The Lost Catacomb

by Shifra Hochberg

  “This first laboratory, then, is where we work on techniques to assist fertility and enhance the chances of a live birth. What will interest you specifically will be the next three rooms, the laboratories where our staff, under Dr. Bumann’s able guidance, is working on the very latest cell technology, exclusive to us.”

  Rostoni, who was beginning to lose his patience after this lengthy, self-congratulatory discourse on the achievements of the clinic, suddenly became more attentive.

  “After our maternity patients safely deliver their babies, we take the expelled placentas to the first lab here, where they are preserved in special solutions and, let us say, for simplicity’s sake, something closely resembling an incubator. The process involves cryonics, a new freezing technology that, I'm afraid, I'm not at liberty to discuss in detail. Our patients, of course, have signed consent forms and are so eager to have a child that they generally ignore the small print on the document, or at the very least, are ignorant of the possible significance and ramifications of these small, legal details.

  “All they know is that they are donating their placentas to scientific research. Perhaps they suspect that this will help other infertile women to conceive. But we don’t discuss the specifics with them.

  “After the placental tissue has been stabilized and cultured in these special incubators, we begin the tricky part of our work. I’m afraid I may be boring you, but I want you to understand the entire process—precisely what this technology involves—so that you can understand why the generous financial backing of the Holy See is so desirable for us, if not critical to our continued success.

  “Now, as I’ve already explained, we're light years ahead of everyone in our research and our knowledge of the physiology of the cell, which as you know is the basic building block of all living things. Every cell in the human body contains genetic codes. As embryos, for example, develop in utero—I trust your Latin will stand you in good stead with some of the terminology,” he added with a smile, “tissue differentiation closes down or suppresses some of the characteristics which are part of the overall code. In other words, as embryos, we all start out as a mass of cells that has the potential to differentiate into any type of cell in the body.

  “These so-called precursor cells, which are found in the newly forming conceptus, and to some extent in the placenta, can divide over and over again for the lifetime of the organism. Regular cells in an organism, or human being, however, are what we call ‘terminally’ differentiated, and undergo no further changes or development. In other words, they’ve already metamorphosed into a specific type and now contain genetic regulatory proteins.”

  Rostoni nodded, indicating that he followed the explanations perfectly.

  “Now, in the human placenta,” Gotthard went on, “there are many embryonic or fetal cells that have ligands—things that attach themselves to other things, fitting each other perfectly, kind of like a hand and a glove or a pot and its lid. These placental cells also have millions of receptor molecules on their surface, and they have the power to home themselves into different target organs. Then, through hormonal and other stimulating factors that work locally, those cells can commit themselves by differentiating, thereby renewing the organ. Presto, the organ is actually regenerated!”

  Rostoni looked at Gotthard in admiration. “Amazing. Truly amazing!”

  “You do understand the implications, my dear Father Rostoni, do you not?” said Gotthard. “They actually become part of that organ. These placental cells that we harvest and incubate,” he continued excitedly, “donated by all of those desperate, wealthy women who patronize our clinic, can actually be used for cell therapy to rehabilitate dying, compromised, or dysfunctional cells. Kind of like a fountain of youth.

  “What we’re trying to fine-tune now is how to get the immune system to accept these embryonic cells, and not reject them as they would any other foreign body. We believe that the material should be injected directly into the bloodstream, not intramuscularly, in order for it to reach all parts of the body and rejuvenate it.”

  At this juncture, Dr. Bumann emerged from one of the labs. He removed a pair of rubber gloves, turning them inside out and rolling them into a ball, and stuffed them into the pocket of his immaculate lab jacket. He greeted Gotthard with a hearty slap on the back and turned expectantly to Rostoni. “And this must be our silent partner, from the Vatican,” he said. “I hope my associate has explained the finer points of our research goals satisfactorily.”

  “Indeed he has,” Rostoni replied, looking at his pocket watch, which he now pulled out of the side of his soutane. “Perhaps we should now adjourn to a more private place to discuss the financial arrangements?”

  “Certainly,” said Gotthard. “Martin, are you free to join us now?”

  “Of course. Just let me tell my assistant that I’ll be back in an hour.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The meetings in Zurich had gone well for Rostoni, far better than anticipated, in fact. The bankers at Cie et Fils and at the Banque Nationale de Suisse had been more than cooperative; they had been surprisingly flexible once they were apprised of the Vatican’s precise requirements. For the time being, there would be no need to meet with the chief players at the Geneva branches of those banks, and Rostoni was confident that most of his business with the clinic in Engenweill could, in the short term, be conducted long distance.

  The Vatican’s initial investment in Gotthard’s clinic had been drawn from several Catholic charities administered by the Holy See. It had indeed been providential, Rostoni mused to himself, that he had stumbled upon the Pope’s fisherman’s ring that day, not so very long ago. In fact, the fisherman’s ring had been the key to his success in diverting funds from these charities to the clinic in Switzerland. His role as the Holy Father’s assistant had given him unimpeded access to various financial records and accounts, and the seal ring had enable him to forge documents that could be marked as “confidential” and that would transfer money discreetly and quietly to Engenweill, as well as to the Swiss bank accounts that were earmarked for the Ratline escape routes.

  It was well known that the Pope had at his disposal certain financial resources designated for his own charitable disbursement.

  Sometimes that money was deposited in the Vatican Bank, and sometimes the Holy Father would put it in a strongbox, under lock and key. But Rostoni had been given a copy of that key, and in fact the Pope had, on more than one occasion, asked his protégée to take care of the distribution of these funds.

  Well, Rostoni thought triumphantly, some of those funds—which would never be missed, given the Pope’s utter trust in his faithful assistant and that assistant’s control of the purse strings which the fisherman’s ring had so fortuitously bestowed upon him—some of those funds would cover Rostoni’s own charitable projects. And, as he now mused rather smugly, charity did indeed begin at home.

  Rostoni knew that the Nazis who sought refuge in South America and elsewhere outside of Europe were interested in more than a temporary escape from Allied notions of justice. They hoped to establish a Fourth Reich some day, and perhaps the scientific research at Engenweill could be used in the future—for a price, of course—to restore the youth and vigor of those most committed in their desire to bring the National Socialists back to power. Perhaps there would be further scope for financial dealings with the Germans.

  In the meantime, Rostoni believed that Gotthard’s experiments might provide an eventual guarantee of his own continued good health and longevity. It was too bad that the Holy Father had misplaced his trust in Niehans, but Rostoni was not about to enlighten him as to the error of his belief. Perhaps one day, Rostoni thought, he himself would be considered papabile, or suitable for papal candidacy, and he would rule all of Christendom for longer than any pope had ever dreamed possible with this potential fountain of eternal youth. The longer he lived—the longer he could retain the full measure of his well-being and vigor—the more likely this scenario coul
d become.

  But even if he were never elected to the throne of St. Peter, he knew that he would never yield his aspiration to control the inner workings of the Vatican and to direct the course of its history to suit his own personal agenda.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Silenzio,” Rostoni cautioned in a soft whisper as he quietly opened the door of the black sedan. The car’s headlights had been extinguished the moment they'd left the precincts of the crumbling Aurelian walls and made their way, in the stealth of night, towards the catacombs of the Via Appia Pignatelli. They'd traveled in a silent convoy, as Rostoni’s driver, a carefully chosen acquaintance of his older brother, a captain in the Trastevere branch of the Fascio, had led the five trucks towards the deserted outskirts of Rome.

  The convoy had parked in the shelter of some thick trees and densely tangled shrubbery, well shielded from the road and from the view of any army patrols that might be scouring the area to pick up possible curfew offenders. Rostoni had researched the location of these catacombs persistently over the past several months, visiting the Secret Archives on a regular basis, ostensibly for the purpose of studying epigraphic and literary sources concerned with the worship of martyrs in underground basilicas. The catacombs of the Via Appia Pignatelli had been discovered in 1885, but all traces of the precise location of its entrance had vanished long ago, the result of the shifting and collapse of some of its multi-layered gallerias in the wake of silent, but nonetheless destructive, earth tremors.

  Rostoni had made several field trips to the area over the past few weeks, under the guise of pilgrimages to the catacombs of St. Calixtus and St. Sebastian, and his relentless efforts had finally borne fruit. His discovery of the entrance, which had been well concealed beneath a jagged pile of rocks, overgrown with tall weeds and lush wildflowers, was well timed.

  A steady flow of goods had been shipped out of Athens ever since the Axis occupation of Greece, arriving first at a little used port in a small fishing village along the Adriatic coast of Italy and then being transported to the secret headquarters of Catholic Charities International, a front for fenced artwork that Rostoni had helped establish, with the financial and logistical assistance of Field Marshal Kesselring, under direct orders from Berlin. Rostoni’s contacts in Zurich had arranged for the transfer of valuables from the secret depths of their bank vaults to coincide precisely with the delivery of these shipments to an abandoned warehouse near the Via Tasso in Rome.

  “Over there,” he pointed, as the group of Waffen SS unloaded a series of oddly sized wooden crates from the lorries and set them down in the grass. “The contents are fragile,” Rostoni warned them. “And irreplaceable. Carry the crates down slowly and one at a time. Place them in the loculi, if at all possible. You may turn on your flashlights only when you enter the crypt. I’ve rigged some lighting in the main hypogeum. There’s a switch at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Giovanni,” he now whispered, turning to his Italian colleague and beckoning him deep into the shadows. “I’ll take the sedan back to Trastevere. When they’ve finished transferring the boxes, you know what to do. Take them back to Fascio headquarters and give them a round of drinks, to celebrate the completion of their mission. And make sure that they are served only the grappa that I’ve prepared especially for this purpose.

  “The drugs have a delayed effect and simulate the symptoms of severe food poisoning. By midday tomorrow,” he said with a sinister glance in the direction of the German soldiers, “there will be no eyewitnesses left to this night’s events.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The veranda of the Keating home had always been a place where the family relaxed in the evening hours when the weather was fine, sitting on deep wicker armchairs and a matching sofa with well-worn needlepoint pillows. Several low glass-topped tables held books and magazines, and a small flowering plant trailed its leaves over the edge of a salt-glazed pottery jug.

  The view from the porch took in a broad expanse of grass, dotted here and there with large maple and oak trees that even now, in early May, had begun to put forth their green leaves, brightening the landscape with the promise of the renewal of spring. Near a corner of the veranda, a small wooden birdhouse, built twenty years earlier in a gesture of whimsy to mimic the architecture of the Keating home, now echoed with the soft warbling sounds of the birds that had returned from their winter habitats.

  Elena had come outside with a large mug of steaming tea in her hand, settling herself into a chair and sighing in contentment. The night air was cool, and she wore a light sweater, unbuttoned, over her shoulders. She was now at the beginning of her final month of pregnancy and looked forward to giving birth with mixed feelings of anticipation and dread.

  Her months with the Keating family had been like an oasis in time, far removed from the horrors of war that she had known back in Italy. Though the radio in the Keating’s kitchen was constantly turned on, transmitting the latest progress of the Allied forces, and though Tom had made several mysterious trips back to England over the past months on missions he declined to discuss, the atmosphere in the house was tranquil.

  Tom’s parents asked few questions, having been told by their son that Elena would not wish to speak of her family nor of the terrible loss she had sustained. They respected his wish to provide little detail about how he had met his young wife, who seemed to be scarcely beyond adolescence. Somewhat puzzled, they had also noticed, without comment, that there were no public displays of physical affection between the two, no playful flirtation of the sort that most young married couples would indulge in, even in front of others.

  Perhaps most mystifying was their daughter-in-law’s almost habitual state of somber introspection. Not that she was moody or unfriendly, or that she failed to respond to the warmth of their repeated overtures, but clearly she was sad most of the time, preoccupied and grieving, they could only assume, for her parents and brother.

  And they could not fail to notice that when Tom was actually home on one of his brief furloughs, he slept in a different bedroom, in the guest room down the hall from where Elena slept alone in the large double bed that had always been Tom’s.

  Was her pregnancy such a source of physical discomfort that this was the only way she could get a good night’s sleep? Didn’t she long for the comfort of her husband’s arms at night during those infrequent intervals when he could actually be with her?

  And though Tom’s mother hesitated to even think the unthinkable, she wondered if the baby was actually Tom’s. Perhaps Elena had been violated by the same Fascist soldiers who had murdered the rest of her family, and perhaps Tom, their heroic son who always did the right thing, had simply rescued her from further tragedy, from the terrible situation in which he had found her, without thought as to his own personal welfare.

  Any marriage was a big step, tenuous enough in the best of situations, and a marriage of convenience could be a difficult thing to live with in the long run. Given their son’s reticence, however, and his protectiveness of Elena, they might never know.

  As for Elena herself, her trepidation about motherhood was twofold. She was somewhat fearful of the birth itself. After all, she was young and it would be her first delivery. She had no idea what to expect, especially in a strange country where hospital protocol could differ dramatically from what went on in Europe, where many women still gave birth at home, supported by the warmth of the family circle, their mothers soothing and encouraging them at every step during the difficult hours of labor and confinement.

  What would happen to her poor baby if she did not survive the birth? And what if the baby looked like Niccolò—which she hoped desperately it would—but she were dead? How would Tom’s parents feel about caring for it until the war ended and Tom returned home? How would Tom himself feel, burdened with a child that wasn’t his and that might look like Elena’s dead lover?

  And if she were to survive the baby’s delivery after all, would she really have the strength, both emotional and p
hysical, to go off on her own? To make a new life for herself in America? She knew that she could never return to Rome, even if the war were to end in the Allies’ favor, for she would always fear discovery by those who had destroyed her family and murdered her beloved Niccolò.

  She no longer believed in any sort of divine justice or retribution that would exact punishment from those who willfully hurt others and gloried in their pain. Her faith in God’s providence, His divine love, His putative protection of His flock—all had been shaken with terrible finality to their very foundations and would never be restored. There was nothing left for her back in Italy. She had no family, no home, and she could no longer find solace in formal religion.

  But what would become of her here in America? She had no education to speak of, since her high school studies had been interrupted. How could she support herself? She didn’t see how her dream of a career in medicine could ever be possible now. Not with a baby whom she would devote her life to, and not in a country whose language she spoke adequately, though not well enough for professional purposes.

  Likewise, she realized, the contents of the small leather satchel she had brought with her from her parents’ ransacked apartment in Rome would never cover the cost of an education in the United States. So far, the money and jewelry had been left untouched, thanks to Tom’s generosity. She would use it only to provide for her baby, as necessary.

  She could not impose upon Tom and his parents forever. It was unfair to Tom especially, who deserved to be with someone who loved him more than anyone else in the world. He was so kind, so giving, so strong. And he had taken such good care of her from the moment they had met. If circumstances had been different, he might, in fact, have swept her off her feet.