by A. L. Knorr
Tomio sat down in the chair beside me. I thought I could feel excitement radiating from him. “Do you think we could bribe the operator to turn a blind eye?”
“This is Italy. You can bribe anyone to do almost anything you want, but again you’d be involving at least one other person, and the more people aware of what you’re doing, the more risky the operation becomes.”
“What’s the other option?” I asked.
Mehmet opened a photograph of a very old looking chapel squashed between hulking buildings. It had a tall black-lacquered door with a thick lintel, and an inscription over the door in ancient Latin. “This is the Cappella Sansevero. It contains priceless artwork and is a hot-spot for tourists. In the basement, among other articles of interest, is a section that has been under construction for many years. Progress there has been extremely slow. One might almost conclude that there is a force who does not want to finish the reconstruction at all.”
A new photograph opened, this one showed a line-up of tourists waiting to get in to the chapel. Approximately central to the photograph was a man in a leather bomber jacket. His face was directed down, so we could not see the details of his features, but a sharp widow’s peak made him stand out from the crowd. A plume of smoke drifted from his mouth and clouded his ear. The tourists around him also had plumes of exhaled condensation and were engaged in conversation ahead of and behind the loner.
The skin on my forearms prickled and I knew without having to be told that I had just laid eyes on Nero Palumbo.
“This photograph was taken in January on a particularly cold day, as you can see. There was even some frost reported on the top of Vesuvius that morning,” Mehmet explained.
A new photograph opened, also of a line-up in front of the chapel, with an entirely different set of tourists, but with the same Nero Palumbo as the lone figure. This time he was looking at something off to his right and we could make out a strong Romanesque profile with generous lips and a hooked nose. Dark curls were tied into a short pouf at the back of his head while sunlight glinted off nearly black hair. A cigarette balanced casually between a thumb and a forefinger was either journeying to or from his mouth.
“A mage who smokes,” Tomio murmured in wonder. “That’s a first.”
“We suspect the smoking is less about an addiction to nicotine than it might be about a compulsive behavior that calms him. If I were to hazard a guess, I doubt he inhales. It may be a tactic to appear normal, the way a mimic might do.”
“A... mimic?”
“Yes. Aliens that appear human on the outside in order to move about the world...” Mehmet trailed off as though he could see the looks of shock on our faces. “Never mind. That’s outside the scope of this conversation.”
Mehmet opened more photographs of the same location, taken at different times of the day and in different seasons. “As you can see, we’ve established a pattern here. At first it appeared to us as though he just had an affinity for the art in the chapel—it is spectacular. Then we began to notice that a little over half the time, we would fail to catch him leaving the chapel. This too became an established pattern, until we surmised that he was leaving, but not the way he went in. There is a rear exit, which we have only photographed him leaving through on eight occasions, but two of those occasions were not on the same day that he was photographed going in. That is why we have pinpointed this chapel as an access point. We have documented much of Nero’s movements throughout the city and we believe this chapel is by no means his only access point, but it appears to be one of the most often used ones.”
“You think he took Gage underground?”
“I am as sure of it as I can be without photographic or videographic evidence.”
Tomio and I exchanged a chilled and determined look.
“Then I guess we’re going underground,” I said.
Part Two
Subterranean Subterfuge
Nine
Beneath Napoli
Mehmet directed us to an image of a franken-map of the subterranean city, which he’d compiled himself by patching together what was available to the public, bribing a city worker for a few private maps from the city, and overlaying the power grid and waterways both ancient and modern. All known entrances and exits were marked with tiny stars while dead-ends were marked with a tiny x.
When I asked him how exactly Tomio and I were supposed to find Nero’s secret lair in a timely manner when there were millions of square meters of tunnels and more yet to be discovered, he gave a dry chuckle I didn’t love the sound of.
“I can only give you my intelligence and where I would look based on what I know. Nero’s above ground movements seem to revolve around a handful of locations. One is the chapel, another is Portici, another is the airport, and another is the Vallone San Rocco and other unnamed catacomb entrances. If I were you, I would search the tunnels that are marked with dead-ends. If you decide to go down at night, then the chapel will be closed.” He pointed out a short alley not far from the chapel. “Use this entrance instead. It’s the one the tour operators use. If you’re good at reconstituting metals, then no one will know you were ever there. The gate is locked with a padlock and chain.”
He used my mouse to mark what he thought were the best places to search once we got underground. When he circled an area with a small skull-and-crossbones with the word Pericoloso beneath it, I asked what made the area dangerous.
“Gas, apparently.”
“You’ve circled it, though.”
“Yes. The gases would be sulfuric and you should be able to smell them long before they become dangerous to you. Plus, magi are able to cope with gases and fumes that humans can’t, so don’t let it worry you.”
My anxiety levels had climbed anyway, although I cheered immensely when Mehmet showed me a photo of Nero boarding a small plane and told me that he wasn’t in the country—and that he’d left alone.
I wasn’t all that fond of going into the earth. It helped to go out and get supplies with Tomio as the sun was going down: a backpack, some sandwiches and water. Mehmet directed us to a trustworthy printer who produced the map in eight pieces of paper we had to tape together.
We decided going down at night was the best option since the sun was setting and we were eager to get moving. The underground was big, but with Mehmet’s help, we were hoping to locate Nero’s bunker, or whatever it was, by morning. We crawled into bed at 8:30 p.m., with Tomio setting his alarm clock for 11:30 p.m. My imagination decided to keep me awake, thinking up all the things that could go wrong. Who needs sleep before an all-night expedition? I tossed and turned until I heard Tomio’s alarm then threw back the covers with a frustrated exhale. It was time to go.
Carrying backpacks and wearing black jeans, black ball-caps and black tank-tops, we stepped out into the hot, humid night. The historical centre after dark was a busy, vibrant place. Young men stood in groups on street corners, laughing and joking with each other, smoking cigarettes and whistling at girls in scanty summer dresses. The young women expressed a spectrum of emotion at this attention, from outright disgust to thinly veiled pleasure. Scooters buzzed along sidewalks, street dogs barked at one another, warning each other to stay out of territory that didn’t belong to them. Street cats slunk between legs and narrowly dodged the wheels of passing cars and motorcycles. Late-night vendors bellowed about their offerings: sizzling, steaming panini or fresh-squeezed succo di frutta.
Weaving through the busy streets with Tomio at my back, I felt eyes linger on me, some friendly, others not so much. One dark-eyed youth barely old enough to grow a full beard stared baldly at me as we passed, dragging on a cigarette. He scanned me from the top of my red ponytail and baseball cap to the black sneakers I’d bought from a street vendor. After a quick squint-eyed glance at Tomio, he punched out a sound meant to get my attention.
“Eh!”
We ignored him and kept walking.
“Perché indossi i pantaloni? Eh! Bella ragazza?”
&nbs
p; My Italian had rusted to near-useless in the year that had passed since I’d been in Venice, but I had enough to know that he wanted to know why I wasn’t dressed in flimsy summer clothing, like the other girls.
Black clothes blended in at night, but I wondered if we should have worn something more weather appropriate until we arrived at our destination. Too late now. The wardrobe I’d chosen to keep attention away from us had done the opposite.
“What did he say about your underwear?” Tomio hissed into my ear, miffed.
“Pantaloni is pants, not panties. Don’t worry about it, just keep walking.”
Since we’d opted to use the tourist entrance and not the chapel (which was closed anyway) for the Napoli Sotterranea, it was a half-hour walk from our villa, hidden in a short dead-end street sandwiched between four major tourist attractions: the Royal Palace, the Galleria Umberto I, the Teatro San Carlo, and the Maschio Angioino. Mehmet had shown us other entrances, but we’d chosen this one not just because it was the closest to the villa and we could reach it on foot, but because attention would be diverted away from the Sotterranea’s entrance.
The main attractions were illuminated and bristling with street vendors and buskers working hard for their euros. Traffic flowed past the shadowed dead-end as Tomio and I slipped unnoticed down the short passage to the entrance gate.
A stone face making a surprised expression, its lips forming a perfect ‘o’ shape, heralded that here was where intrepid souls could descend forty meters below the city streets to experience a world 2400 years old, isolated from but connected to the world above. According to the tourist information, sixty percent of the city sat above this hidden world, with thirty percent still unexplored.
It took me moments to melt through the heavy chain sealing the gate, while Tomio used his body to block my fire-light from passersby. Using a little fire-power to heave the crude, wrought iron gate open, I held it for Tomio and closed it behind him. I reformed the chain just enough so that it wasn’t hanging open. Within a few seconds of descending into the pit of darkness, we lit fires in our hands: living hand-torches. The temperature dropped as steadily as the noise from the traffic and people above, leaving us insulated by the cool, stone womb of one of Italy’s oldest cities.
Ahead, hanging in the gloom and reflecting my fire-light, hung a WWII era bomb, a prop. It made me shiver.
“Why do I always end up underground?” I mumbled.
Tomio was too far back—probably awed by the environment—to hear me, but he either saw or sensed my unease. He hurried to catch up, his sneakers soft on the stone floor. “You okay?”
A natural might have asked if I was cold after witnessing a shudder like the one I had but Tomio knew better. A powerful feeling of gratitude that he’d flown all the way to Italy on a moment’s notice to help, gripped me. I’d already thanked him for coming, several times, but I wondered if he’d ever understand just how thankful I was not to be alone.
Keeping my hand-torch to the side so I could see, I followed the tunnels leading through caverns. We talked quietly even though we were alone.
“The last time I was underground—”
“Right.” Tomio was close enough to squeeze my arm. “Ryan.”
Moving forward through the darkness, we passed a collection of staged props from WWII including a soldier’s outfit complete with helmet, boots and trench-coat.
“Yeah. And the time before that—”
“Dante.”
“Exactly. Good things don’t happen underground, in my experience.”
“Maybe the third time’s the charm.”
Tomio then waxed long on just how charming this third time underground could be as we moved through the aqueduct section of the tour, passing displays of dusty children’s toys and even a collection of plants with hydroponic lights above them. The lights were off for the night, but the air was rich with moisture and the plants were obviously happy enough down here, their leaves brightly colored and springy with good health. A long row of unlit candles sat clustered together on a shelf. The room with the plants ended with a damp passage so narrow we had to turn sideways to go through it.
Tomio’s chatter kept me from thinking too hard about just how many tons of rock loomed over our heads, and how the walls of this tunnel were so close I could hear the sound of my own breathing bouncing back at me.
After Tomio had painted a picture of us successfully rescuing a perfectly healthy Gage and giving the Agency the coveted exact location of Nero’s secret hideaway, he launched into telling stories about his childhood. Though many of them featured martial arts, the easy sound of his voice and his humorous storytelling style distracted me until we reached a cistern where we could break past the borders of the tour. To our right, the tour continued around the cistern and up a set of stairs. To our left, a narrow roped off exit led who knew where.
Tomio eyeballed the small exit dubiously. We’d have to duck our heads to pass through it. “Should we check the map?”
Nodding, I shrugged off my backpack and unzipped the small front pocket. Being taped together meant the map was fragile so we squatted and laid it open on a dry spot on the floor to study it with our fire-light.
“There’s where we came in.” Tomio pointed to the entrance marked on the map with a black bar. Following the tour’s trail, which was marked in blue ink, we located the cistern we were currently standing beside on the map, then the exit leading to the stairs which delivered visitors back to the street. The little passage sat almost directly across from the stairs, but no markings on the map told us what we’d find after we entered it.
We drank water as we discussed the options. There were a series of the dead-ends Mehmet spoke about not far from the cistern on the map, but no clear way to reach them. We’d passed other potential exits on our way to the cistern, but they were even further from where we needed to get to, so heading back didn’t feel right. We decided to give the narrow passage a try and hope for the best. If it failed to connect us, we’d have to come back.
Tucking the map back into its pocket and hooking my backpack into place, I ducked into the narrow passage, following Tomio’s fire-light.
It was not a dead-end, but led us through more of the same types of caverns, aqueducts, and squeezy tunnels that were part of the tour. The difference with these though was that they were dirtier, wetter and creepier. No one had staged these spaces nicely for paying tourists. There were no lovely potted plants or battery powered candles for the taking. The ground was rough and uneven and dotted with puddles. My sneakers were soaked by the time we broke into a place that was so unexpectedly different it made Tomio and I look around in a kind of dazed amazement.
We’d been dumped out into a massive cavern with ceilings as high as a church. Beyond our torch-light was more gloom but it seemed like this broad, high-roofed way went on for a long time in both directions.
“Was it a road?” Tomio wondered as we roamed back and forth, staring up at the square columns arching overhead.
“It’s big enough for two cars to pass, so maybe. I think this might be that thick part on the map from which all those dead-ends branch off.”
With one knee in the dust, I laid out the map to inspect once again, trying not to let my imagination overwhelm me. This big gloomy expanse of darkness was almost worse than the narrow passageways. Something made a scratching sound in a distant corner and Tomio lifted his fire-light for a better look.
“Likely rodents.”
“Probably.” Did rodents come this deep underground? The crafty rat was more likely to make his home where there was plenty of garbage and discarded food scraps to feast on than in the deep, dark, uninhabited bowels of the city. But what did I know?
Tomio suspected we’d moved too far south and should continue up the ‘road’ to our right. I thought we were in the block Mehmet had marked as being a main artery for a spate of those juicy dead-ends he’d recommended we’d focus on, which meant we should move to the left. In the end, I convin
ced Tomio I was most likely to be correct because he’d been sleep-groggy when we had the meeting with Mehmet and I’d been clear-headed.
After a standing snack of cold panini and more swigs from our water bottles, we headed down the dusty road of darkness in the direction I’d chosen.
We were rewarded for this choice when we passed a collection of neatly lined up wrecks of vintage vehicles. Pre-1950s cars, trucks and motorbikes sat side by side in forgotten heaps of broken glass, rusty metal and moldering fabric. To see such current manmade items in such an ancient setting gave me a kind of cultural vertigo.
After the second batch of abandoned vehicles we found our first off-shoot. Exploring it together, we found it was a dead-end, confirming that I’d been right with my guess. If we kept moving along the big road, we should hit a lot more of these off-shoots.
We examined every square inch of the first off-shoot, discovering not so much as a crack in the wall or a loose stone that could be jostled out of place. Moving to the next and the next, we found more of the same. The off-shoots had their own clusters of dusty museum pieces, everything from piles of twisted children’s bicycles, to old bed frames and the skeletons of springy mattresses, warped beyond recognizable shape.
One dead-end hosted a cistern very similar to the one near the end of the walking tour, but otherwise the dead-ends were just that. Solid walls. No exit, no entrance, no shirt, no shoes, no service, thank you for coming.
As the night wore on and our exploration remained fruitless, I felt weariness creeping in behind my eyes. When Tomio announced with a yawn that it was almost three a.m., I figured it was time to double our productivity.
We agreed to split up, but stay close. We would leapfrog one another and study the dead-ends alone. Though I dreaded going into the creepy blackness without Tomio, we’d never be out of shouting distance. So we continued in this manner, and as the time closed in on five a.m. I’d lost count of how many dusty dead-ends I’d run my eyes and hands along.
