The Last Ember (57 page)

“Your Eminence, we understand that all subterranean sites beneath the Jewish Ghetto of Rome are still within the Vatican jurisdiction, per the 1943 Concordat. Our archaeologists’ permits now have been denied repeatedly to excavate beneath the Porticus Octaviae and the Great Synagogue.”

“General”—the undersecretary stood up—“as you know, all subterranean religious sites in Rome are within the sole discretion of the Vatican. Is that all?”

“They are not Christian sites, Your Eminence.”

“They are religious sites.”

“You will not grant our researchers access beneath the Ghetto’s own synagogue?”

“Such exploration would be exceedingly dangerous. Two months ago, the death of Mosè Orvieti, lost in the Tiber, tragically proved that. The subterranean corridors—even if they exist—are available for exploration at low tide only, and even then for short periods of time.” Undersecretary Scipiono tugged on his robe’s cincture and headed for the door. “There is unlikely anything of value beneath the Ghetto.”

Segev stood up as he headed out of the room. “Then why over the last month has your security office installed high-technology surveillance over every manhole in the Ghetto, complete with motion detectors in the furnace room of the Great Synagogue to detect any unauthorized access to the subterranean passages?”

The undersecretary turned around, smiling politely. “You are a determined people, General Segev. You have excavated a national identity for yourselves buried for more than two thousand years.” He stopped smiling. In his eyes flashed something dark. “But some things are meant to stay buried.”

“We are merely asking for the Vatican’s assistance, Your Eminence.”

“General, every nation—including the Vatican—understands what it must do to protect its
own
history.” With that he turned his back and stepped through a private door.

Once in the anterior room, he turned to an assistant. “Follow her.”

A plainclothes Swiss Guard known as a Vatican watcher trailed Segev as she walked across the piazza and down the Via della Conciliazione toward the Tiber. Segev turned the corner into a narrow alley. A half-minute later, the watcher rounded the corner to follow when he collided with a large man carrying a stack of books. The books scattered across the cobblestones. “Oh, my apologies!” the heavyset clergyman said. “Could you give me a hand?” The watcher looked up and it was too late. Segev was gone. The clergyman, Cardinal Francesco Inocenti, walked off, the books back in his arms.

Undersecretary Scipiono flew into a rage when he heard the watcher lost Eilat Segev. A cheerful collision around a corner, a stack of books scattered on the street. It was a countersurveillance tactic older than Methuselah.

“It is a coincidence,” one of his assistants said, trying to assuage him.

“It is not a coincidence!” he said. “We are dealing with the Israelis here!”

The undersecretary walked briskly across the hallway of the papal apartments to the Vatican surveillance room, where three Swiss Guard officers sat in front of their respective screens. “Were you able to pick her up on the cameras?” From the surveillance room, the undersecretary could observe every piece of cobble in Vatican City. A young guard nodded, zooming in the cameras of the quadrant, the block, and the square meter where General Segev was shown winding down the serpentine alleyways.

Segev removed a map from her pocket. The one recovered from Chandler Manning’s body.
About one thing,
Segev thought,
the undersecretary and I agree. Sometimes in protecting its own history, a nation must act alone.
It was the reason Segev’s team had spent two months planning this operation.

She whispered in Hebrew into her lapel, “I am heading down the steps of the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele.”

A voice echoed back, “One minute twenty seconds until you intersect with the team, General.”

The undersecretary watched this on the screen. “Why is she speaking into her lapel? Zoom in.”

The camera frames zoomed in on Segev. The screen captured her turning a tight corner and walking briskly down a side street. Suddenly the screen went completely black.

“What is that?” the undersecretary screamed. He wheeled around to one of his assistants. “Is that a coincidence?” The young guard frantically flipped buttons, trying to find the technological reason. Just as suddenly, the picture returned.

“It must have been litter in the wind. Perhaps a plastic bag, Your Eminence,” said the young guard, his eyes returning to the screen. Eilat Segev was not there. The young guard shook his head. “Excellency, we’ve lost her.”

High above the alleyways, where the camera mysteriously malfunctioned, the nun from the Sisters of Zion Monastery in Jerusalem moved along the roof, reentering the top-floor staff quarters for nuns who run the papal household. She had thrown her shawl over the surveillance camera for a moment, and now rewrapped it around her shoulders. Proudly, she watched Segev from the rooftop, helping her to do something the Church should have done a long time ago.

Segev approached the riverbank. An old fishing boat, a
gozzo
, slowed and an intelligence operative threw a bowline to the shore as Segev stepped on the boat. “When you have a chance, please thank Cardinal Inocenti and the sister for their help. If only all men and women of faith were such friends to us.”

Traveling down the Tiber, Segev could see on her right the synagogue in the dusky light. The undersecretary was right; the tide was low enough to explore beneath the Ghetto for only a few hours a day. That was precisely why this operation required two months of preparation. Segev’s team had planned to execute the extraction at high tide, rather than low tide, in order to use divers with propellered underwater platforms to move the object through the full pipes of the Cloaca Maxima directly into the river.

Segev walked toward the cabin of the boat.

“What is the progress of the Shayetet?” The Shayetet were the Israeli version of Navy SEALS, Israel’s most elite commandos.

“They are through drilling, and the divers are ready to extract the artifact from the bottom of the arch.”

As she spoke, Segev stepped into the boat’s cabin, which had been converted into a state-of-the-art control room. Flat-screen monitors displayed the progress of three divers drilling beneath the giant underwater arch. “All the logistics are going as planned,” a young technician said in Hebrew.

Another man hurried down the metal rungs leading into the control room.

“General,” he said, “we have just received word that the Vatican has mobilized their Swiss Guard. They are searching the riverbanks. It will only be minutes before they discover this boat. We must go.”

“We are not going anywhere,” Segev said. On the screen, she could see underwater sparks from the divers sawing through the bottom of the arch.

“We’re inside the arch, General. It’s dry in here,” said one of the divers. On the screen, Segev watched the diver’s helmet light pierce the blackness.

She watched the divers lower the enormous glittering lamp from the bottom of the arch onto the propeller-driven platforms. As carefully rehearsed by these men in dive tanks on an Israeli military base, the lamp’s rightmost branch had been fitted with a Lucite orb, pressure-proofed to a hundred meters and custom-fitted to create a continuous flammable atmosphere underwater for up to three minutes. With waterproof silicon, they sealed the orb to the last branch of the menorah. Inside the Lucite, the flame flickered, but continued to burn.

“The fire has been transferred successfully, General.”

Within the
gozzo
’s cabin, all activity ceased and the technicians gathered behind Segev to watch the history being made. Segev touched the screen.
That flame has been guarded for over two thousand years.
In the blue-black water she could see the shadowy contours of the menorah’s seven golden branches being lowered onto the underwater vehicle specially crafted for this extraction, a vehicle just wide enough for its propellers to navigate the pipes leading into the Tiber.

Segev knew this was the only operation she would ever run where the commandos were selected not only for their operational skills, but their kohenite lineage.

“Is Orvieti there?” Segev said.

“His body is right here, General. It was in the chamber, lying right beside the menorah,” said another diver into his headset. “We cannot put Orvieti’s body on the propeller platform. It is too much weight.”

But Eilat Segev was a military woman at heart and the Israeli Defense Force’s reverence for the remains of the fallen was unparalleled.

“Then carry him,” Segev said, “but do not leave him behind.”

“General,” a technician in the control room said, “we must leave the body. We have only another two minutes for the flame to survive in the Lucite case.”

“Work faster,” Segev said into the microphone. “Mosè Orvieti traced his lineage back to the slaves of Titus. His ancestors have been in Rome since Jerusalem was sacked two thousand years ago. We’re not leaving him behind.”

The loud sound of gearshifts filled the control room. A portion of the hull had been refitted with a large hatch that now opened beneath the boat, allowing the divers to enter invisibly from the depths of the Tiber. Everyone in the control room fell silent, gathering around the open hatch. The lights lining the underwater hatch reflected off the menorah’s golden surface with the incandescence of a rising sun. Segev knew that no one other than her and her team would ever know of this operation.

Beneath the surface of the water lapping inside the hull, she saw the limp frame of Mosè Orvieti being carried by two divers, as well as the enormous gleaming artifact beside him.

“Two thousand years you both have been in exile,” she whispered.

Segev’s eyes glanced at Mosè Orvieti’s body and then focused back to the menorah’s last branch, its flame glowing inside the Lucite orb as it rose out of the Tiber’s blackness. The menorah’s sheer scale became visible as its massive golden branches broke through the water’s surface.

“And it’s time we brought both of you home.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In antiquity, the
editor
of gladiatorial matches often decided the combatants’ fates. I am grateful that my editor, Jake Morrissey at Riverhead, proved more merciful than his ancient counterparts, and assisted me in giving this project life.

And let me rush to thank my father, Dr. Sheldon Levin, for his love of history and my mother, Lynda Levin, for her love of story. Their respective passions are reflected on every page.

I am also enormously indebted to Suzanne Gluck and Erin Malone of the William Morris Agency for believing in this project from the start. Also at William Morris, thank you to Tracy Fisher and Raffaella De Angelis, Sarah Ce glarski, Eliza Chamblin, and Liz Tingue. At Riverhead a talented core group—Sarah Bowlin, David Koral, Jane Herman, Muriel Jorgensen, Nicole LaRoche, Lisa Amoroso, and designer Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich—enhanced the project at every turn.

With sadness, I also acknowledge Angelo Pavoncello, on whom the character Mosè Orvieti is—fortunately—only partly based. Angelo died during the writing of this novel, and I treasure the wisdom he imparted during our strolls through (and beneath) the Ghetto.

My gratitude also to Director Carmela Vircillo Franklin for her hospitality during my stay at the American Academy in Rome; to the Academy’s assistant librarian, Denise Gavio; to David Petrain, Rome Prize winner in Ancient Studies; and to all the other fellows and staff who welcomed me as one of their own.

Thank you as well to Israeli archaeologist Eilat Mazar; Professor Elisa Debenetti, for use of her photographs of Giuseppe Valadier’s nineteenth-century sketches; fearless Domus Aurea expert Simona O’Higgins; Generale Giovanni Nisti’s staff at the Comando della Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale; and a member of the Waqf Authority who guided me around the Temple Mount with integrity, despite his fear of possible consequences.

And for their inspiration and support, I would like to acknowledge Matthew Pearl; Ezra Stark; Joshua and Andrea Leibowitz; Alessandro Di Gioacchino; Sol Comet and Muriel Cohen; Ted Comet; Clement Roberts; Scott Weinger; gladiator Bob Stark; Sasson Marcus; Brett Spodak; Oshrit Raffeld; Marla Stark; Caryl Englander, for whom the impossible just takes longer; and whether he likes being mentioned or not,
mayn shver
.

And most of all, thank you to my wife, Laura Levin—painter and physician. I cannot fully express my gratitude for her tireless dedication, her keen editing eye, her courage, and most important, her faith in me. A biblical proverb says that a house rests on the wisdom of the wife. So does this novel.