The Thieves of Heaven (20 page)

The four continued through the Vatican catacombs. The verbal sparring between Higgins and Brother Joseph left an anxious silence on the group that had yet to break. They eventually arrived at a black iron gate set in granite, flanked by two Swiss Guards. Brother Joseph handed over his credentials along with a letter of authorization. The guards studied the papers as well as the faces of Brother Joseph’s charges before finally allowing them to pass.

After inserting a series of keys, Brother Joseph pulled open the entrance to a set of wide stone stairs. The group walked two abreast, speaking in hushed tones, aware they were descending through time with each step they took. They came out in an area that confined them under a low earthen ceiling. After fifty yards through the stony caves—some natural, some man-made—they arrived at a large blue plastic tarp. Joseph pulled this aside and they all stepped through into a musty area. It appeared to be a traditional archeological dig; dirt floor, dimly lit by a string of construction lights, the ground terraced in three-inch increments, each step labeled. The dig had gone on for seventy-five years under the direction and watchful eye of the Church. While their faith was the purest of the land, the Church hierarchy was keenly aware that controversy always lay inches below the soil. One never knew what artifacts could create unwanted debate.

“Welcome to the Necropolis.” Brother Joseph paused, allowing everyone to absorb the improbable sight before them: an ancient city street. But where there should have been sky above they saw nothing but the foundation of the basilica. “What you see is the coming together of two worlds, of two beliefs. This is a place of burial, both Christian and pagan.”

The confined space in which they found themselves was an actual street no more than six feet wide; on either side were structures made of brick and stone, doorways covered in ancient carvings. The poorly lit road jogged left and right through shadows before falling into total darkness. “This section, excavated over a thirty-year period, contains dozens of elaborate mausoleums, all of which are pagan—except one. The entire area predates Constantine, actually going back two thousand years. Necropolis is a pagan word meaning ‘city of the dead,’ whereas the Christians preferred to call it a
coemeterium
—where the modern word cemetery comes from—which translates to ‘place of sleeping people.’”

Brother Joseph walked up the gently sloping street. The group followed, awestruck at this pagan secret deep below the seat of Christendom.

“This necropolis was explored and excavated by a team of Vatican archeologists beginning in nineteen thirty-nine at the direction of Pope Pius the Twelfth.” Brother Joseph came to an open section. Debris was scattered about here; wall footings poked up through the dirt. “This is all that remains of the first church of St. Peter, our first Pope. The original church, dating from
AD
one fifty, was buried to make way for the first basilica, which was built by Constantine in the fourth century. It was during recent excavations that the most compelling evidence of St. Peter’s life was found.”

The brother pulled a small flashlight from his pocket and shined it just left of where they were huddled. The beam illuminated a large pane of glass set in the granite wall. Beyond lay a room. The bones were hard to distinguish at first, the color not the milky white of TV forensic shows but much darker. The light picked out a tibia, a fibula, and a femur; while the mandible was not attached to the skull and the teeth were scattered about, you could clearly make out the shape of the head: only then did you realize that this pile of bones was once a living being, the warrior saint who was the first leader of the mighty Church.

No matter the backgrounds or religions of the group, it was hard not to be in awe, staring at history, at a life that two thousand years ago was persecuted and brutally ended for its beliefs and teachings, a man who was ridiculed and mocked in death like his teacher before him for his unwavering faith.

Brother Joseph continued in a whisper. “If you were to go straight up from this point, you would be in the center of the Basilica. Four hundred feet above that is the exact center of the dome. The Lord’s Church, literally built upon His most devout disciple, Peter, a name derived from the Latin
petra,
meaning rock.”

“Were there any other bodies found?” Sister Katherine asked.

“He was found alone. His wife’s tomb was never found.”

Everyone appeared surprised except the rabbis.

Brother Joseph smiled. “St. Peter was a married fisherman before his brother Andrew introduced him to Jesus; the celibacy edict didn’t occur for another thousand years. There are remains in the other mausoleums down here but within this particular sepulcher, there were no other bodies. St. Peter’s tomb had rotted away, along with most of the original church he was buried in. But, as you will see, there were many other items that stood the test of time down here. Most are on display upstairs. Peter’s chair, the chains that bound him, parchments in his own hand, some clothes, textiles, clay pots, and the keys…”

The actual museums were crowded. Brother Joseph deftly led them through the strangling throngs at the Gregorian Museum of Etruscan Art, his commanding demeanor parting the crowds as he continued his lecture. Their tour through the various museums was brief, as their focus was not art but rather the intertwined history of the Church and the Vatican. Still, Joseph allowed them brief stops to absorb the magnificence around them. The two nuns were drawn to the ceiling paintings, the rabbis to the sculptures, while Michael and Higgins stopped to peer into the glass display cases containing books and artifacts.

Within the Gregorian Museum, Michael was drawn to the Room of the Jewels. The large cases here displayed priceless jewelry and artifacts. He took a particular interest in a large gold medallion, the face of which depicted a man and woman entwined in each other’s arms. It had been dug up from the necropolis of Vulci and the image of the couple was as pure and detailed as the day it was created some twenty-five hundred years in the past. It was as if the couple’s love had survived undiminished for two millennia. As Michael looked upon them, he felt for the briefest of moments the possibilities of the life that lay ahead for him and Mary. If he could just get through the next hour…

And then Michael reached into his pocket. It was a natural movement, not unlike someone reaching for a tissue, or some money. But Michael was reaching for neither. He palmed the item as he leaned over the display case, apparently admiring the golden medallion one last time. He affixed the brown malleable ball under the case. It was a simple movement, natural, unannounced, and undetected. And it was the same move he performed on four other cases as they made their way through the Gregorian Museum.

At eleven a.m. the main number of the Vatican was called. A woman refusing to give her name and not allowing the attendant a moment to speak stated that she had it on good authority that an abortion rights protest was going to be staged soon in St. Peter’s Basilica. Young university students looking to protest anything until dinnertime, when their convictions would be replaced with hunger pangs. The Vatican, like every country, received such threats on a daily basis. Most turned out to be hoaxes but it only took one ignored caller to end up with a crisis. The head of the Swiss Guard, Colonel Enjordin, was entrusted with the direction of both the Guard and Papal Gendarme and hence the safety and protection of the small nation. He was technically the head of both the military and the police. He was the man in charge. Enjordin treated each threat as if it was real, and reacted to this one accordingly. He had never shut the doors to the Church or her museums based on a threat and he wouldn’t today. But he did decide to increase the number of guards, both uniformed and undercover. He had a new contingent in training. A precautionary exercise like this would be a good test of their diligence. He dispatched thirty-five supplemental Vatican Gendarme to wander the Vatican.

As Brother Joseph’s group stepped into the Sistine Chapel, Michael reached his point of no return. It was 11:16, they still had one hour left before the end of the tour and it would be at least half that before they arrived at the Treasury Museum. Michael would use the time to focus his mind and clear it of any other thoughts: failure, Busch, Mary. He needed all of his concentration to ensure success. He had run the plan through his head over and over to the point where his mind and body would be on autopilot, acting and reacting just like a dancer upon the stage. Through each section of their tour he noted the movements of the guards, both uniformed and undercover. Their routine and timing was as precise as he had noted over the previous days. He knew their patterns, he knew their faces, he even knew their names. Now he noticed that their numbers had increased; there were new faces supplementing the guards and gendarme. And these men looked worried.

The grand masterpiece of the Sistine Ceiling depicted scenes from the Bible, starting with the creation story and working its way through the Great Flood. In 1508, Pope Julius II had commissioned—what in those days was a commission would be considered conscripted slavery today—the artist Michelangelo to create this masterpiece to God. The youthful genius, who was all of thirty-three, was more than reluctant to take the commission. He viewed painting as a less noble pursuit than sculpture, but Michelangelo’s hand was forced both by politics and by inflexible Papal decree. The work would cover over three thousand square feet and ultimately contain over three hundred figures in a room based on the dimensions of Solomon’s Temple. Through appalling conditions Michelangelo had labored nonstop on his back upon a scaffold eighty-five feet in the air. Despite extremes of hot and cold, his inspiration never wavered.

At the front of the chapel, behind the gold and marble altar, was a fresco greater than the ceiling above. Filling the entire wall, it was much darker, more somber, and grimmer in its vision than the illustration overhead. Called The Last Judgment, it pictured God as uncompromising and pitiless, visiting His harrowing vengeance on a degenerate humanity below. In 1534, Pope Clement VII had conscripted Michelangelo for this work. Though Clement was to die shortly thereafter, both his championing of Michelangelo and his will could still be felt to this day. At the same time, the Pope had Michelangelo redesign the Swiss Guard uniforms to incorporate the gold, blue, and maroon colors of his family’s crest. Clement came from the family known as the Medicis; the Italian family of renown; the business and political deities of Renaissance Italy.

Michelangelo had spent four years on the chapel ceiling, a work representing faith and hope; the Supreme Being portrayed as a living, merciful God. But the Last Judgment—which took nearly seven years—could only be viewed as terrifying.

Here, God was depicted as merciless, vengeful. The central figure of Christ was surrounded by humanity, the righteous summoned to Paradise on the left, their bodies floating up from their earthen graves. On the lower right, Christ consigned the damned to Hell, where they were pulled irrevocably down by cloven-hooved beasts. Below the earth, the dark evil eyes of Lucifer gazed with hunger upward at his reluctant minions.