by Glenn Meade
“For heaven’s sake, run before we’re killed,” said Yasmin, and Jack dragged her by the arm and they darted into the nearest backstreet.
76
THEY RAN FOR fifty yards before Jack shot a glance back over his shoulder. The Arab pushed his way through the crowds, trying to keep up. Jack glimpsed the man’s companion, concealing his machine pistol under his coat.
Jack kept running, dragging Yasmin through the crowds. Rome’s streets were packed but there wasn’t a police uniform in sight. They turned a corner and Jack saw that they were in a dead end. “Turn back.”
By the time they turned round and reentered the street, the Arab was barely seventy yards behind them. Jack ran faster, his lungs ablaze as he clutched Yasmin’s hand. She said breathlessly, “We can’t just run blindly. Do we know where we’re going?”
“I’ve got a rough idea.” Jack scoured the street signs and steered a sharp right into an alleyway, the cobble shiny and worn. He wiped sweat from his face. “The street I’m looking for is around one of these corners. I can’t remember which one but I’m pretty sure we’re almost there.”
“Almost where? What street?” Yasmin began to panic.
“The place I’m looking for is off the Via Varrone.”
They entered the next turning and came to a wide cobbled street lined with tall, centuries-old residential homes with wrought-iron balconies. Their yellow stone façades were soot-streaked by pollution.
Yasmin said, “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“Trust me, it will.”
Soon they came to a building with a basement entrance. A short flight of granite steps led down to a barred metal gate with a rusted padlock. Jack hurried down the steps and called back to Yasmin, “Keep an eye out and let me know if we’ve been followed.”
Yasmin caught her breath and looked over her shoulder. “I can’t see anyone.”
“The Arab and his friend have probably taken a wrong turn. Come down here.”
Yasmin joined him at the bottom of the stairwell. Jack rattled the bars. “It’s locked solid.”
Yasmin saw tarry blackness past the gate. “Where is this place?”
Jack probed between the metal bars with his left hand, fiddling with something on the inside wall. There was a soft click and a sparse string of lightbulbs popped on, revealing a rock-strewn passageway. Bulbs strung along the granite walls illuminated a stone pathway that inclined down. “I spent two years here, working on an excavation. It’s still going on in fits and starts.” Jack got down on his knees, slipped his arm between the bars, and felt along the lower wall inside the gate.
“Just tell me where we are.”
Jack wiggled his fingers, trying to touch something. “What we’ve got down here is not exactly another Pompeii but it comes close. It’s an entrance to underground Rome I told you about. The ancient city’s right below our feet.”
“Except the gate’s locked.”
“Right.” Jack smiled as he removed his hand and revealed a worn metal key, patched with rust, dangling between his two fingers. “The dig caretaker, Rocco, always left the key here. Old habits die hard.”
“Where does this passageway lead?”
“You’ll see.” Jack twisted the key in the lock and pushed in the creaking gate. The air chilled as they moved inside. He closed the gate after them, locked it again, and tucked the key in his pocket.
“Is it safe down here?” Yasmin appeared frozen by fear, a stale smell wafting up from the staircase.
“It is if you know what you’re doing.” A trio of dented tin oil lamps hung from hooks on the wall and Jack grabbed one.
“How are you going to light the lamp?”
“I’ve got a lighter somewhere but we’ll keep going for now. The lightbulbs ought to be on for a good part of the way.” Jack moved down the path. Fifty yards on, it curved downward into pitch darkness. They heard racing footsteps and looked behind them.
Jack put a hand to his lips to silence Yasmin. The footsteps halted. A pause followed, then a rush of feet moved down the basement stairwell.
The Arab appeared behind the gate and he spotted them in the passageway. He tried to rattle open the gate but when it refused to budge he stepped back and fired his pistol at the lock. The shot exploded, ricocheting off metal and stone. It zinged past Jack’s head like a supersonic bee. A second shot ricocheted off the walls but already Jack was charging deeper into the passageway and dragging Yasmin after him.
Nidal saw the couple scurry away. Frustrated, he rattled the gate but the lock hadn’t completely shattered. He covered his face with his arm, carefully aimed the Beretta, and his second shot blew apart the lock, sending shards flying.
The Serb hammered away the metal remains with the butt of his machine pistol, then dragged open the creaking gate.
Nidal stepped inside and spotted the oil lamps hanging on the wall. He grabbed one and raced down the passageway, the Serb following.
77
JACK AND YASMIN hurried on. The air became cooler the deeper they went. After about two hundred feet the string of lightbulbs ended. Another metal gate blocked their path, this one with a heavier lock, an unlit passageway beyond.
This time Jack saw a key hanging from a hook in the wall and he inserted it frantically in the lock. The gate was slow to budge but when he slammed his shoulder hard against the metal, it creaked open in protest. There was barely enough room for them to squeeze through into the blackness and as Jack relocked the gate, they heard the echo of footsteps. “They don’t give up, do they? Stay close to the wall and hold on to my coattail,” he urged Yasmin.
The passageway they entered looked dark and forbidding and the air smelled stale. Jack slipped the key into his pocket and they pushed on ahead. The ground was smooth beneath their feet, the walls slimy to their touch, and they were mostly in darkness apart from the dying glow of the pathway lighting behind them.
Jack whispered, “I don’t want to make us a target, so we’ll wait as long as we can before we light the lamp. I ought to warn you that some of the passageways around here have open shafts that drop down to another level, so be extra careful where you step.”
Tension edged Yasmin’s voice. “As if being chased by a couple of armed madmen wasn’t enough excitement for one day, I get to risk breaking my legs as well.”
Jack’s cell phone rang, the keypad illuminating, and he startled. “What the …!” He hit the mute and checked the caller ID. “It’s Buddy again. Talk about bad timing.”
Jack flicked off his cell as the footsteps on the slope grew louder. “I’d suggest you switch yours off too, in case it rings and gives us away.”
Yasmin flicked off her phone. They moved deeper into the passageway and she kept a firm hold of Jack’s coat as he felt his way along the walls.
Jack listened, and noticed that the echoing footsteps had halted. He looked back and saw moving shadows. The Arab and his companion had reached the second gate. It rattled fiercely and then came a muzzle flash as a ricochet exploded.
“Get down.” Jack squatted, pulling Yasmin after him. “Crouch as low to the ground as you can.”
Yasmin hunkered beside him, alarmed. “What happens when they come through the gate? We’ve nowhere to hide.”
“There ought to be a corner up ahead. Then we can light the lamp and try to lose them in the tunnels.”
“Are you sure we’re even in the right passageway?”
Jack kept feeling his way forward, dragging her deeper into the tarry darkness. “I’m sure of nothing except that this part of Rome’s underground is a maze of tunnels and it’s easy to stray off course. That’s why I’m hoping we can try and lose them.”
Yasmin’s voice hoarsened with panic. “You mean we could get lost?”
“That’s a distinct possibility.”
Nidal rattled the gate but it didn’t budge. The single shot from his Beretta had ricocheted off the iron lock. “Take care of it,” he ordered.
The Ser
b examined the rusted lock. The cast iron looked solid. He shook his head. “I’m not sure we can shoot out the mechanism. This one’s much sturdier than the last. Step well away.”
Nidal took a dozen paces back. The Serb aimed toward the gate, squeezed the trigger, and the MAC-10 stuttered.
Jack groped along the moist walls, moving as fast as he could. He felt a sharp right angle. “I think we’ve found our corner.”
He rounded it, clutching Yasmin’s hand, then fumbled in his pocket for a cheap plastic lighter and removed the oil lamp’s glass cover. He struck the lighter and touched the flame to the wick. It lit at once, yellow light flaring in the darkness to reveal a massive veil of spiders’ webs.
Yasmin staggered back in terror as the air in front of them came alive with colonies of huge black spiders. Their hairy bodies sprang through the air in wild panic, some of them landing on their clothes before they vanished into the shadows between the wall cracks. “What … what are those?” Yasmin was livid with fear.
Jack waved the lamp, tearing the veil of webs. “They’re called saltericchi. A species of jumping spider that live in the darkest, most humid areas underground. At the first sign of light they start hopping around like they’re on crack.” He smiled. “They can scare the life out of you the first time you see them, but they’re really harmless.”
The distant rattle of the metal gate echoed behind them, then came the sound of a short blast of sustained gunfire. Yasmin said, “It won’t be long before they break the lock.”
“I’m not so sure. It looked pretty robust to me.”
Yasmin brushed away the remains of a cobweb in her hair. “Are there any other shocks in store for me that I ought to know about?”
Jack held up the lamp. In every direction he looked was the unmistakable herringbone brickwork of ancient Rome, a barrel-vaulted ceiling rising high above them. “Quite a few.”
When they turned the next corner they came to an ornate two-story mausoleum fronted by two huge marble entrance pillars. They stepped through and the lamplight washed over a collection of what looked like tombs.
One was topped by a stone carving of Christ and the Apostles. On another tomb was a figure of Apollo. Yet another showed Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and revelry, surrounded by rampaging, evil-looking satyrs with horns on their heads. “Where are we …?” Yasmin asked in horror.
“Part of a Roman burial site called the City of the Dead. It came to light hundreds of years ago when the Basilica was being rebuilt. The necropolis dates from the second to fourth centuries A.D. A strange mix of the pagan and the Christian, from a time when Rome was caught between both camps.”
Jack dangled the lamp as they passed a stream of pagan shrines, some of them defaced with cement or overlaid with Christian memorials of stone or marble. Yasmin asked, “What happened here?”
“Christians made a habit of trying to destroy the symbols of pagan gods, but they still had their followers.”
A chill wind whistled through the passageway, making a haunting noise, and Yasmin rubbed her arms in the cold air. Jack waved the lamp toward the bend up ahead. “Just wait until you see what’s around the next corner.”
78
THEY ROUNDED THE corner into an ancient cobbled road. On both sides lay footpaths and ruined buildings, complete with mosaic floors and faded wall frescoes.
Jack scratched his head and tried to get his bearings. “If my intuition’s right, the Nero marbles are somewhere near the end of this street.”
“Where are we now?”
“Standing in the middle of what was once a sprawling complex of apartment homes, shops, and villas.”
Yasmin looked around her in awe. “This is truly incredible.”
“It’s Rome as it existed more than two thousand years ago. It even had many of the trappings of a modern society. See that metal rod?”
As they passed a huge stone water fountain that had been scalloped out of solid limestone, Jack pointed to the remains of a blackened metal rod that protruded from the basin. Yasmin touched the rod. “What is it?”
“A lead pipe that once formed part of Rome’s plumbing system. Fresh purified water was delivered to every doorstep from aqueducts. Over two hundred and fifty gallons a day per citizen, more than most modern cities provide these days. The problem was the Romans didn’t know that they were slowly killing themselves with lead poisoning.”
Yasmin turned her head and listened. “I can’t hear anyone. Maybe they got lost in this maze.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
“Do you know of another way out of here?”
Jack nodded. “I think so, unless it’s been blocked up. Better keep moving.”
Farther on they came to the portal of an impressive villa. The floor was littered with pottery shards, the remains of wine jars. One side of the villa’s entrance contained a pagan shrine with the grotesque face of a stone-carved god.
“Mithras,” Jack explained. “An Iranian god of truth and salvation. He was pretty popular, and one of Jesus’ main rivals during the later empire.”
“Rivals?”
“Jesus had hundreds of pagan contenders that the Romans believed were important gods. Under the polished floors of almost every ancient church in Rome, including St. Peter’s, you’ll find shrines to Mithras, because Christian builders wanted to eradicate the sacred places of any competing religions and replace them with their own symbols.”
Beyond lay a courtyard, the cracked stucco walls painted in rich colors clouded by time. Jack swung the lamp to reveal faded murals: images of naked men and women, frolicking and drinking wine. He jerked his thumb at a half-ruined building across the street. “Where we’re standing is what was once a rich pimp’s villa. Right over there is the brothel he once owned.”
“How do you know all this?”
“From the graffiti we found on the villa’s walls. Etched outside the brothel was an à la carte menu of sexual services on offer.”
Yasmin peered into the brothel ruins. A limestone washbasin and toilet area occupied one cubicle. Others were fitted with what looked like concrete-made beds, that would have been once topped with straw-filled mattresses. Frescoes of naked women and men in various sexual positions adorned the walls. Yasmin studied the images and smiled. “An erotic bunch, the Romans.”
“They had no hang-ups about sex, that’s for sure. Pretty much anything went. That’s historical fact. The morality of the average Roman citizen was probably lower than a snake’s belly. See that signpost out in the street? It’s what I’d call down-to-earth advertising.”
Jack pointed to a stone wall. Inset in the brick was a protruding piece of carved stone. At first Yasmin thought it was a carving of a finger. Then she realized that it was a chiseled symbol of an erect penis. It pointed toward the brothel. She raised an eye. “I guess people’s vices haven’t changed, have they?”
“You said it. But the city’s immorality had a heavy price. You’ll see what I mean straight ahead. And it’s pretty gruesome.”
They came to a flight of stone steps that led under an archway. Jack said, “The steps lead down to part of the Romans’ sewer system. We found lots of infant bones down there during our dig.”
“Why infant bones?” Yasmin asked.
“The brothel women often drowned their unwanted newborns. Ordinary citizens were in the same habit if their offspring were handicapped, or unwanted females.”
Yasmin recoiled. “That—that’s horrifying.”
“Roman society didn’t exactly cultivate the virtue of pity. Clemency, sure, if a gladiator fought bravely in the arena then he might be allowed to live. But the cradle of modern society was a brutal place where life was cheap.”
Yasmin marveled as the lamplight’s yellow glow picked out ancient Latin graffiti still scrawled in faded black above the arch. “What does it say?”
“‘Peaceful are the dead and the living will soon join them.’”
Yasmin shivered. “Let’s hope it doesn
’t turn out to be an omen.”
A huge rat scurried past and disappeared down the sewer steps. Yasmin staggered back, stifling a scream. “Did … did you see that?”
“I ought to have warned you. The rats down here are as big as lapdogs.” He raised the lamp. “We’ve arrived.”
Thirty feet past the archway was a wall at least six feet high, almost completely covered with a mound of building rubble.
Yasmin said, “I thought you said the marbles were here.”
Jack wiped his brow, confused. “They were. You entered this archway to get to them. I remember the location exactly because of the sewer nearby.”
He held up the lamp to study the debris mound. Then he knelt, placed the lamp beside him, and began grabbing handfuls of debris and tossing them aside. “There could have been a rockfall, but the roof looks solid enough. Or maybe someone deliberately covered up the marble with rubble.”
“Why would anyone want to do that?”
Perspiration dripped from Jack’s face as he stopped to tear off his jacket, then began tossing aside armfuls of stones. “That’s a good question. Come on, give me a hand. If we can shift enough of this junk, we’ll find the entrance.”
79
“SLOW DOWN, ARI, or you’ll bleed to death.”
Ari slowed his pace as they ran through the narrow backstreets near St. Peter’s Square. The crowded press of bodies was behind them as Lela ushered Ari into a deserted alleyway and they both caught their breath.
She released her grip on the Sig pistol in her pocket. “Let me see your hand.”
Ari leaned his back against a wall, clutching his left wrist, his face glistening with sweat. Lela examined the gunshot wound. Blood seeped from the back of Ari’s hand where a bullet had scored the flesh, exposing the wrist bone. “Does it hurt?” Lela asked.