The Last Gospel (15 page)

‘Amazing.’ Jack was still awestruck by the image, and put his hand carefully on the snout. ‘They found one of these in King Tut’s tomb,’ he said to Costas.

‘At least that one was where it belonged, in Egypt,’ Hiebermeyer grumbled.

‘Greeter of the souls of the underworld, and protector of them on their journey,’ Maria said from behind. ‘Or so Maurice tells me.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ Costas muttered. ‘I thought you said there were no bodies in here.’

Jack tilted his helmet up, and looked past the snout of Anubis to the darkness beyond. He felt as if the eighteenth century had now given way to a much older past, erupting through the walls like the head of Anubis. He also sensed the danger. A few metres beyond the statue was a temporary metal grille across the tunnel bearing the word
PERICOLO
and a large death’s-head symbol. Hiebermeyer unlocked the hatch through the grille and pushed the extractor fan inside. He clicked it on, and a red light began flashing, accompanied by a low electronic whirr.

‘That’s a good start,’ he said. ‘Believe it or not, the extension lead actually works. We’ve got electricity.’ He checked a digital readout on the back of the fan. ‘In about ten minutes this should have cleared the tunnel ahead as far as we got yesterday, to the point where it ends at another wall. When the light goes green we’ll take the fan forward until the sensor flashes red again.’ He glanced at Jack, and spoke quietly. ‘I could have had this running before you arrived, but I didn’t want to tempt anyone to sneak in. Your superintendency friend seems perfectly happy with Anubis. In fact she’s obsessed with it.’

‘That would figure,’ Jack said quietly. ‘Elizabeth was passionate about Egypt when I knew her. She was paid to study Roman archaeology, but she really wanted to follow in your footsteps, Maurice. I told her all about you. She swore she’d go there once she’d fulfilled her government contract. But something drew her back here. Family connections. Obligations. She only ever hinted at it, hated the whole thing. That’s what really baffles me. Why she’s still here.’

‘You seem to have known her well,’ Maria murmured.

‘Friends for a while. But not any more, it seems.’

Hiebermeyer pushed up his glasses. ‘The bottom line is, as far as they’re concerned, the investigation has got its result, and what we’re doing now is purely a sideshow, a recce, before the whole thing is deemed unsafe and sealed up again. At the moment, I’m happy to go along with that.’

‘How safe is it, exactly?’ Costas said.

‘Well, the tunnel isn’t shored up, and there’s the risk of another earth tremor. The place is full of toxic gas. Vesuvius might erupt again. We could be crushed, asphyxiated, incinerated.’

‘Archaeology,’ Costas sighed. ‘To think, I turned down a position at CalTech for all this. Beach house, surfing, martinis on tap.’

‘We could also be gunned down by the Mafia,’ Maria added.

‘Great. That’s just the icing on the cake.’ Costas sighed, then looked back at Anubis. ‘Anyway, I thought by the Roman period this Egyptian stuff was all passé,’ he said. ‘I mean, what you were saying about this guy Calpurnius Piso. The fashion accessories. Everything had to be Greek.’

‘The Warhol collector doesn’t necessarily throw away his family collection of Old Masters,’ Maria said.

‘Actually, ancient Egypt was the very latest rage,’ Jack said. ‘Egypt was the last of the big old places to be annexed by Rome, after the defeat of Cleopatra in 31 BC. Most of the obelisks you see in Rome today, the one in St Peter’s Square, were shipped over by the first emperors. It was just like the pillage of Greece all over again. Everyone wanted a piece of the action.’

‘Barbarians,’ Hiebermeyer muttered. At that moment the extractor fan flashed green and the fan cut out. He motioned for them to move forward, and crouched through the grille. Jack and Costas picked up the corrugated tube and followed him, with Maria close behind. Ahead of them the passageway was unlit except for the wavering beams of their headlamps. Jack had wondered when he would feel the claustrophobia, and it was now, the point in a tunnel when he suddenly felt removed from the world outside, when progress ahead seemed beyond his own volition, when the tunnel itself seemed to be drawing him in. It was as if the toxic air they were pressing against had bled around them and filled the tunnel behind, sealing them in a capsule that could implode at any moment, sucking them into the vortex of the past. They pressed on, pulling the tube noisily behind them. The tunnel was longer than he had expected, reaching deep into the recesses of the villa site, well beyond the tunnels he had seen on Weber’s plan. About thirty metres on they came to the end, to the dark crack in the wall where Maria and Hiebermeyer had stopped the day before. Jack could clearly see the pick marks from the eighteenth century, and he looked at them closely. Some of the marks were on stone, not solidified mud. The tunnel clearly ended at some kind of structure, a stone entranceway. Hiebermeyer heaved the fan inside the crack and activated it again. ‘It still shows green, but I’m going to give it five minutes anyway. Better safe than sorry.’ He looked at Jack. ‘This is as far as we got just before I came out and called you. After I looked inside.’

‘I can hardly wait.’ Jack turned and peered back down the corridor, where they could see a wavering electric light and hear voices, then the sound of a power tool being tested. ‘Will any of them join us?’

‘I doubt it,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘They’re widening the passageway to get Anubis out. Even our lady guardian won’t come through that grille.’

‘Maybe they think the place is cursed,’ Costas murmured. ‘Maybe Anubis does it for them.’

‘If there was a curse, the authorities would let us know about it,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘They’ve put every other obstacle in front of excavating this place. We’re part of their game. A token gesture, so they can say they’ve done everything they can do, but that the place is just too dangerous.’

As if on cue, there was a shudder and the air shimmered with dust. It was gone as quickly as it had arrived, but there was no doubting the cause. Hiebermeyer took out his seismic oscillator and pressed it against the side wall, then grunted. There was silence for a moment, then a quiet coughing from Maria, and they all clipped on their dust masks.

‘Maybe they’re right,’ Costas said. ‘Is there anything more to see, Maurice? I mean, anything really? I’m good to go.’

‘Too late to turn back now,’ Hiebermeyer said, peering at Jack. ‘I hate to admit it, but I’m beginning to understand those eighteenth-century tunnellers. I know where they were coming from. You don’t want to linger too long down here. I don’t think we’re here for a painstaking excavation. Not exactly smash and grab, but something like an archaeological raid.’

‘I’m hearing you,’ Jack said.

‘While we wait, what’s this about opium, anyway?’

‘You’ll never believe what we found in the shipwreck.’

At that moment there was a grunt and a curse. ‘I think we’ve got something here.’ Costas had been edging ahead of the others, and now framed the ragged hole at the end of the tunnel. ‘I think it might be another statue.’ The others quickly came up behind him, their beams converging on the place where the seismic shock had just caused a section of wall to cave in beside the crack. Inside the cavity was a human form, life sized, lying on its front, one arm outstretched and the other folded under its chest, the legs extending back towards the entrance. It seemed to be naked, but the surface was obscured by a darkened carbonized layer that made the material underneath difficult to ascertain.

‘My God,’ Maria whispered.

‘This must have just been revealed,’ Hiebermeyer said quietly. ‘That tremor just now. It wasn’t visible yesterday.’

Jack knelt down and examined the head, then tried to peer through a small hole just below one ear. He could see that the form was hollow, like a bronze statue, but there was no metal visible, not even a corrosion layer. He thought for a moment, then looked again. ‘Well I’ll be damned,’ he murmured.

‘What is it?’ Costas said.

‘You remember I told you about the bodies at Pompeii, shapes preserved as hollow casts in the solidified ash?’

Costas looked aghast. ‘You’re not telling me this is one.’ He edged back.

‘Only it’s not preserved in ash,’ Hiebermeyer said. He had come up beside Jack and taken out his worn old trowel, using it to pick up a small sample of blackened material from beside the body. ‘It’s bizarre. It’s preserved in some kind of carbonized material, something fibrous.’

‘My God,’ Jack said. ‘You’re right. I can see the crossed fibres. Clothing, maybe.’ He peered at Hiebermeyer, who looked back at him suggestively. Jack thought again, and felt his jaw drop. ‘Not clothing,’ he whispered. ‘
Papyrus
.’

‘Wait till you see what’s in there,’ Hiebermeyer whispered back, aiming his trowel at the crack in the wall ahead of them.

‘These were scrolls?’ Maria whispered. ‘This man was covered in papyrus scrolls?’

‘They were spilling out of the place that lies ahead of us,’ Hiebermeyer replied. ‘It’s as if this man fell into a bed of scrolls, and they were all blown over him when the blast came. When they found Philodemus’ library in the eighteenth century, a lot of the scrolls were strewn around, as if someone were trying to escape with them.’

‘Or was searching through them, frantically looking for something precious to salvage before fleeing,’ Maria said.

‘Let’s hope these books were just more of Philodemus’ Greek scrolls,’ Jack muttered, ‘and not the lost Latin library.’

Costas put out his hand and gingerly touched the shoulder of the body. Instantly the entire form shimmered and disappeared in a puff of carbon. His finger was left suspended in mid-air, and for a moment there was silence.

‘Whoops,’ he said.

Hiebermeyer groaned.

‘Not to worry,’ Jack sighed. ‘An Agamemnon moment.’

‘Huh?’

‘When Heinrich Schliemann excavated the Bronze Age site of Mycenae, he lifted a golden death mask from a royal grave and claimed to have gazed on the face of King Agamemnon. Maybe he really did see something, some fleeting impression under the mask. You remember Atlantis, the spectral form of the bull on the altar? Sometimes you really do see ghosts.’

‘I think it’s time for photographs from now on, Jack,’ Maria said, pulling out a compact digital camera.

‘Absolutely,’ Jack said. ‘Take everything, several times, different settings. It could end up being the only record we have.’

‘Look what’s underneath,’ Hiebermeyer said, suddenly excited. ‘Far more interesting, forensically speaking.’ He hunched down close over the place where the head had been and took out a photographer’s lens cleaner, gently blowing at the dust. Another form was emerging underneath, grey and blackened. ‘It’s the skull,’ he whispered, his voice tight with emotion. ‘It’s partially carbonized too, but looks as if it’ll hold up. And I can see the vertebrae, the ribs.’ He put his finger into a dark sticky mass under the skull, then sniffed it, first cautiously, then deeply. He suddenly gagged, then swallowed hard. ‘Amazing,’ he said hoarsely, wiping his finger against the wall. ‘Never even come across that in a mummy, and I’ve stuck my fingers in a few.’

‘What is it?’ Costas said. ‘Some kind of resin, pitch?’

‘Not exactly.’ Hiebermeyer’s glasses had slipped down his nose, and he pushed them up with the same finger, leaving a dark streak between his eyes. He looked at Costas, beaming with excitement. ‘When the inferno hit this place, the scrolls must have instantly carbonized, but there must have been something in them, a resinous preservative material, that caused the carbonized mass to form the cast around the body. That sealed off the flesh from oxygen, so it couldn’t incinerate. Instead, it cooked.’

‘Cooked alive,’ Maria said.

‘He means, this guy melted,’ Jack added, peering at Costas.

‘Oh no.’ Costas swayed back against the opposite wall of the tunnel. ‘And you put your finger into it.’

Hiebermeyer held up his finger again, and peered at it with some reverence. ‘It’s fantastic. Probably some brain in that. Should be perfect for DNA analysis.’

Maria had edged back to where the man’s feet had been, looking closely, and then sidled up to Hiebermeyer and peered into the ribcage. ‘Look! He’s wearing a gold ring!’ she exclaimed. Hiebermeyer followed her gaze, tracing the finger bones which were contorted under the ribcage as if the man had been clutching at his chest in his death throes. He took out a mini Maglite, and put his face right up to the bones. ‘It’s a signet ring, for impressing into wax sealings on documents. It’s partly melted into the bone, but I can see the design. It’s an eagle impression.’

‘An imperial signet ring,’ Jack said. ‘This guy must have been in the service of the emperor.’

‘I’m not sure if this was a guy, exactly,’ Hiebermeyer murmured, kneeling up with his hands on his hips. ‘There’s something odd about this skeleton. Distinctly odd. Rounding of the face, areas of bone structure you’d expect to be more developed in a male, unusual widening of the pelvic area. It’s not a woman, exactly, but it’s not far off. Very odd.’

‘Didn’t they have eunuchs?’ Costas said.

‘An interesting thought,’ Jack murmured. He stared at the skeleton, thinking hard. In the early fourth century AD, the emperor Constantine the Great surrounded himself with eunuchs, and so did the later Byzantine emperors. Eunuchs were thought to be a safer bet as secretaries and state officials, less likely to be hard driven and ambitious. Earlier emperors had them, too. He looked up. ‘Some scholars think that Claudius’ freedman Narcissus was a eunuch.’ He paused for a moment, then spoke again, almost to himself. ‘But it couldn’t be. Narcissus was murdered when Claudius was poisoned, in AD 54. That’s a quarter of a century before Vesuvius erupted. There would have been other eunuchs around. This whole area attracted oddities, freaks who came here for the amusement of the wealthy, as well as cripples and other unfortunates who sought cures in the sulphur vents of the Phlegraean Fields. That’s the other side of life here in the Roman period, not exactly the tourist image.’