The Last Gospel (23 page)

Massimo nodded, walked inside and stooped down, then swallowed hard, as if he were about to retch. He glanced back at them. ‘You might want to take a few deep breaths. It’s a little high down there.’ He lifted the manhole cover, and they glimpsed the dark beginnings of a spiral staircase. An indescribable smell wafted up. He closed the lid hurriedly, and dived back outside, clutching his mouth.

‘Okay. I see what you mean. We’ll kit up here, outside,’ Jack said.

Massimo swallowed hard, and his voice was hoarse. ‘You’ll see a fluorescent orange line running along the edge of the Cloaca Maxima, then into the Velabrum as far as we reached,’ he said. ‘Beyond that, you’re on your own.’

‘You’re not coming with us?’ Jack said.

‘I’d love to, but I’d be a liability. I had a bad experience yesterday, just below the Forum of Nerva. A conduit suddenly disgorged a gob of yellow liquid into the Cloaca, and it aerosolized into a mist. No idea what it was, don’t want to know. I didn’t have my respirator on. Stupid. I’ve been throwing up every half-hour or so ever since. It’s happened to me before, I just need a little time. Occupational hazard.’

‘You guys take risks,’ Jack murmured. ‘So what is down there? Liquid, I mean.’

‘You want the full menu?’

‘A la carte,’ Jack said.

‘Well, it’s a mixture of runoff from the streets, the things that actually live down there, and leakage.’

‘Leakage,’ Costas muttered. ‘Great.’

‘Mud, diesel, urine. Rotting rat carcasses. And the stringy grey stuff, well, it shouldn’t be there, but the sewage outlets aren’t exactly all they’re piped up to be.’ Massimo gave them a slightly macabre grin, and coughed. ‘But it’s an old city. There’s always going to be a bit of give and take.’

‘Give and take?’ Costas said.

‘Well, one conduit provides clear, life-giving water, the other takes away putrid effluent. Or, to put it another way, the sewage pipes give to the drains, the drains take it away, the river flows to the sea. Here, it’s the natural order of things.’

‘Sheer poetry,’ Costas muttered. ‘No wonder the river Tiber looks green. It’s how I’m beginning to feel.’

‘We’ll be fine in the IMU e-suits.’ Jack said. ‘Completely sealed in, no skin exposed. Tried and tested in all the most extreme conditions, right, Costas? If this goes well, Massimo, we’ll donate you all of our equipment.’

‘That would be excellent, Jack.
Perfetto
.’ He swayed, and looked as if he were about to throw up. ‘You’d better get going. They’re forecasting heavy rain this afternoon, and the Cloaca can become a torrent. You don’t want to get flushed out into the river.’

‘I don’t like that word, flush,’ Costas muttered.

‘The good news is, once you turn the corner from the main drain into the Velabrum, the water becomes clear,’ Massimo said. ‘Under the Palatine it comes from natural springs, and because nobody lives there any more there’s hardly any pollution. Right under the hill it should be crystal clear.’

Jack took off his old khaki bag, and slung it over Massimo’s head. ‘Guard this bag with your life, Massimo, and I’ll see that our board of directors award Costas a special secondment here as your technical adviser.’

‘What?’ Costas looked aghast.

‘Another honorary tunnel rat.’ Massimo gave Costas a feverish grin, and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘It’s a deal. And now it’s my turn to donate some equipment.’ He went back into the chamber inside the stone pier and came out with two compact climbers’ harnesses, with metal carabiners, a hammer and pitons and a coil of rope. ‘It’s not exactly what you’d imagine needing under Rome, but trust me, this can be a lifesaver.’

Jack nodded. ‘Much appreciated.’ He laid the harness down beside the rest of his kit, and waved appreciatively to the two IMU technicians who had gone back to wait by the van. He looked back at the cover over the hole into the Cloaca Maxima, the place where they would soon be going, and took a few deep breaths. Their banter had kept his anxieties at bay, but now he had to face it: this dive was going to force him to confront his worst fear, the one thing that could truly unsettle him. Costas knew it too, and Jack sensed that he was being watched very closely. He pulled the e-suit towards him, and squatted down to take off his boots. He would remain focused. An extraordinary prize could await them. And underwater tunnels always had exits.

Costas peered at him. ‘Good to go?’

‘Good to go.’

T
he manhole cover above Jack slid into place with a resounding clang, sealing him and Costas off from the rumble of traffic through Rome outside. They had given their final okay signal to Massimo and the two IMU crewmen moments before, and Jack felt reassured that the others would be above the manhole for the duration, awaiting their return. But now that they were entombed in the Cloaca Maxima he found himself weighing up the odds once more. There was no safety backup, no diver poised ready to assist in a rescue. It was another calculated risk, like their dive on St Paul’s shipwreck. But Jack knew from hard experience that safety backup was often more psychological than practical, that problems were most often solved on the spot or not at all, that his ability to pull off a dangerous dive often depended on himself and his buddy alone. And any more equipment and personnel would make their operation more visible, and take precious time they could ill afford. He peered at Costas squatting beside him, then angled his headlamp down the spiral staircase into the darkness. This was it. They were on their own again.

‘I’ll go first,’ Costas said over the intercom, peering at Jack through his helmet visor.

‘I thought this wasn’t exactly your cup of tea.’

‘Decision made. Always ready to try a new brew. You okay?’

‘Lead on.’

Costas heaved himself up and clunked down the stairs in front of Jack, the halogen beam from his headlamp wavering along the ancient masonry walls. They were wearing the same IMU e-suits they had used on the wreck, all-environment Kevlar-reinforced drysuits that had served them well from the Arctic to the Black Sea, with integrated buoyancy and air-conditioning systems. The yellow helmets with full face masks contained a call-up digital display showing life-support data, including the computerized gas mix fed from the compact closed-circuit rebreathers on their backs. Their only concession to the unusual circumstances were the climbers’ harnesses that Massimo had insisted they take along, fitted and tested before they had donned their rebreathers a few minutes before.

‘This reminds me of going into that sunken submarine in the Black Sea, hunting for Atlantis,’ Costas said as he stomped around the stairs. ‘I feel as if I could cut the air with a knife here too.’

Jack swallowed hard. Just before sealing his helmet he had caught a waft of fetid air from below, and he still had the cloying taste in his mouth. The last thing he needed now was to throw up inside his helmet. That was one human reality the IMU engineers had failed to consider. He swallowed again. ‘You know, you might want to get the design guys to fit these with a sick bag.’

‘I was just thinking the same thing.’

After about thirty steps, the spiral staircase ended at a small platform in front of an arched door, blackened and dripping with slime. Jack came up behind Costas and they both aimed their headlamps through. ‘There it is,’ Jack said, trying to sound cheery. ‘The Great Drain.’ Ahead of them a straight flight of steps led down into a wide tunnel, at least eight metres across and five metres high, built of stone and brick dripping with algae. Half filling the tunnel was a surging mass of dark liquid, rushing towards them from the darkness ahead and disappearing out of sight below. Jack turned up his external audio sensor, and his head was filled with the sound of the torrent, almost deafening. He turned it down again and pointed to the fluorescent orange line that began ahead of them where the stairs disappeared underwater. ‘That must be Massimo’s line,’ he said. ‘It’s pitoned in, and we can haul ourselves along it. There’s a ledge about a metre and a half below it that’s usually above water, but it looks as if we’ll be wading. The entrance to the Velabrum is only about twenty metres ahead of us.’

‘That’d be a hell of a waterpark ride if we fell in.’

‘It disgorges into the Tiber, but Massimo says there’s a big metal grid in the way. Might not be a happy ending.’

Costas walked gingerly on to the first step in the tunnel. Something large and dark scurried off at enormous speed along a narrow ridge in front of him. ‘Looks like Massimo left one of his friends down here,’ Costas said distastefully.

‘At least we shouldn’t be seeing any of those where we’re going,’ Jack said from behind. ‘According to Massimo, the conduit leading under the Palatine is pure, doesn’t have enough in it to sustain many higher life forms.’

‘That’s reassuring,’ Costas said. They carried on slowly down until they reached the fluorescent line. Costas played his headlamp over the rushing torrent just below them. ‘It looks like espresso,’ he murmured. ‘That foam on top.’

‘
Schiuma
, you mean,’ Jack said. ‘That’s exactly what Massimo called it.’

Costas put a foot into the torrent, holding tight with both hands to the rope. His foot created a wide wake, with foam streaming off to either side. He lifted it out, and what seemed to have been brown foam but was actually a stringy mass came out with it. He thrust his foot back in, shaking it violently. ‘Jack, that was just about the worst thing that has ever happened to me,’ he said, panting. ‘Why this? We could be in the crystal-clear waters off Sicily. Lying by a pool, having a long-overdue holiday. But no, we go diving in a sewer.’

‘Fascinating.’ Jack was squatting on the step behind Costas, peering at a pile of washed-up debris just above the torrent. Costas twisted around, his foot still in the water. ‘Have you found it? Can we go now?’

Jack pushed aside some rodent bones, and held up a slimy chunk of pottery. ‘Roman amphora sherd. Dressel 2 to 4, unless I’m mistaken. The same type we found on the shipwreck, and in Herculaneum. The wine Claudius would have drunk. This stuff got everywhere.’ He put his other hand deep into the sludge, and grunted. ‘There’s more.’

‘Leave it, Jack.’

Jack paused, then pulled out his arm and stood up. ‘Okay. Just being an archaeologist.’

‘Save it for this secret chamber. If we ever get there.’ Costas took the coil of rope from his shoulder. He clipped one end to the piton holding the fluorescent line, and the other end to his harness. ‘I think we can sacrifice one rope here, for safety,’ he said. ‘I refuse to end my days in a torrent of shit. Clip on behind me.’ He turned back and stepped down until the liquid was nearly chest-high, flecking his visor with foam. ‘I’m on the ledge,’ he said. ‘Moving ahead now.’ Jack followed him, feeling the pressure of the water push hard against his legs and then his waist. They began to progress along, painfully slowly, a few inches at a time. The water felt heavy, cloying, and Jack could see iridescent streams of oily matter on the surface, then shifting blotches of brown and grey, a camouflage colour. He tried to focus on the walls, the ceiling, on stonework which had been built well before the Roman Empire, when the Velabrum was first covered over. He arched his head back, and realized the tunnel had taken a slight curve to the right. The steps they had come down from the spiral staircase were now out of view. He turned forward and slogged on, beginning to pant hard with the exertion. He looked down to check his carabiner on the line and then looked up. Costas had vanished. He blinked hard, and wiped his mask. He was still gone. For a horrified moment he thought Costas must have fallen in, and he braced himself for the whip of the rope as he was swept past. Then he saw a dull glow coming from the wall about five metres in front of him, and a yellow helmet appeared.

‘This is the side tunnel,’ Costas said. ‘I’ve clipped the other end of the rope to a piton inside.’ Jack heaved himself against the current for the final few steps, then Costas reached out and hauled him in. Both men sat for a moment slumped against the side of the tunnel, panting. Jack sucked at the hydrating energy drink stored inside his suit, sluicing it round his mouth to get rid of the unpleasant taste. He looked around. They were in a smaller tunnel, but it was still a good three metres high and three metres across, with an arched barrel-vaulted roof and a flat bottom, a channel filled with water flowing down the centre. The flow was exiting into the Cloaca Maxima, and the water was clear.

‘Time for a final reality check,’ Costas said, peering at his wrist gauge. ‘This must be it. The Velabrum. It’s orientated straight into the Palatine Hill, and I can see Massimo’s line running ahead along the right side as far as I can make out, to wherever they stopped.’

Jack put his hand on the side of the tunnel. ‘This is an impressive piece of engineering,’ he said. ‘The Cloaca Maxima has masonry and brickwork from lots of periods, from when it was first covered over in the sixth century BC. But this is different, a single-period construction. Regular, rectilinear blocks of stone at the entrance. If I didn’t know better, I’d say we were walking into one of the great aqueduct channels made by the emperors.’