The Last Ember (25 page)

Profeta looked out the window. “The Colosseum,” he said.

“And one other thing,
Comandante
,” Dr. Odalovi said, standing to leave.

“Yes, Stanoje?”

“After we received the initial results, we thought our in-house machine was acting up. So we cross-checked the results with the carbon dating equipment at the Earth Sciences Department at Sapienza.”

“And?”

“And they said an organic sample that yielded the same carbon results had been submitted only days before. The sample was from the left patella, her kneecap.”

Left kneecap.
Profeta’s eyes drifted down to the photograph, where the corpse’s left leg was still tented upward and the kneecap removed.

“Who submitted the sample?”

Dr. Odalovi glanced down at his notes. “Cianari. Professor Gustavo Cianari, a professor of—”

“Biblical archaeology at La Sapienza,” Profeta finished. He remained silent a moment, watching the afternoon sun rest on the curve of the Pantheon dome. Profeta leaned forward toward his desk phone.

“Damn it, Cianari,” Profeta said. “What have you done?”

A
first-century
map of Jerusalem?” Jonathan challenged. “Emili, unless a map were stowed in an arid desert atmosphere like the Dead Sea scrolls, there’s no way it could have survived.”

“The map wasn’t parchment. It was a painting on the wall.”

“A wall painting?” Chandler was incredulous. “Doesn’t that sound a little public?”

“Not where they painted it.” Emili turned to Jonathan. “I think it’s down in the Domus Aurea, Nero’s Golden Palace. Beneath the inscription ‘Sacred Tree of Light’ those prisoners in the Colosseum inscribed a second line: ‘Domus Aurea.’”

“And that’s not public?” Chandler said. “A map painted on the wall of the emperor’s palace?”

“Where a palace had been previously,” Emili countered. “By the time the slaves from Jerusalem were marched into Rome, the Domus Aurea was no longer Nero’s gem-encrusted paradise. Titus had buried the palace and built public baths over it.”

“Interesting theory,” Jonathan agreed, “but we’d need more historical information—”

“And we have it,” Emili fired back. “In the 1500s, the first explorers of the Domus Aurea described an ancient mural of an unknown city with turreted walls and large public courtyards.”

Jonathan knew that Emili’s extensive preservation work in the 1999 restoration of the Domus Aurea offered her a front-row seat for the sprawling ruin’s history of excavation.

“The map hasn’t been found since, but from the explorers’ descriptions, archaeologists once argued that the painting was of Rome before the great fire of A.D. 64, given how much the fire changed the face of ancient Rome. The fire leveled miles of warehouses and homes in the area that eventually became the space for the Colosseum and public baths.”

“But you said the walls had turrets,” Jonathan said. “The walls of Rome didn’t have turrets until the Aurelian Wall of A.D. 270 to 280.”

“Exactly,” Emili said, “which is why recent commentators suggest the map they discovered in the Domus Aurea was of another ancient city. A city that was bracing itself for the full onslaught of Rome’s force.”

“Jerusalem,” Chandler said.

“Yes,”
Emili said. She was leaning over the worktable with her arms straight, hands flat, and a mess of blond hair dangling just above the table’s surface. It was the same intensity Jonathan remembered. “Jon,” she said, lowering her voice, “the prisoners beneath the Colosseum wrote the second line of the inscription because they were
telling us where to go next
.”

“I’ve brought down some nineteenth-century expedition maps of the Domus Aurea!” Chandler said, quickly turning around, as though they might soon disappear. “Here.” His eyes widened as he unrolled a large yellowed parchment on the table.

“Wait a second,” Jonathan protested. “Even if there is a painting down there, you said it’s lost. The Domus Aurea stretches for
two miles
.”

Emili remained silent, studying the map. Nero’s ancient pavilions were drawn in red, marking where they lay deep beneath the Oppian Hill. Every time she took in the full view of Nero’s sprawling palace, she understood the ancient satirist Martial’s complaint:
Rome is now a single house!

“Jon?” Emili’s voice had raised an octave. The tone of an imminent discovery. “Down in the Colosseum. What was drawn on either side of the inscription?”

“Owls,” Jonathan said. “They surrounded the second line of the inscription,
Domus Aurea
.”

“Look here,”
Emili said, waving him over to her side of the map. “Look where this portico ends. The Vault of ”—she leaned over farther to make sure she had the map’s fine print right—“Owls. The Vault of Owls.” She looked up at Jonathan. “They all but gave us directions.”

Chandler disappeared into the back of the room and emerged from the darkness carrying a large navy bag. Jonathan recognized it at once.

“Why are you carrying that rope ladder?” Jonathan said suspiciously.

“Do you think fifty feet will be long enough?” he said. “It’s the longest one back there, but parts of the Domus are pretty deep.” He placed three heavy ten-inch black aluminum flashlights on the table. “And we’ll need these Maglites,” Chandler said. “It’ll be pretty dark down there.”

“Down there,” Jonathan repeated, struggling to keep his composure. “Climb into the Domus Aurea?”

“Those brick well shafts in the municipal park of the Oppian Hill lead directly into the Domus’s palace corridors.”

“
Renaissance
explorers used those chutes to access the Domus Aurea!” Jonathan responded. “The only reason they even still exist is because the Domus Aurea museum used them for ventilation.”

“Exactly,” Chandler said, “and the museum has been closed for over a year.”

Jonathan knew that the archaeological superintendent in Rome had completed a staggering twenty-year-long renovation to meticulously clean ten percent of the Domus Aurea’s wall paintings for a subterranean museum. But within four years, the carbon dioxide exhaled by tourists discolored the ancient drawings, and the nighttime collapse of an interior wall revealed that the ancient bricks had begun to crumble. By 2006, the doors of the Domus Aurea had closed again, forcing most tourists once again to view its murals only in art history textbooks.

“Jon.” Emili pointed at the map. “Chandler’s plan actually works. If we take this path”—she ran her finger along a dotted line representing an ancient portico—“that would lead us directly into the Vault of Owls.”

“Us?”
Jonathan exclaimed. “Em, I’m not
roping
down anywhere.” Emili saw the memory of Gianpaolo’s death surface in his eyes.

“We don’t need to rope down,” Emili said soothingly. “The Domus museum is not entirely closed.” She looked at her watch. “It still opens a few afternoons a week now for limited tours. Mainly just dignitaries and benefactors. I could see if there’s something this afternoon. I have a friend at the Cultural Ministry who could—”

“Emili, even with museum access, you’d have to sneak hundreds of meters away from the restored corridors to access the Vault of Owls. Those tunnels haven’t been seen by
anyone
in two hundred years.”

“Then what do you suggest I do?” Emili asked, walking around the table toward him. “They’re
erasing
history, Jon. They’ve been doing it beneath the Temple Mount for years, and now they’ve come to Rome to finish the job. If your thesis was right years ago, then Josephus and countless slaves gave their lives to protect the location of the menorah. I can’t let the Waqf destroy that, too.”

“
Brava.
I’m convinced,” Chandler said, handing her his iPhone. “See if there’s a tour.”

I should contact the carabinieri alone,
Jonathan thought.
But that might only put Emili and Chandler in greater danger in the Domus Aurea.
Both explosions, the dockside warehouse and the Colosseum, occurred just after the carabinieri were notified.
Someone was tipping them off.

“Thirty minutes.” Emili put down the phone, looking smug. “How’s that for timing?”

“What’s in thirty minutes?” Chandler said.

“A guided tour, some benefactors from London,” Emili said. “So you’re in luck. The tour’s even in English.”

“There’s a guided tour in a half-hour?” Jonathan said. “Did you plan that?”

“Audentes fortuna iuvat,”
Emili said, and shrugged, quoting Virgil. “Luck favors the brave.”

A police siren blared outside the academy’s gates.

“Or maybe not,” Chandler said, looking out the window. “Today, luck favors the carabinieri.”

“The carabinieri must have circulated a photo,” Jonathan said, turning to Emili. “Did anyone see you come in here?”

“One of the carabinieri guards outside the American Vatican embassy across the street must have spotted Emili,” Chandler said, swinging shut the Casa’s wood-plank doors and locking them. “The officers in their jeep whistled and catcalled for a full minute as we walked by.” Chandler turned to Jonathan. “I assumed it was for her, not me.”

“But the American embassy is on Via Veneto,” Jonathan said.

“That’s the American embassy to Italy, ol’ boy. Rome’s the only city in the world with
two
sets of embassies, one diplomatic mission to Italy and another to the Vatican’s one hundred eight sovereign acres. The American Vatican embassy is across the street.”

The academy’s iron side gate slammed shut, and a uniformed carabinieri officer walked onto the grounds. Jonathan joined Chandler at the window. The flashing light of a lone carabinieri car was parked outside the academy’s back gate. The officer walked at a fast clip across the grass toward the Casa Rustica. Kossi followed, noticeably reluctant, gesturing argumentatively.

Jonathan could hear the carabinieri officer. “If there’s no one here”—the officer spoke curtly to Kossi in Italian, pointing at the wet grass—“then what are these fresh footprints?”

The officer stopped walking and pointed angrily. As though following the order of a furious parent, Kossi skulked back to the academy’s main villa. The officer continued alone. Jonathan could now see his face.

“That’s him,” Jonathan said.

“Who?”

“Lieutenant Rufio, the officer from the Colosseum,” Jonathan said. “He knows we’re here.”

“There’s no back way out,” Emili said. She looked out the window. An ancient Roman stone wall towered over the gardens, casting long shadows over the academy’s well-trimmed lawn.

“I can’t believe this,” Jonathan said. “Not even twelve hours ago I came here a lawyer, and now—
Chandler
, what on earth are you doing?”

Chandler had climbed beneath the table and was tapping on the Casa Rustica’s slate floor tiles with the end of his pen.

“You’re right, the walls are too high to go over them.” Chandler crouched, using his pen to jimmy the tiles. One of them moved slightly, and he got his fingers under the crack and lifted a two-foot-square portion of the floor. The tiles were glued to the top of a hinged wooden trapdoor.

“But not under them. Here, help me lift this.”

Emili helped raise the wood panel.

“It’s an entrance to a Trajanic aqueduct.”

They all knew that the emperors of ancient Rome had built aqueducts for miles inside Roman hillsides, using gravity to bring in water from streams miles outside Rome. But Jonathan had forgotten that the academy was built immediately over a Trajanic aqueduct, constructed in A.D. 129.

“Where does it lead?” Emili asked.

“It runs beneath the Aurelian Wall.” Chandler grunted, lifting the wooden board. “Used over one hundred fifty years ago, when Garibaldi’s men used these aqueducts as foxholes against the papal forces.”

Jonathan quickly climbed the ladder to the stacks, and through the semicircular fanlight above the door watched Rufio approach. Rufio was walking slowly. He removed his gun from his holster.

“Why is he alone?” Emili whispered as she hurried to lift the tiles beside Chandler.

“Because he doesn’t want witnesses,” Jonathan said.

“Aren’t you coming?” Emili called up to Jonathan.

“You’ve got to, Jon!” Chandler exclaimed in a loud whisper. “Josephus arranged the most important heist of the ancient world. It doesn’t get much bigger than this.”

Rufio stood outside the door and wiped his brow with his sleeve. He was sweating profusely.

“Hello!” he yelled, and banged on the door. “I know you’re in there! This is the carabinieri! Open the door!”

Only the rusted shutter of the gardener’s shed answered him, creaking in the wind.

Rufio moved from the front door and walked around the small structure, staring into its frosted windows. “You have no idea what you are in the middle of, do you?” He was now along the back of the house. It was unnerving to hear his voice from each side of the house, as though they were surrounded. A sudden yanking of the bolted back doors startled all three of them.