I, Saul (19 page)

“Tell me, Luke,” Paul said the next night, “have you made any changes in the manuscript, any suggestions?”

“Not a jot or a tittle yet. The story has captivated me.”

“When you get to the latter years, you will find that my mind was not as sharp and my pen much shakier. I will need your help making sense of all of it and putting it into a form where people can read it. Keep it among the brethren and my family.”

When Luke embraced Paul for his usual farewell, he felt an urgency in the old man's grip he hadn't noticed for weeks. Was he afraid the end was near? Luke found Primus most interested in Paul's health. “I confess, Doctor, I wish he would pass in his sleep. I don't want to see his execution any more than you do.”

Later, as he ascended to his guest room, Luke wondered whether

Primus and his wife treated him so kindly only because he had treated Primus' mother. They had to know the risk of harboring a Christian. If and when Nero wanted him, he would not be hard to find.

He sat wearily before the parchments, and at the haunting, lonely call of the night watchman announcing nine o'clock, Luke decided he would allow himself three more hours of escape into Paul's narrative from fifty-five years before.

“Switch seats with me,” Roger Michaels said. “I don't want to be surprised.”

“By whom?” Augie said, rising.

“See the carabinieri station over my shoulder, across the street?”

“You're afraid of the police?”

“I told you, I can't trust anyone.”

He settled with his back to the wall of the Portauovo, pulled his beret down over his eyes, and rested his chin in his hand. Augie would not have recognized him, so he couldn't imagine anyone else would.

When the waiter brought their omelets, Roger left his silverware wrapped in a paper napkin as if to follow through on his insistence that he couldn't eat. “Say a blessing if you want,” he said. “You will anyway.”

As Augie bowed his head, a boldness chilled him. It was as if God Himself had given him utterance. He reached to cover Roger's hand, stunned anew at his friend's shuddering. “Father,” Augie whispered, “we are grateful for this food. Bless it to our bodies. And would You use whatever Roger is going through to draw him to Yourself? I pray in the name of Your Son and my Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.”

Augie unrolled Roger's napkin and slid his silver to him. “You're going to eat, Rog. I'm here to help, and I can't have you running on empty.”

Roger sighed with a catch in his throat. “Oh, Augie,” he said, sounding as weary as Augie had ever heard him, “you remember Klaudios?”

“Giordano? Of course. The Vatican guide with the—.”

“Limp. Yes. He's dead.”

“What?” Augie said, mouth full and struggling to swallow. “How?”

“Murdered. I didn't think they'd do it. They needed him to get to me. How are they supposed to get to me without him giving me up?”

It was all Augie could do to breathe. “Roger, you've got to back up. What are you talking about?”

“I owe him my life,” Roger said, eyes filling. “He was even more in my face about his faith than you were. You know how Catholics can be.”

“I'm lost, Rog. What are you into?”

Roger covered his eyes, appearing to doze. Finally he slid his hands away. “You know they've been working on Mamertime.”

“The prison, sure. Shoring up the foundation or something?”

Roger nodded. “It's been a mess over there, tourists coming all this way, disappointed not to get a look at Paul and Peter's dungeon.”

“Right.”

“The plan was to leave the tufa rock walls just as they are to stay as
close to authentic as possible. It took ‘em weeks to brace those so they could replace the two rows of blocks below floor level.” “Makes sense.”

“Well, Klaudios made friends with the workers over there, even a couple of the supervisors. You know him—wanted to be the first to know when the place would be open to his groups again.”

“That's him.”

“So apparently one day there's a big to-do at the site and Klaudios happens to be there jawing with the supervisor. The engineers had seen some sagging, I think, and they guessed the foundation was deteriorating somehow.”

Augie wanted to leap across the table and grab Roger, demanding he get to the point. “So what caused the commotion?”

“Turns out the engineers might have been wrong about the foundation. The stones were cold but they were dry and appeared in decent shape.”

Roger paused to take a bite, and suddenly he was shoveling in eggs and cheese like it was his last meal. He kept peeking over Augie's shoulder.

Finally the big man took a long swig of his orange juice and said, “Thanks. This was a good idea. I needed that.”

“Roger, I'm going to kill you myself if you don't get on with the story.”

“The supervisor shuts down the work late in the afternoon—” “When was this?”

Roger shook his head. “I can hardly remember when my life ended. A little less than three weeks maybe? Anyway, down deep behind one of the stone blocks a worker finds something wrapped in a kind of
primitive burlap. The cloth was in pretty rough shape, but it had protected whatever it was wrapped around, and that felt intact.”

“He didn't unwrap it ….”

“No!” Roger said. “Valued his job.”

“So somebody called the Art Squad ….”

“'Course,” Roger said, “even though nobody knew what might be in there. Could have been garbage, but the supervisor had to follow the rules. Whoever he called at the Carabinieri Art Squad told him to secure the site and said they would send someone in the morning to check it out.”

“Routine.”

Roger nodded. “But ol' Giordano was curious.”

“Never knew a guy with more questions,” Augie said. “Everything interested Klaudios.”

“So when everybody's gone but a couple of guys from the crew who are supposed to watch the place, he—.”

“They assigned laborers for security?”

“They didn't know it was anything important, Augie. Probably figured it wasn't, like nine times out of ten these so-called finds turn out to be meaningless. So Klaudios tells the guys he's going to nose around inside before he goes back to the Vatican, and they probably don't think a thing about it. Why would they? He's on the Vatican payroll. They know him, he's been friendly with their supervisor, so they don't care. Pretty soon he comes climbing out of there and tells 'em he's going to go get his stuff but that he'd like to spend a little more time in there before he goes home. Asks them if they want anything and comes back half an hour later with snacks and his big old satchel over his shoulder. While they're enjoying what he brought ‘em, he's back in the dungeon.”

“You're not saying he stole an artifact.”

“Augie, you may be the only person on God's green earth who wouldn't have, and I wouldn't put it past you.”

“But that's a major crime! Doesn't he have a family?”

“He's got kids in college.”

“What'd he find, Rog, and how'd you get mixed up in it?”

“Can we walk and talk? I feel like I'm sitting under a spotlight here.”

“This place was your idea, Rog.”

“Not all my ideas are brilliant. Like letting Klaudios rope me into this.”

Augie paid the bill and followed Roger across the street and into the underground station. “We taking the train back to your place?” Augie said.

“My apartment is where they're going to kill me. I haven't been there for days. Anyway, I drove. You can ride back with me. I've booked you into a place less than half a mile away from my neighborhood.”

“Who wants to kill you, Roger?”

“Guy from the Art Squad. He'd use a Tombaroli hit man.”

A tomb raider?
“All right,” Augie said. He dragged Roger to a bench in a secluded alcove and made him sit. “So what did Klaudios haul out of there?”

“You ready?”

“Enough to beat it out of you if I have to.”

“Only the memoir of St. Paul the Apostle.”