The Sacred Bones (32 page)

Santelli grasped what Donovan was implying. "My God, it's right next to the secret chamber."

"Directly abutting the mosque's rear wall. Muslim and Jewish archaeologists already suspect that chambers exist beneath Temple Mount and they'll be performing surface scans to detect them."

Santelli's face was drained. "Then they will find this place."

"It would be impossible to miss," Donovan grimly confirmed. "If the relics described in the
Ephemeris Conlusio
are real, there's a good chance that the physical remains of Christ may be unearthed in a few weeks. That is why I have come here today. To ask you...what can we do?"

"I think that's all too clear, Patrick," Santelli's voice was brisk. "We must retrieve those relics from beneath Temple Mount. Over two billion Christians depend on the Gospels of Jesus Christ. To disrupt their faith is to disrupt social order. We have a very real responsibility here. This isn't just a matter of theology."

"But there's no diplomatic way to obtain them," Donovan reminded the cardinal. "The political situation in Israel is far too complicated."

"Who said anything about diplomacy?" Santelli reached over to the intercom mounted on his desk. "Father Martin? In my phone list, you'll find the number for a 'Salvatore Conte.' Please summon him to my office immediately."

Veering off congested Via Nomentana through the Villa Torlonia park entrance, Giovanni Bersei slowed along a narrow bike path, the Vespa's engine purring softly.

Here, beneath the sprawling English gardens where a flurry of joggers and cyclists went about their exercise regimens, a labyrinth of Jewish crypts formed just over nine kilometers of what had recently proved to be Rome's oldest catacombs-- the burial grounds that ancient Rome insisted be well outside the city walls. And somewhere in this subterranean realm, he was certain, lay part of an ancient secret tied to Jesus Christ.

Glancing up at the weathered neoclassical edifice that made this place famous-- the palatial villa where Benito Mussolini had once resided-- he angled toward a set of low buildings adjacent to the building's rear courtyard. Here were the stables where excavations in 1918 had accidentally uncovered the first burial chambers.

Outside the Villa Torlonia catacomb gateway, Bersei killed the Vespa's engine, dismounted, and rocked the scooter onto its kickstand. Opening the rear cargo box, he removed his laptop bag and a sturdy flashlight, then stowed his helmet inside.

Though he'd been caught up in rush hour traffic for the past forty minutes, it was still only ten minutes to nine. Most likely, the place would still be locked up.

Bersei tried the door. It opened.

Inside the crude foyer an elderly docent sat behind a desk, reading a Clive Cussler novel. There was a large boat on the cover caught in a massive whirlpool's swirling vortex. The old man's deep-set, hazy eyes shifted up, squinting over thick bifocals. A smile broke across his face-- an exterior as aged and historically complex as Mussolini's villa.

"
Ah, Signore Bersei
," he placed his book down and spread his hands. "
Come sta
?"

"
Bene grazi, Mario. E lei
?"

"Better and better everyday," the old man boasted in thick Italian. "It's been a while."

"It has. Glad you're an early bird. I thought I'd be standing outside for awhile."

"They have me here at eight nowadays, just in case anyone feels motivated to get some work done. They've been trying to speed up the restoration."

The Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma still denied tourists access to the Jewish catacombs due to the intensive conservation efforts that were still underway-- a project now spanning more than a decade. Noxious gases still present in the deep recesses of the subterranean labyrinth of crypts had only prolonged the delay.

Bersei pointed to the book. "I see you're keeping busy."

The docent shrugged. "Catching up on my reading. Still haven't gotten word that we'll be opening any time soon. I need to find action somewhere else."

Bersei laughed.

"What brings you back here?" The old man stood, stuffing frail hands into his pockets. Mario's frame was mostly bone, dramatically stooped by age.

It had been a while since Bersei's last visit. Two years, in fact. This was only one of over sixty Roman burial sites he had surveyed for the Pontifical Commission over the years. "The latest carbon dating results have me second-guessing some of my original assumptions. Just want to have a second look at some of the
hypogea
."

The story was a good one. Only a few months ago, a team of archaeologists had carbon dated charcoal and wood fragments embedded in some of the crypt's stucco. The remarkable results dated the site as far back as 50 BC-- over a century earlier than the city's youngest Christian catacombs. The implications of such a discovery were profound, strongly supporting prior theories about Jewish influence on Christian burial rituals. But what was most fascinating was that mingled with the Judaic motifs were symbols closely tied to the early Christian movement. And these vague recollections had brought Bersei back here.

"I see you've got your flashlight."

The anthropologist held it up proudly. "Always prepared. Do you need my card?" Bersei pulled out his wallet, flipping it open to a laminated identification card granting him full access to most of the city's historic sites. Few academics had earned this status.

Mario waved it away. "I'll log you in," he said, pointing to a clipboard at his side.

"No one else down there?"

"You've got it all to yourself."

Somehow, that wasn't sitting right with him. He smiled uneasily.

The docent passed him a piece of paper. "Here's an updated map for you."

Bersei eyed the revised plan of tunnels and galleries. Now it was even more evident that the passageways had evolved haphazardly over centuries of expansion. The complicated representation looked more like a pattern of cracks in a crazed piece of pottery. A web. "I won't be long. Would you mind if I left this with you for a little while?" He held up the laptop bag.

"No problem. I'll keep it behind the desk."

Handing the bag over, he made his way across the foyer and flicked on the flashlight, angling it low to illuminate the stone steps that plunged into pure blackness.

At the base of the steps, Bersei fought off a shiver and paused to adjust his breathing to the frigid, damp air-- the brutal conditions that challenged restoration. It was remarkable that so many frescoes and etchings had been preserved down here, in an unforgiving environment that had completely ravaged the corpses that once occupied its thousands of niches. Barely any bones had been uncovered during excavations in these tombs, most having been stolen centuries earlier by unscrupulous charlatans who had turned a profit by passing them off as the relics of martyrs and saints. Ironic, he thought, seeing as the place was constructed like a maze specifically to avoid looting. So much for protecting the bodies for eventual resurrection. Come Judgment Day, there would be plenty of disappointed souls.

He pointed the light down the narrow passageway-- barely a meter wide and less than three meters high-- where it dissolved into total darkness only a few meters ahead. Almost two thousand years ago, the
Fassores
, a guild of diggers, had hand-carved this labyrinth of tombs out of the soft volcanic rock or
tufa
that formed Rome's foundation. Burial slots called
loculi
layered the walls on both sides. In ancient times, bodies had been shrouded and laid out on these shelves to decompose for
excarnation
-- the ritual rotting of flesh that expiated earthly sin. All were now empty.

These subterranean galleries had been layered into the earth, with three levels of similar tunnels running beneath this one. Luckily, the chamber he was most interested in viewing was in the catacomb's upper gallery.

The
necropolis,
he thought. "City of the dead." He shielded his nose from the moldy smell and hoped that nobody was home. Swallowing hard, Giovanni Bersei pushed forward.

"
Desidera qualcosa
?" Mario set down his book for the second time and studied the rugged-looking man, standing in front of his desk. The man looked preoccupied. Mario tried English. "Can I help you?"

Aggravated by the formality, Conte didn't reply. Following Bersei here, he'd been wondering why the hell the scientist had turned into this park. Now as he read the signage hanging behind the docent's desk, he was starting to make better sense of it. Jewish catacombs? His eyes panned over to the other doorway, opening to a darkened stairwell. Most likely, it served as the exit too. He liked that. "No lights?" Conte queried in Italian.

"You need a flashlight down there," the old man replied.

Again, Conte was pleased.

"But the exhibit isn't open to the public," the docent continued, smiling wryly. "And unless you have proper identification, I'll have to ask you to leave."

Power wielded by the powerless
. Conte disregarded the request, ogling a clipboard on the desk. A visitor's sign-in sheet. And only one name was listed there; the only name that mattered. Besides his quarry, it was clear that the place was empty. This was going to be even easier than he thought. He slid his left hand into his coat pocket and calmly withdrew a small syringe.

As the menacing figure circled the desk in three quick strides, Mario Beneditti was just starting to realize the danger he was in. Cornered, the old man froze.

"Pathetic," Conte muttered. He threw out his right hand, clasping the docent by the back of his neck, while his left hand swiftly arced through the air, thrusting the needle deep into neck muscle, depressing the plunger to inject a concentrate of Tubarine-- a drug used during heart surgery to paralyze the cardiac tissue. Never knowing when he might need it, Conte always kept a lethal dose in his possession.

As the old man crumpled to the floor, Conte stepped smartly away.

The toxins instantly invaded Mario Beneditti's bloodstream and he clawed at his constricting chest with leaden fingers. His face contorted in agony as his heart seized up like a blown engine. His body gave a last, shuddering convulsion and lay still.

Salvatore Conte always marveled at this method's lean efficiency. Whoever found the old man would assume he'd had a heart attack. Any basic autopsy would come to the same conclusion.

Clean.
Very clean
.

After securing the deadbolt on the inside of the entry door, and pocketing the empty syringe, Conte rummaged through the desk drawers until he found the docent's flashlight. He noticed Bersei's laptop bag had been set aside and made a mental note to take it with him on his way out. Then he reached down to the corpse and yanked away a set of keys.

From beneath his coat, he drew his Glock 9mm. He'd try his best to avoid shooting Bersei. That wouldn't be clean and he wasn't looking for complications.

Flashlight on, Conte stepped down into the darkness and pulled the door shut behind him, engaging its meaty lock.

For fifteen minutes, Giovanni Bersei worked his way deeper into the Villa Torlonia catacomb, stopping intermittently to reference the map. The chill in his bones was impossible to shake and the absolute silence down here crushed his ears. At every turn, history's long legacy of death swirled around him. Not exactly ideal working conditions, he mused.

Without the diagram, this zigzag of tunnels would have been impossible to navigate. So many of the passages-- most of which terminated in dead ends-- looked the same, and being underground he had little sense of direction. By no means claustrophobic, Bersei had been in many subterranean lairs more daunting than this. But he had never been alone...in a gigantic tomb.

Judging from the map's scale he figured he'd walked just under half a kilometer from the entrance. His destination was very close now.

Ahead, the left wall gave way to a sweeping archway-- an entrance to a chamber called a
cubiculum
. In the opening, Bersei paused and referenced the map again to confirm that he had found the right cell. Pocketing the map, he let out a long breath and moved into the space beyond.

Running the light over the walls, he scanned the spacious square chamber, hewn out of the porous
tufa
. There were no
loculi
here, just workspaces where bodies would once have been laid out to be prepared for interment. Sitting in a corner were a couple of ancient
amphoras
, which had probably once contained scented oils and spices.

The floor was ornately tiled, the walls plastered and covered in more Judaic design, primarily menorahs and even strong depictions of the Second Temple and the Ark of the Covenant.

In the center of the floor, Bersei craned back his head and aimed the flashlight upwards. If he remembered correctly, what he'd most wanted to see would be here. The moment his eyes adjusted to the amazing fresco that covered the lofty vault, he felt the breath pulled out of his chest.

His flashlight momentarily switched off, Salvatore Conte listened intently for the distant sounds echoing through the stone maze. Strangely comfortable in darkness, the fact that for the second time in a week he found himself in a tomb had no effect on his resolve.

Totally unaware of his pursuer, the anthropologist was making no effort to conceal the scraping sounds of his footsteps against the rough tunnel floor. And stopping occasionally to view a map only compounded his predicament.

Conte was close now. Very close.

He poked his head around the corner of the wall. About forty meters down the narrow passage, a faint glow spilled out from an arched opening.

Reaching behind his back, he tucked the Glock into his belt. Keeping the light off, he quietly removed his coat and shoes, placing them beside the wall with the flashlight. The Minotaur was moving again.