The Mithras Conspiracy Read online

“You never forget.”

  “How could I? La Sirena deserved a bullet in the head. She betrayed him.”

  Did she? La Sirena had doubled as a Nazi informant in the ghetto. After the war, they said she ratted out Uncle Benjamin to the Nazis. Yet, even with a vigilante gun to her head, she admitted other betrayals but denied ever betraying her beloved Benjamin. The doubts haunted Leone. She had become the scapegoat. But if not her . . . who?

  “You didn’t forget him.” The owner shrugged. “Why should I?”

  Leone had no answer. Both his uncle and father had joined the Polizia di Stato in Rome. But it was the family story of Benjamin that made Leone idolize his uncle. Benjamin had created family turmoil by quitting the Polizia di Stato in opposition to Fascism. His uncle defied his only sibling, who remained with the polizia and even became a party member. The more Leone’s father raved against his brother for resigning and becoming a partisan fighter, the more Leone considered Uncle Benjamin his wished-for father.

  He looked up. The furled table umbrella flapped like a trapped bird. Snowflakes drifted down and danced around the tiramisu. A gust of wind rattled the newspaper and snuffed out the candle flame.

  “Come out of the cold, Marco.” The owner squeezed Leone’s shoulder. “Watch the soccer game inside with the others. Lazio versus Sampdoria.”

  “I prefer to stay outside.”

  “What you prefer are these things.” The owner picked up the cigarette butt from the ashtray. “Didn’t you give these up?”

  Leone rubbed his hands together for warmth. Earth tremors reaching 5.9 magnitude over the last several days. The upswing of an economic and political crisis filling the streets with beggars. Rare snow falling in Rome. The season seemed out of joint, except for the comforting aroma of roasted chestnuts sold by the street vendor.

  “What are you doing for New Year’s Eve?” the owner asked. “The tremors won’t stop our party at the restaurant.”

  “What I’ve always done since the separation from my wife. Work overtime.”

  The owner stepped away to scold a busboy at the other end of the courtyard. Leone riffled newspaper pages to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. His eyes drifted past the uncompleted crossword puzzle to a society column titled “The Return of Rome’s Pride.”

  According to the newspaper, Lucio Piso, an international businessman and philanthropist, now living in Argentina, was returning to Rome—his birth city. Although abandoned by his mother and without a father, he turned his life of rags at home into one of riches abroad.

  Why would one of the world’s richest men return when those who could leave were abandoning the sinking ship of state Italy had become?

  He found his answer in the last paragraph. An avid collector of Roman antiquities, the tycoon claimed DNA tests and ancient records in Constantinople proved he was descended from ancient Roman aristocracy. Lucio Piso believed destiny called him back to Rome. Leone shook his head at the delusion. Outside of his Midas touch, Mr. Moneybags was nothing but a vain and foolish plutocrat whose wealth fed charlatans and con men.

  He flipped the newspaper onto the table and checked his cell messages before leaving for the office. A voice mail from Miriam. She must want to see him after all. As he punched in the retrieval code, he thought of the perfect place for dinner.

  “Ciao, Marco. It’s Miriam. Is there any way you can help my son, Shlomo, find a job with the police? I was too embarrassed to ask in your office. He’s a good boy and just needs some work. It was good seeing you again. Take care.”

  The voice mail plummeted him back to earth, but he couldn’t bear to delete it just yet. A job for Shlomo? As the saying went, it would be easier to find a white fly than a position for the shiftless Shlomo in the Polizia di Stato. But how could he deny her his help?

  It was time to leave for work.

  “How much do I owe . . . tiramisu included?”

  “Nothing.” The owner waved away the question with his hand. “Consider it a gift. You cops keep the bad guys away.”

  “No gifts for me or my men.” He put on the table more than enough euros to cover everything. “Gifts come in pretty boxes . . . but with strings attached.”

  Chapter Five

  “And so the religion swept across the Roman Empire. Archaeologists have unearthed hundreds of chapels from the Black Sea to Hadrian’s Wall and from the German Rhineland to the Sahara Des—”

  The hall door of the Pontifical Gregorian University squealed open at the top of the stairs leading down to the lecture platform. Professor Will Fisher looked up, startled. He let his reading glasses dangle from a lanyard. He clutched the lectern. Was the university rector coming to yank him out of class because of the heresy complaint? He couldn’t stand the humiliation without his friend Jack.

  Thank God. It was only the American student.

  “Now, sir, that you’ve announced your presence, pray tell, what religion I was describing?”

  “Christianity?”

  The lecture hall resounded with the scorn of student hoots.

  “A little late, historically speaking, just like your arrival.”

  Fisher swallowed more cutting words that were welling up. He had no business taking out his anxieties on this student. He himself had once arrived in Rome from Milwaukee, much like this young American, perplexed and lonely in a university with students from over one hundred countries.

  “No, not Christianity.” His tone lost its edge. “The religion was Mithraism and the god, Mithras. The belief emerged among the Romans about a century before Christ. The Mithraists worshipped underground in cave-like spaces to honor their god born of rock.”

  His theatrical instincts compelled him to keep the audience engaged and awake at all costs. Could he stump the brightest student in the course? He looked up the rising rows of benches and called on the Spaniard in the third row.

  “How many mithraeums . . . or mithraea, for you Latin sticklers . . . possibly existed in ancient Rome?”

  “Between seven hundred and two thousand.”

  “Right again.” He should have known the Spaniard would read ahead in the class handouts. “The religion overlapped the later rise of Christianity, declined sharply around the time of Emperor Constantine, and disappeared for good after Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the state religion at the end of the fourth century.”

  The wall clock showed it was time for the last act, last scene of his teaching performance. Like most professors, he chose to speak in Italian. The zest and operatic cadences of the language suited the liveliness of his teaching style. Not for nothing did students consider him the hottest teacher at the Gregorian.

  Looking up the ascending rows of admiring faces, he gestured with his arms for greater effect. His theatrical skills as a former off-Broadway actor in short-lived plays served him well. Every outstanding professor like himself had to be a thespian of sorts. The center of attention, he now enjoyed the role of writer and director of his classroom productions in which he always played the leading role. If only he could live forever in the high of his teaching performances, he wouldn’t need his false friend, Jack, who stabbed him in the back every time they reconciled.

  “In conclusion,” he said, bringing down the curtain, “Ernest Renan, the French scholar, remarked that if it had not been for Christianity, Mithraism would have prevailed in the lands of the Roman Empire.” He packed up his notes. “Do you agree? Be prepared to justify your opinion next class.”

  Excusing himself from after-class questions by his student fans, he hurried, exhausted and exhilarated, to meet Jack. Closing the office door, he rummaged behind a thick volume on the lowest bookcase shelf. He needed Jack to help him in the encounter with the rector. Fisher pulled out a skull-and-crossboned insecticide bottle plastered with poison warnings. A little Jack wouldn’t hurt. Just a tad to steady the nerves. Jack deserved another chance.

 
; Pouring Jack Daniels into a bottle emptied of insecticide as his peculiar brand of aversion therapy didn’t fool the alcoholic demons. His hands moved as if on their own toward the bottle.

  Deliver me from temptation . . . This time I can do it.

  On his knees, he held the bottle in both hands outstretched, his head bent over. His hands inched the bottle closer to his face. He smacked his lips.

  My God, my God, why hast thou forsake—

  Someone knocked on the door and wouldn’t stop. Had the rector come to give him the boot?

  He returned Jack to his hiding place and opened the door with hands atremble.

  Chapter Six

  “Commissario Leone.” Professor Will Fisher winced. “I was expecting the rector. Weren’t you coming tomorrow? I thought that’s what we’d arranged.”

  “Sorry to disappoint. But it’s important we talk now.”

  Why now? He can’t suspect me of murdering Basso, can he?

  “Come in, then.”

  “Is Inspector Renaldi watching your office, as I ordered?”

  “I gave him a key.” Fisher looked up and down the hallway before closing the door. “He’s putting a guard on duty tomorrow.”

  The professor collected books from the sofa and dumped them onto his filing cabinet. Skis propped up against the cabinet clattered to the floor.

  “You need to be careful.” Leone replaced the skis against the cabinet. “You could hurt someone.”

  What does he mean? Could he think I hurt Basso?

  “They belong to Wesley Bemis, my colleague on the Herculaneum dig.”

  “Ah, yes.” Leone consulted his notebook. “The archaeologist from Brigham Young University in America.” He put the notebook away. “Why are you two poking around in Herculaneum?”

  The suspicious tone disturbed Fisher.

  “We’re simply resuming the unfinished excavation at the Villa of the Papyri.” He dialed a combination lock on the top drawer of the filing cabinet and removed a yellow fiberglass case. He placed it on his desk and motioned for his visitor to take a seat on the sofa.

  “Thank you for letting me examine this startling parchment,” Fisher asked, snapping open the case. “How did you get it?”

  “I ask the questions. You answer them.” Leone folded his arms. “Before we get to the parchment . . . How did you and Abramo Basso get along?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Let’s not beat the bush, as you Americans say,” Leone said in English before lapsing back into Italian. “I’ve heard you and Father Basso were enemies.”

  Best not to correct his English. “You think I—”

  “I think nothing yet. Please explain your relationship.”

  Dry-mouthed and wishing Italy had a Fifth Amendment, Fisher explained in a meandering monologue how Basso and he had lived parallel lives. They were classical scholars of renown. They both did groundbreaking research on ancient cults before Fisher’s cantankerous friend had volunteered to help catalogue the entire collection of the Vatican Secret Archives. Each also had a scholarly interest in comparative religion. Basso became a Jesuit priest, but Fisher left the order before taking his vows.

  “I compliment you, Professor Fisher. Your Italian is excellent.”

  “You really think so?” Fisher felt a warm glow inside, the kind his friend Jack could kindle. “That’s good to know.”

  “Yes I do, which is why you’ll understand my question . . . Did you kill Father Basso?”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “They say you two constantly fought when he was on the faculty here.”

  “If we were such bitter enemies, why on earth would he require you to bring me the parchment for examination?” Fisher had had enough. “Did you come to arrest me or discuss the parchment?”

  “Arrest you?” Leone acted surprised. “Who said anything about arrest?” He pointed to the parchment. “What does it say?”

  “I call it the Festus parchment. It’s what experts call a palimpsest, a later writing superimposed on an earlier one. Fortunately, instead of scraping the older writing away, Pope Alexander the Second—”

  “Please, Professor Fisher.” Leone raised his clasped hands up and down. “No history lesson. I just need the translation.”

  “With a touch of ultraviolet light, I detected and translated a few more words than Basso could.” Fisher put on reading glasses. “I’ll now read my translation.” The ex-actor cleared his throat for an audience of one.

  Porcius Festus to Paul of Tarsus, greeting . . . may you be recovered from . . . whenever you see glistening wet clay on a potter’s wheel . . . falling sickness . . . you toil and preach too much . . . rest . . . Junius Annaeus Gallio, my colleague who protected your religious speech in Corinth has agreed to entreat his famous brother, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, to invite you to the learned discussions on religion in Herculaneum at the home of the illustrious . . . who . . . is . . . of Ga . . . Jul . . . Caesar . . . congratulations on your acquittal . . . beware court vipers in Rome . . . fortune is fickle . . . goodbye and be well.

  “If true,” Fisher said, snapping shut the case, “this is a religious bombshell.”

  “What do you mean?” Leone scratched his neck. “I only come across real bombs in my work.”

  Fisher took down a copy of the New Testament from his library shelf. “Some have speculated whether Saint Paul suffered from epilepsy. The Acts of the Apostles in chapter nine states—”

  “I don’t care about Paul’s medical history. What about the learned discussions?”

  “I wish I knew.” Fisher closed the book. “We think the surviving letters between Paul and Seneca, the Roman statesman, author, and tutor to Nero, were all fabrications unmasked after the Middle Ages. Outcast Christians probably authored them to gain respectability by association with a leading figure of the day.” The professor replaced the New Testament on the shelf. “This parchment suggests an even closer connection between Paul and Seneca.”

  “But like you said, just a fantasy of pious Christians.”

  “Like the New Testament, the parchment mentions the two judges who heard charges against Paul. No one, not even the writers of the New Testament, left behind the final verdict when Paul appealed to Nero.” Fisher paused. “This says he was acquitted.”

  “One fantasy piled on another is still a fantasy.” Leone rubbed his chin. “The parchment also mentions Herculaneum where you and Ves . . . Ves . . . Wesley Bemis are excavating,” Leone said, overpowering the foreign W sound.

  “I have a hunch about the missing letters.” Fisher snapped his fingers. “If my feeling about the Festus parchment is right—”

  The first few bars of the theme from The Waltz of the Toreadors sounded on Leone’s cell. “Don’t do anything until I get there,” he said into the phone. “Understand?” He snapped the cell shut. “I must leave at once. Some brutal business at the Ardeatine Caves memorial.”

  “Do you still suspect me?”

  “I recommend you not leave Rome.”

  Chapter Seven

  Cardinal Gustavo Furbone strode across St. Peter’s Square on a mission. He breezed past a Swiss guard checkpoint on the way to the secret archives of the Vatican. Rushing through corridors, he flashed identification in the face of a curator brash enough to offer challenge. The ends of his red sash swished around him like the tails of angry cats.

  What was the new pope thinking? Celestine VI had ordered a complete cataloguing of the Vatican Secret Archives. Thousands upon thousands of documents lay on shelving stretching just over eighty-five kilometers. These dust-shrouded catacombs, where the written word sat putrefying, reeked of mildew and death. Furbone shrank from the archives as much as possible. But only he was the caretaker of the cemetery. He had to make that absolutely clear.

  The pope’s rash decision had enabled Abramo Basso to imperil the Chu
rch with the discovery of the Festus parchment. How many other unknown papers and books lay buried, waiting to damage Church interests if they ever resurfaced? As cardinal librarian and archivist of the documentary cemetery, he alone had the power to resurrect a document. Celestine VI compounded the danger by appointing as prefect of the secret archives a Vatican outsider, not even a cleric.

  The cardinal tromped up the white marble staircase to the Meridian Hall on the first floor of the Tower of Winds. He stormed into a side room where Carlos Stroheim, the new prefect, sat slicing an apple on his desk. Grunting a greeting, the prefect carved the apple in half, then quarters, and finally eighths. He lined up the pieces with skin-cracked hands that were red and raw like crab claws. “Now, what can I do for you, Your Eminence?”

  “You can hand over the Festus parchment.”

  They said this stooped half-breed with the hawk nose of a South American aborigine so loved the past he even slept nights in the secret archives despite staff objections.

  “I would if I had it.” The prefect squirted sanitizer liquid on his hands from a bottle and rubbed them together. Stroheim offered a glass jar to the cardinal, who seemed offended by the disappointing aesthetics of the prefect’s pocked face. “Care for some?” The jar held what looked like small black marbles.

  “What are they?”

  “Roasted hormigas culonas . . . literally translated . . . big-assed ants.”

  “Ugh.” The cardinal gagged and waved away the bottle. “How disgusting.”

  “On the contrary.” Stroheim tumbled out ants from the jar. “A rare delicacy from my region of Colombia.” Eyes fixed on the cardinal, the prefect took his time crunching the ants before swallowing them with an audible gulp. Dabbing at the corners of his mouth with a napkin, he switched on a gold-toothed smile reeking of insolence.

  The cardinal knew all too well the source of this insolence. Stroheim and the future Celestine VI had become fast friends in Nigeria, where the Colombian archival expert had modernized governmental records beyond all expectation in an astonishingly brief time. The pope did not forget his friend when the office of prefect fell vacant. Furbone had to manipulate the Colombian savage so as not to antagonize the pope.