The Last Ember (6 page)

Now, years later, Salah ad-Din stood beside Professor Cianari, surveying the subterranean cavern they had just discovered. His conquest was more imminent than ever.

“The Temple Mount was surrounded by fifty thousand Roman soldiers,” he said, turning to the professor, “and the priest escaped through here, along this aqueduct.”

His flashlight revealed a narrow stone aqueduct stretching into the darkness. It appeared to float across the dark chasm that lay on either side.

“And he took with him the one artifact that brought down a Roman emperor.”

R
ome’s morning traffic crawled across the Ponte Palatino, and Jonathan raced up the marble steps of the Palazzo di Giustizia, taking two steps in each stride. The building’s vast neoclassical façade stretched like a civic temple along the Tiber’s bank, longer than two United States Supreme Court buildings laid end to end.

In the interior loggia of the courthouse, Jonathan gave up his passport and stepped through a metal detector. Fifteen-foot statues of famous Roman lawyers from Cicero to nineteenth-century Italian lawmakers adorned marble hallways vaulting upward higher than a cathedral’s.

At the end of one cavernous hallway, Jonathan saw a cluster of people filing into a courtroom. The last of the group was a young woman with blond hair tied in a loose bun. She wore a gray wool pantsuit, a cream silk blouse beneath her cutaway jacket, and stylish black-framed glasses. Her professional, slim-fitting suit was a far cry from the oversized cable-knit sweaters she wore at the American Academy, but Jonathan knew at once it was Dottoressa Emili Travia.

As though feeling his gaze, Emili glanced down the corridor. Jonathan stopped, separated by much more than the expanse of marble between them. From her unyielding glare, Jonathan knew his role as a lawyer in this trial was not a secret. Neither of them said a word. She held the stare, as if she were trying to sift through his past, searching for the clue that would reveal the gradual decline in his ethics that had allowed him to take this case. Even from a distance, Jonathan could see her lightly bite her bottom lip, which she always did when she was thinking. They were full lips, accented by her narrow chin and delicate features. Her beauty was more striking, more daunting than he remembered. Without a change in her expression, she turned around and walked through the courtroom door.

The courtroom was as grand as Jonathan had imagined. Pilasters separated triple-height Palladian windows overlooking Rome. The one modern amenity was a bullet-repellent glass witness case, which Jonathan supposed was installed for use in Mafia trials. The original dark wood witness stand, which would be used in this morning’s hearing, sat near the bench.

The Dulling and Pierce table was in front of the courtroom’s gallery rail, where Tatton was already seated at the table’s end. Beside him, Mildren was writing furiously on a legal pad, transcribing Jonathan’s memo for Tatton’s cross-examination. On the other side of the courtroom, beside their table, the lawyers for the Italian Cultural Ministry had set up an easel with large poster-board photographs of the various inscriptions on the Forma Urbis fragments. Behind the polished walnut helm between them sat a small Italian magistrate with dated brown plastic glasses and thinning dark hair, like iron filings, on his head. Despite the ornate woodwork of his throne, he resembled an overwhelmed bookkeeper.

A legal assistant handed Jonathan a black gown like a judge’s robe, and a white doily cravat, a
fiocco
, for Jonathan to wear around his neck. It resembled something from a sketch of the seventeenth-century British House of Lords, and by the time Jonathan was done fidgeting with the
fiocco
, it looked like a lobster bib.

“That’s the Cultural Ministry’s lawyer, Maurizio Fiorello,” Mildren said as Jonathan sat down at the counsel’s table. He pointed to a short man with windswept gray hair who was in the process of donning his lawyer’s robe over a rumpled suit and knit tie.

“That’s Fiorello?” Jonathan said. Maurizio Fiorello was renowned in art-recovery circles for his ability to wrest art and antiquities from private collections and museums. From his reputation, Jonathan expected a more imposing courtroom presence. Then again, perhaps Fiorello’s ordinary appearance was a deliberate contrast to the aristocratic elegance of Tatton, and a reminder to the Italian magistrate of what the country’s antiquities squads were up against. The rivalry between Fiorello and Tatton went beyond appearance. Fiorello once called the Dulling partner the “American consigliere to the organized illicit relic trade.”

“Silenzio!”
a bailiff called out, and with the sound of a hand bell, the hearing was called to order. Without introduction, the magistrate picked up the papers before him. “Article Forty-four of the 1939 Italian patrimony law, prohibiting the unauthorized removal of historic objects from the Italian Republic. The Cultural Ministry has alleged that artifacts in the defendant’s collection belong to the State Archives. Is that correct, Signore Fiorello?”

“That is correct,
Magistrato
.” Fiorello stood up, reviewing some final notes in his hands. He stepped toward the center of the courtroom and placed the notes down on a wooden lectern in front of the magistrate.

“May I proceed to call our first witness to testify?”

The magistrate nodded, leaning back in his chair.

At the sound of her name, Emili rose from her seat beside Fiorello and settled into the
banco dei testimoni
. She removed her glasses and folded her hands. She looked composed and professional. Jonathan envisioned the last time he saw Emili alone. She was sitting on the edge of his single cot at the academy, naked from the waist up, smiling as she read him a stanza of Ovid’s erotic poetry in Latin.

Jonathan held the bridge of his nose, taking scattered notes, trying to proceed as rationally as he could. “I can’t believe this,” he murmured.

“Me neither,” Mildren snickered. “Bloody lucky testimony isn’t weighted by sex appeal, right?”

“Would you please state your name and title?” Fiorello said.

“Dr. Emili Travia,” she answered. “Deputy director of the International Centre for Conservation in Rome.”

Fiorello’s direct examination of Dr. Travia developed a rhythm of question and answer, establishing her expertise—her Ph.D. at La Sapienza, her receipt of the Rome Prize, awarded to only one Italian biannually by the American Academy in Rome—her rise through the International Centre’s administrative ranks, from staff assistant to deputy director.

Fiorello stepped away from the lectern, his line of questions turning to the events surrounding her team’s preservationist efforts in Jerusalem. He asked Dr. Travia to explain her team’s work on the ground to survey the Temple Mount.

“In 2007 my team of preservationists from Rome arrived in Jerusalem to respond to allegations of archaeological destruction beneath the Temple Mount by the Waqf Authority.”

“The Waqf Authority?” Fiorello said.

“From Al Waqf, or literally ‘the preserve,’ the Waqf is a religious land trust that has administered the Temple Mount in Jerusalem since 1187. Our office heard reports of unauthorized excavation, and our initial investigation discovered mounds of rubble in the olive groves of the Kidron Valley at the foot of the Temple Mount.” Emili recounted how her team moved through the heap, picking out shards of biblical-era pottery and shattered Crusader amulets, like stunned medics surveying a smoldering battlefield with no survivors. “A local monastery confirmed that bulldozers had been dumping rubble in the middle of the night.”

“And you contacted the Waqf Authority?”

“Yes. And as we expected, we received no response.”

“You expected your preservation efforts to be ignored?” Fiorello feigned surprise.

“The Waqf Authority has been as vigilant against non-Muslims visiting certain areas of the Mount as the Manchu priests in imperial China once were in preventing the entrance of mortals to the Forbidden City. If we were to inspect beneath the Mount, Dr. Lebag and I knew it would have to be without permission.”

“Dr. Sharif Lebag was part of your delegation?” Fiorello now approached the witness on the stand in the same way he was beginning to approach the heart of her testimony. He touched the railing as though offering his support, preparing her to broach the topic of her murdered colleague.

“Dr. Lebag had been in Jerusalem for a few months.” Emili swallowed.

“His spoken Arabic and traditional Islamic observance were helpful to recruit informants. A shopkeeper in the Old City’s Muslim Quarter told him of a possible illicit excavation near his stall in the spice market. Men with drills and pickaxes were using a previously abandoned rusted door located opposite his stall. Dr. Lebag and I visited the spice market and inspected the door. It looked abandoned for centuries, except for one detail.”

“Which was?”

“The rusted iron handle had silicon sensors to authenticate fingerprint recognition.”

“Magistrato!”
Tatton objected. “This is all fascinating background, but this case is about an artifact. Is there any relevance—”

“
Magistrato
, I am demonstrating the worth of these fragments by the extravagant efforts to hide them.”

The
magistrato
nodded, permitting the inquiry.

Fiorello resumed. “If this
abandoned
door required fingerprint authentication, presumably you could not enter?”

“No, but we obtained a map of Jerusalem indicating an ancient underground street that ran beneath the spice market and directly beneath the door. The next morning we entered the market.” As Emili spoke she could picture the events in her mind. “Dr. Sharif Lebag and I dressed as tourists, carrying in tattered backpacks our lithium flashlights, climbing rope, and spades. Sharif’s contact, the shopkeeper, allowed us to remove the stone drain beneath the table in his stall. The ancient street was a considerable distance below us and we roped down to it. Enormous columns supported modern Jerusalem above. Our flashlight beams could barely reach the ceiling.”

“And that’s where you saw these fragments?”

“Not at first. At the end of the street there was a cavern converted into a room reinforced with steel beams. The room contained high-tech archaeological equipment, including a humidity-controlled glass case for original scrolls and parchments. Digitized images of Renaissance Greek and Latin manuscript pages papered the cavern walls with labels documenting the folio year.”

“Did the labels identify the source of the text?”

“Yes. All the pages included passages, copied by scribes, from the works of Flavius Josephus. In the center of the room, a group of marble fragments lay on a glass table beneath a fiber-optic lamp. Both Sharif and I recognized the artifact at once. Fragments of the Forma Urbis”—she pointed at the photograph of the artifacts on the easel—“
those
fragments of the Forma Urbis.”

“There were identifying markings?” Fiorello said.

“Yes,” Emili said. “ ‘Archivio di Stato.’ ”

“Roman State Archives,” Fiorello mused. “And you saw another inscription on the fragments?”

“Sharif—Dr. Lebag, I’m sorry—identified the inscription running along the underside.”

“Which was?”

“The same inscription present on these fragments. ‘
Tropaeum Josepho Illumina
.’ ”

“And then what happened, Dr. Travia?”

“From the market above us, there was the sound of a gunshot. A single blast. Through the street grate overhead, we could see the spice market was in chaos. Sharif and I returned to where we had roped in, and, using the pulley we’d fixed to the drain, he belayed me back up to the market stall.” Emili swallowed, willing herself to stay calm. “I climbed out of the drain, and saw the shopkeeper’s legs, just as he had been, sitting at the table. I climbed out from under the table and”—Emili paused, and then continued—“saw him seated, folded over the table, eyes wide open.” Emili closed her eyes, picturing the image, how the blood from the middle of his forehead streamed down into the yellow mound of ground mustard. Emili looked up at Fiorello. “That is the last I remember before being knocked unconscious.”

“When did you wake up?”

“An hour later. In a Catholic hospital outside the Damascus Gate. I had suffered a severe concussion, and the attending nun would not let me leave until an official from the Israel Antiquities Authority signed me out. No one had heard from Dr. Lebag. Immediately, we returned to the Muslim Quarter in search of him.”

“You returned to the stall?”

“Yes, but there was no trace of the dead vendor or his table. The stall where Sharif and I descended was empty. Neighboring shopkeepers insisted it had been empty for days. I showed the official the rusted door but the silicon sensors were gone. In fact, the door now hung slightly off its hinges and you could step right through.” Emili remembered the muscles in her legs tightening as she opened the door and hurried down a long flight of steep stone steps. Fueled by a headlong rush of fear, she ran into the cavern they had entered only hours before. She remembered the shrill echo from screaming Sharif’s name.

“And what did you find, Dr. Travia?”

“The room was empty. The long steel tables were gone, so were the copies of manuscripts papering the walls. No cabinets. No marble fragments. It was all gone; the room was completely stripped—” Emili stopped. She remembered seeing a gruesome broom stroke of blood, thick on the floor like a brush of red paint. The street grate in the ceiling high above allowed in enough light to see a small, dice-sized fragment resembling a piece of white marble on the floor.

“There was a small fragment,” she said, remembering the shard glistening at her feet as if it had been cleaned with a pink protective resin. Moved by a force outside herself, she picked it up and held it in her hand. Turning the piece over, she saw a tuft of black hair. She felt a stab of shock and then convulsive dry heaves seized her. Her legs gave way and she fell to the floor.