The Julian Secret (Lang Reilly Thrillers) (27 page)

He checked his watch. If he didn’t dally, he would make it on time.

A little over a mile away was a cartoonlike carving of an elephant with an obelisk on its back. The monks of the monastery that had become the church Santa Maria sopra Minerva had commissioned Bernini to grace the small square in front with the animal and then proceeded to insist the original plan was unstable, unsuitable, and overpriced. Not lacking a sense of humor, the sculptor had adorned the supposed symbol of wisdom and piety with a trunk of serpentine proportions and ears that could well have been the inspiration for Dumbo.

That had been the thought for centuries, anyway.

Then, in the recent past, excavation for enlargement of the Vatican’s underground parking lot had uncovered a large beast first thought to be the remains of some sort of dinosaur. Quick research of the vast papal library had revealed that the king of Portugal had made a gift to one of the several Pope Leos of an albino dwarf elephant. The pontiff named the beast Hano, and elephant and man shared such an affection that the little pachyderm followed his master everywhere, including papal masses.

Lang never passed this way without a smile.

Just behind the piazza was a small store that sold ecclesiastical vestments and paraphernalia. Before entering, Lang debated: a simple black shirt with clerical collar, or full cassock, perhaps with biretta, the three-ridged square hat favored by many European priests? He chose the latter along with a simple ebony-beaded rosary. He
was tempted to include a Bible printed in Italian but decided keeping his hands free might prove a better choice.

In a half hour, he was on his way. The shopkeeper had asked not a single question nor requested any documentation of Lang’s ordination into the Church. He did, however, carefully examine and count each euro with which Lang paid.

Lang was uncertain exactly what this said about the clergy.

Package under his arm, Lang stopped at a favorite pizzeria just off the Piazza Della Rotunda. There were only two tables, both outside on the street. Both were filled with chatting American college students. He took his square of anchovy, pepper, and onion to enjoy while sitting on the edge of a fountain and looking at the Pantheon, Rome’s oldest structure still in use. His pleasure, if not his sense of history, was undiminished by the presence of a McDonald’s on the very same piazza.

The Pantheon was erected by the Emperor Hadrian a hundred years before Constantine, a temple for not one but all the gods. Every emperor after him erased his predecessor’s name from over the door and carved his own. When Rome became Christian, the building became a church. Michelangelo studied that dome to learn how to do one for the new St. Peter’s. In the eighteenth century, Bernini was hired to put bell towers on each side. The people ridiculed them, called them “donkey’s ears.” They came down. The hole in the center of the dome allowed sunlight into an otherwise windowless single room.

The massive bronze doors, the symmetry of the round building, as well as its antiquity had always had a salutary effect on Lang. He could feel the anger associated with the trip melt away like smoke in a breeze. Thankful Rome’s fountains flowed with potable water, he cupped
his hands to drink and washed the last of the fish taste away before using the thin square of paper that had served as a plate to wash his hands.

He took his time, wandering familiar streets, many of which were too narrow to admit sunlight for more than a few minutes a day. Far too confined for automotive traffic, scooters buzzed by unfazed. Lang was careful to back up to a wall as each Vespa passed, fully aware that the little machines provided a great getaway from purse-or parcel-snatching. He also remembered an attempted stabbing by a killer on a similar contraption.

He was not going to be distracted by his love for the Eternal City.

Back at the hotel, he stood at the front desk, awaiting his room key. He happened to notice a newspaper with block headlines taking up the top fold. Below was a vaguely familiar face, a slightly chubby man in an expensive suit.

Lang held the paper up for the clerk to see. “Who’s this?”

The young man didn’t have to look up from his computer screen. “The prime minister. He is about to be indicted for taking pay, er, pay . . .”

“Bribes?” Lang supplied, reaching for the key a young woman was handing him.

“Bribes, yes.”

Lang couldn’t recall the man’s name, but he recalled him as being, if not one of the richest men in Italy, a conservative (at least by European standards) and a mainstay in a country that changed governments more regularly than its men changed their shirts.

The telltale was as he had left it.

Without taking off his clothes, Lang stretched out on the bed and was asleep before he was aware of being drowsy.

Rome
Hotel Hassler
Three hours later

Refreshed and his body clock now on the same time as Europe’s, Lang untied the string that bound the paper-wrapped package. A few minutes later, he surveyed his image in the bathroom mirror. He looked as much a priest as any he had seen. He took the stairs to the ground floor to minimize being noticed. The Hassler was not a hotel within the budget of an ordinary priest.

Thirty minutes later, he was in St. Peter’s Square. Among the usual throng of visitors, two men were more interested in the priest striding past the fountain than in the architectural splendor that surrounded them. “Sure that’s him?” one asked. “No way to be mistaken,” the other said. “We cap him here?”

The second man, obviously in charge, shook his head. “Too much of a crowd. We’d start a panic. Better we wait, make it look like a robbery.”

“Of a priest?”

“They’ll find him, they’ll find out soon enough who he is. He walked here. He’ll walk back. Be patient.”

As Francis had instructed, Lang veered to the left, approaching a Swiss Guard on duty where a small avenue separated the Bernini Colonnade from the basilica itself. As though to repel a medieval attack, the purple-and-gold-costumed guard lowered his halberd to block Lang’s progress. From the determination on the young man’s face, there was little doubt he would use the weapon if necessary.

Reaching into a pocket, Lang produced the pass from the Scavia Archeolgia that had been faxed at Francis’s request.

The Guard gave the paper the briefest of scans and pointed as he spoke in accentless English, “First door on the right. Show this to the man behind the counter.”

Lang did as he was told, entering a small room filled with nine or ten priests, including one standing behind a ticket booth–like fixture.

“Okay, listen up,” the man in the booth said in tones that came somewhere from midwestern America. “In a few minutes, a couple of our Jesuit brethren are going to take you through the necropolis. Stay with the group. We’d hate for you to get separated and locked up with an unknown number of heathen souls.”

There was a murmur of chuckles.

“And watch out crossing over the street out there.” He pointed as a small truck whizzed by. “You get hit and nobody’s gonna stop to administer final rites.”

Subdued laughter.

The various priests returned to the process of informally introducing themselves. Lang hadn’t counted on this and hoped none were from Atlanta.

His anxiety was relieved when two more came through the single door, their guides.

“A few preliminaries,” the older one said, also an American, although Lang couldn’t exactly place the accent. “As most of you know, the Vatican was originally no more than one of ancient Rome’s seven hills . . .”

Lang’s mind drifted as facts he already knew were repeated.

His attention snapped back as one priest led the way outside and to a glass door that led into a small vestibule, while the second made sure there were no stragglers by following the group. The lead priest pushed a series of buttons on the wall. Lang memorized the sequence. A door opened with a whisper that indicated it also served as some sort of airlock.

“The temperature and humidity are carefully maintained,” the leader said over his shoulder, as though answering an unasked question. “You’ll see why in a moment.”

From an invisible ceiling, soft lights illuminated a narrow cobblestone road between brick buildings that, at first glance, could have lined any ancient city street. Closer examination revealed that the structures even had windows and doors. The insides were decorated with sculptures and wall paintings of scenes from mythology and nature. A bird, easily identifiable as some sort of partridge, sat on a pine bough, depicted in tones fresh enough to have been applied yesterday. Lang marveled that something so ancient could be so well preserved. Another room was done in glittering mosaics, a picture of Apollo in his golden sun chariot being pulled across
the sky by two white horses in midcanter. Almost every tiny tile was just as the artist had placed it.

“Most of these mausoleums were buried for nearly two thousand years,” the guide/priest said. “That’s why they are so well preserved.”

The road climbed more steeply the farther they went. At irregular intervals, another door would open and close with a ghostly sigh.

“They certainly buried their dead in style,” someone observed, speaking in a whisper, much the same as one might do in church.

“The families came to visit on certain days,” the lecture continued. “See the hole in the roof there? For food and drink. The Romans believed the deceased’s spirit could be maintained by pouring nourishment into the sarcophagus or cremation urn.”

Lang stopped, nearly causing a collision with the priest trailing behind the group. He surveyed the incline and looked up and down a street that had not seen the sun in almost two millennia. It was as though he had entered another world, as indeed he had. It took little imagination to see toga-clad Romans walking this street. At several points there had been gaps between tombs. Intersecting paths? Lang was certain the necropolis had more than one avenue. In fact, finding the right one was going to be a problem.

Mistaking his hesitancy for fatigue, the following priest came up behind him. “We’re almost at the top.”

Unnoticed, the ceiling had become visible and was getting lower with each step.

“That’s the floor of the Vatican?” Lang asked.

“Almost directly under the main altar, yes.”

They trudged upward in silence until the street came to an end a few feet short of the union of ground and
roof. Overhead, a pane of glass or some other transparent material admitted a thin light.

Their guide pointed. “We are under the main altar.”

Lang had never suffered from claustrophobia, but the thought of bring confined under the millions of tons of basilica directly above his head gave him pause. He hoped whoever had excavated this necropolis had known what the hell they were doing.

This time the guide pointed to a confined area shaped like a box directly under the light filtering down. “There!”

Lang and the other visitors looked closer. The poor light flickered and danced on a shiny surface. Finally, he made out a transparent container of some sort, not much larger than a cigar box. The glass or plastic sat in a silver holder.

“The bones of St. Peter,” the guide whispered in awe. “They were discovered in the forties when Pius XII allowed excavation of the necropolis you’ve just seen.”

“How do we know the bones are Peter’s?”

Lang couldn’t see the source of the question, but he was not the only one surprised by it. This was, after all, a group dedicated to faith, not historical skepticism.

The lead priest was unfazed, fielding the question as smoothly as a shortstop would a ground ball. Perhaps he had heard the same query from audiences of a more secular nature. “At first, the church had only the legend to go by, that is, that Constantine built his church on Peter’s gravesite. We know from old drawings the first basilica had the Trophy of Gaius, a two-story chapel with a trapdoor into the tombs below. One of the walls of that chapel, the graffiti wall, is still there, covered with Latin names, prayers, and the like, carved into the plaster along with the phrase ‘Peter is here.’ A Roman named Gaius wrote of Pope Zephirinus in the third century,
who boasted of ‘the trophies of the Apostle’ being entombed here.

“When Julius II was removing what amounted to the ruins of Constantine’s basilica to build the new one, bones were found under the main altar, wrapped in tatters of purple cloth, a sign of royalty. Those very bones are the ones you see. In 1968, Pope Paul VI had them placed in transparent reliquaries, one of which you see here.”

“And the others?”

“Underneath.”

The same doubter spoke again, perhaps emboldened by the darkness. “All you’ve got is bone fragments, some rags, somebody’s carving on a wall, and a legend.”

“Not quite. When the bones were encased as you see them, a team of forensic archaeologists examined them. There were no foot bones.”

“So?”

“The feet of a crucifixion victim were nailed to the cross. Once he was dead, the body was left to rot unless there was some reason to take the body down, like freeing up space at the Circus of Nero. Removing the nail to take the body down was too much trouble. The Romans simply cut the feet off. The bones were from someone who, most likely, had been crucified.”

The thought of a number of Renaissance paintings depicting Christ’s ascension came to Lang’s mind. None of them showed Him footless.

The tour guide shone a pencil beam of light onto an inscription. “The Church’s official position is in the Latin inscription on the silver. It means ‘From the bones that, discovered under the Vatican arch-basilica, are believed to be those of the blessed Apostle Peter.’ ”

Sounded like equivocation to Lang. He understood covering your bets.

“We’ll leave by way of the Vatican grotto,” the lead priest announced.

A final door wheezed open and they stood in a large, low-ceilinged room. Squares were formed by groups of sarcophagi, each with the effigy of the former Pope it contained. Minutes later, the group emerged into sunlight. From where he stood, Lang could see the entrance to the necropolis.