The Last Ember (13 page)

“—you must find where the bridge began,” the professor said resignedly.

“And now we have,” Salah ad-Din said, motioning to where the tunnel’s precipice lead to the cavern’s bright air. “We must now only find where this tunnel continues on the other side of the cavern.”

A motorized, aluminum scaffolding lowered Salah ad-Din and the professor fifty feet to the cavern floor. Despite the scaffolding’s electric operation, it took nearly a half-minute to reach the floor.

“You cannot even be certain there was once a bridge between these walls!” the professor said loudly over the electric saws and bulldozer engines.

Walking now across the cavern floor, Salah ad-Din pointed to a wooden sawhorse table in front of him.

“Yes, I can,” he said.

When the professor saw the table’s contents he became oblivious to the sound of the generators, the shouted Arabic between workmen, the smell of their hashish mingling with the diesel and asphalt.

Across the table, an illustrated eleventh-century map depicted the ruins of an arched Roman aqueduct that once spanned the cavern walls.

“This is an original Crusader-era map of the Temple Mount. I thought
none
still existed,” Cianari said. “Where did you find this?”

Salah ad-Din said nothing, a sign that the professor had touched on a topic too sacred for him to trespass. Even now, Salah ad-Din remembered the instructions about how to recover this map that his grandfather had feared was lost.

The high priest’s path of escape continued there.” Salah ad-Din pointed to the far wall. “That is where he hid the one treasure Titus sought.”

“Why should I help you find where the tunnel continues? So you can finish stripping the Mount of all Judeo-Christian artifacts, too?” Cianari’s voice shook with emotion. He watched a bulldozer collide with one of the cavern walls. “I am an archaeologist. Not a butcher.”

“Precisely the reason I chose you,” Salah ad-Din said calmly. He pointed at the deep gashes in the cavern’s far wall. “You can tell we’ve had little success.”

“Get me out of here,” Cianari grunted.

“To leave now, Professor,” Salah ad-Din said, “is to ignore the priceless opportunity of this search.”

“An opportunity to rape sacred strata that date to our patriarchs?”

“An opportunity to save them,” Salah ad-Din said. “It is only in the absence of your expertise”—he motioned to the giant tractor below—“that less
delicate
means have been necessary.”

T
he lock is titanium graphite,
Comandante
,” Brandisi said. “The officers don’t have the right equipment to clip the lock.”

“Stand back,” Profeta ordered. The officers stepped behind him and Profeta switched off the safety of his Tanfoglio. Steadying the pistol with both hands, he fired at the door. The hollow blast echoed through the ruin, sending stray cats scurrying. The lock spun and fell, and the door jolted open.

Inside the tunnel, natural light illuminated the high-tech excavation equipment against the walls.

Profeta walked up to an umbrella-sized chrome device.

“It’s a helium piston,” he said, impressed by the quality of equipment. “It pneumatically pushes out stone with rapid bursts of air rather than a jackhammer’s metal bit.”

“To drill beneath the piazza without any noise,” Brandisi said.

Profeta nodded. “We must move quickly. They may know we’re here.”

That’s what I’m afraid of,
Rufio thought.

Profeta’s flashlight cut through the brown dust. The faint noises of the Piazza del Colosseo drifted through the storm drains above them.

“This tunnel connects the gladiatorial barracks to the service passages beneath the Colosseum,” Profeta said.

Rufio’s eyes darted nervously, his face drenched with sweat.

“Are you okay, Rufio?” Profeta asked.

“Of course,
Comandante
!” Rufio said, his nerves constraining his breath.

He took the lead to project an air of confidence. But he knew better than anyone the danger they faced. The men responsible for this excavation would not hesitate to detonate the entire tunnel with them inside.

The sounds of the piazza above faded, and only the sound of their own footsteps echoed in the tunnel. Profeta examined the excavated walls.

“It’s as if the digging here was done by Jekyll and Hyde,” Profeta said.

“Jekyll? You know who is responsible already?” Brandisi said in amazement.
Nothing got past Il Profeta.

“An English expression,” Profeta said. “There were two personalities at work here in this excavation. Over here”—Profeta’s flashlight scanned the pile of stacked rubble, sharply cracked bricks, and split stone—“the work is methodical, by someone with scholarly training, as though these pieces are to be removed for further study.” He moved his flashlight to another pile of rubble. “And here, the digging is as brutal as taking a chain saw to a fresco.”

A high iron gate stood in the middle of the corridor ahead. It was slightly lower than the ceiling of arched brick.

With an athleticism that surprised Rufio, Profeta grabbed its wrought iron and pressed his shoes on its rusted cross bar, his beard brushing the top of the gate as he lifted his other leg over and landed on the other side. Brandisi followed. Rufio lagged behind, frantically moving his flashlight’s beam down each corridor. He tried repeatedly to grab the fence’s crossbar but missed.

“Rufio, you’re sure you are okay?” Brandisi asked from the other side of the gate.

“Nothing is the matter!” Rufio snapped. “And don’t ask me again. That is an order, Sotto
tenenente
.”
Second
Lieutenant. After a few more attempts, Rufio managed to climb over.

When they caught up with the
comandante
, they found him crouched in the corridor, his right hand raised to quiet their approach.

“Do you hear that?” Profeta whispered.

Brandisi nodded. The echo of two voices reverberated down the corridor. The three of them drew their guns.

W
hat
on earth
are you doing down here, Jonathan?” Emili demanded.

Jonathan stood up, still winded. “I should ask you the same thing.”

Emili took a step back. “Answer me, Jon.”

Jonathan noticed she had moved farther away.

“Wait, you don’t think I’m—”

“Part of this? Why else would you be down here?”

“Because I saw”—Jonathan stopped himself. “It’s all just conjecture, really.” He pulled from his pocket the torn Alitalia napkin where he had scribbled the fragment’s inscription in reverse. He held out the crumpled tissue. “Here,” he said.

Emili stared at the napkin under her flashlight.

“There was a message inside the stones,” Jonathan said.

“The word
illumina
is imperative,” Jonathan said, “as in commanding an observer to
shine
a light onto the fragment. So I did. I shined a light onto the artifact’s face, and”—he halted for a moment—“some letters appeared in the fragment’s shadow. A steganographic message. ‘
Error Titi
.’ ”

“A message inside the stone,
of course
,” Emili said, tilting her head back, eyes closed. “That explains the bright lamps Sharif and I saw hovering over the fragments in Jerusalem.”

“You don’t know there’s a connection,” Jonathan said. “This excavation could just be
tombaroli
, some greedy thugs searching for artifacts.”

Emili wiped away a small grove of mushrooms, revealing a wall carving of gladiatorial combat. “If these were
tombaroli
, Jon, this relief would have been cut out, boxed, and shipped to a London auction house by now. This excavation is different. They are not mercenaries. They are looking for something down here. A piece of information.”

“Emili, even if that’s true, no,
especially
if that’s true, we need to report this illegal excavation immediately.”

“Report it?” Emili said. “They’ll rope off these corridors for weeks. I’m not leaving.”

“Emili, please, the carabinieri will—”

Emili lifted her hand. The seven years of distance again crept between them. Her look hardened and she turned up her overcoat’s collar against the chill. She started down the corridor. “Good luck, Jon.”

“You can’t even get to the end of these tunnels from here,” Jonathan called out behind her. During his doctoral work, he had toured the Colosseum’s underground with archaeologists, comparing the labyrinth ruins with ancient descriptions. “These passages stretch for a quarter-mile. You need someone who’s been down here before!” She continued walking. “Wait,” Jonathan said, shaking his head. He hurried toward her.

She turned around and stared at him, smiling.

“What?” Jonathan said. “What is it?”

“I hate to think what these tunnels are going to do to those expensive shoes.”

J
onathan and Emili followed the corridor, snaking deeper underground. Bats swung overhead in the darkness. Emili’s flashlight revealed a fresh gash in the wall two feet in diameter.

“These walls have been hacked to pieces.” She shook her head, disgusted at the brutality. “They used power sanders and electric saw blades.
Idioti
.”

The passageway widened and began to slope upward.

“We must be close to the gladiators’ gate,” Jonathan said. “The ground here is on a slant. Ancient sources describe gladiators entering the arena up a ramp.”

He pointed to iron hooks on the walls. “This must be the
spoliarium.
”

“The
spoliarium
?” Emili said.

“These hooks were for gladiator carcasses, to drain their blood,” Jonathan said. “It was a profitable commodity. It was bottled and sold in the Roman Forum as a virility drink.”

Emili stepped past him. “Ancient Rome’s Viagra.”

Through a low archway, the tunnel opened to a chamber that looked quarried out of solid rock. The air was thick with dust; tufts of moss clung to the ceiling. Along the eastern wall of the chamber, a small stone parapet answered for a bench. Rows of grooved notches lined the walls, and Jonathan ran his hand across the names written above them.

“What are all these notches?”

“Victories,” Jonathan said solemnly. “Many prisoners fought for their freedom. Every notch was another victory inside the arena.” The notches were eerie remnants of humanity. Jonathan knew that for prisoners of Roman conquest, these were their last rites.

An etching above the archway read, in deeply stenciled letters,
“Dam-nato ad Gladium.”

“Condemned to the gladiators,” Emili translated.

“An ancient punishment reserved for war captives and traitors. ‘Con demned to the gladiators’ meant they faced trained gladiators with little or no armor. These prisoners fed ancient Rome’s insatiable desire for bloody spectacle.”

Along the walls, ancient graffiti was etched in different scripts.

“All these inscriptions are in different languages,” Jonathan said, his eyes moving across the wall. “Syriac, Aramaic, Greek, Latin. These are languages from the Gallic provinces conquered by the Roman army: Par thia, Gaul, Judea. This must be where prisoners and slaves waited before combat in the arena.” He turned to Emili. “We’re standing in the death row of ancient Rome.”

An air of tragedy seemed to linger in the chamber. The inscriptions were so well preserved that both of them felt like intruders.

“Just imagine soldiers dragging the prisoners of war from this room and hurling them before a crowd of sixty thousand bloodthirsty Romans.”

Jonathan looked at the wall, his finger tracing the names. At one point, he stopped. “Look at this carved name.
Aliterius Actoris
.”

“Aliterius the Actor,” Emili said.

“That must refer to the stage actor Aliterius mentioned repeatedly in Josephus’s historical account.”

“Talk about a bad theater review,” Emili said. “What’s his name doing down here?”

“Aliterius was a favorite performer of Emperor Nero and used his political connections to influence decisions,” Jonathan said. “Later emperors, however, were
not
in his fan club.”

“Apparently,” Emili said.