by Gregg Loomis
Even so, the locale's more humble origins were still visible, if one knew where to look. An example was a simple doorway between a trattoria and a shop displaying the .highest end in women's shoes. A hallway led between the two establishments until it widened into a series of rooms offering tools and equipment for sale. There had been no exterior sign. As is often the case in Rome, the proprietor relied on trade from residents who knew the location of his emporium anyway.
Such logic, Lang thought, would drive American ad agencies into therapy if not bankruptcy.
Lang selected two flashlights, batteries, and a short crowbar. Paying for his purchases, he walked northeasterly along the Tiber, enjoying the shade of massive plane trees. In front of him, two teenaged girls clad in identical lowrider, epidural jeans giggled as they looked in shop windows. He would eventually arrive at the post office to which Sara should have sent his package, but for the moment, he was enjoying the sights and sounds of the Ghetto, the area occupied by Rome's Jews since antiquity. It had been almost emptied during the German occupation.
World War II.
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As he walked, carrying his purchases, he tried to imagine a connection between a Roman emperor's, Julian's, idea of a prank, what an SS officer, Skorzeny, might have found in an ancient fortress and the murder of Don Huff. He rethought the procedure he was following. Find the indictment of Christ, or at least its hiding place, and hope whatever was there would lead him to the truckloads of whatever Skorzeny had removed from Montsegur and hope whatever it was, it pointed to the killer.
The whole thing seemed like some sort of intellectual Raggedy Ann, poorly stitched together with seams fully exposed. Raggedy Ann or Barbie, it was all he had, the only trail to Don's murderer. More important, his only hope of finding whoever was responsible for Gurt.
He stopped in the post office. In Italy, as in most European countries, traditional telephone service is' administered by the postal department, possibly accounting for the— inefficiency of both. With the advent of cell phones, provided by private carriers, the stuff of legend and jokes at the government's expense were coming to an end. Still, a woman was shouting into a receiver, her hands gesticulating as only the Italians can. Lang would have guessed her weight at a svelte two hundred; and, from the few words Lang caught, that she was expecting money from someone in Naples. From the tone of her voice, Lang would not have bet on her receiving it.
He stood in line before the single window, impatiently shifting his weight as one postal customer after another exchanged pleasantries and the daily neighborhood gossip with the clerk, a female petite only in comparison with the one on the phone.
In Italy, years of pasta consumption and middle age often ,combine to produce a condition not adequately described as "middle-age spread."
Holding up the Couch passport, Lang's meager Italian succeeded in having the clerk produce an envelope with Mr. Couch's name on it. Lang turned it over, making sure the small bit of red tape he had asked Sara to affix to the back was there. It had not been opened. He hefted its lightness. He had expected it to be somewhat thicker.
It is common, he supposed, that we imagine important documents to be bulky, weight added by significance. The woman was still screaming into the phone when he left.
Back at his hotel, Lang emptied his pockets. He may as well stretch out on the bed. He looked at the stuff from his pants: passport, keys, change, his cell phone.
Where ... ?
The device Reavers had given him-he had forgotten it, leaving it on the dresser. Uneasily, he looked around the room. No, housekeeping hadn't made it here yet. The contraption hadn't been compromised. Not that chambermaids were likely to show a lot of interest in something that resembled a BlackBerry, anyway.
He took off his trousers and lay down on the bed, taking a long moment
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to examine the envelope. Perhaps it contained answers, perhaps a waste of time.
With a sigh, he opened it.
Two pages, clearly produced by typewriter, not computer. But then, the information would predate the common use of computers. Other than what was written on them, the pages were blank, no headings, no clue as to a return address. Lang would have been surprised had there been any hint as to the origin of these sheets of paper.
A list of numbers on the left side, a single word on the right, the same word, starting with 24-4-60 and ending with 5-8-74. The word was the same,
"Madrid."
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Rome
Saint Peter's Square
That night
Even at night the square in front of the Vatican was crowded. Lang had relied upon the fact.
Wearing his cassock, he walked purposefully toward the left side of the papal palace, the same place where he had been admitted by the Swiss Guards the day before. This time, though, he had no pass. As he approached, he slowed his pace, looking around until he saw a group of nine or ten priests hurrying toward him.
The square was sufficiently lit for him to see that they were all young, probably students at one of the many schools and colleges for clergy the Vatican operated. From the animated nature of their conversations, he guessed they were returning from a supper at which spirits were not entirely of the holy nature.
He fell into step, laughing gaily when the others did.
In ragged formation, they held up identifications for the guard. Lang extended a copy of his Georgia driver's license, hoping the generous light wasn't quite good enough to distinguish it from a pass.
Without slowing them down or moving his halberd from his shoulder, the guard waved them through.
Once past, Lang kept up with the group only until he was opposite the door that led to the necropolis. Then he slowed his pace and, waiting until a passing automobile speeding into the Vatican grounds could provide a shield, ducked into the shadows. He was certain no one had noticed, but he crouched in darkness for a full five minutes before moving.,
He simply watched. It was unlikely there was observation equipment. Who, after all, would want to break into what amounted to a graveyard? Still, there was no reason to hurry and less to take chances. His patience was
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rewarded when he detected the slightest movement in the dusky dark above the street on the wall opposite the door. Staring as hard as he could, Lang discerned a small camera moving back and forth on its mount. A slow count of the seconds confirmed that the thing swiveled on a regular scan.
Lang waited until the camera was pointing directly at the doorway before he moved. With slow, purposeful steps he reached the wall beside the entrance, his eyes watching as what little light there was reflected from the lens. He could no longer see the camera itself.
When the reflection disappeared, indicating the camera was facing away from him, he moved to the door. He estimated he had about fifteen seconds before he was on somebody's TV screen. He took a deep breath, willing himself to be calm as he mentally counted off the seconds and began to punch in the code he had memorized.
Ten seconds.
As he pressed each number, a green light appeared on a small panel. He supposed his concentration on watching the numbers the priest had used had prevented him from noticing. There was a pause between touching a number and the green light, the time it took for his selection to be compared to the correct sequence.
Five seconds.
He heard the whoosh of escaping air just as he estimated the camera was a second from being directly on the door. Flattening himself against the ground, he held the entrance open, counting until he knew the surveillance camera was pointed the other way.
In an instant, he was up, inside, and had shut the door.
He was surprised by the lights, the same seemingly sourceless illumination that he had seen before. Evidently, the lighting system was activated by the door's opening. Standing perfectly still, he played a flashlight in a hundred-andeighty-degree arc before turning it upward and across the ceiling, some twenty feet
above his head. The constant pressure and consistent air circulation had made the air remarkably clear of particles of dust from the dirt and stone, enabling the beam of his light to search for more cameras.
He turned the light off, and his eyes probed the darkness for any threads of light across his path, infrared, enhanced light, or other electronic streams, which, when interrupted, would set off an alarm. The idea of a motion detector in a cemetery seemed oxymoronic, but, then, someone, probably the ScavoArchilogica, had deemed an outside surveillance camera-prudent.
Reasonably certain he was unobserved and unhindered, he turned the light back on, this time painting the facades of the tombs he had seen yesterday. If the ancient necropolis was as Francis had described it, there would be more than the single avenue taken by the tour group.
That assumption was joined by another, one Lang had pieced together while walking back to his hotel that afternoon: If the Emperor Julian had wished maximum embarrassment to Christians by use of the indictment, accusation,
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whatever, he would have picked a preeminent place for it, not some random sepulcher. What more predominant spot than the closest proximity to Peter's grave? If the hypothesis was true, one of these streets in this city of the dead would be crowned by what Lang sought.
But which one?
The flashlight illuminated another mausoleum and then a dark space. Probing the emptiness, Lang saw a gap, an alley, perhaps no more than two feet, between the structure and its neighbor. Extending the arm holding the light into the opening revealed a line of walls extending beyond the flashlight's range. He breathed deeply and squeezed into a stygian darkness pierced only by the narrow column of his flashlight.
Halfway through, he bumped into something solid. A brief examination revealed an acrylic barrier, sealing the tourist route from the rest of the necropolis. Made sense. No point in trying to heat, cool, and pressurize an area not used. A closer look revealed a door, this one unlocked, allowing passage into the rest of the burial ground. A gentle push and it opened, creating a mild breeze of pressure differential.
The alley led him onto another road, one identical to the one he had left in width and slope. Here, though, dirt lay in irregular mounds, studded with bits of plaster, marble shards, and general rubble. The street's surface was rough, fraught with holes where cobblestones had rolled loose. The structures lining the way were dingy, caked with the dust of millennia. This area had been excavated and abandoned.
Lang began an uphill trek made laborious by the necessity of shining his light on the road surface before each step. It would be all too easy to snap an ankle by stepping into a hole or tripping over the debris that seemed to have been randomly scattered. Parts of some of the mausoleums had crumbled, giving the impression of a town that had been the center of a battle.
The fact that this area did not have the air-conditioning or pressure control of the single avenue he had seen was becoming increasingly obvious. The shirt under the cassock was glued to his back with sweat, and each breath seemed to include as much dust as air.
The barrier between the part of the necropolis open to select tourists and this part, the unseen, larger part, meant that if his supposition about the location of the indictment was wrong, that it wasn't at the top near St. Peter's bones, he would have to work his way across the hill, getting farther and farther removed from the sole exit into the outside as he moved up and down the spokes of a wheel.
The thought was less than comforting.
The air seemed to be increasing in humidity. Lang remembered he was climbing above what had once been a swamp. He had little doubt the fetid springs that had fed stagnant streams were still here someplace. Sweat was beginning to run into his eyes.
Discomfort notwithstanding, he was tempted to loiter, to look at some of
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the sepulchers with particularly ornate carvings, portrait busts or, occasionally, a fresco partially visible through the accumulation of grime. Never again would he have such an opportunity to examine untouched Roman ruins. He shrugged off the thought.
He would be lucky to find what he was looking for tonight. If he made an exploration out of the task, he would be here a month.
Panting, he stood slightly bent at the crest of the hill. Through the transparent wall, he could see the box that held the reliquary of the saint. To his left was an arched doorway from which the keystone had long fallen. Only the packed dirt that filled the structure held it up.
He stood on tiptoe and used one hand to brush away the grit and dust covering the inscription while the other held the light.
"TeutusForneas" Centurion ... ," he read, unaware he was speaking aloud. The rest of the epitaph had been on the missing stones.
Turning, he focused the flashlight's beam on a square structure with the remains of classical columns framing what had been the doorway. The words on the lintel identified it as the last resting place of an entire family of Greeks who had served and bought their way out of slavery. Judging by the ornateness of the tomb, they could have 'bought anything else they had desired, including slaves of their own.
Lang sighed in disappointment. If his theory was correct, how many of these streets would he have to climb?
On his way back down, he felt more alone than he had in his entire life. In pitch darkness in a burial ground, his only companions the dead of nearly two thousand years ago.
This was a graveyard he wasn't going to whistle past.
As he started up his next street, Lang froze, his ears straining. He had heard something, a sound out there just beyond the edge of his flashlight's beam. Unlike the one next to the lighted avenue, none of the illumination from the tour route leaked over this far, and the dark was so complete it seemed to swallow his feeble light.
There it was again, the sound of something scrabbling among the rubble, sending small pebbles rolling downhill. He lifted the light above his head for added range and a pair of red dots reflected it, blinked, and disappeared to the accompaniment of angry squeals. Rats, annoyed that their habitat had been invaded for the first time since the excavation back in the thirties or forties. What the hell was there for them to eat where the last morsel of food had been left in the first or second century?
He tried not to think about-that or the question of just how bold the rodents might be in defense of their realm. He pushed on up the hill, this slope seemingly more steep than the others.
The first thing he noticed at the top was that he was closer to the box supposedly holding St. Peter's bones than he had been either on the tour or the excursion of the last few minutes. To his right was not a tomb but a wall that
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seemed to support the ceiling. Lang gazed at it a moment before he realized he was looking at the back of the so-called Graffiti Wall mentioned by yesterday's guide as denoting the tomb of Peter. It had been part of Constantine's original papal palace and a support wall for Constantine's basilica.
Standing with his head against it and leveling the flashlight along it, he discovered more than a few carvings on this side also. Greek letters were almost as numerous as Latin inscriptions. There were also figures Lang did not recognize.
He stepped back to get a more complete view, slipped, and would have tripped over his cassock and fallen had he not been able to break his fall by steadying himself with his free hand against the wall.
Otherwise, he would never have seen it: a piece of stone that didn't exactly match that surrounding it at the bottom of what looked like one Of the support columns of the old church. Kneeling, he looked closer. A uniform layer of dust and dirt covered the entire wall. Only at an angle could Lang detect a slight difference in the stone's texture, too. Again using his hand, he brushed as much grit and dust away as possible.
Something had been carved into the stone, a series of letters someone had taken great pains to obliterate. Lang stood and moved to his right and to his left. The angle of the light picked up parts of letters, but not enough to even spe
culate as to the inscription.
He ran the light up and down the wall again, making certain of his original observation that this had been a support wall, one that could not have been moved. In fact, in early Christian times, technology would not allow weakening of this part of the_ foundation by cutting into it. Hence the effort to simply erase the words as easily as one emperor removed the name of his predecessor from the Pantheon. Lang sat on his haunches and thought. Most likely he had found Julian's secret, the emperor's prank.
But without being able to read it, how could it lead him anywhere?
Whoever had tried to kill him, had killed Gurt, obviously thought mere knowledge of the existence of this destroyed carving presented a danger to them.
