Intervention

12

8:15 P.M., TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2008

ROME

(2:15 P.M., NEW YORK CITY)

The flash of the one hundred million volts of electricity came first, followed by a sputtering crackle as it knifed through the humid air to ground itself on the ancient Egyptian obelisk in the center of Piazza San Pietro. A blink of the eye later came the sharp crack of thunder that literally shook the Fiat.

“What the hell was that?” Sana demanded, before her mind told her exactly what it was.

“Thunder and lightning,” Shawn said disdainfully, although he had jumped nearly as much as his wife had. He’d never seen a bolt of lightning so close. “For God’s sake, calm down! You’re out of control.”

Sana nodded as she looked out the rent-a-car’s windows. In the darkness there were lots of pedestrians on their way home, bent into the wind using their umbrellas like shields against the near-horizontal rain. “I can’t help it. Are you sure we should be doing this?” Sana questioned. “I mean, we’re sneaking into an ancient Roman cemetery on a rainy night to steal an ossuary. It seems more like the script for a horror movie than something appropriate. What if we get caught?”

Shawn drummed his fingers irritably on the rent-a-car’s steering wheel. He too was tense, and Sana’s second thoughts were only magnifying his anxiety.

“We’re not going to get caught,” Shawn snapped. He didn’t want to hear any negativity. He was on the verge of making his most spectacular find, provided Sana cooperated.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I worked in there at night for months, and unless I brought people in with me, I never saw a soul.”

“You were using pencil and paper and photography. We’re going to be using a drill and hammer and chisel. As you suggested, what if someone up in the basilica hears us?”

“The basilica is closed up tight as a drum,” Shawn spat. “Look, don’t do this to me. You already agreed to do it. The time is right. We’ve got the tools. We know where to look. And by using the drill to probe for the stone ossuary, we should be in and out in a couple of hours. If you’re dying for something to worry about, worry about lugging the ossuary out of the necropolis and into the trunk of the car.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Sana commented. She stared out the windshield into Piazza San Pietro with Bernini’s curved, elliptical colonnades sweeping off on either side.

“I’m telling you it will be easy,” Shawn said with apparent conviction, though Sana’s misgivings were heightening his own. In reality he knew there were plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong. Despite what he’d just said, he was aware they could get caught. A more probable problem was they wouldn’t find the ossuary. If they didn’t, he’d have to tell the authorities about Saturninus’s letter and share the prestige if the ossuary was eventually found. Of course, that would happen only if the pope allowed the search to take place — unlikely, since the ossuary’s discovery would put Church dogma and papal infallibility in question.

“All right,” Sana said suddenly. “If we’re going to do this, let’s do it and get it over with. Why are we still sitting here?”

“I told you. We got here faster than I thought. The last security sweep of the basilica is at eight p.m. I want to give them plenty of time to finish and get the place locked up tight.”

Sana looked at her watch. It was almost eight-thirty. “What if they find something amiss, like the Pietà is gone?”

Shawn turned to study his wife’s profile in the dark. He was hoping she was teasing him, but that didn’t seem to be the case. She was looking out the car windows like some kind of hyperalert prey about to be eaten. “Are you being serious?”

“I don’t know,” Sana admitted. “I’m nervous and exhausted. I mean, we traveled all the way from Egypt today. That might be easy for you, but it’s not for me.”

“You can be nervous, that’s okay. Hell, I’m nervous, too. It’s natural to be a little nervous.”

“What if I get claustrophobic?”

“We’ll make sure you don’t. I won’t make you come into the tunnel. There probably won’t be room for you anyway.”

Sana regarded her husband in the half-light of the car’s interior. Headlights from the multitude of passing cars played intermittently across his face. “Are you sure you won’t need me in the tunnel?”

“If we’re down there and you don’t want to go into the tunnel, we’ll deal with it. Let’s think positively. Can I count on you?”

“I suppose,” Sana said, without a lot of confidence.

At quarter to nine Shawn started the car and eased away from the curb. With the windshield wipers struggling to keep up with the rain, he had to strain to see. The traffic entering the piazza careened past them at breakneck speed. Entering Saint Peter’s Square, he drove along Bernini’s Colonnade toward Arco delle Campane. “If the Swiss Guards question why you don’t have a Vatican ID card, let me do the talking,” Shawn said. The two dark-brown guard shacks loomed out of the mist ahead. The guards stepped out, wearing dark rain capes over their black-and-orange uniforms. They didn’t look pleased to have pulled guard duty on such a night. Shawn lowered his window as he came abreast of the guard shacks and stopped. A few wayward raindrops immediately blew in through the open window and danced in the swirling air.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Shawn said pleasantly, making an effort to suppress any nervousness in his voice. As he had expected, the shift had changed. They were different guards.

As was the case that afternoon, the guard took Shawn’s Vatican ID card without a word. He examined it with a flashlight, comparing the photo to Shawn’s visage. As he handed it back, he asked, “Where are you going?”

“To the necropolis,” Shawn said, while handing over his access permit. “We’re going to do a little maintenance work.”

The Swiss Guard studied the permit for a minute before handing it back. “Pop the boot,” he said, disappearing toward the rear of the car.

Sana sat uncomfortably as the second Swiss Guard shined his flashlight in her face. Prior to that, he’d used the flashlight and a mirror on a long stick to inspect the underside of the car for bombs.

Shawn heard the trunk slam, and a moment later the guard returned to Shawn’s open window.

“What are the tools for?” the guard asked.

“For our maintenance work,” Jack said.

“Will you be entering through the Scavi office?”

“We will indeed.”

“Should I call security to open it?”

“No need. We have keys.”

“Okay,” the guard said. “Just a moment.” He returned to the tiny guardhouse for a parking permit. A moment later he was behind the car to copy down the license plate number, before returning to the open window. There he tossed the permit onto the dash. “Park straight ahead in the Piazza Protomartiri and leave the parking permit visible on the dash.” He then saluted.

“Phew,” Sana voiced as they pulled away. “I was afraid we were already dead meat when they looked in our trunk and saw the tools.”

“Me, too. During the months I worked here I never got that kind of attention. They’ve certainly beefed up security.”

Shawn parked where he’d been told but as close as possible to the Scavi office. “I’ll get the tools. You get yourself over to the shelter of the portico. I don’t want you getting wet, like this after noon.”

“Will you be able to manage?” Sana asked while getting an umbrella from the backseat.

Shawn grabbed her arm. “The question is: Will you?”

“I’m better now that we’re here.”

Sana was about to climb from the car when Shawn tightened his grip. “Wait for these cars,” he said. Sana turned to see a line of cars bearing down on them in the darkness. They went by with a whoosh on the slick, puddle-filled cobblestones, sending a heavy spray of water to splash against the Fiat. Shawn and Sana turned to watch the red taillights speed away, passing through the Arco delle Campane without even slowing.

“That must have been one of the bosses, maybe even the big boss himself,” Shawn commented.

“Thank you for keeping me from opening my door,” Sana said. “I would have been drenched.”

A few minutes later they were inside the darkened Scavi office. Shawn had carried the tools and other paraphernalia in the two buckets. Now that he was this close, his excitement and anxiety ratcheted up several degrees.

“What should I do with the umbrella?” Sana asked guilelessly.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Shawn exploded. “Do I have to tell you what to do with everything?” He’d been pushed beyond his patience. First, she threatened not to go through with their plan, and now she was asking stupid questions.

“You don’t need to speak to me like that. It’s a reasonable question. If I leave it here, someone may come along and then suspect someone is down in the excavation.”

“Why on earth would someone jump to the conclusion that a trespasser was down in the Scavi when an umbrella is left in the Scavi office? That’s ridiculous.”

“Fine!” Sana snapped back. She extended her arm and let the Hassler Hotel umbrella fall to the floor. She felt that Shawn’s concern for her feelings had descended to a new low.

Shawn was equally unhappy. Over the last year, as her career blossomed one moment she was an independent firebrand, cutting her hair short against his wishes; in another she was as petulant as a child dropping the umbrella as she’d just done.

For several beats they stared daggers at each other. Sana was the first to relent. “We’re both being foolish,” she said. She picked up the umbrella and leaned it up against a wooden bench.

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” he said, but without much sincerity. “I’m uptight because I was afraid you were not going to go through with this, which is of vital importance to me.”

In Sana’s mind any benefit of Shawn’s halfhearted apology melted away like a snowball in the tropics. Instead of taking responsibility for his behavior, he blamed it on her. In other words, the reason he’d hurt her feelings was her fault, not his.

“Let’s get this over with,” Sana said. At this point, the last thing she wanted to do was get into an argument. What she really wanted to do was get back to the hotel and go to bed.

“Now you’re talking.”

Each picked up a bucket and passed through the glazed Scavi inner office door. The corridor beyond was illuminated only by a series of low-intensity night-lights along the marble baseboards.

When they arrived at the flight of steps that descended to the necropolis entry, Shawn paused to look down the corridor toward the basilica’s crypt. He saw no one.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

They descended the stairs. At the bottom, Shawn opened the grate with the appropriate key, let Sana pass, then stepped in himself before locking the metal barrier behind him.

With only scant illumination descending from the night-lights in the corridor above, the couple immediately took out their respective construction helmets and switched on the headlamps.

“Not bad,” Sana commented, using the headlamp to look down the narrow stone passageway to the solid, humidity-proof door to the necropolis. Just a moment earlier, she’d experienced a touch of claustrophobia. The headlamp changed everything.

“Here, take this in one hand and the bucket in the other,” Shawn said, after switching on one of the flashlights.

“I don’t think I need it with the headlamp.”

“Take it,” Shawn insisted.

Shawn squeezed past Sana and quickly descended to the solid door. With every step he felt his excitement grow. He couldn’t help feeling optimistic. He was convinced that the ossuary would be where Saturninus said he’d put it almost two millennia ago.

After unlocking the solid door, he once again moved aside so Sana could precede him. Then, after relocking it, he pushed past his wife to descend quickly to the level of the Roman-era cemetery. He was ready to turn west but sensed Sana wasn’t behind him.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked as he looked behind to see her descending slowly, her headlamp and flashlight moving erratically in rapid arcs.

“I don’t like this,” Sana said.

“What don’t you like?” Shawn demanded, and under his breath he murmured, “What the hell now?” They were just beginning, and he was already finding his wife a progressively frustrating handicap. For a moment he thought about having her wait in the car, but then he remembered he needed her. What he was planning was definitely a two-person job.

“My lights don’t seem to reach the ceiling. It gives me a strange feeling.”

“The ceiling has been purposefully darkened so visitors don’t see the steel supports. It’s for atmosphere.”

“Is that what it is?” Sana said. She reached the ancient cemetery level and allowed her lights to play across the dark entrances of the mausoleums.

Shawn rolled his eyes.

“This place is even eerier at night than during the day,” Sana remarked.

“Because the freaking lights are turned off, for shit’s sake,” Shawn growled.

“What was that noise?” Sana demanded with desperation.

“What noise?” Shawn questioned with near equal concern.

For a few moments of frozen panic they strained to hear sound — any sound. The silence was deafening.

“I don’t hear anything,” Shawn said finally. “What did you hear?”

“It sounded like a high-pitched voice.”

“Good grief! Now you’re imagining things.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, but what I’m not sure is whether you can do this. We’re so close.”

“If you’re sure I didn’t hear anything, let’s finish this and get out of here.”

“Can you calm down?”

“I’ll try.”

“All right, let’s go, but stay close.”

Shawn led the way west in the direction of Peter’s tomb. Sana followed a step behind, avoiding glancing into the mausoleums as they passed their dark, foreboding entrances.

Suddenly, Shawn stopped, and Sana jolted into him.

“Sorry,” Sana said. “You have to let me know if you stop.”

“I’ll try to remember,” Shawn said as he pointed off to the left with his flashlight. “There’s the Roman sarcophagus I pointed out this afternoon. That’s where we’ll put our excavated debris. Do you think you will be able to bring it back here while I dig?”

“You mean by myself?”

Shawn silently counted to ten. “If I’m digging, of course it would be by yourself,” he said impatiently.

“We’ll see,” Sana said. The idea of wandering around in the necropolis alone was daunting, and hardly alluring. All she could hope was that somehow she’d adjust.

Shawn held his tongue. Instead, he continued on, rounding the southern tip of the red wall. Despite the climb, Sana stayed close. A few moments later, they were standing in the large chamber on the east side of Peter’s tomb complex near the original monument called the Tropaion of Peter. Shawn shined his flashlight down through one of the many glass panels of the deck, which had been built to allow modern-day tourists to see into the tomb’s interior.

“We’re almost there,” Shawn commented, his voice brimming with excitement. “We’ll soon be at the level of the floor of Peter’s tomb.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Sana said. “Let’s get on with this.”

“Right!” Shawn agreed with alacrity. It was what he wanted to hear.

Lifting the three-quarter-inch glass panel in the far corner that served as access to the lower level took considerably more effort than Sana expected. After much straining, they got the panel on end and leaning against the wall.

“Let me go first,” Shawn said. Sana nodded. Descending below the glass deck was the part that she was looking forward to the least, and if she was going to have a problem with claustrophobia, this was where it would begin.

Shawn took the time to strap on his knee pads and pull on his work gloves, and advised Sana to do the same. From then on they would need to be crawling about, as the height of the excavated floor to the glass deck didn’t allow either of them to walk upright. Sitting on the edge of the deck with his feet dangling though the open space, Shawn inched himself forward and then swung down to stand on the earthen floor. After Shawn had ducked down and moved away from the opening, Sana mimicked his motions, and soon they were crawling ahead, pushing their respective buckets in front of them.

The floor was what Shawn had originally described, a kind of compacted clayish dirt mixed with gravel. Although Sana was becoming progressively anxious as they moved away from the opening in the deck, she was encouraged by one thing. The dirt, unlike the other areas in the necropolis, was bone-dry, suggesting the ossuary, if they found it, would be as well.

After advancing diagonally under the glass deck, they reached the section of the excavated space that extended under the level above. The ceiling now matched the hardpan of the floor. Sana noticed that there were no supports, and she stopped crawling, eyeing the ceiling with distrust.

Shawn continued forward for another ten feet and stopped to shine his flashlight down a tunnel to his left. “Here we are,” he said. He turned to see that Sana had halted about eight feet back. He waved to her to follow him. He wanted to show her where he believed they were going to find the ossuary.

“Is it safe?” Sana questioned while eyeing the ceiling.

“Perfectly safe,” Shawn said, following her line of sight. “The dirt at this level is like concrete. Trust me! You’ve come this far. I want to show you where I’ll be digging.”

Reluctantly, Sana crawled forward and found herself looking down a narrow tunnel about four feet wide, three feet high, and five feet deep. At the mouth of the tunnel and at its end were supports of rough lumber, each consisting of two stout vertical members and a thick crossbeam forming a truss.

“Why are there supports in there and not here?” Sana asked. She couldn’t help but worry that nothing was holding up the ceiling above where she and Shawn were currently crouching.

“The first support here at the lip is holding up the graffiti wall, while the inner one is supporting the foundation wall for the vault of Peter’s tomb. The space beyond the inner truss is the interior of the tomb. If you want to crawl in there, you’ll be able to see a notched niche in the base of the red wall if you look to the right. That’s where the bones the pope claimed were Saint Peter’s were found, the ones they have a level up in the Plexiglas boxes.”

“I think I’ll pass,” Sana said. The thought of crawling on her stomach through the low tunnel into Peter’s tomb made her queasy and awakened the claustrophobic fears she’d been trying to suppress. It took all of her self-control to keep from fleeing back out to the area under the glass deck and then back up through the opening to the gallery above.

“Let me show you something else,” Shawn said as he crawled into the tunnel and then rolled over on his back. He pointed up at the ceiling using his flashlight and tapped the ceiling between the two trusses. “The ossuary will be up here, if it wasn’t discovered by accident when either the red wall or the graffiti wall was erected. Now, hand me the drill and the goggles. I’m going to probe a bit and see if I can make contact with stone.”

Sana concentrated on Shawn’s commands to avoid thinking about the entire mass of Saint Peter’s Basilica pressing down on top of her. When Shawn was ready to begin, she said: “If you don’t mind, I’m going to move out to the more open area under the glass deck. I’m having a bit of trouble breathing here.”

“Suit yourself,” Shawn said, distractedly. He was thrilled to be back to field archaeology. After he put the pail next to his body, he tried the drill. Its whine seemed particularly loud in the confined space. Satisfied with the drill’s performance, he put the tip of the bit up against the ceiling. The bit cut through the hardpan like a knife through butter. Within seconds it buried its four-inch-long shaft up to the hilt. Dry dirt rained down mostly on his chest, although some went into the bucket. Mildly disappointed not to hit stone on the first attempt, he pulled the drill bit out and moved six inches to the left and tried again.

After thirty minutes he still hadn’t hit stone, despite covering the ceiling with dozens of probing holes. He was ready to switch to the masonry hammer and chisel when he noticed something: The excavators had not burrowed under the vault’s supporting wall as he’d thought, but rather had poked directly through its base. When he looked carefully, Shawn could actually see butt ends of the wall’s brick just outside the vertical supports of the inner truss.

“My God!” Shawn called out for Sana’s benefit. He couldn’t see her, but he knew she was out in the area under the glass deck. He knew where she was because of her impatient questions every five minutes on how he was doing. By the sound of her voice, he could tell she was getting progressively anxious, but there was nothing he could do about it other than keeping her in the loop about his progress.

“Did you find it?” Sana responded hopefully.

“No, not yet, but I discovered something else. The vault foundation goes down deeper. The ossuary had to have been deeper as well. If it is still here, it’s got to be on the right of the tunnel in the direction of the red wall.”

After picking the drill back up and turning onto his left side, Shawn began making holes in the tunnel’s right wall. The first one was midway from the floor to the ceiling and midway into the tunnel, with the result the same as all the holes in the ceiling. Pulling the bit free, Shawn started a second hole at the same level but deeper into the tunnel. Just three inches in, he hit something hard enough to make the drill practically leap out of his hand. Encouraged, he started another hole three inches above the last. He held his breath as the drill bit knifed through the hardpan. Again, the drill bit hit a hard surface.

Shawn could feel his pulse in his temples. Again, he drilled a new hole a few inches away from the last and felt resistance at the same depth. His excitement grew by leaps and bounds, but he wasn’t ready to celebrate. Instead, he quickly sank more than a dozen new holes, effectively outlining a perfectly flat stone approximately fifteen inches square embedded three inches into the tunnel’s wall. At that point, he called out to Sana. “I found it! I found it!” he repeated with great excitement.

“Are you sure?” Sana yelled back.

“I’d say ninety percent sure,” Shawn called out.

With such encouraging news, Sana overcame her reluctance and returned to peer into the tunnel. “Where is it?”

“Right here,” Shawn said. He knocked with a knuckle against the tunnel’s wall at the very center of the covey of holes he’d drilled.

“I don’t see it,” Sana said, with gathering disappointment.

“Of course you can’t see it,” Shawn barked. “I haven’t dug it out yet. I’ve just located it.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Listen, just hand me the hammer and the chisel. I’ll show you, you nonbeliever.”

Sana didn’t necessarily disbelieve Shawn, but like him, she didn’t want to get her hopes up. Sana got the tools and handed them in to Shawn.

Shawn attacked the tunnel’s wall. The process was more difficult than he’d expected, and it took many blows to drive the chisel several inches into cement-like dirt after which he’d wiggle the chisel free. The noise of the steel hammer against the steel chisel was sharp and penetrating, almost painful in the narrow confines. In an attempt to speed up the process, Shawn almost buried the chisel, before pounding it laterally to loosen the surrounding dirt. This took a lot of blows, and each reverberated with a sound like a gunshot, leaving both Shawn’s and Sana’s ears ringing. Sana found she had to cup her ears with her palms to protect herself from the near-painful noise.

After half an hour of pounding the hammer while on his side, Shawn had worked up a mild sweat, and his shoulder was aching. Needing a rest from the continuous effort, he put down the tools and rubbed his complaining muscles briskly. A moment later the beam from Sana’s headlamp merged with his. To his surprise, Sana had actually poked her head into the tunnel.

“How’s the progress?” she asked.

“Slow going!” Shawn admitted. With his gloved hand he wiped off the limestone surface he’d been laboriously exposing. Despite trying to avoid striking the stone with the chisel, he’d nicked it half a dozen times. The nicks stood out sharply as light cream-colored defects against a field of brownish tan. As an archaeologist, he regretted having to employ such a heavy-handed technique, but he had little choice. He knew security made their rounds at the eleven p.m. shift change and he wanted to be long gone. It was already close to ten.

“Do you still think that’s it?” Sana questioned.

“Well, let’s put it this way: It’s a dressed piece of limestone that is surely not indigenous, and it is exactly where Saturninus said he’d placed it. What’s your take?”

Sana couldn’t help but take offense at Shawn’s condescending tone. She was asking a legitimate question because all that was visible was a flat piece of stone, and considering all the construction and modifications that had occurred around Peter’s tomb over thousands of years, there’d probably been multiple opportunities for a stone slab to have been accidently buried where this stone was. With an edge to her voice, Sana made her thoughts known.

“So, now you’re the expert,” Shawn replied sarcastically. “Let me show you something.” Shawn directed the beam of his headlamp to the lower edge of the limestone, where he’d begun the even harder job of undermining the object. At that moment, the entire lower edge was exposed. “Notice something curious,” he said, in the same condescending tone he’d used a moment earlier. “The ‘slab,’ as you call it, is perfectly horizontal and vertical. If it were debris from some other project, chances are it wouldn’t have ended up so perfectly level and perpendicular. This piece of limestone was carefully placed. It wasn’t haphazard.”

“How much longer?” Sana asked in a tired voice. There was no doubt in her mind that her sacrifice of struggling with her claustrophobia was not appreciated. If she’d felt capable of leaving on her own, she would have done it at that moment.

Ignoring Sana’s question and with the circulation restored to his shoulder muscles, Shawn went back to work. Rapidly he completed the filling of the first bucket with dirt. He then called out for the second to be handed in. Twenty minutes later he had a slit-like opening about four inches deep and four inches wide exposing the end of what he now knew to be a limestone box. The cover was about an inch thick, and was sealed with caramel-colored wax. Giving up on the masonry hammer because of the confined space, Shawn switched to using the chisel as a scraper before pulling out the debris by hand.

Suddenly, Shawn froze. He sucked in a lungful of air as his heart skipped a beat. The lights in the necropolis had flashed on, accompanied by the low rumbling sound of electrical transformers being activated.