The Titanic Plan (46 page)

“
Here, gimme it,” Henry said. “Y’see, if you turn it in a certain way…” Henry rotated and twisted the book until the open page caught the light. “See, there it is.”

Archie could make out an impression of sentences that were seared onto the page. But the letters were indistinguishable on the blackened paper. “This is useless, Henry.”

“
But it was Mick’s,” Henry said, as if that fact alone gave it magic. “He wrote in it all the time.”

Archie glanced again at the unreadable chaos of letters, trying to make something out of the writing that was etched onto the page. “I’m sorry, Henry. No matter what Mick wrote, the fire destroyed it. There’s no way anyone could read it.” Archie closed the book and held it toward Henry. “It means more to you than to me.”

“
No,” Henry shook his head and pushed the book back to Archie. “It’s Mick talkin’ to you, Captain.”

“
If he is, it’s impossible to know what he’s saying.”

“
Y’gotta try. That’s why I’m here. To make you try.”

Archie cracked open the book again that night. He fingered through its fragile pages, angling the book in twenty different directions to catch the light from the table lamp. It did no good; the writing was indiscernible. But as Archie started to close the book, the last page captured his eye. It wasn’t filled with the indecipherable squiggles of the other pages. Instead, Mick had scrawled nine large words across it. Archie held the page up to the light, but couldn’t quite make out the sentence. He moved the page closer to the lamp, hoping the direct light would give the paper more definition. The words struggled to emerge. Archie took the shade off the lamp and moved the page even closer to the bulb. Like an apparition emanating from darkness, the words slowly became clear and sent a shiver through Archie. In big letters, written three years earlier, Mick had scrawled in Latin and in English his final message: “
Omnes viae Romam ducunt
--
All roads lead to Rome
.”

During the next two weeks at sea, Archie tried to put the prescient, disturbing words from Mick’s diary out of his mind. He played hours of bridge with Millet, took afternoon walks around the ship’s promenade with Henry, lounged on a deckchair in the sun. Nothing worked. As the ship approached Italy, Archie couldn’t shake the feeling that something terrible was going to happen.

CHAPTER 50

T
hen something terrible did happen. Three days before the S.S
. Berlin
steamed into the harbor at Naples, an anarchist named Antonio d’Alba shot King Vittorio Emanuel of Italy. Archie had an appointment to meet the King and deliver a personal letter from Taft. He was shaken when he got news of the shooting. Upon the ship’s docking, Archie received word that the King was only wounded in the shoulder and had survived. With that bit of good news, Archie felt a little relief.

Millet had booked a suite for the evening of their arrival at Naples’ finest hotel, the
Grand Hotel Parkers
. The next morning Archie awoke with the first light of dawn. Henry, now Archie’s valet by default, was still asleep, so Archie slipped down to the hotel’s café that overlooked the port of Naples. The dawn air carried a winter chill. Archie watched the fishermen sail their skiffs into the port with their morning catch. Church bells began tolling. A waiter brought Archie a small cup that contained a thimbleful of a dark, murky liquid.

“
I ordered coffee,” Archie said to the waiter.

“
Si.
Caffe
. Drink. You like,” the waiter spoke in barely intelligible English.

Not wanting to offend the genial fellow, Archie took a sip. It was like nothing he had ever tasted – deep and bitter, yet chock full of some divine flavor that snapped his senses alert. Archie looked up to the waiter who was nodding knowingly, perceiving that it was this American’s first taste of something so exotic as Italian espresso. “Italy awaits you,
signore
,” the waiter said, spreading his arms in a grand welcoming gesture.

The same week Archie arrived in Italy, some of the richest and most powerful capitalists in the world were also making their way to Rome. Astor had left America two months earlier, taking Madeleine to Egypt, then France. Vanderbilt sailed in early March. Morgan had left before the New Year, first traveling to Egypt, then off to frolic with Lady Sackville in England before meandering through France to Rome. Benjamin Guggenheim was coming from Paris, where he was keeping party hours with his current mistress, a French
chanteuse
named Leontine Aubart. Henry Clay Frick arrived in France in mid-March and booked a train to Rome for the first week in April. The Weidners, including George and his son Harry, began their trip with a stay in Paris, where George’s wife Eleanor remained when father and son traveled to Italy.

Vanderbilt set the meetings to begin April 7 at Rome’s
Grand Hotel Plaza
. It was the hotel of kings and emperors – discreet enough to provide the illustrious participants privacy, and luxurious enough to indulge them in the extravagance they were accustomed to.

When Archie arrived in Rome, Frank Millet took him and Henry to the Villa Aurelia, the
American Art Academy’s
headquarters atop the Janiculum, the highest hill in Rome. The grounds were filled with formal gardens, wide lawns and quiet glades that had a spectacular view of the chaotic city below. “Rome is the pearl of the world,” Millet said to Archie and Henry as he escorted them through the grounds to their rooms. “And Villa Aurelia is the pearl of Rome.”

That evening, alone in his room, Archie took Mick’s diary from his bag and placed it on the bed stand. He thumbed through the fragile book, hoping against hope that it might yield some other clue; that Mick might have had a little more to say from beyond the grave. He stared at the charred pages, occasionally holding one up to the lamp’s light. He thought he recognized some words: “wife,” “fight,” “Finch,” “never.” But nothing made sense. It was like combing through a mountain of sand searching for a diamond. He turned to the back page again and read the only sentence he could decipher.
All roads may lead to Rome,
Archie thought,
but what road do I take now that I’m here?

The next morning Archie and Henry met their guide in the foyer of the American Academy. He was the son of Millet’s secretary at the Academy. “He’s very popular with the tourists,” Millet told Archie. “Has a different style than most. I think Henry will take to him. And you might, too.”

Alberto Scarponelli was everything Millet said and more. He had a youthful zest that was complimented by dancing brown eyes and an unruly shock of thick, black hair that piled atop his head. Words came pouring out of him, accompanied by a wild choreography of tics, grunts and gestures. “Okay, hello, you want the Eternal Beauty of Rome Tour?” was the first thing Alberto said. “Or the Blood Flows Like Fountains Tour?”

“
Blood Flows Like Fountains Tour?” Archie repeated, baffled.

“
Si
. It is my most popular tour. Rome is blood. Its history is blood. Rivers and rivers of blood, oh yes. Sometimes, you listen closely while I give tour, you hear the screams of tens of thousands of Romans who have been stabbed, slashed, speared, eaten by lions, decapitated by gladiators, their blood running into the Tiber like…”

“
Enough,” Archie stopped him. “We want the Eternal Beauty of Rome Tour.”

“
No,” Henry cried out, his eyes wide with excitement. “The Blood Tour.”

“
Henry,” Archie said, shaking his head. “We’re in Rome, the cradle of western culture. You don’t really want to go on some ridiculous tour about killings and murder?”

“
Yeah, I do,” Henry said eagerly. “It sounds great!”

Alberto shrugged his shoulders. “Like I say, it is my most popular tour.”

Their first stop was the
Colosseum
. Alberto led them up a hidden back stairway and through a dark tunnel that opened dramatically onto the stadium. Archie became surprisingly emotional as the ancient arena revealed itself. “The glory that was Rome,” Archie said reverently.

Alberto pointed to the vast honeycombed floor. “Imagine two great gladiators,” he said breathlessly, “their muscled bodies glistening with sweat as they wait for the signal from the Emperor to begin their battle. The proud warriors size each other up, then brutally attack. How long does the savage contest last? Maybe five minutes? Ten, if the crowd is lucky. Twenty, in an excellent match. The men know this battle is for their lives and they are relentless in their fight. Swords cut into flesh. Tridents plunge into bodies. Screams, horrible screams from the gladiators mix with the shouts of fifty thousand Romans filling the stadium calling ‘Good attack,’ or ‘Coward,’ or ‘Death to him!’ ‘Kill him!’ Oh, it is a blood-drenched spectacle. And then one of the gladiators falls. Wounded. His side is slit open. He pleads for mercy. It is up to the Emperor to signal thumbs up or down, life or death.”

“
What does he do?” Henry asked, quivering with excitement, envisioning the scene that took place there almost 2,000 years earlier.

“
Unless it is a particularly good match and the fallen gladiator has put up an exceptional fight, it is usually ‘thumbs down.’ Death. The victor plunges his sword into the fallen man’s heart then slashes his throat.”

“
Wow!” Henry uttered.

“
Yes. The Romans loved gladiator contests the best. They also liked watching slaves and heretics being torn apart by lions or crocodiles. Right there, right where your eyes are now looking.”

Archie broke in. “I believe after Rome fell, the Christians turned the Colosseum into a house of worship. And God has been celebrated here far longer than death.”

“
Yes, God has been celebrated here, but he never seemed to like the place. Too much blood. The only creatures that are happy here are the cats. Roman cats. And they are as vicious as their lion ancestors – they rip rats to shreds.” Alberto let out a high laugh, picturing the carnage. He then led Archie and Henry across the street to a small trail that wound up a grass covered hill. “We are climbing the Palantine Hill,” Alberto said in his most florid voice. “This was where Rome was born, where Romulus created a city and named it after himself. And it is where the first murder of Rome occurred, when Romulus slew his brother Remus for deriding the new city. That murder by Rome’s founder condemned our city to its bloody fate. As Rome grew, the Palantine Hill was where the richest and most powerful men in Rome had their palaces. The great Tiberius Augustus, the second emperor of Rome, built his Imperial Palace there.” Alberto pointed to the ruins of a crumbling fortress wall. “Tiberius was smothered to death by Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, also known as Caligula.” Alberto pointed to another tall wall on the hill. “Caligula’s palace stood there. It was the most magnificent dwelling of the first century. Within those walls Caligula, swimming in insanity, appointed his horse as consul and priest. And it was there, right there, that Caligula had orgies with over 1,000 men, women…and beasts.”

“
What’s an orgy?” Henry piped up.

“
A big party. Very big party where everyone has lots of fun,” Alberto answered gleefully.

“
It’s almost noon,” Archie broke in, trying to change the subject. “Are we going to have lunch?”

“
Si, si
,” Alberto said, “I take you to a great restaurant near the Piazza Farnese. But we are near the Forum. We should go there first.”

A cold, low fog had crept over the Roman Forum. The three descended from the top of sunny Palantine Hill into what seemed like a gray purgatory where the remnants of Rome’s greatness lay strewn about in broken marble and crumbled monuments. “This is the heart of ancient Rome, the most glorious city the world has seen,” Alberto said, leading Archie and Henry through the melancholy pathways to three ancient Corinthian columns that up held up a portion of a ravaged wall and marble roof. “Here is the Temple of Vesta, the heart of Rome’s first kingdom. It was built in 700 B.C. It is where the vestal virgins tended Rome’s sacred flame. And over there…” Alberto pointed to a tall brick building that was in remarkably good condition, “...is the Curia Julia, the seat of the Roman Republic, where the Senate met. On the Ides of March, Julius Caesar was traveling there when he was intercepted and brutally murdered, stabbed 23 times.”