The Bonaparte Secret lr-6

by Gregg Loomis

  Rossi stood next to Lang, using a red bandanna to wipe a combination of sweat and grime from his face. “It is not as exciting as the History Channel, I fear.”

  “At least there aren’t any commercials.”

  “No, my friend, the commercials come before the show begins, when I go to various foundations to beg money to support the project.”

  Lang was about to reply when a young woman, her denims caked with dirt, her hair covered by a scarf, approached excitedly. She spoke in quick bursts of Italian punctuated with the erratic hand movements that are as much part of the language as the words themselves.

  Whatever she was saying, it must have been important, as Rossi didn’t take the time to translate. He gave Lang a “follow me” gesture and took quick steps in the direction she was pointing.

  Trotting to keep up, Lang came to a stop, almost colliding with Rossi’s back. Before them was a circular hole, one lined in white marble. A pair of ladders was fixed to the top and disappeared into darkness.

  “The Alabaster Tomb,” Rossi explained. “We are searching for the possible passages discovered by electromagnetic imaging.”

  “I read about it on the flight over,” Lang said. “Understand you think there may be more than the single chamber known so far.”

  Rossi gave him a look that said the archaeologist was thankful not to have to take time to explain. “As you can see, we are working inside as well as digging down to whatever the imaging shows. Come.”

  Before Lang could say anything else, the Italian was climbing down one of the ladders. Lang’s choice was to stay here or follow.

  Lang had sudden empathy for those whose jobs required descent into manholes. Sunlight lasted for about the first fifteen feet before a string of electric lights became visible, casting about as much shadow as illumination. At the bottom, Lang noted he was standing in an inch or so of water. The proximity to the harbor meant a high water table, although from the smell, Lang guessed fresh or brackish rather than salt water. He looked upward to see a vaulted ceiling over a room perhaps ten by thirty feet, the walls smooth with fluted columns carved into them.

  A few feet away, Rossi was conferring with two people whose sex was indeterminable in the pale light. He already had on a miner’s helmet, complete with attached light. Without turning, he handed one to Lang.

  The conversation complete, Rossi motioned for Lang to follow as he led the way, flashlight in hand. “Originally it was thought this was the only chamber, hardly a tomb fit for royalty. Today we believe differently. Mind your step.”

  The warning was timely. Otherwise, Lang might have tripped over what he thought was only rubble next to a wall. A closer look showed the pile had probably been part of the wall that had been removed to reveal a corridor behind it.

  Rossi played his flashlight into the hallway. “This was sealed off, a wall erected and made to look like the rest of the main chamber, where we entered, and disguised to look like nothing more was here.”

  “Why would someone go to that much trouble?” Lang asked.

  From behind, he could see Rossi shrug, the answer obvious. “To conceal something from grave robbers, perhaps.”

  Lang’s miner’s helmet thumped against a particularly low place in the ceiling, making him thankful he had put it on. “Like what?”

  “I hope we will find out. Someone certainly has been here before us. The entrance was opened and then resealed.”

  Rossi stopped abruptly, his light shining on two more workers. There was going to be a tight squeeze to get past. “Perhaps there was more, er, loot to be had later or some other reason they did not want anyone to know they had been here.”

  Rossi was squatting, his light reflecting from something small on the floor. He looked up, asking a question in Italian.

  One of the workers, definitely a man, nodded, holding up a palm-sized digital camera.

  “We photograph every artifact in the location it was found,” Rossi explained for Lang’s benefit. “Otherwise, it is like taking a fact out of historical context.”

  Lang was looking over the archaeologist’s shoulder. “What have you got there?”

  Rossi shook his head. “Not sure. Has a small loop on the back. It looks like… a button?”

  “They had buttons in the ancient world?”

  Rossi was using the flashlight to illuminate the object in his palm. “Sure. Except they were usually larger than this and in fanciful shapes-seashells, animals, deities and so forth. This one is more like a modern button.” He ran a thumb across it. “Until we can get it cleaned off, we won’t really know.”

  He produced a small plastic bag from a pocket and dropped the object into it. “But this isn’t what the excitement was all about. Come on.”

  He stepped forward. “You will note there are still scraps of plaster on the walls, or rather the cement common to many Greco-Roman structures.” He paused to place the light next to the wall. “You can even see a bit of pigment still sticking to plaster. At one time, there may have been frescoes here, or at least some sort of wall paintings. One does not decorate a hallway to nowhere. A pity centuries of being under water have all but obliterated them.”

  “Underwater?”

  “The 365 AD earthquake and tsunami moved the harbor inland, raising the water table.”

  “But we’re dry now. Or almost.”

  “Pumps, my friend. We have pumps running twenty-four hours a day. Otherwise we, too, would be nearly underwater. Only the ceiling was dry when we first entered here.”

  The lights strung overhead along the passage terminated at what looked like the end of the corridor. Four or five of the workers whispered excitedly as they pressed against the wall to make way for Rossi.

  “A blank wall?” Lang asked, perplexed.

  “Perhaps,” Rossi said, running a hand along it. “But note the plaster is slightly different in color than the rest of this hallway, if that is what this is. Before the advent of electric flashlights, that would not be as visible as it is now. The texture of the plaster appears to be just that, plaster. If this is the end of the corridor, why cover it over instead of just leaving the rock? In fact, I’d guess someone resealed this.” He turned his light upward, revealing a series of black smudges. “Whoever was here before used candles or oil lamps.”

  “You mean someone before electric lights were available?” Lang asked.

  Rossi nodded. “And someone or ones who worked here long enough for the soot from the lighting device to accumulate. Perhaps while they were erecting a false end of the corridor.”

  “But I thought this passageway was underwater since the tsunami.”

  “Pumps to remove water have been available since ancient times. Someone could have pumped it nearly dry just as we have. Also, they could have braced this wall against the water pressure outside while they erected this wall.”

  “Meaning there’s something behind it?” Lang asked.

  Rossi took an ordinary rock hammer from one of the observers and tapped the wall. “Meaning I intend to find out.”

  Half an hour later, work was halted while wire was strung both for lights and for fans to remove the dust that had reduced vision to a few feet. An extra generator and pump chugged in the darkness, forcing tepid air from the surface into the excavation and the constant trickle of water out. Lang’s eyes stung and he could feel his face caked with grime mixed with sweat. Rossi and the others were dim ghosts in the gritty haze. Even though the corridor was wide enough for only one person to wield the larger sledgehammer at a time, no one was leaving. This was hardly his idea of the romance of searching for ancient worlds, but Lang could feel the tension among the workers like a close score in the last minutes of an intense football rivalry.

  There was a muffled cheer as a section of the wall crumbled, leaving a hole through which a spout of water emptied into the corridor before being sucked away by the pumps. The fans could not prevent an incoming tide of grit swirling throughout. It took two or three minutes befo
re a murky visibility was restored. Figures moved in a penumbra of dust, resembling shadows without forms.

  A gentle tug at Lang’s elbow turned him toward a haze of swirling particles of dust, plaster and rock as he followed Rossi into the opening. A ray of light from a flashlight, distorted by reflection, stabbed upward. Lang’s eyes followed. The roof had at one time been step-pyramidal, shaped by carefully fitted stones, most of which had fallen, leaving a tangle of roots from the plants above. It had been supported by a colonnade of Ionic columns carved into rock. As visibility increased, Lang could make out what looked like a single slab of stone about four feet high in the middle of the room. Perhaps a permanent catafalque on which a sarcophagus rested?

  Even in the gritty near twilight, Lang could see his friend’s grin.

  “This is it? This is Alexander’s tomb?”

  Rossi’s smile faded. “Possibly. The construction is consistent with what we know of other Ptolemaic tombs.” He played his light around the chamber. “And the Roman historian Lucan tells us when Caesar visited Alexander’s tomb, he ‘eagerly descended,’ indicating something below ground. He also uses the phrase ‘unseemly pyramid.’ ”

  “Dedecor?”

  Rossi looked at Lang quizzically. “Yes, I believe that is the word.”

  “It also can have the connotation, ‘unnecessary’ or ‘useless.’ That would describe an underground tomb with a pyramid- shaped roof.”

  Rossi chuckled. “Mr. Couch, Dr. Roth or whoever you might be, I knew you were quick thinking. You proved that at Herculaneum. Now I discover you are also a Latin scholar. I cannot but wonder what is next.”

  Lang ignored the remark. “What will it take to identify this as the real tomb of Alexander?”

  Rossi gave the patented Italian shrug. “Months if not years. We must find things, carvings, inscriptions that can either be related directly to Alexander or at least have dates compatible with the time he might have been laid to rest here. Every archaeologist who has searched in other places, or most of them, will present papers demonstrating why this cannot be it.”

  Academics, Lang thought, were even more jealous of their contemporaries’ success than lawyers.

  Something caught his eye and he swept a nearby wall with his light. “Let the games begin. That looks like a carving of some sort.”

  Rossi stepped over to it, raising a hand to brush away the dirt caked around it. “It will need cleaning, but it appears to be a battle scene. I would guess Greeks versus Persians.”

  “That sounds like Alexander to me.”

  Rossi shook his head almost sorrowfully. “Not necessarily. Many wished to, er, clothe themselves in the glory of Alexander. For example, there is the misnamed Alexander Sarcophagus found in Sidon. It was carved with the exploits of Alexander shortly before his death. For years after its discovery in 1887, it was thought it had been carved for Alexander if not actually used.”

  “And?”

  “Most likely carved for a minor puppet king, Abdalonymus, whom Alexander appointed to rule. It is the gem of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, though.”

  “You’re saying this tomb, if that is what this is, could be carved with scenes from Alexander’s life even if the tomb was somebody else’s?”

  Rossi was still studying the carvings. “The Ptolemy dynasty legitimized itself by stressing it was Alexander’s rightful successor. They even formed Alexander cults. They were the ones who promoted him into being seen as a god. Their tombs contain more about him than themselves.”

  Lang looked perplexed.

  “You’ve seen such things in modern times. Didn’t Stalin claim to be Lenin’s rightful political heir even after disposing of such inconveniences as Trotsky?”

  “I guess I never thought of it that way. I-”

  Before he could finish, there was a dull thud from above. The whole ground, including the chamber, shook, unleashing a new avalanche of dust and dirt. Lang had an immediate vision of an explosion.

  Then, the lights went out.

  Worse, the generator powering fans sucking air in from above and water out was silent. It seemed to be getting more difficult to breathe.

  Someone’s voice shouted excitedly from the corridor behind them, echoes distorting the tone.

  Lang swung his light toward the voice. “What’d he say?”

  “He said the entrance to the surface is closed,” Rossi said calmly. “Digging may have undercut the foundations of the old stones, caused them to fall into the excavation. Or one of the supports we erected against the outside water pressure collapsed.”

  “Sounded more like an explosion to me.”

  “No, no, my friend. We brought no explosives to the dig. To use such things would risk destroying what we hope to find.”

  “Now what?” Lang wanted to know.

  “Now we wait for the crew above to dig us out.”

  Why did Lang think it wasn’t going to be that simple? Was it because he was beginning to smell a whiff of that heavy, pungent, sweet odor of nitroglycerin-based explosives such as dynamite, something someone other than Rossi’s crew might have brought to the site? And if that someone had blasted the opening closed, they certainly had not done so with the consent of Rossi’s people above, the people who supposedly would dig them out.

  Lang inhaled a mouthful of dust. No doubt about it: it was getting harder to breathe.

  And water was collecting around his feet.

  472 Lafayette Drive, Atlanta

  9:22 the same day

  From under the kitchen table, Grumps watched with palpable relief as Gurt bundled Manfred against one of those late winter storms that paralyze the city every few years. Ice, not snow, covered every outdoor surface, transforming the most humble bush into an iridescent handful of diamonds. At irregular but persistent intervals a rifle shot-like crack attested to the inability of another tree limb to bear the extra weight. As usual, schools, including Manfred’s private pre-K, had announced shutting their doors as the first frozen precipitation had fallen the night before. Predictably, state, local and federal governments seized the opportunity to suspend operations along with a number of large businesses. Smaller operations, those whose bottom lines might be adversely affected by an unplanned holiday, bravely remained opened in the face of a clientele largely fearful of risking life, limb and automotive coach work on streets slick as oil.

  Gurt had had enough of being confined in a house with a five-year-old’s rambunctiousness despite her normally strict discipline. Manfred had lost interest in his toys, tired of his mother’s reading to him from books already nearly memorized and tormented Grumps to the extent the dog had taken rare refuge from his young master and closest pal. One alternative was to turn on the television and let the magic screen absorb the child, something Gurt was loath to do. She severely limited Manfred’s TV watching, certain that the mindless junk that passed for entertainment would decrease her son’s IQ if not rot the brain entirely.

  Gurt zipped up the child’s jacket, smiling at the resemblance the bulky clothes gave Manfred to the Michelin Man. “There,” she said in German, “now we will go to the park.”

  All Gurt had to do was dream up some activity that would both engage and exhaust her son. She shrugged into a knee-length fur coat, checked to make sure her gloves were in the pocket and started to push Manfred toward the front door. In midfoyer she stopped. Grumps had abandoned the safety of the kitchen table. His tail broke into a furious rhythm as Gurt pocketed a tennis ball.

  “Wait here,” she commanded both the little boy and the dog.

  Grumps, now joyful at the possibility of a romp outside, skidded to a stop just short of a collision with the front door. He waited, tail wagging in impatient anticipation as she trotted up the stairs.

  In the bedroom, she removed the Glock 19 from the bedside table, checking the action and magazine before stuffing it in a coat pocket. She normally did not carry a firearm when escorting or driving Manfred, out of the fear that should she need to use it,
she would draw return fire, endangering the little boy. Besides, how often did a mother driving her child to kindergarten need a weapon?

  But these were not normal times. After Venice and the crude but frightening attempt on her home, she felt leaving her pistol behind was foolish.

  She watched her and Manfred’s step carefully as they made their way carefully down the three short but icy stairs from the front door to the brick path that led to the driveway. With canine impetuosity, Grumps made the transition in a single leap, landing hard and sliding a couple of yards on his rear on the ice-encrusted bricks. Both Gurt and Manfred nearly lost their balance as they doubled over with laughter.

  By the time they reached the driveway, the stillness of the scene became apparent. Although Ansley Park was normally a quiet neighborhood, today it was totally and eerily silent. The sounds of the surrounding city, the white noise of traffic on busy Peachtree Street three blocks away, the whine of jets arriving or departing distant Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, the hum of civilization, were absent as if the blanket of ice were some huge sponge that soaked up all sound.

  The rattle of tire chains on pavement across the park was like a shout in an otherwise-silent church and reminded her few of her neighbors were natives of Atlanta. This transplant had brought his winter paraphernalia with him when he left Michigan, Illinois or one of those places where snow and ice were common.

  The next interruption of the crushing stillness was the cough of an engine cranking. Gurt looked at a black SUV with an exhaust trail, idling at the curb. Although tinted windows prevented her from seeing the occupant, she recognized the vehicle as belonging to the security service Lang had hired.

  A door opened and a man got out. She thought she remembered he had been introduced to her as Randy. The way his eyes had never left her bustline made her wonder whether this was a name or a description. He was a beefy man with streaks of gray in his fading red hair. The fouled anchor and globe of the Marine Corps was tattooed on his right forearm above the “ semper fidelis ” motto.