what day, Commissario, was Father Basso murdered in the Ardeatine Caves mausoleum?”

  “December twenty-fifth, Christmas Day . . . but what does that have to do with anything?”

  “Whose birthday do we celebrate?”

  “Please, Professor Fisher.” Leone folded his hands as though in prayer and moved them up and down. “Just get on with it.”

  “Pardon me, Commissario.” Fisher looked hurt. “I’ll keep it short. The Romans celebrated the birthday of Sol Invictus—the Unconquered Sun—on December twenty-fifth, the same day we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Sunday was also a holy day for both belief systems.”

  “What does this have to do with Mithraism?”

  “Sculptures,” Fisher said, “show Mithras and Sol Invictus dining together on a table draped with bull hide. Over time, Mithras and Sol merged into one deity. The birthday of Sol became that of Mithras as well.”

  “And the first Christians,” Garvey said, “picked December twenty-fifth for the day of Christ’s birth to coincide with the pagan festival.”

  “True.” Fisher put away his laptop. “The pagan intelligentsia of the time had moved toward a belief in one god.”

  “Class is about to end, Professor.” Leone looked at the sky out his window and put on his black leather trench coat. It was time to meet with Shlomo, his unruly informant, working undercover. “I have to leave. What’s your point?”

  “Once Christianity became the state religion, archaeological evidence indicates mithraeums were ransacked and destroyed. The era of live and let live had ended. Christians built churches over mithraeums. The worm turned, and the Church was now on top.”

  “In retaliation,” Garvey said, “the pagan Egyptians of Alexandria hanged the city’s bishop for building a Christian church on top of a mithraeum.”

  “You’re telling me this is historical payback?” The commissario put on a gray fedora. “Give me a break.”

  “Face it. Somebody doesn’t like churches built over mithraeums.” Fisher followed Leone and Garvey out the door. “According to the media, Questore Malatesta thinks the Egyptian Phoenix bombed San Clemente and Santa Prisca.”

  “I disagree,” Leone said. “The Egyptian Phoenix wants the return of the obelisks, not revenge. We interrogated several leaders of the group yesterday. They claimed an imposter tipster framed them.”

  “I think we all agree the Egyptians aren’t involved.” After speaking, Garvey looked at Fisher. He nodded his assent.

  “Good. We agree on something at least.” Leone closed his office door. “But I don’t believe I’ll need to chase more disguised loonies.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Fisher said. “I’d also keep an eye on other churches erected over mithraeums.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Riccardo Renaldi knuckled his eyes and blinked until they adjusted to the glare of the noonday sun. They didn’t have to blindfold him so hard. The Roman Rinata underling in the car acted not as a comrade but as a guard. He didn’t deserve this treatment.

  At the guard’s directive, Renaldi sat at a picnic table outside a farmhouse made of travertine. A tomato patch flourished on one side, and on the other, wild sunflowers had gone to seed.

  Across the table sat Carlos Stroheim, mumbling German through a sanitary mask to an old man picking at his thumb. The old man wheezed, resting one liver-spotted hand on the table and the other on a walker.

  Without revealing the stranger’s name, Stroheim introduced him as originally from the South Tyrol region and a dear friend of the Pater Patrum. The dear friend recuperated as a houseguest after a bout of pneumonia.

  “Use the Italian name,” Renaldi said. “The Alto Adige belongs to Italy now.”

  The mystery man’s accented Italian confirmed he came not only from the region bordering Switzerland and Austria, but was an ethnic German with one foot in the grave.

  After the nameless introduction, the prefect resumed his conversation with the old man. They purposely cut Renaldi out of the conversation by speaking a language sounding to his ears like barking dogs.

  Returning the disrespect instead of acquiescing to it, he poured himself a tumbler of red wine from the carafe on the table and helped himself to the last piece of cheese without their permission. They took him for granted despite all he had done. He poured more wine and yet more. Locked up in their babble, they paid him no attention. The old man laughed so hard at what Stroheim said that he fell into a coughing fit. They had to be talking about him, probably even mocking his height.

  He had made an appointment to speak with the Pater Patrum personally. Who was this potato eater cutting into his appointed time? The Chinese had wiped out his father’s shoemaking business with their cutthroat competition. He’d had it up to here with these foreigners.

  “Tell me this guy’s name.” Renaldi banged the empty tumbler on the table. “And speak Italian.”

  “Otto. And he prefers German.” Stroheim scrubbed his cracked, sore, red hands with antiseptic.

  “Screw him. He’s supposed to be Italian.” He reached for the carafe, but it was empty. “What’s his family name? You gave him my full name.”

  “It’s not important.
”

  “It is to me.” Renaldi stood up. “I’m important.” He collapsed back down.

  “Of course you are,” Stroheim said, moving the wine carafe back to his side of the table. “Yesterday the Pater Patrum said your initiation was just around the corner.”

  “Really?” A tight smile flickered on Renaldi’s face.

  Maybe he would be somebody after all.

  “Really. He has great things in store for you.”

  “Then I deserve to report directly to the Pater Patrum . . . without going through you or Lucio Piso.”

  “I promise to look into it.”

  “Let’s shake on it.” Renaldi held out his hand.

  “Sorry.” Stroheim shrank away. “Germs. I have enough concerns with Otto.”

  “Give me the exact date of my initiation.”

  “Not now. I have to take care of Otto. I promise I’ll—”

  “I demand to see the Pater Patrum now.”

  “Something’s come up. You have to wait.”

  “I want to know his identity.”

  “What you’re asking compromises operations.”

  “You know his identity.”

  “I’m in the inner circle.” Stroheim stood up. “Let’s talk later when the wine’s not talking.”

  “Don’t patronize me.” Renaldi grabbed for the prefect’s throat across the table. His arms wouldn’t reach.

  They’re laughing at me.

  “I’ll see the Pater Patrum on my own. I’ll show you.” Renaldi tore across the yard toward the front door of the farmhouse into the open arms of two guards.

  When he awoke, bouncing along blindfolded with a headache and a bump on his head, he had no idea where the car was taking him. After some time, the driver stopped the vehicle. His Roma Rinata handlers removed his blindfold and dumped him in front of his apartment building in Rome before driving off. Lying abandoned in the gutter, he vowed revenge.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  At 3:30 a.m. on Good Friday morning, not far from the Corso Italia in the town of Sorrento, Cardinal Gustavo Furbone, the local boy made good, sat alone on a purple-cushioned cathedral chair. Fighting sleep, he waited by the curb in the reserved area cordoned off with velvet ropes and stanchions from the press of common people. Chopin’s Funeral March op. 35, rose dirgelike in the distance as the White Procession began its journey on its way past the area reserved for dignitaries. Nodding off and then snorting himself awake, the cardinal heard the slow and steady beat of the lugubrious rhythm come closer. They would meet soon.