“I don’t have much time,” Will said. “I have to meet Carlos Stroheim.”
“Don’t let me delay you.” She stretched out a cramped leg. “I’m busy too.”
“I’m sorry you found out about him from the media.”
“It’s not about your father.” She sat down on the bench. “It’s about you.” She took a swig of water from her bottle. “My ex-husband hid his affair. I don’t want to blind myself again.”
“By the way, I think it’s great you’re meeting Leone tomorrow.” He sat down and slipped his hand over hers. “Finding an unexpected Italian relative and all.”
“Your concern for my lineage is touching.” She removed her hand from his. “But don’t change the subject.”
“I swear.” He crossed his heart. “I didn’t know about his role in the Ardeatine massacre until I read about it. You’re not the only one deceived.”
“Cut the crap, Will.” She bolted up, ready to leave. “When the story first broke, the media didn’t mention he was your father. But you knew he was. It’s not what he did. It’s what you didn’t tell me.”
“Why would I?” He stiffened his torso. “I was always ashamed of him. I wanted to forget, get away as far as possible, start a new life, but my past caught up.”
“The past isn’t your problem. It’s the present.” She sat down. “I can’t help wondering what else you’re hiding.”
“What about your affair with Wesley Bemis?”
“My affair with Wesley Bemis?” She put her hand on her hip and laughed. “What are you talking about?”
Will’s lips pursed. He looked away. “Wes told me in a letter from Switzerland.”
When she saw Bemis after the museum arson, he’d been a mass of red and purple bumps the doctors called keloid scars. They burst across his face like angry cancers. Surgery made things worse. Oozing paranoia and spouting religious gibberish, he had berated her for rejecting him. He took a leave of absence from the Villa of the Papyri and headed for Switzerland. She’d thought he was out of his mind and out of her life. Only one was true.
“Will. It’s not true. You know he’s troubled. You saw him go ballistic when you took over operations at the villa while he recovered.”
“I didn’t say I believed him.”
“That man.” She caught her breath. “That man plagiarized my doctoral thesis. He sexually harassed me at Harvard and at the Villa of the Papyri.”
“Who’s hiding things now?”
“I had my reasons for not telling you.”
“I had mine too.” He took his eyes off the fountain and looked at her. “If you want me to tell everything, it has to be a two-way street.”
“I wasn’t”—she cleared her throat, looking at the pigeons pecking on the ground—“going to let him scare me off, like some helpless bimbo. I had to stand up to him.”
“What’s that got to do with not telling—”
“We didn’t have a personal relationship then.”
“We do now.”
“Then don’t hide things in our relationship.” Did this man know himself well enough for a long-term relationship? His only serious romance ended in a crack-up, almost stampeding him into the Jesuit priesthood. Although handsome and older, he had the air of a starry-eyed seminarian on the streets of Rome in a dress cassock and circular-brimmed hat. She wanted a solid relationship as well as her profession.
“Now that we’re into full disclosure,” she said, “the University of Chicago has offered me a visiting professorship.”
“Will you accept?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
***
“The Holy Father asked me to show you this today,” Carlos Stroheim said, standing behind Will Fisher. “I must leave you to your work.”
As he surveyed the Callinicus sarcophagus in the pit, Fisher barely heard Stroheim, his attention riveted on this amazing find before him.
Callinicus once lived.
The inscription confirmed Mithraism as a highly organized cult composed of different congregations and presided over by a pope of sorts. The man buried down there must have written the Callinicus letter because he claimed a friendship with Paul of Tarsus, the intended recipient of the letter. Although the Unity Report was forged, the circumstantial evidence of this newly discovered tomb made the authenticity of the Callinicus letter a slam-dunk.
Wait a minute.
He didn’t want to get ahead of himself this time. The Unity Report had stampeded him into jumping to false conclusions. Getting burned again would not look good on his résumé.
Celestine VI had requested his personal physician, a former specialist in paleopathology, to examine the bones. The examination might shed more light on the man in the sarcophagus.
Why hadn’t Callinicus been cremated? In his time, Christians buried their dead, but pagans usually cremated them. Something didn’t seem right. And then there was the mind-blowing inscription that—
“Before I go.” Stroheim tapped Fisher on the shoulder. “How did you know? My warning about Cardinal Furbone’s vandalism was for the pope’s ears alone.”
It was time to set Stroheim straight. “The pope told me your warning about Cardinal Furbone.”
“Why?”
“He’s announcing later today I’m the new supervisor of Vatican excavations.” Fisher smiled. “The work at the Villa of the Papyri impressed him.”
“What’s going on with him?” The prefect of the secret archives wiped his hands with a sanitizer tissue. “He dithered over filling the post for almost a year. Suddenly, he’s taking actions as though there’s no tomorrow.”
“I wish I knew.” Outraged at the cardinal’s near destruction of cultural heritage in the name of Christian faith, Celestine VI expected his supervisor of excavations to report the facts and hide nothing. God doesn’t need a ventriloquist, the Holy Father had thundered. This was no longer a man to be trifled with. Maybe the Holy Spirit moved in him, as the pious claimed. “He’s grateful you reported the cardinal’s machinations.”
“I had no choice.” Stroheim’s facial muscles twitched. “I had to stop the ecclesiastical vandalism before leaving for Argentina next week.”
“Argentina?”
“Vatican business. Highly confidential.”
Fisher listened to Stroheim covering up his involvement in Roma Rinata. He appreciated his father’s coming clean about Stroheim and Piso with him and the commissario during a visit to the Regina Coeli prison. Without that information, they would not have known the extent of the conspiracy. He stopped nosing further into the details of the trip. That would put Stroheim on alert and compromise the commissario’s investigation.
“I have something for you.” Stroheim called over an assistant who handed to Fisher the miter and medallion found in the burial chamber. “Furbone told me to destroy these.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“To destroy the memory of man is a sacrilege . . . cultural Alzheimer’s.”
“Where is Cardinal Furbone? The Holy Father wants the Vatican inspector general to arrest him.”
“All I know is he left with his chauffeur.” Flashing a gold-toothed smile, he held up his hands and shrugged. “Maybe he went to do penance for his sins.”
The prefect knew more than he was saying.
“Let me know when the cardinal returns.”
“Of course . . . if he does.” Stroheim removed a sheet of papal stationery from a folder. “Here’s the preliminary report about the skeleton, by the pope’s physician.”
The skeleton belonged to a robust male about a meter and a half tall with a fracture in the left leg.
It fits.
Callinicus had written about a fractured left leg due to a chariot mishap.
Fisher strained to keep his glee in check.
“I must leave,” Str
oheim said. “I have packing to do.” He had scarcely left when he returned. “Oh, I almost forgot. Before his departure, Furbone told me he worked out a deal to undo your university dismissal.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“Wait. There’s more. You must publicly recant your religious syncretism theology. You will be notified when and where. Do you agree?”
Fisher gave a quick nod. “Just do me the favor of keeping it secret.”
“Of course.” The prefect smirked. “Isn’t that how the Vatican works?”
***
Leone and Garvey nudged their way through the line of regulars and bellied up to the stainless steel bar of the Sant’Eustachio Il Caffè.
Before Garvey had arrived, the barista, who was into genealogy, enlightened him about the terminology. This relative from America was technically a first cousin, twice removed. Looking at her in her fire-engine-red jogging shorts and scruffy running shoes, she seemed not far enough removed for his taste. He now had second thoughts about this getting-to-know-you meeting.
Leone poured a packet of sugar into his espresso. What irked him most was not the male patrons ogling her in the skimpy getup, but his relationship to the object of their ogling. He emptied another packet and stirred. Her entrance half-undressed and unkempt made a bad impression reflecting on the family reputation. The barista kept staring at her until Leone gave the youthful Don Juan the evil eye.
He gulped his espresso in one go before saying what had to be said.
“Dr. Garvey, you’re not making a good impression in that outfit.”
“I wanted to meet my newfound kin,” she said, elbowing a patron pressing too close. “Not to make an impression on strangers.”
“You know the saying? When in Rome—”
“Do as the Romans do.” She pointed to his three-legged dog. “Doesn’t your pooch make a bad impression in this elegant café?”
She was hard-headed, all right.
“Doctor, that’s my dog, Mondocane.” He tugged at the leash. “Well-mannered dogs are acceptable in bars . . . not jogging shorts and running shoes.”
“Just call me Nicole.” She stooped to pet Mondocane. “And why don’t we skip the stuffy lei and refer to each other with the informal tu?”
“But we hardly know each other.”
“You will.” She laughed. “Anyway, we’re blood. Tu is for family and relatives, isn’t it?” Garvey finished her freshly squeezed juice from blood oranges.
“What was Benjamin like?” she asked in a soft voice.
He fumbled in his pocket and brought out the faded black-and-white photo of his uncle in the white shirt with the unbuttoned collar. He wouldn’t have shared the photo unless she’d asked. He relaxed into telling everything he knew. The words came out halting and cautious but then gathered speed and abandon. It wasn’t just her red hair but the silent empathy, like his mother’s. At the end of his monologue, he surprised himself by asking, “Would you like me to show you his grave in the Ardeatine Caves?”
“It would be an honor.” She hesitated. “Did Otto Fischer talk to you?”
“To me and his son.” Making sure no one could overhear, he moved closer. “But I’m not free to discuss police business.” He waited until the barista set down an espresso for her. “Did Professor Fisher tell you what his father said?”
“Not much. Just his suspicions.”
“Please keep the information confidential.” He planned to further interrogate Stroheim about the meeting with Renaldi and Fischer at Piso’s country estate. He needed an airtight case against the superintendent. If he was wrong . . . Piso would have his head. “We’re at a delicate point in our investigation.”
“Will’s seeing Stroheim today. I’m worried about him.”
“Are you involved with Professor Fisher?”
“When did my personal life become police business?”
She made a face upon taking her first sip of espresso.
“It’s not. It’s family looking after family.” He didn’t want to rile her up even more by declaring a single-shot espresso wasn’t to be sipped. “Next time you try an espresso you might want a little sugar.”
She shot him a puzzled look as though he were the foreigner. “I can take care of myself.”
“Then why the worried look?”
“It’s Will I’m worried about.”
“You,” he said, slipping into the familiar tu form, “have nothing to worry about.” With her approval, he emptied a packet of sugar into her espresso. “Stroheim is under surveillance.”
“Why don’t you arrest him?”
“The kitten will lead us to the cat.”
“Stroheim’s going to Argentina next week. Will doesn’t know why.” She took another sip of the espresso and then put it aside. “But I’m sure he told you this new information first.”
Like hell he did.
“I’m afraid he overlooked that nicety.”
“He does have a way of overlooking things.”
No time remained to put a tail on the prefect. He needed to reel in Stroheim before he got away to Argentina.
“I must return to the office.” He clinked coins into the tip tray and roused Mondocane from a nap with a gentle hand. “Time to go, my friend.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” She turned her left cheek toward him. “We may be distant, but we’re still cousins.”
He grazed her cheeks with his before leaving.
“If you need anything, let me know . . . Nicole.”
Chapter Sixty-Two
Will Fisher couldn’t wait until his full team assembled. A word in the Callinicus epitaph wouldn’t let him. Dead languages were keys to locked doors. And the meaning of one Latin word might be the key to this door.
Jack Daniels, his friend, called out for release from the hip flask. Jack promised to banish the loneliness sapping his resolve in the godforsaken landscape.
Not now.
Before he changed his mind, he gurgled out the whiskey into the mud like a pagan drink offering to the gods of sobriety. His ascent up the academic ladder would come crashing down if they found the great scholar drunk in the mud and pissing in his pants.
He lowered himself into the pit with a scholar’s fierce need to know. The sarcophagus lid remained propped up against a burial chamber wall after the pope’s personal physician had removed the skeleton. He remembered the phrase on the lid . . . etiam in morte mihi proximus. The Latin words translated as closest to me even in death did not mean what the pope’s physician thought.
Closest didn’t refer to the personal relationship between Callinicus and Saint Paul, whatever it may have been. If that was the intent, the author of the epitaph, presumably cultured and literate, would likely have used the more exact familiaris, or even propinquis. The author chose proximus because it was the appropriate Latin word to highlight a relation between objects based on physical distance.
But what sense did that make? None he knew of. He and the pope’s physician had toured the nearby mausoleums. They gave every indication of housing only pagans and certainly no Christian as prominent as Paul of Tarsus. He had to be right this time. People might otherwise question his competency as the supervisor of Vatican excavations.
He climbed into the emptied sarcophagus. The fear of entombment rattled him. He fantasized a giant hand would clap the slab back onto the coffin. He sucked on the flask, now empty of Jack Daniels, whom he had rudely cast onto the ground outside. A few drops fell onto his parched tongue. He craved his friend. He flung the empty flask out of the pit in despair.
Fisher put his unavoidable sobriety to use. He knelt down, probing across the bottom with his free hand while following its methodical movement with the flashlight in his other. At the head of the sarcophagus, his hand touched a vase filled with Roman coins. Not far from it rested a dish filled wi
th what looked like desiccated beans. He picked up the dish to admire its design. To his astonishment, the dish had covered a saucer-sized hole.
The Romans had used pour holes for mourners to nourish the spirit of the dead inside a sarcophagus with wine and other liquids. The lid resting upright outside the sarcophagus had pour holes. But the Romans did not drill pour holes inside the bottom of a sarcophagus. It made no sense . . . unless it wasn’t a pour hole. He sprawled lower to peek through the hole.
He saw something.
Chapter Sixty-Three
In the bathroom of his Maremma farmhouse, Lucio Piso shaved with a straight razor he had once used to cut up an informer. The mirror reflected the next ruler of the country.
In the past week, the European Union had imposed draconian conditions on Italy for a financial bailout. Street mobs clamored for an end to austerity and a restoration of national honor. Mussolini memorabilia leached out of the dark places. The country would fall into his lap like a ripe fig.
He finished shaving and ordered the cardinal’s gag removed.
“How dare you?” The cardinal massaged his jaws. “After all I did for you.”
The guards shoved the manacled Furbone onto the toilet seat.
“You mean”—Piso admired his face in the mirror—“what you did to me.”
“I don’t understand.”
The cardinal lunged up, trying to break free.
“God commands you to stop this sacrilege. Let me go.”
The guards twisted his arms. He whimpered, falling back onto the toilet seat.
“Remember this scent?” Piso slapped the cardinal’s face and neck with cologne, heavy with the fragrance of cedar and musk plus a hint of lemon.
“I remember,” Piso said. The cardinal, then a priest in war-ravaged Rome, had used it while abusing his charges.
“How did you . . .” The cardinal’s mouth opened, and his eyes widened. His expression morphed into apparent puzzlement. “I don’t recall using that cologne.”
The Mithras Conspiracy Page 25
