New Rome Rising

by Rene Fomby

  20

  Rome

  Sam poked at her breakfast experimentally. The chef her assistant had hired to cook for her for the duration of her stay in Rome was trying valiantly to match Sam’s admittedly pedestrian American taste buds, but somehow everything was still coming out a bit off. The biscuits were dry and needed more lard—a lot more—and the sausages tasted more like Olive Garden than Jimmy Dean. But the gravy was pretty good, even if the cook had thrown in a splash of nutmeg for some inexplicable reason. Sam opened up another biscuit, spooning heaps of gravy across the top and tackling another bite, washing it down with a long slug of strong American coffee. At least the cook had gotten that part right.

  The last few days marked only the second time Sam had set foot inside her family’s apartment overlooking the iconic Spanish Steps in the heart of Rome. The first time had been under similar circumstances, her pending meeting with the strikingly handsome Italian finance minister. But this time the arcs of their professional lives had seemingly switched places. She had consented to a quiet dinner with him the night before at a restaurant overlooking the Tiber River, surrounded by a mob of other diners to make sure the meeting was all about business. Which, she supposed, it mostly was.

  The last time they had met was over three months earlier, at his office in the Palazzo delle Finanze, home to Italy’s Ministry of Economy and Finance. The occasion was the imminent collapse of BancItalia, the bank that lay at the heart of the Ricciardelli commercial empire—her daughter’s multi-billion-dollar inheritance. Faced with an imminent government shutdown of the bank, Sam had come to beg for more time to get the bank back on its feet following the raiding of its cash reserves by her father-in-law, William Tulley. Carlo Rossi had been less than accommodating that day, insisting that the Italian government had to follow the letter of the law and place the bank under receivership. But in the end Sam had won out, arguing that the bank’s collapse would have a cascading effect, ultimately bringing the Italian economy to its knees and opening up a broad breach in the political environment that the ultranationalist right could exploit.

  Since that day, Sam had made good on her pledge to turn the bank’s fortunes around, selling off several smaller, less profitable segments of the Ricciardelli empire to create a solid cash flow for the bank and divesting it of its more sluggish investments. In addition, her warnings regarding the dangerous political turn facing the Italian state had proven amazingly prescient, and Rossi was himself now facing a looming election that promised to boot his party from power, replaced by an anti-immigrant, anti-EU coalition that was just as bolstered by its anger at the stagnating economy as it was ignorant of any real solutions to Italy’s problems.

  Rossi had proposed the dinner to catch up on old times, but his real objective was to enlist Sam’s support in the upcoming elections. And, quite possibly, to put out some feelers for a more personal type of partnership as well. Sam had deftly fended off both advances, insisting that, as an American with no real ties to Italy other than as regent for her daughter’s commercial interests, her interference in Italian politics might easily be twisted by his enemies to suggest a continuing and quite regrettable tendril of old-fashioned American imperialism. And, of course, she reminded him that her short-term personal goal was to return home to Texas, where, she reminded herself, she was technically in a law partnership with one Harrison Crawford. A partnership that quite possibly might grow into something much larger and a great deal more personal. But, as to the political alliance, she left the question open for now. The political winds in Italy were shifting, as they were across all of Southern Europe, and the future was growing almost impossible to predict, especially for an outsider. But she ended the dinner with dessert and coffee and a promise to leave everything on the table.

  Today, however, her attention was focused on a very different challenge. In three days the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church would meet in conclave to select a new pope, and she was under no illusions that the process would produce another liberal game-changer like the previous pope. With Agent Gavin Larson busy trying to track down his missing partner, that left just two people in charge of protecting the Project from being hijacked by that very same Church—Sam and a somewhat scatterbrained religious studies professor from Turkey. Over the past two days they had made great progress scouting out the offices located on the tenth floor of the underground Vatican Library facility, as well as the floor just above it, but today—with the Vatican security forces pulled away to monitor and protect the swelling influx of foreign cardinals—they would pretty much have the entire facility to themselves. And they would start with the fourteenth floor, the last stop on the elevator ride into the heart of the Church’s deepest secrets.

  She checked her watch and was surprised to realize that she had dawdled far too long over her disappointing Deep South/Italian breakfast. Her driver had been waiting downstairs now for over fifteen minutes. Downing one last long draw of life-sustaining coffee and pausing to press a napkin to her lips, she grabbed her bag and headed out the door. Today she and Mehmed would, hopefully, find out just exactly what that smug little shit of a Swiss Guard had tried so hard to keep hidden in the basement of the Vatican’s secret warehouse.

  21

  Marseille

  Much to his increasing annoyance, Gavin had to spend two long days after the shooting locked up in the hospital before the doctors would finally sign off on his release. He had contemplated just going AMA—Against Medical Advice—but since he still didn’t have any solid leads in the case, he figured, why buck the system if it doesn’t help? And deep down in his soul he couldn’t really disagree that he needed a little more time to heal.

  Meanwhile, Dez had stayed busy chasing down the few leads they did have in the case. The fisherman had completely disappeared—Dez suggested that he had probably been made to disappear, most likely permanently—and the three men they had in custody were still stonewalling, even faced with the significant “inducements” the SDAT typically applied to encourage their terrorist suspects to cooperate. So, in the end, Gavin knew their best course moving forward was to put himself back out on the street as bait, what he had come to think of as a reverse mousetrap. And the only real question left to any of them was, which mousetrap would spring shut first?

  The doctors had advised strongly against him taking a flight back to Morocco, worrying about the effects of the reduced air pressure on his still-lingering concussion, so he grabbed a ferry instead. The long trip across the Mediterranean reminded him sharply of another trip he had taken just three months or so earlier, the trip from Rome to Tunisia, with Andy at his side pretending to be his honeymooning bride. At the time, her presence had been a constant annoyance to him, like a fly buzzing around his head that he couldn’t manage to swat, no matter how hard he tried. But over time that buzzing sound had worked its way into his heart, and now the world seemed eerily quiet without it.

  Stepping off the ferry at the cargo port at Tangier-Med, he grabbed a seat on a bus for the forty-kilometer ride to the train station, then hopped a train heading west for the three-and-a-half-hour trip to Rabat. By the time he finally arrived back at his apartment he was exhausted, both from the long trip and from the need to be constantly on alert for any sudden attacks by Boucher’s and Tulley’s henchmen.

  Before plopping down fully clothed on his bed for a well-needed rest, though, he paused to place a call to Sam, then another to Sanders, letting them know he was safe and sound now back in Morocco. Safe for the time being, that is. A situation he hoped would change for the worse overnight.

  22

  Vatican City

  After spending two full days tediously searching every room on the ninth and tenth floors, Sam and Mehmed decided to change their strategy and perform a quick sweep of the remaining floors, then return if they could the next day to examine anything truly interesting at greater leisure. The all-too-real risk of getting caught snooping around was very much in the back of their minds the entire
time.

  The eleventh floor was a complete bust, just an endless array of storage rooms filled floor to ceiling with cryptically-labeled boxes of paperwork and a curious assortment of small objects that meant nothing to either Sam or Mehmed. The twelfth and thirteenth floors appeared to be devoted to art, pieces that might as well have been paint-by-numbers as far as they could make out, since neither of them had ever studied art history. The fourteenth floor was a bit more mysterious, however. Judging from the size of the floor directly above, more than half of the fourteenth floor appeared to be locked behind a set of substantial-looking metal doors that wouldn’t respond to either of their IDs. After trying repeatedly to gain entrance, they finally gave up and decided to move on.

  But the fourteenth floor held another huge surprise for Mehmed. Inside one of the storage rooms they found a hermetically-sealed closet that wasn’t in fact hermetically sealed, but instead was lying wide open, with dozens of boxes scattered about just outside.

  Mehmed opened one of the boxes and started rifling through the papers inside. “Sam! I think this might be the inside info on what happened to the last pope.” He held up one sheet of paper. “Look! Apparently they did a toxicology screen after all!”

  “Yeah? What’s it say?” Sam leaned in to peer over Mehmed’s shoulder.

  “Hmm. Not really sure.” Mehmed’s forehead wrinkled as he quickly scanned the document. “Lots of chemical names, but nothing I recognize.” Reluctantly, he returned the paper to the box. “You know, this could turn out to be a treasure trove for historical research. Just imagine—”

  “No, Mehmed. We’re not going there.” Sam scowled at him as she bent down to close everything up.

  “But Sam! I’m just talking a box or two. We can take them up to the lab, scan everything, then have it all right back down here before anyone even suspects something was amiss—”

  “Read my lips. No.” Sam was already halfway out the door. “You know the rules. Today is all about exploring, trying to figure out what the Vatican bigwigs are hiding down here. And we still have a long way to go, eight more floors right above us. This is no time to get bogged down with stealing stuff, even for a short while. And we certainly don’t need to risk getting caught red-handed with any of this. Who knows what the tight-ass Vatican police would do to us then. Probably lock us up in some secret prison and throw away the key. We wouldn’t be the first people the Vatican has made disappear …”

  “Okay, okay, you’re right.” Mehmed started to join her, but at the last moment he reached down, opening the box one last time and grabbing the toxicology analysis. “But, hey, at least let me take this with us. I can look up all the chemical names on Google and figure out what it all means. They’ll never know it’s missing.” He folded the papers lengthwise and stuffed them into his jacket pocket.

  “Okay, sticky fingers. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Sam held the door wide open and waved him outside. “Let’s just finish up this floor, then grab some lunch and start in on the rest of the floors upstairs.”

  ※

  Done with their quick scan of the lower levels, after lunch they decided to start at the top floor and work their way back down. Which turned out to be a really smart idea, in retrospect, after they stumbled onto the biggest secret room of all on the otherwise unremarkable third floor. Unlike most of the other locked rooms, this one had a double door. Intrigued, Sam held up her badge to unlock it, but Mehmed reached up a hand to block her.

  “Hold it there, eager beaver. You know what we agreed on. We only use my badge, just in case someone up there is keeping tabs. That way at least you have some plausible deniability about snooping around down here.”

  “Sorry. I guess I am getting a little too antsy about all this. So far we’ve poked through almost nine floors down here, and all we’ve found are endless boxes of old records and artwork even the Vatican doesn’t deem worthy of putting on display. Maybe they don’t even remember it’s down here. I’m about ready to call it a day, to tell the truth.”

  “Yeah, I’m getting there, too.” Mehmed pressed his badge against the card reader and the door on the right buzzed. “After you, my lady,” he said, waving Sam through.

  She grabbed the door handle and turned the knob, but the door refused to budge. “Are you sure you unlocked it?” she asked.

  “Hey, you heard it the same as me. But, okay, I’ll try it again.”

  Mehmed raised his badge to the card reader, and once again the door buzzed. Sam immediately turned the knob and pulled, but to no avail.

  “Maybe it’s stuck,” Mehmed suggested, activating the lock for the third time and pulling on the door handle himself. This time the door moved slightly, but still refused to open all the way.

  “Well, that’s progress,” Sam suggested. “But clearly this has been sealed up for a very long time, even compared to all the other rooms we’ve visited. Tell you what, I’ll hit the lock with your badge, and you give it the whole heave-ho. And put your back into it this time, Claudine.”

  “I’ll Claudine you,” Mehmed retorted, but nonetheless unclipped his badge holder from his belt and handed it to her.

  On the fourth try he managed to get the door open by almost a foot, and together they wrestled with it until finally the hinges gave up the fight and let them swing the door fully open. Inside, the room was pitch black, and unlike the other places they’d poked into, stepping into the room didn’t activate the automatic lighting.

  “Okay, this is interesting,” Sam ventured. She pulled out her cell phone, which was otherwise useless this far underground, and switched on the flashlight app. Holding it up, she swept the dim beam of light left and right. Directly in front of them she could almost make out a large hulking dark gray shape, but just to the left of the open door behind them she found what she was really looking for—a light switch, an old-fashioned push-button switch from the early days of the twentieth century. “Vo-ee-la!” she murmured under her breath as she reached over and pushed the button. Instantly lights began to flicker on over their heads, and she turned back to find out what exactly the Vatican had hidden away in room seventeen, floor number three.

  23

  Vatican City

  In the harsh glare from the fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling, the dark gray hulk turned out to be a small train of some sort, sitting on a set of tracks leading off left and right into the gloom and covered completely in gray tarps. Mehmed helped Sam pull the tarp off the back of the train, both of them wheezing and coughing from the century or so of dust they had stirred up. With the tarp off, though, the passenger car it had been protecting gleamed like it was brand new. Sam remembered Mehmed and Archie Bennington’s earlier lectures about how well things could stay preserved in sealed-up environments, and that certainly seemed to be at work here.

  “Whoa,” she muttered, stepping back to get a better look at the car. “Didn’t expect this.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Mehmed turned his attention from the train to the walls and arched ceiling, which appeared to be composed of old, slowly decaying brown and reddish bricks. “This must be an old Roman aqueduct, repurposed to serve as an underground tunnel. Or maybe it’s just a tunnel, after all, like the tunnel we saw in Akko. A way to move people and supplies underground with no one being the wiser.”

  “Where do you suppose it leads?” Sam stepped over to examine the bricks herself.

  “My guess is, this is an escape route, probably dating back to the time the Vatican Palace was constructed, but the aqueduct almost certainly was here long before then. I would say pre-Constantine, since I don’t recall any aqueducts being constructed after he moved the capital to New Rome.” He glanced down at his feet, where a small amount of water lay in puddles here and there. “If it’s an aqueduct, whoever put this train here sealed off the tunnel somewhere off to the right of us, or this whole place would be sitting waist deep in water. As to the other end—”

  Sam had already started pulling off the rest of the tarps.
“This train is absolutely gorgeous! And look—it runs on coal!” The small car directly behind the engine was piled high with mounds of jet-black coal.

  “It makes sense. This whole setup looks like something that was meant to be used only rarely, probably for the pope and his closest allies and attendants in the rare event the Vatican was ever attacked. As a matter of fact—” Mehmed paused to sort through his memories of Vatican history. “I can think of three events in particular. The first was the Sack of Rome, when the army of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, furious at not having been paid for their victorious war against the French, decided to exact a payday from the treasures of Rome. The pope at the time, Clement VII, was said to have escaped the Vatican through a secret tunnel, supposedly taking refuge in the Castel Sant’Carlo on the banks of the Tiber, just a stone’s throw away, but I always wondered how that made any sense. I mean, any army capable of getting past the Vatican’s defensive perimeters and beating back the Swiss Guards wouldn’t have had any problems getting inside the Castel. So now I’m willing to bet he actually escaped down this tunnel.”

  “You said there were three events. What are the other two?”

  “Well, I’m thinking 1870, when the Savoy army poured into Rome and the pope took refuge inside the Vatican for fifty-nine years. If I were him, I certainly wouldn’t have felt all that safe just hiding out in the palace, at least not until things had settled down a bit. Too easy for the Italian king to change his mind and come roaring into Vatican City after him. And then, of course, there was the Nazi bombing of the Vatican, which happened twice, in 1943 and 1944.”