Sign of the Cross paj-2

by Chris Kuzneski

  The anger in Maria’s face softened. Slowly she turned back toward Dante.

  ‘For several months I’ve been exchanging information with Dr Boyd. He’d inform me about things that he’d discovered, and I’d do the same for him, all in hopes of planning a successful dig. I knew I couldn’t join him in Orvieto — there was no way I could hide that — but I figured one of us could be there. That you could be there. And in my mind, that was good enough.’

  Her tears started again. ‘That’s what you’ve been hiding? That’s the family secret?’

  Dante laughed at her innocence. ‘No, that’s not it at all. Father’s been keeping something from both of us for our entire lives, something we should’ve been told long ago. I swear to you I didn’t know about it until yesterday. When father learned about Roberto’s death, he pulled me aside and told me everything. He told me the truth about the Catacombs, the crucifixion, and our family tree. You see, the Catacombs of Orvieto were built for us. For our family. They were built to honor our relative.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Who was our relative?’

  Instead of speaking, Dante pointed over his shoulder to the painting his father had commissioned shortly after visiting the Catacombs for the first time. The image was similar, albeit smaller than the one that Boyd and Maria had found in the first chamber of the Catacombs. The one Maria knew she had seen before but could never place in her head. Suddenly, she understood the reason why. Her subconscious had been blocking it out.

  ‘The laughing man,’ she gasped. ‘I’m related to the laughing man?’

  Dante frowned. ‘Who’s the laughing man?’

  ‘Him,’ she said. ‘That’s what we’ve called him, because we never knew his name. His image was everywhere in the Catacombs. On the walls, in the carvings, on a burial box. We’ve been searching for his identity ever since.’

  ‘Then your search is over, because you already know his name.’

  ‘I do?’

  He nodded knowingly. ‘Because it’s your name, too.’

  ‘My name? What do you mean? He was a Pelati?’

  ‘No,’ Dante said. ‘His name was changed to protect us from his sins… He was a Pilate.’

  ‘A Pilate?’

  He nodded. ‘As in Pontius Pilate. He was our ancestor. We are his descendants.’

  ‘We’re his what?’ She stared at Dante. Then at Boyd. Then back at Dante. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I mean, our family name isn’t Pelati… It’s Pilate. The name was altered to protect our family from persecution.’

  ‘Pontius Pilate was the laughing man?’

  Dante nodded. ‘And our forefather.’

  It took a moment for that to sink in. Once it did, Maria let out a soft whimper that suggested she had been blindsided. She wanted to argue, wanted to fight, but in her heart she knew her brother would never lie about something like this. That meant everything he’d said was true.

  They were related to the most infamous murderer of all time.

  Slowly, in an act of desperation, she turned toward Dr Boyd, who was now standing by her side. ‘Professore? Is this possible? Is any of this possible?’

  Boyd closed his eyes and pondered the history. ‘Yes, my dear, it just might be.’

  ‘But… how?’

  He took a deep breath, trying to find the words. ‘As remarkable as this sounds, very little is known about Pontius Pilate. Most scholars agree that he became procurator of Judea in 26 ad and ended his term ten years later. Yet nothing is known about his birth or death, though theories abound on both.’

  Some historians believe that Pilate was executed by the Roman Senate shortly after Tiberius’s death in 37 ad. Others claim that Pilate committed suicide, drowning his sorrows in a lake near Lucerne, Switzerland — a lake that is located on Mount Pilatus. Meanwhile, German folklore insists that Pilate lived a long and happy life in Vienna Allobrogum (Vienne on the Rhone) where a fifty-two-foot monument, called Pontius Pilate’s tomb, still stands today.

  ‘Despite these uncertainties,’ Boyd stressed, ‘there are several facts about Pilate we are certain of. The most interesting involves his wife, Claudia Procula. Few people realize this, but Pilate’s wife was the granddaughter of Augustus and the adopted daughter of Emperor Tiberius.’

  ‘What?!’ Maria blinked a few times. ‘Tiberius was Pilate’s father-in-law?’

  Boyd nodded. ‘I bet you never heard that in Sunday school, now did you?’

  ‘No,’ she gasped. Suddenly the thought of Pilate and Tiberius working together seemed like a probability. These men were more than just political allies. They were relatives.

  Boyd continued. ‘Did you know the Coptic Church of Egypt and the Abyssinian Church of Ethiopia have always claimed that Pontius and Claudia converted to Christianity after the crucifixion? In fact, they honor them every June 25th as saints!’

  Dante interrupted him. ‘Dr Boyd, I think you’re missing the big picture here. None of that is important. We should be concentrating on the crucifixion and nothing else.’

  ‘Which is my point exactly!’ he said with a dismissive wave. ‘For years now I thought that they were nuts, honoring Pontius Pilate as a hero. Calling him a Christian. Now I know that they were right. Good heavens! He actually started the religion. I feel like such a fool.’

  ‘You feel like a fool?’ she blurted. ‘How do you think I feel? I just found out that we’ve been running around Europe looking for my relative. That a painting of the laughing man was hanging on my father’s wall!’ She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. ‘How could we have forgotten Pilate? He’s such an obvious candidate. We should’ve considered him.’

  Boyd comforted her. ‘Come, come, my dear. You’re not alone in this. All of us ignored Pilate as a suspect. Cheer up! It’s not the end of the world.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said a new voice from the doorway. Stunned, they whirled around and saw Benito Pelati and four armed guards enter the room. ‘For Dante.’

  Benito punctuated his statement by firing two quick rounds. Spray erupted from Dante’s chest, staining the painting of Pilate and the entire wall behind him. Then, as if in slow motion, his lifeless body slid out of the leather chair and onto the floor below. The sight of this filled Maria with such a murderous rage she sprang forward and tried to knock the gun out of her father’s hands. But a guard intervened, blocking her path with his body.

  Undeterred, she tried to go through him, clawing at his face with a flurry of slaps and punches. The guard briefly took the punishment before ending Maria’s antics with a head-butt to the bridge of her nose. Then he finished her off with a right hook to the chin, a blow that sent her crashing through the glass coffee table behind her.

  Impressed with her fighting spirit, Benito stared at Maria. ‘Who would have guessed it? Of all my children, the one with the biggest balls happened to be the girl.’

  72

  Maria regained consciousness, tied to a chair. Blood trickled from her nose and mouth. Gashes covered her. Shards of glass stuck out of her flesh like porcupine quills. The room was spinning.

  She blinked a few times and tried to focus on the blurred figure in front of her. Fog blanketed everything. Her vision. Her memory. Her hearing. The muffled sound of her name filled her head like an echo. Someone was speaking to her. She blinked again, trying to figure out who it was.

  ‘Maria?’ her father repeated. ‘Can you hear me?’

  ‘What?’ she slurred. ‘Where am I?’

  ‘You’re home, Maria. After all these years, you’re finally home… I think that calls for a celebration.’ One of the guards handed a bottle of vodka to Benito, who preceded to dump it over Maria’s head. The fiery liquid seeped into her wounds, causing a thunderbolt of pain to surge through her body. He laughed at her screams of agony. ‘Makes you feel alive, doesn’t it?’

  Suddenly the details of her situation hit her like an avalanche. She knew where she was and what was happening. Worst of all, she knew who was t
aunting her. In an instant her longtime nightmares had become a reality. She was sitting in front of her father.

  Benito said, ‘I knew I’d see you again someday. Though I never imagined it’d be like this.’

  ‘Me, either,’ she spat. ‘I was hoping it was at your deathbed.’

  He shook his head. ‘Instead, it’s taking place at yours.’

  Maria glanced around the room, searching for hope. A weapon. An escape route. Anything helpful. That’s when she noticed Dr Boyd tied up next to her. His chin was slumped against his chest. His shirt was drenched in blood. His eyes and cheeks were swollen from repeated blows to his face. ‘Oh my God! What did you do to him?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything. My men did quite a bit, though. They got angry when my questions went unanswered.’ He studied the horror in her dark brown eyes. He had seen the same look many years ago during a similar situation, one that had happened in the same room. ‘Hopefully, you’ll be more cooperative than he was.’

  ‘Don’t count on it.’

  He shrugged. ‘Too bad. Then I guess you’ll suffer the same fate as your mother.’

  ‘My mother? What do you mean? What are you talking about?’

  He smiled. He knew she would take the bait. How could she possibly avoid it? ‘Come now, Maria. You don’t really think that she killed herself, do you?

  You knew her better than anyone. Did she seem like the suicidal type?’

  The room started spinning again, this time from all the questions that were swirling in her head. She’d always had doubts about her mother’s death. Suddenly everything started rushing to the surface. How did her mother die? What really happened? Was she killed? Was it an accident? There were so many things that she wanted to ask, she was unable to speak at all.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ Benito offered. ‘I’ll trade you for information. You answer one of my questions and I’ll answer one of yours… How does that sound?’

  She nodded, accepting the devil’s terms without hesitation.

  He pulled up a chair and sat across from her, hoping to read the truth in her eyes. ‘Who knows about the Catacombs?’

  ‘Half of Europe,’ she groaned, still feeling the burning in her skin. ‘People have been talking about them for years.’

  Benito smirked at her insolence. Then he showed how he really felt by pushing a chunk of glass that jutted out of her thigh. Her scream filled the room, turning his smirk into a smile. ‘This doesn’t have to be difficult. All I’m looking for is the truth. If you give that to me, I’ll give you what you’re looking for… But if you lie, you will suffer… Understood?’

  She nodded in understanding.

  ‘Who knows about the Catacombs?’

  ‘Just us… Boyd and me… We didn’t trust anyone else… so we kept it to ourselves.’

  ‘And what of the others? Petr Ulster? Payne and Jones? What do they know?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she insisted, still catching her breath. ‘They know we were looking for them. They didn’t know we found them.’

  Benito nodded. Unbeknownst to Maria, Dr Boyd had blurted the same thing during his interrogation, leaving Benito little choice but to believe them. At least for now. Later he’d let his men take a crack at them with slightly more persuasive methods.

  ‘My turn,’ she grunted. ‘What happened to my mother?’

  ‘You don’t waste any time, do you? So I won’t either. Your mother was killed.’

  ‘Killed? By who?’

  ‘Sorry, Maria. It’s my turn now. You just used your question.’

  ‘But — ’

  ‘But nothing!’ He tapped his finger on the shard of glass, just to let her know he was in charge. ‘What did you take from the Catacombs?’

  ‘A scroll. We took a scroll. Nothing else.’

  ‘Be more specific,’ he demanded. ‘Tell me about the scroll.’

  ‘No, that’s another question.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s not a question. It’s an order. Tell me about the scroll.’ He emphasized his point by putting more weight on the shard. ‘Your original answer was incomplete.’

  ‘Fine,’ she grunted, hating him more by the minute. ‘We found it in a bronze cylinder. In the basement.’

  ‘In the documents room. Inside a stone chest with his picture on it.’ He pointed to the painting behind the desk. ‘Am I right?’

  She nodded, confused. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘How? Because that’s where I left it. You don’t actually think that you were the first explorers inside the Catacombs?… That’s amazing. Women can be so naive.’

  ‘What? Wait a second! You mean you’ve been inside?’

  ‘Of course I’ve been inside. I discovered them. Or should I say rediscovered them. The Church has known about the Catacombs for years.’

  ‘But the scroll? If they knew about the scroll, why did they leave it there?’

  Benito flashed a patronizing smile. How could she be so dumb? ‘The Church didn’t know about the scroll or the lower level. The Romans sealed the entrance to the staircase two thousand years ago. It stayed closed until I ran tests on the plateau and discovered the basement.’

  He grinned at the irony of the scroll’s resting place. Pope Urban VI had selected Orvieto as the perfect spot to protect the Vatican during the Great Schism. Meanwhile an even bigger threat — a document that could shatter Christianity and everything that the Church stood for — sat unnoticed the entire time he used the Catacombs. Benito realized if any of the pope’s men had found the hidden entrance to the staircase, the evidence of Pilate’s plot would’ve been destroyed by the Church in the 1300s. Thankfully, that never happened.

  ‘My turn,’ Maria said boldly. ‘Why was my mother killed?’

  ‘Why?… Because of you.’

  ‘What? What do you mean?’

  He raised his finger, telling her to stop. ‘Did you translate the scroll?’

  Maria wanted to lie. Yet she knew if he sensed it, he’d stop giving her information about her mother. And that was something she couldn’t risk. To her, the mystery of her mother’s death was more important than the secret of the scroll. ‘Yes. We translated it in Milan.’

  He had expected as much. ‘Then you know the truth. The hero of the crucifixion wasn’t Christ. The real hero was Pilate, your ancestor. His con created the biggest religion of all time.’

  She shrugged, refusing to give him a reaction. ‘Why was she killed for me?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear what I said? You’re related to Pontius Pilate. He was your forefather.’

  ‘So? I’m more concerned with my mother. Why did you kill her?’

  He grinned at her audacity. He decided to reward it with the answer. ‘Why? Because she wanted you back. You were her little girl… From the moment you went to school, she became increasingly difficult to handle. She knew I wasn’t going to give in to her, so she decided to apply some outside pressure, hoping to change my mind.’

  ‘What kind of pressure?’

  Benito shook his head. Her turn was over. ‘When Roberto was tortured, what did he reveal?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there.’

  ‘Maria,’ he said sternly, putting his hand on the glass shard.

  ‘I’m serious. I wasn’t there. That’s why Payne cut off Roberto’s finger for identification. If I’d been there, I would’ve identified him myself.’

  Benito considered this, then nodded.

  ‘What kind of pressure?’ she repeated.

  ‘Your mother found information about the Catacombs in my office. She threatened to go public unless I let you return home.’

  Finally, everything started to make sense. That’s the reason her mother had called her at school and told her to pack her bags. She figured the info about the Catacombs would be enough to buy Maria a ticket home. Obviously, she was wrong. ‘So you had her killed?’

  ‘No, I killed her myself. Right here in this room.’ He smiled, thinking back to that day. She was his wife, so he f
elt his actions were well within his rights. Just like putting the family dog to sleep. ‘No woman was going to tell me what to do. Not in my home.

  Not over Orvieto. This was my family’s secret, not hers. She had no business getting involved in this. She deserved to die.’

  73

  Payne briefed Nick Dial en route to Lake Albano, warning him what type of guards Benito Pelati had on his payroll. Ex-military, ex-Swiss Guard, the type of guys that two ex-MANIACs knew how to handle. Dial realized he’d be screwed without their help, so he said a few words and made them official Interpol deputies. Somehow Payne and Jones didn’t think it was very legal.

  Dial called for reinforcements, too, but they managed to beat the local police to the scene. Too bad. They weren’t waiting for anyone. Not with Boyd and Maria in captivity.

  An iron gate greeted them at the front of the property, as did an empty guard station. Payne helped Jones and Dial over the wall before he climbed it on his own. The yard was dark and spacious. They dashed through the bushes and trees, keeping an eye out for the security staff. They weren’t even sure that anyone was home until they heard a gunshot. Then another. Two identical sounds coming from somewhere inside the house. It was time to make their move. They didn’t know who was involved or what they were facing, but they didn’t care. Gunshots in a house were never good. So they decided to put a stop to them.

  Jones led the charge to the front door, while Dial covered his back. Payne crept along the perimeter, looking in windows, trying to get a feel for the interior. He plotted escape routes, spotted weaknesses, estimated room locations and dimensions. Lives were on the line, and he knew it. The more information he had going in, the more corpses they’d have coming out. The enemy’s corpses, not their own. Payne refused to let his guys get killed during missions.

  Payne reached the front porch just as Jones had sprung the lock. Payne briefed them on what he’d seen and volunteered to take the lead. There were no objections. Dial went next, followed by Jones. A sweeping staircase went up both sides of the foyer and met on the second floor. Paintings and statues lined the walls. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, though it gave them no light. They were standing in near darkness, thankful for the faint glow that came from deeper in the house. They decided to follow it.