The Mithras Conspiracy Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 M. J. Polelle

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lido Press, Sarasota, Florida

  www.mjpolelle.com

  Edited and designed by Girl Friday Productions

  www.girlfridayproductions.com

  Cover design: Paul Barrett

  Project management: Sara Addicott

  Cover image: eZeePics/Shutterstock

  ISBN (paperback): 978-0-9600863-0-6

  ISBN (ebook): 978-0-9600863-1-3

  First edition

  To my wife, Donna, with me every step of the way, and to my children, Mark, David, Beth, and Daniel.

  Prologue

  AD 392

  December 25

  Rome, Italy

  In the century-old Baths of Caracalla, the potbellied Roman police officer known as the vigilis pounds his club on the door. “Open in the name of Emperor Theodosius.” Flaming torches illuminate the mob’s rage. “You are all under arrest.” Silence from inside the room. The officer kicks the door open. Crumbling like the empire, red brick powders his face. Its chalky grit peppers his tongue and tickles his nostrils.

  A ferret-faced informer slinks forward, jangling a ring of keys. He gives the ring to the officer and takes a gold coin in return. The officer rattles a key into the lock. The door moans open on rusted hinges. Like a serpent on fire, the mob undulates down the narrow, twisting rock-hewn stairs after the winded officer.

  In the grotto, the mob brushes the officer aside and confronts the congregation. Fifteen men and seven youths cower wide eyed behind a mitered and scarlet-robed priest muttering prayers.

  The attackers overturn a table set with bread loaves and jars of red wine in celebration of the day. From their cloaks, the mob pulls out axes and knives. They hack and stab. Blood and wine slick the white-tiled floor.

  The mob leader struts behind the altar, where a sheet conceals the object of his suspicions. He rips off the sheet. In the shadowy glow of a brazier, he discerns a marble statue.

  The statue depicts a bare-chested youth glaring with opal eyes. Yellow curls dangle under a stocking cap. Clothed in alien pants, the youth sits astride a bucking bull. He plunges a dagger into its flank with one hand and pulls up its snout with the other. A snake and a dog leap up in frozen motion to lap blood from the beast’s wounds.

  The mob clamors for the leader to mark the statue.

  Claiming kinship to the illustrious Piso clan, a grizzled centurion—one of the worshippers attacked by the crowd—staggers up from the floor. He suffers another frenzy of fists and knife stabs before falling again.

  A stonecutter chisels the sign of the cross into the forehead of the pagan god.

  The cavern echoes with cries of “Hail to Jesus the Christ.”

  The centurion screams a curse of eternal vengeance on the attackers and their religion just before a knife slits his throat.

  Chapter One

  The Near Future

  December 27

  Rome, Italy

  Commissario Marco Leone of the Polizia di Stato sighed over the water-soaked corpse in a black cassock lying facedown near the Four Heads Bridge. The Tiber buried its victims no better than Rome buried its past. The writhing whirlpools of the mud-yellow river concealed tree limbs, rocks, and who knew what other dangers. His grandmother used to wag a finger in warning. The overthrown gods of old reached from the past to drown little boys wandering too near.

  Do they also take down priests?

  “The case is yours,” said the carabinieri police officer standing near Leone.

  “Not what we agreed to. It’s your turn.”

  When he’d joined the police, they told him the jurisdiction between the carabinieri and the Polizia di Stato was like spaghetti—snarled up and slippery.

  “Just because a drunk or suicide drowns in the Tiber?” The officer puffed his chest, which was crisscrossed by a white bandolier. “That’s not important enough for us.”

  Not important enough? Everyone knows these presumptuous carabinieri have red stripes running down the sides of their navy-blue pants so they can find their pockets.

  “Come on, Marco. I’m busy with family this Christmas season.” He made the sign of the cross with a grin. “You’re Jewish. You have the time.”

  “Then convert.” Leone shook his head. “I’m leaving for Chicago.” The top brass of the Polizia di Stato had selected him for a professional enrichment program with the Chicago Police Department. He had to leave in two days if he wanted to escape the hidebound traditions of life in the eternal city. They didn’t call it the New World for nothing.

  A medical examiner slipped on latex gloves and eased the dead man faceup on the river walkway. Leone felt the fish eyes of the corpse boring through him. Sores dotted the face like salted cod too long in water. An eyelid missing. Bits of lip gone. The Tiber gods had collected their toll.

  The examiner crouched down, slipping his hand under the cassock with a pickpocket’s finesse. He fished out a plastic card from a wallet.

  “Who is he?” Leone asked.

  “Abramo Basso.” The examiner scrutinized the card. “Connected to the Vatican Library.”

  “Abramo Basso?” Leone shook his head in disbelief. Abramo Basso. The name of his childhood chum hit him hard in the stomach like a sucker punch.

  They had grown up together as dead-end toughs in the ghetto of Rome before gentrification. His best pal converted to Christianity and became a priest-scholar of classical studies. They fought. He felt guilty for refusing Abramo’s olive branch. They lost touch. Each escaped the ghetto in his own way.

  Leone knelt next to the corpse and examined it closely. Someone had burned the numerals 3, 6, and 5 into the skin. He had to find out who.

  “I’ll take this case after all.” He looked up at the carabiniere. “This man was my friend.”

  Leone poked numbers on his cell and told his secretary, “Cancel my plane ticket to Chicago.”

  Chapter Two

  Back in his office, Commissario Marco Leone looked at the wall clock—4:25 p.m. Abramo Basso’s sister would arrive at 4:30 p.m. sharp for her appointment. She had the punctuality of a Prussian. He adjusted his shirt collar and smoothed the hair on his head to camouflage a thin patch. She had once, so long ago, smoothed his hair that time in the rain when they strolled arm in arm over the cobblestones of Campo dei Fiori, and she had—

  The office door swung open. His secretary announced, “Signora Miriam Sforno here to see you, Commissario.”

  Sforno? Wasn’t her late husband’s surname Adorno?

  “Bring her in.” He flicked lint from his trousers.

  Clutching a yellow fiberglass case to her chest, she limped toward him. Her hobble had grown worse since they last met. And it was all his fault.

  He arose from his desk and pecked her on the cheek. Touching her shoulder, he said, “You’re as young as I remember.”

  “Fibbing was never your strong point, Marco.” She grazed his cheek with a butterfly brush of her hand. “Don’t change.”

  She dabbed at the misting in her eyes with a handkerchief. Just maybe the past could co
me alive. Did she feel the same way as he did?

  “Abramo told me to give you this . . . if anything happened to him.” She broke out sobbing and twisted the handkerchief.

  He took the case from her and placed it on a credenza. He guided her to the chair next to his desk.

  “Before I forget, thank you for the money,” she said. “It was a hard time for you and me.”

  Her father had raged at Leone for crippling his daughter. Miriam’s mother had died unexpectedly while Miriam recovered in a hospital. Miriam’s father lost his job soon after. Marco and Miriam’s plans of a life together were put on hold until they withered over time. She went her way; he went his. She married, had one child—a loser son—and lost her husband. Marco married, had one child—a disaffected daughter—and lost his wife to another man.

  “What money?”

  “Good thing you’re not a card player.” She smiled. “Shortly before his death, Abramo told me the money came from you.”

  “It was the least I could do.” He fidgeted in his chair. “I was driving at the time of the accident. Not you.”

  “Still beating yourself up?” She leaned toward him. “You know perfectly well the police blamed the other driver.”

  “If I hadn’t—”

  “Enough.” She waved her hand, brushing aside the topic. “They say you’re divorced.”

  “Yes, but it’s a long story. Maybe we could discuss it over dinner.”

  “Dinner?” She pulled back. “I’d like that . . . but I don’t think it’s possible.”

  Of course. How tactless. She still grieved for her brother. He had to keep things on a professional basis, for now. “Is the parchment in the case?”

  She nodded, averting her eyes from the credenza. “My brother found the parchment while working in the Vatican Library. He took it because he feared the cardinal in charge, Gustavo Furbone, would suppress it. They quarreled about it when—”

  “Furbone?” He leaned back in his chair. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Do you know him?”

  “I know him all right.” Gustavo Furbone, then a careerist monsignor on the make, had once appeared at headquarters for an ecumenical blessing of police vehicles with a hippie rabbi. Another cockamamie idea cooked up by his boss, the questore, Pietro Malatesta. While the patchouli-scented rabbi murmured prayers, Furbone sprinkled holy water on police cars. Leone refused to let his undercover car be sprinkled. Furbone fumed, but the car remained a heathen. Leone lost track of the cleric except to note his steady ascension on the escalator of Vatican politics. “Please continue, Miriam.”

  “Abramo told me the cardinal threatened him if he didn’t return the parchment.”

  “Idle ranting perhaps?”

  “My brother didn’t think so. He was scared.” She leaned forward again, her voice tremulous. “Abramo came home one evening to find burglars ransacking his apartment. They pushed him down and fled.”

  The telephone rang. He let it go to voice mail.

  “Abramo wanted Professor Will Fisher to examine the parchment. He’s an American at the Gregorian university in town. My brother said that after himself, Fisher was the next best authority on early Christianity.”

  “Christianity?” Leone paused. “That’s what this is all about?”

  “I don’t know.” She put her handkerchief into her purse. “He said the less I knew, the better for me.” She lowered her voice. “But he did say its contents . . . if true . . . could rattle the Church.”

  “Did my men make you identify your brother at the morgue?”

  “They said they didn’t need me. A fellow priest identified him.”

  Good. She was spared the sight.

  “Did he ever mention the numbers three . . . six . . . five to you?”

  “No . . . why?”

  “Miriam.” He ran a finger under his shirt collar. “Before we go any further, you must know I have a special interest in this case.”

  “Naturally. You and my brother, always getting on each other’s nerves, yet mirror images of each other. That’s why you couldn’t get along.”

  She reached across the desk and took his hand.

  “He wanted you involved if anything happened to him. Despite the quarrels, he trusted and respected you . . . though he’d never tell you to your face.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” he said, looking into her eyes.

  “Please, Marco.” She removed her hand. “I’m a married woman.”

  “But . . . But I heard your husband died.”

  “I remarried recently. His name is Rabbi Elia Sforno.”

  Leone’s hopes tumbled back into the tomb of his memories.

  Chapter Three

  “After you drop me off at headquarters, check out the vandalism at the Ardeatine Caves national memorial.” Commissario Marco Leone turned to Inspector Riccardo Renaldi for a response. The inspector mumbled assent with eyes fixed straight ahead and hands squeezing the steering wheel.

  “Why won’t you let me do my job in the Basso case?” the inspector said, glancing across at his superior in the passenger seat. “My duty is to do the spadework.”

  “This case is a personal matter.”

  “You don’t think I’m up to the job, right?”

  “That’s not it.” But, truth be told, having the police chief as his application reference greased the wheels of Renaldi’s admission to the Polizia di Stato. “Abramo Basso was my friend. I simply owe him and his sister.”

  “Exactly why you shouldn’t get so involved. You can’t be objective.”

  Leone didn’t need unsolicited advice from Il Piccolino . . . the little guy . . . the moniker of one barely over a meter and a half in elevator shoes. With a nasty Napoleon complex to boot. Lucky for Renaldi the polizia no longer had a rigid height requirement.

  “Is this about your estranged wife?” the inspector asked, turning a corner.

  “She’s got nothing to do—”

  “Look.” Renaldi pointed ahead to a crowd of demonstrators blocking the street. They were burning the prime minister in effigy. Flames shot up from a straw figure hanging from makeshift gallows. The inspector shifted into reverse.

  “Don’t retreat,” Leone ordered. “Avanti.”

  “We need to wait for backup.”

  “Keep going forward . . . that’s an order.”

  The squad car crept ahead. Flashers pulsated blue light. Renaldi switched on the singsong wail of the siren. A red paintball exploded on the hood and splattered the windshield. Leone reached across Renaldi and banged on the horn. The mob surrounded the car and rocked it back and forth. Seconds later a rock shattered the rear window.

  Leone poked a Beretta 92FS pistol out the passenger window. Yelling curses, the mob backed away and opened a path. Almost running down a demonstrator, Renaldi lurched the car forward. Fellini-like flashes of clenched fists and grotesque faces wrapped in rage whizzed past Leone.

  But for him this was no film. Italy was on the brink of collapse. The European Union was locked in negotiations with the playboy prime minister in a last-ditch attempt to arrange a bailout before the country defaulted on its bonds. Things were getting out of hand.

  “Some of those guys were cops,” Renaldi said. “What the hell are they up to?”

  “The police unions have joined the protest against budget cuts.”

  “I don’t care. Cops shouldn’t agitate in the streets.” The inspector turned off the siren and flashers. “Il Duce knew how to handle guys like that.” He hit the steering wheel with his hand. “Communist scum.”

  Protestors held banners proclaiming the coming of proletarian power as the answer. Leone sighed in frustration. Did the protestors even remember what the question was? The empty slogans were dusted off once again. The national future was always the past in disguise. Nothing would ever change. Unless he
got out of the country and out of his rut, neither would he.

  The inspector pulled up in front of headquarters. He put his hand on Leone’s arm. “It is about your wife, isn’t it?”

  “Will you get that out of your head?” He broke away from Renaldi’s touch. “I knew Basso. How he thought. How he felt. I need to handle this case from the ground up.”

  “You two were separated at the time. You weren’t involved with her.”

  “That’s not the point.” Leone got out and looked back through the open door. “The three-year wait for consensual divorce hadn’t quite passed. We were still technically married.”

  “Only because this is Italy.”

  “Nonetheless. You put the horns of a cuckold on me.”

  “OK, OK. You’re a technical cuckold.” Renaldi took off his cap and ran his hand through his hair. “Why can’t you let it go? It’s ancient history.”

  Unlike his own hair, Renaldi had the thick, black wavy hair of a matinee idol that he’d never had and never would have. That must have attracted her.

  Leone rubbed his balding crown. “How do you erase a memory, Riccardo?”

  “By creating new ones.”

  He slammed the car door on the answer.

  Chapter Four

  Scanning the morning headline in the ivy-walled courtyard of Da Pappagallo restaurant, Marco Leone took a final drag on his half-finished cigarette.

  SEISMIC TREMORS UNDER ROME

  He ground the cigarette into a Cinzano ashtray. Cracks in Foundation of Saint Peter’s read the subheading. His eyes moved on to the opening sentence. Investigators are still determining the damage to—

  “December 31.” Surprising him, the owner of Da Pappagallo plunked down a dish of tiramisu with a lighted candle. “It would have been your uncle’s birthday today. He’d be proud of you for finding out his fate after the Nazis captured him.” He patted Leone on the shoulder. “Bravo, Marco.”