Just then, Nicola’s cell phone rang. “Yes, this is Nicola, Father. What have you found out?” She listened carefully as Father Benedetto began to outline the information he’d received from his cousin at the Vatican Bank. Finally, she let out an exultant cry. “I can’t believe it! I’m going to put Bruno on the line. He’ll want to hear this for himself.” She handed Bruno the cell phone, whispering, “This is incredible!”
Bruno listened soberly as Father Benedetto explained that a rigorous search through computer files and older bank records had revealed that Cardinal Rostoni was one of the chief financial officers of Catholic Charities International, the foundation under suspicion for organizing the transfer of stolen Jewish artwork to Rome. Benedetto’s cousin had not yet been able to ascertain precisely when Rostoni had become involved with the foundation, but he was working on some possibilities. The information that he had obtained up to this moment had been difficult to unearth, carefully concealed as it had been between layers of bureaucratic paperwork and documents dating back to the early 1940s and the establishment of the Vatican Bank.
Still other files had yielded information equally sensitive and potentially damaging. Large sums of money had been transferred to Catholic Charities International from the personal account of the Pope during the early months of 1944, with no indication as to the purpose. There were no signatures on those documents, only the imprint of the Pope’s seal ring.
Other funds had been shifted from Catholic Charities to one Bishop Alois Hudal’s personal bank account and to that of Father Krunoslav Draganovic. As Bruno explained to Nicola after hanging up the phone, those were two of the most notorious criminal figures in the Vatican Ratlines that had spirited Nazis out of Europe to South America and other locations.
“‘Vatican Ratlines’?” Nicola had asked in puzzlement. “I don’t understand.”
“Well,” Bruno answered, “the Ratlines were escape routes used by German and other Nazi-affiliated war criminals. I’m sure you’ve heard of Odessa and Die Spinne, for example, haven’t you?”
“Yes, those were Nazi-operated escape organizations, weren’t they?”
“Right. Anyway, there were also some individuals in the Vatican who helped Nazis escape. All of this is carefully documented fact, I’m sorry to say.
“And by the way, even the Allies made some dirty deals with German fugitives from justice. Obviously not with the major criminals who were brought to trial at Nuremberg, but with others, many of whom were equally guilty of crimes against humanity. It’s one of the nastiest little secrets of the war.”
Nicola was horrified. “Wait a minute, Bruno. Are you saying that the American government actually helped Nazis escape from justice?”
“That’s right,” Bruno said, with a look of disgust on his face. “In exchange for so-called useful intel and—or so they claimed—because it would help in the fight against Communism. At least that’s one of the theories. It’s shocking, isn’t it?
“And as long as we're on the subject, Nazi gold and profits from the war were filtered through the IOR on a regular basis. The Vatican took a substantial percentage of all German monies as overhead, so to speak, before passing them on to various Swiss banks. This, too, has been thoroughly documented, in case you were wondering.
“Anyway, let’s not get too sidetracked here. We need to plan our visit to the catacombs. And the sooner the better.
“Look,” he continued rapidly, “I think we can start with some basic archaeological tools of the sort we’ve been using until now. You know, the trowels, brushes, scrapers, tweezers, and picks that we’ve left in the hypogeum.
“But if we don’t find evidence of a hidden doorway or crypt easily, I can borrow some equipment from the University—maybe a magnetometer or some tomography equipment to detect underground objects. My department also owns some portable ground-penetrating radar to detect variations in soil density that could hint at another underground chamber. But that would probably raise some questions I’d prefer not to answer right now, so we’ll leave that as a last resort.”
“Okay,” she broke in anxiously, “but you still didn’t tell me, did Father Benedetto find out anything about Rostoni that might connect him to the murders of my relatives? Any real proof?”
“He did mention that he’s going to work on that now. Calling in a few favors, I imagine. But it might take several days.”
He hugged her and held her close, his cheek resting against the top of her long, wavy hair. “Don’t worry, cara. We’ll get through this together. We owe it to your grandmother—and to Matt—to follow through on this. We’re not going to let Rostoni get away with murder. Not this time.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Do you have everything we need?” Bruno asked, glancing sideways at Nicola as he pulled out of their parking space and began driving in the direction of the Via Appia Antica.
“I think so,” she replied quietly. She opened the backpack once more and verified that it contained an assortment of picklocks, a crowbar, a hammer, some heavy spikes, flashlights, penlights, extra batteries, a magnifying glass, and a pair of small but powerful binoculars.
The dark pouch belt at her waist held her wallet and an extra set of keys for the small black Smart Car that Bruno had rented at Termini earlier that day, paying in cash and using false ID provided by a document technician in the laboratories at the Secret Archives whose loyalty to Father Benedetto was unimpeachable. The car would be easier to maneuver and hide at night than Bruno’s larger, flashier Brava, and Matt’s death had forced them to consider the dangerous possibility that they might be followed.
Forty minutes later they reached the corner of the Via Appia Pignatelli, not far from the Vigna Randanini, where Bruno turned off the headlights and pulled over to the side of the road. He put the car into neutral and they wedged it behind some dense shrubbery, where it easily blended into the dark shadows.
“Watch out,” he warned Nicola in a low whisper as they began to walk towards the entrance to the Marchesa's property. “There’s a pile of rocks to your left.” He turned on a slender penlight and flashed it quickly over the rubble.
“Thanks,” she whispered back, grabbing his arm for support as she sidestepped the rubble. “I probably would have tripped over it—and then our little adventure might have come to an end before it really started.”
It was the middle of the night, three days after the package with its disturbing contents had arrived from Greece. Bruno and Nicola had carefully prepared for this nocturnal expedition, returning to the Secret Archives with Father Benedetto to find original reports of the excavations at the Via Appia Pignatelli dating back to the 1860s. Together they had narrowed down the probable location of the entrance to the lost catacomb to somewhere within an area of a quarter of a square mile, in the middle of a secluded meadow surrounded by crumbling stone walls and overgrown with weeds and tall grass. A small site map, divided into grids, had been carefully marked to indicate where they should concentrate their efforts.
After careful consideration, however, they had decided to return first to the Vigna Randanini to look for a hidden crypt or passageway behind the wall in which they’d found the buried yad, believing it was far more likely that the stolen artwork would have been secreted there, rather than in the nearby catacomb of the Via Appia Pignatelli, whose entrance had vanished long ago. Moreover, having noted the difficulty of exploring the terrain near the lost catacomb during a quick, surreptitious visit the previous day, they felt it would be safer to work underground rather than to risk the possibility of exposure in an open field, even under the cover of darkness.
By now they were convinced that the Greek and Iberian artifacts stolen by the Nazis had been transferred to the catacombs at some point during World War II and that the yad, dating from the period of the Spanish Inquisition, had been embedded between the bricks of tufa literally to point in the direction of a secret doorway. Unfortunately, however, when they had pried it out of its hiding place, they
had been unaware of its possible significance and had failed to take note of the precise position in which the tiny hand had rested.
Now, clad entirely in black—with a lightweight ski cap to cover Nicola’s long auburn hair—they hugged the high brick wall surrounding the estate of the Marchesa and moved silently towards the wrought iron gate, whose lock and hinges they had carefully oiled two days earlier in anticipation of tonight’s visit. The carabinieri were parked some twenty feet from the entrance to the grounds, and Nicola and Bruno could hear the sounds of laughter and quiet radio music being played.
“Maybe you should take a peek at them through the binoculars,” Nicola suggested, “and see what they’re doing. I know we have permission to be here, in theory, any time of day or night, but I wouldn’t want them to spot us, especially the way we’re dressed. We look like a pair of cat burglars,” she added dryly, as she surveyed their black active-wear and shoes and pulled her ski cap down more snugly over her reddish curls.
“They seem to be wide awake,” Bruno replied as he took a careful look. “But, fortunately for us, they don't seem to be paying attention to anything but the beer they’re guzzling. I don’t think we’ll have a problem.” He handed her back the binoculars and she stuffed them into her pouch belt.
Beckoning her to follow, Bruno now moved forward swiftly and opened the tall gate just wide enough for them to slip through. Skirting the inside of the wall, they tiptoed softly through the grass, with starlight as their only guide, and reached the entrance to the catacombs without incident.
On their last visit there, they had also made sure to oil the hinges of the heavy iron door that sealed the underground catacomb network and had left it unlocked. Now they closed it noiselessly, picked up the oxy lamps that they had placed near the entrance, and made their way down the long corridor leading to the disputed hypogeum.
“Bruno?” Nicola whispered as they reached the yad, her voice echoing faintly in the hollow of the tunnel. “How do you want to start?” She set her oxy lamp down on the floor. Its pale yellow light shone eerily through the grid of its metal casing, throwing a series of quivering elongated shadows on the walls and ceiling of the passageway. She shivered in the dank coldness of the crypt and moved closer to the lamp for warmth.
“Well,” he considered, “we can either try to move some of the tufa bricks, the way you did when you discovered the amphora, or we can try to pry off some of the false tomb markers near the yad to see if there’s some sort of hidden opening.”
“Okay. Why don’t we start with the tomb markers,” Nicola proposed. “I think it’s far more likely that we’ll find a crawl space behind one of them, leading to a tunnel or another crypt, rather than some sort of secret door built into the walls of the passageway. Any opening of normal size would just be too difficult to camouflage, at least in my opinion. I only hope that nothing shatters, though,” she said in concern, “because if we don’t find what we’re looking for, we’ll be hard put to explain how we allowed these irreplaceable tomb markers to become damaged.
“And by the way, I think we should wear latex gloves this time,” she added, pulling some out of her pouch belt and handing him a pair. “I know that our fingerprints are all over the catacomb, but for this little escapade,” she said wryly, “I think it’s best that we avoid leaving any identifiable traces on the plaques we’re trying to dislodge or on anything we might find eventually in a hidden storeroom or chamber.”
Taking the other oxy lamp with her, she entered the hypogeum and returned a few minutes later with a specially prepared solvent in syringes that she had set aside previously for this specific purpose. Handing one of them to Bruno, they worked systematically, injecting the chemicals into the periphery of the plaques, one at a time, hoping to dissolve or at least loosen the mortar that cemented them to the walls.
They waited patiently for fifteen minutes for the solvent to take effect. Then, working together, Nicola grasped the plaques on the top and bottom to stabilize them, while Bruno inserted a flat trowel and tried to pry them off the surface of the tufa. Several of the plaques crashed to the ground despite their efforts to avoid chipping or smashing them, and they gathered the broken pieces together in individual piles, deciding to ignore the damage in the meantime.
Finally, about half an hour later, they removed an unusually large tomb marker to the far right of the yad, nearly at waist level, and Nicola gasped in surprise.
“Bruno,” she cried triumphantly as she shone her flashlight into the gaping hole that was now revealed. “There’s nothing behind this plaque. Nothing, that is, but a tunnel!”
“Dio! You’re right.” He reached through the open space and flashed his light into the dark passageway on the other side, bouncing its beam off the walls and ceiling, noting that the floor was littered with sharp limestone fragments. The tunnel appeared to stretch out endlessly into a deep black abyss.
“Can you boost me into it?” he asked. “I think I should go first, just in case.”
“Sure, but maybe it would be safer if you climbed onto a stool and tried to squeeze through. I can hold it for you.”
“Actually I have a better idea, Nicola. Bring me another stool from the hypogeum. Maybe I can ease it through the hole and set it down inside, on the ground. That will make it easier to climb in. There are too many shards on the floor, and we don’t want to slip and get cut unnecessarily.”
He maneuvered the stool through the recess and dropped it into the tunnel, managing, somehow, to position it upright. He then climbed onto the other stool that Nicola now brought and gingerly hoisted one leg into the recess. “It’s a bit tight,” he said, crouching as he tried to angle himself through the hole, ‘but I think I can manage it. Here, take my pouch belt.” He unclipped it and slowly squeezed through the empty loculus, dropping to the other side and landing safely.
His voice echoed back and forth as he beamed his flashlight into the blackness and called out, “It looks clear from here. Climb onto the stool and I’ll help you slide through. Give me your hand.”
She removed her own pouch belt and passed it and Bruno’s pouch through the opening, then handed him her flashlight. Torn between fear and anticipation, she slipped through the wall and dusted herself off. “Do you think it’s safe to leave the oxy lamps out there?” she asked in belated concern, pointing in the direction of the passageway they’d just left. The yellowish light shone brightly through the rectangular opening in the wall, like a beacon.
“Of course,” Bruno replied. “We may need the light to guide us back here in case there’s no clear-cut outlet or if there are some other corridors on this side that prove to be misleading. We can’t risk getting lost.”
He now reached into his pouch belt and pulled out a heavy spool of bright yellow plastic twine, luminous in the steady beam of his flashlight. As Nicola watched, he began to unroll it, fastening it securely to the legs of the stool that stood under the niche they had just crawled through, amid the shards of the shattered limestone plaque that had covered the opening just a short while ago.
“Okay, we're good to go,” he said, satisfied that there would be a reliable way for them to retrace their footsteps.
They moved cautiously into the depths of the tunnel, and Bruno continued to unwind the spool as they followed a twisted pathway for a distance of about 40 feet. Finally they found themselves at a dead end.
“This looks like it might be a door,” Bruno said, as he aimed his flashlight at the dust-covered wall they had nearly bumped into and then patted it down systematically with his gloved hand, from left to right, until he heard the distinctly harsh clang of metal. Removing a small whisk brush from his pouch, he began to clean the surface, revealing a narrow door that was embedded into the tunnel wall.
“I don't see a lock or handle just yet, so I think I should first try the small crowbar and see if I can dislodge the door from the wall,” he said.
After several attempts, however, he shook his head in frustration. “It won�
�t budge. The door frame is just too tightly fixed into the tufa for this crowbar to work. Can you hand me one of the microfiber cloths? Maybe if we do a more thorough job of wiping this down we'll find a lock.”
Nicola held both her flashlight as well as Bruno's, shining them at the surface of the door, and fifteen minutes later Bruno finally uncovered a small flat lock that had been camouflaged in layers of grit. He flicked the whisk brush over it repeatedly and then turned to Nicola. “Can you hand me the can of WD-40? Maybe that will do the trick.”
He sprayed the lock several times, and eventually, after patiently trying several of the picklocks he had brought with him, he succeeded in opening the door, whose rusty hinges gave way with a loud creaking groan. Wedging one of the larger flashlights into the door frame as a temporary measure, he then stabilized the opening itself by driving several heavy spikes into the floor of the tunnel, to prevent the door from moving.
“I think this should hold,” he said, grabbing his flashlight and flicking it on again. “Now there's no way the door can swing inward. With any luck, we won't get trapped inside.”
“Thanks, Bruno. That's just what I needed to hear. I feel so much more confident now,” Nicola said with a slight shudder.
“Come on, Nicola. We'll be fine. But I’ll go in first,” he cautioned, “just in case.” He shone his flashlight down the narrow stairwell opposite their point of entry, and they descended a short set of uneven stone steps that led to a large, roughly paved landing.
“Look, Bruno, there’s a light switch here,” Nicola cried out in astonishment, and she flicked it on, eyeing the heavy wiring that ran up the wall and along the ceiling, wondering who could possibly have installed it.
Momentarily dazed by the bright lights, they gasped aloud in surprise as they found themselves standing in front of a wide doorway to an exceptionally large chamber, a room many times bigger than the contested hypogeum in the Vigna Randanini.
The Lost Catacomb Page 30