Jon Tracy - The Rome Prophecy

Mater is being stretchered away with a tourniquet around one of her legs, while another paramedic works frantically on her shattered kneecaps.

Valentina diverts Sweetheart’s attention while soldiers pass by carrying a body bag out of the temple.

There are more to come.

Valentina killed four of them. Lorenzo’s men finished off the fifth.

She sits on the floor with her back to the temple wall, puts her arms around Sweetheart and pulls her up on her knee. ‘It’s all over, baby. This is the last time you’ll ever see this stinking place.’ She strokes her hair and the child rests her head on Valentina’s blood-soaked chest.

Tom buttons up his shirt as he walks over to Lorenzo. ‘There’s a man trapped further down the tunnel.’ He points to the hole in the wall that he came through. ‘I think he’s dead. There’s some kind of pit back there with a lion in it.’

Lorenzo looks sceptical. ‘ Un leone? ’

‘It’s a long story.’ Tom tucks his shirt into his trousers, which one-handed is harder than he’s ever imagined. ‘There were two of them. We only managed to kill one.’

Lorenzo nods to the darkness ahead. ‘Show us.’

Tom leads the way. ‘This is the route we came in by. I was told there might be some kind of booby traps, and the floor seems to be one of them.’

They climb through the hole in the gallery wall. ‘Best stay close to the middle. The section of floor that I was on just flipped. It’s on some sort of rocker mechanism.’

Lorenzo and his team reach the edge of the pit and peer in.

A guttural growl rumbles up from the fetid hole.

Seemingly without any instructions, the team springs into action.

One soldier produces a coil of zip-wire and attaches it to his colleague’s belt. The second man slides a light on to his machine gun and drops into the pit.

Within seconds there’s a burst of gunfire.

Tom guesses the animal’s dead.

The zip-line hangs slack around the belt of the soldier standing beside Tom. From below there are the sounds of rocks being moved.

A full minute elapses before the shout comes up: ‘ E morto. L’uomo e morto.’

Tom knows what it means.

He was right.

Guilio is dead.

He crosses himself and remembers the young man’s bravery, an act of courage that saved his own life.

He turns to Lorenzo. ‘I’d like to go down. Is that okay?’

The major looks at him questioningly. ‘With that shoulder?’

‘Your medics have given me so much stuff, I won’t feel pain until the start of the third millennium.’

Lorenzo sizes him up. The Major is tall, but Tom’s even taller and broader. He motions to one of his men. ‘Give me another zip.’

It hits his hands quicker than Tom’s seen pitchers throw a baseball.

Lorenzo clips it to his own belt and turns back to Tom. ‘Take this line holder and wrap it around your waist, then we’ll lower you down this tilted floor; that way there’s no big sudden drop to jar you.’ He throws the line over to Tom and shouts into the hole: ‘The civilian’s coming down; give him some light and help him through the last part of the drop.’

Tom moves into position and Lorenzo instructs another soldier to help him take the weight.

‘Okay! Let’s ease him down.’

It seems strange to Tom to be sliding down the same section of ground that almost cost him his life.

The soldier’s light nearly blinds him as he looks down. He glances away and sees the lion that Guilio killed.

The soldier’s hands guide Tom’s feet past piles of rubble and on to the bottom of the pit. ‘Okay!’ the officer shouts up to Lorenzo.

Tom sees what’s left of Guilio’s corpse.

His head has been chewed off. His arms and legs bitten away.

Tom feels like being sick.

He forces himself to kneel beside the mutilated torso. A man who in his mind is a martyr in the truest sense of the word.

He places his hand over Guilio’s heart and recites an adaptation of the twenty-third psalm: ‘The Lord is your Shepherd and now you shall not want. He led you down the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake, and though you walked through the valley of the shadow of death you feared no evil. Now our sweet Jesus will prepare a table for you in the presence of your enemies. He will anoint your head with oil and ensure your cup is eternally full. He will perpetually be at your side and will restore your soul. He will grant you the right to dwell in his house for ever. Amen.’

The soldier with Tom makes the sign of the cross and then helps the American to his feet.

‘ Grazie.’ As Tom thanks him, he spots a shrine to Cybele set in the wall.

The sculpture of her is the same as the one he saw in the catalogue at Galleria Borghese. She is holding an open book.

The Tenth Book?

‘Can you shine your light over there?’

The soldier points his MP5 at the marble.

Tom has a hunch.

More than a hunch.

He takes Guilio’s scalene pendant from his pocket and tilts his head so that he considers the rectangle of the book as though it was horizontal rather vertical.

He remembers how he moved the slab of tree that blocked the end of the gallery.

There was a hidden triangle of key slots sunk in the middle of the bark.

He runs his fingers over the two marble pages.

Each line of the book is carved deeply, and there is lavish Latin writing engraved all over them.

He looks again.

It isn’t Latin, or even Greek.

He doesn’t recognise it.

It could be Etruscan. Maybe Phrygian.

The soldier steps closer and focuses the light for Tom. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Just trying something.’ He shows him the black stone pendant. ‘This is a key. If I can find the right locks, we may discover something behind here.’

‘As long as it’s not lions, I don’t mind.’

He smiles and points his light down and off to the left. It illuminates an open steel gate about a metre high and half a metre wide. ‘They came through there. The place is full of animal shit and bowls of dried food. There aren’t any more, I already checked.’

Tom is relieved. ‘Can I have the light back, please?’

The soldier obliges.

The book is small enough for Tom to scan it quickly. He notices for the first time that the left-hand page is scored with diagonal lines that cross in the centre. He explores it for hidden slots.

There aren’t any.

Then it occurs to him that the crossed lines create a giant X.

X for ten.

He’s sure he’s found a connection to the Tenth Book.

But what is it?

He shifts his focus to the right-hand page. There are no obvious clues. It looks almost identical to the left-hand one except that there are no diagonal lines. Tom knows the clue is staring him in the face, but he can’t see it.

He suddenly remembers the optical puzzles where you stare at a pattern and when your focus slips, another, far more intricate one becomes visible.

He concentrates hard.

Too hard.

He blinks. Relaxes. Tries again.

He’s conscious of the soldier next to him, and it’s distracting. He lets his focus go and clears his mind almost as though he were preparing for prayer.

From the marble page appears an image he’s more than familiar with.

A pentagram.

An inverted one.

He daren’t blink. Mustn’t move an inch. Can’t let it vanish.

He stretches out his hand and tries the pendant in the first point.

It fits.

He presses it in and feels a latch click.

Slowly and carefully, he works his way anticlockwise along all the other points of the pentagram. Each contains a hidden lock.

The fifth and final lock gives off a satisfying click.

But nothing happens.

Nothing opens.