The Last Ember (3 page)

He walked across the floodlit palazzo and soon recognized the baroque façade of Dulling’s Rome office. He had seen it in an article of
Architectural Digest
, displayed in the firm’s lobby in New York. The firm took pride in the palazzo’s sixteenth-century design by a wealthy papal family, and its five ornate floors, which had been the scene of numerous banquets for popes and Roman nobility throughout the centuries.

The palazzo’s giant doors were as tall as a drawbridge, and two feet thick, of iron-studded oak. Jonathan lifted the knocker, an angry wolf’s head sinking its fangs into a circle of brass, but before it dropped, the massive doors began to shutter and creak, opening slowly.

Jonathan walked into the palazzo’s column-lined courtyard, the gravel’s crunch echoing with his every step. The only trace of modernity was overhead, and understated: The red light of a surveillance camera blinked beneath a sculpted marble angel perched above an archway. The lens trained on Jonathan as he moved across the courtyard.

The latest-model BlackBerry rattled in a holster on his waist. A text message prompt appeared on the color screen.

He clicked the message.

 

 

Jonathan remembered how the ancient historian Suetonius described Roman generals transmitting their battle plans to their field officers by hiding them inside clusters of grapes. The firm’s partners sent their marching orders via BlackBerry.
More the world changes,
Jonathan thought,
more it stays the same
.

At the end of the courtyard’s northern colonnade, a grand oak door had been left ajar.

He climbed a marble staircase, and on the second floor, a hallway lined with sculptured niches led to a
salone
refitted as an executive conference room.

Beneath a crystal chandelier, Bruce Tatton leaned over a deeply polished oak table, his knuckles flat on it, as though he were braving a gust of wind. He was a solidly built, middle-aged American, with a full head of expensively cut gray hair carefully combed back, and thick black eyebrows. His black satin bow tie and the matching moiré silk suspenders under his dinner jacket suggested he had been pulled out of an important affair to put out a fire at the office.

At Tatton’s side was Andrew Mildren, a Dulling and Pierce associate formerly of the London office. Mildren was seated at the table, looking as obedient as a terrier. He was wearing a smart gray pinstripe suit and a massive Windsor knot of navy satin. Mildren was a few years senior to Jonathan and was gunning for partner. In every law firm, one associate makes an art of defending the devil. Mildren’s inspired defense of a firearm manufacturer (safety-latch malfunctions) had recently persuaded a London High Court to dismiss the case with prejudice. A great victory for the Dulling London office and the European firearms market. Rumor was that it earned Mildren an additional six-figure bonus—in sterling.

In front of the conference table, in a glass display case, lay two ancient marble fragments. They were large, each three feet across, and fit together like an oversized jigsaw puzzle. Bruce Tatton hauled the coattails of his dinner jacket to one side and rounded the conference table toward Jonathan.

“You were the bloody Rome Prize winner in classics, Marcus,” Tatton began without preamble, pointing accusingly at the marble fragments. “Recognize them?” With a certain violence, he unknotted his bow tie so that it dangled from his neck.

Jonathan approached the ancient stone fragments, his eyes not leaving them.

“They’re fragments of the
Forma Urbis Romae
,” he said.

“Meaning what?” Mildren snapped.

“ ‘ The Form of the City of Rome’ is the literal translation from Latin. It was an enormous stone map of Rome carved in the late second century A.D. that spanned more than a hundred feet in diameter.” Jonathan moved his hand above the marble engravings. “You can still see the street markings of ancient Rome. These curved concentric markings were an arena of some kind.”

“One hundred feet in diameter?” Mildren said. “Bloody huge map.”

“It was,” Jonathan said. “Covered an entire building wall in the Roman Forum. Most early scholars thought the size was a myth, an exaggeration, until the Renaissance, when pieces of the map slowly began to resurface, found among building materials in the garden patios of Roman nobility and stairway decorations inside the loggia of Saint Peter’s.”

“Your expertise in classics, Marcus, has become”—Tatton lifted his eyes to the ceiling mural—“
relevant
to our client who owns this artifact. Can you recognize which part of Rome these fragments depict?”

“It must have been a large amphitheater of some kind, most likely the Colosseum. These rectangular grooves inside the lines must be the gates.”

Mildren slid a thick folder across the conference table. It stopped abruptly under Jonathan’s hand.

“That is the
fascicolo
, or case file, for those fragments.”

“What case?” Jonathan said. “I haven’t received any information.”

“Our client anonymously loaned these two fragments to the Capitoline Museum,” Tatton explained as though setting the rules of an athletic match. “The Italian Cultural Ministry alleges they were stolen from the Italian state archives in Rome decades ago. The ministry’s expert witness is a UN official who claims to have seen these fragments last year, stamped with the very words that strike fear into the heart of every antiquity collector, ‘Archivio di Stato,’ meaning from the state archives.”

“Where did he see these fragments?”

“She,”
Tatton said. “She claims to have seen these fragments while investigating an illegal excavation in Jerusalem near the Temple Mount.”

“Their witness saw
these
fragments exactly?” Jonathan asked. “The Forma Urbis shattered into thousands of pieces when the Goths sacked Rome in A.D. 455 and scattered them across the ancient world. Scholars discover new fragments every decade or so.”

“The UN official identified an inscription on the underside of the fragments,” Tatton said.

Jonathan crouched and looked up through the display case’s glass bottom. Three Latin words were carved roughly into the underside of the stone.

“‘Tropaeum Josepho Illumina,’”
he read aloud, his voice sounding cramped under the display case.

“Can you translate it?”

“
Tropae
means ‘monument’ or ‘trophy.’ ” He recalled the origins of the word, how ancient soldiers staked the ground where a battle would “trope,” or turn in their favor. “
Illumina
means ‘revealed,’ ” he continued, “or, literally, ‘brought to light.’ The inscription is broken off there at the end, but it was probably
illuminatum
, meaning ‘revealed,’ as in, ‘A monument revealed to . . .’ ”

“To whom?” Tatton said, folding his arms expectantly.

“Josephus,” Jonathan said, standing back up. “A monument to Josephus revealed.”

“You did your graduate work on Flavius Josephus, I’m told,” Tatton said. “At the American Academy in Rome.”

“Years ago. The research wasn’t worth very much, I’m afraid.”

“Worth the cost of a first-class plane ticket from New York, wasn’t it?” Mildren said brittlely. “Take your jacket?”

Jonathan gladly removed his damp suit jacket, but Mildren did not take it. Rather he motioned vaguely toward an upholstered chair at the conference table. Jonathan stepped forward but could not bring himself to put the wet jacket on the antique fabric. He tucked it under his arm instead.

Tatton picked up a manila file on the conference table and read aloud. “Rhodes scholarship in first-century Roman literature and a pre-doctoral Rome Prize for your thesis on the ancient historian Flavius Josephus.” Tatton looked up. “Indulge me if I have a question or two.”

Jonathan pointed to the fragment. “I’m not even certain this inscription refers to Flavius Josephus,” he said. “We have only a partial name on this inscription, and, besides, the fragment here mentions a
monument
. The historian Flavius Josephus wasn’t very popular in the ancient world. A monument in his name would have been unlikely.”

“Why?” Mildren asked.

“Few ancient authors have been as vilified as Flavius Josephus,” Jonathan answered. “He was a Jewish general who defended Jerusalem, but once captured by the Romans, later handed over information to help them breach Jerusalem’s city walls. It didn’t help his historical reputation that Emperor Vespasian, to thank him, awarded him Roman citizenship after the war. His historical account of Rome’s siege of Jerusalem became an instant best seller in the Roman world. The age-old question is, Was his eyewitness account from the perspective of a political realist or a murderous traitor? His credibility is questionable.”

“Then Josephus has something in common with the UN official who says she saw these fragments,” Mildren said. “Her credibility is questionable, too. She claims to have seen the identifying stamp, ‘Archivio di Stato,’ on this part of the fragment.” Mildren pointed at the smooth end of the marble slab. “On our fragments, no stamp,” he said proudly.

“But that portion has been sanded smooth,” Jonathan answered, pointing to the side of broken marble stone. “Artifacts are often altered to escape museum identification. It’s like a quick paint job on a stolen car.” Jonathan inspected it even more closely. “Looks as though someone even tried to artificially age that section with chemicals. Proper archaeological testing—”

“Will not take place,” Tatton cut him off. “Mysteries of the ancient world do not concern us here. Archaeology may dig up the truth at all costs, but legal discovery does not. Our client’s version of history is the only one we seek to advance. That presents us with a single question: How to discredit this UN official’s testimony by showing these artifacts were not the ones she allegedly saw in Jerusalem?”

“Why didn’t her UN team recover these fragments in Jerusalem?”

“Because she couldn’t,” Tatton said. “She claims to have found the fragments inside”—he waved his hand dismissively—“a
hidden
research facility of some kind. But when she brought UN investigators back to the site, it was an empty cavern. No trace of artifacts anywhere. Even her UN colleague who stayed behind was no longer there.”

“Well,
some
of him was still there,” Mildren said. “The UN investigators found a piece of the chap’s brain on the floor. All that was left of him.” Mildren’s tone was upbeat. “That’ll work very well.”

“Excuse me?” Jonathan said.

“Mildren means from a legal perspective, of course,” Tatton said. “Her colleague was killed on the site, the trauma of which”—Tatton shrugged innocently—“we will argue has altered her recollection. Truth is, her restoration efforts are respected as among the best in the UN, but administrators describe her as impulsive and overzealous.” Tatton picked up a yellow-bordered magazine and tossed it onto the table’s center. “See for yourself.”

It was a
National Geographic
, an issue dedicated to a remote dig site in Sri Lanka, but the cover photograph was more befitting of a glossy fashion magazine. A woman’s tan, fine-boned face framed by wet curtains of ash blond hair, a semiautomatic rifle slung across her bronze shoulder. Jonathan stared not at the image but at the caption: “Dr. Emili Travia: The Angel of Artifacts.”

“Across the world of antiquities conservation,” Tatton said with contempt, “her nickname was instantly born.”

“Marcus, you all right?” Mildren said. “You’re white as a ghost.”

But Jonathan’s mind was elsewhere. He was picturing Emili at the academy seven years ago, where she was a Rome Prize winner in preservation, her elbows resting on the floor of her preservationist’s studio beside an open bottle of wine, her eyes squinted in laughter as she demonstrated to Jonathan how to scrub an ancient mosaic Roman tile covered with two-thousand-year-old dust.

“Yes,” Jonathan said, the shock so palpable he could taste it in his throat. “Fine.”

“Marcus, I want you to assist our efforts to cripple Dr. Travia on cross-examination tomorrow,” Tatton said. “What you bring is background knowledge, historical expertise. Look over these artifacts and prepare a memo attacking her testimony from every historical angle. I don’t want any surprises.”

“Tomorrow?”

“You’ll have ample time to prepare,” Tatton said. He pulled back his sleeve to check a wristwatch laden with more gold than an ancient funereal bracelet. “Seven hours. We’ll meet you at the Palazzo di Giustizia a little before nine.”

“And do change your suit,” Mildren said. “Looks like you slept in a washing machine.”

Tatton grabbed his overcoat and stood in the doorway. “It must feel a bit strange for you now, being back in Rome after all this time. A five-star hotel like the Exedra will be a bit different from those graduate student days, no?”