Patraeus opened his mouth to say something when he felt a tug inside his throat. Everything inside him began to constrict, and he dropped to his knees gagging.
Poison!
“You have been as much a help to the Dei in your death as you were in life, Patraeus,” Dovilin was saying, although the words began to slur in Patraeus’s head. “This poison came from a tiny vial in Athanasius’s sack. I believe it was intended for our Lord and God Domitian. From your delayed reaction, it appears to be a Dei formula that would have circumvented the palace wine taster and reached Caesar’s lips…”
By then Dovilin’s words were but a distant hum, his presence a mere shadow, leaving only a final, fleeting thought to escape with the assassin’s spirit.
Loose ends.
III
Athanasius made it to the olive tree in the courtyard outside the winery, aware of two snipers walking along the second story of the façade. He could see their silhouettes in the moonlight. But that appeared to be all the security there was, just a couple of guards on the lookout ready to sound any alarms. He then saw a dark figure in the mouth of the winepress cave below — Cota, waving him over. She seemed to be holding a basket.
It was too far and he risked being spotted by the snipers once he left the cover of branches. So he waited until the nearest sniper turned his back, then he darted to the cliff, kissing the wall as he worked his way to the winepresses. The loud chirping of locusts covered the sound of his steps. Once inside Cota couldn’t wait and wrapped her arms around him.
“Such speed and stealth, Samuel!” she said and pressed her lips to his face.
He took her by the hand and led her toward the vault doors in back, where a torch flickered on the wall. “The faster we get to the Angel’s Vault, the more time we have together. Are there guards?”
“Only locks,” she said breathlessly, “and I have the keys.”
He grabbed the three on a ring she dangled out of her hand. “Samuel!”
He smelled the alcohol on her breath. It would make things easier for him shortly, but not now. “Quiet, Cota, and I promise you a revelation.”
“Oh!”
He opened the vault door at the back of the winepress cave and found the interior guard station empty as promised. He tried to open the heavy door to the Angel’s Vault, but the first two keys didn’t work. He tried the third one. With a sharp push he finally turned the rough tumblers and it opened.
He took up the torch, stepped in and saw the amphorae lined up like the treasures of a pharaoh’s tomb.
“Get comfortable,” he told Cota, who seemed both perturbed and yet aroused by his take-charge manner.
“Samuel, you are full of surprises,” she said as she spread linen and a few small pillows across the floor.
“A man has to preserve an air of mystery, you know,” he said as he kneeled before one of the imperial amphorae and opened his sack. He dug his hand in to find his vial of poison but couldn’t feel it. He dug further.
“What are you looking for?” Cota asked. “I’m right here.”
“I had an exotic aphrodisiac from the Far East I thought we’d try with some of this wine,” he said, shaking out everything from his pack on the floor in a panic. “You don’t think anybody in Rome would miss it if we helped ourselves to a couple of cups from an open amphorae, do you?”
Cota didn’t reply.
“Do you?” he asked again, and turned around in time to see Vibius raise a thick forearm holding a mallet.
“Actually, I do,” Vibius said, bringing the mallet down on his head.
He was back in the dark of his nightmares again, this time no Gabrielle to be found. He was gagging on refuse, unable to breathe, an unbearable pressure upon his back. He felt like he was about to explode. Suddenly a halo of light appeared around him, the dark shadow rose, and he raised his head up out of the pomace of the lagar to gasp for air as grape skins and pulp filtered down through holes into the cavern below. In front of him he could see a horrified Cota on the ground in tears while her husband Vibius barked orders to Brutus and the guards manning the screw press.
“Again!” he shouted.
Athanasius heard the creak of the capstan, pulleys and ropes as the boulder above him began to lower, shaking the lagar below him. He wanted to crawl out, but he had no strength in his legs, and feared his body would be cut in two.
“Please, Vibius!” Cota screamed as the boulder came down.
Athanasius buried his face in the rotting grape pulp, turning to flatten his head as much as possible, bracing his shoulders and hips and praying his bones didn’t smash to dust under the weight bearing down upon him.
It pushed him down, unbelievable pressure, and he worked his tongue to free an airhole in one of the drainage holes to breathe. His temples were in a vise, and he was sure his head was about to crack open like a melon, and then he heard a crack and feared the worse.
Vibius must have heard it too, because the screw press wheel began to turn and the boulder lifted off Athanasius’s body, broken for sure.
“Well, it looks like you won’t be walking out of here alive, Athanasius. So why don’t you tell us what you’re after.”
He could barely open his jaw, and when he did, he spat out grape stems and seeds. “Domitian,” he groaned. “Poison.”
“And you realize what that would have done to us, don’t you?” Vibius shouted in his face. “The Roman legions here would wipe us out. All of us. Including the underground church. Is that what you wanted?”
“No.”
“Well, let me tell you what I want, spy. I want you to tell me who Cerberus is.”
“I don’t know.”
Vibius dangled the Tear of Joy necklace in front of Athanasius’s face as he lay in the pit. “I think you do.”
“He doesn’t,” said a voice, and Athanasius glanced up to see Gabrielle with a crossbow. He blinked twice, because he didn’t believe it, and then she actually shot an arrow into Vibius’s arm and screamed, “Samuel!”
He felt the rumble above and with all the strength he could muster rolled out of the lagar and got up on one knee. He started to wobble as Vibius pulled the arrow out of his shoulder and came at him with it.
“The Dei says die!” he screamed.
Athanasius ducked and straightened his knee out enough for Vibius to trip over it and fall into the lagar.
“Stop!” he screamed to Brutus and the rest at the wheel.
But his cry only made them stop too suddenly. The windlass snapped, and the boulder dropped on Vibius, his blood spurting into the drains toward the fermentation pits.
“Vibius!” Cota screamed, running over. “Vibius!”
Athanasius staggered to his feet, amazed he could even stand upright. He saw Gabrielle in the back by the gate to the tunnels, waving him over. “Hurry!”
Brutus and the guards stood in shock, and Athanasius knew why. It wasn’t his head that was going to roll; it was going to be theirs. Unless they brought his to Dovilin first.
“Run, Gabrielle!”
He chased her into the dark, cursing himself for his failure to kill Domitian by poison and praying Virtus was having better luck in Rome.
A handful of anonymous but aristocratic Romans were waiting for Croesus when his commercial flagship Poseidon anchored in Ostia. But the slain shipowner and Dei chief from Ephesus never appeared. So their small line of regal chariots departed along the Appian Way back to Rome, where Virtus, who had spotted them from aboard the ship before it arrived, followed them by taxi to a plain, four-story building not far from the Palatine. He checked into the inn across the street and made sure to get a room with a balcony view of the building.
For several days Virtus watched the golden chariots and litters that rode in and out of the house in Rome, where rich and powerful members of the senate and Roman society came to pray with one another and pay tribute to the Dei. Among them he noted Senator Celsus, cousin of the slain Croesus of Ephesus, and Senator Sura, father of the master of the Games Ludlumus. But there were many more as well, and it was the lesser-known junior members that he did not recognize that worried him most, and he did his best to memorize their faces.