The Tombs (A Fargo Adventure) (31 page)

Sam said, “Unless I have Boiardi wrong, I think he’ll supply a couple of Carabinieri to serve up on top too. If we find the treasure, the police will be the best ones to guard it. Next, let’s plan the equipment we bring down there. There will probably be Tibor, János, Remi, Albrecht, and me. I figure Boiardi and two Carabinieri will make it eight. We should each have a wheeled pushcart. The wheels should be large and inflated, like the tires of a small bicycle. That way, nobody has to carry a seventy-pound pack, and, if we find the tomb, we can begin removing objects on the first trip to the surface.”

“If carts like that aren’t available, I’ll have some fabricated,” said Selma.

“When do you think we’ll be ready?” asked Remi.

Selma said, “Today is Thursday. The catacomb is closed to visitors on Tuesdays. If we can complete the negotiations with the administrators by then, that would be the time to start.”

There was a knock on the door and then several waiters with carts brought in their dinner. The whole group adjourned to the large table and continued their planning over a feast. Selma had ordered a wide variety of dishes and the wine to go with them. There were seafood dishes, others of carved beef, lamb, chicken. There were pasta dishes and several kinds of salads. The next knock came about ten minutes into the feast. Sam went to the door.

In the open doorway stood Captain Boiardi, dressed in a dark civilian suit instead of a black uniform. Sam said, “Captain. I’m glad you could come so soon.”

“If you would save more policemen’s lives, I’m sure you would always have excellent service.” He embraced Sam heartily and slapped his back. “Good to see you, Sam.” He took Remi’s hand and kissed it. “Remi, it is a delight to see you again. You soothe my eyes after the long drive.”

“Please come in and make yourself part of the party, Captain,” she said. “Do you have any of your men with you? They’re welcome to join us too.”

“No,” he said. “You remember the trouble we had last time because we were noticed leaving Napoli. This time we’ve split up and divided the stops we must make. I gave myself the most pleasant.”

“Thank you,” said Sam. “Let me get you something to eat and drink. If we don’t yet have what you like, we can order anything. We’re in a hotel, after all.”

“I’ll have a soft drink,” he said. “Otherwise, water. I still have meetings this evening.”

Sam gave him a glass of ginger ale, and they sat at the table. Boiardi said, “The Ministry of Culture has approved our proposal of a joint project in the catacomb. They have also granted a permit to excavate, secured the cooperation of the Divine Word Missionaries, and sent my squad to assist. When do we go in?”

“We’d like to start Tuesday, when the catacomb is closed to visitors.”

“Perfect,” said the captain. “We’d rather not waste men on crowd control.”

“How did you get the Ministry to act so quickly?”

“You placed the first treasure—the one from Mantua—with the Ministry voluntarily and that showed you to be responsible and legitimate. You fought and saved Carabinieri from criminals, proving yourselves to be true friends of the nation, of historical study, and of me, Sergio Boiardi.”

“I’m certainly glad we did,” said Sam. “We plan to ask the Ministry to take physical custody of what we find this time too.”

“Excellent,” he said. “We’ll be prepared to transport any finds to a space in Il Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli right away.”

“Will you be coming down in the catacomb with us?”

“Yes. I and two other men will join you. I will also have three men at the entrance with trucks, a radio link with the Rome police, and a first-aid station.”

“Thank you,” said Sam. “Can you be ready to go in on Tuesday?”

“We could go tomorrow.”

“Tuesday will be fine,” Sam said. “What time do you think we should start?”

“Four a.m. would be good. The traffic in Rome became impossible the day Caesar was assassinated,” said Boiardi. “We’re waiting for it to clear.”

B
ENEATH
R
OME

A
T FOUR A.M.
T
UESDAY, THE MEMBERS OF THE EXPEDITION
gathered inside the walls of the Catacomb of Domitilla at 282 Via delle Sette Chiese. It was not yet light out, but a representative of the Divine Word Missionaries named Brother Paolo was there to admit them. He wore the brown robe of a monk, but his bespectacled face seemed more like that of a businessman than a monk, and his socks and shoes were like those someone might wear going to an office. The total effect was like a man caught in his bathrobe before leaving for work.

They followed him down a set of narrow steps to the front doors of a fourth-century church. Only the roof and a single row of windows were visible above ground level, and the interior of the church seemed very old. It was bare, more a relic now than a place of worship. The group brought their gear down into it, and Brother Paolo showed them its three naves, then pointed out the doorway that led to the catacomb and sent them on their way.

It took the explorers about a half hour to get their carts down the first three sets of stone steps to the level where they were to begin their search and then to fill it with their equipment and supplies, which was in backpacks. In the days of preparation, the quantity of these items had been gradually pared down to the essentials—light, photographic gear, tools, water, and food. Now each of the explorers strapped a light to the forehead with an elastic strap.

As they made their way through the first tunnels, what they saw were empty shelves, a few small Roman frescoes plastered and painted over stone or brick, a few empty rooms built as crypts. There were shrines, chambers that were painted, but most of the burial places were unadorned, shiny tufa stone. As they went on, they saw more and more spaces that were still occupied. Now there were large stones to seal the tomb niches. Albrecht began to deliver lessons. “In this section we can relax a bit. The tombs are from the period around 550 to 600
C.E.
, long after Attila was buried. He can’t be in a tunnel that hadn’t been dug when he died. We want the sections with tombs that were dug before the year 453. You will notice that none of the seal stones gives the date as a number. During that era, the Romans used the Julian calendar, which began in 45
B.C.E
. Years were not numbered. Instead they were given the names of the two consuls who took office on January first. The year Attila died, the consuls were Flavius Opilio and Johannes Vincomalus. Remember those names. Attila was still encamped at his stronghold by the Tisza River when he died, meaning it was too early in the year to go off to war. That means he probably died in
Januarius
,
Februarius
, or
Martius
.”

Remi said, “Will it give his name?”

“Almost certainly not, unless it’s disguised in some way. He was cunning, clever. He would not want a Roman to find his tomb. But I think he wanted it to be found some day.”

“Certainly he gave us all the clues,” said Remi.

“He made us work backward, from his most recent treasure to his very first. I believe he wanted a Hun to find the treasures and then use the wealth to do something in the world—but first to conquer it. Perhaps he wanted a descendant to find it. Apparently none of his three sons was up to the task of ruling the world and he undoubtedly knew it.”

“Now that we’re here, I feel as though I must have missed something along the way, some way of distinguishing his tombstone from the others,” Remi said.

“Finding the tomb is part of his test too. We’ll use what we’ve got—date and age—and see what else there is. The catacomb was used between the second and the seventh centuries. His will be somewhere in the earlier ones. And I’m guessing that there will be something that outsiders wouldn’t recognize—maybe a linguistic signal, something that’s not in Latin.”

“I hope he didn’t make it too hard for us non-Huns.”

“I have faith that he didn’t. Think about what you and Sam have just been through. He’s been teaching you about himself. He’s been forcing you to go and stand in each of the places where his life was changed. He’s taken you from the final days, when he was at the height of his power, marrying the beautiful Gothic princess Ildico in his stronghold on the Hungarian Plain surrounded by his hundreds of thousands of fanatical followers, all the way back to the very first moment of his career. Now we know that the start wasn’t a triumph. It was the moment when an orphaned twelve-year-old stood in his father’s grave, about to be sent away as a hostage. And what he did was vow to conquer Rome and be buried here.”

“But he didn’t conquer Rome.”

“He reached the point where it was in his power to do that but chose instead to preserve his overpowering army for another day.”

“And he died before he could come back.”

“True,” said Albrecht. “His death was a complete surprise to everyone. During the long period while he was burying his hoards of pillaged treasure and leaving messages, I’m sure there was never a doubt in his mind that he would take Rome and declare himself emperor. When he turned back at the Po River in 452, he was aware that there was nobody left who could stop him. Flavius Aëtius, who had prevented him from extending his kingdom to the Atlantic coast, no longer had an army that could stand against him. It turned out that Aëtius’s nominal victory at Châlons-en-Champagne was the last victory by any Western Roman army anywhere, and I believe Attila was astute enough to see it that way. I think that in 453, in late spring or early summer when campaigning season began, he would have gone back to attack Rome. Instead he died.”

They walked along the dark catacomb, the lights from their foreheads the only illumination except when one of them shone a flashlight on an inscription or there was a flash when someone took a picture. From the rear of the group Sam called out, “Keep reading every seal stone you come to. Take pictures to help record our route.”

They walked on, along gallery after gallery. At one point, Tibor and János turned to look at an offshoot of the corridor they were in, then scurried to rejoin the group as the light moved on ahead.

Sam stopped and whispered to them. “Did you hear something too?”

Tibor said, “It sounded like footsteps somewhere in the dark behind us. You heard it?”

Remi said, “You think that Attila’s men came down here and took over an earlier burial?”

“Exactly,” said Albrecht. “We think they found a tunnel, or even a district of the catacomb, that was old enough so nobody ever visited it anymore. Then they probably removed a sealing stone and whatever human remains were behind it. Next they did what some Roman families did—dug much deeper and wider into the stone to make a chamber. They would have made a very small, narrow opening so the tomb looked like the thousands around it. But if the treasure is anything like what we’ve read, the chamber would be much larger than any of the crypts we’ve seen so far.”

“We’ve got to think more about recognizing it,” said Remi. “Is there a family symbol, or a pun on Attila’s name, or a nickname?”

“Even the name itself is a controversy,” said Albrecht. “Some people think Attila is derived from Gothic and meant ‘little father,’
atil
meaning ‘father’ and
la
being a diminutive. The idea is that the Huns were Asiatic and a bit smaller than the Gothic peoples of the future Germany. We also have Priscus’s account, which says Attila was on the short side.”

“Do you accept that?” asked Tibor.

“No. I think it contradicts much of what we know about him. He was a charismatic leader and an absolute ruler—a tyrant, if you will—and a ruthless warrior. At times he pursued strategies that would preserve his armies, but at other times, if it suited his purpose, he hurled his cavalry at fortified positions and accepted huge casualties as the price of victory. He wasn’t the sort of person who is called ‘little father,’ and certainly not the sort who would use that name.”

“So what is your favorite theory?”

“I think that the Hunnic language was closest to that of the Danube Bulgarians, a more recently extinct Turkic language. In Danube Bulgarian,
attila
means, literally, ‘great ocean’ or ‘universal ruler.’ It fits the role of a king of the Huns, whose job was to bring victory, and therefore prosperity, to the people. It also has no hint of an origin in a distantly related language or a Western point of view.”

The group walked to the first three galleries that were candidates for Attila’s grave. They had all been dug and filled before the year 400. There were carved inscriptions, but none that contained all three necessary elements—the right names of consuls for the year 453, the age forty-seven, and a date of death during the first three or four months of the year.

Captain Boiardi asked, “Why do we assume Attila would tell the truth about anything? Why not put a fake name, year, and day?”

Albrecht said, “Because it doesn’t fit with what we think his purpose was. We think he wanted the tomb to be possible for the right person to find—one with determination and cunning and persistence. We think he wanted the wealth he buried here and elsewhere to be used by a future leader of the Huns to rule the world.”

They went to the fourth district on Albrecht and Selma’s list, a place of intersecting galleries like the streets of an underground city. All turns were right angles at the ends of blocks. The explorers read inscriptions and took photographs, as they had for many hours, and then, without any audible surprise, came Remi’s voice out of the near dark. “I think we’ve found him.”

Albrecht stopped. “What?” He pivoted to face her.

Remi was standing beside a space where there were several openings covered with seal stones. She pointed at one and repeated, “I think this is Attila.”

Albrecht moved closer to the big stone she was examining. His single headlight added to hers and lit it brighter. The others gathered around. Albrecht read aloud to them.
“‘Fidelis Miles,’
meaning ‘Loyal Warrior,’” he said.
“‘Obit die annus Flavius Opilio et Iohannes Vincomalus vicesimo quinto Ianuarii.
XLVII.’”
He laughed loudly and put his arm around Remi. “I think you’re right. I think that behind this stone is the man we’re searching for.”

There was a general round of handshaking, backslapping, and hugging. Sam said, “Let’s all stand back a little so the seal can be photographed. From this moment on, everything gets documented, measured, and photographed as it is before it gets touched. Albrecht will be in charge.”

The next two hours were spent on documenting the seal stone and removing it successfully. In the carved shelf space was the skeleton of a Hun warrior of the fifth century, much like the ones Albrecht had found in the field in Szeged, Hungary, early in the summer. “Presumably this man is the loyal soldier.” The man, who was now a skeleton, wore leather pants and a tunic. He also carried a dagger and a long, straight sword.

Sam and Albrecht placed a board under the skeleton and the textiles and weapons, then carefully slid it outward so it could be placed in a rigid airtight plastic container like a flat coffin that was held by Tibor and János. They moved it out of the way.

Now Albrecht and Sam began to examine the back wall of the man’s narrow berth carved into the rock. Sam took out his pocketknife. “Can I test it?”

“By all means,” Albrecht said. “I think it should be a false wall made of plaster.”

Sam prodded and scraped at the wall for a few seconds and then brought out a chunk about an inch thick. “It’s a layer of plaster that hides a second stone.”

“Let’s photograph it before we remove it.” Sam and Albrecht stepped back while Remi photographed the plaster. Then they carefully removed pieces, examining them for paint or scratches.

Albrecht leaned into the opening and stared at the piece of tufa fitted into the back beyond the plaster. “It’s a second seal stone. Oh, yes. This is it!” he said. “‘
Sepulcrum Summi Regis.’
The Tomb of the High King.
‘Magnus Oceanus.’
The Great Ocean.
‘Rex Hunnorum.’
Ruler of the Huns.”

The others applauded, probably the loudest sound heard in this spot in over a thousand years. As it died down and stopped, Sam leaned close to Captain Boiardi. “Was that an echo?”

Boiardi listened for a few seconds, then nodded. “Let’s go see.” He turned off his headlamp.

The two stepped away from the side of the tomb and went back the way they had come, their flashlights turned off. As they quietly walked back, from time to time one of them would stop and they would wait and listen for a few seconds, then continue. As they came to the second turning, there was a larger opening that had been dug for a family crypt. Sam and Boiardi made the turn, Boiardi flicking on his light to see where they were.