The Mithras Conspiracy

by M. J. Polelle

  Brandishing torches, the devotees in white-hooded robes with eye slits turned the corner at the far end of the street and stepped like zombies toward him in slow-motion cadence.

  “What’s this?” asked a pink-haired punk teen in a USA tank top up against the velvet ropes of the reserved area. “The Ku Klux Klan?”

  The ring in her navel was too much for the cardinal. “Be quiet,” he ordered. “Have you no shame?”

  The procession leader carried a wooden cross over his shoulder past the reserved area. He stopped to welcome the town’s guest of honor in a voice muffled by his hooded face. It had taken far longer than he deserved, but at last the town recognized the cardinal’s importance, even if only the trivial title of honorary chairperson for Holy Week activities.

  The procession leader was not the one he had come to meet. They had been young men when they left Sorrento to make their fortunes. What did he look like now? He was somewhere in the long procession.

  Down the street came a marcher with the hammer and nails commemorating the Crucifixion. He walked past the cardinal. Then came another with the water bowl and towel recalling the washing of hands by Pontius Pilate. Neither was the awaited one.

  Had he taken fright and not come as agreed?

  The next bearer of a Passion symbol had the appearance of a diminutive ghost swathed in a white-hooded robe with eye slits. Could it be? This bantam ghost jangled a sack representing the thirty pieces of silver paid to Judas for his betrayal. The Jesus betrayer incognito walked over to the reserved area. Beating his chest with his fist in simulated atonement, the Judas figure fell to his knees before the cardinal’s chair for a blessing.

  That action signaled he had arrived.

  “Why, Riccardo, did you insist on meeting at this ungodly hour?” The cardinal lowered his head and voice. “Still playing games of cloak-and-dagger, just like when we were boys in Sorrento.”

  “I fear for my life.” Riccardo Renaldi looked up and down the street. “If Piso finds out.”

  “Come, come. He’s simply a wealthy bureaucrat now. Not an executioner.”

  “That’s what you think. He represents forces.”

  The cardinal sighed. “Let’s get to the point.” He leaned forward in his cathedral chair over Renaldi’s bowed head as though hearing a confession. “I agree to retain you on your terms. Can you do your part of reporting what they find under the trapdoor?”

  “Don’t underestimate me like the others.” The hooded face looked into the cardinal’s. “I have my sources. If you want, I can steal or destroy scrolls they find.”

  “Steal? Destroy?” The cardinal made the sign of the cross over Renaldi’s head. “I’m simply protecting Holy Mother Church from further scandal. The dangerous text of the Callinicus letter already circulates among the public.”

  “What lives by history dies by history.”

  “Spare me your epigrams.” The cardinal placed his hand on Renaldi’s head in the guise of a blessing. “Now go.”

  “What about the original of the Callinicus letter?”

  “Let’s wait until Piso gives it back to Fisher for storage in the Naples museum.”

  “Why? You think I can’t outwit Piso?”

  “The charred scrolls are already at the Naples museum. Once the Callinicus scroll arrives, we can take care of them all together.” The cardinal lowered his voice. “Certain arrangements have been made.”

  “Don’t question my abilities again.” Renaldi rose to his feet. “That person you hired to retrieve the Festus document botched the job. I wouldn’t have failed you. Who was it?”

  “Lucio Piso.”

  “Piso?” The Judas figure laughed, causing spectators to eye him with disapproval. “That cunning bastard.” He brought his laughter under control. “My eyes are open now.”

  “Watch your tongue,” the cardinal ordered. “This is Good Friday morning.” He flipped his hand toward the procession. “Now get back at once before suspicion arises.”

  Renaldi rejoined the procession winding down the street just as a statue of the sorrowful Madonna standing on a flower-bedecked litter hoisted on the shoulders of four hooded acolytes lurched around the corner up the street in search of her son. Transfixed by her gaze, the cardinal covered his eyes with his hands and pulled his earlobe.

  Through the mist of incense, his own mother’s coal-black eyes pierced him. Those eyes. She was coming for him.

  In another bout of deranged fury, his mother staggered toward him with her fists. The yet-to-be cardinal pleaded and put up a child’s arms in defense, but her face remained impenetrably depressed with lifeless black eyes. She pulled his ears and bashed him unconscious for being the seed of the monster male who had deserted her while pregnant.

  The Madonna passed him by.

  He needed more than sleep. He need to get a grip before things fell apart.

  Chapter Forty

  Above Cardinal Gustavo Furbone’s desk hung a painting of Jesus directing his disciples to let the little children come unto him. As though rendered speechless by a stroke, the cardinal looked pained.

  Before the cardinal’s stare, Lucio Piso squirmed in his seat. Did the summons to appear mean Furbone now recognized the man whose boyhood he had stolen? Uneasy with the silence, Piso pointed to the painting. “Yours?”

  “Just an inferior piece of art I inherited with the office.”

  “If memory serves . . . it’s better for a person to drown with a millstone around the neck than to corrupt a child.”

  “Matthew eighteen, verse six. My sentiments exactly.”

  “I am so glad we both agree, Your Eminence.”

  Leaning forward in his chair, the cardinal squeezed lemon juice into his tea.

  Piso still felt the squeeze of the hand on his buttocks as though it were happening now. Over fifty years ago he had watched this degenerate take to his afternoon habit of tea drinking right after sexually abusing little boy Lucio. His hands yearned to squeeze the cardinal’s neck. It is a mortal sin to disobey me, the degenerate had said, puffed up with the overpowering authority of his priestly office.

  “Wouldn’t you like some tea?” The cardinal reached for the teapot.

  “Forgive me, Your Eminence. What did you say?”

  “Tea?”

  “No, thank you.” His mouth ran dry, and his voice grew hoarse. “It upsets my stomach.”

  “I know you . . .”

  He recognizes me. He is on guard. My plan is undone.

  “. . . think my assignment to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is permanent. Not so.” The cardinal sipped his tea. “I have higher aspirations.”

  “Of course.” Fortune had not deserted him after all. “I should think pope someday.”

  “You recognize my ability already, do you?”

  “I can think of no one more suited.”

  “God bless you, my son.” The cardinal put down his cup. “I called you here to discuss . . . a private matter.”

  The Fates had lifted him up only to dash him down into despair.

  “Please do not take offense, Signor Piso.” The cardinal dabbed his lips with a linen napkin. “I appreciate what you have done . . . but I no longer wish to retain you to recover the Festus letter.”

  The superintendent of excavations shivered in the exaltation of his deliverance. The ancestral genius within him had saved the day. Like a great general way up on a hill where no enemy could touch him, he foresaw victory in the fog-receding future.

  “I fully understand. My best efforts have been unavailing.”

  “You’re not offended?” The cardinal dabbed his forehead with the napkin. “I worried you would be. I prefer to remain friends.”

  “Offended? Not at all. You have relieved me of a great burden.”

  “As a token of friendship, you may keep the retainer.”r />
  “And the Mithras statue with the cross in the forehead? I must have it.”

  “With pleasure. Good riddance to the devil’s delusion.”

  While the cardinal called to postpone a tailor’s visit to measure his own girth for vestments, Piso checked a text message from Commissario Marco Leone of the Polizia di Stato in Rome. When he arrived at the Villa of the Papyri, the commissario wanted the superintendent of Herculaneum excavations to make Riccardo Renaldi available for questioning about the missing Festus letter.

  What to be done with Renaldi now a thorn in his side?

  The cardinal hung up the phone.

  “I am concerned about your involvement in something else.”

  “Oh?” Was he but a plaything of the gods?

  “My source says your archaeologists have discovered a trapdoor in the Villa of the Papyri.”

  “Your source?”

  “And they think more scrolls lie beneath.”

  “Who?”

  “You must revoke permission for their entry into the villa.”

  “I must?” The insolence. “They already entered this morning.”

  “Then have someone watch them. Take what they find and alert me.”

  “Who might that be, pray tell? Riccardo Renaldi perhaps.”

  “Please.” The cardinal tugged at his ear. “I ask a favor, as one friend to another.”

  “I must know the source’s identity.”

  “I shouldn’t tell you.”

  “No, you should not.” Piso put his hands on the cardinal’s desk. “If you want it to get out about your orgy in—”

  “How did—” Furbone staggered to his feet. “Did you know?”

  “I make it my business to know.”

  “It is Renaldi.”

  “Rest easy now, my good cardinal. I see no need to spread gossip about you.”

  “You won’t hold it against him, will you?”

  “Of course not. He is my security chief. How could I be secure without him?” Piso made an exaggerated sign of the cross. “We are on the same side. That of Mother Church.”

  “God loves a forgiving heart, my son.” The cardinal splayed his hands across the bulge of his belly and sighed. “One minor point. I understand you will store the original of the Callinicus scroll in the Naples Archaeological Museum.”

  “Renaldi again?”

  The cardinal nodded.

  “My devoted Renaldi is correct. I deliver it this week to be kept with the charred scrolls found in the Latin library.” The cardinal wanted something. “What would you have me do?”

  “Nothing at all.” The cardinal’s face turned serious. He placed his hands on the desk and leaned in toward Piso. “I approve of keeping them all in one place . . . including any new finds.”

  “What a good memory my security chief has.” Piso stroked his chin. “Are you sure you don’t want me to do something for you . . . as one friend to another?”

  “Just curious.” The cardinal tugged his ear. “But . . . as one friend to another . . . I was disappointed your office released the Callinicus translation before consulting me.” He stood up from his desk. “It will disturb the faithful.”

  “Have faith, Your Eminence. It’s only an unofficial translation of an unauthenticated scroll.” Piso followed the cardinal’s lead in standing up as the meeting drew to an end. “Would you like a Vatican expert to verify the translation?”

  “That would be premature.”

  “Why?” What was the whited sepulcher up to?

  “Things happen.” The cardinal smiled. “Your audience is over.”

  The cardinal held out his ringed finger to end further discussion.

  The inner Pater Patrum watched Lucio, the puppet boy, kiss the ring.

  After leaving the office, Piso vomited in the nearest toilet.

  Chapter Forty-One

  A gray-ponytailed classics expert in a rumpled suit pored over the text of the Callinicus letter for the last time in a seedy suburb outside Naples with the shades down. A victim of incipient dementia aggravated by accumulated grievances, the ex-professor had committed the indiscretion of assaulting his university dean during a faculty meeting.

  Forced into retirement, he shook his head free of the academic nightmare. His work this evening required complete attention to detail. Writing lewd Latin phrases for greeting cards would not keep his stomach satisfied if he failed to please his anonymous client operating through a straw man.

  If he got this right, he would have enough money to sue the university and then some left over for a vacation in Greece. How those arrogant assholes at the university would envy his access to an original scroll . . . if they only knew. When he thought it safe, he might even break the secrecy pledge to his anonymous client. The world should know of the Callinicus letter and his linguistic prowess.

  He closed his eyes and took three yoga breaths to steady his head and hand. The ex-professor absorbed every squiggle of the Callinicus lettering as though it were a familiar musical score running through his head. He could even see the writing style of Callinicus in his sleep. He prepared to forge the handwriting of the long-dead Roman.

  He first examined the Latin translation of the Italian text he had been given and then the clean sheet of papyrus. Who were these guys? What they said was counterfeit papyrus looked like the real thing.

  A maestro of dead languages, he picked up the reed pen like a conductor’s baton before transcribing his Latin translation onto the papyrus. Under bright light, he hunched over and scratched the first of many Latin letters in impeccable homage to Roman calligraphy of the first century AD.

  Near midnight, he yawned and stretched. He put on a torn overcoat and headed into the night with his Latin masterpiece. At the meeting place, he handed it over and received in payment strangulation by garrote.

  The hit man answered his cell. “Do you have it?” he heard.

  “I do, Pater Patrum.”

  “Enter unseen at night into the villa.”

  “Should I tell Renaldi?”

  “Not a word to him. Only you and I must know.”

  After the police found the hit man dead, only the Pater Patrum knew.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Nicole Garvey’s day looked promising. Lucio Piso had kept his promise to return the original of the Callinicus letter to the National Archaeological Museum in Naples for safe-keeping and further work along with the carbonized scrolls. The Vesuvius Observatory had downgraded the earthquake alarm to a cautionary level. As if in confirmation, the sun emerged behind white clouds against a pale blue sky. The wind shrank to a warm breeze on her face. The guard dogs drowsed unperturbed near the entrance. And, best of all, Lucio Piso had given Will and her permission to explore under the trapdoor of the scriptorium without the presence of Riccardo Renaldi. All that nagged in the back of her mind was the public statement of a Neapolitan volcanologist who claimed his controversial radon-gas detector indicated elevated danger remained.

  “Do you think they’ll sue him?” she asked Will.

  “The local prosecutor says he’ll investigate the volcanologist for unnecessarily arousing public alarm.” Will checked over his gear. “The National Institute of Geophysics says the radon-detector gizmo is unreliable.”

  “Maybe the whole country’s about to blow.” She showed Will a newspaper. “Even Rome has temblor problems again.”

  “Just coincidence.” Will held her arm. “Look, Nicole . . . We don’t have to descend today.”

  “And not explore what’s under the trapdoor? Not on your life.” She retied a bootlace. “We’ll finish up in no time and get out even if Vesuvius blows.”

  She tried forgetting that the Romans in AD 79 thought the same way.

  “My thoughts exactly.” Fisher picked up the front end of the collapsible extension ladder. “We should
go before Piso changes his mind.”

  She held up the rear of the ladder while Fisher held the front and led the way to the shaft in the villa. Before starting their descent into the underworld, she stuck out her tongue at the security camera Renaldi had installed at the entrance to the shaft. To her delight, Wesley Bemis was out of the way at the museum in Naples, where he worked with his fancy technology on the treasure trove of burnt scrolls they had found in the Latin library. “What happens when the security camera tips off Renaldi we weren’t with Bemis in Naples?”

  “Not to fear.” Fisher motioned for her to crouch as they angled the ladder through the tunnel. “Piso stood up for us against Renaldi. The security chief is on thin ice with his boss.”

  Something about Piso didn’t inspire the same trust in her. Smitten with the wacky notion he was related to the ancient Piso clan, the superintendent wanted the villa explored as badly as they did. Yet, his way of referring to the villa as “my villa” in the literal sense creeped her out. She had met his type before. He manipulated people like arm’s-length pawns in some private game to which he alone knew the rules.

  They passed through the Latin library with the mural of Mithras and his controversial companion into the scriptorium where Fisher had discovered the intertwined names of Mithras and Christ.

  They walked over to the trapdoor of the scriptorium and pulled it open. She poked her flashlight into the abyss. The rotted-out form of what once was a ladder lay on the dark floor below. They lowered the extension ladder through the opening until it steadied itself on the floor.