The Last Ember (52 page)

“Where’s Orvieti?”

Jonathan looked to the other side of the cavern, where Orvieti still stood on the platform, fifty feet above the basin floor. The stone retaining wall around him looked as tall as a skyscraper. The giant stones undulated; some erupted from their place, allowing huge pockets of river water to pour into the cavern.

“He says this is a test! Something about the Red Sea!” Jonathan shook his head. “We have to get out of here. There isn’t time.”

“The Red Sea?” Emili surveyed the collapsing basin. She saw Orvieti standing alone on the platform. She recalled her conversation with him the day before.
You must believe in the splitting of the Red Sea.
“We’ve got to get up there!” Emili screamed over the roar of the water.

“That’s the safest place in the cavern!” Emili said. “Trust me! I think he’s right!”

The water rose past their knees, and Jonathan led Emili up the only staircase. The smooth stones were slippery from the water gushing out of the wall twenty feet in front of them. Jonathan struggled to keep his balance.

As they moved closer to the wall, jets of water burst forth on both sides of the stairs. Jonathan ducked as he climbed, lowering his center of gravity. Finally they reached the platform. Orvieti remained staring at the wall in front of him.

“The stairs were not the test!” Orvieti repeated, his eyes ablaze.
One must believe in the splitting of the Red Sea.
“Move closer to the wall!”

“Closer to the wall?” Jonathan yelled. “The whole river is going to—”

It was then that the entire wall in front of them began to shake. No longer did particular sections give way, but the entire structure of the wall seemed on the verge of collapse. The three of them stood at its center, as though seeking safety from a collapsing skyscraper by standing at its foot.

The limestone blocks, weighing hundreds of tons, burst outward on either side of the platform as two great hillsides of water—each fifty feet high—poured forth into the basin around them. Sunlight through the broken dam streamed into the basin, illuminating the fish and enormous logs of driftwood that curled over on both sides of them. The platform on which they stood had been carefully engineered to remain bone dry, lying in front of the one intact piece of wall.

Inside the archway before them, the small stones that blocked up the opening began to crumble and give way to a dark corridor that resembled a tunnel inside the curl of a towering wave.

“The Red Sea!” Emili shouted in disbelief. All three of them watched the walls of water on either side of them. “The corridor leads under the Tiber!” She shined her flashlight through the archway in front of them. They helped Orvieti step over the bricks, and the three of them entered the dark tunnel in the wall. The tunnel ceiling was high enough for them to stand, and its walls were made of very ancient brickwork made from crushed lime and sand.

T
he materials from the International Centre for Conservation in Rome had been couriered to Profeta’s office. Brandisi spread them across the small conference table and studied them.

“I think you should see this,
Comandante
,” Brandisi said.

Profeta looked up and noticed that the lieutenant had turned white. Brandisi pointed at one of the photographs of Dr. Emili Travia’s team, standing in the Valley of Kidron adjacent to the Temple Mount, picking through huge mounds of rubble. It was a candid photograph with Drs. Emili Travia and Sharif Lebag crouching to pick up pieces of pottery. Brandisi leaned over the photograph.

“Him, without the beard.”

“What about him?”

“That’s who I saw in the archives of the Great Synagogue,” Brandisi said.

“My God, Alessandro,” Profeta said, and at first Brandisi did not look up, unsure the
comandante
even knew his Christian name.

“What is it,
Comandante
?”

Profeta remembered the director’s assurance.
The DNA results confirmed Dr. Lebag’s remains. I oversaw the investigation myself.
Profeta swayed for a moment, swept away by the vastness of the conspiracy. He pointed at the picture. “Lieutenant, I think you just identified Salah ad-Din.”

 

 

 

Lieutenant Copia opened the door to Profeta’s office and found the
comandante
and Brandisi standing over the photograph in a moment of apparent serenity. Although all four of Profeta’s desk phone lines had lit up, ringing in an uneven chorus, neither of them seemed to notice.

“Comandante,”
she said, “there’s some kind of . . .
flood
in the Colosseum.”

Profeta slowly looked up.

“What do you mean, flood?” Profeta looked out the window. “The rain has stopped.”

“The entire subterranean portion of the ruin is submerged,” Copia said. “That’s all we’ve been told. In the middle of the United Nations ceremony, water began gathering beneath the arena.”

“That would have to be thousands of gallons of water,” Brandisi said.

Copia nodded. “A bank along the Tiber near the Piazza Bocca della Verità appears to have given way. The city engineers say a water main has burst, but investigators have not ruled out an intentional act.”

“Brandisi, take three cars to the Colosseum to investigate,” Profeta said. He stood up from his chair and grabbed his coat. “And send this photograph of Sharif Lebag to Interpol immediately.”

Profeta turned to Copia. “Any word on the evidence found at the Villa Torlonia?”

“The results of preliminary fingerprints from the cigarette-rolling paper are almost ready. As you requested, the evidence is being processed outside our lab, so it will take another hour.”

“What evidence?” Rufio said abruptly from the doorway.

“We found some rolling paper around the illegally excavated tomb,” Profeta said.

“I’d be happy to pick up the lab results,
Comandante
,” Rufio said.

“I’m sure you would, Lieutenant,” Profeta said. The expression of Profeta’s face gave Rufio an uneasy feeling. “But I’ll pick them up myself.”

W
here are we?” Emili asked, her voice echoing in the tight corridor.

“Must be the Cloaca Maxima,” Jonathan said. “The sewer from republican Rome, probably dating to the third century B.C. It was probably forgotten by the time the Colosseum was built.”

“Which is why the slaves of Jerusalem could have used it to reach a part of the city no longer accessible even in their own day,” Orvieti said.

They waded through the dark corridor’s waters, which now rose to their waists. The only sounds were the rushing current and Orvieti’s oxygen tank clanking against the walls.

“How’s he doing?” Jonathan said to Emili.

“His teeth are chattering,” she said. “We need to move faster.”

“We’ll try,” Jonathan said. “But the water level is rising with the evening tide.” He looked at the arched ceiling, “We won’t be able to breathe in here much longer.”

“Seems like we are walking deeper into the Tiber,” Emili said. Debris from the river around them beat hollow thumps against the outside of the tunnel wall.

She touched the stones and marveled aloud, “Two thousand years and this tunnel is still holding against the river current.”

“If this was an ancient sewer,” Jonathan said, “there must be an outlet to the Tiber somewhere along this passage.” The tunnel’s water level rose to their chests. Emili looked at Jonathan nervously.

“There!” Jonathan called out, swimming to a square of white light flooding through a barnacled steel grid above them. Jonathan could only fit his arm through the square iron bars, but he could feel the outside air and the spray of the river against the surrounding rocks.

Jonathan rubbed Emili’s plastic restraints against the metal grates until they snapped.

With her arms free she lifted her head through the bars to look out.

“Which shore?” Jonathan asked. “Rome or Trastevere?”

“Neither. We’re in the middle of the river,” Emili said. “Look.”

Jonathan moved beneath the grate and saw the underside of an ancient bridge bathed in floodlight against the dark sky.

“The Ponte Rotto,” she said behind him, referring to the abandoned scenic ruin in the middle of the Tiber. The thousand-square-foot patch of overgrown river silt supported the ruins known as Ponte Rotto, Broken Bridge.

“The Ponte Rotto’s base floods easily with the tide,” Jonathan said. “We have to work quickly before the island is submerged. Any minute and the current will be too strong for us to climb out.”

“Is there a lock?” Emili said.

Jonathan searched the grate, and lifted himself to see between the weeds lining the grate. “No, but I can see a latch.”

Jonathan pressed himself against the grate, grunting as his arm scraped on the slimy plants for an object to expand his reach. He found a wet piece of driftwood and threaded the iron bars to push up the bolt of the latch.

“It’s heavy,” Jonathan said. “I almost have it.” Jonathan used the stick to push the bolt upward. The metal groaned as the bolt gave way. “Got it,” he said.

“Orvieti first,” Jonathan said to Emili. “Let’s go,
Signore
!”

But Orvieti did not move from the far side of the tunnel. His flashlight’s beam pointed into the darkness, illuminating various tunnels branching off from the single passage where they stood.

“I can’t leave,” he said.

Jonathan knew time was of the essence. The tide was rising, and the island above them would not be above water for much longer.

“Emili,” Jonathan said, motioning to the open grate. “You go. I’ll work on him.”

“Jon, I can’t just—”

“
Go.
The tide is rising every second. When you get out climb to the top of the ruin and get help.”

Jonathan knitted his fingers at the water’s surface and Emili used them to step up through the hatch.

“
Signore
, the latch is open, your turn. Let’s go!” Jonathan said.

“I will never have this opportunity again,” Orvieti said. “Perhaps no one will. I know which corridor leads to the menorah.” Orvieti shone his flashlight down the corridor farthest to the left. “That corridor bends back toward the Roman shore, beneath the Ghetto. You said the last known location of the first Arch of Titus was where descendants of the slaves from Jerusalem lived.”

“That was written in the
eighth
century by an anonymous monk!” Jonathan said, above the rushing current. “You can come back!” The water level rose so rapidly in the corridor it was visible. He knew that even after they climbed out onto the small island, the tide would be dangerously high.

“This is my only chance,” Orvieti said.

“This corridor is almost flooded,” Jonathan said. “You will not . . .” He paused, looking at Orvieti with a stronger bearing, “. . . survive. You will not survive,
Signore
,” he said plainly.

“It is the only way for me to survive,” Orvieti answered. “This is all I have. Now go.”

Orvieti turned away from him. He pushed through the corridor into the darkness.

M
osè Orvieti floated through the ancient sewer tunnel, his feet touching the tunnel’s bottom only intermittently. His green oxygen tank bobbed beside him and the flashlight in his right hand strobed in and out of the water’s surface. He was not certain how far the current had carried him. The water level had lowered, and the ceiling was completely dry. He was no longer beneath the Tiber.

The sound of rushing water grew louder, and Orvieti realized he was nearing the tunnel’s outlet, not just from the noise but from a sudden, foul stench that filled the tunnel. It was almost as sour and rank as the smell of death he recalled all too clearly from more than a half-century before. For a moment he was certain the tunnel intruded upon some recent graves, until he remembered that buried Roman streets often accumulated tons of human waste and fermenting algae.

At the tunnel’s outlet the water streamed down a sharp rock slope into darkness. Next to the water fall was a series of outcroppings he could use to lower himself down.

He pushed himself out of the opening, barely able to catch his breath because of the stench. He eyed his oxygen tank. He knew there was only a few minutes’ worth of air in the small canister.
I must wait until I need it.
Slowly, he began to climb down the rock, the strap jangling around his shoulder. Surprised by his own agility, he carefully moved down the incline of the rock face, one foot beneath the other. But his legs shook under the strain of his weight. The slope steepened and he slid down the moss between the footholds.

Catching his breath, he shone his flashlight down the rock slope and saw the ground’s soft gray silt twenty feet below.

Beneath him, the floor seemed to be alive, writhing in some kind of rhythmic motion.

He looked at the floor more closely. He saw splashing in the water, a terrain of leathery gray ribbons arcing and slipping back into the blackness of the water, like the humps of some mythical sea beast.

“Eels,” Orvieti said aloud. Thousands of them. He knew that they were the most durable of the Tiber’s inhabitants, feeding off the natural minerals and algae. He remembered as a boy how the last of the Tiber’s fishermen made their livelihood from eels, as the pollution had become so bad only this durable water snake could survive. He knew eels flourished beneath Rome, but he never imagined a grotto like this: an endless carpet of eels—enormous, ancient-looking things. The Tiber’s native eels, Orvieti knew, were not dangerous except for their particularly keen sense of smell. Any cooked flesh and they would devour it. In his youth Orvieti watched Tiber’s eel fishermen smoke their bait before setting out for the day.