Chapter 20

ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME

In mid-May 1998, Galway received official confirmation that his article on the Pythagorean manuscript had been accepted for publication in the prestigious Journal of Ancient Philosophy and History. As for the manuscript itself, it had been bought at the auction by an anonymous collector for the sum of 420,000 pounds. It was not known whether the new owner intended to donate it to a museum or library. That posed a bit of a problem for Galway, who could not include the location of his translation’s primary source in his article.

His satisfaction at having his paper accepted was tempered by the fact that he had been unable to crack the secret of the last eight pages of the ancient book, of which he had only very poor quality photocopies of photocopies. He had translated the poem on page six and concluded that it referred to Pythagoras, but that was about all the headway he could claim. He was intrigued by the drawing on page four, showing a serpent and two feminine figures, but couldn’t see any connection with the Pythagoreans. The rest of the pages, containing arabesques, mathematical symbols, and geometric figures, seemed to be equally irrelevant as far as the location of Pythagoras’ papyrus was concerned. The precious scroll’s trail had gone cold.

Disappointed with the lack of results on the papyrus front, Galway turned his attention to his late father’s memoirs. Clearly, the old man had entrusted his younger son with the unfinished book knowing he could count on him to complete the writing and have the work published.

Actually, Galway senior had already done most of the work, and had left a printout of the third draft of chapters 1 to 14. Elmer went over it and found that it required only minor corrections and a few additions. In particular, a number of post-it notes reminded the author of facts to be checked, pictures to be inserted, and so forth. Among these, a note in chapter 7 caught Elmer’s attention. It read “Neopitagorica Basilica 1935–38—Insert two drawings here.” That particular section of the chapter was about the excavation of a very ancient underground basilica situated in the historic center of Rome, and in which Ernest Galway had participated. He had written:

The building, a large vaulted hall of basilican type, with vestibule, apse, and three aisles divided by pillars, is some fifteen meters long, nine meters wide, and seven meters high. It was discovered in 1917, as a result of a landslide under the roadbed of the Rome-Naples railway, but only in 1935 did serious excavation work begin.

The decoration is elaborate. Walls, vaulted ceilings, and apse are covered with well-preserved stucco reliefs. Among the subjects are mythological compositions, sacrificial and ritual objects, and symbols of resurrection and afterlife. All this suggests that the building was used by followers of some mystic cults which flourished in Imperial Rome.

From the character of the concrete, which contains no fragments of tiles, and from that of the bricks of tufa used in a shaft above a skylight, it may be argued that the building was actually constructed early in the first century AD—and not in the second century, as it is generally believed. Another argument in favor of the earlier date has been put forward by Professor Clermont, who pointed out that the decoration is entirely Greek in spirit, showing no motifs derived from astrology. Clermont also contended that the building was probably used by a Neo-Pythagorean assembly.

His curiosity aroused, Galway looked inside the box labeled “1935–38.” It contained photographs, drawings, and miscellaneous records. The drawings had inscriptions on the back (place, date, and so on), so it was easy for him to find those marked “Neopitagorica Basilica.” There were six of them, and one in particular caused his heart to skip a beat: a finely executed drawing of a stucco bas-relief showing a serpent inside an oblong lozenge and flanked by a pair of matching feminine figures—the unmistakable source of the enigmatic illustration in the Pythagorean book. The thought then came upon him with the force of a revelation: the papyrus scroll written in Pythagoras’ own hand was hidden somewhere in that basilica.

After doing some research on the Internet, he learned that the Neo-Pythagorean basilica was on the World Monuments Watch list, undergoing a major restoration, and closed to the public. Structural work to the building was also being carried out to fix various problems, such as water permeating the site and an antiquated ventilation system that had favored bacterial growth on the polychromatic surfaces.

He began making preparations for a trip to Rome. Among other things, he would have to cancel a talk he had been invited to give at an international conference in Munich and make arrangements for Slipper to be looked after. But, most important of all, he had to obtain permission to conduct the search from the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage. That would likely take weeks, even months, if his experience with bureaucracies around the world was any indication. Fortunately, he knew a junior deputy minister, Dottore Luigi Pisano, through a common friend.

Galway e-mailed Pisano about obtaining the necessary papers and got the following reply:

Caro Professore Galway: Permission to excavate or carry out a search in Rome’s archaeological sites is not delivered by my ministry but by the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma. Please address your request to them, stating your aims for the excavation or search and for how long (six weeks per year at the most), together with a list of the members of your team and a budget for the work.

It will be helpful if you write directly to the head of the Department of Excavation Projects at the Soprintendenza, Signore Ettore Calabrini, mentioning my name [he gave e-mail and postal addresses]. He will see that your application is put on the fast track.

Welcome to red tape Italian style, thought Galway, and to how to (perhaps) circumvent it by pulling the right levers.

He wasn’t sure it was a good idea to tell the Italians the real motive behind his interest in the basilica. He was afraid someone else might get there first, depriving him of the credit he deserved for his role as the discoverer of such a priceless document. But short of staging a commando-type operation to find the papyrus and then smuggle it out of the country, there was no way other than the official way.

He had been mulling over whether to reveal his true intentions on his application for the Italian permit when he got a call from his brother. It was about some papers that needed to be signed in connection with his father’s succession. Elmer, who had not mentioned his discovery to anyone yet, could not resist confiding in his brother. He told John about his hunch regarding the location of the papyrus and his apprehension about disclosing too much to the Italians.

Then he said, jokingly: “I even thought of going down in the middle of the night to fetch the scroll without bothering with permits, a mission worthy of that intrepid archaeologist in the movies . . .”

“Indiana Jones. Not a bad idea. It can be done.”

“You’re not serious, are you?”

“Of course I’m serious. I know some people in Bogotá who specialize in that type of operation, and they have ‘branches’ all over the world. It won’t cost you that much, and results are guaranteed. Absolute discretion too.”

Elmer was not really surprised to learn that his brother had contacts in shady circles. In the emerald mining business, protecting a site in the middle of the jungle, when not smuggling gems out of the country, often required using some questionable methods—and the appropriately qualified personnel.

“Are you proposing to steal the scroll?” asked Elmer in disbelief.

“Actually, I was only thinking of borrowing it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, suppose you’re the one who finds it. If it’s so important, you get the glory. Then you give it back to its rightful owner and everybody’s happy.”

Elmer cut him short, refusing to listen any further. “Thanks for trying to help, but I won’t gamble my reputation on some cloak-and-dagger operation.”

“No problem. It was only a suggestion.” John hadn’t really expected Elmer to go along with his scheme. And then he added, changing the subject: “Don’t forget to send the signed papers to Harris as soon as possible. He’ll forward them to the real estate agent. Good luck with the Italians,” and hung up.

Elmer Galway had never smoked and was only a moderate drinker. At age sixty-four, he was in pretty good physical condition, as he had been throughout his adult life. He had a well-proportioned body, with only the hint of a bulge at the waistline, and strong arms, a legacy of his youthful passion for sport. As an active member of the Oxford Rowing Club he still rowed occasionally, but he kept fit chiefly by walking a good deal and strictly following a healthy diet.

This bright picture of his general physical condition undoubtedly played a part in his new approach to the Pythagoras’ scroll search-and-recover operation. He still believed the papyrus was hidden somewhere in the Roman basilica and was determined to put his intuition to the test, but he no longer intended to apply for permission to search the building—at least not for the moment. He had a better plan, one that had slowly dawned on him after his telephone conversation with John.

It had been easy for him to obtain detailed information about the basilica (plans, photographs, and so forth) through the World Monuments Watch by manifesting a professional interest in the restoration work being carried out, and he had been glad to see that scaffolds had been put up at various places inside the building.

He had chosen Wednesday, June 17, as D-Day to put his plan in operation. Since he wanted to arrive two days earlier, he had booked a flight to Rome leaving London Heathrow the morning of Monday, June 15.

There was a very good reason for his choice of date: on the evening of June 17, in Montpellier, France, the Italian football team played Cameroon in the World Cup final phase. Not that Galway cared much about football in general or the Italian team in particular, but practically everyone else in Rome did. And therefore, from kickoff time at 9:00 p.m. until the final whistle at around 11:00 p.m., the streets of Rome would be deserted and the city paralyzed, as every single soul in town, from people at home to cooks in restaurants and policemen on duty, would be glued to a TV set watching the game—which suited Galway just fine.

Shortly past noon on the 15th and after an uneventful flight from London, he arrived at Rome’s Leonardo Da Vinci Airport. Catching a cab was not a problem: he was solicited by half a dozen taxi attendants competing for attention: “Taxi, taxi to the city, this way please.”

He had booked a room in a small two-story hotel in the heart of historic Rome, facing Nero’s Aqueduct and a short walk from the basilica. The purported reason for his trip was to look at certain archaeological records at the Vatican Library, but the real purpose of his presence in Rome was to search the Neo-Pythagorean basilica for Pythagoras’ scroll.

In the afternoon, after checking in at the hotel and having a light lunch at a nearby trattoria, he headed for Porta Maggiore to perform a reconnaissance of the grounds.

On one side of Porta Maggiore Square, between via Penestrina and Scalo San Lorenzo streets, stands a short wall, its bricks blackened by dirt and grime. It is the wall that supports the railway viaduct carrying the Rome-Naples line. Partly hidden by a recess in the wall and inconspicuous to those passing by, there is a door. Beyond this door, down a flight of stairs and some ten meters below the railway tracks, is an entrance to the so-called Neopitagorica Basilica—although not the original entrance, which is still unexplored.

Galway’s main concern was the door lock. He walked nonchalantly along the brick wall looking like the tourist he actually was. When he reached the door, he stopped and examined it for a while with innocent curiosity, and even turned the knob and pushed it. The door was locked, but he was relieved to learn that the lock was a standard one—and fortunately not one of the keyless type. There is really no reason for heavy security, he thought. The building is empty, except perhaps for some scaffolds, and neither graffiti artists in search of notoriety nor vandals in a destructive mood would be interested in showing off their talent or their contempt for society in such a dark and out-of-the-way place.

Having completed the reconnaissance of the site to his satisfaction, Galway spent the rest of the afternoon sightseeing in Rome’s historic district. He wondered whether those magnificent vestiges of the Roman Empire’s glorious past, such as the Colosseum and the Forum, had yielded all their secrets before beginning a new life as tourist attractions. Perhaps not, he thought, for the site of the Roman Forum was still being excavated and several areas were closed to the public.

He spent the best part of Tuesday at the Vatican Library—he already had a reader’s pass from previous visits granting him access to the library’s collections. The modern-day library, started by Pope Nicholas V in the 1450s with a few hundred Latin manuscripts, now contained more than 1.5 million printed books and some 150,000 manuscripts in its sixty kilometers of shelf space.

The double-nave main reading room with its beautiful frescoed ceiling was full almost to capacity, but not the slightest sound could be heard. He found an empty chair and sat down at a desk between a monk in a brown robe, his head buried in a pile of books, and a bespectacled young man with a laptop. A fervent lover of books—an attraction that was as much a sensual affair as an intellectual one—Galway wouldn’t miss out on the opportunity to hold in his hands some of the library’s treasures. He selected a splendidly illuminated survey of Rome’s ruins from the fifteenth century by papal secretary and amateur archaeologist Poggio Bracciolini, a prelude to the excavation and restoration of the ancient city that began during the Renaissance.

When he left the library early in the evening, Galway was feeling upbeat and optimistic about the success of his plan. He was also feeling hungry, and for his last dinner before D-Day decided to have a typical three-course Italian meal.

After some searching, he settled for a small restaurant off St. Peter’s Square with an outside dining area at the rear. He set aside the menu, happy to follow the recommendations of the waiter, an expansive short man with very shiny black hair who took his order without writing anything down. In response to Galway’s request for some typical Italian food, he had earlier explained that there was no such thing as “Italian food” but a constellation of regional cuisines.

Galway’s Italian feast began with an entree of prosciutto (cured ham) with melon, followed by cacio e pepe (cheese and pepper), the simple signature Roman pasta dish, and involtini di vitello (savory veal rolls with tomato) as the main course, the whole washed down with a half liter of house white wine. By the time dessert was served, he had had more than enough to eat, but that didn’t stop him from finishing the delicious Baba al rhum, a traditional Neapolitan pastry soaked with rum and topped with whipped cream.

He dozed off during the taxi ride back to the hotel and had to be woken up by the driver. By midnight he was sound asleep and dreaming he was a nobleman in ancient Rome hosting an all-night banquet.

Unlike the previous two days, when a merciless sun in a whitish blue sky had beaten down on the city, Wednesday morning was overcast and cool. Galway slept late and had breakfast served in his room: orange juice, toast, marmalade, and tea—almost what he had at home, with only the porridge missing.

As the moment to put his plan into execution neared, he grew increasingly restless and decided to kill time by taking a bus tour to the nearby town of Tivoli, famous for its well-preserved Emperor Hadrian’s Villa from the second century and its spectacular gardens. After the tour he went back to the hotel and tried to take a nap but couldn’t sleep. He forced himself to lie in bed nevertheless. At seven o’clock he got up, opened the shutters, and looked out the second-floor window. The weather was unstable. Heavy gray clouds covered the sky while treetops were swept back and forth by gusts of wind. It looks like it’s going to rain, he thought, and that’s just fine: the nastier the weather, the fewer the people on the streets.

He wasn’t hungry—or was too nervous to feel hungry—so he decided to skip dinner and began packing his material for the operation: coverall, helmet with lamp, archaeological field tools (trowel, brush, etc.), digital camera, and first-aid kit. Everything fit nicely inside the small backpack. He then dressed as he would for a night out to a fancy restaurant, except for the heavy-soled shoes and the woolen sweater he was wearing under his shirt.

At 8:45 he came downstairs. In a small room adjacent to the lobby, a few guests and the front-desk clerk were gathered in front of the TV set. The latter caught sight of Galway as he was sneaking out: “You’re not watching the game, Signor Galway?”

“I’m afraid not, I have a dinner appointment,” he replied, in as casual a tone as he could manage. And, before stepping outside, he turned and shouted an enthusiastic “Forza Italia!”—the rallying cry of the Italian football fans.

The weather remained menacing, but in the end it didn’t rain. Galway approached the door walking briskly close to the wall and holding the backpack by the straps in his left hand. There was not a soul in sight on his side of the street. Traffic was minimal. A couple of cars were stopped at the red light on via Penestrina facing him, and a lone and almost empty bus was circling the Porta Maggiore roundabout. As his right hand reached for the door handle, he could feel his heart pounding. He turned the handle and pushed the door. It opened onto a dark corridor, barely illuminated by the glare of the street lamps. Galway quickly stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He remained motionless in the pitch black darkness, leaning against the door while trying to catch his breath.

The first part of his plan had worked to perfection—thanks to John. His brother had made the necessary arrangements for a “specialist” to pick the lock that evening, clearing the way for him to get into the basilica.

A couple of minutes later, he was ready for action. The place was damp and stuffy. He reached for the flashlight in his pocket and switched it on, sweeping the space in front of him with a beam of white light. The narrow corridor ended in a brick wall some twenty feet away, but he could see the opening of a staircase down the corridor on his right.

He changed into his coverall, put on his headlamp, shouldered his backpack, and slowly began going down the stairs, supporting himself with his left hand against the wall. Treading carefully on the slippery surface, he went down until he came to a landing, beyond which the staircase changed direction. After descending another flight of stairs he reached the ground: he was standing on the damp floor of the ancient basilica, his nostrils and lungs filled with the musty air trapped underground in the poorly ventilated building.

He inspected the floor first. It was a mosaic floor, much of which had been preserved, but several rectangular spaces where the pavement was missing suggested that its finest portions, most likely panels with figure compositions, had been removed.

Next, he pointed the flashlight in various directions and toward the ceiling. Moving with caution, he then proceeded to survey the place. The building was rectangular in shape, measuring about fifteen by ten meters, with a vaulted ceiling some seven meters high. Its architecture was of basilican type, the most popular form of early Christian churches: a nave flanked by aisles separated from it by rows of pillars, with a vestibule at one end and an apse at the other. The place was rich in decorations: walls, ceilings, and pillars were all covered with stucco bas-reliefs on a variety of subjects, from mythological scenes to symbols of resurrection and afterlife. In the main chamber all decoration was in white stucco, while the vestibule had a dado of Pompeian red ornamented with figures of flowers and birds, and a ceiling adorned with squares of sapphire blue.

And then he saw it. On the vertical face above the arched opening between two pillars, a serpentlike figure in relief seemed to come to life as its shadow shifted under the sweeping motion of the flashlight beam. There it was, the original of the scene in the Pythagorean book showing a serpent flanked by two feminine figures that had long puzzled him. If his intuition was correct, the papyrus in Pythagoras’ own hand could not be far away.

Almost one hour later, an exhausted and disheartened Elmer Galway, his clothes damp and soiled, was beginning to contemplate the possibility that his carefully planned search operation might end in failure.

He had assumed that the papyrus would be hidden in a cavity or hole in the wall somewhere near the serpent bas-relief represented in the ancient book. As was common in Roman buildings of the time, the pillars and arches were built of bricks made of tufa, a volcanic stone with a coarse, porous texture. He had examined the brick wall around and near the bas-relief for some particular sign or peculiarity, anything that might suggest that a treasure was hidden behind, but had noticed nothing special.

When he encountered stucco decorations, he had gently tapped all around the figures with the handle of his trowel, listening for some hollow sound that might indicate an empty space or chamber underneath the stucco layer—but knowing full well that detecting a cavity with such a hopelessly primitive method was a long shot at best.

In order to reach the upper part of the pillars and the wall above the arch, he had climbed on one of the scaffolds that had been put up during the restoration work, presently interrupted for lack of funds. Pushing the heavy structure over the uneven and muddy floor to position it on the right spot all by himself had required considerable physical effort, and after completing the operation he had to stop and rest for long minutes.

The fatigue he was now feeling no doubt contributed to his growing discouragement. He sat down on a half-rotten and wet wooden box and leaned back against one of the pillars to consider his options.

Meanwhile, down at La Mosson Stadium in Montpellier, Cameroon was proving a tough nut to crack for the heavily favored Italian side. True, Luigi Di Biagio had opened the score in the seventh minute and Italy was still up 1-0 well into the second half. But the Cameroonian attack led by Samuel Etoo was tearing Italy’s defense apart with increasing ease, forcing the Italian goalkeeper Gianluca Pagliuca to perform save after spectacular save to keep his team ahead.

Back in the underground basilica, Galway was reflecting on the options available to him. Was the papyrus hidden behind the serpent bas-relief itself? There was no way to find out other than piercing through the stucco, which would cause irreparable damage to the 2,000-year-old exquisitely crafted work. But how could he possibly destroy one of the oldest extant bas-reliefs of ancient Rome just to verify a hunch? Extending the search to other parts of the building appeared as an even less attractive alternative, especially in his present condition. He looked at his watch: 10:15.

As he lowered his head almost conceding defeat, the beam from his helmet lamp hit the soiled base of the pillar in front of him at a particular angle. If the angle had been slightly different, he never would have seen what he did. When his eyes, which had been staring into space for a while, focused on the spot illuminated by the light, he jumped to his feet and knelt down on the floor covered in rat droppings next to the pillar. But the image he had just seen had disappeared, and for an instant he thought he had hallucinated. This time using his flashlight he pointed it to a brick at the base of the pillar, slightly moving it to change the angle of the beam of light until the image he had previously seen reappeared in front of his incredulous eyes: ten barely perceptible small dots engraved in the stone and arranged in the shape of a triangle—the Tetraktys, the Pythagoreans’ sacred symbol. Two millennia of erosion had all but erased the small, round incisions in the porous stone, but enough of a trace of them remained—enough for the trained eye of an archaeologist to notice them.

No longer feeling his fatigue, he reached into his backpack for chisel and hammer. Working frantically despite the uncomfortable crouching position, he succeeded in first loosening and then removing the stone block, which was slightly larger than a shoebox. The block had been lying on a rectangular stone slab which he had no difficulty in prying up and removing to reveal a flat, sandy surface.

Perspiring heavily and anticipating with excitement the imminent climax, he plunged his trowel into the moist sand. The tool went in only halfway before hitting a hard surface. Buried in the sand was a terracotta jar or flagon, its surface coated with a kind of wax, lying on its side. Its mouth was covered with a piece of cloth tightly tied with a string.

He extracted the jar from its sandy tomb and examined it. It was orange in color and quite heavy, with a broad biconical body, a handle, and a wide cylindrical neck. He didn’t bother fetching his measuring tape and estimated its height to be about 40 centimeters. Using a brush, he cleaned the sand-encrusted string and then cut it with his knife at various places until it loosened its grip on the piece of cloth. Very carefully, he removed the cloth lid with the string still attached to it.

The jar appeared to be full of sand, which explained its heavy weight. With trembling hands, he slowly tilted it. Nothing came out; the sand was too tightly packed inside. With the help of his knife he was able to loosen the sand plug. Then, holding the vessel upside down with both hands, he shook it vigorously until sand finally began to pour out.

There was something else besides sand inside the jar: a metal tube—of the kind used to keep papyrus scrolls in ancient times, he thought, convinced by now that it contained what he had come looking for. The tube was in fact a cylinder, apparently made of lead, fitted tightly inside a much shorter one that served as a lid. All around the edge of the lid was a dark substance, possibly bitumen that had been used to seal the container. The two sections were stuck together, but by using his knife and repeatedly twisting and pulling, he managed to remove the lid. Inside the tube was something that looked like a rolled newspaper, only much shorter. He slowly took it out, gently holding it with his tweezers. It was a papyrus scroll, loosely rolled and looking miraculously intact after 2,500 years.

Fifteen meters above the floor of the basilica, Rome erupted into a single and prolonged roar of joy—though not in celebration of Galway’s discovery. In Montpellier, Christian Vieri had scored in the seventy-fifth minute, sealing for all practical purposes Cameroon’s fate, to the relief of the Italian fans. The Italian striker was to repeat the feat fourteen minutes later and put the icing on the cake in Italy’s 3-0 victory over the strong African side.

It was five minutes past eleven o’clock when Elmer Galway stepped into the street and swiftly closed the entrance door to the basilica behind him. In his backpack, he was carrying his soiled coverall and tools. As for the precious papyrus scroll, he had only taken a look at the first column of text, since unrolling it without proper precautions could have seriously damaged it. Satisfied that the papyrus was actually what he had expected, he had taken several photographs of it and its hiding place, after which he had put it back exactly where he had found it and had covered as best he could all traces of his nocturnal visit to the ancient basilica.

The streets, so quiet on his way over from the hotel, were now bustling with activity. A car with an Italian flag floating in the wind and carrying a noisy party drove past him. In neighboring streets, bars and cafés were packed with elated fans and drivers were honking their horns to salute Italy’s victory. The loud celebrations will likely continue well into the night, thought Galway. That suited his mood perfectly; he too had something to celebrate.