Wayward Son

by Tom Pollack

  It was after midnight. As they cruised through the suburbs of Rome, Juan Carlos filled Amanda in on the plan.

  “It’s about a two-and-a-half-hour drive. It’s late and you must be tired. Otherwise, we could stop in Piazza Navona for a gelato and some people watching.”

  “Let’s go direct, if you don’t mind. We won’t even get there until nearly three in the morning.” Amanda recalled her twenty-hour day in California before departure.

  “De acuerdo. We’ll go straight to Silvio’s place in Ercolano. Of course, he’s invited you to stay with us there. Now tell me about your life in California. You know, being together again makes me realize how much I’ve missed you. It’s amazing that the scavi have been responsible for this reunion. Are you still enjoying the Getty work?”

  “Yes, I love the job. I can’t say the same for my boss, but the work is great. And I feel the same way about our reunion, Johnny. You know, I’ll always be grateful for your help when my dad died. You rescued me, but it took me quite a while to get my emotional footing. I’ve always felt guilty about the missed phone calls and closing myself off from you and the world. And then you left to join Real Madrid…”

  There was a brief pause as Johnny wove through the traffic.

  “Real Madrid was a good ride. I could never have afforded these wheels without my signing bonus. But I’ve decided my knee injury did me a favor. The team schedule is relentless. Don’t get me wrong, being a celebrity is fantastic. I enjoyed those years, but I’m happy to be back in archaeology.”

  Amanda couldn’t help but think of Luc Renard, and her own crack at celebrity. She decided not to bring it up, instead delving into what was really on her mind.

  “Well, now that you’re done with soccer, have you decided to settle down?”

  “Oh, I’m still playing the field, at least a little bit. How about you?”

  “My best friends are my papyri,” she joked. “And Plato, of course.”

  They exchanged glances with a grin.

  They were now on the autostrada. With no speed limit that any Italian driver took seriously, Juan Carlos opened up the throttle. Amanda sneaked a glance at the speedometer needle, which hovered at the 160-kilometers-per-hour mark. One hundred miles an hour—and other motorists were still passing them! Amanda allowed her mind to wander as Johnny inserted an Italian pop CD and drove into the night.

  ***

  It was nearing two a.m. when blinking caution lights alerted them to a motorway mishap. With a sigh, Juan Carlos braked steadily, and the Alfa soon slowed to a crawl. It looked as if the entire autostrada had been shut down in their southerly direction.

  “Where are we?”

  “Just north of Caserta,” he replied. “It’s not too far to Naples and Ercolano. But I think they’ve shut down the road. Maybe the rain caused a big accident earlier tonight.” Multicar pileups were more than occasional on Italy’s major roads.

  True enough, all traffic was being diverted at the Caserta exit. Even at this late hour, the line of cars was considerable.

  “We’re probably being diverted to Nola. Then we can take another side road back to the A1 and continue on the direct route. Here, take a look.”

  Juan Carlos switched on the car’s GPS. She saw that to get to the E841 to Nola, they would have to make a number of turns on local streets.

  It was then that he noticed the headlights.

  He murmured, “That’s funny.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know this area very well. To save time, I’m taking a shortcut to get to the main road. But every time I make a turn, this guy behind me does the same thing. I’m almost certain we’re being followed.”

  “Maybe he knows the same shortcut?”

  “Not likely. I think we may have the Camorra on our hands.”

  “The Camorra?”

  “They’re the mob, the Neapolitan cosa nostra,” he said softly, not wanting to alarm her. “Lately there’s been an outbreak of carjackings. They go for luxury sports vehicles like the 8C. There’s an international market, all over Europe. It’s often easier to carjack a vehicle with a high-tech alarm system than to steal it off the street. They tried it with this car once before, in fact.”

  Amanda felt rattled, despite his calm tone. “That’s not very reassuring. What do we do if they catch us?”

  “Don’t worry, cara mia. This bambino can outrun anything.”

  Juan Carlos picked up speed, cornering expertly, until they gained a stretch of country road. They were nearing the E841, which the GPS showed as a divided highway. The occasional streetlights had given way to pitch blackness. The headlights in the rearview mirror grew steadily closer.

  He shut off the CD player and gripped the steering wheel hard. “Hang on,” he smiled.

  The whine of the engine and the shriek of the sport coupe’s powerful braking system ruled out further conversation. Amanda prayed they could make the E841, where more frequent traffic and the presence of toll plazas would make carjacking risky, if not impossible. Whoever was following them, she thought, must have a powerful vehicle to be able to keep up with the Alfa.

  A mile short of the E841, they hit a straightaway, and Juan Carlos floored the accelerator, gaining distance from their apparent pursuers. Blurred fencing on each side of the road showed they were in farm country.

  Suddenly, just beyond a shallow curve in the road, an apparition ambled into the Alfa’s headlight beams. It was colored dirty white, with light gray shading toward a huge horned head. It stood on stumpy, sturdy legs that inched obliviously toward the broken white line in the center of the road. Whoever wanted to get past would have to veer either left or right.

  Juan Carlos turned the wheel deftly and the Alfa raced past, seemingly grazing the bovine’s tail.

  “What in God’s name was that?” shouted Amanda, gripping Juan Carlos’s shoulder. They were still traveling almost one hundred miles per hour.

  “Oh, that? That, cara mia, was a Romagnola, the Italian version of a Texas Longhorn steer. It must have gotten outside the fence somehow.”

  “Johnny,” Amanda said urgently, looking back over her shoulder. “The headlights are gone.”

  And, indeed, the rearview mirror was dark. Juan Carlos grinned to mask his relief. “I guess the Camorra got served a fifteen-hundred-kilo steak dinner,” he said wryly.

  “That’s terrible,” said Amanda, thinking of the poor beast.

  They resumed a reasonable speed. On the E841, once her adrenaline had done the same, Amanda questioned Juan Carlos.

  “Shouldn’t we report this to the authorities?”

  “Normally I would. But if we go to the police tomorrow, you have no idea about how Italian bureaucracy would tie us up. They’d want endless forms and probably a personal appearance or two, maybe in Caserta or perhaps even in Naples. Your American nationality could add a complication, with the consulate becoming involved. It’s one of the reasons why the Camorra has such a free hand. People simply don’t want the hassle. And the time that a report takes will mean that we won’t be able to work on the scavi.”

  “Well, if you’re sure we’re doing the right thing…” Amanda’s voice trailed off.

  “Let’s just think of it as an adventure. Benvenuta in Italia,” he said, turning to her with a grin. “But let’s not tell Silvio and Renata—we don’t want to scare them. It’ll be our secret.” He reached over and placed his hand reassuringly on her thigh.

  “Now I owe you for another rescue.” She covered his hand with her own, giving it a squeeze. “I can’t wait to get to work—let’s see if we can arrive in Ercolano in one piece tonight!”

  Juan Carlos switched the CD player back on and slotted in an old Luciano Pavarotti disc. They turned up the volume and sang “Torna a Sorrento” along with the great tenor as the Alfa hummed quietly toward the Bay of Naples.

  CHAPTER 6

  Ercolano, Italy

  AMANDA HAD HOPED TO get started in Ercolano as soon as possible. But when Jua
n Carlos knocked on her door midmorning that Saturday, she still felt exhausted. She had slept fitfully, her bizarre dreams punctuated by a herd of Romagnola crossing a pitch-dark road. Jet lag from the long airplane journey also didn’t help. Still, Amanda roused herself and stumbled down to breakfast, lured by the smell of strong coffee and fresh rolls.

  At breakfast, Silvio Sforza, Juan Carlos’s grandfather, vetoed any suggestion they start the project that day. Amanda needed rest, he said. The exploration might prove to be physically arduous, depending on what lay behind the bronze doors. Deferring to his judgment, Amanda silently thanked him for the extra day of rest.

  The Sforzas’ hospitality made her feel genuinely at home. Silvio and his wife, Renata, owners of a large apartment in Naples, had rented a modest but comfortable house in Ercolano for the excavation season from early April to late October. Amanda was installed in a cozy room on the top floor, whose sparse furnishings suggested it had once been a nursery.

  Although in their late sixties, both Silvio and Renata looked much younger. Silvio was of average height, portly and aristocratic, with aquiline features, a classic Roman nose, and thinning gray hair. Renata was almost as tall as Amanda, with wavy salt-and-pepper hair. They had reared six children, and their second daughter Diana, Juan Carlos’s mother, lived in the Spanish Mediterranean city of Valencia, where Juan Carlos was born.

  As Amanda cupped her hands around her second mug of coffee, Silvio suggested that Juan Carlos squire Amanda around on a private tour of the excavations.

  “Since you were last here,” Silvio began, “there have been a number of major finds. Some of them remain unpublished and have not yet been exhibited. Even with the resources shared with us by the Getty,” and here he bowed graciously, “it is so hard for us to keep up with antiquities in Italy. We simply don’t have the funds. And some of my colleagues are not as assiduous as they should be in making their discoveries public.”

  Amanda nodded sympathetically.

  “If you can crack the code on those doors—and I am pretty sure it is a code—we have no idea what you’ll find. But that is tomorrow’s business. Today, Juan Carlos will do an excellent job of updating you on the local context. He’s nearing the end of his second season with our excavation team.”

  “Why not get started after breakfast?” suggested Renata. “I’ll have lunch ready at two o’clock. Then we’ll all relax with a siesta.”

  She turned to Amanda.

  “It still gets quite hot here in the afternoons.”

  “Sounds like an excellent plan,” Amanda smiled to Juan Carlos.

  “Then we are decided,” concluded Silvio. “Amanda, I leave you in the capable hands of il cocco della nonna.”

  Amanda’s puzzled expression evoked a literal translation from Silvio.

  “It’s—how should I say?—an expression that means something like ‘the apple of the eye of the grandmother.’”

  As they all laughed, Amanda thought she could detect a trace of a blush on her friend’s cheeks.

  ***

  They spent the next three hours weaving between ancient and modern, marveling yet again at the way present-day Ercolano lay on top of Roman Herculaneum. Over three centuries, since the first traces of the ancient town were found in 1709, less than one half of it had been excavated. Scanty budgets, public opinion, and fiercely defended property rights made it doubtful that excavations would ever be complete, or even reach the level of neighboring Pompeii. Most of Herculaneum’s important public buildings, such as the palaestra, or sports complex; the suburban baths; the basilica, or courthouse; and the theater remained either partially or totally buried.

  “Don’t think it doesn’t have a lot to offer, though!” enthused Juan Carlos, listing for Amanda a litany of attractions: frescoes, mosaics, wall paintings, furniture, jewelry, everyday kitchen implements, and partially excavated buildings. The excavations at Herculaneum continued to offer a unique panorama of daily life as it was over nineteen hundred years ago.

  They concluded their tour with an inspection of the new site. Just one hundred yards outside the ancient town walls lay the Villa dei Papiri, still mostly covered by sixty-five to eighty-five feet of volcanic matter. After a seven-minute walk to the north, Juan Carlos pointed to a deep declivity where excavations had been in progress for the last three seasons. Near the bottom of the rough-hewn stairs used by the excavators, the recent earthquake had split a huge wall with a narrow crack. This fissure was sixteen to eighteen inches wide and, he explained, extended several hundred feet into the slope. Juan Carlos mentioned that it was here that the robot with the fiber-optic cable had been inserted.

  “Silvio will show you the pictures over lunch,” he told her. “You will probably find them helpful. But he thinks they pose as many questions as they answer.”

  They arrived back at the house at one forty-five, when it was already ninety degrees in the shade. After a brief washup, they joined Silvio and Renata, who were busy making preparations in the small dining room.

  Lunch was long and leisurely. Renata had prepared a delicious seafood stew as the main course. There were bowls of fresh vegetables and fruits and pine nuts, and flaky round loaves of bread. Glasses brimmed with Lacryma Christi, the local white wine.

  Between courses, Silvio gave Amanda a brief tutorial on the photographs the robot had taken. He explained that some distance inside the narrow crack, the way was completely blocked by a set of tall double doors that looked as if they were made of bronze. On each side of the doors were inscriptions. On the right, these seemed entirely textual, while on the left there were a number of images.

  What had been deciphered so far suggested that the right-hand door had been inscribed with a group of quotations or proverbs. How these related to the images on the left—if indeed there was a relationship—was difficult to say. Many of the images were partial, and some of them were doubtless hidden by volcanic dust or other debris.

  The robot, Silvio explained, was no longer operative. It had been disabled by one of the earthquake’s many aftershocks.

  “What kind of code might the inscriptions contain?” Amanda wanted to know.

  “My best guess,” replied Silvio, “is that it constitutes a key for the doors. We know that combination locks existed in Roman times.”

  “But could this one possibly still function after all these years?” she queried.

  “A lock was found in the Kerameikos in Athens,” he told her, “dating from the Roman era there. It wasn’t made of metal that can rust, but rather, it used a series of finely polished stone cylinders. Remarkably, it worked perfectly. And look here,” he handed Amanda one of the photographs of the doors, pointing to a partially hidden row of symbols. “It’s hard to be sure, but it looks to me as if at least some of these symbols are three-dimensional, extending outward slightly from the door’s surface. I believe these doors may have the same type of mechanism.”

  “So, you’re suggesting that the symbols can be pressed in some sequence to open the doors?”

  “Precisely. Let’s hope you can determine the sequence.”

  The group gave over the late afternoon to a refreshing siesta. When they reconvened for a cup of tea at six o’clock, Silvio suggested that they dine that evening at a local trattoria. Renata, who had spent most of her day in the kitchen, enthusiastically seconded this motion.

  “Let’s spend the time before dinner making a list of the equipment you will need, Amanda,” said Juan Carlos. “Then we can send Carmelo to pick up the stuff at the excavation office.” Carmelo was the trusted foreman of the digging team.

  Later, over an aperitif and with the list completed, Silvio explained to Amanda that he had another, more selfish reason for postponing her mission until the following day.

  “As you know, Amanda, Ercolano is a small town. Archaeology takes center stage here, and not only because of the tourist industry. The residents, quite naturally, are always on the watch for what the authorities are planning to do next. There is
very little trust on their side. They worry about the town government condemning their homes and businesses for new excavations. Rumors fly. So I’ve done my best to keep this mission low-key.

  “Frankly, we think we have some major finds in store. Nothing quite like this has come to light before, at least during my tenure. The biggest recent bombshell was in the eighties and nineties, when my predecessor Dr. Maggi uncovered all the lava-encased bodies in the marina boathouses. That generated a lot of publicity—not all of it good—so we want to keep a low profile until we know exactly what we’re dealing with.

  “I have planned for us to start early tomorrow morning. On a Sunday, there will be fewer people on the streets. The diggers have the day off. We’ll have only Carmelo and a few expert excavators. We’re nearing the end of the season, but there are still quite a few tourists. We’ll do our best not to attract attention, okay?”

  “Absolutely. I sympathize with your position,” Amanda said.

  The conversation turned to her work at the Getty. She filled Silvio in on the antikythera restoration, taking care not to share anything that would violate the Getty’s confidentiality agreement with the Vatican. Silvio said he had a foggy recollection of the ancient computer, mentioning it had been decades since he last saw it. Amanda noted that Juan Carlos was following the discussion with keen interest. “I guess he has made a full conversion back to archaeology after all,” she thought.

  Dinner at Trattoria Viva lo Re was festive. A strolling accordion player took requests, and even Silvio, who had seemed to Amanda a trifle formal throughout the day, unwound, tapping his foot in time to the music. After the meal, Renata ordered a round of espressos, prompting Juan Carlos to reach into his jacket and extract his leather pocket case of Montecristo No. 2s. Silvio deftly employed his cigar cutter and accepted a light from Juan Carlos’s S. T. Dupont lighter, the distinctive ping from its cap blending with the strains from the accordion. Juan Carlos proffered the case toward Amanda, who politely held up her hand.