The Vesuvius Isotope (The Katrina Stone Novels) (22 page)

Alyssa must have noticed me staring. “The inscription on the plaque refers to a Gospel story. Christ appears to Mary Magdalene dressed as a gardener.”

“This statue is Mary Magdalene?”

“The statue is called
Modesty
.” It was a non-answer. “It’s the third in di Sangro’s triad of artistic excellence.”

“She hardly looks modest,” I said.

“Exactly. Just as
The Dead Christ
hardly looks dead. This statue is an allegory of wisdom. It represents a veiled Isis. This chapel was erected on the site of an ancient Temple of Isis. Di Sangro had this statue placed in the exact location where a statue of Isis once stood. This one is making the statement attributed to the veiled Isis for centuries.”

“What statement?”

“Nature loves to hide.”

She paused to allow me to fully absorb the meaning of the sentence and then continued. “Like I said before, di Sangro was very selective about what messages he left behind for posterity. One of his most public pursuits was a quest for an ‘eternal flame.’ Near the end of his life, he claimed to have actually invented one, but of course he never published the details of the science so nobody can verify today whether or not the flame was real. The claim might have been a chemical reference exclusively—a chemical element or mixture that could burn without ever dying. But I don’t think so.

“This statue, the veiled Isis, is exactly where it belongs. But the statue of
The Veiled Christ
is misplaced. It was intended to go in the underground chamber. Di Sangro detailed in his plans for this chapel that
The Veiled Christ
—the Christ not really dead, but merely resting—would go in the center of the underground chamber. Beside it would be di Sangro’s eternal flame.

“The metaphor is obvious. Di Sangro was seeking immortality. He was seeking a substance that could restore life to the dying, a substance capable of doing exactly what our nardo document describes.

“What if di Sangro found the first evidence of his ‘eternal flame’ in the Villa dei Papiri? Or what if he found it at another one of the secret locations in which we know Cleopatra hid documents? That might have been his reason for exploring the villa, once it was rediscovered, with such a passion in the first place. It might have been his reason for following Cleopatra’s example of burning his own research notes. It might have been his reason for erecting a tribute to her patron goddess, on the site of a former Temple of Isis. What is clear is that his quest for immortality led di Sangro to those papyrus scrolls.

“Now, consider the nardo document. Put it in the context of the 1750s when the Villa dei Papiri was being excavated. Had di Sangro discovered a similar text, there is no doubt he would have pursued it in secret.

“An extensive network of Herculaneum document hunters grew up out of the discovery of the scrolls in the villa. I am talking about some of the most powerful leaders in the world. Certainly, they sought treasure—the statues, bronzes, coins, jewels. All of those things were pillaged rampantly when Pompeii and Herculaneum were discovered—you saw a large collection of the recovered pieces in the archeological museum. But they also sought the science that had been introduced to the world by the Ptolemy leaders in Alexandria.

“And remember, any science considered too radical in di Sangro’s time was thought to be magic or witchcraft or the work of the devil. One had to hide not only from the Church but also from anyone
else
who was pursuing the same goals. A competitor could either usurp the work or simply turn the rival in to the Church authorities.

“Katrina, I think this rivalry is still active today. I am trying to sort out the details of exactly who knew about di Sangro’s work and who else has known about the papyrus scrolls in general over the centuries. It’s a daunting task. But I can tell you this, the more I look into it, and the more I learn who has been involved with this discovery since the 1750s, the more I feel that… I’m not losing my mind. Someone really is trying to kill me.”

I looked over at the woman who had just that afternoon saved my life, and I decided that I owed it to her to return the favor. “I know who it is,” I said.

Since, therefore, it cannot be doubted that this is a true light, similar to our candles or lamps, and has burned three months and some days without any reduction in the material used for fuel, it can rightly be called perpetual, much more so than those imaginary lights which can sometimes be found in the ancient tombs and any other light which does not have the same properties as mine, i.e. all the qualities of other natural flames, does not deserve to be called eternal.

-Letters of Raimondo di Sangro (1710–1771)

Chapter Fifteen

Jeff is lying on his back. He is naked. He is dead. A pool of red ripples outward from his body, spreading quickly over the deck of my yacht. From my vantage point on the terrace of our bedroom, I scream.

I turn and run. I tear through the bedroom, down the hallway, and onto the staircase. I descend the stairs two at a time, but it is dark, and the farther I run the more disoriented I become. When I reach the lower floor, I fumble in the dark until I find a light switch. When I flip it on, a brilliant light fills my vision. I shield my eyes.

But then my eyes adjust, and I realize that the light is not blinding after all but soft and comforting. And I am not in my house but in a beautiful underground chamber.

And Jeff is not dead. He is sleeping.

Jeff lies in the center of the space, illuminated gracefully by a single eternally burning flame. It is not a red pool of blood surrounding him but a soft veil, spun from a delicate silk of the purest white I have ever seen.

I approach him. He awakens and smiles at me. His smoky blue eyes shine gently up at me through the translucent veil. Slowly, he slides the veil down over his body. Its thin, iridescent folds puddle at his feet.

“Morning, love,” he says and sits up.

I begin to sob uncontrollably, and a look of confusion darkens Jeff’s countenance.

“What is it, Kat?” he asks with concern.

I can barely speak. “I thought… I thought you were… you were dead!”

Jeff wraps a comforting arm around me. I bury my face in his chest and throw my arms around his shoulders. I can feel the bullet hole in the center of his back. But I also feel him breathing.

“Come with me.” Jeff takes my hand and leads me out of the chamber.

When we emerge, we are in the depths of a beautiful private garden. Slowly, lazily, we stroll through, silently enjoying the fragrances and the beauty of the lush foliage around us.

“Open-toed shoes are OK,” Jeff says, and across his face spreads an enormous mischievous grin.

I stare up at him for a moment, questioning.
Huh? Open-toed shoes? Did I hear that right?
Then I feel a similar grin crossing my own countenance. “That’s good,” I say. “I’m so glad to hear that because I have lots of cute ones that are very comfortable this time of year.” I pause to think before asking, “What do I wear them with?”

Game on.

We walk.

Jeff is no longer naked, but he still bears the bullet hole through the center of his chest that somehow does not kill him.

I ponder his latest puzzle. It is about open-toed shoes. But in the end, it will have very little, if anything, to do with shoes. And I already know everything I need to solve it.

“Hmm,” Jeff says. “What to wear them with?
Nothing too revealing. Nothing flashy. Nothing tight. You don’t want to call attention to yourself. It’s a different culture.”

Jeff leads me to a climbing vine and wraps one of its tendrils around a finger, staring at the winding plant with fascination. “Isn’t she amazing?” he asks.

“Who?”

His response is a single word. “Nature.”

I frown. “Sometimes she’s a bitch.”

Jeff chuckles. “Yes,” he says. “She loves to hide. But you can find her.”

“How?” I plead, with tears once again springing to my eyes. “I don’t understand any of these things! Chemistry is not my area! Egyptology even less so!”

“You’re wrong,” he says. “You are exactly in your element. The answers are right in front of you. Just open your eyes and see them.”

We come to a gentle river flowing lazily through the vast garden. There is no bridge across it. Jeff releases my hand and smiles at me, and then he winks and dives into the water.

I want so badly to dive in after him, but something holds me back. Instead, I watch in silence as my husband swims across the flowing river. When he reaches the far bank and emerges, he is naked again, his wet skin glistening in the brilliant sunlight. He looks back across the water and blows me a kiss. Then he turns and disappears into the lush greenery along the river bank.

I turn around. Before me stands my house, and I suddenly realize that the garden I am standing in is the one in my own backyard.

My hotel room’s alarm clock blared. I struggled not to hear it, to stay asleep, because to wake would be to lose him again. But waking was inevitable, as it always is at such beautiful moments, and I finally conceded.

I awoke with tears in my eyes. It had been so nice to be with Jeff again. It was now so painful, so cold, so harsh to be alone in reality once more.

For a few moments, I lay staring at the hotel room ceiling, reflecting on the dream. It had felt so real. But it was nonsense. How could The Game exist in a dream? How could Jeff taunt me with a secret in a dream?

I shook off my confusion, sad beyond description that it was only a dream, and that he was still gone.

Beside me, I heard my purse vibrate. I reached toward the nightstand and rummaged through my purse until I found one of the iPhones. It was Jeff’s.

There was a new text message from John. It read simply:
Jeff. Call me.

I felt a sudden chill, and I pulled the hotel bedding more tightly over my body, all too aware that it was not the least bit cold in the room.

John knows that Jeff is sick
, I thought.
He knows because he diagnosed Jeff. And he diagnosed Alexis. That’s the reason for his concern. Now that I have spoken to Alexis, he probably knows that I know. About both of them. But he doesn’t seem to know anything further about what Jeff has been doing in Italy.

Why not?

I deleted his text and pulled the bedding even more closely around my body, but I was still shivering. Because he was the link. John. Jeff’s best friend. John was the only connection.

The sudden, unambiguous revelation was paralyzing. John was the only common denominator between my husband and my daughter—two people with dramatically different lives, living in different cities, and with no genetic relationship. They shared nothing except for the same, very rare form of cancer. And the same personal physician.

As I forced myself to emerge from the warm cocoon of a Naples hotel room bed, I was terrified that my husband had been murdered on the orders of his best friend.

Our attorney sounded both surprised and perturbed to be receiving a business call, on his home phone, at 10:30 p.m.

He sounded even more perturbed when I asked if my husband had made any recent changes to his will, and when I made it clear I needed to know the answer to that question immediately. My voice was steady, but my hands were shaking, as I could only hope attorney-client privilege would compel his silence should Jeff’s murder be discovered before I could finish what I needed to do.

That was three days ago.

I was surprised to discover in myself that morning a sense of calm. It had come to me quietly in the form of a wonderful, terrible, haunting, poetic, and bittersweet dream.

I was still thinking of the dream as I sat on a Naples public bus once again, absentmindedly nibbling a pastry and sipping hot coffee. I marveled at the mysterious core of the human psyche that produces dreams like a belching volcanic crater buried deep in the mind, the Freudian Phlegraean Fields.

My mother used to tell me that all dreams have meaning. Despite my innate sense of logic, I believed her. Now, I knew that the Jeff in my dream was not really Jeff. He was the subliminal materialization of my own subconscious, manifest in the familiar form of my most trusted loved one. The objective part of my mind had finally found a way to speak, and I had heard it.

I
was
exactly in my element.

I had spent a lifetime accruing an encyclopedic knowledge of biology and had rigorously educated myself in the fields of cancer research and drug discovery. I had the insatiable inquisitiveness of a lifelong researcher and the critical eye of a highly trained scientist. I was following the trail of the man I loved more than anything and whom I knew better than anyone else in the world. My memory was as sharp as a razor. And I would stop at nothing. If I could not solve this puzzle, it could not be solved.

The more my self-doubt dissolved, the more clearly I understood what I needed to do. Alyssa would be expecting my call, but she would have to wait. Despite Jeff’s warning to me in his text message, he himself actually
had
trusted someone. He had trusted just a single soul. And with that one act, he had instantly created a long list of those whom he had deliberately
not
trusted.

Everyone we knew was on it.

Her too.