‘Not just yet, Jack.’ Hiebermeyer murmured, making his way past the scrolls on the floor towards the extractor fan. ‘I’ve spent too long dealing with these people now to be so optimistic. Let’s stall the champagne until this place is more than just a figment of our imagination.’
‘Jack, there’s an open scroll here.’ Costas was standing beside the shelves, peering into the recess behind the marble jars.
‘There are scrolls everywhere,’ Jack said. ‘This place is an Aladdin’s cave. We’ll just have to leave it.’
‘You said you wanted to see Claudius’ handwriting. I’m not sure, but this one looks like it might be in two different hands, one of them a little spidery. Looks like someone’s jotted notes in the margin.’
‘Probably mad old Philodemus,’ Hiebermeyer said.
‘I doubt it. I think Claudius was having Philodemus cleared out,’ Jack said. ‘I think he was making room on the shelves for his own stuff.’ He walked over to Costas, who moved aside, and peered where he was pointing. The scroll was open, the two ends partly rolled back, with a few inches of writing visible in between. The scroll looked identical to those in the basket by the door, the volumes of Pliny’s Natural History, with the distinctive rounded finials on the handles. Someone must have been consulting it, then put it down opened at a page. The woman’s voice came up the tunnel again, shouting, insistent. ‘Dr Hiebermeyer! Jack! Please. Now!’ Jack looked up, suddenly distracted at hearing his name spoken by a voice from a past that had never been resolved, as if she were calling to him in a dream. For a second he felt an overwhelming need to leave everything and go back out of the tunnel, to find out what had gone wrong. Maria and Hiebermeyer were already out of the chamber, taking the extractor fan with them. Jack shook his head, looked at Costas and then back at the scroll, forced himself to concentrate for a moment longer, to read the words of the ancient script.
He froze.
He looked again. Two words. Two words that could change history. His mind was racing, his heart thumping.
Then, for the first time in his life, Jack did the unthinkable. He lifted the scroll, carefully rolled the two wound ends together, and slid it into his khaki bag. He flipped over the cover of the bag and buckled the straps. Costas watched him in silence.
‘You know why I’m doing this,’ Jack said quietly.
‘I’m good with it,’ Costas replied.
Jack turned to follow Hiebermeyer and Maria. ‘Right. Time to face the inquisition.’
Fifteen minutes later Jack stood with Costas and Maria in the open air outside the archaeological site, waiting for the guard to unlock the door that led back out into the alleyway through the modern town of Ercolano. They had been hit by the heat as they left the tunnel, but the blinding sunlight of their arrival on the site had given way to a lowering grey sky, with dark clouds forming over Vesuvius and blanketing the bay behind them. They had doffed their safety helmets outside the tunnel and made their way past the workmen and the guards in the main trench, leaving Hiebermeyer to make his report to Elizabeth and a male inspector who had been waiting beside the tunnel entrance, impatient to close up the site. The Egyptian statue of Anubis had already been drilled out of the volcanic rock and stood partly crated outside the entrance, a cluster of tungsten lamps to one side ready for the impending media event. A concrete-mixer had already been drawn up next to the tunnel entrance, and workmen were laying wooden formers ready to fill and block up the tunnel for good. Everything seemed to be happening exactly as Hiebermeyer had predicted.
The guard who had jostled Costas on their way into the site was ambling across the small courtyard towards them again, smoking, his sub-machine gun slung over his back. He came directly towards Costas, flicked away his cigarette and made an upwards gesture with both hands. Jack realized that he was planning to frisk him. Jack looked at Costas, then back at the guard, then at Costas again. This was not going to work. They had less to lose now that they had done what they came for, but the last thing Jack wanted was an incident that would lead to full body searches. He put his hand on his precious bag and tried to catch Costas’ attention, but Costas’ eyes were glued on the guard, expressionless, and Jack could see his hands slowly clenching and unclenching.
At that moment there was a clatter behind them and Hiebermeyer entered the courtyard, followed by Elizabeth and the male inspector. Elizabeth snapped at the guard in Italian and he sneered at her, standing his ground. The man with Elizabeth then said something and the guard backed off a few steps, passing over a bunch of keys. The man went straight to the door and unlocked it, ushering them out. Maria and Costas ducked through. Jack was about to follow, then looked at Elizabeth, catching her eye for the first time. She looked back at him, imploring, and suddenly reached out and grasped his arm, drawing him into the shadows, past the slit-eyed gaze of the guard. For a fleeting moment Jack was back where he had been all those years before, held by those dark eyes that still had the same allure, but in a face more worn and anguished than the passage of time could explain. He barely registered what she whispered to him, a few tense sentences, before she pushed him forcibly away and left quickly the way she had come, back round the corner towards the excavation trench, disappearing out of sight.
Jack was rooted to the spot, and then heard Costas calling him through the doorway. He stumbled past the guard who was now talking intently on a cell phone, his eyes following Jack, and past the inspector who nodded at him, and then through the entrance into the rubbish-strewn alley. The door clanged shut behind him and he heard the padlock being engaged. He looked up towards the dark cone of Vesuvius looming over the rooftops at the end of the alley, and began following the other three. He clutched his bag, feeling the shape inside, and felt his heart begin to pound. There was no turning back now.
10
T he man in the black cassock swept past the baldacchino and towards the pier of St Andrew, making the sign of the cross towards the high altar as he passed. He was tall, late middle aged, with fine, aquiline features and scholarly glasses, but with the sinewy toughness of a Jesuit who had spent years in the field. He nodded curtly at the Swiss Guard who stood at the low entranceway into the pier, then glanced back at the baldacchino. The great black pillars had been cast by Bernini from bronze taken from the Pantheon, the pagan temple to all the gods, here transformed into baroque splendour and captured beneath the dome of the greatest church in Christendom. To the man this place always made the ancient Roman sense of mastery over nature seem puny, insignificant, just as it made the people appear puny who stood beneath it today. It was a place where all could know the ascendancy of the Holy See, over a congregation far larger than ever could have been imagined by the Roman emperors at the time of Christ.
He sniffed, then wrinkled his nose slightly. The air seemed heavy with the exhalation of thousands of pilgrims and tourists who had passed through that day, as they did every day. They were the power of the Church, yet the man found the base reality of the common people distasteful and always relished passing beyond, into the sanctuaries of the ordained. He reminded himself why he was here, this evening. He recovered his stride and made his way purposefully down the steps into the grotto under the nave, to the level of the Roman hillside where there had once been a hippodrome of Caligula and Nero and a city of the dead, a necropolis, dug into the rock. Now it was the burial ground of popes, and the revered resting place of St Peter. The man made the sign again as he passed that holy spot, then weaved his way through the surviving foundation stones of Constantine the Great’s basilica to another door and another flight of steps, leading down into the depths of the ancient necropolis. The door had been opened for him, but as he passed through he took out a key from under his cassock, and with his other hand flicked on a small torch. At the bottom of the stairs the beam danced over rough stone walls lined with niches and shadowy recesses. He bent to pass down a low passageway to the right, descended a flight of rock-cut steps into an empty tomb and felt along the wall, quickly finding what he was looking for. He slid the key into the hole and a concealed door gave way, opening inwards. He ducked through, then turned and locked the door again. He was inside.