by Gregg Loomis
He had no real interest in the characters. He had seen enough at Montsegur to have a good idea what they said.
Using his light to motion to the two Wehrmacht soldiers, he ordered them to open the box and bring him the tools in it. In moments, he was supervising two men rocking crowbars back and forth in an effort to wedge them between the original and newer stone. He noticed several of his SS detachment nervously glancing at the floor above, as if anticipating the collapse of the entire Vatican upon their heads. That might have been a problem with the old basilica. Although Pope Julius II had planned to preserve Constantine's papal palace when he began rebuilding the Vatican in 1506, he and more than a century of successors had been forced to abandon the idea. The only part of the original St. Peter's was down here, support columns that no longer were weight-bearing.
In ten minutes, both bars were firmly inserted into the tight space between old and replacement stone. Another few minutes of heaving and prying were rewarded by the sound of stone grinding upon stone.
Squatting, Skorzeny futilely tugged at the smooth surface as if his hands alone could move it. Finally, there was enough space for him to insert the hand with the flashlight and squint down its beam in much the same manner he would have sighted along the sights of a rifle.
At first, he thought he was looking at some sort of wall made of clay. Then he noted the reddish material was round. He pulled back, allowing himself a more comprehensive view. He was almost touching a large vessel of some sort, a jug or vase.
Stepping farther back, he stood. "I want that rock pried fully open," he commanded. "The sooner we can get to whatever is in there, the sooner we can get out of here."
The encouragement may have been the reason that, five minutes later, two men were removing a large, vase like object. Skorzeny recognized it as an amphora, a large container, usually of Greek origin, with two handles, one on either side of its slender neck. This one was the size of a man, at least of a man in Julian's time.
Skorzeny waited until the two men had removed as much dust and grime as possible before he inspected their find. A seal was still in place, and he thought he could make out an inscription in the-centuries-hardened wax. Walking slowly around the huge vessel, hands behind his back, he tried to make a decision. Should he open it here and now?
Probably not, he concluded. There was some small chance the thing was filled only with its normal contents, olive oil or wine, but-he considered that unlikely. There would be little point in storing the mundane in this very special place. More likely, the jug held something else, something that needed to be sealed off from air and light. Like some sort of documents. And it was, of course, documents that the Montsegur inscription had seemed to indicate had been removed to the… What was the wording the Latin professor had used? Palace of the One God?
Whatever the contents, there was no point in risking them here. Let the container be opened in a place where others would take the blame if damage was done. Der Fahrer would be delighted if Skorzeny's assumption were correct, if…
"Herr Sturmbahnfuhrer?" One of the men was bending over, peering into the space from which the amphora had been removed. "There appears to be another."
On hands and knees, Skorzeny scrambled to the opening, taking in the remaining contents. Sure enough, a second container, identical to the first, was clearly visible now that the other one had been removed.
This presented a problem: The box the two regular army men had carried in was barely large enough to hold the first. Orders mandated discretion, and carrying a man-sized, ancient Greek amphora out of the Vatican was not going to be accomplished without notice. He might as well leave with the drum and bugle corps so beloved by the party playing "The Horst Wessel Song."
Machts nichts; didn't really matter. In a day or so, a week at most, Pius XII would be in German custody as hostage for all Vatican treasure, including the remaining clay jar.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Vatican City
Below St. Peter's Basilica
The present
This time, Lang had known what to expect. He spread a plastic sheet on the dirt before kneeling in front of the altered column. He switched on the fluoroscope and, once again, was astounded by how quickly the purple light made obliterated letters jump into view.
"Accusatio… rebellis… " Pretty much the same diatribe as he had seen at Montsegur, except… He moved the light slightly. Except supposedly the very indictment itself was contained inside.
What did that have to do with whatever Skorzeny had wanted?
He was about to find out. Standing, he took two steps back, playing the flashlight over the column. He could see now that the spot he had noted earlier was only the bottom part of a larger segment. A section almost five by three feet had been cut out of the pillar and replaced, presumably to hide something inside. Taking the short crowbar from underneath his cassock, he was surprised at how easily it fitted between the new and old stone. Almost as if someone had pried it open since Julian had sealed it sixteen centuries ago. Maybe someone had, someone like Skorzeny.
On second thought, there wasn't a lot of "maybe" to it. The picture on Don Huff's CD showed" the German in front of the Vatican. Unlikely he had come here as a mere tourist.
What if there was nothing here, what if whatever clue he was seeking was gone? What if…?
The last question went unfinished as he put the iron bar down, turned off his flashlight, and listened. He was greeted by overpowering silence, an absence of sound that is a sound within itself, just as white, an absence of color, is itself a color.
What had he heard? He was unsure. Another rat, scurrying about what had been his ancestors' exclusive domain? No, something more substantial than that.
But what?
He counted off a full minute, then another and another. Could he have simply overheard part of a tour of the necropolis on the other side of the plexiglass? Possible, but he thought he 'remembered a sign announcing that the office through which those excursions began closed for the day at six.
He recalled the old Gypsy woman he had almost struck in the darkness of an alley, the one who had sought no more than a few euros. The paranoia that became the constant companion of all Agency personnel had almost cost that crone dearly. Could the same thing be happening again?
He looked around the inky darkness. Alone, in the permanent midnight of an ancient burial ground, by stealth rather than by right. Anxiety could not find a more fertile breeding ground.
Besides, who would be here at night?
No one but the spirits of Romans dead for millennia.
And they didn't employ magical curses for those without coins to give them.
Probably didn't pick pockets, either.
Switching the light back on, he returned to prying the stone loose from the base of the pillar. With the gravelly crunch of grit grinding grit, the rock fell out of its socket. Lang bent down, spraying the hole with light.
He had stayed in cheap hotels that had smaller closets.
But never one that came with a large amphora.
The Greek jar loomed out of the shadows with a suddenness that startled him. He reached for it before freezing in midgrasp. He stepped back, surveying the entire opening. In front of the vessel he was looking at was an impression in the dirt, a circle that could have been made by a similar container.
But if so, where was it? If Skorzeny had found the two of them, why would he take only one? Only one way available to answer the questions that kept bubbling tip in his mind: See what's inside.
He tipped the jar over slightly to examine its gracefully slender neck and rimmed top. Sealed with wax, wax bearing some sort of insignia. The imperial crest of Julian? He rocked it back and forth. Were it not for the fact the thing was sealed, its lack of weight would have made him guess it empty. But people did not close up empty containers.
Perhaps the contents had drained out or evaporated. He rolled the jar in a rough circle, finding no cracks or holes. Whate
ver had been put in there was still there. He laid the large urn on its side and fished under his cassock for a pocketknife, which he found and opened. The wax had had a long time to dry and crack. It yielded quickly, giving off an odor of dust, long-dead mold, and faint rot. If Lang had ever wondered how eternity smelled, he now knew. Shining the light into a darkness even more intense than that around. him, Lang saw something wrapped in what looked like a shroud, a roll of old, dusty linen. He stuck the light between his. teeth, leaving one hand free to prevent the amphora from rolling down the slope and the other to reach inside.
It was like touching cobwebs. He saw, rather than felt, the cloth dissolve at his fingertips. Light still in his mouth, he stood and lifted the bottom of the jar, gently shaking its contents onto the ground.
The whitish cloth looked as though it were melting as it touched the dirt. Underneath was more robust material, a scroll still wrapped around two wooden sticks, the sort of thing large enough to be seen in the hands of an official by a multitude gathered to hear some ancient proclamation. The part exposed to light was written on what Lang guessed was vellum or parchment. Large patches were missing, holes that consumed whole sentences. Still, Lang knew he was lucky. Other documents of like age, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the' Oxyrhynchus Papyri, had been discovered sealed in jars but had been in fifty thousand or more crumbs that scholars had been piecing together for half a century. Wary of touching a manuscript so old, he leaned down on hands and knees to see what he might have found. The text was in Latin, Hebrew, and a script he did not recognize, most likely Aramaic, the pastoral tongue common to the peoples of the Middle East at the time of Christ.
He started to put the scroll back into the jar, then stopped. He knew he should do whatever seemed necessary to preserve such an ancient and possibly historically significant writing, the only known contemporaneous evidence Christ had even existed. He was aware that, should his harming of it become known, he would be excoriated by academic, archaeologist, and historian alike.
On the other hand, he neither knew nor associated with any of the above.
And the contents of this jar might well give him a clue as to Gurt's killer.
A no-brainer.
He separated the two rolls and began to read the tattered paragraphs.
What he saw was surprisingly similar to the abstruse phraseology of the indictments returned against his own clients. No wonder the lexicon of the law was founded in Latin.
The Romans had perfected legal obfuscation long before modem lawyers.
The part of the scroll he was looking at charged the reus, defendant, with publicly encouraging the people retinere, to withhold, legally due taxes by equivocating or questioning what was actually due Caesar. Another accused of attempting to foment, fovet, distrust of Rome's ability to fairly distribute food by pretending there was a shortage of fish and loaves when in fact an ample supply was at hand, as evidenced by what remained. Refusing to recognize the divinity of Caesar, insisting on exclusively worshiping the god of the Hebrews.
Lang could have spent the rest of the night reading of the offenses against Rome, all of which would have been treason, all of which would have carried a sentence of death by crucifixion.
He sat down hard. Not only was he looking at the only surviving simultaneous record of Christ's existence, he was seeing a Christ quite different from the man portrayed in the Gospels. Leb Greenberg, the Emory professor, had been right: More Lenin than Gandhi. He was also right that the Gospels perpetrated perhaps the greatest historical revision known by blaming the Jews for the death of an enemy of Rome. This was definitely not something the Church would want known.
He could understand why the modern-day Catholic Church would go a long way to make sure the words in front of him never saw light. In fact, he was surprised the scroll had been left here instead of either destroyed or removed to those very secret archives available to few besides the Pope himself. Another look at the columns gave him a possible answer: Until the excavation was done here, no one could have gotten to the amphora even had its existence been known. By the time the dig was under way, it would have been difficult to tell what was actual support and what was simply a part of the original supplanted St. Peter's Basilica.
The Church, had it known of Julian's prank, his secret, would have thought it safe from discovery. Had the Vatican known of the inscription at Montsegur?
No way to know.
The medieval Church, the Inquisition, would have suppressed any trace of Julian's secret along with any who even mentioned it. But today? Would they kill to quell knowledge of it? The Church had, after all, survived Galileo, Luther, and Darwin.
Even Dan Brown.
The parchment could well explain why Pius had remained silent, apparently indifferent to Nazi atrocities, maybe even explain why so many Nazis escaped to South America on papal passports issued for fear of revelation of Julian's secret. But today? Things were very different than in the thirties and forties. Advocates of abortion, stem-cell research, gay rights, and other causes opposed by the Church weren't assassinated.
And there were probably those socially conscious souls who would even see Christ the revolutionary more appealing than Christ the submissive. The Church might even gain converts, or at least attract a larger audience.
It had, after all, been playing the same feature for two thousand years.
But if not the Church…?
What had Franz Blucher called the organization that had helped escaping Nazis? Die Spinne, the spider. But old Nazis would hardly be interested in shattering Church dogma; they would want to protect their kind.
Like Skorzeny.
But Skorzeny was dead, wasn't he?
Lang stared for a moment into the darkness. Julian, Skorzeny and
…
It was. like a mental meteor shower, brain neurons firing synapses at each other, the Gunfight at the Cerebral Corral. Phrases, faces, places blurring into a realization Lang knew he had unconsciously possessed long before now. He had been an idiot to concentrate so hard on discovering new facts that he had paid little attention to the ones he had.
Ah'm damned sorry to hear someone survived duty in Berlin back then only to get shot.
No one had told Reavers Don Huff had been shot. In fact, the close, all-but-prohibitive regulation of firearms in most European countries made murder by gunshot unlikely. Unless administered by the police or some form of government agency.
Any government.
An attack in a jail shared by federal prisoners. And by a prisoner of whom there was no record.
A trainload of treasure that had largely disappeared.
Operation Paper Clip.
A politician's face on television, familiar but unremembered. Because there was no scar. A politician who had reentered the United States on a regular basis from Madrid.
Or somewhere in Spain.
A politician whose plan to strengthen American politics presumably included strengthening the intel community.
Assassins who appeared, knowing he would be on a bridge.
A sniper at Herculaeneum.
How could he have overlooked so much?
Again reaching into his cassock, he took out the communication device Reavers had given him, checking to make sure it was switched off. In fact, he couldn't remember ever turning it on.
He hadn't needed to.
He slammed the contraption against a stone pillar. He was gratified to see it shatter, not surprised a small red eye winked, an LED, light-emitting device, indicating it was operative no matter off or on.
The nature of all cellular phones operating from satellites made them traceable by GPS, but only when in use.
Reavers's gadget had GPS, all right, but not only when actually communicating with satellites. Not only had the identity Reavers furnished him with given advance notice of his travel plans, every move he had made had been tracked to within fifty feet or less.
Lang stood shakily, trembling with rage. Not only had he been
deceived, his stupidity in pursuing secrets of early Christianity had cost Gurt her life. He couldn't bring her back, but he could sure get even for her. He could…
The top of the slope was suddenly flooded with light, as if the sun had risen on the Vatican hill for the first time in nearly two thousand years. Shielding his eyes, Lang turned slowly.
"Take it easy, pard'nuh," a familiar drawl ordered. "No need gettin' shot this late in th' game."
Lang let his arms drop, denl0nstrating he had no weapon. Thirty feet away and at the edge of the glare Reavers stood. From the snakeskin boots to the belt buckle the size of a hubcap to the ten-gallon hat, he looked the part of the cowboy. But no Colt Peacemaker. 44.
Instead, a Sig Sauer P 229 9mm in his right hand.
That was contemporary Agency.
Just like the one sitting uselessly in Lang's bedside table back in Atlanta.
Lang thought there were at least two more men, each carrying something heavier than a side arm. He could not be certain, because the light was too bright, intentionally so.
"So you were tracking me all along," he said lamely. "No doubt Gurt, too."
"No doubt."
Play for time, that had been drilled into him from his earliest training. When faced with capture or worse, talk, keep your enemy occupied. Sing "Dixie" and tap-dance if necessary. Of course, Reavers had the same training. Lang was betting the man's ego would make him ignore it while he savored his victory.
Lang slowly lowered his hands and tried not to be obvious as he cut his eyes right and left looking for a possible weapon.
There was a long silence before Lang spoke. "What is it you want, Reavers?"
The chief of station shifted his weight as though leaning on something Lang couldn't see. "I think you know, pard'nuh."
Lang's foot touched something hard. A quick glance down showed him the short crowbar at his feet. "Maybe you want what's in this amphora. It could cause the modern Church a lot of grief if someone made its content public."
Reavers frowned, shaking his head. "Don' bullshit me, Lang. You know damn well what I want."
