The Mithras Conspiracy

by M. J. Polelle

  What’s going on?

  He opened the door to an inferno rushing in.

  ***

  “Tickets, please.” Doing a random check, the conductor barged through the front door of the car. The commissario felt the pistol withdraw from the back of his neck. The train slowed, rocking side to side like an oversized cradle, as they approached the Naples Stazione Centrale. The conductor gave the tickets a distant once-over and hightailed to the front of the train as quickly as he came.

  Now or never.

  Leone lunged through the glass sliding door left swinging open by the conductor and slammed it shut in Renaldi’s face. Nestling the scroll box under his left arm, he barricaded the door with his body and held the door handle closed with his right hand. His hand blanched, aching with the pressure. He yelled for help. Without looking back, the conductor passed through the forward cars toward the front. The only other passenger in the car was a beggar boy standing with an accordion behind Leone.

  The train eased into the Naples central station. While his ex-colleague struggled to fling it open, Leone battled to keep the glass door closed. Staring into Renaldi’s hate-filled eyes, Leone felt the deft fingers of the boy trying to filch his billfold.

  The little bastard.

  Renaldi caught the commissario off guard and ripped open the door. Almost falling, Leone grabbed the neck of the beggar boy with one hand and spun him into Renaldi. The accordion crashed to the floor in an explosion of cacophonous chords. Thrown back against the door, Renaldi recovered and stepped forward. He drew a Baikal pistol fitted with a silencer and pointed it at Leone.

  Gliding through the open door like an apparition, King Shahryar halted behind Renaldi.

  “Give me the box.” Renaldi gestured with his fingers. “Or you’re dead.”

  The king drew his sword from his sheath.

  “Drop the gun,” Leone said, staring at the apparition, “or you’ll be the dead one.”

  “You fool. What do you—”

  The king plunged the sword into Renaldi’s back. The train came to a full stop. Renaldi slumped to the floor. The exit doors whooshed open onto the passenger platform of the Stazione Centrale.

  “Who are you?” Leone asked.

  “Take the scroll box and go,” the Persian king said, jumping out the open door and boarding a baggage trailer lying in wait. The driver threw a blanket over the king and beeped the trailer out of sight through a horde of passengers scampering away.

  Leone hurried out of the station and caught a taxi to the Gabinetto Segreto.

  ***

  His head full of questions and no answers, Leone saw black smoke billowing from the National Archaeological Museum as the taxi pulled up. A fire truck pumped an arc of water into the building. He elbowed through the crowd of gawkers to the entrance, where paramedics wheeled Wesley Bemis out on a stretcher bed. Burns scorched his face almost beyond recognition.

  Leone’s friend, the inspector on the Naples police force, stood in conversation with the museum director. The inspector broke off his conversation to greet Leone. “So, you’re back in Naples. A bachelor like you can’t stay away from my wife’s cooking, can you?” He hugged Leone.

  From him, Leone learned the museum had stored a collection of painting supplies near the Gabinetto Segreto. The Naples police found the suspected arsonist burned to death, apparently trapped by the inferno. A sniffer dog picked up traces of kerosene, the probable accelerant, leading from the suspect’s vehicle up through the museum to the Gabinetto Segreto. The police believed they recovered the kerosene can used in the arson. The dead body still clutched the container. Examination revealed a pinhole puncture in the bottom of the can. That defect had led the sniffer dog from the vehicle to the arson site inside the museum.

  “Who did it?” Leone asked.

  “We’re still checking out the dental work.” The inspector raised the visor of his hat with a forefinger. “We found a phone number in his charred wallet. It’s for Cardinal Furbone’s office. Know him?”

  “All too well.”

  “Now, about your . . . incident . . . on the train. We have some talking to do.”

  “You heard already?”

  “My investigators are at the station.” The friend shook his head. “Doesn’t look good for you.”

  “I can explain.”

  “Really?” The inspector rolled his eyes. “‘Oh, a Persian king just came by and saved me.’ Sure. Before you explain,” the inspector’s face turned serious. “Renaldi arrived at the hospital . . . dead.”

  “And you suspect me of killing him? I know leaving the scene doesn’t look good.” Leone reached for a nonexistent smoke in his shirt pocket. “Could you give me a cigarette?”

  “Gave it up on doctor’s orders.” The inspector smirked. “Relax, the beggar boy and several other witnesses cleared you. We also found Renaldi’s pistol. The crazy pants leaping out of the train and running away is our suspected killer.” He nudged Leone’s shoulder. “I was just playing you.”

  “You rotten prankster.” Leone nudged back with a grin.

  He was free. Now that the Gabinetto Segreto had gone up in flames, he had to find another place to hide the Americans until they could decipher the Unity Report, away from danger.

  “What’s inside?” The inspector pointed to the container. “Something valuable enough for Renaldi to kill?”

  Aside from probable theft of the Festus parchment, Leone explained how his ex-colleague had tried to take control of the discoveries in the Villa of the Papyri and almost killed him for the Unity Report. Renaldi had to be working on behalf of someone willing to pay big money for ancient documents.

  “Too bad,” the inspector said, “about the original of the Callinicus papyrus.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was inside the Gabinetto Segreto with the carbonized scrolls.” The officer looked at the museum director. “He says they all went up in smoke.”

  “Too bad Lucio Piso kept his promise to return the Callinicus papyrus to the museum.” Leone grimaced with the determination nothing would happen to the Unity Report. “That’s why I need to get this new scroll to the Americans, so they can translate it in safety. Before someone tries to take it.” Leone scanned the crowd for likely thieves. “Don’t take it from me. You don’t need—”

  “Don’t worry.” His officer friend held up a hand. “I’m only an agent on the Naples force, and you’re a big-shot commissario from Rome. Besides, I don’t need the red tape involved with a cultural artifact. Just take care of it.”

  “No problem.” He patted the scroll box under his arm. “Like my own baby.”

  “All I need to do is one thing.” The inspector sighed. “Find the loony masquerading as a Persian king, take his statement, and give him a medal for saving your life.”

  “That should be easy.” The commissario pulled a playbill from his pocket. “He gave me this. He’s the star in the play.”

  “Unfortunately, my Roman Sherlock Holmes, there’s no such theater in Naples.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Back in Rome, Marco Leone entered the questura with a spring in his step. “Not bad,” he answered a colleague concerned about his health.

  “Not bad?” The colleague raised an eyebrow. “For you that’s like being on top of the world.”

  “Hush.” Leone put a finger to his lips. “The Fates will hear you.”

  “Lucky for you the actor happened on the scene.”

  Leone kept his thoughts to himself. The person costumed as a Persian king didn’t just happen to be at the right place at the right time. That person ordered him to take the scroll from the train and go. He’d known about the scroll box. The Persian king saved him from being killed, but the lion-masked assassin in Amalfi and the raven assistants tried to kill him. Did two rival bands of costumed terrorists exist? Would he e
ver get to the bottom of things?

  Only in a nightmare did he get to the bottom of something. He was trying to find the depth of a chasm splitting the earth open. As he reached the edge of the abyss, he tumbled in backward with winged demons in raven masks swirling down after him. When he twisted forward in midair to learn what lay at the bottom, he stared into the eyeless sockets of Don Perugino’s corpse welcoming him to the underworld with outstretched arms.

  Why hasn’t Shlomo reported in? Without more information from him, the investigation would stall. He hadn’t made contact in weeks. If he had a new money source, probably petty thievery, that might explain the lack of contact. Rumor had it he now scammed tourists outside the Colosseum. The slacker informant needed screws applied to spur motivation.

  “The Waltz of the Toreadors” interrupted his thoughts.

  Moving past ringing telephones and document-stuffed cabinets, Leone ducked into an alcove to answer his cell.

  “The Americans have arrived,” said the manager of the Castello of Julius II in Ostia. “I’ve now paid back the favor, Commissario. Right?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ve got my job to think about. If the boss finds out . . .”

  “Don’t worry. The castle is closed to the public for repairs.”

  “Who are these Smiths, Jack and Jill, anyway?”

  “I told you. They’re honeymooners.”

  “Give me a break. They’re like two cold pieces of codfish.”

  “They’re not Latin lovers. So what?”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “Who cares what you . . . All right. I’ll tell you . . . but keep it a secret.”

  “On my mother’s grave.”

  Considering it indiscreet to point out his mother was still alive, Leone played upon the manager’s love of spy novels. “They’re CIA agents using the honeymoon as a cover.” His imagination spun into overdrive. “They need a safe house for a few days to analyze documents from Russian governmental archives. Very hush-hush.” Now for the finishing touch. “An official commendation awaits you if you do your patriotic duty.”

  “Thanks for including me in the operation.” The voice swelled with pride. “You can count on me to keep mum.”

  ***

  Marco Leone snagged a copy of Il Messaggero from his secretary’s outstretched hand, in keeping with their morning ritual, on the way to his office. “It’s a Brioschi day,” she spoke to his back. The code phrase meant the day’s news would upset him.

  Slamming the office door shut, he collapsed into his chair and saw it smack on the first page—the lurid tale of a suspended police inspector, Riccardo Renaldi, killed in Naples while trying to murder Marco Leone, a police commissario.

  The intercom buzzed.

  “Commissario—”

  “What now?”

  “Questore Malatesta on line one. And turn on the RAI News channel.”

  “Hello?” He pretended he didn’t know who was calling. “Who is this?”

  “It’s me, Questore Malatesta. I want to make it like it never happened.”

  As the TV screen showed the bloodstains in the Circumvesuviana car where Renaldi died, the unctuous voice-over lamented the “fratricidal frenzy” that had seized the “trouble-plagued” Polizia di Stato in Rome.

  Distracted by the TV, Leone asked, “Like what never happened?”

  “What Renaldi tried to do to you.”

  “Never happened? Your godson almost murdered me.”

  The TV faded to a reporter at the scene in the middle of an interview with the beggar boy who saw a “circus clown” save Commissario Leone.

  “You misunderstand. I mean my taking you off the terrorist attacks on the churches.” A pause on the line. “You’re back on the case. No hard feelings?”

  The TV faded to the RAI News anchorman. With ominous music in the background, the TV celebrity thundered about the need to investigate Questore Pietro Malatesta for hiring his godson. Even Italian nepotism had limits.

  “What about the Chicago sabbatical I was promised?”

  “Restored. No problem.”

  “Another thing.” He had him where he wanted him. “I want additional time in Chicago.”

  “OK, OK. Just get to the bottom of the terrorism and the Basso murder. Don’t forget to look into the Egyptian Phoenix . . . And Marco . . . another thing.”

  “What?”

  “If I go down, your trip to Chicago goes down with me. Ciao.”

  ***

  It was going to be one of those days. The commissario’s stomach churned. He gulped a Brioschi with water before concentrating on Il Messaggero’s lead story. The carabinieri had swooped down on a controversial Baptist soup kitchen operated by an American named Jesse Soames to arrest a war criminal named Otto Fischer hiding out “under the noses of the Polizia di Stato.”

  Another black eye for the department.

  He popped a second Brioschi. To make matters worse, the carabinieri had failed to even notify the Polizia di Stato of the raid. It was too much to expect they would invite their comrades in law enforcement to share the honors of arrest. A photo of a decrepit Otto Fischer contrasted with another showing a younger and smugger version in full Nazi regalia. At least the lead story had pushed the department’s public relations fiasco in Naples off the front page of Il Messaggero.

  “Commissario—”

  The intercom again.

  “Who is it this time? The pope?”

  “Close. Your carabinieri friend from the Tiber beat is here.”

  “Let him cool his heels for twenty minutes.”

  After twenty minutes, his secretary brought in the police officer from the carabinieri without knocking. Will she ever remember to knock?

  “You’ve got a nerve coming here after failing to notify us about the Nazi bust.”

  “This is my thanks for giving you the Basso murder case?” His visitor made a tsk sound with tongue and teeth. “Our interagency agreement only requires joint interrogation of persons who may be of mutual interest. Not prior notification.”

  “Then why are you here? Just to rub it in?”

  “We’re interrogating a witness—Jesse Soames. I came with a personal invitation.”

  “Why should his interrogation interest me?”

  “Believe me. It will.”

  “When?”

  “In forty-five minutes.”

  “So soon? You should have told me earlier.”

  “The interagency agreement—”

  “Doesn’t specify a time. I know.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Where?”

  “Our interrogation room.”

  “Why not ours?”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Arriving late, Leone sat behind a table next to the special deputy interrogator of the carabinieri. Before them, Jesse Soames sat in a stainless steel chair bolted to the floor at the edge of a circle of illumination cast from a table lamp.

  Outside the circle sat a row of carabinieri cadets along the wall framed in shadow, like the black border of a condolence card. Although Leone found the newer generation of carabinieri well educated and skilled, the special deputy represented an older generation too often undereducated and underskilled.

  What other carabinieri interrogator would have the audacity to take a statement in dress parade regalia? He wore it all, the two-cornered lucerna hat with red plume, the silver epaulet on his right shoulder, the white strap across his chest, and even the operatic cape of midnight blue. The special deputy’s boast that this exercise in vanity intimidated subjects into confessing dumbfounded even his carabinieri colleagues.

  “Who is this man?” Soames scrutinized Leone.

  “I am Commissioner Marco Leone of the Rome police.”

  “What i
s your relationship to Lucio Piso?” the special deputy asked Soames.

  “My employer.” Soames swallowed hard. “He’s not a friend.”

  “Are you the father of Nicole Garvey?” Leone asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Enough.” The special deputy fumbled through papers on the table. “Need I remind you, Commissario Leone,” he said, waving a sheet from the pile, “that our interagency agreement here stipulates you do not ask questions?”

  “No need.” Leone shrugged. “You just did.”

  “Your grandfather—” Sentence unfinished, the special deputy reached down to pull out a folder from the briefcase at his feet. “Your grandfather, Colonel Soames, was an American OSS agent operating behind German lines in Rome, correct?”

  “Yes he was, but what does that—”

  “At war’s end he took a special interest in the young Lucio Piso.” The interrogator waved a paper at the witness. “He used his OSS influence to place Lucio in an orphanage operated by Monsignor Gustavo Furbone, now a cardinal, did he not?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Isn’t it true you attended a birthday party for Superintendent Piso in Buenos Aires at his expense?”

  How would they know? Leone wondered.

  Soames’s eyebrows tightened. “He was my employer after all.”

  Unlike the Polizia di Stato, the carabinieri had deep intelligence sources Leone could only dream of because the carabinieri were part of the military. That competitive advantage grated on him.

  “You say he is not a friend. Yet the record shows a history of family friendship.” The special deputy started to rise but sat down again. “Why do you accuse Superintendent Piso of hiding a war criminal called Otto Fischer?”

  “Because it’s true. He hid Otto Fischer at my mission in Rome without my consent.” Soames’s shout resumed its whisper-like quality. “I thought we were friends. Not anymore.”

  “Lucio Piso denies knowing anything about Fischer’s past.”

  “He lies. He tried to stop me from turning Fischer in.”

  “Didn’t you conceal the truth about your service in Vietnam?”