The Last Ember (20 page)

On the top floor of the palazzo, Jonathan stood in front of the closed double doors of Tatton’s office. He was about to knock when he noticed his black shoes were caked with a layer of thick gray mud from beneath the Colosseum. He slipped into the bathroom, wiped the shoes clean, and caught his reflection in the mirror. A perfect facsimile of the lawyer he was seven hours ago, now wearing a pressed gray suit, spread white collar, and navy silk tie. The only hint of the last few hours was a cut just below his hairline, and he covered it with a forelock. Jonathan stared at the mirror, and in his exhaustion his mind drifted back to the first time he had met Bruce Tatton, six years ago. Jonathan’s academic career had recently collapsed and he was working at an auction house, cataloging antiquities that had been sold the evening before.

You use a whole bloody bottle of aftershave, Marcus?” Jonathan’s mind reeled back to the present. Mildren’s head poked through the bathroom doorway, files in both of his arms. “What’s taking you so long? In Tatton’s office.
Now.
”

Tatton’s office had the cavernous quality of a gilded ballroom. Its sheer square footage dwarfed even the large French baroque carved-oak desk that could have belonged to Napoleon. A domed Renaissance mural of pink clouds and raining angels exuded a convenient atmosphere of infallibility. Tatton paced on the lavishly restored burled walnut planks and spoke quietly into the phone as if comforting the bereaved.

Mildren slumped into a green velvet chair and Tatton acknowledged them both, nodding ominously.

“Cultural Heritage Guard,” Tatton said, his hand over the receiver as he hung up. Mildren sat there silent, pen poised over a writing pad. He knew his master’s habit of adding information in his own time. “A meeting,” Tatton said to Jonathan directly, as though he required special instruction. “It shouldn’t take long.”

“Cultural Heritage Guard?” Jonathan asked.

“The Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale,” Mildren responded, writing on his legal pad already jammed with notes. “A carabinieri unit.”

“The antiquity squad, isn’t it?” Jonathan disguised the strain in his voice.

“Indeed,” Tatton said. “The
comandante
himself is on his way here.”

“To the office?”

“Usually what ‘here’ means, old boy,” Mildren said. “In the place you’re standing.”

A flashing red light accompanied the discreet beep from the phone on Tatton’s desk. Outside the window, Jonathan watched the gates open as a police car crawled slowly through like an invading force.

“Did he mention anything else?” Jonathan knew he was asking too many questions, and hurried with an explanation. “Because I’ve found some research that—”

“That I’m sure is quite useful, yes.” Tatton cut him off, centering the small clock on his desk to the millimeter. “Your instructions are to say nothing.”

The carabinieri car parked diagonally across from the firm’s doors. Jonathan watched a bearded man in an overcoat get out of the car. A younger officer stepped out of the car and remained in the piazza. Jonathan recognized his lanky frame and high hairline of matted red curls. The officer was still applying a cold pack to his right elbow. A hollow beat of Jonathan’s heart struck like a pounded fist. It was the man who attacked him just two hours ago beneath the Colosseum.

In a strange fragmentation of time, Jonathan watched Tatton stand up, nod into his phone, and say,
“Mandali su.”
Send them up.

“They gave no reason for coming?” Jonathan managed to ask Mildren, but his voice must have been louder than he thought, because Tatton answered from behind his desk.

“Of course not,” Tatton said, wiping imaginary dust from his desk. “What did the Greeks say? Surprise is worth a hundred men?”

Profeta walked through the corridors of the Dulling and Pierce palazzo escorted by the firm’s public relations staffer, a petite Italian man in a charcoal suit and skinny black tie whose natural posture leaned slightly forward, resembling a courteous bow. He smiled nervously, explaining the palazzo’s history and architecture as they walked, curious why the
comandante
of the carabinieri’s most elite unit demanded to speak with the office’s most senior partner.

“Built in 1660, the palazzo housed Innocent the Tenth’s family—”

“His mistress,” Profeta said as they walked.

“I’m sorry?”

“This palazzo was built in 1650 by Innocent the Tenth for his reputed mistress, Olimpia Maidalchini.”

“We don’t normally give that part of the history,” the public relations staffer said. Another nervous smile.

“Of course not,” Profeta said.

With the formality of a palace courtier, the public relations officer rapped gently on the oversized double doors of Tatton’s office and then opened them. Profeta waited a few feet behind.

“Comandante,”
Tatton said. “An honor, truly. Now, when was the last time you and I had the pleasure?”

“The Ara Pacis restoration,” Profeta said.

“Ah, yes,” Tatton said, politely unclear as to his meaning. “How could I forget?”

Comandante Profeta had become a vocal critic of heavy corporate fund-raising for local restoration projects. At the Ara Pacis restoration—sponsored mainly by Dulling and Pierce corporate clients—the
comandante
’s quip about the postmodern architecture for the altar’s new museum revealed far more than an architectural critique. “The new museum’s iron-and-glass cage pays homage not only to modernism but also its financial sponsors,”
La Repubblica
had quoted Profeta as saying. “It even looks like a petrol station.”

Tatton gestured for the
comandante
to sit in the oversized chair across from him. He gestured to Mildren and Jonathan. “
Comandante
, my associate, Andrew Mildren, and our visiting colleague from New York, Jonathan Marcus.”

Jonathan nodded in greeting, squeezing the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger as though massaging a migraine, making only the briefest of eye contact as he shook the
comandante
’s hand. Jonathan returned to his seat, gazing through the window at Lieutenant Rufio, who still stood beside the carabinieri car. The officer was no longer the despa rate man Jonathan had encountered in the tunnels beneath the Colosseum. He was taller than Jonathan remembered, and his posture bore a disciplined grace.

Tatton sat down, his head bowing respectfully. “Now,
Comandante
,” he said, his tone businesslike, “how is it that we may help you?”

A secretary came in with tiny cups of espresso and placed them between the
comandante
and Tatton. It became clear to Jonathan that—incredibly—the carabiniere was not here to arrest him.

“Late last night we raided an abandoned warehouse in the port of Civitavecchia. It appeared to be a safe house for the trafficking of illicit antiquities. The site contained high-tech equipment and crates of torn manuscript pages.”

“Intriguing,
Comandante
.” Tatton’s tone was guarded. “But I’m not certain how we can assist you.”

Profeta removed a piece of paper from the manila folder under his arm. He pushed it slowly across Tatton’s desk. “Our technology team recovered this image from the hard drives. Forgive the bullet hole in the center. It seems someone wanted to dispose of their research abruptly.”

From where Jonathan sat he could make out a sketch of the fragments of the Forma Urbis under a plate of shattered glass.

“Does the image look familiar to you?”

“You’re in a law firm, not a classics department,” Tatton said. He handed the page back to Profeta. “I’m sorry it doesn’t.”

“They’re fragments of the Forma Urbis,” Profeta said. “Your client’s fragments of the Forma Urbis,” he added, as though helping him along amiably.

“
Comandante
,” Tatton said, leaning back slowly, his head raised, neck outstretched like a noble animal in sense of danger. His tone was still civil, but his indignance now more thinly veiled. “You’re not suggesting—”

“That your client was somehow involved in the operation we raided last night?” Profeta waited a moment. “Unclear. The operation was not interested in selling antiquities here in Rome.”

“Not interested in selling?” Mildren said, the thought offending him. “What for, then?”

“Research,” Profeta said ominously.

“Or another smuggling operation.” Tatton smiled. “Palimpsests and manuscripts are doing quite well at auction these days.”

“The pages were marked up with notes, devaluing them considerably. Moreover, each page was a different scribe’s version of the work of the first-century historian Flavius Josephus.”

“Josephus?” Jonathan repeated aloud, although he did not mean to.

“Yes,” Profeta said. “If the pages had been intact manuscripts, they would be some of the oldest complete Greek texts of Josephus’s
Jewish War
. The pages spanned editions over the course of centuries.”

The
comandante
slid an enlarged photograph of an old manuscript page across the desk.

“Here is a photocopied sample of the manuscript pages we discovered.”

Tatton did not bother to look at it. He chose rather to gaze at Profeta.

Jonathan leaned over to see the text of the manuscript on the desk. He meant to stay silent, but his adrenaline was now working against him. “May I see it?”

“Of course,” Tatton said with a frosty smile. “All here to help the
comandante
’s investigation as much as possible, aren’t we?”

Jonathan looked at the text and recognized the narrative immediately. An excerpt from Josephus’s account of Titus’s final charge into the Temple’s Holy of Holies.
“And Caesar led his staff inside the Temple,”
Jonathan translated to himself,
“and viewed the Holy Place of the Sanctuary with its furnishings. The soldiers were spurred on by expectation of loot, seeing that everything outside was of gold. But one person ran in before them.”
The last phrase jumped out at him and he repeated the words,
“One person ran in before them.”

“There you are,” Jonathan whispered as though spotting a fugitive who might overhear.

“There who is?” Mildren whispered back.

But Jonathan did not hear Mildren or anything else. The room around him disappeared.
Josephus managed to get inside,
Jonathan thought,
inside the innermost chamber of the Temple before Titus.
As though catching a glimpse of a suspect on a crowded street, Jonathan leaned further over the text, peering closer, as though for a better look. He scanned the manuscript page, feverishly translating it on the legal pad resting on his lap. There was the illusion that he was taking notes of the meeting, but in Jonathan’s mind he was not in a law office at all but back at the academy library, creeping up behind one of history’s great unanswered questions.
Great scholars have the hunter’s will,
Sharif once told him, laughing.

Jonathan felt a tingling of anticipation as he moved down the manuscript’s page.
Something was revealed here.
A line so important, someone scoured archives through centuries of Josephus manuscripts, ripping priceless pages to find it. As Jonathan read, the realization struck him with so much force, he spoke aloud.

“There’s an additional line here,” Jonathan whispered.

“What?” Mildren said.

“In the text here,” Jonathan answered quietly, pointing at the parchment page, “there’s a line that’s not in later editions of Josephus.” Seven years earlier, at the academy, Jonathan had spent weeks on end reading entire tracts of Josephus’s writings. “I’ve never seen it.”

“Just shut up,”
Mildren muttered.

Jonathan stared at the line, and as the answer came over him, it was not like a crashing wave, but a gradual tide. No moment of Eureka, but more like a reminder of something he knew all along. In graduate school, Jonathan imagined the setting in which he would arrive at this moment. This law office and the suit he was wearing could not have been further from his prediction.