The Second Messiah (40 page)

Nidal raced through the underground passageway and came to a sudden halt. He swore.

In front of them were five Roman archways going in different directions.

The Serb’s face was enraged as he ripped the magazine from the MAC-10, reloaded a fresh one, and slammed it home. “Which one do we take?”

Nidal clutched the lamp in one hand, his Beretta in the other, and cocked an ear. “Quiet. Did you hear that?”

“Hear what? We’re lost. This place is like a rabbit warren. You know they found a tourist’s skeleton somewhere in the city’s tunnels a while back? He’d been dead for years—”

“Shut up,” Nidal hissed, raising a finger to his lips.

The Serb fell silent. Nidal listened, then moved toward the mouth of the archway on his left. “I heard a noise. It sounded like rocks falling.”

The Serb shook his head. “I heard nothing. You’re imagining things.”

Nidal ignored him and raised his Beretta, his eyes alive, like a bloodhound scenting his prey. “They’re near here, I’m sure of it,” and with that he swung the lamp high and plunged into the passageway.

“ARE YOU
SURE
this is the spot?” Yasmin removed another pile of rubble. She sounded breathless and irritated. “We’re getting nowhere fast, Jack.”

He dumped an armful of bricks on the pile, his face drenched in sweat. “I’m pretty sure we’re in the right place.”

“Then why haven’t we seen the marbles? Face it, there’s
nothing
here, Jack.”

“Don’t speak too soon.” He worked feverishly, tossing away more rubble until a couple of brick stairs were exposed. A waft of foul-smelling air blew up, but disappeared just as quickly. “Give me a hand here.”

They cleared away enough of the remaining debris to reveal stairs leading down into a darkened passageway. Jack grabbed the lamp. “Stick close and watch how you go.”

They stepped down into a broad brick corridor draped with cobwebs. An army of
saltericchi
spiders jumped ahead of them, vanishing into darkness. Yasmin said, “Our friends are back. Where does this lead?”

“You’ll see.”

The flickering oil lamp threw eerie shadows around the walls. They fumbled on until the corridor ended at a plastered archway, pitch darkness beyond. “Let’s have some light on the situation.” Jack raised the lamp and they moved under the archway.

Yasmin gasped as they entered an enormous round room. It appeared about sixty feet wide and almost as high. All across the floor massive blocks of barreled limestone were scattered in total disarray, the remains of Roman columns. Debris from the partially collapsed roof had spilled into the room.

But it was the circular walls that were most impressive. Decorated with at least a dozen six-feet-high and three-feet-wide marble slabs that were set into the plaster, the slabs had been chiseled by stonemasons to resemble colossal unrolled scrolls. Half depicted battle scenes; the other half were inscribed in Latin. Most were cracked and had huge chunks missing, as if damaged when the limestone columns had collapsed into the room.

Jack stepped back to get a proper look, lamplight flickering over the marble. He ran his fingers over portions of the chiseled inscriptions, the borders decorated with theatrical images of wild animals, monsters, and sylphs.

“Is this the rotunda you talked about?” Yasmin asked.

Jack nodded. “This one’s part of a luxury private villa. It’s an exercise in vanity, really.”

“What do you mean?”

“The marble scrolls are a sort of historical tapestry, depicting glorious past deeds, some of them a record of the villa owner’s and his ancestors’ achievements.” Jack moved closer to study the marble, using his sleeve to remove a thick layer of dust. “According to this inscription, he was a man called Cassius Marius Agrippa.”

“Was he someone famous?”

“If he was I’ve never heard of him. The ancient Romans loved the grand gesture. Their city was full of monuments, statues, and plaques to the movers and shakers of their world. Important figures liked to blow their own horn.”

“So he could have been famous.”

“Well, maybe not, Yasmin. Anyone worth their salt or with an ego complex had a bust made of themselves, or a statue commissioned. Some just liked to have their personal achievements inscribed for posterity, like Agrippa here.”

“What did he do?”

“A whole bunch of things, according to this. Agrippa was a man of many parts. Roman army general, consul, businessman.”

A portion of one of the inscriptions drew Jack’s attention and he
put
the lamp on top of one of the limestone blocks and climbed up. He grimaced in pain as he reached the top and gripped his leg. “Ouch, that hurt.”

“What’s wrong?”

“A twinge in my thigh.”

“Your wound?”

“Yep.”

“Be careful, take it easy.”

Jack used his elbow again to wipe off dust from the marble. He carefully ran a finger over the stone as if he were reading Braille. “I also think this guy Agrippa may have been in love.”

“With who?”

“Himself. His list of his achievements seems endless. On top of everything else Cassius Agrippa was—”

“Was what?”

Jack held the lamp closer to the marble, light flickering over the inscription as his brow creased with shock. “There’s something amazing up here. Come and see for yourself.”

LELA STUMBLED OVER
a hill of rubble. She felt totally confused as she halted in the middle of a cobbled Roman street, the remains of shops and villas on either side. “Where are we? This place is a total maze. Why do I have the feeling that we’re lost, Ari?”

They were far past the entrance passageway, the string of lightbulbs had ended, and Ari used his lamp. Ahead, half a dozen passageways led in different directions. High above them was a metal trellis set in the roof, the hint of street light filtering down, the vague sounds of traffic and a distant church bell.

Ari swung the lamp to create a bigger spread of light, then peered up at the metal trellis above. “I read about these tunnels. They crisscross Rome. So there have to be other exits.”

“I hope so. We can’t go back the way we came with the police around.”

Ari moved left but as he did his balance went and he teetered on the edge of a huge shaft, the lamp swinging in his hand to reveal that it dropped away into bottomless darkness.

“Ari!” Lela grabbed his arm and managed to pull him back in.

He wiped perspiration from his brow. “That was pretty close.”

A second later, Ari’s cell phone rang and he flicked it on, heard a voice, and said, “Go ahead.” He covered the mouthpiece and said back to Lela. “It’s base, in Tel Aviv.”

“What do they want?”

“They’ve got a positive ID on the Arab.”

Yasmin gripped Jack’s hand and he pulled her up to join him on the limestone block. She found her balance and held on to him as he read from a damaged section of the marble. “What does it say?” she asked.

Jack touched the chiseled lines with his forefinger. “According to this, Cassius Agrippa was a commander in Roman-controlled Syria. It doesn’t say where in Syria but it does mention it was at the same time as the governorship of Pontius Pilate, who controlled Palestine.”

“Go on.”

“Cassius Agrippa claims a long list of personal achievements. But what’s particularly interesting is this one: ‘Portavit sicco suus officium quod sentio quod neco Nazarene notus ut electus vir.’”

“Give it to me in plain English, professor.”

“It says: ‘He carried out his duty and judged and put to death the Nazarene known as the chosen man.’”

Jack took a worn, leather-bound notebook from his back pocket and jotted down the Latin words inscribed on the marble. “That’s all I can make out. After that there’s a big gap where the inscription’s been damaged. The ‘chosen one’ was another term used to describe the messiah at that time. By ‘chosen man’ I’ve a feeling they mean the same thing.”

“Is this the same commander who carried out the execution in Dora?”

“I’ve a gut feeling it may be. Father Novara and Father Kubel were both archaeologists and must have figured out some sort of connection to the Nero marbles inscription. Why else would the drawing be in the file?”

“Does it say where the execution took place?”

Jack followed the inscription with his finger. “No. Big chunks of the writing are missing here too.”

Yasmin frowned as she looked around the rotunda scrolls. “Why do you think Cassius Agrippa wanted all this mentioned in his inscription?”

Jack thought about it. “Probably simple vanity. In the years after Jesus’ death his name would have spread as Christianity grew. Jesus’
legend
would have been well-known in Rome. Judging by Agrippa’s long list of triumphs the guy had a big ego. Maybe he wanted to stake his claim for posterity and suggest he played a part in the drama of Jesus’ death.”

“I don’t get it. Why isn’t a significant piece of history like this well-known, Jack?”

“Newly discovered Roman sites are being uncovered almost every day by construction workers. References to Jesus’ followers are a dime a dozen. This one doesn’t even mention Jesus by name. Let’s face it, if someone translated the inscription it probably wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense without some kind of context.” Jack finished writing in the notebook and flipped it shut.

“Isn’t there any more?” Yasmin asked.

“Nothing worth talking about. And the rest of the inscription is destroyed forever.” Jack frowned as he climbed down off the limestone, careful not to strain his leg.

Yasmin said, “You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”

“If we’re talking about the same messiah that the world knows as Jesus—and remember, we’re talking about the same time period, so it’s probable—then this poses a huge question. Everyone knows that in the gospels Jesus was sentenced to death and crucified in Jerusalem by Pontius Pilate.”

“Go on.”

“So how could a commander, Cassius Agrippa, serving almost eighty miles away in Syria, have been responsible?” Jack offered up to Yasmin his hand.

She took hold of it and Jack added, “If my sense of direction’s right, we’re under or near the Vatican. Ease yourself down.”

Yasmin slithered down into his arms.

Jack released her and then closely inspected portions of the shattered marble. “This area is probably normally out of bounds to anyone but Vatican officials with the authority to be down here.”

“What are you saying?”

Jack slapped a hand over the damaged portion of the marble. “It
all
seems a bit convenient. What if someone deliberately defaced the marble to hide the full inscription? Some of this damage could just as easily have been inflicted with a hammer or chisel as by falling debris.”

“Where does that leave us?”

“Nowhere, except with a bunch of questions. The big one being, how could Jesus have been crucified in two places?”

“Any suggestions that make any kind of sense?”

Jack considered, and then an excited tone crept into his reply: “Only this. What if two messiahs existed at about the same time?”

“Are you serious?”

“As weird as it sounds, it’s about all I can think of. And it poses a couple of mind-blowing questions. Did this second messiah have any relationship to the Jesus of history that we know of? Did their two stories connect in some way?”