The Second Messiah (38 page)

THEY RAN FOR
fifty yards before Jack shot a glance back over his shoulder. The Arab pushed his way through the crowds, trying to keep up. Jack glimpsed the man’s companion, concealing his machine pistol under his coat.

Jack kept running, dragging Yasmin through the crowds. Rome’s streets were packed but there wasn’t a police uniform in sight. They turned a corner and Jack saw that they were in a dead end. “Turn back.”

By the time they turned round and reentered the street, the Arab was barely seventy yards behind them. Jack ran faster, his lungs ablaze as he clutched Yasmin’s hand. She said breathlessly, “We can’t just run blindly. Do we know where we’re going?”

“I’ve got a rough idea.” Jack scoured the street signs and steered a sharp right into an alleyway, the cobble shiny and worn. He wiped sweat from his face. “The street I’m looking for is around one of these corners. I can’t remember which one but I’m pretty sure we’re almost there.”

“Almost
where
? What street?” Yasmin began to panic.

“The place I’m looking for is off the Via Varrone.”

They entered the next turning and came to a wide cobbled street lined with tall, centuries-old residential homes with wrought-iron balconies. Their yellow stone façades were soot-streaked by pollution.

Yasmin said, “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“Trust me, it will.”

Soon they came to a building with a basement entrance. A short flight of granite steps led down to a barred metal gate with a rusted padlock. Jack hurried down the steps and called back to Yasmin, “Keep an eye out and let me know if we’ve been followed.”

Yasmin caught her breath and looked over her shoulder. “I can’t see anyone.”

“The Arab and his friend have probably taken a wrong turn. Come down here.”

Yasmin joined him at the bottom of the stairwell. Jack rattled the bars. “It’s locked solid.”

Yasmin saw tarry blackness past the gate. “Where is this place?”

Jack probed between the metal bars with his left hand, fiddling with something on the inside wall. There was a soft
click
and a sparse string of lightbulbs popped on, revealing a rock-strewn passageway. Bulbs strung along the granite walls illuminated a stone pathway that inclined down. “I spent two years here, working on an excavation. It’s still going on in fits and starts.” Jack got down on his knees, slipped his arm between the bars, and felt along the lower wall inside the gate.

“Just tell me where we are.”

Jack wiggled his fingers, trying to touch something. “What we’ve got down here is not exactly another Pompeii but it comes close. It’s an entrance to underground Rome I told you about. The ancient city’s right below our feet.”

“Except the gate’s locked.”

“Right.” Jack smiled as he removed his hand and revealed a worn metal key, patched with rust, dangling between his two fingers. “The dig caretaker, Rocco, always left the key here. Old habits die hard.”

“Where does this passageway lead?”

“You’ll see.” Jack twisted the key in the lock and pushed in the creaking gate. The air chilled as they moved inside. He closed the gate after them, locked it again, and tucked the key in his pocket.

“Is it safe down here?” Yasmin appeared frozen by fear, a stale smell wafting up from the staircase.

“It is if you know what you’re doing.” A trio of dented tin oil lamps hung from hooks on the wall and Jack grabbed one.

“How are you going to light the lamp?”

“I’ve got a lighter somewhere but we’ll keep going for now. The lightbulbs ought to be on for a good part of the way.” Jack moved down
the
path. Fifty yards on, it curved downward into pitch darkness. They heard racing footsteps and looked behind them.

Jack put a hand to his lips to silence Yasmin. The footsteps halted. A pause followed, then a rush of feet moved down the basement stairwell.

The Arab appeared behind the gate and he spotted them in the passageway. He tried to rattle open the gate but when it refused to budge he stepped back and fired his pistol at the lock. The shot exploded, ricocheting off metal and stone. It zinged past Jack’s head like a supersonic bee. A second shot ricocheted off the walls but already Jack was charging deeper into the passageway and dragging Yasmin after him.

Nidal saw the couple scurry away. Frustrated, he rattled the gate but the lock hadn’t completely shattered. He covered his face with his arm, carefully aimed the Beretta, and his second shot blew apart the lock, sending shards flying.

The Serb hammered away the metal remains with the butt of his machine pistol, then dragged open the creaking gate.

Nidal stepped inside and spotted the oil lamps hanging on the wall. He grabbed one and raced down the passageway, the Serb following.

JACK AND YASMIN
hurried on. The air became cooler the deeper they went. After about two hundred feet the string of lightbulbs ended. Another metal gate blocked their path, this one with a heavier lock, an unlit passageway beyond.

This time Jack saw a key hanging from a hook in the wall and he inserted it frantically in the lock. The gate was slow to budge but when he slammed his shoulder hard against the metal, it creaked open in protest. There was barely enough room for them to squeeze through into the blackness and as Jack relocked the gate, they heard the echo of footsteps. “They don’t give up, do they? Stay close to the wall and hold on to my coattail,” he urged Yasmin.

The passageway they entered looked dark and forbidding and the air smelled stale. Jack slipped the key into his pocket and they pushed on ahead. The ground was smooth beneath their feet, the walls slimy to their touch, and they were mostly in darkness apart from the dying glow of the pathway lighting behind them.

Jack whispered, “I don’t want to make us a target, so we’ll wait as long as we can before we light the lamp. I ought to warn you that some of the passageways around here have open shafts that drop down to another level, so be extra careful where you step.”

Tension edged Yasmin’s voice. “As if being chased by a couple of armed madmen wasn’t enough excitement for one day, I get to risk breaking my legs as well.”

Jack’s cell phone rang, the keypad illuminating, and he startled. “What the …!” He hit the mute and checked the caller ID. “It’s Buddy again. Talk about bad timing.”

Jack flicked off his cell as the footsteps on the slope grew louder. “I’d suggest you switch yours off too, in case it rings and gives us away.”

Yasmin flicked off her phone. They moved deeper into the passageway and she kept a firm hold of Jack’s coat as he felt his way along the walls.

Jack listened, and noticed that the echoing footsteps had halted. He looked back and saw moving shadows. The Arab and his companion had reached the second gate. It rattled fiercely and then came a muzzle flash as a ricochet exploded.

“Get down.” Jack squatted, pulling Yasmin after him. “Crouch as low to the ground as you can.”

Yasmin hunkered beside him, alarmed. “What happens when they come through the gate? We’ve nowhere to hide.”

“There ought to be a corner up ahead. Then we can light the lamp and try to lose them in the tunnels.”

“Are you sure we’re even in the right passageway?”

Jack kept feeling his way forward, dragging her deeper into the tarry darkness. “I’m sure of nothing except that this part of Rome’s underground is a maze of tunnels and it’s easy to stray off course. That’s why I’m hoping we can try and lose them.”

Yasmin’s voice hoarsened with panic. “You mean
we
could get
lost
?”

“That’s a distinct possibility.”

Nidal rattled the gate but it didn’t budge. The single shot from his Beretta had ricocheted off the iron lock. “Take care of it,” he ordered.

The Serb examined the rusted lock. The cast iron looked solid. He shook his head. “I’m not sure we can shoot out the mechanism. This one’s much sturdier than the last. Step well away.”

Nidal took a dozen paces back. The Serb aimed toward the gate, squeezed the trigger, and the MAC-10 stuttered.

Jack groped along the moist walls, moving as fast as he could. He felt a sharp right angle. “I think we’ve found our corner.”

He rounded it, clutching Yasmin’s hand, then fumbled in his pocket for a cheap plastic lighter and removed the oil lamp’s glass cover. He struck the lighter and touched the flame to the wick. It lit at once, yellow light flaring in the darkness to reveal a massive veil of spiders’ webs.

Yasmin staggered back in terror as the air in front of them came alive with colonies of huge black spiders. Their hairy bodies sprang through the air in wild panic, some of them landing on their clothes before they vanished into the shadows between the wall cracks. “What … what are those?” Yasmin was livid with fear.

Jack waved the lamp, tearing the veil of webs. “They’re called
saltericchi
. A species of jumping spider that live in the darkest, most humid areas underground. At the first sign of light they start hopping around like they’re on crack.” He smiled. “They can scare the life out of you the first time you see them, but they’re really harmless.”

The distant rattle of the metal gate echoed behind them, then came the sound of a short blast of sustained gunfire. Yasmin said, “It won’t be long before they break the lock.”