“Well, the reason we chose you to conduct these tests is because your expertise and integrity are above reproach,” said Dr. Castolfo. “We will have the scroll in Rome first thing Friday morning so that you may begin the testing process. Is there anything else we can do while you are here?”
“Of course!” said the Smithsonian paleographer. “I want to see every scrap of papyrus that you still have from the excavation. The Testimonium is important, but that does not change the fact that you also uncovered the oldest extant writings of a Roman statesman. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, what you have are the only known handwriting samples of ANY Roman emperor—except for a few Byzantine letters dating from the Medieval era. And those rulers were Roman in name only. I want to see the other things you have found.”
They spent the rest of the morning pulling out the items from the chamber on Capri one at a time. Henderson stared, examined, measured, and photographed artifacts for the next three hours, sometimes calling in his assistants to help him take close-up photographs and measurements. He seemed equally interested in everything—he used as much time to examine Caesar’s sword as he did the letter from Tiberius. The signet ring he examined for a long time, and when he got to the beautiful cameo of Vipsania, he studied it with a fascination bordering on reverence. Last of all, he read and examined the remaining portion of the will of Caesar Augustus, shaking his head sadly at the burned edges.
The Capri team watched him with interest at first, and finally decided to leave him to it, sitting at the table and talking quietly as they waited, occasionally answering questions from the American or from his two grad students. Finally, Henderson finished examining every remaining artifact from the Villa Jovis chamber, and sat down at the table with them.
“So what do you think, old friend?” asked Luke Martens.
“You know, I have examined some remarkable artifacts in my time,” said Henderson. “But I can honestly say that I have never wanted to be part of the original excavation team quite as much as I wish I could have been with you folks two weeks ago. This is truly an amazing discovery!”
“Any doubts, based on your initial examination of the artifacts?” asked Josh.
“Not really,” said Henderson. “Granted, the naked eye can only detect and measure so much, but I see nothing here that is not one hundred percent consistent with an origin in the first century AD. What a shame so much was destroyed in the blast! Looking at the photographs, I could have spent months reassembling and restoring the shredded documents from the rat’s nest!”
“Well, they are still sifting rubble out there,” said Dr. Castolfo. “Perhaps they may yet find some of the remaining artifacts.”
“I sincerely hope so,” said Henderson. “In the meantime, I think my assistants and I are due to catch the evening train to Rome. I look forward to seeing you all in the new research lab there Friday morning.”
“Allow us to escort you to the station,” said Guioccini as he and Castolfo rose. “As for the rest of you, we will see you at the funeral in an hour.”
* * *
Simone’s service was a simple Catholic mass, followed by two touching eulogies, one from her daughter and one from her ex-husband, who seemed far and away the more grief-stricken of the two. For Josh and Isabella, seated in the audience with the board members and Dr. Martens, the sight of their raw pain was difficult to bear. Josh found tears running down his cheeks, and Isabella simply stared ahead, her gaze a mask of numbness. Josh could follow some of what Ricardo said, and Isabella later translated the rest for him. It was a deeply personal and very moving tribute.
“When I met Simone thirty years ago, she was a beautiful college student with a smile that lit up the room, and a laugh that seemed to make the stars themselves twinkle,” he began. “She was also the most magnificent cook I ever met! How could any Italian man not want to make such an enchanting woman his own? We fell madly in love, but she made it clear from the beginning that her career was very important to her. I thought I would humor her, let her look at her silly ancient pollens for a while, until she realized that being home with me was much more fun than staring at ancient relics and taking samples back to the lab for testing. I was foolish. Her fascination with the past was not some schoolgirl fad, but a true vocation. I tried to tell myself that it was all right, but eventually I got jealous of her job, of her absences, of her constantly trying to tell me about her latest project, her latest dig. It was hardly fair—she had made it clear from the beginning that she wanted a career—but I began to resent her job as if it were a lover. And out of that resentment came anger, a desire to settle the score. I began to keep company with other women. She found out, we quarreled, and we split. It was the most petty and vile thing I ever did.”
He broke down and sobbed a moment, then continued. “For a while I told myself I was happier this way; that my girlfriends were more fun than she ever had been; that they did not have careers that took them away from me for weeks at a time. But to tell you the truth, they were boring. Not a one of them had her smile, her brains, or her common sense. It did not take me long to realize what a precious jewel I had cast aside. So I tried to come back to her.” He swallowed hard and looked at the closed casket. “But I had hurt her too deeply. She did not give her heart away lightly, and I had broken it. I kept telling myself that I could make amends, that I could make things right again. We talked on the phone every now and then, and I would beg her to trust me just a little bit. Over the last year, I began to think that the ice was melting. I dared to hope that we could be together again one day. She even called me when the group she was working with returned from Capri, to tell me how exciting the dig had been. I asked her if I could see her when it was done, and she said yes!”
He put his hands over his face, and his whole body was racked with sobs. His daughter came up to him and put her hands on his shoulders, and he looked up again. “But it was too late!” he said. “I lost the most precious thing I ever possessed—the trust of a woman who truly loved me. No, lost is too flimsy a word. I threw her trust away. I discarded it out of pure selfishness, and I never got it back. Oh, Simone, if you can hear me now, I hope you know just how sorry I truly am! I would pour my heart’s blood out on this altar just to see you smile at me one more time!”
He suddenly looked up at the mourners in the church. Every eye was staring directly at him. He raised his head high and addressed them directly. “That is probably not the eulogy that you were expecting,” he said. “But it is what is in my heart. My wife was the most beautiful woman I have ever known, inside and out, and I cast her aside. I would tell every man here—never make such a mistake! You will never find anything that will take the place of your first love.”
With that he sat down heavily, and the air seemed to go out of him. Lucretia Apriceno patted him on the shoulder, and then took her own stand behind the pulpit.
“That was not exactly the kind of remarks that my father and I discussed beforehand!” she said. “But scripts are boring, my mother used to say. Life is far more bitter and sweet than anything we can dream up. I will say this about my mother and father both: they always loved me, even when they forgot, for a while, how much they loved each other. Mama taught me her love of the past, and her love of the kitchen, as well as her love of life itself. I was never bored when I stayed with her, because she taught me how to enjoy everything that she loved to do. When she was studying ancient pollens, she bought me a microscope and taught me how to tell them apart, and what distinguished them from modern ones. When she baked lasagna, she showed me every detail of the recipe, and served me the first slice. When I wanted to go to my first dance, she put on her cassettes and we spent an entire afternoon learning every possible step to every popular song, so that I would not feel awkward on the dance floor. I could not have asked for a better mother.”
A single tear formed and slid down her cheek. “She called me right after the discoveries from Capri were made public. She told me that the contents of
the Pilate scroll had removed the lingering doubts she had harbored about God for many years. And she said that if God could forgive a contrary old hen like herself, then she probably ought to find it in her heart to forgive my father, too. Just a few days later, I saw the blast on the news, and then got the call that she was one of the victims. I felt as if my heart had been ripped out and stomped upon, but as I have had time to reflect, and to talk with her friends, I can honestly say that I am glad she died without any bitterness in her heart. As much as I might wish that she and Papa had gotten back together and enjoyed the autumn of their lives as a couple, it comforts me to know that love between them never died completely. I will miss her, but I will do my best to honor her, every day of my life, by being the kind of woman she taught me to be—the kind of woman she was. I love you forever, Mama!”
With that her resolve gave way, and she sat down next to her father. The two of them clung to each other as the choir sang the requiem mass, and the pall bearers carried the casket out of the church. Josh and Isabella stood with the rest of the congregation as they walked by, leaning on each other. After the funeral procession left the cathedral, he looked down at the beautiful Italian who had stolen his heart.
“I can’t promise you much,” he said. “But I promise you this—I will never have to speak such words over you. You will always have my heart, and you will always have my promise to be true.”
She smiled, though her face was still wet with tears. “Of course you will be true,” she said. “You are not Italian!”
<<
BERTRAND: Good morning, Agent Lucoccini. I am Lincoln Bertrand, with the CIA’s counter-terrorism office.
LUCOCCINI: Yes, Colonel, your reputation precedes you! May I presume this is not a social call?
BERTRAND: That is correct, sir. I need to pass on a warning, and I was told that you were more trustworthy than the Naples Police Department.
LUCOCCINI: That is a harsh assessment, but not inaccurate. Chief Zadora is a scrupulously honest policeman who has implemented many reforms, but corruption is an epidemic among the rank and file that it will take a generation to root out. Tell me your warning, and I will do my best to see it is acted upon.
BERTRAND: There are two jihadist sleeper cells in Italy that we have been watching for some time now. Both have been activated and have gone off the grid completely. Our inside man was brutally murdered yesterday. We have reason to believe that the master terrorist known as “the Ethiopian” is in Italy, and may now be the operational commander of these two cells.
LUCOCCINI: Merda! We have been trying to nail that bastardo ever since he killed several of our medical nuns in Somalia in the 1990s. Shot them in the back at point blank range and then urinated on their corpses! Help us nail him and the government of Italy will be very grateful!
BERTRAND: I wish we could be of more help, but all I can say for sure at this point is that we believe his target will be the scroll known as the Testimonium. For religious reasons, the jihadists are scared to death of this thing. I imagine they will also want to kill the scientists that excavated it.
LUCOCCINI: We have already figured that an attempt might be made on the scroll when it is transported to Rome for testing. We have arranged for full security—two armored personnel carriers, an armored car for the scroll and the scientists, and several police cars as well. They will have a full-scale battle on their hands if they decide to take us on!
BERTRAND: It is good to hear you take this threat so seriously, but I will remind you of two things. First of all, these jihadists will be very well armed. There was a large weapons cache in a storage unit south of Rome that is now gone. I imagine they will have at least one RPG launcher. And one more thing—
LUCOCCINI: Yes?
BERTRAND: In our experience, the Ethiopian is very good at thinking a step or two ahead of his competition. So—be careful out there!
LUCOCCINI: Good advice. Can you keep me apprised of any new intelligence that you develop?
BERTRAND: I have an agent on the ground monitoring the situation. He will contact you if there is anything further to share. He will identify himself only as “Dingo.” I have given him your number.
LUCOCCINI: Will your country be interested in interviewing the Ethiopian if we can catch him alive?
BERTRAND: Yes indeed. He is one of the most highly placed Al Qaeda officers still at large, and we could probably get some very valuable information from him—and there is also the matter of at least three dead CIA agents that we can lay at his doorstep. One of them was a friend of mine. The Ethiopian barbecued his face at point blank range with a small flamethrower of some sort. So yes, we would be very interested in . . . interviewing him.
LUCOCCINI: I take a rather old-fashioned view of justice, my friend. You know Italy no longer has a death penalty.
BERTRAND: We do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
That evening Josh and Isabella had dinner with Dr. Martens and Alicia. Reverend and Mrs. Parker had decided to take the train up to Rome the day after the funeral and see the sights before heading home, so they had retired early to pack up and rest. The two couples sat in the penthouse restaurant of the hotel, having decided to enjoy more traditional Italian cuisine in place of sushi.
Josh took a bite of a hot bread roll dipped in olive oil. “I don’t understand why you Italians aren’t the most obese nation on earth, eating this many carbs with every meal!” he said.
Isabella smiled. “It’s the olive oil,” she said. “Cooking agent of the gods! One reason the Romans lived longer than the other races of antiquity was the huge amounts of this stuff they consumed—that, and the fact that they despised beef. Romans loved fish and seafood, poultry, and occasionally pork or other more exotic meats, but they consumed far more fruit and vegetables than they did red meat.”
Josh nodded. “That may be, but a mere decade of mortality is a small price to pay for a well-cooked cheeseburger with bacon!”
She shook her head. “Americans!” she said.
“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, Izza!” said Alicia. Somewhere over the last three days she had bestowed this nickname on Isabella, who seemed not to mind it at all. “A good bacon burger is pretty hard to beat!”
“Well, I think Dr. Henderson was pretty impressed with your discovery,” said Martens.
“I don’t see how anyone could review all the evidence and come to any other conclusion,” said Isabella. “The discovery was in such obviously ancient context, there is no way any of the artifacts could have been planted!”
Martens nodded. “I will tell you something, Dr. Sforza,” he said. “People who do not want to believe will find a reason not to. I had a co-worker a few years ago who used to ridicule me to no end for believing in Christ. He accused me of pimping out science to serve the interest of those he called ‘brain dead fundamentalist yahoos’! I sat and talked till I was blue in the face about all the valid, historical reasons for accepting the New Testament as an authentic, eyewitness account of the life and ministry of Jesus. No matter how thoroughly I thought I had proved my case, he managed to poke holes in it, and question everything I believed in. Proof and evidence didn’t matter—he had convinced himself the Gospels were fairy tales, and no amount of persuading would convince him otherwise. As I got to know him better, I found out that he was a compulsive womanizer—a true sex addict, in fact. He was terrified of religion, because he knew that believing in Christ would require him to change his lifestyle, or acknowledge the eternal consequences. So, for him, it was safer not to believe—even at the cost of complete cognitive dissonance!”
Isabella looked at him with interest. “You know, Josh and I have talked about this at some length,” she said. “Why does God care who, or with how many partners, we choose to have sex? The drive is a natural part of our biological nature, so why sho
uld He punish us for engaging in it?”
Martens nodded. “It is probably the biggest single impediment to belief for young people in the Western world today,” he said. “I remember a quip from some comedian I was listening to once, he said that ‘if it weren’t for that whole “thou shalt not commit adultery” thing, France would still be Christian today!’ But honestly, God has never based His commandments and standards on what people enjoy the most, but rather on what is best for them. Is society best served by rampant promiscuity and unwed mothers? Any sociologist worth his salt will tell you that societies grow and thrive when the family unit is stable, and study after study has shown that children do best when raised in a home with both parents. Is any relationship ever improved by adultery? None that I have seen! Think about what Signor Apriceno said this afternoon. How much happier would he and Simone have been if he had never strayed! God guides us, not towards the short term thrill, but towards the long-term ideal. However, I have found that, in following His plan, the short-term can be pretty amazing too!” He leaned over and planted a kiss on his younger bride’s cheek.
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