Jon merely smiled, trying to steel himself for the peril ahead.
“But why in the world you would want to choose the busiest time of the day for your escapade is quite beyond me.”
“Noon isn’t the busiest-tourists will be leaving for restaurants-and I couldn’t bring it off if the place were nearly empty.”
“Why not? That’s when I would have done it.”
“Wrong. Same number of guards then, but fewer things to distract them… greater chance of detection. Tourists are my protection.”
At the basilica, Sullivan parked his Fiat near a service door in the rear and extended his hand to Jon. “God go with you, you crazy fool! I’ll be waiting out here, praying for a miracle but with my cell phone handy.”
“See you here in fifteen to twenty minutes, Kev.”
Jon hoisted his gear, walked up to the service door, and passed through it without challenge. At a very deliberate pace so that he would not attract attention and yet arrive at the crypt exactly at 11:59 a.m., Jon walked through the ranks of pilgrims in line to see the crypt and approached the railing surrounding it. It was 11:58-a minute too early-but no real problem. He slowly opened his toolbox and looked around for guards. Thank goodness noon was also the time for the changing of those guards.
A great boom seemed to explode inside the sanctuary. Although it was merely the Janiculum cannon doing its thing as it did at noon each day, the tourists were sufficiently startled for Jon to make his move. He hauled out his dark green tarpaulin and started spreading it over the glass ceiling of the crypt. “Mi scuzi! Per favore, mi scuzi!” Jon said in his best Italian accent, while nudging several pilgrims aside in the process. At the center of the tarp now covering the glass, he placed a large sign in both Italian and English: CHIUSO PER QUINDICI
MINUTI CLOSED FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES
Then he went to the small doorway near the side of the high altar and tried the door. It refused to open. Was it locked? With prayer and a stronger tug, it opened at last. He crawled through and emerged inside the crypt. Quickly he opened his tool kit, hauled out the drill, and set it to work on his target, which was the most centrally located mortar-filled hole in the lid.
The drill purred away without making the quick progress Jon had counted on. He put more pressure on the drill. This reduced the rpm but the drill seemed to start making some penetration. Still, no breakthrough. The mortar they used centuries ago was pretty good after all, he mused. The drilling seemed to go on for endless minutes.
This was all taking too long, he realized. He pushed harder and harder, yet the material refused to yield. His concerns had become worry, and worry was now bordering on panic. He’d have to abandon his wild scheme, cut his losses, and head out ASAP. Yes, common sense dictated that he do just that. After one final push, it would be the end.
Suddenly the drill broke through. It would instantly have crashed into the lid of the sarcophagus had not Jon’s gloved left hand been waiting to cushion the blow. Trembling with joyful relief, Jon pulled the drill out and replaced it with his photo wand. It just fit into the orifice. He lowered it exactly one foot down, then turned on the strobes and started tripping the camera shutters. He twirled the wand forty-five degrees and did the same, then the next forty-five degrees, and so on until he had made a complete circle.
Next he lowered the wand nine inches further and repeated the process. He thought briefly of trying a third round but canceled the concept in the name of prudence. He quickly removed the photo wand and retrieved all his gear. As a final touch, he plugged the hole in the lid with color-matched hardening clay. Then he crawled back out of the crypt. He emerged through the door at the end of the passageway and could finally stand up again. Then his heart almost failed. One of the basilica guards was standing there, looking at him with a great frown.
“Buon giorno!” Jon said amiably, retrieving his wits. He closed the little door, ignored the guard, and walked over to the railing around the crypt, where he removed the sign and the tarp. Then he strolled casually but methodically back to the service door, wondering whether the guard was following him. But he dared not look backward. That would have been too obvious a tip-off.
When he reached the service door, Jon was sure brawny hands were about to seize him by the very scruff of his neck. But no. Thank the good Lord, his bluff had been successful.
He climbed into Kevin’s Fiat and they drove off. Jon looked at his watch. Only nineteen minutes had elapsed since they’d arrived. To Jon it had seemed more like nineteen hours.
“Do you mean to say the guard just stood there, looking at you?” Kevin asked while driving through the Ostian Gate on their way back to the Janiculum. “I find that a little hard to believe.”
“I don’t blame you. I was lucky. But it’s all in appearances, Kev, appearances. To that guard, I was just one of the many handymen tending the place. He probably sees dozens like me every day.”
“But how did you ever have the… the guts to pull off something like this? When you put on those duds, you must have known something as serendipitous as this could happen.”
“I got the idea from something that happened years ago when I was a freshman at Harvard. One afternoon, some students-dressed like street construction workers-brought a huge air compressor onto the corner where Mass Avenue runs into Harvard Square. They fired up the compressor, and then-with three jackhammers roaring at the same time-they started blasting away at Massachusetts Avenue, tearing up the pavement and stacking huge pieces of asphalt onto the curb. The police quickly came, of course, but what did they do? They carefully directed traffic around the construction area so the ‘city workers’ could get their job done!”
Kevin was laughing so hard, he had to pull over to the curb. Finally he asked, “What did they ever do to those pranksters?”
“Not a darn thing. After a half hour of this, they simply left the scene-air compressor, jackhammers, and all, which they had ‘borrowed’ from a university construction site.”
“They never caught them?”
“Never.”
Kevin shook his head, incredulous.
“See,” Jon said, “like I said, it’s all in the appearances, Kev.”
“Maybe it was more like you were Daniel, and the Lord himself closed the mouths of the lions.”
“Yeah, maybe so.”
That evening, they prepared to upload Jon’s precious photographs. As he attached each camera to USB cables connected to his laptop, Jon was cautious-trying to keep his own hopes in check more than to convince his friend. “You realize, Kevin, that there are plenty of things that can go wrong here. For one, we could have technical failure with one or both cameras-not the strobes, since I saw the flashing-but if the remote shutter controls failed, we’d have nothing. That’s unlikely, but not impossible. Or the camera lenses might have missed their target because I angled them wrong-although I tried hard to get the geometry straight. Or even with all the technical stuff working perfectly, there might well be nothing inside, no target.”
Kevin shook his head. “Why so negative? I’m sure there must be something inside the tomb.”
“Well, I suppose there probably are bones inside, but they might not be St. Paul’s.”
“But how would you ever know that?”
“Simple. If the skull were attached to the neck bones, then it couldn’t be St. Paul because we know he was beheaded.”
“Oh… of course.” With an impish grin, Kevin asked, “Is that all?”
“Well, there is one more possibility,” Jon admitted. “There’s a remote chance that we have the photos of… the real McCoy. Sorry, that’s a dumb phrase for something as extraordinary and sacred as this, but you know what I mean.”