CHAPTER ONE
2667 Words
CHAPTER ONE
The Appian Way in the suburbs of Rome, that same day
Despite the danger that they had been followed, despite the need to hurry, Professor Remi Laurent could not help but slow down and look around her in wonder.
She and her partner at the FBI, Special Agent Daniel Walker, strolled down a leafy, cobblestoned avenue. On both sides of the road stretched wide fields, the bucolic view marred somewhat by a cluster of distant apartment buildings to the left. But keep your eyes forward and all you saw was an overgrown road and a couple of old stone monuments on the edge of it.
This was no ordinary road. It was one of the best preserved stretches of the Appian Way, built in 312 BC by the Roman censor Appius Claudius Caecus, expanded over the centuries, and long used by the glorious capital of the Empire as one of the main roads in and out of the city. Leading families, eager to show off their pedigree, built sumptuous tombs along its length, complete with marble plaques boasting of their ancestors’ deeds.
They approached one of those tombs now, a temple in miniature, cracked Corinthian columns still holding up a portion of the roof. Inside lay a pair of shattered sarcophagi. The inscription had vanished, stolen by relic hunters in the early modern period or taken by archaeologists in the twentieth century to one of Rome’s innumerable museums.
A pity either way. It would be nice if the monuments of the past could remain where they were, safe from acquisitive hands.
But that wasn’t how the world worked. If her career as a medievalist hadn’t taught her that, her investigations for the FBI certainly had.
“I think someone’s following us,” Daniel whispered, confirming a sneaking suspicion they had both had since arriving in Italy. “No. Don’t look around. Too obvious. Let’s go look at this tomb.”
They stopped and stared at it. Daniel took out his phone and took a picture of the tomb. As he angled it so she could see he whispered, “Don’t look at the phone, look beyond it. Two men, tan slacks. Dress shirts.”
She looked where he indicated. Several people were in view. An Italian family with a picnic basket looking for somewhere to set up. An old man in dirty clothes carrying a burlap sack, perhaps one of the local farmers. An American tourist couple with a huge camera.
And then the two well-dressed men who had just stopped. One was pointing out into a field and the other looked on, grinning.
Remi and Daniel had just passed that way, and there was nothing worth pointing at, just a field with some cows. Obviously these two men had stopped in order to pretend they were doing something, just like she and Daniel had.
“Looks like the Society of Devout Students has figured out that wall painting too,” Remi grumbled.
They had first learned of the existence of that secretive society, dedicated to the protection of the Gospel of Longinus, on an earlier case. Unfortunately, the society had learned of Remi and her hunt for the cryptex, and decided to try and find it for themselves.
Only a couple of months before, they had even followed her all the way to her latest clue, a faded fresco in the ancient St. Pishoy Monastery in the desert of Wadi El Natrun, Egypt. It had taken Remi many long hours studying photos of the fresco to figure out the message hidden inside it. There had been no text other than a few names and common prayers, but the pictures had seemed unusual.
So every night, after her grueling accelerated training to make her an FBI agent, she brewed some coffee and stared at the images.
And stared.
Weeks of staring and it had finally come to her—the picture was a series of symbols, like most church paintings, but also a clue.
Or series of clues.
It showed Christ, robed and dusky like an Egyptian, reaching out his hand, two fingers extended in the old method of giving a blessing. His fingers pointed to a book, no doubt the Bible, being held by a young man. Next to this scene was a small, stylized city with the Coptic word for Rome painted above it. Beneath the city was a winged lion, the symbol for St. Mark, one of the four gospel saints and the founder of the Coptic church. Next to this figure was an altar laid out with candles and the objects for Communion.
The one detail that caught Remi’s eye the most was a line between the city and St. Mark and the altar. Grass grew out of it, signifying ground. Ground was hardly ever painted in early Christian art. Figures simply floated. Its inclusion here must have held some special significance to the artist.
Once she saw that, all the pieces began to fall into place.
St. Mark under Rome. The Catacombs of St. Mark just outside of Rome. Inside these tunnels for early Christian burials was a chapel dedicated to St. Mark, from which that network of catacombs got their name.
A mural in a monastery far out in the desert of Egypt pointed here, to the early Christian catacombs along the Appian Way just outside Rome. One of the world’s oldest functioning monasteries pointed to one of the world’s oldest Christian burial places.
When Christianity had been a minority religion in the Roman Empire, persecuted by pagan emperors angered that the Christians wouldn’t bow down to them as living gods, the Christians had dug a network of tunnels to bury their dead. Instead of triumphant monuments along the Appian Way with inscriptions dedicating the souls of the departed to Rome’s many gods and goddesses, the Christians buried their dead in secret, out of sight.
The catacombs naturally became meeting grounds for the illegal faith, and besides the tombs there were chapels and meeting rooms. The St. Pishoy Monastery rebus pointed to one specifically—the so-called Catacombs of St. Mark, given its name because of the chapel and several paintings of the winged lion that was the saint’s symbol.
When the answer came to her it hit her like a sledgehammer. Could the secret of the cryptex finally be in her grasp? After all the clues, was the end to her quest finally in reach?
Then came the doubt. The Catacombs of St. Mark had been rediscovered in the late eighteenth century during building works. Treasure hunters, archaeologists, and curiosity seekers had been poking around the catacombs ever since. It was the same with all the other tunnel networks built by ancient Christians. Many had suffered serious damage because of this before the Italian government started to protect them around the turn of the century.
Then there was another doubt. The mural of St. Pishoy Monastery had been painted in the ninth century, long after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine in 313 AD had made Christianity a legal religion in the Roman Empire. Soon it became the dominant religion. Within a few more generations, it was paganism that was banned. The catacombs, no longer useful, were sealed and gradually forgotten.
So by the time of the Egyptian painting and the construction of the cryptex in the Middle Ages, did anyone even know the Catacombs of St. Mark even existed?
Remi decided that they must have. Considering all the secret societies, hidden agendas, and f*******n texts secreted within the vast world of Christianity, a truth that she had only recently come to understand, anything was possible.
And so she had requested some vacation time, purportedly due to exhaustion and a case of nerves thanks to their last case, and booked a flight to Italy. Daniel, also taking some vacation time, had volunteered to come along. He had become almost as eager for the hunt as she had.
But it turned out the Society of Devout Students had cracked the code as well.
Or had they? Remi wondered as she glanced at the two burly men trying very hard to look innocuous. The society had agents everywhere, especially Italy. In fact, their headquarters was in Rome, only a few kilometers away. If they had cracked the code about the same time she had, they should have come and gone by now.
Unless they hadn’t cracked the code. Unless they were monitoring her movements and had followed her here.
It had happened before, when a case had taken her to Luxor. Father De Sanctis of the society had snuck into the local museum, thinking she was having a secret meeting about the cryptex with the director.
“We need to lose them,” Remi said.
“Easier said than done,” Daniel replied. “We’re out in the open and the catacombs are only another kilometer up the road. Our tour is in half an hour, by the way.”
Remi nudged him. “You can be late. You’re always late.”
“I’m not always late!”
Remi smiled. “Just most of the time.”
“We’re both going to be late if we don’t shake these guys.”
Remi studied the tomb they were pretending to photograph. Behind it stood a thin hedge, blocking the view of what she assumed was a field behind it.
A chain strung between two metal poles blocked entrance to the otherwise wide-open tomb. Enough to stop the law-abiding general public, but not an FBI trainee agent on vacation. She stepped over the chain.
“Here we go,” Daniel grumbled, following her.
Resisting the urge to look at the two men following her, she pointing at some imaginary item of interest within the tomb and passed between the columns, Daniel by her side.
Like she had suspected while standing outside, it felt like entering a Roman temple in miniature. There was even an altar, a rectangular stone with Latin writing on it and the bas-relief of a robed woman slumped in grief. The top was bare, with a raised circular portion for burnt offerings.
Beyond this stood the two sarcophagi, made of fine porphyry but now shattered, most likely by treasure hunters long ago. Despite the urgency of their situation, Remi paused to look, tut-tutting at the wanton destruction.
Don’t judge too harshly, she reminded herself. You’re a bit of a treasure hunter yourself.
At least you’re a less destructive one. Most of the time.
She still hadn’t forgiven herself for smashing that medieval ceramic figurine of the Virgin Mary. But what could she do? The clue it contained was hidden inside. It had been made to be smashed.
That was before it was an antique.
Remi put that thought aside and looked around for an escape from the men following her.
The back wall had entirely disappeared, only the bare corner columns still standing, holding up nothing. A few stones lying overgrown in the weeds were all that remained.
Luckily the side walls remained intact, shielding them from view.
“That hedge looks thin enough to push through,” Remi said.
“Sure, I don’t mind getting scraped up on my vacation,” Daniel replied.
“I’ll buy you a pizza and a gelato.”
“You know my heart.”
They peeked out the back of the tomb, looking both ways. The thin strip of the Appian Way they could see from their vantage point was empty. Their pursuers would be here any moment, though. Time to make a move.
Clambering over the heap of rubble, they got to the hedge and, covering their faces to protect them from the branches, pushed their way through. Remi’s blouse caught and got a little tear. Her hands got scratched in several places. A small price to pay.
They stepped through and onto the edge of a broad green field. A few cows grazed placidly not far off, ignoring the two intruders.
“There,” Remi whispered. A low stone fence divided this field from the neighboring one not twenty yards to their left. They made for it, trying to run quickly yet silently. Remi was glad she’d worn running shoes. She hadn’t worn heels since she had joined the FBI. She wondered if she would ever wear them again.
Low voices on the other side of the hedge. The Society of Devout Students or just some tourists?
They didn’t pause to find out. Hurrying to the wall, they hopped over it and crouched behind, now fully out of sight.
“What do we do now?” Daniel whispered.
Good question. She looked around. The field they were now in lay fallow. A farmhouse stood in the distance. Remi hoped the farmer didn’t look out the window and see two strangers hiding behind his boundary wall. The hedge ran along the Appian Way, cutting off the tourist site from private land. It looked thin enough in many places to push back through.
Good, so they could get back to the Appian Way and continue on to the catacombs, but the two men from the society would be sure to find them.
Unless …
Remi peeked over the wall and saw a man push his head and shoulders through the hedge. He was looking the other way. Remi ducked back down before he looked her direction.
Of course. It wouldn’t have taken them long to figure out she and Daniel weren’t in the tomb anymore. They must have realized the only way for them to have disappeared was to have pushed through the hedge. They had probably broken enough of the little branches to leave a clear sign of their passage.
So the men would come through and start searching for them. And she and Daniel had nowhere to hide.
Just then Daniel’s phone buzzed.
“Are you serious?” Remi asked, exasperated.
“Sorry. I have this filtered. It must be important.”
Still crouched behind the wall, he checked his phone. Remi looked over his shoulder and saw it was an email from Keiko Ochiai, assistant director of the Antiquities Division.
“What does she want?” Remi whispered. “We’re on vacation.”
“Pro tip: no one gets a vacation from the FBI.”
He opened the email and angled the phone so she could read it.
“Daniel, there’s a case that requires your immediate attention. Can you and Remi make it back by tomorrow? Apologies, Keiko Ochiai.”
Daniel started typing.
“Dear Assistant Director, we will try to book the next flight. Regards, Special Agent Daniel Walker.”
Remi gasped. “What are you doing? We have work to do here.”
“It wasn’t a request, it was an order. The FBI doesn’t really make requests. At least we get a two for one.”
“A two for one?”
“If you get recalled from vacation, you get two days for every one you miss.”
“That doesn’t help us get into the catacombs before they do!”
“Keep your voice down,” Daniel said. “This is your fault anyway. You have an incredible talent for getting us into trouble. We’re halfway around the world trying to sneak into some ancient catacombs and Assistant Director Ochiai wants us to come in.”
“Why does that count as getting into trouble?” Remi asked.
Daniel looked at her, c*****g an eyebrow. “Have you not been paying attention on our previous four cases?”
Remi laughed, then clapped a hand over her mouth. That had been too loud.
“We’ll need to change our flight. But don’t worry, we still have plenty of time to get there,” Daniel reassured her. “We just need to hide out for a bit and give them the slip.”
“Hey, you two!” a man’s gruff voice shouted in Italian. “What are you doing here? This is private property!”
- Writer
