The cardinal glanced at two assistant archivists cataloguing the documents in a wall-sized bookcase. The accursed bookcase. There, Abramo Basso, while working for Stroheim, had discovered an unsent parchment letter from Pope Alexander II inviting William the Conqueror to Rome. Under the Latin script, Basso had detected ancient writing that survived an unskillful attempt at erasure with milk and oat bran. The scandalous discovery purported to be a letter from Porcius Festus, the Roman governor of Judea, to Saint Paul in Rome. After the prefect had dismissed the assistant archivists at the cardinal’s request, Furbone tugged at his ear. “Where is it?”
“As you requested, I contacted persons gifted, shall we say, in the art of unofficial retrieval.” The prefect paused. “They couldn’t find the parchment in Basso’s apartment.”
“Saint Paul consorting with pagans.” The cardinal wiped his brow with a lace handkerchief. He laid his hands on the front of Stroheim’s desk. “No good can come of the Festus parchment.”
“Come, come.” Stroheim folded his hands. “The parchment belongs to the eleventh century, not the Roman period.” The prefect circled his hand in the air. “At best, someone made a copy of a copy of a copy and so on. How accurate can it be? It’s not the original.”
“The problem is you think like a pedant.” The cardinal frowned. “Many will believe it transmits the original with sufficient accuracy. Even the New Testament consists of copies of copies.”
“Then why did Pope Alexander the Second try to erase it? He must have thought it a fake.”
“Or a danger . . . as I think is the case.” The cardinal tugged at his ear again. “How did Basso manage the theft?”
“He promised to store the parchment in an acid-free case inside one of the climate-controlled storerooms.” The prefect gulped down a slice of apple. “Instead, he stole it.”
“You’re responsible for Basso’s theft. What do you plan to do about it?”
“Commissario Leone wants to question me about the Basso homicide. I plan to answer his questions.” The prefect took off his wire-rimmed glasses and wiped the lenses with his sleeve. “So glad I wasn’t the one to threaten Basso.”
“What will you tell the commissario?”
“See that?” The prefect rose and pulled out a packet of documents the size of a thick magazine. “That bookcase alone holds about nine thousand packets.” He blew dust off the one in his hand. “Who knows what else we’ll find?”
“Answer me. What will you say?”
“The truth. Basso stole the Festus parchment from the bookcase.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
Furbone tugged on his earlobe once more. “You didn’t hear me threaten Basso . . . isn’t that right?”
The image of his mother pulling on his earlobes in her rages flashed through the cardinal’s mind. Embarrassed, he let go and awaited for the prefect’s answer.
“It depends.” The prefect sat down at his desk. “Will you allow Lucio Piso, my philanthropist friend back from Argentina, to purchase the Mithras statue?” He leaned toward the cardinal. “For his collection of Roman antiquities.”
“With the cross cut into the forehead? Out of the question.”
“But I negotiated its presence in our library with the director of Vatican Museums. Without me, it wouldn’t even be here.”
“And I’m the boss. And I say no.”
“I could be mistaken.” Stroheim scratched his head. “But I seem to recall you threatened Basso with physical harm if he didn’t return the Festus parchment.”
“You dare blackmail me? A cardinal of the church?”
“Ah, it’s becoming clearer.” The prefect took a fistful of ants from the jar and washed them down with mineral water. “I see and hear you threatening Basso in my presence.”
The cardinal pulled out a cablegram from under his cassock. “I know,” he said, inching closer to the prefect, “you were a leader in the Neo-Nazi Aryan Force in Colombia, all the while hiding behind your role as a respected national archivist.” The cardinal tossed the cablegram onto the desk. “His Holiness should know his prefect from the Colombian slums even trafficked in narcotics.”
Stroheim slumped back in his chair and ran his swollen hand through his hair. “You know.” He shook his head. “My memory isn’t what it used to be.” He ran his hand over his chin. “I propose I only imagined you made a threat . . . just like you incorrectly imagined I was mixed up with the Aryan Force.” He folded his hands across his stomach. “Am I right?”
“Of course.” The cardinal smiled. “Memory plays tricks on us all.”
Chapter Eight
Commissario Marco Leone descended, his eyes adjusting to the underground gloom of the World War II mausoleum in the Ardeatine Caves, now closed to the public for restoration. Inspector Renaldi and he stood alone in the fading glow of afternoon sun filtering through a slit around the sunken chamber’s perimeter. A monolithic slab of concrete ceiling stark as skeleton bones rested on squat pillars close above hundreds of sarcophagi. Before investigating the outrage inside, Leone took a moment to admire the avant-garde architecture, unusual in a city anchored to the past.
“Are you okay?” Renaldi asked. “You’re sweating.”
“I’m fine.”
“Have you thought of retiring? You’re overdue.”
“Sorry, Renaldi. You’ll have to wait to take my job.”
Rows of identical gray granite coffins contained the remains of over three hundred Nazi massacre victims, each victim personalized by name, age, profession, and photo. Had it not been for Leone, his Uncle Benjamin would have remained one of the unknown victims. By using cutting-edge DNA techniques and methodical spadework to determine his uncle’s identity, he had made his reputation in the Polizia di Stato. They still called him the Bulldog for his personal and unrelenting crusade to find out what had happened to his uncle.
Bowing his head, he stuck a bouquet of white and pink chrysanthemums into the flower receptacle at the foot of his uncle’s sarcophagus.
What barbarian had smeared a swastika and the number 365 on the sarcophagus? Like a virus, the number replicated itself across the rows of stone coffins. The swastika spoke for itself. But what to make of the number, the same one found on the forehead of the priest’s corpse? The number of days in a year? A code of some kind? If only he could light up a cigarette in the sacred place and solve the puzzle.
“If the guilty partisans had surrendered, none of these unfortunates would have died.”
He bristled at the intrusion of Renaldi’s voice interrupting his private moment. The weight of grief stifled his instinct to strike back. Renaldi and those like him had to discredit the Resistance to preserve their image of a past bestowing meaning on their present. Like Uncle Benjamin used to say, better not argue with a fool lest bystanders be unable to tell the difference.
Renaldi’s men paraded past Leone with five scraggly-haired punks in handcuffs on their way to police headquarters. Their garbage smell upset his stomach.
“I caught these perpetrators red-handed,” the inspector said. “Case solved.”
“Really?” Leone held his tongue. “Show me the mithraeum now.”
After entering the adjacent mithraeum, Leone examined the barely visible frescoes of Mithras slaying the bull and also feasting with the sun god. “When did this cave come to light?”
“About two months ago, when they renovated the mausoleum.” Renaldi pointed to a Latin inscription scrawled on the floor in bloodred letters: In spelaeo velatis oculis NON illuduntur. “What does it mean?”
“I’m not sure, but I know someone who might,” Leone said, thinking of Professor Fisher. The inscription was too vivid to be ancient. Someone alive had scripted the graffiti. Sniffing incense, he looked around. “Let’s examine that pot on the wall ledge.”
Ren
aldi struggled, but even in his lift shoes, he could not quite wrap his fingers around the pot. Nudging the inspector aside, Leone put on gloves and took down the still-smoldering pot.
“I could have taken it down.” The inspector’s face flushed. “I’m not an invalid.”
“It’s not your size, for heaven’s sake.” Leone held up a gloved hand. “Just that you would have destroyed any fingerprints with your bare hands.”
“The gang I arrested must have brought the incense.”
“You’re certain, are you?”
“Of course. You yourself always say that whenever times get bad, satanic cults pop up in Italy like poison mushrooms.”
Leone walked toward the main room of the mithraeum. Through the opening, he saw an ancient altar and beyond that, an animal carcass lying in the charcoal embers of what looked like a campfire. “Is that it?”
“It’s what I told you on the phone.” They both entered the main room and beheld the scene. “The remains of a baby bull.”
Animal flesh still filled dishes strewn on the floor. A drinking bowl and goblets, some overturned, rested around the circle of burned-out charcoal. An empty whiskey bottle lay off to the side. Whoever did this had left in a hurry, maybe surprised by some intrusion into their macabre feast.
“I have the lab results.” The inspector held up the report. “It identifies bovine blood in the bowl, in the goblets, and all over the floor.”
“So soon?”
“I have connections at the lab.” Renaldi winked. “Let me work with you on the Basso case. I’d be an asset.”
“You never worked a homicide case.”
“I have to start sometime.”
“No more, Renaldi. You have enough to do here.” Fed up and feeling a surge of nausea, he fled the foul site of the mithraeum, a mixture of stale blood and sweet incense.
Reentering the mausoleum chamber, Leone tried to walk away his nausea through rows of coffins. Back pain glided up and down his spine like fingers playing on a keyboard. He’d have to consult a doctor before it affected his professional performance. Renaldi wanted his job. He suspected the predator inspector would eye him for any sign of weakness before swooping in for his position.
In the dim light, Leone stopped when he almost stepped on a knife resting next to a sarcophagus. It lay there with a pearl handle shaped like a snake’s head. Dried blood splotched the emerald patina of the bronze blade. A spotted trail of blood wove to and fro alongside the sarcophagus.
Sensing Renaldi coming up behind him, he turned. “How could you miss this?” His finger pointed at the knife and spatters of blood.
“I hadn’t finished my investigation.” The inspector rubbed his palms up and down his thighs. “Before you barged in and took control, as though everything would fall apart if you weren’t involved.” Renaldi took a deep breath. “Anyway, I solved the case and arrested the culprits before you ever got here. I’ll get their confessions at headquarters.”
“You solved nothing.”
“What do you mean?”
“The juvenile delinquents you arrested arrived after others had performed what looks like a cult rite of some kind. These young thugs you hauled off just took advantage of the earlier forced entry to see what they could steal for drug money.”
“How could you know that?”
“One of the gang members you arrested is an undercover cop. He reports to me.”
“And you didn’t trust me, your own inspector, with this information?”
“I didn’t need you.”
“Then I’ll find someone who does.”
Chapter Nine
Hot morning wind splotched the silk of his ancient Roman tunic with sweat. The chauffeur gunned the Land Rover, twisting up the switchback roads into Argentine hill country toward the mansion retreat far from Piso Global Enterprises in Buenos Aires. Lucio Piso looked forward to the farewell theme party in his honor before he left for Rome. The trees stationed like sentinels along the road waved hosannas to him. Through shimmering air drunk with humidity, he saw his mansion poking in and out of sight at the top of the highest hill. Only an awaited telephone call from across the Atlantic clouded the celebration.
Servants creaked open the filigreed iron gates. On each side of the entrance stood a statue of Cupid pissing champagne into a pool. Guests filled fluted glasses with the champagne in salute to his arrival. The chauffeur drove over the stone bridge onto a driveway lined with BMWs and Mercedes Benzes. Piso ordered his driver to halt. In keeping with the classical motif, guests swarmed around in Roman togas and tunics. Piso needed to know about the call.
“Has he telephoned?”
“Not yet, sir.”
The guests shouted greetings in Spanish and Italian, with a discordant one in German. The former Nazi military officer sat in a wheelchair with his portable oxygen tank. Didn’t he know it was risky to speak German? Didn’t he know he was supposed to dress up in a toga for the party? The once dashing military officer had gone senile.
For the sake of their money and connections, Piso checked his disgust for this dwindling collection of cranky Nazi geezers held together by weepy memories and fears of arrest. These has-beens dared press him for information about the underground movement that would overthrow the Italian government and shake Europe. A lack of discipline and genius had done in the Italian Masonic plotters of Propaganda Due in the 1980s. They had turned a coup attempt into a comic opera of ineptitude. He would not make the same mistake.
On foot, he led an entourage of guests and servants toward his four-story mansion. Statuary of Greek and Roman mythological figures lined the pathway to the open portal of his residence, where the majordomo handed Piso a towel monogrammed with his initials. Wiping beads of perspiration from his forehead, he took pride in these pagan masterpieces that he’d illegally recovered from Italian soil. They now belonged to a new government that could protect and cherish them. The rebirth of ancient glories nourished his spirit; the dull-as-dust commercial cover of a global business did not.
A woman screamed. As Piso drew near, she remained frozen and fixated on a log near her feet. On top of it, a pit viper rustled like fall leaves in the wind and prepared to spring at the woman. Piso flicked his towel toward the serpent with a skill honed from his years as an amateur bullfighter. The distraction caught its attention.
The viper lunged into the towel and fell writhing to the ground in a whirl of dust and cloth. With repeated stompings of his thick sandals, he smashed the serpent’s head as it tried to escape. Piso raised the viper’s body on high like a lifeless sausage in acknowledgment of the crowd’s cheers before hurling it to the ground. In life’s arena, he was the gladiator growing ever more powerful in the continual defeat of his adversaries.
Piso ordered a servant, who passed on the order in a chain of command down the hierarchy of servants, until four menials trotted out of the mansion hoisting a sedan chair on their shoulders. Elevated onto the vehicle by a swarm of hands and arms, he rode on a wave of victory to the front door of his mansion. At the entrance, his majordomo announced the caller from Rome would call back in twenty minutes.
“Let me out.” Piso scrambled out of the sedan chair and stumbled. A menial steadied him before he hit the ground. “I must take the call in the privacy of my study.”
***
After cleansing the telephone with sanitizer, the prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives clamped the receiver to his ear. The rhythmic tinkling of telephone rings in Argentina sounded to Stroheim like the crisp tones of ceremonial chimes in honor of Mithras at the break of Christmas morning in the Ardeatine Caves. The transoceanic voice of the Pater Patrum, the Father of Fathers, boomed into the prefect’s ear.
“Pronto. Stroheim? Is that you?”
“It’s me, the prefect of the Vat—”
“You bungler. Where is the parchment?”
“I d
on’t know.”
“Your life hangs in the balance.”
“Forgive me, Pater Patrum.” The prefect’s voice cracked. “I swear I’ll find it. I didn’t know how much it meant to you.”
“Do you take me for a fool? Basso told you the parchment referred to the Pisos of ancient Rome . . . my ancestors.”
“On my mother’s grave, I’ll track down the Festus parchment.”
“You have also stirred up the police with Basso’s death.”
“Forgive me, blessed representative of Mithras on earth.” Hoping his flattery would help, the prefect bunched up the telephone cord in his hand. “We arranged for the reconsecration of the mithraeum and the initiation of the new Lion . . . as you requested . . . on December twenty-fifth, the birthday of Lord Mithras. Basso snooped and caught us performing the sacred ritual soon after midnight. He would have betrayed us.”
“You idiot. Why did you not torture him to locate the parchment?”
“We didn’t have time.” Stroheim failed to rein in the panicked undertone of his voice. “He took us by surprise in the Ardeatine Caves. He ran for the exit. We cornered him. He struggled like a demon. I had to stab him with the ritual knife. We then disposed of the body by—”
“Disposed of the body? The police had no problem finding it in the Tiber.”
“We won’t get caught, I swear.”
“How can you assure me?”
“When Commissario Leone interrogates me next week, I’ll tell him about Cardinal Furbone’s threat to harm Father Basso.” Stroheim caught his breath. “The police will arrest the cardinal.”
“Do not dare to implicate Cardinal Furbone.”
“What? . . . I don’t understand.”
“You presume to demand an explanation . . . from me?”
The Mithras Conspiracy Page 3