“I suppose,” she said politely.
“Answer the call, Anna.”
At that moment, from within the car, her cell phone rang. She glanced down to find the illuminated readout of her phone bathing the passenger’s seat in an electric blue.
By reflex she looked into her purse. “I thought …” The cell-phone pocket was empty. Looking up again, she found herself alone. The man was gone.
“But …”
She glanced around, looking for him, finding him nowhere. The church door wasn’t too far away.
I guess he went back inside.
She dropped into the driver’s seat and picked up the impatient phone. Dyson’s number filled the display.
“Hey,” she answered. “The weirdest thing just happened …”
“What?”
She scowled, looking into her rearview mirror. “Oh, nothing, I guess.”
“I tried calling a little while ago. Everything okay?”
“Yes, fine. I left my phone in the car.”
“Listen,” he said. “Are you busy?”
“Just headed home. How did Herculaneum fare? Much damage?”
“Why don’t you come see for yourself?”
“What?”
“I’ve made a find, Anna. It’s big, I think. I found a descending passageway. The quake shook loose a plug of hardened ash. Some kind of catacomb. There’s stuff down there. Shiny stuff. I need your expertise.”
“I’m out of the business, Jack. You know that.”
“Come on, Anna,” he implored her. “Ancient Rome is your thing, not mine. My strong suit’s Central and South America. I’m just here to survey damage, not to evaluate a whole new find. Gianni and I have been down there once already, but I know you’re going to want to experience this in situ.”
Images of the buried town filled her mind. She had been there many times and had loved each experience. Time had frozen there, preserving forever a window into the past that never should have been, capturing a magic not possessed by any other place of antiquity, even Pompeii.
“My treat,” he further pleaded with her. “And you know you love it here.”
She remained silent, thinking as she looked toward the spot where the strange old man had stood.
“Answer the call …”
“Hey, I did it for you,” Dyson said with an audible grin.
“All right,” she yielded with a smile. “Just for you.”
Twelve
Anna, dressed for the somewhat warmer Italian climate, stepped through the glass doors leading from the tarmac into the passenger lobby of Naples’ Capodichino Airport. She looked very much the native Campanian woman, wearing a white, half-sleeved, ruffled peasant blouse and gray capris she had bought just before the flight. A northerly gust from outside caught her from behind at the last moment before the doors closed, blowing her hair in front of her face. As she swept the tangled tresses back, clearing her field of view, she saw a sign being held high at the back of a large knot of people. It read, And the Rest.
She smiled, hurrying forward, and found Dyson there waiting for her. He bent down, and they shared a lingering, breathtaking kiss.
“Oh,” she said, her arms around him, “I’ve missed you so much.”
“When we get home,” he said, “we’re both going to do a lot less missing. I promise.” He breathed in her scent, her neck, her hair. “Wow … you smell great.”
“Thank you.”
She laid her head against his chest and closed her eyes, just letting him hold her. For a moment the crowds around them simply went silent and faded away.
If only I could stay here forever, she wished.
She felt a kiss on the crown of her head.
“Well, lovely lady,” he said. “Are you ready to get out of here?”
“More than ready.”
“Do you want to go to the hotel, or straight to the site?”
“The hotel,” she said. “Please.”
He took her ever-present purple gym bag and led her down the concourse.
“Looks like somebody went shopping.”
“Who, me?” she asked, smiling.
“I like it,” he said. “That outfit. Very … carefree.”
They stopped at the baggage claim, waited until her suitcase appeared, and departed the terminal for his waiting car. In minutes they had left the airport behind them and were winding their way along narrowing roads toward the hotel.
“Man, I hate driving here,” Dyson barked as a car suddenly swerved in front of him, missing his bumper by less than a foot. “These folks just don’t believe in the concept of the safety cushion.”
“Better you than me,” Anna said, clinging to the seat-belt shoulder strap. “Eyes on the road.”
They managed to reach the hotel in one piece minutes later. It was a relatively new place, its sign proudly declaring its heritage: Hotel Neapolis.
Dyson retrieved her luggage from the trunk. “I got you the room next to mine. You want to take a nap or anything? I could kill some time in the café.”
“All those hours in the air gave me plenty of sleep already,” she said. “I would love a hot bath, though, and maybe something to eat. Then Herculaneum.”
He smiled and bowed. “Your wish is my command.”
Her bath had been a delight of soft plumeria, jasmine, and warm oils. The light lunch of pasta and fruit that had followed satisfied them both, immersing them in the romantic flavors of the region. Now, fully refreshed, Anna held her breath as Dyson wove his way through constricted streets planned and built long before the advent of motorized traffic.
“The roads south are closed,” he explained, his foot constantly switching from pedal to pedal. “Everything’s impassable for miles around the blast site. What the shock wave didn’t get, the fires did. Highway’s gone altogether. The smaller roads are filled with toppled masonry, abandoned cars, you name it.”
“All that history lost,” Anna mourned. “All those people. It’s so sad.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “It’s kind of a shock to see the place so still, so quiet. No sounds of traffic, or voices, or kids playing. Just the wind. Really eerie.”
As he passed a pair of oil storage tanks, Anna realized they had entered an industrial district. Buildings to their left were constructs of rusted metal and badly faded paint. To the right, the Mediterranean sparkled.
“Not the prettiest part of town,” Dyson commented.
“At least, the traffic’s a lot lighter.”
He turned to the right, pulled the car into a space, shut off the engine, and pointed.
“Here we are,” he said. “The other marina’s nicer, but this one was a lot closer.”
He climbed out of the tiny vehicle, and she followed, the straps of her purple gym bag over her arm. Inside were a Windbreaker, a camera, a few excavation tools, and a flashlight.
“Two if by sea,” he quipped, slipping on a pair of sunglasses pulled from the breast pocket of his denim shirt. He zipped his jacket against the ocean breezes. “There she is, right down there.”
They descended a ramp and walked out onto the dock. Anna loved the scent of the ocean and drew of it deeply. Dyson led her to a slip occupied by a new white boat with a maroon sun canopy. “Twenty-three-footer,” he beamed. “She’s fast and easy to handle.”
“It’s lovely,” Anna said, her hair tossed aside in the breeze. The air was cool but not cold, though that would be changing later as the mercury dropped with the sun. Knowing this, she had worn a blue V-necked sweatshirt and jeans, with a jacket in waiting.
“It should be,” Dyson said, after taking a moment just to enjoy seeing her standing before the sea. “She’s costing Gianni’s boss a tidy sum.”
He climbed aboard first, then h
elped Anna in. As he cast off the ropes, she took a seat just forward of the pilot’s station. The engine roared to life, and they were off. As Dyson maneuvered around the sea break, he pointed out a short row of small boats that had taken on water and sunk in a recent storm.
“Free parking,” he commented.
They passed the coast on their left as the boat headed south. Ahead and to their left loomed Vesuvius, ominous in its sheer size. The mountain had always made Anna uncomfortable, but its presence was a necessary evil if one wanted to visit Herculaneum, as she often had.
Behave yourself, she warned it.
“I have a Vespa scooter waiting onshore,” Dyson shouted above the sound of the waves and roar the engine. “We won’t have to walk.”
“Thank you.” Anna smiled.
Never venturing more than a few hundred feet from shore, they covered the two-mile distance in just minutes. Again he maneuvered around a sea break, cut the engine, and dropped anchor just as the prow of the boat came to rest against the rocky shoreline.
Anna looked up at the modern apartment buildings just off the beach, homes now as vacant as the entire area. The sea thundered behind them, while before them, chained to an electrical pole, waited the scooter Dyson had promised.
He helped her out of the boat and over the rocks, then handed her a bike helmet. After crossing a triple row of railroad tracks, they reached the scooter. It was a pale metallic blue.
“Pretty,” Anna commented. “Nice choice.”
“I figured we only needed one,” Dyson said with a grin as he unlocked the bike.
“You would.”
“Wanna be my biker chick?”
“Do I get a cool leather jacket?”
“Probably not.”
Anna pouted, teasing him, and slipped her helmet on. Dyson pulled the scooter clear of the pole and swung his leg over the seat. As he put on his helmet and fastened the chin strap, Anna climbed on behind him, sidesaddle, and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Hang on,” Dyson said, starting the motor.
He turned, clearing a small stand of trees before winding his way through the claustrophobic streets and alleyways west of modern Ercolano. Covered vineyards to their right spread far to the south, overlying much of the newer land once laid down by the volcano. He wove along the northern side of a stone wall, beyond which Anna knew Herculaneum waited.
And then, with a sudden sweep to the right, they passed through an opening in the wall, and the twenty-first century vanished. Now they were surrounded by stone hewn by men whose lives had passed before the star had shone over Bethlehem.
It was AD 79 all over again.
Dyson guided the scooter down a cross street, past ancient homes and businesses whose owners had been forgotten, places now named for their most prominent features.
The House of the Beautiful Courtyard. The House of the Wooden Partition. The House of the Corinthian Atrium. The House of the Carbonized Furniture. Such were what remained of a place once deemed a flowering paradise by its tens of thousands of residents—a paradise on the shoulders of the Mediterranean.
On the shoulders of a colossus patiently waiting to destroy everyone.
They slowed. Before them rose a sixty-foot wall of volcanic material, its strata sharply defined in shades of gray. Along its crown ran a double row of pines, isolating the excavation’s timelessness from the modern streets and vineyards beyond.
Dyson stopped at an intersection, alongside what once had been a community drinking fountain. The aqueduct that had fed it was gone, swept away in the cataclysm. Anna climbed off the scooter and looked at the town immediately around them, where the daily lives of so many had once unfolded.
A thermopolium, she recalled, the Roman equivalent of a fast-food restaurant. Ceramic pots were still sunk into the rectangular marble counters, from which hungry Herculaneans had made their selections.
And beyond that, just to the south, stood a place where appetites of a different sort had been satisfied. A brothel.
Oh well …
“Where’s Gianni?” she asked.
“Had to go back to the museum for some equipment. He’ll be back tomorrow morning. He stationed a couple of his guys to watch the site.”
“You can trust them?”
“Sure,” Dyson said. “Gianni’s the most careful man I know. He trusts no one who hasn’t earned it. And I trust his judgment.”
“So, out here I’m all alone with you?” she teased. “I may be safe from the big bad mountain, but you, on the other hand …”
“Yeah,” he said, grinning, “you’re in trouble now.”
The silence was oppressive. Save for the two guards, she and Dyson were the only people for miles. The wind, shifting northeast, whistled through the stone, howling in a plaintive voice.
“Ground zero is a mile due east,” Dyson mentioned, removing his shades. “We’re safe here, from a radiation standpoint.”
“Where’s the site you found?”
“Just over there,” he pointed. “Behind the—”
A low rumble filled the air, breaking the silence. Anna felt a vibration in her feet and ankles as the ground moved almost imperceptibly for a moment.
“That’s been happening a lot?” Anna asked, concerned.
“Yeah,” he said. “Minor stuff, though. Window rattlers.”
“How often?”
“Few times a day. I’ve been on the phone with the Geological Institute, though, and they say there’s nothing to be worried about yet.”
“Yet?”
“The quakes don’t seem to be in any hurry to get stronger. Ol’ Italy’s just relieving a little stress, that’s all.”
“What if the nuke shook something loose?”
She was more than a little concerned. That was clear.
Dyson smiled and took her into his arms. “They don’t think so. We’re fine. Come on.”
He led her toward his discovery. Anna glanced up, unable to see the volcano for the solidified ash wall. But she knew it was there.
And she had an odd feeling it knew she was there too.
At the entrance Dyson greeted the two guards in Italian. They smiled, eyeing Anna for a little longer than he was comfortable with, scrutinizing her from head to toe. Once the couple had passed by, Dyson looked back over his shoulder, as did Anna, who caught them watching her from behind as she walked away.
“Classic,” Dyson muttered. “Can’t trust these guys for a minute.”
“Jealous?” Anna teased.
A dark opening appeared before them, edged by hardened ash on one side and masonry on the other. Crumbled volcanic detritus made the footing hazardous. “This is it,” he said. “Near as we can figure, it was a temple of some sort. Seems to have been better built than just about any other structure excavated here. The roof took the weight of the ash flows.”
“Amazing,” she said, reaching into her bag for her flashlight. She switched it on, then they passed through the opening and found themselves standing on polished white marble. Ornate columns of the same stone surrounded them, numbering more than one would expect, given the size of the room.
“This architecture isn’t Roman,” she observed. “I don’t know what it is. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Good,” Dyson said. “Then it isn’t just me.”
“I’d say these pillars are why the roof stood up. Four rows in such a confined space. And the walls aren’t just cemented stone. Those are heavy slabs. Blocks, maybe. The place was built like a bomb shelter.”
“Maybe to survive the volcano,” he theorized. “As if whoever built it knew it would have to someday.”
“The Romans thought Vesuvius was extinct,” Anna said. “Looks like someone else knew better.”
“This wa
y,” Dyson said. He led her to a passage at the back of the main chamber. A large, heavy wooden door, carbonized and still in place, stood half open.
“Took both Gianni and I to get this open yesterday,” Dyson told her. “The metal bracing helped hold it together. Looks like it used to be heavy oak, but it’s just charcoal now.”
“It must have been an oven in here,” she noted. “Hundreds of degrees, for who knows how long. Months, maybe.”
They passed through the opening. At the other side of a short landing, leading downward, was a flight of stone steps, vanishing into the darkness.
“I have so been through this before,” she said, her tone wary.
Please, Lord, she prayed. No more surprises.
He led her down the stairs, past heavy archways carved in marble. They were well underground now. When the bottom step was finally behind them, and they had reached their destination, Dyson flipped on a work lamp.
Its white light gently bathed the room, revealing a place like none Anna had ever seen. Apparently carved out of the bedrock, the chamber had been bedecked with supporting structures of sparkling crystalline stone. Columns of an unknown type supported an elaborate network of deep-set beams high above, into which figures of men, women, and animals had been carved.
“This is Penteli marble,” Anna marveled, running her fingertips up and down one column. “What the acropolis was built of. The Parthenon. In sunlight, when polished, it gleams golden.”
“I didn’t know the Romans used it,” Dyson said.
“They didn’t, Jack,” Anna puzzled. “Never, that I’m aware of. This comes from a single quarry a long way from here, north of Athens. It’s as fine as glass but stronger than most other types of marble. The sculptors of ancient Greece used it almost exclusively.”
“So what’s it doing here?”
She shook her head in amazement. “I have no idea.”
“These figures,” Dyson wondered, shining a flashlight at the ceiling beams. “Who are they?”
Anna looked up, her gaze following as he shifted the beam from one place to another until it fell upon tableaus of powerful men battling bizarre serpentine beasts and embracing voluptuous women.
The Demas Revelation Page 20
