The Last Ember Read online

  Emili walked toward him, her solemnity and quickness suggesting that he had angered her or taken her for weak. She pushed his right shoulder, shoving him into the stacks and out of view.

  “Okay,” Jonathan said. “So my Latin’s not much better than—”

  But Emili did not let him finish. She opened her mouth and kissed him deeply, her hands clutching at the back of Jonathan’s hair.

  “Wait,” she said, stepping back. “There’s a problem.”

  “What problem?” Jonathan said. “That was the opposite of a problem.”

  “You don’t have travel documents to fly aboard a UN aircraft. To even step on the tarmac you need a laissez-passer.”

  Jonathan knew it was comparatively easy for those with the coveted light-blue UN passes to move across the most complicated borders in the world.

  “They’re only issued to international civil servants, aren’t they?”

  Emili thought a moment, a conspiratorial smile not far behind. “Well,” she said, “we’re about to change that.”

  52

  Inside Vatican City, Profeta walked through the papal apartments’ back corridors, far from where tourists are permitted. A ceremonial papal guard in Elizabethan dress snapped to attention, unlocking a series of oak doors leading to the Sala Consultazione Manoscritti, the reading room for Vatican drafts and manuscripts. Profeta knew only an exclusive club of independent Christian scholars and Vatican researchers had ever seen the breathtaking size of the reading room for drafts and manuscripts. The walls of ancient books were impossibly long, as though two mirrors reflected panels of rococo vaults stretching into infinity. Across the ceiling, angels danced with books and keys as parchments rained down from heaven in remarkable trompe l’oeil stuccowork.

  Nestled between two card catalogs, Cardinal Francesco Inocenti’s girth nearly filled the width of a small niche in which his desk sat. Profeta wondered how someone with such an affection for old-style Roman cooking had reached Inocenti’s old age. More than a half-century ago, the cardinal started his career in the Church as a librarian, and now, having retired from the College of Cardinals, where he had spent twenty years, he returned to his true passion, cataloging the world’s rarest cracked and faded books behind the Vatican’s walls, where his career had begun.

  On his desk was a manuscript hundreds of years old, its metal locks blackened from fire.

  “Jacopo, thank you for coming so quickly. You brought the manuscript page I requested?”

  Profeta handed him the page inside a laminated sheath. With extra care, Cardinal Inocenti removed the page from its protective covering and lay it down inside the open medieval manuscript in front of him. The inside jagged edge of the manuscript page matched perfectly with the long ripped stub that protruded inches out of the binding.

  “How did you know this page belonged to this book?” Profeta asked.

  “For two hundred years, pages from many of our Josephus manuscripts have been missing,” Cardinal Inocenti said. “In 1809, Napoleon stormed Rome’s walls and brought the Vatican to its knees. He had all the Vatican treasures at his mercy, but what did he take? Not the Vatican’s most prized possessions, the statue of Augustus or the Laocoön. Instead, his archaeologists came to the library and examined the manuscripts of Flavius Josephus.”

  “Flavius Josephus as an archaeological guide? But Emperor Titus commissioned Josephus to write his history as propaganda. They are as biased as one of Berlusconi’s newspapers writing on politics.”

  The cardinal laughed, but his solemnity returned as he lifted the manuscript page. “It was certainly Titus’s intention for Josephus to write a flattering Roman history, but what if Josephus had something else in mind?

  “The parchment was treated with potassium nitrate. They were looking for writing rubbed out under the vellum beneath the current script. Apparently, there may be more to Josephus than meets the eye.”

  “Your Eminence, these efforts sound more appropriate for a scholar, not an antiquities thief. These men do not share your love of history.”

  “I am not speaking about history,” Cardinal Inocenti said, his gaze anchored on Profeta. “I am speaking about greed, Comandante. Treating Josephus’s manuscripts with chemicals?” He pointed at the circled letters of text. “Searching for equidistant letter sequences in the Greek? What is the adage you once shared with me about stolen antiquities?”

  “The greater the relic, the greater the thief,” Profeta said.

  “Veramente,” Cardinal Inocenti said.

  He swiveled in his chair, reaching for a manila envelope behind him. “For years, our monasteries in Jerusalem have been tracking illicit archaeological activity beneath the Temple Mount. Unfortunately, the Waqf’s jurisdiction makes the inner workings of the Vatican look like an open book.”

  He removed pictures from the manila envelope and handed them to Profeta. Each depicted large piles of rubble amid olive groves. Inside the huge piles of dirt, Profeta could make out crushed marble and terra-cotta.

  “What is this?”

  “Priceless ruins from beneath the Temple Mount,” Cardinal Inocenti said. “We found them dumped in the valley of Kidron. The piles were systematically mixed together to prevent future excavation.”

  “And the Waqf is conducting these excavations?”

  “Not directly, no. There are many honorable and religious imams within the Waqf Authority who know nothing of these excavations. But a small few within the Waqf have used the trust’s jurisdiction over the Mount to permit an ongoing excavation of catastrophic proportions, led by a man named only as Salah ad-Din.”

  “Salah ad-Din as in the twelfth-century warrior?”

  The cardinal nodded. “Our Christian informants in Jerusalem report that this man Salah ad-Din has been researching priceless Josephus manuscripts as well as detailed topographical maps of Rome.”

  “And you think this relates to the excavations we’ve discovered in Rome?”

  “Yes, our sources report that he was digging here to find a location beneath Jerusalem. Jacopo, he will use methods of excavation cruder than you can imagine.”

  “Cruder than what I saw beneath the Colosseum? I’m not sure that’s possible.”

  “Our contacts in Bethlehem report nitrocellulose explosives, as well as rubber suppression mats, smuggled in through Syria. Whatever he is looking for, he will detonate to find it.”

  Comandante Profeta reached for his two-way radio. “Brandisi, get me Eilat Segev at the Israel Antiquities Authority, immediately.”

  53

  On the outskirts of Rome, Emili’s motorcycle approached a ramshackle postwar apartment building. The building’s rust-stained concrete walls rose six stories, and the chipping around the first-floor windows indicated where security bars had been ripped off.

  “I’m guessing this isn’t on most tourist maps,” Jonathan said.

  A sign in the shape of a heraldic symbol was glued to the door. RAOUL FRADELI, MASTERPIECES, PORTRAITURE.

  “Here we are,” Emili said.

  “Fradeli?” Jonathan said. “That name seems familiar.”

  “You’ll be UN personnel in no time.”

  Jonathan looked at the hand-painted sign.

  “Masterpieces?” Jonathan shook his head. “Please don’t tell me he’s a forger.”

  “Look at the bright side, you’re about to have one of the best imitation UN passports in the world.”

  Jonathan knew that for most forgers, with their steady hand and eye for signatures, it was more lucrative to imitate green cards and EU passports than to spend months repainting a Monet only to compete with the poster shop down the street.

  “The name, it just sounds so familiar,” Jonathan said.

  She pressed the apartment number.

  “Quem é?” said a gruff voice in Portuguese.

  “Raoul, it’s Emili.”

  The metallic sound of a buzzer answered. They walked up creaking steps, each one worn into a trough-shaped plank. The grainy
sound of an opera playing on an old phonograph echoed in the stairwell. There was a sharp odor of mildew.

  “Wait a minute . . . Raoul Fradeli,” Jonathan whispered. He remembered a case three years before, in which Dulling and Pierce represented a museum in Detroit against a small Italian dealer. The museum’s insurance company investigated a piece and traced it back to the studio of a Raoul Fradeli. Fradeli claimed to have just restored the painting for the dealer, but it was clear he painted the thing from scratch.

  Jonathan stopped on the staircase landing. “Emili, I know this guy from a case.”

  “I wouldn’t mention that if I were you,” Emili said.

  “What if he recognizes me?” Jonathan whispered.

  Jonathan pictured himself in a New York office conference room at Dulling and Pierce. He sat directly across from Raoul Fradeli, watching the firm’s senior lawyers grill him with questions about his restoration. The expert witnesses could not agree which quadrants of the canvas were original.

  “The case against him was dismissed,” Jonathan said.

  As Emili was about to knock, she turned around and smiled. “I told you he was good.”

  Raoul opened the door, the collar of his white coat upturned, a beret tilted to one side, three days’ scruff of beard on his face. He looked the consummate bohemian artist. His demeanor immediately changed when he saw Jonathan.

  “Who the fuck is this?” Raoul said in Portuguese-flavored English.

  Emili stepped past him. “A friend who needs a favor.”

  Raoul stared at Jonathan uneasily, narrowing his eyes, as though faintly recognizing him.

  “And who is willing to pay handsomely for it,” she added.

  Raoul grinned suddenly. “In which case, any friend of yours is a friend of mine. Benvenuto.”

  Behind him, replica paintings of Goya, Picasso, and a half-finished Jack-son Pollock lined the walls. In a sink, a small penciled sketch soaked in soapsuds, a technique used to age parchment a few hundred years in a matter of hours.

  Emili pulled Raoul aside, showing him her laissez-passer, issued to international civil servants of the United Nations. He nodded reluctantly and took the papers from Emili’s hand. He whispered to her in Italian, “Do I know this guy?”

  “No, Raoul, you don’t.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ll pay you what you want, and get out of your life,” Jonathan said with an abrupt confidence as false as the art around him.

  “I like him,” Raoul said to Emili. He turned to Jonathan. “I like you, so I give you discount.” He took the papers from Emili and walked over to his stove, and stirred the boiling water where he was making pasta. He walked back over to the table where Jonathan was sitting.

  “For le bleu?” Raoul said, looking at Jonathan.

  “What’s le bleu?”

  “The most coveted,” Raoul said. He held up Emili’s small blue UN passport. “The UN laissez-passer.” He lowered his voice reverently. “It unlocks every border in the world.”

  “How much?” Emili asked.

  “Mille.”

  A thousand euros! Jonathan yelled, but only to himself. Emili nodded that the price was fair.

  “Reasonable enough,” Jonathan heard himself say, counting out the bills. It was nearly all the cash he had withdrawn before leaving for Rome.

  Raoul went to snatch the money, but Jonathan pulled back his hand as he glanced at the stove. “That pasta?”

  Raoul nodded.

  Jonathan handed him the money, remembering they had not eaten all day.

  “Then this better include dinner.”

  Raoul grinned, leading them into a back room, where lamination and scanner equipment lined the walls. The rest of the flat was a dusty artisan’s studio, and Jonathan was stunned by the contrast of this room’s technology. Emili took in the equipment, shrugging, “At least he’s a professional,” she whispered.

  “It’ll be a real person,” Raoul said, putting on glasses with jeweler’s loupes flipped up. “Even if they run the passport through a scanner, it’ll correspond to one of the UN’s fifteen thousand passports currently issued.” He pulled out a blank shell of the UN’s light blue passport backing, and a straight-edge razor and fine-point marker; he flipped down the magnifying lenses of his glasses and got to work.

  Emili and Jonathan waited at a small table beside the stacked dirty dishes in the sink. They heard the cutting of a board and the sound of a scanner. Half-drawn Chagall sketches lined the kitchen wall, emitting an inky smell of ash and chalk. When the pasta was cooked, Emili returned with two steaming bowls.

  “I have a question for you,” Emili said.

  “If it’s whether I remember how to twirl the pasta like you once taught me,” Jonathan winced, “prepare to be disappointed.”

  “About your work at the firm.” Emili sat back down at the table. “I’m still surprised you represented that antiquities dealer a couple of months ago.”

  “Which?”

  “Andre Cavetti. You knew the guy wasn’t clean,” Emili said. “He’s running illegal excavations just outside Naples bigger than a soccer stadium.”

  “But that bronze nude statue wasn’t illegally excavated. And it certainly didn’t belong in some museum in Italy.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because it was a fake.”

  “What?” Emili’s eyes widened.

  “The Latin inscription used grammar that wasn’t invented until the tenth century, and her hairstyle looked like a Renaissance pinup girl’s.”

  “None of the other experts saw it?”

  Jonathan shrugged. “Someone will. Eventually.”

  “So you managed to prevent the Italians from embarrassing themselves by having a fake on display in their museum, Cavetti saves face in the art world, and Dulling wins again.”

  “Not exactly the heroic solution, but justice isn’t done by heroes with swords anymore,” Jonathan said. “It’s done by lawyers.”

  “Coming with me to Jerusalem is the heroic solution.” Emili’s tone softened. “So how do you explain that choice, Counselor?”

  “We’re talking about one of the greatest treasures of the ancient world here, Emili.”

  But both of them knew that the answer was a placeholder for one that couldn’t be spoken, although it hung thick in the air of the kitchen. Because I nearly lost you down there. Because I’ve pictured you a hundred times, lying in the catacomb’s rubble, blood seeping out the side of your lips. Because I remember grabbing your wrist, frantically searching for a pulse, whispering in your ear, “Just stay with me. . . . Just stay with me.”

  “Did you say something, Jon?” Emili asked, sitting in the kitchen. “You just said, ‘Stay with me.’ ”

  “I meant, stay with you,” Jonathan said, fumbling. “I’d like to stay with you.”

  “I need your real passport.” Raoul’s voice from the other room was a welcome interruption.

  “Why?” Jonathan said.

  “Just going to borrow the picture, image it, then put it back.” Raoul flipped down his loupes again. “The picture’s lamination must look creased and matted. New picture is a dead giveaway.”

  Jonathan watched Raoul cannibalize his real passport, peeling back his current identity. He remembered how ancient Romans scraped and washed leather parchments to reuse them, but often the underwriting, the scriptio inferior, resurfaced years later as the animal hide aged. As Emili took Jonathan’s hand, rebuking him to properly wrap the pasta around the fork, he realized just how much the scriptio inferior of his own past had resurfaced with a startling legibility.

  “And please don’t get any tomato sauce on the Chagall lying on the countertop,” Raoul said, looking up at them. Through the magnifying lenses of the loupes, his eyes looked comically large. “The British Museum just bought it.”

  54

  In East Jerusalem, General Eilat Segev sat in her office at the Israel Antiquities Authority in the Rockefeller Museum, a ninetee
nth-century Byzantine-style building that looked etched from a solid piece of sandstone. In the hallways outside her office, priceless Greek sculpture and Roman-era capitals were propped against wooden crates as though in a storage depot. Whether or not the Israel Antiquities Authority intentionally decided to preserve the ascetic habits of tent-housed British archaeology of the 1920s, or whether the Israeli government was simply reluctant to invest in a public building so deep inside Arab Jerusalem, the no-frills classical ambience of the Rockefeller Museum could not have better matched the strength and simplicity of General Eilat Segev: the woman in charge of Israel’s only organization to prevent illicit excavations and the illegal trafficking of ancient artifacts.

  General Segev leaned over her desk, her long gray hair pulled back from her face, which was tanned and creased from thirty years of fieldwork. She still wore the same dust-covered white blouse and trim olive pants from her site work earlier in the day. Her outfit had a vaguely military appearance, and the image of her leaning over her maps with such intensity resembled her days in the military, when, as the commander of an elite team, she studied Syrian troop movements along the border late into the night.

  Archaeology for her was a first love, but a second career, not realized until her military role as a high-ranking officer of foreign dignitary security details came to an abrupt end in Sharm el-Sheikh, when a bullet meant for the Israeli foreign minister found her abdomen instead. Her passion for archaeology, coupled with obvious praise from the foreign minister’s office, allowed Segev to transfer with commendation to the ranks of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

  She thought pursuing her passion for archaeology would mean a milder career. But Segev found herself running an organization that had begun to more closely resemble the Mossad than an archaeological parks department. Almost daily her undercover agents in the Israel Antiquities Authority were discovering new tunnels that were used to smuggle antiquities and arms from Egypt to Gaza. And her department now fielded Hasidic informants to keep tabs on fringe religious groups looking to harm historical Islamic sites. Segev may have fought in every war for Israel since 1967, but as far as her professional dedication was concerned, she protected Islamic minarets with the same vigor that she did the Western Wall.