Текст книги "The Tombs"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

The two jumping horses belonging to his daughters had been found safe in a farmer’s field seventeen miles from his house, so that part had worked out without trouble. But he hated that this couple, the cause of all his misery, seemed not to be afraid that they might fall into his hands a second time. They were wrong not to be afraid. He’d had four men here for days, watching for them. He also had a group of oil drillers from Atyrau searching for the tomb of Attila’s father in the hills.

As he came into the baggage area, he saw two of his men waiting for him. One of them—the blond—had helped with the kidnapping of Remi Fargo, the last thing Poliakoff could recall that had been done right. As he approached, he said, “Tell me what’s going on now.”

“They were here,” said the blond man.

“They ‘were’ here? Where are they now?”

“They took off about two hours ago.”

“For where?”

“They filed a flight plan for Odessa.”

“Odessa?” he said. “That’s not their destination. That’s a refueling stop.” He reflexively looked up and away from them toward the terminal building. He would have to dream up some way of finding out the plan they would file in Odessa.

“There!” The blond man pointed. “Danil and Leo. They were at the hotel, searching the room. They must have found something.”

Poliakoff saw the two men get out of a cab and begin to hurry toward him. He could see that one man’s face was bruised and the other man could barely walk. He didn’t need to speak with them and ask what had happened. He knew.

*  *  *

BEING AIRBORNE was a relief. Sam and Remi lay, with their seat backs tilted and their legs up, in big leather seats like overstuffed easy chairs. After the private plane landed in Odessa, Sam sat looking out the window as the ground crew chocked and grounded the plane and then hooked up hoses and began to refuel. He pressed the button for Tibor Lazar’s number in Hungary. It rang once and there was Tibor’s voice. “Sam?”

“Yes.”

“How is the search going so far?”

“It’s done. Let’s leave it at that. Do you remember the morning when we were in your car on the way to Budapest and all agreed to be partners in this project?”

“Of course.”

“Well, now is the moment for all of us to come together one more time. We’ve read the fifth message,” said Sam. “We’re going to find and open the tomb of Attila.”

“Woohoo!” Tibor called out. It was a wordless shout, a celebration.

“Come to Rome,” Sam said. “There will be a room for you in the Saint Regis Grand Hotel. You can bring János and anybody else you want. Just be sure Bako’s men don’t follow you and nobody knows your destination.”

“I will bring János, but we’ll need to leave the others here to warn us if Bako or his men move.”

“All right. Come as soon as you can.”

“We’ll leave tonight. I wouldn’t miss this if I had to walk to Rome.”

Sam hung up. “Well, he seems enthusiastic.”

“Without that enthusiasm, the rest of us would be dead—Albrecht, you, me.”

“True,” said Sam. He watched the two fuel men disconnect the hoses from the private jet. “It looks as though we’re almost ready to head to our last stop.”

“I am,” she said. “I want a view of Rome, a nice hotel, a bath, and a dress that shows how little I’ve eaten since Moscow. And I want to sleep in a bed for at least one night instead of being out digging holes.”

“That all sounds within our reach,” Sam said. “Just one last dig and we’re done.”

ABOVE ROME

SAM AND REMI’S PLANE DID NOT COME IN TO LEONARDO da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport, the huge international hub with forty million visitors a year. Instead they flew into Ciampino Airport, fifteen kilometers southeast of Rome. They had no luggage except a laptop computer, so they passed through customs quickly.

It took much longer to get through the Roman traffic to reach the St. Regis Grand Hotel. The hotel was spare and elegant on the outside but luxurious inside, with ornate public spaces adorned with vases of flowers. At the desk was a message from Professor Albrecht Fischer, inviting them to his suite on the tenth floor. Remi said, “I’m going to buy myself some clothes, take a bath, and then I’ll be ready to see people.” She looked at Sam, who said nothing.

“And I’d better get you some clothes too,” she said. “You look as though you’ve been digging for bones like a dog.”

“A noble beast engaged in a noble profession, but I’d better go with you,” said Sam.

They checked in, then asked the concierge to get them a driver to take them to the right stores for buying the best-quality ready-made clothes. They both bought new casual attire, and Sam bought a suit while Remi bought a cocktail dress, shoes, and purse. They took a cab to their hotel and retired to their suite for an hour before they came to Albrecht’s room and knocked.

The door swung open, and it looked as though a party was in session. There was Albrecht, and Selma Wondrash was across the room carrying around a tray of hors d’oeuvres. Pete Jeffcoat and his girlfriend and coresearcher, Wendy Corden, were acting as bartenders. Tibor Lazar and his brother János sat on a couch. There was a large table set for dinner.

“Sam! Remi!” Albrecht called out as though announcing them. “Welcome to our humble abode.” People stood up and surrounded them and then put wineglasses in their hands. Remi whispered in Sam’s ear, “This is like a dream.”

“It is,” he said. They took seats at the big table. “Sorry we’re late,” he said. “We arrived wearing the clothes we wore in a fistfight.”

“We’ve been eager to talk about the tomb,” said Selma. “Albrecht wanted to wait for you.”

Albrecht stood. “All right,” said Sam. “Go ahead.”

Albrecht said, “Well, what I believe we’re going to find is the chamber containing Attila’s remains. His message to us—to the people who found the five treasures, whoever they turned out to be—was very clear. He wanted to be buried as the guest of a daughter of the Flavian emperors.”

“Which were the Flavian emperors?” asked Sam.

“Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, a father and two sons, who ruled Rome from 69 to 96 C.E. They built the Colosseum. Vespasian was a general commanding the eastern forces who essentially took the throne by showing up in Rome at the head of his army. That made him a hard man to argue with. Titus and Domitian inherited.”

“Why would Attila care about them?”

“I’m not sure. They were strong emperors who ruled near the height of Rome’s power. They were the first emperors who tried to take over Dacia on the Danube as a colony, and that was near the Huns’ territory, but it didn’t happen until some time after the Flavians died.”

“Then it doesn’t seem like enough,” said Remi.

“Connections are tricky. As everyone here knows, the Roman who fought Attila at Châlons, France, was named Flavius Aëtius. He was not an aristocrat from Rome but was born in what is now Bulgaria. He was sent as a young man to be a hostage of the Huns at the court of Attila’s uncle Ruga. He and Attila were friends. The name may be part of the attraction. Maybe it symbolized the ruling class of Rome for Attila.”

“And you said that Attila was a hostage too,” said Remi.

“Yes. Attila was sent to Rome by his uncle, King Ruga, at the age of twelve in 418. He was there for at least two years, I believe. What he saw was extreme wealth, along with extreme corruption and murderous conspiracies. He saw that Rome was the ultimate prize for a conqueror. He also observed and studied the practices and strategies of the Roman army, the best in the world—its strengths, methods, and its weaknesses. Since he was from a warlike people, this was probably of most interest to him.”

“And that made him want to be buried like a Roman?”

“It made him realize that Rome was the greatest empire of his era and that it was vulnerable to him. He wanted to conquer it. The burial would have been secondary, a sign he had won.”

“And you said you knew exactly where he wanted to be buried in Rome.”

“A crucial point is that none of the early Roman emperors were buried. The custom was to cremate them. If Attila wanted to be buried, as his father, uncle, brother, and other relatives were, as well as Huns as far back as we know about them, his choices were limited. For nearly all of Roman history, it was illegal to bury a body anywhere within the limits of the city.”

“So what happened?” asked Tibor.

“What happened was, the catacombs. The early Christians believed in the resurrection of the body, so they wanted to be buried, just as the Huns did. They began to dig tunnels at the edge of the city and bury people there. The first were the Catacomb of Domitilla. She was a daughter of the Flavians, a niece of Vespasian, and first cousin of both Titus and Domitian. The land originally belonged to her. Like all of the forty other catacombs that came after it, this one was dug along one of the major roads.”

“How long will it take us to find the Catacomb of Domitilla?” asked Tibor.

“Not long,” said Albrecht. “The address is 282 Via delle Sette Chiese. It’s just west of the Via Ardeatina and the Appian Way.”

“You mean it’s that simple? It’s right there in the open?”

“Not exactly,” said Albrecht. “With Attila, nothing ever seems to be simple. The Catacomb of Domitilla held one hundred fifty thousand burials. It’s fifteen kilometers of underground passages on four levels. Each tunnel is about two meters wide and over two meters high, with shelves, or platform-shaped depressions, that hold the bodies of the dead. There are offshoots and rooms, each of which has more shelves dug into the rock. This kind of rock is called tufa, which is a soft volcanic stone that hardens after it’s exposed to air. It’s what is under all of Rome. If you wished to bury someone, you would find an unused spot or extend a tunnel to make one, then hollow out a shelf in the wall and put the deceased in it. Next, you would seal the space with a slab. Carved into the slab was the name of the deceased, his age, and the date of his death.”

“But why did Attila choose a catacomb?” asked Remi. “And how would he even know about them?”

Albrecht said, “I’m sure that elucidating and explaining what Attila did will take up most of the rest of my career. Rome was the most famous place in the world. People talked about it. Attila was probably taught to admire the Flavians, two of whom are included in the group historians call the five good emperors. Many of the Flavian family were buried in the oldest parts of this catacomb. He also knew that the desecration and looting of monarchs’ graves was a concern. We know he left instructions, going to great lengths, to hide his grave. We know Attila was very cunning. Because Rome was full of people from every country in the Empire, he probably knew it would be possible for a small burial party of Huns to look innocent long enough to enter a catacomb that was outside the city limits. To hide his grave among the graves of a hundred and fifty thousand, most of them Christians who owned little that could be left as burial goods, seems to be very much the sort of thing Attila might do. And of course we have his word that this is what he did.”

“The word of a twelve-year-old?”

“One of the things we know is that people who underestimated this man usually died. And there is another reason to have faith in the young Attila.”

“What’s that?”

“That year, Attila was the one chosen as hostage, not his older brother Bleda or anyone else. This was Ruga’s best chance to get a spy into the most important court on earth. It was also Rome’s chance to form a relationship with the youth whom they believed would one day be leading the Huns. Both sides agreed on who that would be—the twelve-year-old Attila.”

“All right,” said Sam. “We know where the tomb is, and all the members of the partnership are here. Let’s plan how we’re going to accomplish this.”

“I’d like to have all of us there for the finish,” Remi said. “Even if we’re fifteen hundred years late and the tomb has been looted, we all work to follow his instructions to the end.”

“Remi is right to mention the possible end,” said Albrecht. “Some of the catacombs were looted by Visigoths, Lombards, early medieval scavengers. It’s possible we’ll find nothing. But the Catacomb of Domitilla is the least compromised.”

Sam said, “What are the legalities?”

Selma said, “We’ve done some looking into it. The people of Rome abandoned the Catacomb of Domitilla by the ninth century, then forgot it existed. In 1873 it was rediscovered. Because most of the catacomb was an early Christian cemetery, it was placed under the ownership of the Catholic Church. In 2007 the Pope appointed the Divine Word Missionaries, an organization of priests and monks, to act as administrator. At the moment, about sixteen hundred meters are open to the public, but they’ve been cooperative about projects to explore, map, and photograph the rest of the catacomb for historical purposes. It’s by far the oldest and biggest, and the one that still contains the bones of its original dead. We’ve called Captain Boiardi of the Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale. He has agreed not only to provide security but also to intercede for us with the Divine Word Missionaries. He’s telling them about the way you called in the authorities after the Mantua excavation.”

“Wonderful,” said Remi. “He’s somebody we want on our side.”

“He called a while ago and asked for you and Sam. I told him I worked for you, so he said to tell you he would be here as soon as he could. He has the Ministry of Culture approving this as a joint project. Anything that’s dated before the ninth century B.C. or after the fourth century A.D. will be granted a license for possible export to the U.S. Anything else will be negotiated case by case.”

“Those are generous terms,” said Sam.

“It will be good to have official backing,” Albrecht said. “Going into a catacomb is like a cave expedition. The floor is hard, smoothly finished, and reasonably level and dry. But beyond the areas open to the public, it’s not very different from the way it was in 300 C.E. There will be no electricity. None of the deceased will have been removed from their crypts and sepulchres. We’ll use what we bring and, when we go, we’ll leave nothing behind. This is a fifteen-kilometer archaeological site. We map and photograph, but, to the extent that we can avoid it, we touch nothing. We’ll have to be very deliberate, attentive, and patient because the tomb will be hidden somehow. What we’re after is one of the great treasures of the ancient world. Attila started thinking about this tomb when he was twelve and didn’t stop until he died thirty-five years later. All we can assume is that finding it will not be easy.”

Sam said, “I think we’d better all decide how we’d like to do this. I suggest that before we go down there, each of us think about our capabilities. If you don’t think you’re up to walking ten miles on a stone surface carrying a backpack, then you should remember that going there and back is twenty miles. If you have a hint of claustrophobia, it’s better to realize it now. There’s nobody in this room who hasn’t earned the right to be down there. But we’ll also need a team to remain on the surface to watch the vehicles, take charge of anything we bring up, deal with the authorities, and so on.”

The group all looked at one another appraisingly, but at first none of them spoke. Finally Selma said, “I’ll be worth more upstairs.”

“I’ll go down,” said Tibor.

“So will I,” said János.

“I think I need to be down also,” said Albrecht. “I know what we’re looking for.”

“I’m going down,” said Sam.

Remi said, “Me too.”

Wendy said, “I’ll stay with Selma.”

“Thank you,” said Selma. “I was beginning to wonder if I was going to be all alone.”

“I’ll stay up too,” Pete said.

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.”

BENEATH ROME

AT FOUR A.M. TUESDAY, 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,’ atilmeaning ‘father’ and labeing 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, attilameans, 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.”