The Last Ember Page 8

  TWO YEARS LATER, FRAGMENT OF FORMA URBIS

  RESURFACES IN ROME. UN OFFICIAL TO TESTIFY

  Rome. Representatives of the Italian Cultural Ministry are expected in court today to dispute the provenance of two Forma Urbis fragments on loan to the Capitoline Museum from an unnamed source. The Ministry asserts the fragments should be returned to Rome. . . .

  A museum display, Emili thought. Over the last two years she had researched the black markets in London and the auction houses of Shanghai, trying to locate these pieces of the Forma Urbis that she believed were responsible for Sharif’s death. And they turned up in a museum. Emili massaged her temples in exhaustion.

  “Dottoressa Travia?”

  Emili was startled by a voice in the doorway. Dr. Jacqueline Olivier, the director general of the International Centre, carried a thin black briefcase and a black-and-tan-checkered coat over her arm. As usual, she arrived at the UN offices after a breakfast meeting and was neatly turned out in a double-breasted suit and French-knotted scarf, her charcoal-colored hair cut to feathered perfection. With her fine aristocratic features and quiet air of erudition, and born into Parisian nobility, Director Olivier was the very personification of the prestigious organization that conserved priceless monuments of civilization. In contrast, Emili had loose strands of blond hair strewn across her exhausted face. She sat up abruptly, embarrassed to have such an elegant and accomplished figure discover her lost in reflection.

  But in the director’s eyes there was not the least bit of judgment, only concern.

  “I heard about your testimony today,” she said.

  “I know your thoughts on the strength of our evidence, Director.”

  “Or the lack of it,” Director Olivier said, stopping her. “Emili, I know what this artifact means to you, especially with the World Heritage Committee meeting this week. You hoped this artifact would rescue your efforts to show illicit excavations beneath Jerusalem.”

  “They confirm what Dr. Lebag and I saw.”

  Olivier leaned against the doorway, tucking her gloves into the front pocket of her overcoat. “But are we really to believe that someone began a riot in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem to stop your investigation? That to protect their research they were willing to take Sharif’s life?”

  Emili answered quietly. “They were willing to take many more lives than Sharif’s. He was just the only one down there.”

  Olivier offered her a consoling smile, an expression meant to soothe. Instead, it so clearly revealed her own administrator’s agenda of wanting to let this go, of wanting the office staff to move on, that it had just the opposite effect. It emboldened Emili. The political expediency that made the director want to believe Sharif’s death was accidental had fostered exactly the kind of revision of history that Emili, as a preservationist, was trained to guard against.

  “Emili, I wish I could convince you to stay for the World Heritage Committee opening ceremony tomorrow.”

  “Not unless you allow me to present our findings about the illegal excavations beneath the Temple Mount at the plenary conference. Otherwise, I’ll be returning to Jerusalem this evening.”

  “On the World Food Programme charter, I suppose?” the director stepped out of her office, wagging her finger maternally. “You’re deputy director now, Dr. Travia. You should start traveling like one.”

  The director’s footsteps faded down the hallway, and Emili stood up. She unhooked her herringbone overcoat from the back of the door, tightened her scarf, and carefully picked up the Napoleonic sketch Orvieti had entrusted to her. If answers about those fragments of the Forma Urbis lay in the Colosseum, she would find them.

  14

  Comandante Profeta, followed by Lieutenant Rufio, swiped his access card outside the Command’s computer forensic laboratory and stepped through its glass doors. The preserved ceiling of the laboratory reflected the building’s original purpose as a Jesuit college, and domed frescoes vaulted over tables of confiscated computer servers from the midnight raid. The computers were dissected; their exposed wires resembled electronic open-heart surgery.

  “We salvaged a digital image, Comandante,” Lieutenant Copia said proudly. She handed Profeta a computer printout. “Came from the one LCD monitor we removed before the explosion.”

  “But you said there was a bullet hole directly through the screen,” Profeta said.

  “Correct,” Copia responded, “but the bullet through this screen shortcircuited the LCD display, burning the last image onto the screen’s hyper-compressed pixels.” The technician pointed at the printout in Profeta’s hands. “That was the last picture on the screen.”

  The image was a black-and-white sketch, prismed in shards as though the sketch had been photocopied behind a sheet of shattered glass. The imprint of a bullet hole lay at the center of the image.

  “These are Forma Urbis fragments,” Profeta said. “Looks like they are assembling pieces of the ancient map to reconstruct an image of the Colosseum.”

  “Comandante!” Brandisi said. He charged into the room, holding clenched pages in his right hand, as he would a torch. “I have information about the restoration project adjacent to the dockside warehouse in Civitavecchia.”

  “The restoration project?” Profeta said.

  “Yes, you said to research the restoration effort of a small Roman ruin located on the same dock as the warehouse we raided last night. As expected, the restoration was sponsored by the Cultural Ministry of Civitavecchia and the local tourist bureau, but there was a private donor. A Saudi-based cultural heritage fund called the al-Quds fund.” Brandisi looked down at the wrinkled pages in front of him. “A UNESCO-subsidized fund incorporated in Morocco in 1998 to ‘preserve the Islamic cultural heritage of Jerusalem.’”

  “Jerusalem?” Profeta said. “What does Jerusalem have to do with a ruin on an abandoned pier twenty minutes outside Rome?”

  “Could be a cultural-exchange project,” Rufio said, referring to the pairing of foreign preservation projects for reciprocal donations. “Helps with publicity. It’s probably nothing unusual.”

  “I searched for other local restoration projects with contributions from this same fund, and I found one. It’s a restoration project for a ruin downtown.”

  “Where?” Profeta asked, his eyes shifting to the printout of the shattered screen depicting the Forma Urbis.

  “Just outside the Piazza del Colosseo.”

  “Along the northeastern gate of the Colosseum, along the Via del Colosseo?” Profeta asked.

  Brandisi glanced again at the wrinkled pages in front of him. “Yes,” he said, stunned. “A restoration of the gladiatorial barracks, just outside that area of the Colosseum. How did you know?”

  Profeta pointed at the shattered image. “It’s the location of the gate on these fragments of the Forma Urbis.” Profeta turned to Rufio. “Rufio, I want four squad cars surrounding the Colosseum. These antiquity thieves could be beneath the ruin even as we speak.”

  “Comandante, are you sure about this?” Rufio said, his cheek twitching. But he knew Profeta had not heard the voice that haunted him since he had hung up the pay phone in the alleyway only an hour before.

  “If they discover the excavations near the Colosseum, you realize the measures Salah ad-Din will have to take,” the hushed voice had said.

  “But there are hundreds of tourists in the piazza around the Colosseum!” Rufio protested. “It’s not some abandoned commercial pier you can just blow—”

  But by then, the line was dead. A recorded operator’s voice had interrupted Rufio in rapid Arabic, presumably asking the caller to try again.

  15

  Tatton and Mildren returned to the firm like a triumphal procession victorious in battle. Jonathan walked behind them, seeing the palazzo’s façade glisten in a sudden burst of winter sun, much like his future career at Dulling. Seven years ago, he would have burned with excitement at the discovery of hidden writing inside a piece of the Forma Urbis and probably pre
sented a scholarly paper on the concealed letters. Now Mildren’s suggestion about taking a power sander to their underside made terrifying sense.

  Tatton’s voice echoed in his mind. Mysteries of the ancient world do not concern us, Marcus. And he could hear Emili’s counterpoint as if to answer, “Sharif knew these fragments meant something more, Jon. It’s why he stayed behind.”

  In the courtyard, the palazzo’s arched stables were outfitted with sleek glass walls for the partners’ indoor parking. Now, during the workday, it resembled a luxury Italian car dealership of vintage Ferraris and Alfa Romeo roadsters.

  Jonathan was somewhere in the middle of the courtyard when he realized he simply could not let it go. Titus’s mistake. The ancient spy craft was too obvious for him to ignore. If an inscription about Emperor Titus lay inside the gladiators’ gate, a message carved inside a fragment of the Forma Urbis would have been the most durable way to signal someone to retrieve it, even centuries later.

  “Damn it,” he said, turning away from Dulling’s palazzo. The Colosseum is not far from here, Jonathan thought. In this weather it probably won’t be packed with tour groups.

  He walked at a determined clip, as though the firm’s eyes were still on him. He suspected the research he was about to do could come dangerously close to betraying attorney-client confidentiality, and he could not afford to leave a trail. He turned off the Piazza della Repubblica into a narrow alley, past a small Renaissance niche that housed a statue of the Virgin Mary and fresh flowers supplied daily by the local faithful.

  The wind had picked up considerably, nearly pushing him across Piazza Venezia. The reason the message Error Titi was carved inside those fragments of the Forma Urbis was to identify a gladiators’ gate in the Colosseum. Jonathan shook his head, as though trying to snap himself out of the notion. But an adrenaline rush well known to classicists rose within him, a sense of imminent discovery as palpable as the freezing gusts whipping at the tails of his suit jacket.

  From the precipitous height of the Vittorio Emanuele Monument, the top of the Forum’s ruins came into sharper focus.

  The Roman Forum, the open-air archaeological park located in the center of downtown Rome, lay sixty feet below the traffic-clogged streets on either side. On a summer day, its ancient pavement would be packed with barking tour guides and screaming children. But on a cold winter afternoon beneath gathering clouds, the foggy, slumbering ruins looked more desolate than ever.

  To Jonathan’s trained eye, the strewn pillars and marble debris were silent ghosts of the bustling marketplaces and ancient office buildings that once stood in this downtown of the Roman Empire. For Jonathan, the whistle of the wind was a haunting reminder of how quickly civilizations fade.

  Jonathan jogged down the stairs through the entrance gate. Touching down on the Via Sacra’s original Roman pavement, he felt the uneven texture of the ancient road through the soles of his still-soaked Ferragamos.

  It began to drizzle again, but Jonathan pressed forward, stretching his long legs with each stride, his shoulders thrust forward as he walked through the ruins, passing the Arch of Septimus Severus, the burned masonry of an ancient notary public’s office, the onionskin marble of temple columns. Jonathan’s pace quickened, his anticipation growing more intense as the Colosseum loomed into view.

  He entered the Piazza del Colosseo, a vast expanse of cobblestone that even on this winter afternoon was packed with tour guides shouting in different languages over the calls of souvenir hucksters with arms full of Colosseum paperweights. Locals dressed in gladiatorial garb stood in front of the outer arches, knocking tin swords against their plastic chest shields to solicit pictures for two euros apiece.

  Even from across the piazza, the Colosseum’s massive pilasters of limestone and travertine dwarfed the souvenir tables. An orange mist of late-morning sun hung low around the Colosseum’s four stories of classical stone archways.

  “Marcus Aurelius!” A voice nearly startled Jonathan out of his skin. The meat of a hand struck Jonathan, a friendly back slap, with enormous force.

  Jonathan recognized the voice immediately. Chandler Manning. Jonathan had not seen him in years. He was much the same as Jonathan remembered him from the library at the American Academy: a small, paunchy frame; disheveled hair over his ears; a partially untucked dress shirt beneath a wrinkled blue blazer. Chandler had lost weight, but not enough.

  “Look who’s returned!” Chandler said, throwing up his stubby arms. He was shorter than Jonathan had remembered. In his right hand Chandler held an extended pointer with a purple feather glued to the top for the benefit of a small group of tourists trailing behind him. For a moment he jogged to keep pace with Jonathan’s long strides, tripping over the Forum’s uneven stones.

  Jonathan stopped and extended a hand. Chandler playfully batted it away, offering a clubby male hug.

  “Hullo, Chands,” Jonathan said.

  When Jonathan was a graduate student at the Academy, Chandler Manning was the librarian. Chandler spoke with a vaguely British accent, with his jaw thrust forward. He was American, but from his many years abroad and facility with languages, he had abandoned his native inflection for a foreign air that would make few guess his childhood origins were a small mining town in northwestern Oregon.

  “Ladies and gentlemen”—Chandler turned to the semicircle of people on his tour and spoke to them effortlessly in German—“this is an honor, really. The former Rome Prize winner who dazzled us all.”

  They nodded enthusiastically, as if Jonathan were an unexpected monument not on their itinerary. One of the tourists took a picture of him.

  “Seven years it’s been, Aurelius?” It was a Chandler affectation, nicknaming the world around him to make it instantly his own. Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor A.D. 161-180. “I still remember you running around this Forum,” he said, leaning in with a close, nostalgic smile. “Could date the stones of this place to the year, couldn’t you?”

  “That’s overstating things, Chands,” Jonathan said politely. “How are the ancient cults treating you these days?”

  “Not ancient cults, Jon, it’s the modern ones I’ve been up to.” He handed Jonathan a card. It looked vaguely occult with green designs resembling crop circles. Jonathan glanced down at the card. It said, “Roman Kaballah: Eternal Knowledge in the Eternal City.”

  “Need anything at all while you’re here, Aurelius, you call that number, or just show up. I’m around.”

  Jonathan looked up from the card. “Kaballah? You’re not serious, Chandler.”

  Chandler shrugged. “Commercial mysticism and some entrepreneurial savvy go a long way these days. Bought some dead occultist’s library just off the Campo dei Fiori for a song. Place is just magic. Up to two lectures per evening. Even have a girl at the receptionist desk taking credit cards.”

  Not that this surprised Jonathan. He remembered how Chandler could captivate entire tables of scholars over drinks at the local pub by the American Academy, the Thermopolium. Showing off his photographic memory for a pretty Italian bartender, he would combine codices by Benedictine monks with Egyptian astrology to produce a theory that the sphinx was really a representation of Saint Paul. It was nonsense, of course, but the only offensive part to Jonathan was how the party tricks masked Chandler’s remarkable ability to synthesize endless material spreading across centuries and recall details at a moment’s notice.

  “Sounds like you’ve found your calling, Chandler.”

  “And you?” Chandler leaned in rather close, his eyes wide open. He flashed a deadly serious face. “Your exit was the stuff of ancient myth.” Chandler stood back, as though to give space to the grandiosity of the statement. “Myth,” he repeated. “I mean, after the tragedy in the catacombs that night, it’s like there was damnatio memoriae about you,” he said, referring to ancient Rome’s political tradition of blotting out inscriptions and defacing statues to erase the memory of previous emperors. “Remember how the academy keeps portraits of former Rome P
rize winners above that little wooden bar off the villa’s salon? Well, they even took yours down. Nerve, I tell you.”

  “Listen, Chandler”—Jonathan’s eyes caught the long line for the Colosseum—“I’m in a terrible rush, but it’s good to see you. Really.”

  Jonathan edged away, a tight-lipped smile, holding up Chandler’s card as though intending to use it.

  Chandler moved his pointer in Jonathan’s direction, holding it like a tilted foil. “One more thing.”

  He tapped Jonathan’s chest with his pointer, an air of playful menace. He turned to the members of the tour group, again in German. “Did I mention that Marcus here was not just a scholar but an excellent swords-man?” He switched back to English. “Division One saber fencing champion for Columbia, was it?”

  “City College of New York.”

  “Even better. Those uptown snobs can’t handle anything other than a foil anyway.”

  Jonathan looked over Chandler’s shoulder. “Chandler, really, I—”

  “Come, Jon, one point for old time’s sake.” Chandler took another pocket pointer out of his jacket, pulled it to full extension, and handed it to Jonathan.

  Chandler bent his knees in the classic pose of a fencing advance, jiggling the purple feather in front of Jonathan.

  “Next time”—Jonathan imitated a smile—“I’m afraid I’m just too—”

  Jonathan stepped to the left to make his way politely around him, but Chandler stepped to the left, one foot in front of the other. With a one-two beat, he scraped Jonathan’s pointer with his own, tap-tap, egging him on. This is ridiculous, Jonathan thought, and if he weren’t in such a rush, Jonathan would have waited out his showmanship, but tourists were starting to gather, and this was becoming a spectacle. Reluctantly Jonathan raised the extendable pointer, holding it loosely enough to lead Chandler to lunge, and when Chandler did, Jonathan deftly rapped Chandler’s knuckles from below. As though on a string, Chandler’s pointer flew into the air and landed flat in Jonathan’s palm. Turning around, Jonathan straight-thrusted the pointer with such force into Chandler’s breast that it collapsed to its pocket size, giving the German tourists such a perfect illusion of impalement that their eyes went around their tour guide’s body to see if the pointer had exited the other side.