The Lost Catacomb

by Shifra Hochberg

  The wall immediately opposite the entry was covered by a tremendous red flag with a black swastika on it that was suspended close to the ceiling and framed by two sculpted bronze eagles with spears in their claws. Beneath the flag there were carefully arranged portraits of what appeared, at first glance, to be a gallery of military personnel—a large grouping of men in Nazi uniforms of varying rank, their insignias visible on their collars, epaulets, and caps. Some appeared to be wearing the uniforms of the SS, some those of the Luftwaffe, and some those of the Kriegsmarine, the German navy. Each framed photo, apparently arranged alphabetically, was tagged with a small plaque indicating name and position in the hierarchy of the Third Reich, as well as a list of their awards for valor and dedication to the Fatherland.

  The other walls were lined with tall symmetrical glass-fronted steel cases that stood on a heavy metal platform, with wires and piping attached to what appeared to be a large generator, whose dull whirring hum broke the unnatural silence of the catacomb. Shaped like upright coffins, they displayed a series of what appeared to be bodies swaddled in heavy striated cloth, almost like mummies, but with their faces exposed, their eyes closed, and their skin tinged a strangely bluish white.

  “What is this, Bruno?” Nicola asked as she approached the cases, tentatively putting out her hand to touch them. “Are they are real? Or are they wax figures?”

  “Oh, they're real, all right,” he said, grabbing her arm and pulling her back. “Don't touch anything,” he warned. “It might be dangerous. Look at all that liquid bubbling and sloshing about in the cases.”

  “I don't see anything bubbling,” she said as she looked around. “Where? What are you talking about?”

  “Up there,” he pointed, “at the very top of each case. Can you see it now? It looks like it could be some kind of preservative. I wouldn't be surprised if this is some sort of cryonic set-up meant to preserve Nazi corpses.”

  “What?!” she blurted out.

  A look of barely restrained hatred came over his face as he explained. “Look at the names, Nicola. Dannecker, Goebbels, Hass, Hess, Heydrich, Kappler, Kesselring,” he said, picking out names at random from among the portraits. “It reads like a 'Who's Who' of some of the most notorious Nazi criminals.

  “It looks like someone has frozen these bodies in the hope of reviving them at a later date. Maybe the people who operated the Nazi Ratlines moved the cadavers to this location, one at a time, in order to restore them to life at some time in the future. Maybe they were planning for a revival of the Third Reich. Or the establishment of a Fourth Reich.”

  “Oh, come on, Bruno,” she said with a look of disbelief on her face. “That's ridiculous. And impossible.”

  “No it isn't,” he insisted. “Haven't you heard of a similar technique being used in hospitals? They wrap the bodies of critically ill patients in a special fabric impregnated with a chemical coolant that lowers body temperature just enough to prevent neurological damage and tissue morbidity. Then the patients can be revived—thawed out as it were, eventually—once someone figures out what disease they have or what medications will cure them.

  “Sometimes they just inject a biological coolant intravenously, into the circulatory system, to shut things down in order to let the body recover from trauma. My sister's a doctor. She's done this kind of thing in the ICU many times. I know it sounds like something out of a bad science fiction novel, but apparently the technology has been around since World War II.”

  Nicola shuddered and backed away slowly from the macabre lineup of glass-encased bodies. “This is getting a bit too creepy for me, Bruno. Wouldn't this mean that someone—someone now, not just years ago—still intends to revive these dead Nazis?”

  “I guess so,” he answered soberly, his jaw tightening with suppressed anger. “We just need to figure out who could have had the means to set this up. Or who would want to do this. After all, someone must still be making sure that the generator is working and that the integrity of the freezing system remains uncompromised.”

  “Who could have possibly had access to this technology? Clearly the bodies have been here since the time of World War II,” Nicola interjected.

  “Obviously someone very powerful,” Bruno replied. “Someone with both the funds and the manpower to have the bodies of these monsters stabilized and preserved at the time of death and then brought, one by one, from secret locations all over Europe—or even South America—to this catacomb. The logistics involved are nearly unimaginable.

  “But then again, someone did manage to do it. And the only possible reason, as we've already speculated, would be to re-establish the Reich. That's pretty obvious, at least to me.”

  He looked around the hypogeum again, momentarily lost in thought. Then rousing himself from his reverie, he turned to Nicola.

  “Look,” he said. “I don't know how much time we have left. We have to stay focused. Remember, we're going to have to leave the Vigna Randanini itself while it's still dark outside and while the carabinieri are too tired or distracted to notice us. We need to start looking for what we came here to find. There are two other doorways over there. Let's check them out.”

  Motioning her first towards a dark arch near a corner of the crypt, they flicked on another light switch and entered the next room. The chamber held carefully arranged display cases of all shapes and heights. Gold and silver objects glittered brightly on wide tables and behind fitted glass doors in the recesses of the loculi. Soft track lighting, strategically angled to highlight the artwork, dazzled their eyes, flooding the room with dizzying light that bounced off the gold and silver surfaces, creating the illusion of an endless montage of superimposed images reflected on the mirror-like façades.

  In between the loculi, the walls were hung from floor to ceiling with oil paintings of various sizes, arranged by country of origin, as well as by genre and date.

  “This isn't just a warehouse or storeroom, Bruno,” Nicola whispered, as she gazed slowly around the room in increasing astonishment. “It seems to be a collection of some of the most valuable artwork I’ve ever seen. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that it looks like a museum. A private museum of some sort.”

  “It is a museum, Nicola,” Bruno said in shock as he approached one of the display cases. “Look! Everything is labeled. Even the paintings have explanatory plaques near them in two languages—German and Italian,” he showed her as he moved closer to one of the walls. ‘From the private collection of the David-Weill family, France, 1943,’ ” he read aloud.

  “And there’s even some sort of primitive climate control equipment,” Nicola gasped in wonderment, pointing to the ceiling. “Here, in the catacombs! My God, what is this place supposed to be?” she exclaimed, turning to Bruno.

  His features hardened as he answered her. “I think we’ve found the location of the stolen artifacts that Matt was looking for. But this isn’t just a hoard of Greek or Iberian objects, Nicola. Look at all these oils,” and he pointed towards a series of paintings that were clearly by Monet and Sisley. “They look like the so-called degenerate art that the Nazis expropriated throughout Europe, mainly from private Jewish collectors and Jewish-owned art galleries.

  “I think we’ve found something similar to the Museum of Dead Nations that the Nazis had planned to build before they lost the war.”

  She looked at Bruno and stammered, “ ‘Museum of . . .’ What on earth are you talking about, Bruno?”

  His dark eyes narrowed and he began to explain, an edge of unmistakable anger to his words. “There’s a lot of documentation about a Museum of Dead Nations that the Nazis intended to construct to commemorate the elimination of the Jews and Jewish culture. The Poles were also going to be ‘memorialized’ there, so to speak, as well as the Gypsies and their culture.

  “Look at what’s been stored here all these years,” he said with a sweeping gesture. “And not just stored—this has been carefully organized, down to the last detail. There are Impressionist oil paintings,
old Dutch masters, and look over there,” he said, pointing to another wall. “Those are some Italian pieces that could be by Tiepolo. That one is definitely something by Giotto. I’ve never even seen a description or mention of any of these works anywhere. They must have come from private collections all over Europe that were never open to public view. And all of these must have been owned by dead Jews,” he added with bitterness.

  “Just look at these gold and silver Torah accessories, the ritual ornaments, and all of these illuminated manuscripts in Hebrew.” He walked over to one of the glass-encased loculi. “There are about twenty Torah pointers on exhibit here. Like the one we found at the Vigna Randanini.

  “I think this must have been some sort of major storage point for the Nazis. And they obviously had someone helping them here in Rome. Someone whose initials were ‘M.R.,’” he said in disgust. “All of those crates that were on the inventory list of items shipped to Catholic Charities International must have been transferred here. It’s the only credible explanation. And his illustrious Eminence, Cardinal Mauro Rostoni, appears to be the maker of this museum.”

  “So he wasn’t just a Fascist sympathizer,” Nicola said with undisguised hatred in her voice. “He actually colluded with the Germans in stealing Jewish property. I guess that’s why it’s all here, and not in the Vatican. Clearly he was working independently and not for the Church. This must be part of some larger conspiracy.”

  She began to pace back and forth, rapidly surveying the artifacts. “What could he possibly have intended to do with this collection?” she went on angrily. “Maybe he was hoping—maybe he’s still hoping—that some sort of Fourth Reich will be established and that he’ll be celebrated for amassing this priceless collection of stolen art.”

  “You're probably right. And I guess that also means that he was somehow responsible for that revolting antechamber of horrors back there,” Bruno added in repugnance, pointing in the direction of the crypt with the frozen Nazi cadavers. “He had to have known about it. There's no other possible explanation.”

  Nicola, in the meantime, had walked over to the largest display case in the center of the room and read the sign aloud: “Religious artifacts from the dead community of Corfu. Torah scrolls, embroidered velvet Torah covers, Rimmonim, shofars, and silver Torah crowns, ca. 1432, originating in Spain.”

  “How about this one?” Bruno asked. “It has full-page illuminated Bible manuscripts, Passover Haggadahs, and the Mishnah Torah of Maimonides. ‘Microcalligraphy, Mudjar style, 14th century, dead community of Marrano Jews, Portugal. From the Greek archives of the Beit Sfarad Synagogue of Crete.’ And here’s another, with lusterware Seder plates and silver wine goblets. ‘Dead Jewish community of Thessaloniki, Greece, 1942.’”

  As they moved from exhibit to exhibit, they found to their increasing horror that each commemorated a different Jewish group that had been exterminated during the Second World War. “You realize the significance of what we’ve found, don’t you, Nicola? The Museum of Dead Nations is still alive and kicking.”

  Continuing to walk around the vast chamber, overwhelmed by the sheer number of artifacts on display, they suddenly noticed a narrow doorway leading to a smaller gallery. It had been barely visible between the crowded array of paintings and art objects, and they had nearly overlooked it. At its center, there stood a massive silver Menorah nearly five feet tall. Encased in glass and resting on a low mahogany stand, it almost touched the ceiling of the catacomb. Ornate and elaborately embossed, with inscriptions in both Ladino and Hebrew, it had probably been intended for the lighting of Hanukkah candles in some underground place of worship, far from the watchful eyes of the Inquisition.

  “Look, Nicola,” Bruno said as he opened the glass doors to examine the inscriptions on the Menorah. “This was apparently owned by Greek descendents of a Marrano family. Their name appears on the candelabrum itself, with the dates of their flight from Lisbon and their subsequent arrival in Thessaloniki. And instead of the traditional reference to the miracle of the holiday, it quotes some lines about God’s vengeance—‘For the blood of His servants He will avenge, and the land will atone for His nation.’ That’s a loose translation, more or less, from Deuteronomy.

  “But this is even more peculiar,” he went on, mystified by what he saw as he continued to survey the object. “The Menorah doesn’t have the usual cup-like receptacles for oil and wicks. It has actual candleholders, with tall heavy spikes to stabilize the tapers. This is extremely rare, at least for that period of time,” he added, reaching up tentatively, on tiptoe, to touch one of the thick spikes, whose razor-sharp tip nearly pierced his latex gloves.

  Next he walked over to a display of silver wine goblets, anchored in the center by an unusually large Cup of Elijah, a ceremonial chalice that was traditionally used at the Passover Seder. Opening the showcase, Bruno picked it up, turning it over in both hands to inspect the beautiful engravings and Hebrew lettering. “Wow! This is even heavier than it looks,” he said in surprise, and he replaced it, for the moment, on a nearby table.

  “What does the inscription say?” Nicola asked.

  “On the cup? It quotes a prayer from the Passover Haggadah, asking God to pour out His wrath on the nations that have tried to destroy the Jewish people throughout every generation. I guess that the two quotations, here and on the Menorah, must have been a response to the terrible persecutions of the Spanish Inquisition.

  “You know, it’s pretty ironic that both of these ritual objects, with these specific quotations, should have wound up here, in this . . . well, I guess we can call it a branch of the Museum of Dead Nations. A museum obviously intended, by none other than Cardinal Rostoni,” he said with loathing, “to venerate the Nazi dream of total eradication of the Jews.”

  Nicola stared at him in incredulity, her eyes now blazing with anger. “I can’t believe that all of this has been here since . . . what? . . . the 1940s, and no one knew to look for it. We have to tell someone about this. We have to call Father Benedetto. Or maybe go to the newspapers. This needs to be exposed. And so does Rostoni’s collusion with the Nazis.”

  “I don’t think so,” growled a low voice behind them suddenly. They whirled around in shock to see a dark shape with a gun, standing between the display cases.

  “So, I see that you’ve found out our little secret,” said Luciano with a sinister smirk as he moved towards them, a Glock pointed at them menacingly.

  “You,” he motioned to Bruno with his free arm, “over there, to the right, near the wall. And as for you, bitch, you’re not going to expose anything to anyone.” He lunged forward and grabbed Nicola’s arm, pointing the gun at her head. “One false move and you’re dead.”

  “My God, it’s one of the librarians from the Secret Archives,” Nicola breathed in a ragged voice.

  “How every clever of you to notice,” Luciano said contemptuously. He twisted Nicola’s arm behind her, and she cried out in pain. Moving with measured steps towards Bruno, he thrust Nicola in front of himself, for protection.

  “And now, before I kill you both, whom else have you told about this place? Remember,” he said, prodding Nicola roughly with the gun, “I can make this very quick, or very painful. Your choice.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  An hour earlier, two motorcyclists had pulled over to the side of the road, near the bored carabinieri. Both were dressed entirely in black, though one appeared to be substantially younger than the other, who was paunchy and silver-haired beneath his dark helmet. The two had trailed Nicola and Bruno on their Vespas from a discreet distance as they’d made their way to the catacombs.

  Ever since his arrival in Rome, Josef had followed Bruno and Nicola, overseeing the surveillance of Bruno’s apartment, and one of his associates had placed a small but sophisticated tracking device on the bottom of the rented Smart Car after Bruno had parked it down the block late that afternoon. Unknown to Bruno, his green Brava had had a similar device attached to the underside of its front bumpe
r the previous week, and his movements had been traced ever since.

  “I think we’re lost,” Josef said innocently, as he dismounted the Vespa and pulled out a map to show the policemen. “We need to find . . .” And as the carabinieri pored over the map—relieved to have something to occupy them—Josef backed away quietly. In a flash, Luciano approached, held his breath, and sprayed something oddly sweet-smelling directly onto their surprised faces.

  “The halothane should work for the next four hours, at least,” Josef said, holding his breath as he grabbed the canister from his companion and quickly sprayed the carabinieri’s faces once more, for good measure. “I’ll stay here to keep an eye out for trouble. You go into the catacombs. Try to find where the woman and the Jew have gone and why.” Luciano handed him his helmet, and Josef hung it on one of the Vespas, together with his own.

  As Luciano moved rapidly towards the entrance to the Vigna Randanini, he tripped over a pile of rocks, and the small canister of anesthetic slipped unnoticed out of his pocket, dropping with a muffled thud onto a soft pile of fallen leaves.

  Finding the door to the catacombs unlocked, he entered, and using a diagram provided by Giovanni easily made his way to the disputed hypogeum. Using the stool that had been left there, he climbed through the gaping hole in the wall, slipping and landing abruptly on all fours on the floor of the tunnel. He cried out in pain and flashed his light onto the bottom of the passageway, where he saw that he had cut himself on a pile of jagged marble shards that had managed to pierce his black leather gloves. He removed the gloves and wiped his bleeding hands on his dark sweatpants, swearing under his breath, and then made his way down the corridor, limping slightly, as he followed the luminous yellow twine towards the secret catacomb and its stolen treasures.

  “So,” Luciano gloated, a note of triumph in his voice as he tightened his hold on Nicola’s arm and aimed the Glock at her head, “you seem to have discovered our little secret. Too bad no one will ever know about it.”