Chapter Thirty-Two
Outside the ruins of the Mithraeum of the Seven Gates in Ostia Antica, Lucio Piso paced back and forth at half past midnight. Around this subterranean chapel of Mithras in ancient Rome’s port, nothing stirred but whispers in the wind. Unless he hung up on Renaldi’s litany of excuses, he would be late for his star role and risk electronic detection.
“One fact remains. Against orders, you let the American archaeologists into the Villa of the Papyri without you.” Piso remembered what he had told Renaldi when, disguised as the Pater Patrum, he first met him in the Maremma. “You told me the Pater Patrum wanted you at the villa as his eyes and ears.”
“I beg the Pater Patrum to forgive me.”
The power of his alter ego comforted Lucio Piso.
“Tell the Pater Patrum I promise to do better.”
“Of course.” How he loved deceiving the world with his alter ego.
“I must go.” Piso cut over to the mithraeum entrance. “If you want to join Roma Rinata, do not fail the Pater Patrum again.” To avoid police tracking, Piso smashed the burner cell phone.
He had to keep stringing the runt along.
Piso put on the alabaster mask of Mithras. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes until he could feel himself transfigured into the Pater Patrum, the supreme Father of Fathers. The exalted representative of Mithras on earth, he opened his eyes and entered the underground sanctuary.
Platforms on both sides of the room paralleled a central aisle running up to an altar at the far end. A floor mosaic of black-and-white squares depicted seven gates representing the seven hierarchical stages of initiation and spiritual purification. In the regalia of their spiritual hierarchy, Roma Rinata members sat on the platform to the left of the entering Pater Patrum. The candidates for promotion waited on the platform to the right.
Behind the square altar, a semicircular niche opened into a wall stained with the faded colors of sun and fire. In preparation for the initiation ceremony, the Ravens had placed in the niche an icon of Mithras slaying the bull on behalf of mankind.
How could the slain divinity of Christianity replace the slayer divinity of Mithraism? A slave religion over a warrior religion? It must not stand. After twenty centuries of error, Mithras returned to his place of honor in the niche.
A masked Raven assisted him in donning the crimson robe brocaded with gold filigree over his white tunic. From the Raven, he took the golden crosier encrusted with rare gems and his shepherd’s crook of office. Another masked Raven set on his head the miter headpiece of office. The eyes of all upon him, the Pater Patrum strode to the altar behind two dwarfs, Cautopates and Cautes, dressed as the mythological torchbearers.
“I am death,” Cautopates chanted, holding a burning torch upside down. “I am the resurrection,” Cautes responded, holding a like torch right side up. Before the altar, the Pater Patrum turned to his flock, Cautopates on one side and Cautes on the other.
Reenacting an ancient ritual, the sole candidate for the elevated rank of Miles—a Soldier of Mithras—walked blindfolded down the aisle, hands bound by chicken guts. He knelt at the feet of the Pater Patrum. Carlos Stroheim, the disguised Pater for the Vatican district of Rome, stood by the candidate’s side as his sponsor.
He, the Pater Patrum, the Father of all Fathers, reigned supreme at the apex of a resurrected and updated Mithras cult. More than fifty lesser Fathers, like Stroheim, operating in and around Rome, stood ready to rise up with their cells of conspirators in a coup d’état inspired by the Mithras cult. All the ranks of Mithras formed the leaven of the coming revolution.
He was the new Pater Patrum, sprung to life, after a long line of Pater Patrums had died out with a whimper in the fourth century AD. They had waned just as the Christian popes of Rome waxed, appropriating the name papa from the departed pagan popes. The lower ranks were his elite corps in the coming revolution. The Fathers, who enforced his commands, were the elite of the elite.
He trusted Carlos Stroheim the least, though the man was deferential as a slave. The prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives had bungled the search of Abramo Basso’s apartment, blundered by murdering Basso in the Ardeatine Caves, and botched the ambush of Marco Leone in the mountains of Amalfi. Yet, Stroheim remained the sole Trojan horse inside the Vatican—for now. When his usefulness ended, the Maremma bulls would gore him to death.
After placing a laurel wreath on the bowed head of the Soldier candidate, Carlos Stroheim removed the candidate’s blindfold and handed the Pater Patrum a sword. Chanting Nama . . . Nama . . . Sebesio, the Mithraic invocation whose meaning had become lost in time, the Pater Patrum sliced away the chicken entrails binding the candidate’s hands. “Now liberated from the bondage of your former beliefs,” the Pater Patrum intoned, “you are free to wear a victor’s crown.”
The candidate removed the wreath and placed it on his shoulder while reciting the proscribed words, “Mithras is my only crown, Roma Rinata my salvation, and the Pater Patrum my leader on earth.”
As Pater Patrum, he had added the phrase about Roma Rinata and himself . . . but so what? Just as he had instituted the masks and garb for the seven stages of organizational progression, his was the genius to stitch together with new cloth the surviving shreds of ancient rituals.
What little the world knew of Mithraism came mostly from the biased pens of Christian contemporaries who mocked it and feared its curious resemblance to aspects of Christianity. He had to build upon such scant knowledge and mold it to his purposes. A reshaped Mithraism would reinforce his grab for political and social control. Just as the Emperor Constantine needed Christianity to create one religion in one empire, he would do the same with this more ancient religion.
“I hereby declare you a Soldier of Mithras.” The Pater Patrum tapped the candidate’s scalp with the crosier.
Two masked Lions readied the ten candidates for their initiation into the lowest rank of Raven. On the Pater Patrum’s signal, the ten flapped their arms and croaked like birds, shuffling around a vat of water three times one way and three times the other. One by one, they dunked their heads into the vat until they could no longer hold their breath. Each head bobbed up in turn, gasping in symbolic rebirth.
These true believers held him in awe. He could do no wrong. To so skillfully shepherd these acolytes clad only in loin cloths confirmed the superiority of his real self. Before him bowed the refuse of the streets, the skinheads, the petty criminals, the social misfits. They considered their lives worthless, with nothing to lose and everything to gain if they followed their leader and his cause. He would give them what everyone needed, something to live for, and more importantly for his purposes, something to die for. He was the artisan. They were the clay to be molded as he saw fit.
At his command, they recited singsong the Roma Rinata creed he had composed: “I believe in the genius of the Pater Patrum, our Holy Father of Fathers, in the communion of all brothers of Mithras, in the social and political regeneration of Italy, in the conversion of Europe, and in the resurrection of the empire.”
When they finished, two masked Lions passed around trays filled with circular loaves of bread. The Lions poured wine into goblets held in outstretched arms. That miserable commissario Marco Leone had caused the death of his bravest Lion catapulted over an Amalfi mountain—the only one honored with a lion mask of glass instead of papier-mâché.
“Candidates for the Raven rank,” he said, “I hold in my left hand the bread of Mithras warmed in the sun to absorb its divine rays, as prescribed by our spiritual ancestors, to become as hard as you in the coming battle. And in my right, I hold a cup of wine to fortify us in the days ahead.
“By eating this bread and drinking this wine, on this new day named after the sun, a day sacred to Lord Mithras, you become one with the sun god. By doing so, you imitate Lord Mithras himself, who ascended to the heavens after sharing a banquet with the sun god,
and then became one with him. So—”
“I must ask something before I agree to become a Raven.”
Who dares interrupt?
Rocco—the broad-shouldered candidate from Sicily, no more than thirty, broken nosed, scarred across the right cheek, uncouth and vigorous—the spitting image of Caravaggio.
Two Lions ran at Rocco. He raised his fists in self-defense.
“Leave him be.” The Pater Patrum crooked his forefinger. “Come forward.”
Flanked by the two Lions, Rocco swaggered up to the Pater Patrum. The Lions tried pushing him onto his knees. He resisted. The Pater Patrum commanded the Lions to leave him alone. The Raven candidate wore only a loin cloth and a gold cross around the neck.
“What, my son, do you wish to ask?”
“To get sworn in as a Raven . . .” Rocco looked around and then lowered his voice. “To become a Raven, do I have to believe this . . . pardon the expression . . . bullcrap?”
Shock dumbfounded the Pater Patrum.
“I see you wear a Christian cross. This is not allowed.”
“It’s just a piece of jewelry.”
“If so, remove it.”
“I promised my mother to never remove it. That’s the only reason I wear it.” His hands clenched and reopened and clenched again. “I believe in her, not the cross. She gave me life. I owe her mine. I only believe in what I can sense and understand.”
“Because you love your mother, you wear it.” The Pater Patrum distilled the Sicilian’s meaning, as if his words would help him understand. They did not. He had never experienced father or mother or love. He was an abandoned orphan.
“Now then.” The Pater Patrum collected himself and raised his crosier. “It is not a matter of belief. It is a matter of outward compliance. You need only respect our symbols in the same way you honor your mother with the cross. Can you do that for the sake of Roma Rinata, which, like your mother, offers you a new life?”
“I can.”
“Good, my son. Now return to your post.”
The Pater Patrum rapped his crosier on the floor. One by one, the new Ravens knelt before him. Each in turn extended his hand straight out and interlocked his fingers with the fingers of the Pater Patrum. They pumped hands three times to complete their secret handshake of recognition.
“I, the Pater Patrum,” he said, marking each candidate’s forehead with ashes, “hereby admit you to the rank of Raven on your ascension up the celestial ladder through the seven stages of rebirth.”
As each new Raven received his assignment from Carlos Stroheim, a senior Lion approached the Pater Patrum. “How prudent, most holy Pater Patrum, not to make a scene. A scene is what the Sicilian scoffer would have wanted.” He embraced the Pater Patrum and whispered in his ear. “Give the order, and I’ll take care of Rocco.”
“Take care of him?” The Pater Patrum shook the Lion’s shoulders. “Yes, yes. By all means, take care you not harm a hair of his head if you wish to preserve your own head.”
The other Ravens followed Rocco out of the mithraeum.
“For that Raven, more lionhearted than my Lions, I have conceived a special mission.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Sunglasses protected Nicole Garvey’s eyes, puffy from worry and lack of sleep after a late return from Rome. Workers fretting about the absence of birds and the presence of green-tinted clouds whirling in the sky carted volcanic rock from the Villa of the Papyri.
Outside the historic villa, the chained guard dog howled at Mount Vesuvius, about six kilometers away. The wind, foretelling rain, kicked up, brushing through Garvey’s hair. The yowling and the desperation of the dog straining against the chain and biting its leg put her nerves on edge even more than the report of wells gone dry overnight. The volcano spewed up a billowing cloud of ash and smoke more ominous than the daily witches’ brew of wispy vapors slithering through its vents.
A pack of unseen dogs in the stretch of modern tenements between Mount Vesuvius and Herculaneum accompanied the howling with their yapping. An underground sea of red-hot molten rock sloshed a little under 248 kilometers under the only active volcano in Europe, a ticking time bomb waiting to explode once again.
The Mormon boy wonder let her cool her heels outside the administrative field tent on purpose. She suspected payback for disputing his order to evacuate the room behind the collapsed wall down below.
Or was it about her trip to Rome?
It didn’t matter. She did the right thing in visiting her father, even if it shook her to the core. A man who once adored his grandfather refused to show her the grave of Colonel Soames. What scared her even more was the way he cursed her great-grandfather and refused to talk about him. She wanted to shake him and make him talk, but it wouldn’t have done any good. Nothing could make him talk once he clammed up. She spent her time in Rome just trying to keep him from sinking deeper into depression. He promised to see a doctor, but she despaired he would. What if he should . . .
“Come in.” Renaldi jerked this thumb toward the tent next to the Villa of the Papyri. “He wants to see you.”
Her father’s state of mind and the hubbub about the recent tremors jangled her nerves enough without having to deal with the Mormon.
Like a penitent schoolgirl, she stood before a folding table full of cluttered papers. Bemis sat behind the table on a folding chair. He played his game of pretending not to notice her. She would not lose her cool. Her job was on the line.
“You did not have my permission to leave.” He took the unusual step of looking her directly in the eyes. “I can’t allow that.”
Renaldi stood beside the table like an attack dog at the ready.
“I had to see my father in Rome.” She struggled to confide in Bemis. “He served in Iraq. He’s having a hard time.”
“You had a job to do here, Nicole.”
“Dr. Garvey.”
“Whatever.” Bemis stacked papers on his table. “Fact remains you went AWOL.”
“I’m here now. We’re supposed to help Will examine the room he uncovered.”
“His name, Dr. Garvey,” Bemis said, looking pleased with himself, “is Dr. Fisher.”
“She wasn’t supposed to leave the villa without notification.” Renaldi glanced at Bemis. “Get it over with. I have to check on Fisher below.”
Bemis nodded to Renaldi and puffed his cheeks. “I’m afraid your conduct won’t do.” Bemis removed his cowboy hat and fanned himself before plopping it back on his head. “I don’t like doing this,” he said, smiling, “but—”
“Great news.” Will Fisher pushed aside the tent flaps and rushed in. “I found a stunning wall inscription down there. Come see.”
“Wonderful, pardner.” Bemis shook Fisher’s hand. “I’d love to see it.”
“Are you ready to descend with me?”
“Her.” Bemis nodded at Nicole. “She went AWOL on us.”
“No, she didn’t.” Fisher laughed. “I forgot to tell you. Dr. Garvey told me she had to see her father on a medical emergency. I gave her permission because you and Renaldi weren’t available.”
“You forgot to tell us?” Renaldi rolled his eyes. “I don’t believe you.”
“My pardner here does have a bad memory.” Bemis reached for his rucksack. “He’s notorious for forgetting his class schedule.”
“Yep . . .” Fisher clowned, holding out the lapels on his shirt. “I’m the original absentminded professor.”
He lied to save her job. She’d be happy to repay the debt . . . with interest.
“Follow me.” Fisher stood at the tent entrance. “I’m eager to get back.”
“Next time, see me.” Bemis paused until Fisher had left the tent. “I’m sure we can work something out . . . Nicole.” His smile verged on a leer. “Let’s get going. We’ve work to do.”
He chilled he
r even in the day’s heat.
***
Inside the Latin library, the workmen had removed the remaining debris. Renaldi stayed behind to supervise the workers packing boxes with the carbonized scrolls discovered earlier in the library. He delayed shipment of the scrolls to the National Archaeological Museum in Naples until he verified that the number of scrolls Fisher had counted and prepared matched the inventory tally in his hand. Because he personally answered to Lucio Piso, Renaldi warned Fisher that everything had better be in order.
Garvey and Bemis trailed Fisher into the murkiness of the adjacent room the professor had stumbled into.
“My turn for surprises, lady and gentleman.” Fisher made an exaggerated bow. “Welcome to the scriptorium.”
“Scriptorium?” Garvey asked. “I didn’t expect it.”
“Before the medieval monks,” Fisher said, “superrich Romans sometimes had a scriptorium for writing and copying letters and documents . . . not just a library.”
“Here’s proof.” Fisher stood beside stacks of blank papyrus sheets resting on what appeared to be a decayed pallet. “This papyrus looks like top-notch stock for the scribes.”
“You had better—”
“I know, I know, Wes. I’ve already inventoried these scrolls to keep Renaldi happy.”
Fisher cleared his throat. “Ta-da . . . Now, my friends, switch on your lamps and look at that wall. It’s going to make us famous.”
He walked to the other side of the scriptorium and held up his lamp. Underneath mosaics showing male figures copying papyrus scrolls, Fisher traced with a flashlight in his other hand the Latin letters C, H, R, I, S, T, U, S running horizontally across the wall.
“I was wrong.” Garvey held her breath. “Christianity came to Herculaneum before the eruption.”
Fisher ran his flashlight vertically down the wall, revealing M, I, T, R, A. The two words formed a cross sharing the common letter I.
“Mitra . . . the Latin root word for the English word miter worn during religious services.” He lowered the flashlight beam to the floor. “I wonder.” He rubbed his chin. “Ancient sources refer to the Magi, the Persian priest-astrologers, as wearing a kind of turban . . . and maybe the inscription means Christ is a high priest.”
The Mithras Conspiracy Page 12