The Last Ember

Table of Contents

 

 

 

RIVERHEAD BOOKS
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Copyright © 2009 by Daniel Levin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Published simultaneously in Canada

 

The author gratefully acknowledges the permission to reprint the following images:

Photographs of the sketches of Giuseppe Valadier on page 62 (drawing of an arch of the Colosseum) and 344 (architectural sketch of the Colosseum). Reprinted with permission of Professor Elisa Debenetti. Reproduction of the Forma Urbis on page 13. Reprinted with permission of the Stanford Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project.

Photograph of the Arch of Titus relief on page 337. Used with permission of Beth Hatefutsoth, the Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, Tel Aviv.

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Levin, Daniel, date.
The last ember / Daniel Levin.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-13337-8

1. Antiquities—Fiction. 2. Treasure troves—Fiction.
3. Rome (Italy)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3612.E92373L
813’.6—dc22

 

 

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

All references to ancient texts in this novel are real, as is the Waqf Authority—a secretive Islamic land trust that has administered the Temple Mount in Jerusalem since 1187 A.D.

Historians are forgers.

 

 

—The Life of Flavius Josephus,
first century A.D.

12:15
A.M.
Fiumicino Airport. Rome

 

 

 

 

 

W
hy have I been flown here?” Jonathan Marcus asked the chauffeur, raising his voice over the winter rain.

The downpour of a Roman
burrasca
pounded the hood of a black Maserati Quattroporte sedan. The chauffeur’s shirt was soaked, his stomach blousing out like a sack of grain.

“The partner is expecting you,
Signore
,” he said, taking Jonathan’s carry-on and opening the back door.

Water streamed down Jonathan’s suit pants and gathered on his Ferra gamo shoes, but he seemed not to notice. He pointed at Fiumicino’s runway lights.

“Underneath the runway where my plane just landed was once the largest sea harbor in imperial Rome. The
Portus,
it was called. Two-thousand-year-old Roman ships are still under there!”

The chauffeur nodded politely. He laid Jonathan’s briefcase in the trunk and, when he closed it, was surprised to see the tall young man still beside the open door, elbows on the roof, the wet folds of his white dress shirt clinging to his athletic shoulders. He was staring at the runway.

Jonathan Marcus had returned to Rome, a young corporate lawyer in a navy chalk stripe suit and a loosened Hermès tie, but just ten minutes back on
terra antiqua
and memories from his doctoral work in classics beckoned to him from the stones.

“Signore?”
The chauffeur gently pointed to the door.

Jonathan ducked into the car’s immaculate leather backseat. In the finished-wood console, a freshly brewed cappuccino steamed in a bone china coffee cup bearing the firm’s dignified logo, DULLING AND PIERCE LLP. He was reminded of the firm’s mania for formality, and although his jacket was still sopping, he slipped his arms through its sleeves and buttoned it.

“Still not exactly presentable,” he said softly, raking back the soaked, brown hair from his brow. Stubble accented the strong angles of his attractive face, darkening his boyish looks.

A digital clock in the center of the console displayed the time in a cobalt blue glow: 00:17 a.m.

Long day,
Jonathan thought.

Only twelve hours before, Jonathan was sitting at his desk on the forty-first floor of Dulling’s headquarters in midtown Manhattan, another solitary night of document review before him, when the intra-office mail cart delivered a travel itinerary with the word URGENT stamped across it like a red sash.

The details were few, listing only the departure time of an Alitalia flight out of Kennedy Airport in three hours and his seat number in first class. This exceeded even Dulling and Pierce’s legendary standards for client secrecy. A partner’s recent toast at a firm dinner now sounded like an ominous oracle. “With your background in classics, Marcus, antiquities dealers all over the world will want you on their lawsuits, won’t they?”

Last month, Jonathan’s representation of Dulling client and Roman antiquities dealer Andre Cavetti catapulted him into the spotlight of the antiquities world. The Italian government had brought a lawsuit in a U.S. District Court in Manhattan, alleging that Mr. Cavetti’s gallery on Madison Avenue displayed a twenty-inch-high nude bronze statue illegally excavated from the ancient town of Morgantina on the Sicilian coast. Jonathan’s cross-examination of the Italian government’s expert, Dr. Phillip von Bothmer, curator of Greek and Roman antiquities at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, left the Italians’ case a smoldering ruin.