The Julian Secret

by Gregg Loomis

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  a favor and a service for which a gratuity was expected? Like most Americans, he tended to err toward the latter rather than the former.

  Whatever the art of tipping, there was something not quite right about the young man leaning against the adjacent building as he talked on a cell phone and smoked.

  There was nothing unusual about anything. Italians are perhaps the most accomplished loungers in the world.

  Generally, they prop themselves against brick, stucco, or stone with equal insouciance, seeming perfectly comfortable in contorted poses that would send the average American to a chiropractor. Smoking also is common, fear of cancer, heart or respiratory ailments apparently viewed as less than manly. The preferred method being to let the cigarette dangle from the lower lip or be used in the hand as a short pointer to emphasize the gesticulation for which the nationality is famous. Even more ubiquitous than cigarettes are cell phones. An Italian, or at least a Roman, is somehow not complete unless his phone is held to one ear while he manually expresses himself to his unseeing correspondent with gestures. Sometimes this takes place while driving an automobile or motor scooter, frequently with very exciting results.

  All of this being true, there was still something about the way the fellow detached himself from the wall, his eyes following Lang, something Lang would have described as not quite passing the smell test. He stopped, ostensibly pantomiming some point while Lang slipped Mr. Couch's credit card into a teller machine. The man had positioned himself where he would not be obvious in watching.

  Lang could almost feel his antennae rise and quiver. It had been years since the course in surveillance detection, but its lessons were unforgotten.

  Lang dawdled at a news kiosk and his companion actually walked half a block ahead, constantly turning as he continued his animated conversation. The man was following, but not so obviously as to remove all doubt. Lang took a quick survey of his surroundings. There was no handy alley to draw in his tail where Lang might turn on him. Besides, the area was heavily patrolled by the Polizia, a measure to discourage the pickpockets preying on arrivals at the train station. Assaulting someone who had actually done nothing would certainly draw their attention.

  Lang took his time at the newsstand. Was he being followed by more than one? Didn't look like it. He could lose the man, simply duck into a store and head for a rear entrance. But if he failed, his shadow would know he had been spotted. Better to keep the follower obvious.

  At the station, Lang was certain the man could see the rail ticket he bought was to Naples. The stalker did not board the train.

  Lang was confident he was going to meet someone else in three hours or so. He only hoped he could spot him.

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  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Herculaneum

  Four hours later

  Like any tourist who had ever been subjected to the legal thievery of Italian cabdrivers, Lang had haggled over the fare before getting into the shiny Mercedes. Now the meter showed an extra seventeen euros. The driver, who had spoken good if broken English at the Naples depot, was suddenly unable to remember a word of the language and was reduced to violent head-shaking and Italian invective as Lang tendered the amount agreed upon. The stopped cab was blocking half the narrow street, and the cars behind were expressing displeasure at the delay.

  None of this was a first-time experience for Lang. He used the time to survey the surroundings. On the way from the train, Naples's traffic had been far too dense to discern if he had been followed. As a suburb of the city, his destination consisted largely of mid-rise apartments, small shops, and crowded sidewalks. The few strollers who had gathered to watch the altercation would provide perfect cover for anyone who was now following.

  Conceding defeat, Lang parted with the euro notes. This time there was no question as to the appropriateness of a tip. Unless he could have handed over a live hand grenade.

  The spectators dispersed, but at least one lingered long enough to watch Lang enter through stone portals that led to a path.

  The trail ran along a ridge. On the left side was dense vegetation, on the other a yawning hole that grew in size as he descended. Suddenly, he was looking down at a small town, one in which, other than roofs, the buildings, streets, and public spaces were perfectly preserved. He could make out one, two villas whose timeless Mediterranean features are seen today wherever warm sun meets cerulean sea.

  Herculaneum had been a seaside resort, the site of vacation homes for wealthy Romans. Unlike Pompeii, Herculaneum had not been smothered in a cloud of fiery volcanic ash. Instead, a single blast of superheated, possibly toxic gas had extinguished every form of life within seconds but, other than charring exposed wooden fittings, had done little damage to the actual buildings, leaving them to be preserved by successive coats of mud that slid with millennia of rain from the surrounding hills. Many of the frescoed walls and elaborate mosaic tiled floors had survived, the colors of their designs as vibrant as the year in which they were last used. For years, archaeologists had marveled at the lack of loss of life, assuming the inhabitants had fled in private ships.

  Only in mid-twentieth century had the former waterfront been excavated, now several hundred yards inland.

  The boathouses, evidently used as a refuge pending embarkation, had held enough skeletons to satisfy the most gruesome imagination.

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  The walk took a sharp right turn, ending at a small building housing both ticket office and a restaurant with outdoor tables overlooking the ruins. From the concrete pad surrounding the structure, Lang could see what had been a seawall. Along the wall, several tents had been erected. He guessed that was the site of the present dig. Indeed, that was the only place left for archaeological exploration.

  Two or three hundred yards the other way, the direction from which he had come, a steep hill crowned with apartment buildings stood. Sheets, shirts, underwear, anything that had been laundered that morning flew from the clotheslines between rails of balconies as proudly as pennants from the yardarm of a man-o'-war. The paradox of a cheap checkered tablecloth flapping over the villa of a long-gone, wealthy Roman had a message, Lang supposed, even if he couldn't verbalize it.

  What was certain was that the expense of shoring up dozens, if not hundreds, of people's homes made digging in this direction impractical if not impossible.

  He stepped inside the building and bought a ticket. Outside, a flock of guides waited on tourists who simply weren't there. Lang supposed the crowded streets at the top of the hill and lack of visible parking sent the big tour buses to Pompeii, a much larger if less preserved ruin that could accommodate thousands of sightseers daily. Two hundred people would clog the few narrow streets so far exposed here.

  Climbing down the steps, he followed the seawall until he was opposite the place canvas covered the base. Standing with a piece of stone in one hand and a magnifying glass in the other was Indiana Jones. Or at least his Italian counterpart. Tall, with a broad-brimmed hat, military-style khakis, and knee boots, he was intent on whatever he was inspecting.

  "Dr. Rossi?"

  Indiana turned and looked up with eyes that had become myopic from close scrutiny of too many antiquities. The face was tanned and prematurely lined from exposure to the sun. A queue of white hair protruded like a tail from under the hat. There was nothing defective about the smile as bright as young Savelli's.

  "Mr. Couch?" He shifted the glass from one hand to the other, put both it and the stone down, and extended a hand. "Enrico must have called even as you were leaving the museum. It is not every day we are honored by an American newspaperman."

  The accent was more British than Italian.

  In spite of a twinge of guilt at the deception, Lang produced a small tape recorder, setting it down on a stone that might have served as a bollard for Roman galleys. "I'm particularly interested in forensics, the tools you use to read old and obliterated inscriptions or ancient and faded texts."

  The archaeo
logist nodded. "There is no magic in that, Mr. Couch." He picked up the stone he had been holding. "Note the indentations on this. I

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  suspect it was some sort of a marker, perhaps what we today would call a slip number for someone's private watercraft. Centuries of abrasion in the sand of the beach have worn it nearly smooth." Even through the magnifying glass Dr. Rossi held, Lang could see only faint indentations and grooves. He stood back.

  ''You have something that will enable you to read that?" The Italian crossed the small enclosure to lower the flap of canvas. With the light breeze shut out, sweat instantly began to prickle Lang's neck. The archaeologist reached into a box and produced a contraption that resembled a hair dryer.

  "Please forgive the heat, but it is necessary to exclude as much light as possible. This is an ultraviolet scanner." He held it so the beam would run along the surface of the stone before he turned it on. "There!"

  Like a magician's trick, the faint grooves became readable: ''XXI.''

  "Twenty-one?" Lang asked skeptically, still unsure what he was seeing.

  "Twenty-one," Dr. Rossi confirmed. "What we don't know is if that is a slip number, the number of a boathouse, or part of a larger inscription. This business is full of puzzles."

  He seemed more elated than overcome by the prospect.

  "That light," Lang asked. "How does it work?"

  Rossi put down the stone and opened the flap. The air rushing in was warm and moist but refreshing, like opening the kitchen door after broiling a roast.

  '''When a stone or any hard substance is engraved, by hand or machine, the groove frequently goes deeper than the human eye can see, albeit very narrow. The ultraviolet simply picks up and casts shadows from the otherwise invisible grooves. This one was fairly easy. Had we not been able to read it, I would next have used this."

  He produced a camera with a very short, wide lens.

  "Thirty-five millimeter with a huge macro lens and ultraviolet filter. We would have put the rock on the table there, turned on the klieg lights, and photographed it."

  "Like trying to read the numbers filed off a firearm,"

  Lang suggested.

  ''At least in your television crime dramas, yes."

  He put the camera down and picked up its twin. "This one has the same lens but with an infrared filter. When we come across writing on parchment, papyrus, any form of material that would have required some form of ink, we use this. Often the pigment has long ago faded but it leaves a residue, one this camera can pick up. In fact, the Oxyrhynus Papyri, found in the nineteenth century in what amounted to ancient garbage dumps, have yielded parts of Aristophanes' plays long lost, early parts of the Gospels, all sorts of things tossed onto the rubbish heap from the second century B.C. to the seventh A.D. With this camera, we can actually read what the original discoverers could not."

  Lang braced himself for the full duration of an academic lecture. He was surprised when Dr. Rossi came up short.

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  "I digress from your question. You might want to remember 'Oxyrhynus Papyri' if you have any questions about how this sort of equipment is being used. I'm sure there's an Internet site."

  He spelled the words for the benefit of the empty tape recorder and lifted his watch to inches in front of his face.

  "Oh my. It's past time to stop work for the afternoon recess. The men will be complaining. Do you have labor unions like that in America, Mr. Couch?"

  Lang started to suggest the doctor ask any out-of-work airline employee. Instead, he said noncommittally, "We certainly have them. Doctor, you've been most helpful."

  They were stepping out from under the canvas.

  "Could I perhaps persuade you to stay for tea? Or perhaps something a little cooler?" the archaeologist asked.

  Lang was about to reply when something streaked across the corner of his eye. A flash of a reflection, the early-afternoon sun dancing off of glass. A small, polished piece of glass.

  "Shit!"

  Lang threw himself to the ground, an arm extended to knock down the Italian. Tiny fragments of rock stung his cheek a millisecond before he heard the flat crack of a rifle.

  Dragging the doctor behind him, he rolled under the canvas, which would screen them both.

  The man outside the Rome museum on the cell phone, no doubt a call to a confederate in Naples. A tail in traffic so thick it was impossible to detect. The man who had watched him enter the path to the ruins.

  And enough time to get a rifleman with a telescopic sight in place in one of hundreds of apartments facing the ancient town.

  Dr. Rossi was breathlessly speaking into a cell phone. Lang heard the word poliziamore than once.

  A burly workman, dirt caked to his hairy bare chest, took the doctor by the arm, helping him to stand on none-too-steady legs. Even without understanding the words, Lang knew the archaeologist was assuring his workers he was OK.

  He turned to Lang, a nervous grimace twitching at the corners of his mouth. ''You think it's safe now?"

  Lang nodded. "Whoever it was, he's long gone. Trying another shot's too risky now that we know the area where it came from."

  The doctor made a show of brushing himself off and said with forced humor, "I knew the crew expected me to observe the midday recess, but they could have simply asked."

  The police arrived in force, made a detailed if futile search of the apartments, and interviewed everyone in

  sight, including the horde of guides. The few visitors had been evicted for the afternoon closure before the shot had been fired.

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  As far as Lang could tell, the local cops were pretty sure Rossi had been the intended victim. There had been a rumor that the apartments were to make way for complete excavation, a possibility a number of the inhabitants opposed vociferously without inquiring into its actual existence.

  Only one policeman, Lang guessed the only English speaker, paid him any heed at all. After taking his name, address, and residence in Italy, the man asked, "The doctor says you shoved him out of the way. He would be dead had it not been for you. How you know someone gonna shoot?"

  Lang shrugged modestly. "The doctor is mistaken. I heard the shot and hit the ground, pulling him with me."

  The cop eyed him suspiciously.

  Lang gilded the lily. "I was in the Gulf War. I know what a rifle shot sounds like, and getting down is still instinct." Now that he was a war hero, the policeman seemed satisfied and wandered off to question the workmen.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Rome

  The Hotel Hassler

  That evening

  The train ride back to Rome had provided an opportunity for thought, more so than Lang would have preferred. He was fairly certain he knew the actual mechanics of getting a sniper in place, but he had no more idea as to the reason than before. Whoever was trying to kill him seemed to be intensifying the effort the closer he came to whatever secret the Emperor Julian had left and Skorzeny may have attempted to solve.

  What possible relationship was there between a fourth-century pagan Roman and a twentieth-century SS officer?

  The answer kept coming back the same: None.

  Except both may have discovered a document that contradicted the conventional view of Christ.

  OK, come around on another tack: Don Huff had been killed because of his work, a book on unpunished war criminals, Nazis. As Franz Blucher had pointed out, it was unlikely an ever..decreasing number of old men could or would form a consortium to keep a secret over sixty years old, but such an organization had been put together sixty years ago. What if it still existed with new members?

  Instead, Lang was inclined toward the theory that Skorzeny, either at Montsegur or Rome, led to a larger, older mystery, one of such theological significance that some group was willing to keep on killing to prevent its solution. To the ordinary person, such a hypothesis might rank right up there with UFO

  cover-ups and JFK conspiracies. But Lang wasn't ordinary, at least not
in that

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  sense. Only a year before he had uncovered what could, arguably, be called the oldest and greatest conspiracy of all time. He had also confronted one of the world's richest and most powerful entities, a name unknown to even the most sophisticated.

  Religious intrigue existed, and there were undoubtedly secrets some groups would kill to keep.

  Then there was Skorzeny himself, the brilliant and rarely photographed Austrian. What, if anything, did the information Hemphill had provided have to do with the necropolis? Although Lang had found proof positive, the Himmler order, that the elusive Skorzeny had, in fact, been in Rome, had he had time to explore the secret of the necropolis before returning to Berlin? Likely. Huff's pictures showed him in front of the Vatican.

  And after Berlin ... ? The capture of the Hungarian prime minister, according to Blucher.