Boyd paused, taking a bite of his apricot bis-cotti. His stomach growled in appreciation. ‘What about your father? Would he be willing to help?’
‘Probably. But he’d hold it against me for the rest of my life.’ She took a deep breath, trying to control her emotions. ‘You see, he’s always viewed women as the weaker sex. So I was a big disappointment from the very beginning. He already had two sons from his previous marriage, yet I guess he wanted another. That’s one of the reasons that I moved away from Italy. To prove that I could survive on my own.’
‘Which means we won’t be calling him for help.’
She nodded. ‘Not if I have a say in the matter.’
Boyd sensed that Maria wasn’t telling him everything about her father. After all, this was a life-and-death matter, not a simple favor. But Boyd had some secrets of his own, so he wasn’t about to push her on the matter. At least not yet.
‘And you do,’ he assured her. ‘Although there aren’t many other alternatives. At least none that I can think of without any sleep.’
‘Tell me about it. The last time I was this tired I’d spent the entire night in the library.’
Maria yawned, thinking back to her days as an undergraduate when she used to pull all-nighters twice a week. She’d fill a thermos with coffee, gather all the books she needed, then dive into her research until the sun came up.
Research. The word echoed through her mind.
Research. That’s what they should be doing. Not sitting on their butts, yawning and bitching. They should be in a library, doing what they were trained to do.
‘Professore,’ she said, excited. ‘Let’s figure out what the scroll says.’
‘Shhh!’ Boyd glanced around the café, praying no one heard her. ‘Keep your voice down.’
‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘But we have nothing better to do. Why not decipher the scroll?’
‘But how? This isn’t the type of thing I could translate from memory.’
She slid her chair closer. ‘What would you need?’
‘Privacy, for one. We’d need to find a room where I could work for several hours in peace. Second, I’d need a translation guide. A number of books have been written on early Latin. I’d need one to help me through the obscure passages.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yes, the three Ps. Pencils, paper, and patience. No translation is possible without them.’
Maria smiled as she reached for the check. ‘If that’s all you need, then we’re in luck. There are two schools nearby with world-class libraries.’
They caught a bus to the Università Cattolica, hoping that it had everything Boyd needed.
Even though they lacked a college ID, Maria turned on her charms and sweet-talked the male security guard into letting them inside. Her charisma was so effective she even convinced him to unlock a private study room so they could conduct their translation in private.
Once they got settled, the two headed in different directions, searching for materials. Boyd grabbed a map and looked for the location of the library’s Latin collection while Maria sat at a computer terminal and entered EARLY LATIN. Within seconds she was staring at the name of the best books in the building. Unfortunately, when she got to the section, he was already emerging from the stacks with several books in his hands.
‘Computers,’ he laughed, ‘are a waste of time and money!’
They returned to the study room, where Boyd unveiled the bronze cylinder. He’d peeked at the scroll during their journey to Milan and realized that it was written in the same language as its brother, the language of the Roman Empire. Now he just needed time to translate it.
‘What can I do to help?’ she asked.
‘Why don’t you use your fancy-pants computer skills and research the artwork of ancient Rome? Try to locate the laughing man from Orvieto. He has to be mentioned somewhere.’
Maria went to the same terminal as before and typed ANCIENT ROMAN ART. The computer scanned the library’s resources and spat out a long list. Photographs, sketches, maps, and descriptions were available by the hundreds, all of them detailing the colorful history of the Roman Empire. Maria grabbed the first five books she found, then settled into a nearby booth.
As she opened the first book, she realized that she didn’t have a plan of attack. Sure, she could flip through page after page, hoping to stumble across a picture of the laughing man, but she knew there had to be a more efficient way to conduct her research.
Giving it some thought, she decided to look in the table of contents, hoping that her theory from the Catacombs – that the laughing man was actually a Roman leader – was accurate. To her surprise, the book classified its artwork by emperor, meaning she could flip through the book’s pictures until she reached the last leader of the Empire.
Starting with Augustus, she studied statue after statue and carving after carving, but none of them shared any similarities to the face of the laughing man.
After Augustus was Tiberius, a man who ruled the Empire from 14 to 37 ad, a period that covered the adult life of Jesus Christ. In her mind she felt that Rome’s second emperor could be the man she was looking for. Since the laughing man was prominently displayed on the crucifixion archway and Tiberius was the leader of Rome at that time, she thought they might be one in the same. That made sense, didn’t it? But as soon as she saw Tiberius’s face in a series of statues, she knew it wasn’t him. The two men looked nothing alike.
‘Damn!’ she cursed. ‘Who the hell are you?’
Maria searched for the laughing man for two more hours before she finally took a break. Her lack of sleep coupled with her lack of success proved to be a powerful narcotic. So she stumbled down two flights of stairs to the basement lounge and bought the largest espresso they sold. While waiting for her order, she collapsed into a nearby booth and rested her head on the table. Unfortunately, the sound of footsteps cut her nap short.
‘La Repubblica?’ offered the server who brought Maria’s order.
She didn’t have the energy to read the local paper but accepted it with a nod. The instant he walked away, she brought the steaming cup to her mouth, savoring the rich aroma with several deep breaths before finally taking a sip. ‘Aaaaah,’ she moaned. ‘Much better than sex.’
Within seconds Maria felt rejuvenated, so much so that she started to skim the headlines. She had no intention of reading any articles – she wasn’t that refreshed – but hoped to catch up on the major news: An Earthquake in India… A Murder in Denmark… Violence near Orvieto -
‘What?’ she gasped.
She skipped back to the story and forced her eyes to read the headline, hoping it was a hallucination. Shockingly, the paper claimed that there’d been a terrorist attack near Orvieto.
Maria put her espresso aside and started to read, devouring the words of the article. The paper claimed that Dr Charles Boyd blew up a bus, killing nearly forty people in the process. It stated his whereabouts were unknown but warned he should be considered armed and dangerous.
With a mixture of emotions, she gathered her things and rushed upstairs to tell Boyd the news. She burst into the conference room, expecting to find him working, his slight frame hovering over the outstretched scroll. But he wasn’t there. The ancient document sat in the middle of the table next to a translation of the text, yet his chair sat vacant. It was a sight that made no sense to her. Why did he leave the document unguarded? No way he’d abandon it for a bathroom break or a trip to the card catalog. It was far too important to leave unprotected.
God, she thought, I hope nothing happened to him.
She walked forward, desperate for a sign that he was OK, a scrap of paper that said I’ll be back soon or an envelope with her name on it. Instead, she saw something she wasn’t expecting, a scene that confused her even more. Dr Boyd was sitting on the floor in the corner of the room. His knees were pulled to his chest and his eyes were glazed, fixated on the far wall.
‘Dr Boyd? Are you all right?’
A blink. A wince. Then a shudder. His entire body trembled as he tried to answer, as if the words he was searching for required every ounce of strength that he could produce. Finally, he managed to whisper three words, ‘Christ is dead.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, confused.
‘Our discovery will kill Christ. It will murder the Church.’
‘What are you talking about? How does one murder the Church? The Church can’t be murdered. It’s an institution, not a person. Tell me what’s wrong. What’s going on?’
‘Trust me, you don’t want to know what I’ve learned.’
‘Of course I do. I risked my life for that scroll. In fact I’m still risking my life for that scroll.’ She held up the local newspaper and showed it to him. ‘We’re wanted for murder. You and me. The authorities are blaming us for the deaths of three dozen people.’ Actually, Maria’s name wasn’t mentioned, but she figured a little white lie might work to her advantage. ‘Now, unless I’m mistaken, an accusation like that means I’m entitled to full disclosure.’