The Julian Secret (Lang Reilly Thrillers) (31 page)

Panting, he stood slightly bent at the crest of the hill. Through the transparent wall, he could see the box that held the reliquary of the saint. To his left was an arched doorway from which the keystone had long fallen. Only the packed dirt that filled the structure held it up.

He stood on tiptoe and used one hand to brush away the grit and dust covering the inscription while the other held the light.

“Teutus Forneas, Centurion . . . ,” he read, unaware he was speaking aloud.

The rest of the epitaph had been on the missing stones.

Turning, he focused the flashlight’s beam on a square structure with the remains of classical columns framing what had been the doorway. The words on the lintel identified it as the last resting place of an entire family of Greeks who had served and bought their way out of slavery. Judging by the ornateness of the tomb, they could have bought anything else they had desired, including slaves of their own.

Lang sighed in disappointment. If his theory was correct, how many of these streets would he have to climb?

On his way back down, he felt more alone than he had in his entire life. In pitch darkness in a burial ground, his only companions the dead of nearly two thousand years ago.

This was a graveyard he wasn’t going to whistle past.

As he started up his next street, Lang froze, his ears straining. He had heard something, a sound out there just beyond the edge of his flashlight’s beam. Unlike the one next to the lighted avenue, none of the illumination from the tour route leaked over this far, and the dark was so complete it seemed to swallow his feeble light.

There it was again, the sound of something scrabbling among the rubble, sending small pebbles rolling downhill. He lifted the light above his head for added range and a pair of red dots reflected it, blinked, and disappeared to the accompaniment of angry squeals. Rats, annoyed that their habitat had been invaded for the first time since the excavation back in the thirties or forties. What the hell was there for them to eat where the last morsel of food had been left in the first or second century?

He tried not to think about that or the question of just how bold the rodents might be in defense of their realm. He pushed on up the hill, this slope seemingly more steep than the others.

The first thing he noticed at the top was that he was closer to the box supposedly holding St. Peter’s bones than he had been either on the tour or the excursion of the last few minutes. To his right was not a tomb but a wall that seemed to support the ceiling. Lang gazed at it a moment before he realized he was looking at the back of the so-called Graffiti Wall mentioned by yesterday’s guide as denoting the tomb of Peter. It had been part of Constantine’s original papal palace and a support wall for Constantine’s basilica.

Standing with his head against it and leveling the flashlight along it, he discovered more than a few carvings on this side also. Greek letters were almost as numerous as Latin inscriptions. There were also figures Lang did not recognize.

He stepped back to get a more complete view, slipped, and would have tripped over his cassock and fallen had he not been able to break his fall by steadying himself with his free hand against the wall.

Otherwise, he would never have seen it: a piece of stone that didn’t exactly match that surrounding it at the bottom of what looked like one of the support columns
of the old church. Kneeling, he looked closer. A uniform layer of dust and dirt covered the entire wall. Only at an angle could Lang detect a slight difference in the stone’s texture, too. Again using his hand, he brushed as much grit and dust away as possible.

Something had been carved into the stone, a series of letters someone had taken great pains to obliterate. Lang stood and moved to his right and to his left. The angle of the light picked up parts of letters, but not enough to even speculate as to the inscription.

He ran the light up and down the wall again, making certain of his original observation that this had been a support wall, one that could not have been moved. In fact, in early Christian times, technology would not allow weakening of this part of the foundation by cutting into it. Hence the effort to simply erase the words as easily as one emperor removed the name of his predecessor from the Pantheon. Lang sat on his haunches and thought. Most likely he had found Julian’s secret, the emperor’s prank.

But without being able to read it, how could it lead him anywhere?

Whoever had tried to kill him, had killed Gurt, obviously thought mere knowledge of the existence of this destroyed carving presented a danger to them.

Then he had another thought: Suppose they didn’t know the words had been rendered unreadable?

Either way, he was determined to decipher what had been rendered illegible. As he scrambled down the slope, he was making a mental list of equipment. Hadn’t Reavers insisted on being committed?

The monitors in the featureless room were dark, their screens a row of blind cylopean eyes. In contrast, anoverlay showing a map of Rome was backlighted, a single bright dot moving slowly across the southeast corner.

Taking a specially calibrated ruler from the drawer of the steel desk, the room’s sole occupant laid it beside the dot, measuring its movement for several seconds before he picked up a telephone with no dial on it.

“He’s leaving now,” was all he said.

Somewhere between Paris and Rome
Eurostar
At the same time

It had been a long time since she had ridden on a train. Not even once during the year she had spent in the United States, where such transportation was largely scorned for any journey longer than across town. Understandable, since American trains were far slower than travel by car, while those in Europe frequently exceeded a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour.

She leaned back in the seat, comfortable even though in third class, and peered out of the window into the night. Except for the few flashes of towns that were only smears of light, the darkness concealed any real sensation of movement other than the gentle rocking of the train itself.

Comfort or not, she would not have chosen to travel by rail had convenience and speed been her only criteria. To fly, one had to present identification, something she
lacked. Airport security was far stricter than that of rail terminals, despite the terrorist bombing of the Spanish train a year ago. She needed to travel in anonymity.

That was why she was enduring the man seated next to her, some sort of electronics salesman from Milan. He had made an elaborate display of offering to pay for the cheap sandwiches and bottled water offered by vendors who seemed to board the train at every stop. He had made no secret (and, she suspected, little truth) in recounting the endless successes of his business, the cost of whatever motorcar he owned (she had almost dozed off and missed the marque), and the thrill and excitement of the life he lived.

He had not (and, she suspected, would not) get around to discussing the gold wedding band she guessed he was unable to remove from a pudgy finger.

A poor dye job on barely enough hair to comb over a pink scalp, a cheap, off-the-rack suit, and a cologne that could have been a weapon of mass destruction. He was so intent on her breasts as he spoke, she doubted he could recognize her face.

Antonio—that was the name he gave her, anyway—clearly considered himself to be a gift to women. She considered him to be atonement for some long-forgotten sin. Still, she avoided the temptation to simply turn her back to him or, better yet, get up and move. There were no reserved seats in third class.

Bad as he was, Antonio served a useful function: A woman traveling with a man, even Antonio, was less conspicuous than one alone.

Keeping an attentive smile plastered in place, she simply tuned him out.

Another reason for traveling by rail was the opportunity to do so. She had gone from the hospital to the local rail station and been gratified to find a train due in the
next few minutes, one that would take her to Lyon, where she would transfer to one for Paris and then directly to Rome. Pretending to read the posted schedules, she had waited until a man purchased the ticket to Paris. As he had turned from the ticket booth, stuffing his ticket into a billfold, she had backed away and directly into his path. A Frenchman is unlikely to let such an opportunity with a pretty girl escape. While he pretended it was an accident that his hand found its way to her breast, she had helped herself to the wallet in his inside coat pocket.

A fair trade is an honest bargain. Or was it the other way around?

In other circumstances, she might have felt some modicum of guilt for the victim whose pocket she had deftly picked, but she desperately needed to get to Rome. And she could never have lifted the wallet had he not groped her. Perhaps the experience would prevent him from doing the same thing to another woman.

She doubted it. A Froggie who can keep his eyes and hands off an attractive woman is a dead Froggie.

Antonio launched into a new anecdote. Her mind was whirring with images blurred by the speed at which they appeared, somewhat like a film on fast-forward. The helicopter, hovering like a mechanical dragonfly, before exploding in a brilliant flash, the ensuing blackness. A brief moment of consciousness, being unable to move under huge weight that seemed to crush the breath from her. A silence so intense it had a sound of its own.

The facts had come back to her, but in no particular sequence. Until she sorted them out, it seemed equally likely she had gone to Montsegur before, not after, leaving Atlanta or being in Seville. She did know what she had found in the pocket of the man who had intended to kill her, and she knew she must tell Lang.

But how?

She had lost her encoding communication device along with everything else but the clothes on her back. Some of the clothes on her back, she corrected, remembering the shredded blouse. Besides, she had no idea exactly where she could reach him, although she was certain she knew where to find him sooner or later. She could call his office and ask Sara to have Lang contact her. But if what she suspected was true, anything said over any phone connected to Lang was being monitored. She only hoped he recognized the possibility his conversations were not private.

She would simply have to follow the theory she had put together. She only hoped she got there in time.

She also hoped he would figure out he was on the wrong path. Or, as the Americans said, barking up the wrong tree. Why would anyone want to bark up a tree, right or wrong?

Rome
The Vatican
April 28, 1944

At the same time Pius XII was conducting a meeting of the Pontifical Commission for the Vatican City State, Waffen SS
Sturmbahnführer
Otto Skorzeny was pretending to be just one more German taking pictures of St. Peter’s Square. Even had it not been for blue eyes the color of glacial ice and the dueling scar that circled his right cheek, the ordinary
Wehrmacht
troops along the border of the Holy City would have shown him even more deference than the black SS uniform merited.

The rugged good looks, the soft Austrian accent did nothing to conceal an air of one who commands as though he were born to lead men into desperate ventures. One of those ventures, the rescue of Il Duce, had resulted in a notoriety that made him uncomfortable. A soldier’s place was on the front lines, not the headlines.

Having his name in the papers was even more disquieting. At least he had successfully declined to allow photographs. Anonymity was like virginity: once lost, never regained.

He had had no choice in the matter. His
Führer
had ordered him to make himself available to Herr Goebbels’s press corps, and he had followed those orders as would any good soldier. Fortunately, fame was indeed fleeting and the civilian public’s brief attention quickly focused elsewhere. Even now, though, months later, a number of the troops called him by name as they saluted.

With invasion of France by the Allies imminent, he had requested a command similar to the one he had had on the Eastern Front until he had been wounded in 1942. Instead, he had been summoned to Hitler’s home atop the mountains of Berchtesgaden, where the
Führer
himself had explained the present mission and its importance. Although Skorzeny would have preferred a return to combat, the
Führer
had been very persuasive.

Today Skorzeny was reconnoitering another raid.

Through the viewfinder of the Zeiss camera, he watched the Swiss Guards. Although their medieval pikes and uniforms provided more show than protection, he knew the men were trained in the use of modern weapons and prepared to die defending their employer, the Pope.

He hoped that would not be necessary, although he could not imagine them standing by as the Pope was taken prisoner.

He trained the camera on the area surrounding the obelisk. A souvenir of Rome’s conquest of Egypt, it had been brought to Rome in the first century,
A.D.
, although it had been moved to its current location only when the present St. Peter’s Basilica was under construction in
the sixteenth century. Its previous location and the significance of that spot was, Skorzeny understood, marked by an inset in the paving of what was now a fairly busy roadway between the southern edge of the basilica proper and the beginning of the Bernini colonnades. Two costumed guards were stationed here to prevent the unauthorized from entering the Vatican grounds.

If Skorzeny’s information was correct, the subject of his interest was just beyond that entrance.

If it existed. He was uncertain exactly what the enigmatic inscription on the wall at Montsegur had meant. Even when translated by the head of the Classics Department at the University of Berlin, it made little sense and had even less significance. Who cared what crimes had been alleged against the son of a Jewish carpenter two thousand years ago? Non-Jewish, he mentally corrected himself. The Nazi party had done extensive research and produced conclusive evidence that Christ was not a Jew—conclusive for any German who valued his life or liberty, anyway.