investigators rarely write anything there at all.”
“Shit!” Jack exclaimed. Then, realizing what he’d said, he excused himself. “I’m just so desperate for this information,” he said. “I wanted to know how many deaths the OCME
has seen over the last thirty years or so that involved alternative medicine. It’s that type of statistic that gets people’s attention.”
“Sorry,” Alida said with a forced smile.
14
10:08 P.M., TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2008
ROME
(4:08 P.M., NEW YORK CITY)
Just keep your eyes closed!” Shawn whispered. “Don’t open them, no matter what! Just imagine you’re on a beach and the sun is streaming down, and white, puffy clouds are passing overhead against a faraway blue sky.”
“It’s too cold to imagine I’m on a beach,” Sana said, with desperation in her voice.
“Then for chrissake, imagine you’re lying in the snow at Aspen, looking up at a crystalline winter sky that makes you feel you’re seeing beyond the Milky Way.”
“It’s not that cold.”
For a moment, Shawn didn’t respond. He was running out of patience and things to say to Sana, whom he’d been comforting the entire time they’d been hiding, pressed together in the tunnel. He’d known her for nearly five years, and never suspected the severity of her claustrophobia or the panic it was capable of creating. She began vociferously complaining from the moment they turned off their headlamps and dove into the tunnel headfirst, ending up on their sides facing each other in an uncomfortable embrace. Initially he had just shushed her, as he was nearly as terrified as she was, though his fear was driven by the real danger of discovery by Vatican security, not claustrophobia.
Unfortunately, her panic was such that he had had to try to calm her or she would have been the reason they were discovered. Looking at her with the meager light creeping in from both ends of the tunnel, he had seen she was trembling, her forehead was dotted with perspiration, and her eyes were thrown open to their absolute limit.
“You have to calm down!” Shawn had snapped in a hard whisper.
“I can’t,” she had cried in the softest voice her panic would allow. “I can’t stay here. I’ve got to get out. I’m going crazy!”
Forced to be creative, he ordered her to close her eyes and keep them shut. To his unexpected gratification, it had had the desired effect. She’d immediately calmed enough to stay put.
“How are you doing?” Shawn finally asked. Although she didn’t answer, he was encouraged. She’d not opened her eyes or complained about her panic for several minutes, giving Shawn a moment to calm himself. When the lights had suddenly popped on twenty minutes earlier, he’d panicked, too, rushing from inside the tunnel out to the area beneath the glass deck. He knew he had to replace the heavy glass panel they’d left leaning against the wall. There’d been no doubt that if the glass had been seen standing open, they would have been found.
Just minutes after they’d gotten the glass panel back in place and had scrambled back to the tunnel, they had heard the voices of people arriving on the scene, mounting the glass deck and carrying on a conversation.
While Sana had struggled with her panic attack, Shawn had to fight his own fears that he and Sana might have left some of their equipment in view through the glass deck. For the ten minutes the security people were in the area, Shawn was driven to distraction worrying that they’d be discovered.
He wondered what had attracted the security people. He’d never know for sure, but he admitted that Sana had been surprisingly clairvoyant. It had to have been the piercing, metallic clang of the masonry hammer against the chisel being conducted by the hardpan and marble up into the basilica.
“Can I open my eyes now?” Sana asked suddenly, breaking the heavy silence in the confined tunnel.
“No, keep them closed!” Shawn snapped. Dealing again with Sana’s claustrophobia was not something he needed at the moment.
“How long are we going to stay like this?” Sana asked tremulously. It was apparent she was still struggling, but before Shawn could answer, the lights in the necropolis went off, throwing them into absolute blackness.
“Did the lights go off?” Sana asked nervously but also with a touch of relief.
“They did,” Shawn said, “but keep your eyes closed until you get your headlamp on.” He began wriggling backward in an attempt to extricate himself from the tunnel. When he was free, he turned on his headlamp. Sana joined him a moment later, switching hers on as well.
At first they sat staring at each other. Although Shawn had worried that Sana’s panic might reappear when she opened her eyes, it didn’t happen. Getting out of the cramped tunnel had been enough of a relief to keep her claustrophobia under control.
“Remind me never to take you on another dig,” Shawn said irritably, as if blaming Sana for the scare.
“Remind me never to go!” Sana shot back.
They continued staring at each other for another few seconds, both of them panting as if they’d just run a hundred yards instead of being immobilized for half an hour.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Sana said. “So far, this ranks up there as one of my least favorite experiences. Get in there and get that damn ossuary!” The last thing Shawn wanted was to be bossed around by Sana after he’d had to hold her hand, at least figuratively, through the entire ordeal. Dealing with her fears had been worse than the fear of discovery.
“I’m going to get the ossuary because I want to get it,” Shawn retorted, “not because you’re ordering me to do so.” He grabbed the chisel and the bucket, and crawled back into the tunnel.
Sana could hear him scraping the dirt from around the ossuary, but unfortunately she had nothing to do and her mind reverted back to obsessing about the situation. Now that the glass access panel had been lowered in the deck, she was completely at Shawn’s mercy by being truly imprisoned. As a consequence, her panic and anxiety threatened to return.
“Shawn!” Sana called out over the scraping and grunting noises he was making in the tunnel. “I need us to go back and raise the glass panel.”
“Go do it yourself,” Shawn yelled back, along with something Sana couldn’t hear but could guess.
Knowing she couldn’t handle the glass panel herself, and knowing that Shawn knew it too, made her furious, but there was a good side.
She quickly realized that anger mollified her claustrophobia. The more angry she was at Shawn, the less anxious she was about being in a confined space. Recalling that closing her eyes had worked so well in the tunnel to lessen her panic, she did it again.
“Voila!” Shawn shouted from inside the tunnel. “It’s free! It’s coming out!” As if waking from a hypnotic state, Sana’s eyes popped open. As far as she was concerned, Shawn could have been talking about her. The ossuary’s freedom was her freedom as it meant they would soon be leaving. Completely forgetting her phobia, she crawled forward to the mouth of the tunnel and watched Shawn slide out the stone ossuary from the niche in the wall.
“Is it heavy?”
“Heavy enough,” Shawn said with a grunt, settling the limestone box onto the tunnel’s floor. Repositioning himself, he pushed it out of the tunnel and emerged himself.
Squatting on their knees and gawking at the ossuary between them, the couple instantly forgot their irritation. Shawn reached out reverently with his gloved hand and gently brushed off the residual dirt from its top. He was momentarily overwhelmed by the possibility it could contain the relics of one of the most revered people in history. The surface was covered with what appeared to be indecipherable scratches. Once he was able to make sense of them, it all clicked into place.
“I was hoping to see a name,” Sana said, disappointed.
“There is a name!” Shawn said. “And a date.” He rotated the ossuary so that the script that had been facing him was now turned toward Sana. She studied it, recognizing only the Roman numerals of a date: DCCCXV, which she figured out was 815. She slowly raised her eyes to Shawn’s. It seemed all their effort had been for naught.
“Oh, no!” she cried. “The damn thing is from the Dark Ages!” Shawn smiled slyly. “Are you sure?” he asked teasingly.
Confused, she looked back at the Roman numerals and again translated them into numbers. It still came out
