The Last Gospel

by David Gibbins

  ‘This looks like a setup,’ Costas grumbled.

  ‘I thought I’d spring this on you now after giving you a sense of purpose. It’s fantastically exciting, the chance to explore completely unknown sites in the heart of ancient Rome.’

  ‘Jack, don’t tell me we’re going diving in a sewer.’

  A man came towards them from where he had been squatting beside the arch. He had a wiry physique and fine Italian features, though he seemed unusually pale for a Roman. ‘Massimo!’ Jack said. ‘Va bene?’

  ‘Va bene.’ The voice sounded shaky, and close up the man looked slightly grey. ‘You remember Costas?’ Jack said. The two men nodded, and shook hands. ‘It seems only yesterday that we met at that conference in London.’

  ‘It was my greatest pleasure,’ Massimo said in perfect English, only slightly accented. ‘We work here under the auspices of the archaeological superintendency, but we’re all amateurs. It was a privilege to spend time with professionals.’

  ‘This time, the tables are turned,’ Jack said, smiling. ‘This will be my first venture into urban underwater archaeology.’

  ‘It’s the archaeology of the future, Jack,’ Massimo said with passion. ‘We come on ancient sites from below, leaving the surface intact. It’s perfect in a place like Rome. It beats hanging on the shirttails of developers, waiting for a fleeting chance to find something in a building site before the bulldozers destroy it.’

  ‘You’re beginning to talk like a professional, Massimo.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure to help. We’ve been desperate to explore where you’re planning to go. We’ve been waiting for the right diving equipment.’

  ‘What do you call yourselves?’ Costas said.

  ‘Urban speleologists.’

  ‘Tunnel rats,’ Jack grinned.

  ‘Be careful of that word, Jack,’ Massimo said. ‘Where you’re about to go, it might come back to haunt you.’

  ‘Ah. Point taken.’ Jack gave a wry grin. ‘You have a map?’

  ‘It’s inside the arch. Your people will bring over the equipment. Follow me.’ Jack and Costas waved at the two IMU technicians, and went towards a door in one of the stone piers. ‘This leads up to a complex of small chambers and corridors inside the arch, used when it was converted into a medieval fortress,’ Massimo said. ‘What nobody knew was that the stairway extends below as well, into the Cloaca Maxima. We assumed there must have been an access point somewhere under the arch, and came looking for it a few months ago. The superintendency allowed us to remove the stones.’ He pointed to a new-looking manhole cover about a metre and a half round on the floor just inside the door. ‘But first, some orientation. The map.’ He reached behind the door and pulled out a long cardboard tube, then extracted a rolled-up sheet and held it open against the side of the pier. ‘This is a plan of everything we know about what’s underground in this part of Rome, from the entrance into the Cloaca Maxima under the Colosseum to the river Tiber just beyond us here.’

  ‘This is what I’m really interested in,’ Jack said, using both hands to point to branches leading off the main line of the Cloaca Maxima, then drawing his hands together into the blank space in between.

  ‘Absolutely. That’s one of our most exciting finds,’ Massimo said. ‘We think those branches are either end of an artificial tunnel running right under the Palatine. We think it was built by the emperor Claudius.’

  ‘Claudius?’ Jack said, startled.

  ‘He’s our hero. A posthumous honorary tunnel rat. His biggest projects were underground, underwater. Digging the tunnel to drain the Fucine Lake. Building the great harbour at Ostia. His aqueduct into Rome, the Aqua Claudia. We think a drainage tunnel under the Palatine would have been right up his street. And he was an historian, would have been fascinated by anything they came across, any vestiges of the earliest Romans, his ancestors. He might even have gone down there himself. One of us.’

  ‘Small world,’ Costas murmured.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well,’ he began, then Jack shot him a warning look. ‘Well, Jack was just telling me about Claudius, the harbour, when we were flying into Fiumicino. Fascinating guy.’

  ‘I think we can leave Claudius aside until we actually find something that identifies his involvement,’ Jack said sternly. ‘Remember, what we’re after dates hundreds of years before Claudius’ time. What we talked about on the phone, Massimo. The Lupercale cave.’

  ‘The Lupercale,’ Massimo repeated reverently, then looked furtively around. ‘If you can find a way into that from underground, then we’ve made history.’

  Costas peered enquiringly at Jack, who turned to him stony faced. ‘My apologies, Costas. I was waiting till now to fill you in on what we’re really after. I didn’t want anyone overhearing, any word leaking out,’ he said forcibly, looking at Massimo. ‘It’s an amazing find. Archaeologists drilling into the ground below the House of Augustus on the Palatine broke through into an underground chamber, a cavity at least fifteen metres deep. They sent in a probe, and saw walls encrusted with mosaics and seashells, like a grotto. It could be the Lupercale, the sacred cave of Rome’s ancestors, where the she-wolf nursed Romulus and Remus. A place revered in antiquity but lost to history. It could be one of the most sensational finds ever made in Roman archaeology. We’re here to see if we can find an underground entrance. Massimo’s even kept the superintendency in the dark. His team are worried about looters getting in, and want to explore the place fully before going public.’

  ‘The Palatine’s riddled with caves and fissures,’ Massimo enthused. ‘God only knows what else lies under there. The Lupercale cave could just be the tip.’

  ‘You’re sure this is the best entrance, here under the arch?’ Jack asked.

  ‘On the other side of the Palatine, the tunnel runs from the Cloaca Maxima somewhere near the Atrium Vestae, the House of the Vestal Virgins,’ Massimo replied. ‘We haven’t got any further than that. This side is definitely your best bet. The branch going from here into the Palatine is on the line of the Velabrum, an ancient stream that was once part of another marshy area, canalized and arched over about 200 BC. We’ve explored as far as the edge of the Palatine, but then the tunnel drops down and becomes completely submerged. We’re not cave divers, not yet. From our farthest point we think it’s only about two hundred metres to the site of the Lupercale, and about thirty metres up.’

  ‘What’s the geology?’ Costas said.

  ‘Tufa, volcanic stone. Easily worked but strong, a good load-bearer. And you sometimes see calcite formations as well, even stalactites and stalagmites, where calcium-rich groundwater has dripped into the Roman conduits.’

  ‘Can we take a peek down that hole?’ Jack said, jerking his head towards the open doorway in the arch. ‘I want some idea of what we’re dealing with.’

  Massimo nodded, walked inside and stooped down, then swallowed hard, as if he were about to retch. He glanced back at them. ‘You might want to take a few deep breaths. It’s a little high down there.’ He lifted the manhole cover, and they glimpsed the dark beginnings of a spiral staircase. An indescribable smell wafted up. He closed the lid hurriedly, and dived back outside, clutching his mouth.

  ‘Okay. I see what you mean. We’ll kit up here, outside,’ Jack said.

  Massimo swallowed hard, and his voice was hoarse. ‘You’ll see a fluorescent orange line running along the edge of the Cloaca Maxima, then into the Velabrum as far as we reached,’ he said. ‘Beyond that, you’re on your own.’

  ‘You’re not coming with us?’ Jack said.

  ‘I’d love to, but I’d be a liability. I had a bad experience yesterday, just below the Forum of Nerva. A conduit suddenly disgorged a gob of yellow liquid into the Cloaca, and it aerosolized into a mist. No idea what it was, don’t want to know. I didn’t have my respirator on. Stupid. I’ve been throwing up every half-hour or so ever since. It’s happened to me before, I just need a little time. Occupational hazard.’

  ‘You guys
take risks,’ Jack murmured. ‘So what is down there? Liquid, I mean.’

  ‘You want the full menu?’

  ‘A la carte,’ Jack said.

  ‘Well, it’s a mixture of runoff from the streets, the things that actually live down there, and leakage.’

  ‘Leakage,’ Costas muttered. ‘Great.’

  ‘Mud, diesel, urine. Rotting rat carcasses. And the stringy grey stuff, well, it shouldn’t be there, but the sewage outlets aren’t exactly all they’re piped up to be.’ Massimo gave them a slightly macabre grin, and coughed. ‘But it’s an old city. There’s always going to be a bit of give and take.’

  ‘Give and take?’ Costas said.

  ‘Well, one conduit provides clear, life-giving water, the other takes away putrid effluent. Or, to put it another way, the sewage pipes give to the drains, the drains take it away, the river flows to the sea. Here, it’s the natural order of things.’

  ‘Sheer poetry,’ Costas muttered. ‘No wonder the river Tiber looks green. It’s how I’m beginning to feel.’

  ‘We’ll be fine in the IMU e-suits.’ Jack said. ‘Completely sealed in, no skin exposed. Tried and tested in all the most extreme conditions, right, Costas? If this goes well, Massimo, we’ll donate you all of our equipment.’

  ‘That would be excellent, Jack. Perfetto.’ He swayed, and looked as if he were about to throw up. ‘You’d better get going. They’re forecasting heavy rain this afternoon, and the Cloaca can become a torrent. You don’t want to get flushed out into the river.’

  ‘I don’t like that word, flush,’ Costas muttered.

  ‘The good news is, once you turn the corner from the main drain into the Velabrum, the water becomes clear,’ Massimo said. ‘Under the Palatine it comes from natural springs, and because nobody lives there any more there’s hardly any pollution. Right under the hill it should be crystal clear.’

  Jack took off his old khaki bag, and slung it over Massimo’s head. ‘Guard this bag with your life, Massimo, and I’ll see that our board of directors award Costas a special secondment here as your technical adviser.’

  ‘What?’ Costas looked aghast.

  ‘Another honorary tunnel rat.’ Massimo gave Costas a feverish grin, and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘It’s a deal. And now it’s my turn to donate some equipment.’ He went back into the chamber inside the stone pier and came out with two compact climbers’ harnesses, with metal carabiners, a hammer and pitons and a coil of rope. ‘It’s not exactly what you’d imagine needing under Rome, but trust me, this can be a lifesaver.’

  Jack nodded. ‘Much appreciated.’ He laid the harness down beside the rest of his kit, and waved appreciatively to the two IMU technicians who had gone back to wait by the van. He looked back at the cover over the hole into the Cloaca Maxima, the place where they would soon be going, and took a few deep breaths. Their banter had kept his anxieties at bay, but now he had to face it: this dive was going to force him to confront his worst fear, the one thing that could truly unsettle him. Costas knew it too, and Jack sensed that he was being watched very closely. He pulled the e-suit towards him, and squatted down to take off his boots. He would remain focused. An extraordinary prize could await them. And underwater tunnels always had exits.

  Costas peered at him. ‘Good to go?’

  ‘Good to go.’

  12

  The manhole cover above Jack slid into place with a resounding clang, sealing him and Costas off from the rumble of traffic through Rome outside. They had given their final okay signal to Massimo and the two IMU crewmen moments before, and Jack felt reassured that the others would be above the manhole for the duration, awaiting their return. But now that they were entombed in the Cloaca Maxima he found himself weighing up the odds once more. There was no safety backup, no diver poised ready to assist in a rescue. It was another calculated risk, like their dive on St Paul’s shipwreck. But Jack knew from hard experience that safety backup was often more psychological than practical, that problems were most often solved on the spot or not at all, that his ability to pull off a dangerous dive often depended on himself and his buddy alone. And any more equipment and personnel would make their operation more visible, and take precious time they could ill afford. He peered at Costas squatting beside him, then angled his headlamp down the spiral staircase into the darkness. This was it. They were on their own again.

  ‘I’ll go first,’ Costas said over the intercom, peering at Jack through his helmet visor.

  ‘I thought this wasn’t exactly your cup of tea.’

  ‘Decision made. Always ready to try a new brew. You okay?’

  ‘Lead on.’

  Costas heaved himself up and clunked down the stairs in front of Jack, the halogen beam from his headlamp wavering along the ancient masonry walls. They were wearing the same IMU e-suits they had used on the wreck, all-environment Kevlar-reinforced drysuits that had served them well from the Arctic to the Black Sea, with integrated buoyancy and air-conditioning systems. The yellow helmets with full face masks contained a call-up digital display showing life-support data, including the computerized gas mix fed from the compact closed-circuit rebreathers on their backs. Their only concession to the unusual circumstances were the climbers’ harnesses that Massimo had insisted they take along, fitted and tested before they had donned their rebreathers a few minutes before.

  ‘This reminds me of going into that sunken submarine in the Black Sea, hunting for Atlantis,’ Costas said as he stomped around the stairs. ‘I feel as if I could cut the air with a knife here too.’

  Jack swallowed hard. Just before sealing his helmet he had caught a waft of fetid air from below, and he still had the cloying taste in his mouth. The last thing he needed now was to throw up inside his helmet. That was one human reality the IMU engineers had failed to consider. He swallowed again. ‘You know, you might want to get the design guys to fit these with a sick bag.’

  ‘I was just thinking the same thing.’

  After about thirty steps, the spiral staircase ended at a small platform in front of an arched door, blackened and dripping with slime. Jack came up behind Costas and they both aimed their headlamps through. ‘There it is,’ Jack said, trying to sound cheery. ‘The Great Drain.’ Ahead of them a straight flight of steps led down into a wide tunnel, at least eight metres across and five metres high, built of stone and brick dripping with algae. Half filling the tunnel was a surging mass of dark liquid, rushing towards them from the darkness ahead and disappearing out of sight below. Jack turned up his external audio sensor, and his head was filled with the sound of the torrent, almost deafening. He turned it down again and pointed to the fluorescent orange line that began ahead of them where the stairs disappeared underwater. ‘That must be Massimo’s line,’ he said. ‘It’s pitoned in, and we can haul ourselves along it. There’s a ledge about a metre and a half below it that’s usually above water, but it looks as if we’ll be wading. The entrance to the Velabrum is only about twenty metres ahead of us.’

  ‘That’d be a hell of a waterpark ride if we fell in.’

  ‘It disgorges into the Tiber, but Massimo says there’s a big metal grid in the way. Might not be a happy ending.’

  Costas walked gingerly on to the first step in the tunnel. Something large and dark scurried off at enormous speed along a narrow ridge in front of him. ‘Looks like Massimo left one of his friends down here,’ Costas said distastefully.

  ‘At least we shouldn’t be seeing any of those where we’re going,’ Jack said from behind. ‘According to Massimo, the conduit leading under the Palatine is pure, doesn’t have enough in it to sustain many higher life forms.’

  ‘That’s reassuring,’ Costas said. They carried on slowly down until they reached the fluorescent line. Costas played his headlamp over the rushing torrent just below them. ‘It looks like espresso,’ he murmured. ‘That foam on top.’

  ‘Schiuma, you mean,’ Jack said. ‘That’s exactly what Massimo called it.’

  Costas put a foot into
the torrent, holding tight with both hands to the rope. His foot created a wide wake, with foam streaming off to either side. He lifted it out, and what seemed to have been brown foam but was actually a stringy mass came out with it. He thrust his foot back in, shaking it violently. ‘Jack, that was just about the worst thing that has ever happened to me,’ he said, panting. ‘Why this? We could be in the crystal-clear waters off Sicily. Lying by a pool, having a long-overdue holiday. But no, we go diving in a sewer.’

  ‘Fascinating.’ Jack was squatting on the step behind Costas, peering at a pile of washed-up debris just above the torrent. Costas twisted around, his foot still in the water. ‘Have you found it? Can we go now?’

  Jack pushed aside some rodent bones, and held up a slimy chunk of pottery. ‘Roman amphora sherd. Dressel 2 to 4, unless I’m mistaken. The same type we found on the shipwreck, and in Herculaneum. The wine Claudius would have drunk. This stuff got everywhere.’ He put his other hand deep into the sludge, and grunted. ‘There’s more.’

  ‘Leave it, Jack.’

  Jack paused, then pulled out his arm and stood up. ‘Okay. Just being an archaeologist.’

  ‘Save it for this secret chamber. If we ever get there.’ Costas took the coil of rope from his shoulder. He clipped one end to the piton holding the fluorescent line, and the other end to his harness. ‘I think we can sacrifice one rope here, for safety,’ he said. ‘I refuse to end my days in a torrent of shit. Clip on behind me.’ He turned back and stepped down until the liquid was nearly chest-high, flecking his visor with foam. ‘I’m on the ledge,’ he said. ‘Moving ahead now.’ Jack followed him, feeling the pressure of the water push hard against his legs and then his waist. They began to progress along, painfully slowly, a few inches at a time. The water felt heavy, cloying, and Jack could see iridescent streams of oily matter on the surface, then shifting blotches of brown and grey, a camouflage colour. He tried to focus on the walls, the ceiling, on stonework which had been built well before the Roman Empire, when the Velabrum was first covered over. He arched his head back, and realized the tunnel had taken a slight curve to the right. The steps they had come down from the spiral staircase were now out of view. He turned forward and slogged on, beginning to pant hard with the exertion. He looked down to check his carabiner on the line and then looked up. Costas had vanished. He blinked hard, and wiped his mask. He was still gone. For a horrified moment he thought Costas must have fallen in, and he braced himself for the whip of the rope as he was swept past. Then he saw a dull glow coming from the wall about five metres in front of him, and a yellow helmet appeared.