Hounds of Rome

  “I understand,” Steve answered glumly. “I have a question.”

  “What?”

  “Can I borrow your car?”

  *****

  Steve drove north through the city in Angelo’s car to Saint John Lateran Cathedral. Walking down the aisle in the dark interior of the church, he looked up at the urns resting high above. He thought of young Peter who had said he was cloned from the tissue fragments in one of the urns. Young Peter, murdered. He wondered whether other clones might be produced either from the remains of the original Saint Peter or perhaps from the body of young Peter.

  Steve knelt in the first pew. He didn’t pray. He had come to sort things out in his mind while God listened in—if God cared to listen in. He was angry at being tossed out of the church. So they will let me remain as a Catholic parishioner, he thought bitterly. Perhaps I could be a deacon—like a dismissed surgeon in a hospital being told he could stay on as a medical technician or an orderly.

  Their decision was unfair, but there was no way he could convince the church authorities of that fact. They had taken the BioGene results with a grain of salt. They wanted him out. It resolved a dilemma for them. He thought of the parishioners he had counseled through the years—people who had lost loved ones, lost jobs, lost hope. People who had been treated unfairly by events or by other people. He would tell them life was like that. You learned to live with it after a time. You learned to make the best of it. You held onto the belief that God had a purpose in mind. The unfairness would be straightened out—if not in this life, then certainly in the next. It was faith that would triumph over the unfairness. Faith was the key. All you needed was faith in God and faith in yourself.

  As he knelt, he was aware that the messages he had given through the years in counseling parishioners, were messages that he now sorely needed to take to heart. Like so many people who had lost homes and all their belongings in tornadoes, floods or earthquakes, you couldn’t let yourself go off the deep end he told himself. You had to rebuild. You had to learn to turn away from the past, and simply press on. Through all the calamity, you had to trust your faith in God’s goodness.

  His anger faded. He began to pray. He began to trust.

  *****

  Steve Murphy walked back up the aisle to the front entrance of the Saint John Lateran Cathedral. He paused briefly, turning to look back at the altar, then walked out into the bright Roman sunshine.

  *****

  Steve opened his eyes, although in the blackness, he wasn’t really sure they were open. He groped for the flashlight but something told him not to switch it on. It was a soft sound. He had been asleep on the cot in the small alcove that lay behind the narrow slit in the wall on the third level down. At first, half awake, he thought the noise that wakened him was made by rats searching for a way under or through the metal cage that covered his cot. He kicked at the cage. These past nights spent trying to sleep in the catacomb were the same old misery he had had to put up with weeks before when the Knights of Carthage were after him. Many nights were filled with prayer because sleep was elusive. He often lay on his back with his arms folded behind his head for hours, wondering what he would do with the rest of his life after the priesthood. But on this night, he was so exhausted, he had finally fallen asleep.

  Was it the rats? He knew that if he simply left the rats alone, they might gnaw through the wire mesh of his cage. He kicked again, careful to keep the sound as muffled as possible.

  After a few minutes in the silence, he decided the rats must have given up. Then he heard a whispering voice. He knew it couldn’t be Angelo because when Angelo’s head hit the pillow in the upstairs bedroom of the rectory, even a strong earthquake was not likely to wake him.

  The whispering grew louder. Someone was creeping down the steps to the lower level. He was whispering to someone else. Was it the monks?

  Steve lay frozen in his cot. He could see a glint from a flashlight that reflected momentarily on the wall just outside of the alcove. It told him that his pursuers, whispering to one another, were dangerously close. He held his breath and lay motionless on the cot. His only hope: that they wouldn’t see the narrow slit in the wall that led to his sleeping chamber. He strained to listen. The soft footsteps passed by the opening to his alcove. The whispering began to fade in the distance. They had missed his opening. He began to relax. Fifteen minutes passed. Then he heard the sounds growing louder. They were coming back. He distinctly heard the voice of Brother Michael. He could afford to wait no longer. If they found the opening, he would be trapped in the dead-end alcove.

  Pushing off the screen, he bolted to his feet and ran out into the main corridor. He had forgotten the flashlight, but there was no time to return for it. They heard him and started running after him. With hands touching lightly on both sidewalls as he ran in the dark, he knew they weren’t far behind because the light from their flashlights flickered crazily on the crudely carved tufa rock ceiling and bounced on the earthen floor. He turned a corner into a side passageway and slid into an empty open crypt in the wall and laid flat. He had seen it before. Carved deeply into the wall, it was one of the few crypts that had been carved deeply enough to hold two bodies side by side. He pressed as far back as he could hoping not to be seen by his pursuers.

  He could feel the rush of wind as the brothers ran by with flapping robes and sandals crunching into the soft earth. He figured they hadn’t seen him as they continued down the passageway.

  As Steve pressed against the back earthen wall, he found the crypt not long enough for his body. His knees pressed against the roof of the crypt. Crumbles of dirt fell on him. Then the roof fell in. Something large landed on his chest. In the blackness, he had no idea what it was. Was it a large chunk of cemented earth from the crypt above? He tried to shake it off. In the confined space, he tried to push it away. His hands explored it. He shuddered in disgust. It was a body from a long-sealed crypt above. More than a skeleton, it seemed to have pieces of flesh attached. Groping, he felt a shoulder and a bony arm. The skull was pressed face down on his neck. The kiss of the dead. He decided the ancient must have been buried face down although he had no idea why. He tried to calm himself by remembering that if flesh remained after two thousand years, it was probably the body of a saint. “Whoever you are, pray for me,” he whispered as he climbed out of the crypt and tried to run in a direction opposite to the one the monks had taken. But something in the crypt kept dragging him back. A skeletal arm with long bony fingers had caught in his clothes. As he grabbed the arm it separated from the hand. He had to pull off bony fingers that seemed to be grasping on to him in a death grip. Wrestling himself free, he took off.

  Hearing the noise of the falling debris of the crypt, the brothers turned around and started running back. Glancing to the rear as he ran, Steve saw the glint of a knife in the light from one of the flashlights. He gritted his teeth in a flash of anger. He remembered Elmer and what they had called an ‘accident’. He thought of Saint Peter who had denied Christ three times on the night before the Crucifixion, while he, Steve, had cast off his anger in front of God in the Lateran Cathedral only to have it come surging back. The weakness of the flesh.

  Surely the monks had been told he was about to be defrocked—that he was no longer a problem for the church. He was certain now that they would never give up pursuing him even after he left the priesthood. They had made up their minds to kill him. It would be easily done in the catacombs and easy to cover up. They’d simply dump his body into an unexplored crevasse.

  Thudding feet. They were close behind. They had an advantage: they were running with flashlights to light their path, he was running in the dark. He took a turn into a side passageway just as he heard one of the brothers shout, “There he is. We got that shithead now.”

  After turning the corner Steve halted abruptly. He fumbled with the latch on a wrought iron gate in the sidewall that led into an alcove. He swung open the gate but didn’t go into the alcove. Instead, he squeezed by th
e open gate and ran along the passageway. The decoy saved him a little time as the monks, seeing the open gate, searched the alcove. Cursing, they were soon after him again. Now, the pursuers and the quarry were deep into the catacomb.

  As the monks closed in on him again, Steve stopped to fumble with the latch on the gate of another alcove. This time the monks knew the game. This time they would not be decoyed into searching another alcove where he might be hiding.

  As Steve tried to squeeze around the open gate one of the monks came up behind him and, reaching out, slashed him on the shoulder with his knife. Steve felt a surge of pain and felt blood running down his left arm, but at this point, nothing was going to stop him. He took off running again. As he ran he quickly glanced back. He mumbled under his breath: “This is for Elmer.” Then he heard the yelps begin—at first just a few, then a clamor. Then the sound of scrambling, yelping dogs fighting their way out of the alcove and crowding into the passageway. The pack of dogs he had been daily feeding small portions of meat in the alcove were still hungry enough to want more. The gate had been locked, now it was open. As the dogs charged, moving back, trying to escape, Brother John fell in the narrow passageway. Brother Michael fell on top on him. As the dogs piled on, the monks slashed frantically with their knives. Blood spurted on the walls and ceiling. The yelps turned into growls as the dogs bit into the monks’ faces, necks and hands, and chewed away their habits. The monks’ yelling turned into screams. Steve debated whether to turn back to help but although he had fed the dogs, he had not befriended them. With no weapon in hand, there was nothing he could do to help. His plan had been to use the dogs, if necessary, only to scare off the monks, but the dogs had gone into a frenzy of attack when the monks slashed at them with their knives. After a few minutes, the screams stopped and the only sound now was from the growling, gnarling dogs tearing at the flesh of their victims.

  For Steve, the pursuit from Arizona to New Hampshire to the Aleutian Islands, to Paris, Israel, and finally to Rome, was ended.

  *****

  Steve shakily climbed the steps to the rectory. He tore off his clothes and wrapped a crude bandage on his upper arm and shoulder. He struggled into a cassock. It was one of Angelo’s. He felt like he was wrapping himself in a tent. After a few minutes spent trying to catch his breath and calm down, he poured himself a glass of wine. His hand shook so badly, he had to refill the glass. He slumped into a chair. But he found he couldn’t just sit there knowing what had happened down below. A sudden thought: maybe the monks were still alive. He jumped up and called for an ambulance and the police. A few minutes later, the police arrived accompanied by two ambulances. Hearing the sirens, Angelo came running in from the chapel.

  “Steve, what in heaven is going on? The carabinieri are here.”

  “I called them Angelo. I had a struggle with those two Arizona monks down below. I also told them to bring two ambulances because the monks are badly wounded. In fact, I hate to say it but they may be dead.”

  *****

  Half a dozen carabinieri rushed into the rectory. Angelo recognized the inspector—an old friend. They shook hands as Angelo directed the other policemen and the medical team to the stairs that led down to the catacomb.

  The police fired shots to scare off the dogs; then, after witnessing the aftermath of the carnage—three dead dogs, blood everywhere, and two partially eaten men, the medical team called for the coroner.

  *****

  An hour later, the police inspector and the priests were gathered in Angelo’s office. The police inspector was puzzled. “Tell me, Father Angelo, you didn’t hear anything at all?”

  “I was asleep in my room upstairs. I heard nothing.”

  Addressing Steve, he asked: “What about you, Father?”

  Steve, who had slipped into a cassock after he had taken off his torn clothes, tried to appear only mildly disturbed by the event. “I couldn’t sleep and as I was sitting here having a late night glass of wine, I heard screaming. It was very faint. Must have been coming from deep down in the catacomb. That’s when I called you and the medics.”

  It was a trap he had set. One he hoped he wouldn’t have to use. But it was the only way he could think of to stop a pursuit that could only end in his death. He thought sardonically: As the old saying goes, ‘better them than me’. He realized that he might have complained to the police, but as in the case of New Hampshire and again in the Aleutian Islands, who would believe that two Catholic monks were trying to kill a Catholic priest?

  The police inspector, an old friend of Father Angelo, had other questions—unspoken questions: Why had a cot been set up in a tiny, almost hidden alcove near the bottom of the stairs that led down to the third level? Who would want to sleep in the cold, damp, blackness of an underground cemetery? And if, in fact, someone had been sleeping down there, why hadn’t the dogs attacked that person?

  The inspector was no fool. He knew that the priest, Murphy, who claimed to be innocently sitting in the priesthouse drinking wine in the middle of the night, was surely covering something up. The dust on his shoes and what appeared to be a few drops of blood on the floor below his cassock were the tipoffs. Although the priest must have been down there and knew what had happened, there wasn’t any way the inspector could link him to the deaths because the monks had clearly been killed by the wild dogs. He could grill Murphy of course, but what was the point? Besides, if his old friend, Father Angelo, seemed to have accepted the matter calmly, the inspector was content to let it remain a mystery.

  “Father Angelo, what should we tell the press? Surely news of the deaths will be reported to the media.”

  Father Angelo leaned forward and gave the inspector a penetrating look and a pat on the shoulder. The inspector offered a convenient solution: “Let’s just say that two American monks were curious about the catacomb and perhaps were looking for a religious relic to take back to a church in America. The affair, unfortunately, resulted in an accidental death.”

  As the inspector got up to leave, Angelo gave him a grateful bear hug.

  *****

  The story appeared in the newspapers and on TV the next day. Two American monks, looking for relics, had apparently slipped into the San Callisto Catacomb unobserved. They were attacked and killed by a pack of wild dogs. The police reported that the passageway was awash in the blood of dead dogs and men. There were several unanswered questions: Why were the monks in the catacomb late at night? And why were they carrying knives? Could it be because they knew there could be wild dogs down at the deepest levels? The monks had apparently gone down to the fifth level which was as yet not completely explored. Nothing like this had ever happened in the San Callisto Catacomb which was generally considered safe; however, since many areas and the deepest levels were as yet unexplored, there could be hidden dangers. Visitors were urged to be escorted by an official guide who would lead them only to areas considered safe.

  45

  Several days after the incident, Steve was off for his morning jog on the Old Appian Way. When he returned, he had taken his shower and was seated at breakfast with Angelo. He saw a puzzled Angelo staring at him. “There was a phone call for you, Steve. It came while you were out running. It was a young woman. She said her name was Janet.”

  “Did she leave a phone number?”

  “No. She said she’s attending to some business this morning and can’t be reached. Did I mention that she’s here in Rome? She said that if you can make it, she will meet you for lunch at noon at the Santa Lucia Trattoria right across from the Colosseum.”

  *****

  She was seated alone at one of the sidewalk tables of the trattoria. The huge Colosseum was framed behind her. She wore a mini-skirt after the fashion of many young Italian women. They revealed a pair of crossed legs that several men at a nearby table were openly admiring. When Steve arrived, the men turned back to their wine glasses and conversation. As Steve looked at her, the noise of the roaring traffic that flooded the area surrounding the Col
osseum virtually disappeared. He was almost breathless at her stunning beauty. He had forgotten! His memories of her face had long been out of focus, dimmed by time. But now, her soft blue eyes and flowing chestnut brown hair brought the faded memories back to stunning reality.

  As he approached, she smiled. Her smile lit up her face. She extended her hand. He was disappointed, hoping for something more. Her hand felt unbelievably soft and comforting. Since he was casually dressed in a light jacket and slacks, none of the other diners paid any attention. But if he had come in his black suit and Roman collar, there would have been looks from those around them questioning why a priest was having lunch with a beautiful young woman.

  For almost a minute, neither of them spoke. He sat, gazing into her eyes, studying her face. Wisps of her hair danced in the breeze.

  She was the first to speak. “Before I came to Rome, I went to see your brother. Jonathon told me you’re about to be defrocked. You must feel terrible about it. I’m so sorry for you, deeply sorry. Do you plan to appeal it?”

  “No. I’ve come to terms with it,” he said quietly. “I will always have my private devotion. They can’t take that away from me.”

  “Jonathon said the tests at BioGene were all negative. You must be happy about that.”

  “I am, but the church authorities don’t really believe it. You know the Catholic Church—everything tends to be either black or white. There is no in-between. Since the BioGene results are probabilistic rather than one hundred percent absolute, the church authorities are playing it safe. And it’s more than that. They’re still not convinced that a clone is just a twin, even though it is a delayed twin with laboratory involvement. By the way, Janet why are you in Rome? I can’t believe you came all this way just to see me.” His face showed traces of a smirk.