Brotherhood of the Tomb (41 page)

They turned off just after the Catacombs of Praetextatus, onto the Via Appia Pignatelli.

‘The old Jewish catacombs are just over there on the right,’ she said, pointing. ‘The Brotherhood built theirs near them. If anyone stumbled across them, they were meant to think they were just more Jewish tombs and leave them alone.’

They stopped about half a mile along, near a small farmhouse.

‘The catacombs are beneath that farm,’ she said. ‘The people who own it are members of the Brotherhood. We may have to force our way in.’

They knocked at the door of the main building, a ramshackle affair that might have looked deserted but for the plume of smoke curling from the chimney. A tall man of about thirty-five dressed in a check shirt and muddy cords appeared in the doorway. He scowled at them and made ready to slam the door in their faces.

‘Che cacchio desidera? What the shit do you want?’

‘My name’s Maria Contarini. I have an urgent message for Cardinal Migliau from the Seven.’

He frowned and looked from her to Patrick.

‘Cardinal Migliau? The Seven? What are you talking about?’

For a moment, Patrick’s heart sank. They had guessed wrong. Then another man stepped out of the shadows behind the first. He was younger and dressed in tight-fitting black clothes.

‘What do they want, Carlo?’

‘Says her name’s Contarini. Says she’s got a message from the Seven. For Cardinal Migliau.’

The younger man stepped into the light. He was suntanned and muscular looking.

‘Who are you?’ he asked. He seemed edgy.

‘I told your friend. Maria Contarini. With a message for the Cardinal. A personal message. You’re to take me to see him.’

‘Contarini? From Venice?’

‘Yes. Listen, I don’t have much time ...’

We’ve been looking for someone of your name. Francesca? Is that it? Francesca Contarini. You look..,’

He froze as she took the Beretta from inside her coat and aimed it at his forehead. Patrick took her lead, drawing his own gun before Carlo could make a move.

‘Easy now,’ Francesca said. ‘Come out here and put your hands on the wall, high as you can reach. You too, come on.’

They got the two men outside and spread them against the wall. Patrick frisked the younger man and found a Browning Hi-Power in a shoulder holster. Carlo was unarmed.

‘How many inside?’ Francesca asked.

‘Go to hell,’ said the young man.

‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘How long have you been dead?’

‘Not as long as you’ll be.’

‘Don’t count on it.’ She turned to Patrick. ‘Let’s get them inside and tied up. Keep them covered while I check the house.’

She slipped round the door, crouching low, her gun at the ready. The house was silent. No one challenged her. The place was little more than a one-storey wooden shack with half a dozen rooms. It took Francesca less than a minute to confirm that the coast was clear.

‘It’s okay,’ she shouted. ‘Bring them in.’

While she took her turn watching their prisoners, Patrick found rope in an outhouse. They tied the two men back to back on the floor in what looked like an extraordinarily uncomfortable position.

‘They teach you to tie like that in Egypt?’ Patrick asked.

Francesca nodded.

‘Along with the knitting,’ she answered.

The entrance to the catacombs was in the outhouse. Francesca remembered it clearly from her

previous visit. A small trapdoor opened onto a flight of wooden steps. Beside it, half a dozen kerosene lamps hung on hooks. There was a box of matches to hand. They each took a lamp and lit it.

Francesca hung back at the top of the steps.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Patrick.

She shivered.

‘I told you, I couldn’t face this place when I was a child. The bodies are still down there, you know. Or what’s left of them. Thousands of loculi, a mile or more of passages. And only what light you can carry with you.’

‘Sounds like a nice place to take little girls for a day out. Would you like me to go first?’

She nodded.

‘Funny though, isn’t it?’ she smiled. ‘Here I am, the ghost, frightened of a few musty old tombs, while you slip in without a care.’

‘What makes you think I’m not scared shitless?’

‘Are you?’

‘No. Of course not. I do this sort of thing every weekend for kicks.’

‘That’s all right, then.’

Holding the lamp in one hand, he swung his legs over the edge onto the ladder and began to climb down. Francesca waited until his head was clear, then followed him gingerly.

The ladder ended about forty feet down. Patrick stepped off, turning the knob on the side of the lamp to increase the illumination. He found himself in a broad paved area that led to a low, monumental doorway. The walls and edges of the doorway itself were painted with rows of symbolic motifs: vines, bowls of wine, lotus and acanthus leaves, peacocks, doves, and angels with gentle, faded wings.

Francesca joined him, adding her light to his.

‘Do you have any idea of the layout of this place?’ he asked.

She shook her head.

‘Not a very clear one. It’s on several levels. They’re divided into passages with niches for the dead. I remember some larger tombs as well, and some side chapels. My father told me the large tombs contained the sarcophagi of martyrs or members of the Seven and the Pillars who’d died in Rome.’

Patrick took his gun out.

‘I’ll leave the ghosts to you,’ he said.

She did not smile in reply.

They met their first ghosts moments later, as they passed through the doorway. The narrow passage swelled to form a small antechamber where mourners had held the funeral agape. Its stucco walls were covered from floor to ceiling with paintings, small portraits, each about ten inches square. The style was that of Roman Egypt, the faces replicas of those painted on mummy cases of the period - honest, lifelike representations of men and women who had lived and breathed some eighteen centuries ago.

Everywhere Patrick and Francesca looked, their eyes met the steady gaze of the dead. There were family groups marked out by a border of lilies or laurel, couples side by side, fathers, mothers, lovers - all serious and composed in death. Francesca shuddered and took hold of Patrick’s arm.

‘I’d forgotten this,’ she whispered. ‘They’re so alive, they seem to be accusing us. Or waiting for us to join them.’

‘If we don’t find Migliau soon, they won’t have long to wait. Come on, through here.’

Cobwebs hung at intervals like tattered flags in a dark cathedral. Patrick felt them brush his face as

he moved along the first narrow passages, hemmed in by row upon row of marble slabs. Some of the slabs had fallen away, revealing pathetic heaps of cloth and bone.

At its end, the passage opened out again, becoming a mortuary chapel. A simple altar stood by one wall, flanked by twin sarcophagi. Above it, angels hovered, wingless in God. The face of Christ looked down, bearded, large-eyed, a man on the verge of Godhood, his hands outstretched to receive his sacrifice. Patrick shuddered.

There was a sound of feet climbing steps a few yards away. A light appeared, then a voice called out.

‘Paolo? Che cosa stai facendo?’

Patrick put down his lamp and pulled Francesca back against the wall of the chapel. The light wavered, then started in their direction. A man came into view, carrying a lamp like theirs. Patrick grabbed for him, taking him off balance and completely by surprise. He tried to cry out, but Patrick had already thrust an arm hard against his mouth, choking off his scream. The man’s lamp dropped to the ground, splintering and bursting into flames. Francesca hurried forward and stamped them out.

With an easy movement, Patrick brought the gun to the stranger’s head and hissed in his ear.

‘One sound out of you and you really are dead. Capisce?’

The man grunted and made what seemed like a nodding motion. Francesca frisked him, taking his gun.

‘Okay, listen,’ Patrick whispered. ‘We’ve come for Migliau. I want you to take us to him. Understand?’

The man struggled, trying to break free. Patrick tightened his grip.

“Which way? Down the stairs?’

The man jerked his head. Patrick turned him and pushed him towards the opening out of which he had come. At the top of the stairs, he released his grip and took his lamp from Francesca.

‘Go down one step at a time,’ he told the man. ‘I’ll be right behind you.’

The prisoner seemed about to protest, then thought better of it. One by one, he descended the flight of stone steps. Patrick followed him closely.

Ten steps from the bottom, the man jumped. He landed awkwardly, stumbled, and got to his feet.

‘Aiuto!’ he shouted in a loud voice. ‘Astolfo! Alberto! Correte qui presto!’

Patrick shot him as he started to run, pitching him back against a funerary slab. Followed closely by Francesca, he rushed to the bottom of the stairs. They had no choice. They had to go on. Migliau must be here. Patrick glanced at his watch. It was nearly nine o’clock. Just over an hour to go.

‘Patrick, quickly - change into his clothes! They don’t know who fired. The acoustics are bad, they may not be able to distinguish one voice from another. Hurry!’

Patrick shouted, ‘It’s all right! I’ve got him,’ then hurried to do as Francesca had suggested. He ripped off Roberto’s suit and pulled on the trousers of the dead man. He heard footsteps running further along the passage, then voices.

‘Nico? Che succede? Was that you? Who were you firing at?’

‘An intruder. It’s okay, I got him.’ Patrick’s voice was muffled and distorted among the tombs.

Lights appeared, still some distance from them.

‘Hurry, Patrick! Don’t bother with the shoes.’

Just in time, Patrick pulled the man’s sweater

over his head. He moved behind Francesca, holding his gun at her head.

There were three men, all holding lamps and guns.

What’s up, Nico? The cardinal’s frightened. Who’s this woman?’

‘Now,’ Patrick whispered.

They moved apart, Francesca to the left, Patrick to the right, opening fire as they did so, round after round. Their opponents did not stand a chance.

Running now, they raced along the passage, Francesca in front, Patrick trailing, hampered without shoes. Suddenly, they turned a bend in the corridor. There was a blaze of light. Lamps flickered. A fire burned brightly in a metal brazier. Flames twinkled on mosaics of gold and silver. In a high dome, their reflections coruscated like exotic fish in a sea of bronze.

At the centre of the room, dressed in black edged with red, an old man sat in a high-backed chair. His clothes were soaked with blood and his hands were crimson. In his right hand, he held a long, thin-bladed knife.

FIFTY-SIX

Migliau gave up the knife without a struggle. He was thin and wasted, a shadow, tattered and torn. Twenty years ago, in another tomb, in a different darkness, he had taken life as easily as a cook breaks eggs. It had been nothing to him, beside the enormity of what he had found. Now, he seemed drugged, witless, a thing of straw.

He was still tall, but all the vigour had been sucked from him relentlessly. His cheeks were hollow, his neck thin. Only his eyes retained the old anger, the tensions of a man close to divinity or madness. Behind him, on a stone altar, the gutted body of a naked child lay on a film of fresh blood.

Francesca found a sheet on a low bed close by, on which the cardinal had evidently been sleeping. She covered the child and took him down from the altar. He was still warm, like something sleeping, a dream away from his lost years.

‘I loved him,’ whispered the cardinal. Patrick bent to hear him. The cracked lips parted, whispering. ‘He was my son. They said it was necessary, that I should have a son. For today, to be my sacrifice. He was to be the balance. The payment for Christ’s Vicar.’

He looked down at the white-swathed bundle Francesca laid on the ground.

‘They brought a woman for me,’ he said. ‘Seven years ago. She was white, so very white, and frightened of me. She should not have been frightened, I would not have harmed her. Her flesh was pale, not like the dreams of women I used to have. No more dreams now, no more. She stayed with me until a child was certain, then they took her away. I had

started to desire her by then. But I do not dream of her.

‘I called the boy Giovanni, after John the Zealot. They kept him in a house near the patriarchal palace, where I could visit him every month. They never let me see his mother. What happened to her? Is she still alive?’

He paused, contemplating a memory.

‘All the time I knew his destiny, but I still loved him. That was part of the reckoning, they said, part of the balance. Without love, there could be no sacrifice, none that had any meaning.’

He looked at them, one after the other.

‘I shall soon be Pope,’ he said, his voice still a whisper. ‘He is my guarantee, because I loved him. But I shall have no love. No love for God, no love for mankind. There will be nothing now but sacrifice. There will be balance upon balance until every drop is bought and paid for.’

Patrick took the old man by the arm and raised him to his feet.

‘It’s time to go,’ he said. He felt nothing, not even contempt.

‘But there hasn’t been time for a Conclave yet.’

‘There will be no Conclave.’ Was that true? If they didn’t make it in time, the Church would need to find a new pope.

What about the child?’ Francesca asked.

‘You take Migliau,’ he said. ‘I’ll carry the boy.’

It was a race against time, now. The worst of the rush-hour traffic had cleared, giving them half a chance. Cars and pedestrians cleared out of their path. Once in the city, Francesca took a circuitous route through side streets, avoiding the main thoroughfares that she knew would still be heavily jammed. It was almost ten

when they reached the Vittorio Emanuele bridge and eased themselves into the line crossing the river.

They drove straight across St Peter’s square, stopping at the Bronze Doors that formed the main entrance to the Vatican. Within seconds, they were surrounded by Swiss Guards posted there as extra security for the ceremony inside. They formed a ring round the van, pointing their Uzis at its doors.