The Mithras Conspiracy

by M. J. Polelle

  He would flimflam them. After all, he was the king of cons.

  The new inspector promised that Commissario Leone would ride to the rescue and arrest them. The commissario would put him in a witness protection program with a new identity and financial support. He could start a new life far from Rome.

  Shlomo cried out with feigned joy.

  “You are now baptized a son of Mithras.”

  It was the voice of the Pater Patrum.

  Hands removed his blindfold and lifted him up.

  Through a curtain of incense smoking up from braziers appeared the Pater Patrum clasping a ruby-encrusted crosier, his identity hidden under the bone-white mask of Mithras.

  To the Pater Patrum’s right sat a figure in a saffron robe shot through with orange stripes. Gold powder caking his face, he wore fire-red eyewear. This had to be the Heliodromus, the courier of the sun in Mithraic lore. The Pater Patrum tapped the crosier three times on the floor.

  With this signal, Shlomo strutted up and down the cave with arms flapping and throat croaking to the beat of the Lions clapping hands in unison from the benches. He felt like a fool hazed into a secret fraternity of the demented.

  The nave ran only about twelve meters long, and the ceiling no more than four and a half meters high. Shlomo thought that the mithraeum of the Circus Maximus should be more impressive. The Pater Patrum and Heliodromus beckoned him forward into the mithraeum sanctuary studded with pumice and seashells.

  Wasn’t the mithraeum of the Circus Maximus supposed to have been covered with white marble? When will the commissario come? The sheriff always arrived on time in the American Westerns he loved. He fell on his knees before the Pater Patrum and Heliodromus.

  “Nama . . . Nama . . . Sebesio,” chanted the Pater Patrum, its meaning tongue-tied by time.

  In accordance with updated ritual, two Ravens pecked at his bare back with the beaks on their masks.

  “Father of all the Fathers,” Shlomo said. “This isn’t the mithraeum under the Circus Maximus, is it?”

  “I changed my mind.” The Pater Patrum rested his hand on Shlomo’s head. “You deserve the special honor of initiation in this mithraeum under the Palazzo Barberini.”

  “But it’s supposed to be closed.”

  “Nothing is closed to the Pater Patrum.”

  “I am honored.”

  Leone was going to raid the wrong mithraeum.

  “But I am not worthy of this honor.”

  Shlomo beat his chest with his fist for submissive effect. Calm yourself. You’re the master of getting out of tight spots. You’ll figure it out.

  “You are more worthy of this,” the Heliodromus said, “than you know.”

  “We should postpone my initiation.” Shlomo raised his bowed head. “The attack on the Vatican obelisk has Rome crawling with police.”

  The Pater Patrum pushed his crosier into Shlomo’s chest, pushing him back.

  “Do you question me?”

  The pecking on his back began to hurt.

  “Forgive my careless speech.” In a yoga child’s pose, Shlomo prostrated himself at the feet of the Pater Patrum. He had to regain favor. “I am only concerned for your precious life. Without you we are lost sheep.”

  “We do not forgive.” The Pater Patrum tapped Shlomo’s head with the crosier. “Back on your knees.” Shlomo kissed the red slippers of the Pater Patrum before raising himself to his knees.

  The Heliodromus intoned, “O neophyte, in the time of ancient Persia, ravens feasted on the dead strung up on funeral towers, and thus thou art dead to thy former life and reborn into the eternal life of Lord Mithras.” He took the Raven mask from a silver tray offered by a Lion and placed it over Shlomo’s face. “Repeat after me. The will of Lord Mithras is the will of the Pater Patrum, and the will of the Pater Patrum is mine.”

  Why didn’t the Ravens stop hurting his back?

  He repeated the words of this bastardized ritual of Mithraic baptism composed of fact and fantasy. The Pater Patrum wandered from the ritual script by blaming Christians for destroying the Mithraic holy books. But as a mystery religion, they wouldn’t have kept books, would they? Dismayed at his expectation of rationality from a group of fanatics, he faced another truth: the sheriff wasn’t coming. Not to worry. He didn’t need the sheriff.

  He was still the Houdini of scams. He would find a way out.

  “Do you swear by your sacred honor,” the Pater Patrum asked, “to obey and never betray Roma Rinata?”

  “I do.”

  “Lord Mithras,” the Pater Patrum said, “has swept away Celestine the Sixth, the pretender to my title as pope of Rome. Our time of return is upon us.”

  Cymbals clashed and drums throbbed.

  Hoarse from his vehemence, like an angry drunk, the Pater Patrum rambled on about the coming grandeur of Roma Rinata. It would topple the government and seize power. It would cancel the Lateran Treaty Mussolini signed with the Vatican, expel the imposter pope from Rome, and liberate the mithraeum said to exist somewhere under St. Peter’s Basilica. On the glorious day of national salvation, the leaders of Roma Rinata would reveal their identities to an adoring populace.

  “Do you wonder, Shlomo Adorno, why we have specially honored you today?”

  Surprised by the Pater Patrum’s deviation from his diatribe, Shlomo answered, beating his chest with his fist. “Because the Pater Patrum can raise even the most ignorant to wisdom.”

  Snickering broke out behind his back.

  Had he sucked up too much?

  “You undervalue yourself,” the Pater Patrum said, patting Shlomo’s head. “You are dear to us.”

  He was dear to them. He didn’t need the sheriff. He was still at the top of his game.

  “To reconsecrate the Barberini Mithraeum,” the Heliodromus said, “we need a fitting sacrifice.”

  Pain sliced into his back. The Ravens went too far. He whirled around. They weren’t beaks. Blood flowed down his back. They held knives coated with blood.

  “And you are the sacrifice,” the Pater Patrum said. “Shlomo . . . the traitor.”

  “How did you—”

  “Find out?” The Pater Patrum cackled. “When the police raided the Santo Stefano Rotondo church, we knew it was you. We slipped you false information about a planned attack on the church. You failed the test.”

  Shlomo had a final thought before his death. He needed the sheriff after all.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Cardinal Gustavo Furbone calculated that the odds of pulling off his plan increased to near certainty if the Vatican secretary of state failed to appear. At the head of the conference table in the Apostolic Palace, he prepared to convene what American prelates incomprehensibly called the “kitchen cabinet.” To his right fidgeted the English cardinal just arrived from London, and to his left drowsed the Spanish cardinal. Last, and certainly least of eight cardinals, the pope’s private secretary took his place at the end of the table.

  A Nigerian outsider like Celestine VI, the pope’s secretary had the audacity to question the right of the prefect of the secret archives to attend the meeting. Since canon law didn’t formally recognize the kitchen cabinet anyway, the cardinals voted to let Carlos Stroheim attend. Furbone spread his thick fingers over his rounded belly in satisfaction at his preliminary victory in the Hall of Constantine. The meeting promised future victories on his way to Saint Peter’s throne just like the fresco of the Vision of the Cross before his eyes foretold Constantine’s ascension to emperor.

  To Furbone’s dismay, the secretary of state bustled into the hall with an iPhone plastered to his ear. Furbone looked at Carlos Stroheim next to him. The prefect of the secret archives stopped cleaning the table in front of him with sanitizer tissue and returned the look. This Frenchman spells trouble, their eyes said.

  “You must end your call,” Furbone
said. “We have a decision to make.”

  As soon as he terminated the call, the latecomer lashed out at Furbone.

  “By what authority did you suspend reinforcement work under the basilica . . . contrary to the express order of the Holy Father?”

  “You forget I am now administrator of St. Peter’s Basilica.” Furbone waved a stamped paper. “The camerlengo has declared the pope in a coma and, sad to say, effectively dead.”

  “You mistake coma for death.”

  Furbone dismissed the retort with a flick of his wrist. “A meaningless distinction.”

  The secretary of state puffed himself up as having the equivalent powers of a prime minister. No one else in the Vatican acknowledged his conceit. He also had a reputation as a hothead and somewhat of a bully. Few of the Vatican staff wanted to work for him, though they respected his abilities. Furbone surmised these character flaws could play into his hands.

  “Under canon law,” Furbone said, “the camerlengo is now in charge of the Church’s property, subject only to the College of Cardinals.”

  “You well know,” the Frenchman replied, “Celestine the Sixth, like his recent predecessors, intended to merge the office of camerlengo into my office.”

  “Intended?” Furbone repeated the word with derision. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” He clucked his tongue. “Like so many things the pope intended, he failed to carry out his intent.”

  “It slipped his mind.” The Frenchman looked at the cardinals as if asking support.

  “No doubt,” Furbone replied, “the residual effect of polio, like so many of his, shall we say . . . lapses.” Several cardinals nodded in agreement. “Anyway, the reason for his inaction is irrelevant.”

  The Spanish cardinal, now awake, nodded his head in assent after seeing the nodding heads around him. The English cardinal looked befuddled. He was too inexperienced for his views to count for much.

  “Your carping is uncalled for.” The secretary of state chopped the air in a Gallic gesture. “More pressing matters preoccupied His Holiness.”

  “Please stop waving your hand in my face.” Furbone rubbed his cheeks, fixing the pope’s private secretary with an icy stare. “What is it?”

  “Shortly before this meeting,” the secretary said, half rising from his chair, “I received word from the Gemelli Polyclinic. The Holy Father has intermittent moments of consciousness.”

  “He is still in a coma and cannot perform his duties.” Furbone stood up. He leaned over like an alpha primate with his fingers splayed out on the table. “And the camerlengo and I have decided—”

  The private secretary’s cell phone interrupted the meeting with its Nigerian Christian ringtone remixed with disco sound and drumbeat. Before Furbone could reprimand him, the secretary slunk into the corridor to answer the call.

  “As I was saying . . . before the jungle music interrupted me . . . the camerlengo agrees with me. All engineering and architectural work under St. Peter’s has ceased and will not be resumed.”

  “You have no right.” The Frenchman folded his arms. “I will not accept this.”

  “Let’s be sensible,” Furbone said, pleased to see the Frenchman’s face take on an apoplectic glow. “We cannot have the Basilica of St. Peter put on rock-and-roll shock absorbers.” He hoped to contrast the Frenchman’s growing excitability with his own jocular composure.

  “Isn’t the analogy a trifle extravagant?”

  Who is this English upstart to challenge him? “What is your point?”

  “My point is simple. Base isolation, as it’s properly called, is a standard architectural procedure. An exorbitant material . . .” The English cardinal paused as the secretary of state whispered to him the correct Italian word. “I mean an . . . absorbent . . . material is inserted at the foundation. The material then buffers the shocks of earthquake tremors. The Japanese have retrofitted buildings with this procedure and—”

  “I disagree,” said Furbone. “Even if the project does not damage the holy places under St. Peter’s . . .” Why is that pest of a private secretary signaling for my attention at the back of the hall? “. . . the cost will be enormous. Remember how the cost of building St. Peter’s helped spark the Reformation.”

  “Whatever we do,” Stroheim said in a passionate tone, “we must not destroy the past.” His demeanor switched to a gold-toothed smile. “That would be a cardinal sin . . . as they say in English.”

  Who does this South American aborigine think he is, grabbing attention with his juvenile wordplay? “Let’s attend to business, if you please.”

  “Of course, my good cardinal.” The prefect’s smile flashed gold-toothed impudence.

  Ignoring the waving hand of the private secretary near the door, Furbone concentrated on winning over the Englishman. “You must agree this base isolation you speak of has never been used on so large and unique a basilica as St. Peter’s.”

  “I do,” the Englishman said. “But any collapse could be catastrophic.”

  “We must avoid novelty,” Furbone said as the pest called the pope’s private secretary approached him from the side. The secretary shifted his weight from foot to foot like a schoolboy needing permission to pee. He could ignore the pest no longer.

  “For the love of God, what do you want?”

  “I’m so sorry.” The secretary held up his cell phone. “The architect just called from Bologna. His assistant finished surveying the damage under the basilica caused by the earth tremors.”

  “You presumed to interrupt me again . . . for that?”

  “He discovered something extraordinary.”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Opening a top shirt button in the morning humidity, Marco Leone waited in the middle of a gathering mob. With the acquiescence of the minister of the interior, Questore Malatesta had ordered the Polizia di Stato to backstop the Polizia Penitenziaria during the transfer of Otto Fischer from low-level security to the protective custody of Regina Coeli prison. The national police were to keep a low profile so as not to offend the sensibilities of the penitentiary police, jealous of their limelight moment in the public eye. Any minute now, the Polizia Penitenziaria would transport the monster of the Ardeatine Caves down the narrow and crooked street to his new home.

  Dressed as a vagrant in sunglasses with cheek stubble, Leone reprised his rookie years as a master of disguise gone undercover to battle crime with other comrades of deceit. Did he still have the magic touch of those glory years? He scoured the crowd for troublemakers with his cap held out for alms.

  Reeking of lavender, an old woman in a laced shawl squinted at him through thick glasses.

  Did she see through his disguise?

  “A euro for your troubles.” She deposited a euro in his cap. “God has heard you.”

  Not a sparrow falls without God knowing about it. So the priest had said at Abramo Basso’s funeral Mass. Did God hear Abramo in the Ardeatine Caves? Or Benjamin, before the Nazi blew his uncle’s brains out with a handgun? And now Shlomo Adorno found mutilated like the skinned lambs butchers hoisted over their shoulders. The image of Shlomo’s bloodied corpse wrapped in a winding sheet and dumped in front of the Questura di Roma from a stolen car still haunted him.

  Miriam, I’m responsible for your son’s death.

  You didn’t kill him, Marco, the killers did.

  But I insisted he do undercover work.

  And I’m the one who cajoled him and charmed you to find a position in the Polizia di Stato.

  It’s my fault, Miriam, all my fault . . .

  You give yourself too much importance, dear Marco.

  I will never find peace until I arrest who murdered him . . .

  Will you find peace even then?

  “You almost fooled me,” a voice whispered. Leone turned to confront a street musician with an untamed beard and hair gelled in
to punk-rock spirals. It took a few moments to recognize Rossi in disguise.

  “You upstage me.” Leone ran his fingers over the psychedelic-colored surface of Rossi’s vintage Billy Boy guitar. “Any leads on the bomb call?”

  “The perpetrator phoned from a fifties American-style retro bar, just like I thought.” Rossi straightened the red bandana across his forehead. “The owner recognized the caller from the mug shots, a petty criminal named Rocco. We found his apartment.”

  “Shlomo’s source. He knows about Roma Rinata,” Leone said. The case was ready to break open. “Did you bring him in for questioning?”

  “No.”

  “No? What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing’s the matter with me.” Rossi’s face muscles twitched. “Something’s the matter with him. We found him dead in his apartment . . . a suicide, partially decomposed. Swallowed acid drain cleaner.”

  Leone’s throat tightened.

  “The suspect’s mother died in the explosion. Rocco left a suicide note.” Rossi swallowed hard. “He admitted planting the C-4 sticks, killing his mother. He didn’t know she’d attend the religious service. He wanted to suffer before he died.”

  “How much involved with Roma Rinata?”

  “Note didn’t say.” Rossi strummed a few bars of a protest song on his guitar. “His aunt and coworkers know nothing about his private life. Just a sullen Sicilian.”

  “Good work, Inspector Rossi.”

  “Did you actually say . . . ‘good work’?”

  “I must be getting soft.” Leone studied a sidewalk crack. “Now, go back across the street.”

  On the other side of the street, Rossi played the protest song like a pro, too much of a pro. His musical magic whipped up the crowd into a fighting mood. The shouting for vengeance against the monster dwindled as an indigo police van rumbled down the street toward Leone. The van halted. The words “Polizia Penitenziaria” spread across the side in white letters.