The Last Gospel (14 page)

‘He was probably patronized by the rich owner of this house,’ Jack said. ‘A kind of philosopher mascot. Whether or not there was a Latin library too has always been the big question.’

‘And the tunnel, the one we’re going into, the one revealed by the earthquake?’ Costas asked.

‘It’s one of the early tunnels, dug by Weber’s men, heading towards the area of the villa where the library was found. It was sealed up while Weber was still in charge.’

‘Any idea why?’

‘That’s what we’re here to find out.’

‘Do we know who owned this place?’ Costas said.

‘That’s the beauty of this period, leading up to the eruption,’ Jack replied. ‘We know a lot of the names of aristocrats from the Roman historians, from Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny, half a dozen others.

‘Cue your first treat,’ Hiebermeyer interrupted, beaming. ‘What alerted the superintendency to the earthquake’s effect on this site was that part of the solidified mud wall in this trench collapsed, over there. We may as well look at it now while our guard finishes his cigarette.’

They made their way past the group of workmen, who were now clearing away chunks of rocky conglomerate, and came to a gap where a section had fallen away from the trench wall. Elizabeth d’Agostino was standing only a few metres away with a clipboard, talking rapidly to a man with the same ID around his neck, evidently another inspector. Jack tried to catch her eye, but failed. ‘It’ll be months before they clear all this,’ Hiebermeyer muttered to Jack as they picked their way through the rubble. ‘Every possible reason for delay will be found. Someone, someone really big, wants this place shut down, and I think they’re going to have their way.’

‘Not if we can help it,’ Jack murmured.

‘There are three big forces at play around here,’ Hiebermeyer continued quietly, mopping the sweat off his brow. ‘The first is the volcano. The second is the Mafia, organized crime.’

‘And the third is the Church,’ Jack said.

‘Correct.’

‘Pretty volatile mix,’ Costas said loudly, then coughed as he saw the inspector glance at them.

‘Makes doing archaeology in Egypt seem like a piece of cake,’ Hiebermeyer murmured. ‘Sometimes I think they’re wishing for another eruption, to seal this place up for ever. It seems that the huge loss of life that would result, the destruction of these sites and all the archaeology and the loss of tourist money would be nothing compared to the danger of what might be found here. What that might be, I don’t know, but someone’s frightened of something. I suspect someone powerful in the Church is worried about a great revelation, an ancient document that might undermine their authority. Look how much obstruction there was when the Dead Sea Scrolls were revealed in Israel. Another pyroclastic flow from Vesuvius would eliminate the threat here for all time.’

‘Let’s hope you’ve found enough to keep the door open before that happens.’

‘You’re going to be amazed,’ Hiebermeyer whispered, looking at Jack intently. ‘What we’ve found. Trust me.’ They reached a table covered with safety gear, and he turned and spoke loudly. ‘Hard hats on. Health and safety regulations.’

‘They have those in Naples?’ Costas said pointedly. The inspector looked around again, and Jack shot Costas a warning look. They both donned orange hard hats, followed by the others. Everyone followed Maria and stooped in file under the overhang into a cavity about five metres deep, decreasing in height to the point where Maria at the far end was forced to squat down. Costas crawled in beside Jack and pressed his hand on the irregular grey surface above them.

‘See what I mean?’ Jack said. ‘Hard as rock.’

‘Must have been a nightmare to excavate.’

‘Here we are.’ Hiebermeyer pointed. Emerging from the solidified mud in front of them was a smoothed slab of masonry, veins of blue and green visible on the polished white surface.

‘Cipollino,’ Jack murmured, stroking the surface appreciatively. ‘Euboean marble, from Greece. Very nice. No expense spared in this villa.’

Hiebermeyer flicked on the headlamp on his hard hat, and immediately they could see that the slab was covered with an inscription. It was in three lines, bold capital letters carved deep into the marble:

‘It’s Greek!’ Costas exclaimed.

‘These kinds of inscriptions were highly formulaic,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘You find them in Egypt too, from the time before the Romans when the Greeks ruled. It reads “The council and the people honour Leukios Kalpornios Peison, the son of Leukios, the ruler and patron of the city.” ’

‘Ruler and patron,’ Costas whistled. ‘The local Mafia boss?’

Jack grinned. ‘I remember this. There’s an identical inscription in Greece. Calpurnius Piso was Roman governor on the island of Samothrace, in the Aegean. He must have brought this back as a memento.’

‘Along with a shipload of statues and other art,’ Maria murmured. ‘Maurice showed me the stuff they found here in the eighteenth century, in the Naples museum. It’s incredible.’

‘This particular Calpurnius Piso was probably the father or grandfather of the one we know most about, who lived in the time of the emperors Claudius and Nero,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘That later Calpurnius Piso seems to have been especially loyal to Claudius, but hatched a plot against Nero that failed. Piso retired to his house, maybe this very one, where he opened his veins and bled to death. That was in AD 65, eleven years after Claudius’ death and fourteen years before Vesuvius blew. We don’t know who the owner of the villa was at the time of the eruption, but it was probably another family member or this inscription wouldn’t still be here. Maybe a nephew, a cousin, someone who escaped Nero’s purge of the family following the assassination attempt.’

‘So this clinches it,’ Jack said, eyeing Hiebermeyer. ‘This really was the home of Calpurnius Piso. Another small step for archaeology. Congratulations, Maurice.’

They moved out into the open courtyard again. Hiebermeyer took off his hard hat and jerked his head towards the looming presence behind the rooftops. ‘Don’t congratulate me, Jack. It was the volcano that did it, not us. This inscription was revealed by the earthquake. It’s what alerted the authorities to what else might have been revealed, old excavation workings that might have opened up. Then they saw the tunnel entrance.’

‘It seems to be more Greek than Roman around here,’ Costas said, wiping the dust from his hands. ‘I had no idea.’

‘There are layers of it,’ Jack said. ‘First the Greeks who colonized the Bay of Naples, then the Romans who rediscovered Greece when they conquered it. The Roman generals in Greece looted all the great works, from places like Delphi and Olympia, and a lot of Greek art starts to appear in Rome, often stuck on Roman monuments. Then wealthy private collectors like Calpurnius Piso bring back their own haul, some of it masterpieces but mostly lesser works, what was left. Then, by the time we’re talking about, the early imperial period, Greek artisans are making stuff specifically for the Roman market, just as Chinese potters or Indian furniture-makers produced stuff for western taste in the nineteenth century. That’s what you mostly see in Pompeii and Herculaneum,
objets d’art
in the Greek manner, more style than substance.’

‘I look at a sculpture,’ Costas said determinedly. ‘I like it or I don’t like it, and I don’t care about the label.’

‘Fair enough.’ Jack grinned. ‘The truest kind of connoisseur. But you really have to understand the context here, and that’s the beauty of these sites. You can see how the Romans used their art, how they appreciated it. To them, it didn’t matter if they had a Greek Old Master or a fine reproduction, because when it came to the crunch they were all just decoration. What really mattered to the Romans were the portraits of their ancestors, images that embodied the virtues they so admired, that emphasized family continuity. Those portraits were kept hidden away, often in a private room, and were traditionally in wax and wood so haven’t survived. The Romans get a lot of bad press because art historians of the Victorian period, who glorified classical Greece, mostly only saw collections of ancient sculptures ripped out of context and lined up in galleries and museums. It seemed to show indiscriminate judgement, bad taste, vulgarity. Come here, and you can see that nothing was further from the truth. If anything, it was the Greeks at this period who lacked the edge.’

‘Which brings us very neatly to the reason you’re here,’ Hiebermeyer beamed, pressing his hard hat back on.

They watched as the guard finally roused himself, ambling over to the wooden doorway and making a big display of unlocking it. ‘The greatest lost library of antiquity,’ Hiebermeyer said quietly. ‘And one of the greatest black holes in archaeology. Until now.’

J
ack crouched behind Hiebermeyer at the entrance to the tunnel into the ancient villa. It was already cooler, a relief from the baking sun outside. Immediately in front of them was a metre-wide extractor fan with an electric motor, and behind it a flexible corrugated tube that ran out of the temporary wooden structure in front of the entrance to a coil and an outlet high on a wall above the site.

‘After coming out of the tunnel yesterday, I played up the danger element just to ensure they wouldn’t try going in,’ Hiebermeyer said. ‘But there really is a toxic gas buildup in there, methane, carbon monoxide. Mostly it’s from organic material that’s beginning to rot, with the introduction of more oxygen after the tunnel was opened up.’

‘Not bodies?’ Costas said hopefully.

‘In this place, they’re either skeletonized, or incinerated,’ Hiebermeyer replied. ‘Usually,’ he added.

‘How long do we have to wait?’ Maria asked.

‘We’ll give it a few more minutes, then take the fan in and reactivate it when we reach the grille.’

Jack paused. ‘I think this is the first time we’ve dug together since Carthage.’ He turned to Costas. ‘The three of us were students together, and we cut our teeth with a UNESCO team at Carthage. I dived in the ancient harbour, Maurice disappeared into a hole in the ground and Maria recorded inscriptions.’

‘I feel the odd one out here,’ Costas said.

‘I think you can join our club.’ Jack nudged Hiebermeyer, who tried to look at Costas stonily through his pebble glasses, the hint of a smile on his face, his cheeks streaked with grime. Jack suppressed a grin. ‘Maurice found the remains of a great bronze furnace, just as described by the Romans, the first definitive evidence for Carthaginian child sacrifice. It was a fantastic find.’

‘Fantastic?’ Costas said weakly. ‘Child sacrifice. I thought we’d left all that behind on our last little adventure, with the Toltecs in Mexico.’

‘The past is a pretty unsavoury place sometimes,’ Jack said wryly. ‘You just have to take what you get, go with the flow.’

‘Go with the flow,’ Costas repeated. ‘Yeah, right.’ He looked into the dark recess behind the gated entrance in front of them, then back at Jack. ‘So what delights does this place hold for us?’

‘Ever been to the Getty Villa?’

‘The Getty Villa. Malibu, California. Yeah,’ Costas said vaguely. ‘I remember a school trip. Classical design, lots of statues. Big central pool, great for skimming coins.’

Hiebermeyer raised his eyes, and Jack grinned again. ‘Well, this place was the basis for the design of the Getty Villa.’

Costas looked doubtfully at the black hole in front of them. ‘No kidding.’

‘Okay, we’re moving,’ Hiebermeyer said, eyeing the hole that he and Mana had managed to enlarge slightly the evening before. He lifted up the extractor fan and heaved it forward, pulling the exhaust hose behind him. Jack and the others followed, and within a few metres they were completely enclosed by the tunnel. It was about as wide as a person could stretch, and just high enough for Jack to stand upright. The surface was like an old mine shaft, covered with the marks of chisels and pickaxes, and it smelled musty. Jack felt as if he were walking back into the eighteenth century, seeing the site through the eyes of the first tunnellers who had hacked their way into the rock-hard mud, through the eyes of the engineer Karl Weber as he tried to make sense of the labyrinth his men had dug in their search for loot. He followed Hiebermeyer round a corner, and it became darker. ‘No electric lighting yet,’ Hiebermeyer said ruefully. ‘But keep your headlamps off for a moment. Okay, you can switch them on now.’

Jack activated his beam and shone it forward. He stifled a gasp, and tripped forward slightly. The head of Anubis was staring out from the side of the tunnel just ahead of him, the black ears upright and the snout defiant just as Hiebermeyer and Maria had first seen it the day before.

‘Behold your second treat.’ Hiebermeyer twisted back round after having placed the extractor fan just in front of him. ‘This is the key find I meant, the clincher for the superintendency. It’s exactly what they want. A spectacular find. You can see they’ve already widened the recess around the statue, ready for taking it out later today. It’ll be all over the front pages tomorrow morning. Cue closing up this tunnel. Permanently.’