After kicking aside the double-edged sword, the long rectangular shield, and the broad-visored helmet taken from the defeated man, the victor stood towering over him. He was bare-chested as well, and wore leg pads up to his thighs to protect his lower limbs; in his left hand he gripped a small round shield; in his right, a short, curved sword, like a dagger. His features were hidden by a helmet that covered his entire face, leaving only two small openings for the eyes. The victor raised the blade of the curved dagger to within a few inches of his own nose, as if a bestial myopia drove him to smell the adversary’s blood on the weapon that would kill him. The crowd worshipped him. He reciprocated, hardening into the unmoving madness of a stone idol.
“Iu-gu-la! Iu-gu-la! Iu-gu-la!”
Everything remained fixed for a few interminable seconds — the despairing defeated man, the exalted victor, the ululating public — a moment suspended in time as in a horrific infinity. Then, suddenly, that picture of unyielding savagery came to life again. The Emperor rose from his throne and held his arms out before him as if to embrace the entire amphitheater. A silence fell. Absolute. The most powerful man on earth, who could dispose of anyone in that arena however he wished, turned to the people, taking their views into consideration. At that moment, even the lowest of the excrement-befouled plebeians could express an opinion. The decision depended on him as well. He, too, was called upon to decide life or death. The Emperor radiated divine power, shedding it over everyone in the Colosseum. The people would be part of the spectacle, would descend into the arena and decide the match.
“Iu-gu-la. Iu-gu-la. Iu-gu-la.”
Once again the cry broke the silence. The people had decided.
Even before the Emperor, coming down from his dais surrounded by vestal virgins, turned his thumb down, the defeated gladiator moved. Advancing on his knees, he clasped his hands around the victor’s legs. Then he bowed deeply and, with exasperating slowness, bent his head forward. As soon as the head’s arc reached the end of its course, the victor, gripping the knife with both hands, plunged it straight into the victim’s neck. Up to the hilt.
“Ha-bet, hoc ha-bet!”
From the stands, a howl like thunder greeted the death.
“What does iugula mean?”
One of the two presumed CIA agents, the male, approached the bed from which the man attached to the drip and the electrocardiograph had just finished describing his vision. His name was John Dukakis, and he was a forty-three-year-old former soldier, who had joined the Army after his college education was paid for by ROTC scholarships; he was a veteran of the two Persian Gulf wars, and a native of Medina, a town in the western part of New York State.
Agent Stone waited for the man’s reply in a room in a mysterious, small underground hospital connected to the U.S. embassy, on Via Veneto. Dukakis had been transported there after he fainted. Now, after he had been given the necessary care, and the medical personnel had been dismissed, he was being questioned. The only other people in the room, besides the two CIA agents, were the Army officer who had been present at the San Camillo hospital, Angelo Perosino, and an artist who specialized in sketching storyboards for film directors at Cinecittà, that Hollywood on the Tiber where all the great Italian films had been produced in the ’50s and ’60s by the likes of Fellini, Visconti, Rossellini, and De Sica. The artist was busily translating into images the story he had just heard from Dukakis, but the former soldier seemed to have nothing further to add.
“What does iugula mean?” Agent Stone repeated.
“I don’t know,” Dukakis said finally. “I only speak English. Those fiends in the stands were shouting it as though possessed.” Then he turned his head away, swallowed with difficulty, and half-closed his eyes.
“It means sgozzalo, ‘cut his throat.’” Perosino chimed in. “The public at the gladiatorial contests shouted it when they wanted to demand the death of one of the two combatants.”
“And that cry at the end?” the agent inquired further.
“Habet, hoc habet?”
“Yes, that one.”
“It means ‘He got it.’ It refers to the sword thrust into his neck. The people shouted it when the defeated man ‘got’ the sword.”
The illustrator had finished. He handed the sheets to the two agents. The woman took them. A series of quick sketches perfectly reconstructed the entire scene that Dukakis had described, alternating long shots and close-ups, as in a film sequence.
The woman gestured to the others to follow her out to the corridor. She shook her head: “He’s a soldier who fought in the front lines, probably suffering from the trauma of a grenade or some variation of post-traumatic stress syndrome, and he must certainly be a fan of action films like Gladiator. The one with Russell Crowe as a Roman general sent to do combat in the arena. He is probably superimposing the film’s images on the scene of the real Colosseum.”
“But Dukakis doesn’t know Latin!” the other agent interrupted.
The woman quashed the objection with a quick hand gesture. Now she gazed severely at Perosino, her blue eyes like ice. It seemed that she would not allow her hypothesis to be proven wrong.
Perosino regretted having to do so: “I’m sorry to contradict you, but that’s not possible. The patient’s account is much more faithful to the historic reality than the film is. In a number of details. Even if you ignore the issue of Latin, Dukakis’s description of the death ritual does not appear in the film and his details about the equipment are much more accurate. For one thing, Russell Crowe, in the role of Maximus, appears in the arena with armor that was worn not by gladiators but by soldiers of the Roman legions. The gladiators in Dukakis’s vision, on the other hand, fought bare-chested, as they did in actuality—”
“Then you, too, Professor Perosino,” Agent Stone interrupted “believe that these subjects have ‘seen’ the past?”
Little by little, as the conversation continued, Agent Stone was assuming an increasingly animated air. He stared off into space as he spoke, as if he were expecting at any moment to be visited himself by one of those visions.
Perosino began to feel anxious. Though compelled to say that Stone was right, deep inside he sympathized with the skeptical position taken by Agent Miller. He decided that it was his turn to ask questions. “Do you think that what we have here are cases of ‘remote viewing’?” he asked point-blank.
“Our driver will accompany you back to the university. The agreed-upon sum will be credited to your bank account. You have been a great help to us. Good day, Professor Perosino,” Agent Miller said as she moved off down the corridor. Agent Stone followed her without another word.
III
“It’s happened again.”
Angelo Perosino looked up from his Negroni. Standing in front of him in his Armani suit, Agent Stone stared at him from behind the shield of his inevitable sunglasses. Once again Perosino took offense. He had always gauged the meagerness of his salary as a university researcher by the cost of an Armani suit. It would take a month’s pay for one to buy an Armani suit. But only on sale at the end of the season. This is what Angelo Perosino thought whenever he felt discouraged about his work, and this is what he thought now when Agent Stone appeared before him.