The Last Ember (21 page)

It was all there,
Jonathan thought, just as he imagined it would be,
all in a single line of text.
A single line that revealed the breadth of a conspiracy beyond the imagination of even a scholar intimate with the intrigues of Rome. One line torn from countless manuscripts because it revealed how a man—in a single moment—dedicated his life to a lie so great that historians would believe it for millennia. Jonathan touched the line, chilled by the vast conspiracy brimming beneath the text. He drew his finger across the words, and as he did, translated them slowly, reliving the moment of the creation of a double agent so effective he not only infiltrated an enemy camp, he also wrote its history.

“That’s how he did it,” Jonathan exhaled, speaking to the page. “Josephus used a hidden gate.”

“Is it your stomach, man?” Mildren mumbled. “You’re all doubled over there.”

Jonathan sat up, realizing he was so hunched over his face nearly touched the page. “I’m fine, thanks.”

“Jonathan,” Tatton said loudly, repeating his name. “You’re the former graduate student in classics. Am I wrong?”

“Wrong about?”

“That this is all a bit
academic
?” Tatton squinted with disdain at the word. “The
comandante
’s precious resources spent cooking up all these connections?”

If Jonathan had been unsure about the answer, Tatton’s glower supplied it.

“Academic. Yes,” Jonathan said. “Very.”

“There you have it,
Comandante
,” Tatton said, clasping his hands prayer-fy, “straight from a former Rome Prize winner at the American Academy in Rome. This is all a bit academic for us barristers. Devaluing priceless manuscripts may lack good sense,
Comandante
, but it is not evidence of a crime.”

Lieutenant Rufio, having left his post at the car, now stepped through the door and handed the
comandante
a second folder. He nodded politely to Tatton, pardoning his interruption. Jonathan kept his gaze down, studying the claw feet of his velvet chair rather than make eye contact. After a moment, Jonathan lifted his eyes, catching a glimpse of Rufio—the paragon of loyalty, the faithful servant. Even Jonathan doubted the possibility of his betrayal, though he could still picture the lieutenant’s fury beneath the Colosseum, as he waved his gun wildly, shouting,
“In Sicily there are rules!”
And yet now his façade was convincing.

“No, but I’m afraid this is evidence of a crime,” Profeta said, leaning across the desk to hand Tatton a photograph.

Tatton stared at the photograph, marshaling the strength not to display surprise before an inquisitor—a technique he had trained countless clients to master. His only visible response was a mournful shake of his head as he slid the photograph back across his desk. The image stopped in front of Jonathan, and he could not believe Tatton had not so much as winced.

The photograph displayed a dead woman, her body ashen in the flash-bulb’s light, floating in an amber liquid inside a marble column. Jonathan leaned over and studied the tattoo around her navel, reaching for his BlackBerry inconspicuously beneath the lip of the desk.
Phere Nike Umbilicus Orbis Terrarum.
“Victory through the Navel of the World,” Jonathan said softly. “It must be the Hidden Gate’s location.”

Jonathan subtly raised his BlackBerry above the desk and, using its camera function, snapped a photograph of the dead woman’s image. He coughed to cover the digital shutter-click.

“A grievous matter,
Comandante
,” Tatton said, but it was clear his civility was reaching its boiling point. “You managed to identify the victim?”

“The perpetrators detonated the warehouse before we could recover the corpse,” Profeta said. “These men will destroy evidence of their research at any cost. They are not interested in history or culture. There will be other explosions.”

“Other explosions?” Jonathan interrupted.

“Yes,” Profeta said, gathering his materials on Tatton’s desk. “We believe these men are responsible for the explosion beneath the Colosseum only two hours ago.”

“Will you excuse me a moment?” Jonathan said, rising.
More explosions.
His nerves could not continue in this mood of crisis.
I have to stop Emili.
He walked leisurely toward the door, past the lieutenant. He could feel the lieutenant’s eyes on his back, as though he had recognized him.

“What happened to your hand?” Rufio said in rapid Italian, as Jonathan stepped past.

“I’m sorry?” Jonathan responded in English, trying to distance himself from the person beneath the Colosseum who spoke fluent Italian.

“Your hand. What happened to it?” Rufio pointed at Jonathan’s knuckles.

“Paper cut,” Jonathan said, immediately regretting it. He tucked his hand into his pocket and stepped into the hall, closing the door behind him. As though in slow motion, he walked down the hall and passed the document copy room’s immaculate supply of sharpened pencils and rows of staplers. He waited for the brass cage elevator to rise slowly, and with each ratcheting click of its gears he imagined Lieutenant Rufio swinging open the door to arrest him.

He stepped into the elevator, and just before its accordion brass doors shut, he thought for a fleeting moment that he had managed the slimmest of escapes when the sound of a slamming door burst out from the hallway.

“Fermati!”
Jonathan heard someone shout, and then came the sound of shoes galloping down the marble corridor. A figure was tearing toward him in long strides.
The officer recognized me,
Jonathan thought. For a moment, Jonathan considered his options.
I have to get out of here and stop Emili.
He rapidly pressed the door-close button. But at the last moment, an arm jammed into the elevator and its accordion brass doors sprang back.

“Yes?” Jonathan said, tilting his head innocently. His heart pounded so hard he was certain it moved his lapel.

The door widened and to his surprise it was not Rufio who stood there, but Mildren.

“Marcus,” he said, winded, “you are to tell no one, do you hear me?”

“Tell no one what?”

“About what you bloody told me in my office this morning.” Mildren looked shaken. “If you so much as hint to
anyone
that these fragments bear some kind of
stupid
message, you might as well buy your own plane ticket home. Am I understood?”

Jonathan stared at him, saying nothing.

“Am I understood?” Mildren said, panicked veins sprouting in his neck.

“Completely,” Jonathan said.

The elevator doors closed between them, and the cage reached the courtyard. Passing the guardhouse, Jonathan slowed his stride, waving nonchalantly to the guard, who offered to call a taxi.

“Thank you, but I prefer to walk,” Jonathan said.

He moved through the crowd in Piazza Navona, unsure of what was more shocking to him: the solution to a mystery of the ancient world or his desire now to ignore it.
Bury it and move on,
said the young lawyer in him. Get back to New York. What did Emili call it?
Reburial
. When preservationists accidentally uncover archaeological sites they cannot afford to maintain.

Except he couldn’t ignore it. Only after he realized the unconscious quickening of his legs did he realize why. Years before, Jonathan spent countless nights in the academy library, searching for the one element his Josephus theory lacked: a motive. A reason important enough for the ancient historian to forsake his reputation for all time. And now, after a single day back in Rome, a great mystery of the ancient world practically solved itself for him.

Jonathan shook his head, realizing he had been right all those years ago. Josephus’s capture by Roman troops
was
carefully arranged, as was his rise within the Roman ranks—all to know the precise moment of Titus’s siege of the Temple Sanctuary so he could smuggle the Tabernacle menorah to safety
.

“Cognoscere mentem, cognoscere hominem,”
Jonathan said aloud, remembering the legal phrase he had used in court only weeks before.
Know the motive, know the man
.

J
onathan turned off the piazza into a narrow alley, jogging now. He moved down another cobbled street, and then hurried up an old set of marble steps. He could not afford to leave a trail.

Once he reached Via Arenula, he got in a cab and the driver turned around. Lost in his own thoughts, Jonathan had forgotten to give him instructions. After a moment, Jonathan spoke words he never expected to utter in Italian again.

“The American Academy in Rome, please.”

The taxi crossed the Tiber into Trastevere, winding up the Janiculum Hill beneath a thick canopy of umbrella pines. Since the nineteenth century, the academy’s villa had sat atop a steeply sloped hill overlooking all of Rome.

Jonathan stepped out of the cab beneath the San Pancrazio, a restored Renaissance arch near the top of the hill. He walked down the slope of a hedge-lined street and approached the front iron gate of the academy’s villa. Jonathan could smell the academy’s gardens; he remembered the chef’s oregano patch.

Even after all these years, the same gatekeeper sat in the sentry box. Kossi, originally from Togo, was listening to the cheers of a soccer game on a small radio, just as Jonathan remembered him. It was only appropriate that Kossi worked at the academy. He was not an ordinary security guard, but someone with a deep love and knowledge of the ancient world. Kossi had been a graduate student in classics at a small university just outside Ghana until a rebellion decimated the university and a good part of his left cheek. After long nights of research, Jonathan used to walk down to the academy’s guard gate, and over espresso at dawn trade Latin phrases from the great works of the ancient world.

Hoping the guard had not forgotten him, Jonathan approached the gate.

“Ventis maria omnia vecti, oramus,”
Jonathan said. A line from the
Aeneid
. Across a storm-tossed sea, we beseech you for help.

The scar along Kossi’s jaw wrinkled as he grinned in disbelief.

“Jonathan Marcus?”

Kossi had grayed at the temples, but his brochure-quality West African smile was radiant as ever. Kossi knew the context of Jonathan’s citation immediately. Aeneas’s troops begging Dido to welcome them on her shores. The security guard replied in Latin, giving Jonathan the very next line from the ancient classic, something most Ivy League Latin professors could not do.

“Solvite corde metum.”
Then free your heart from fear.

The gate clicked open. Kossi clutched Jonathan’s shoulder paternally. In one sense, Jonathan hoped not to find Kossi still in the sentry’s box, that his abilities would have allowed for him to find a teaching position in Europe, but here he was seven years later, a copy of Catullus’s Latin poetry in his hand, and the distant cheers of a soccer game in the background.

“You’re a lawyer now, I’ve heard.” There was pride in Kossi’s tone, but also something forlorn.

“Kossi, is there anyone in the Church?”
The Church.
The fellows’ nickname for the vaulted library inside the academy. “It’s urgent.”

Kossi shook his head.
“Riposo.”

Jonathan looked at his watch. It was one p.m. The Italian afternoon break, the
riposo
, had not even occurred to him. It really had been a long time since he was in Italy.

“I’m afraid I don’t have a couple hours to spare, Kossi. It’s . . . it’s for a meeting.”

“For a lawyers’ meeting?”

Jonathan nodded. “It’s complicated.”

“Glad to see things haven’t changed.” Kossi gestured up the marble stairs. “I’ll meet you at the door.”

The American Academy spared no expense. Financed personally by Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, and William Vanderbilt, the main villa was designed by McKim, Mead and White, whose other modest projects included the Metropolitan Museum of Art and New York City’s old Pennsylvania Station. The central villa housed thirty of America’s most talented scholars and artists to spend a year or two immersing themselves in the classical traditions Rome offered.

Jonathan entered the academy’s interior loggia, still admiring its ivy-covered pilasters and salmon stucco walls. The empty
cortile
, or interior courtyard, was like a ghost town, the wind whistling through its columned cloister. He remembered the courtyard in the summer, grappa picnic lunches for the fellows. Jonathan had been certain he would never step through these gates again.

Along one side of the courtyard, large French windows opened into the academy’s great room, now lit only by three spots of a billiards lamp above a cloaked pool table. Jonathan remembered how the academy fellows socialized there. In his mind he could still hear their banter about the ancient world over the crack of the cue ball. Jonathan had stepped into not only the sleeping courtyard, but his past.