The necropolis, he thought. “City of the dead.” He shielded his nose from the moldy smell and hoped that nobody was home. Swallowing hard, Giovanni Bersei pushed forward.
“ Desidera qualcosa?” Mario set down his book for the second time and studied the rugged-looking man, standing in front of his desk. The man looked preoccupied. Mario tried English. “Can I help you?”
Aggravated by the formality, Conte didn’t reply. Following Bersei here, he’d been wondering why the hell the scientist had turned into this park. Now as he read the signage hanging behind the docent’s desk, he was starting to make better sense of it. Jewish catacombs? His eyes panned over to the other doorway, opening to a darkened stairwell. Most likely, it served as the exit too. He liked that. “No lights?” Conte queried in Italian.
“You need a flashlight down there,” the old man replied. Again, Conte was pleased.
“But the exhibit isn’t open to the public,” the docent continued, smiling
wryly. “And unless you have proper identification, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
Power wielded by the powerless . Conte disregarded the request, ogling a clipboard on the desk. A visitor’s sign-in sheet. And only one name was listed there; the only name that mattered. Besides his quarry, it was clear that the place was empty. This was going to be even easier than he thought. He slid his left hand into his coat pocket and calmly withdrew a small syringe.
As the menacing figure circled the desk in three quick strides, Mario Beneditti was just starting to realize the danger he was in. Cornered, the old man froze.
“Pathetic,” Conte muttered. He threw out his right hand, clasping the docent by the back of his neck, while his left hand swiftly arced through the air, thrusting the needle deep into neck muscle, depressing the plunger to inject a concentrate of Tubarine—a drug used during heart surgery to paralyze the cardiac tissue. Never knowing when he might need it, Conte always kept a lethal dose in his possession.
As the old man crumpled to the floor, Conte stepped smartly away. The toxins instantly invaded Mario Beneditti’s bloodstream and he clawed at his constricting chest with leaden fingers. His face contorted in agony as his heart seized up like a blown engine. His body gave a last, shuddering convulsion and lay still.
Salvatore Conte always marveled at this method’s lean efficiency. Whoever found the old man would assume he’d had a heart attack. Any basic autopsy would come to the same conclusion.
Clean. Very clean.
After securing the deadbolt on the inside of the entry door, and pocketing the empty syringe, Conte rummaged through the desk drawers until he found the docent’s flashlight. He noticed Bersei’s laptop bag had been set aside and made a mental note to take it with him on his way out. Then he reached down to the corpse and yanked away a set of keys.
From beneath his coat, he drew his Glock 9mm. He’d try his best to avoid shooting Bersei. That wouldn’t be clean and he wasn’t looking for complications.
Flashlight on, Conte stepped down into the darkness and pulled the door shut behind him, engaging its meaty lock.
51
******
For fifteen minutes, Giovanni Bersei worked his way deeper into the Villa Torlonia catacomb, stopping intermittently to reference the map. The chill in his bones was impossible to shake and the absolute silence down here crushed his ears. At every turn, history’s long legacy of death swirled around him. Not exactly ideal working conditions, he mused.
Without the diagram, this zigzag of tunnels would have been impossible to navigate. So many of the passages—most of which terminated in dead ends—looked the same, and being underground he had little sense of direction. By no means claustrophobic, Bersei had been in many subterranean lairs more daunting than this. But he had never been alone...in a gigantic tomb.
Judging from the map’s scale he figured he’d walked just under half a kilometer from the entrance. His destination was very close now.
Ahead, the left wall gave way to a sweeping archway—an entrance to a chamber called a cubiculum. In the opening, Bersei paused and referenced the map again to confirm that he had found the right cell. Pocketing the map, he let out a long breath and moved into the space beyond.
Running the light over the walls, he scanned the spacious square chamber, hewn out of the porous tufa. There were no loculi here, just workspaces where bodies would once have been laid out to be prepared for interment. Sitting in a corner were a couple of ancient amphoras, which had probably once contained scented oils and spices.
The floor was ornately tiled, the walls plastered and covered in more Judaic design, primarily menorahs and even strong depictions of the Second Temple and the Ark of the Covenant.
In the center of the floor, Bersei craned back his head and aimed the flashlight upwards. If he remembered correctly, what he’d most wanted to see would be here. The moment his eyes adjusted to the amazing fresco that covered the lofty vault, he felt the breath pulled out of his chest.
His flashlight momentarily switched off, Salvatore Conte listened intently for the distant sounds echoing through the stone maze. Strangely comfortable in darkness, the fact that for the second time in a week he found himself in a tomb had no effect on his resolve.
Totally unaware of his pursuer, the anthropologist was making no effort to conceal the scraping sounds of his footsteps against the rough tunnel floor. And stopping occasionally to view a map only compounded his predicament.
Conte was close now. Very close.
He poked his head around the corner of the wall. About forty meters down the narrow passage, a faint glow spilled out from an arched opening.
Reaching behind his back, he tucked the Glock into his belt. Keeping the light off, he quietly removed his coat and shoes, placing them beside the wall with the flashlight. The Minotaur was moving again. ***
Giovanni Bersei’s gaze was transfixed on the images floating above him.
In the center was a menorah contained within concentric circles like a sunburst, centered upon a large cross—a cruciform—wrapped by grapevine tendrils.
On the ends of the cross were circular forms containing other symbols—a shofar, the ceremonial horn used to usher in the Jewish New Year; etrogs, the lemon-shaped fruit used by Jews during sukkot, the feast of the sacred Tabernacle—all imagery that paid homage to the lost temple.
Between the equal arms of the cross were four half circles that he swore had been purposely arranged to match the points of a compass. Each contained the symbol carved onto the ossuary’s side—a dolphin wrapped around a trident. The early Christian symbol for Jesus Christ, the Savior— the dolphin who shuttled spirits to the afterlife superimposed over the physical incarnation of the Trinity.
Trembling, Bersei tucked the flashlight in his armpit and reached into his breast pocket for the photocopy of the scroll.
“My God,” Bersei muttered. The same exact image—a virtual reproduction of the ceiling fresco—was drawn
