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  “Marcus?” he called out, looking around. There was no response.

  The old monks’ quarters had been completely destroyed in the violence following the Revolution and in its place the Musée National des Antiquités had created an immense hall of marble in the Classical style, part of nineteenth-century architecture’s sad attempt to recreate the splendor of the ancient world. MacLeod had trouble envisioning a display of Monet’s works installed in this room, or the paintings of Georgia O’ Keeffe—although, come to think of it, there were a few of Henry Moore’s more amorphous sculptures he thought might feel at home here.

  For Constantine’s new exhibition, however, the room was perfect. Two Corinthian columns secured a large banner bearing the name of the exhibit in precise Latin lettering: Hostes Romae—Hostiae Romae. Rome’s Enemies—Rome’s Victims.

  Passing under the banner, MacLeod approached a freestanding stone archway built in the style of the Roman triumphal arches he remembered from his days in Italy with Hugh Fitzcairn. He smiled, remembering the morning after the duke’s wedding, waking up barely clothed on the top of one such arch near the ruins of the Forum, Fitz nowhere to be found and him with one hell of a headache, wondering how the devil he’d managed to get up there. Or how the devil he’d get down. Then along came Fitz with a hay wagon. Good old Fitz.

  This particular arch wasn’t actually stone, he realized as he got closer, just a clever simulation. And the opening in the archway was barely taller than he was, probably only a fifth of its original scale—no hay wagon necessary to break the fall. He admired the workmanship in the gilt statue on top of the arch—some triumphant Roman emperor in a chariot pulled by four fiery steeds, their muscles rippling. He brushed off his Latin to read the inscription. Titus. This particular triumphant Roman was Titus.

  He tried to remember which one Titus was. “Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius,” he chanted under his breath. In the back of his mind, he could hear Brother Paul chanting it along with him, night after night, all those years ago in the Monastery of St. Christopher. “Caligula, Claudius, Nero …” Paul had tried hard to teach MacLeod about the history of the world he’d begun to explore, but MacLeod had been so young then. So very young. He could name the kings of Scotland and those were the only kings worth knowing.

  “Galba, Vitellius …” No, wait. “Otho, Vitellius …”

  “Ach, it’s no’ fair—four in one year!” he could hear his frustrated younger self say, and Brother Paul had just laughed.

  “Otho, Galba …” It was no use. He couldn’t keep them straight then, he couldn’t do it now. He gave up and walked on.

  The floor plan had been deliberately designed in such a way that any visitor coming into the great hall was compelled to pass through the Arch of Titus to enter the exhibition. As MacLeod walked beneath the arch, he noticed the light-beam sensor just before he was about to trip it. Cautiously he reached out and broke the beam of light with his hand. Drums and horns blared around him. He looked around for the source, on alert. Then, over the martial music, came chanting and cheering:

  “Ave, Caesar!” “Hail the conquering hero!”

  He stepped cautiously through the archway and found himself surrounded by the frenzied citizens of Rome. Life-size mannequins garbed in Roman finery, caught in uncanny tableau as they seemed to cheer, applaud, strew his way with flowers. Each face individual, expressive, filled with the emotion of their leader’s triumphal march into the city, of his glorious victory over the barbarians. Lights and sound flickered, highlighting this group, that person, flash, flash, giving the Romans the illusion of movement, almost giving them life. MacLeod turned quickly one way, then the other, taking in the crowd, receiving their adulation, and for one brief instant perhaps, he felt it, knew what it was like to be a king. To be the Emperor.

  Then, in mid-rapture, the crowd abruptly silenced. Marcus Constantine stepped from beside the Arch of Titus, a key in his hand, and walked toward MacLeod.

  “So? What do you think?” he asked, more than a little proud of his creation.

  MacLeod caught his breath. “Impressive.” He looked at the curator, so comfortable in a suit and tie, at home in his museum with his books and artifacts, so much the academic, and tried to see the legendary Roman general beneath it all. “Is that what it was like?”

  Constantine’s eyes shone bright, remembering, and he smiled. “On a good day.” Then he laughed. “On a bad day you were up to your waist in swamp water trying to keep your provisions dry and the Emperor was trying to bribe your aide to poison you.”

  “Office politics?” MacLeod remarked.

  “Precisely.” Constantine pointed to the Arch. “He came after Vespasian, by the way. Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, the Year of Four Emperors that ended with Vespasian, then Titus, Vespasian’s son.” In response to MacLeod’s look, he said, “Don’t let it bother you, I can’t remember them either.” Then he winked at MacLeod and whispered conspiratorially, “And I was there.”

  MacLeod followed Constantine past displays arranged to give the museum visitor a quick foundation in the rise and power of the Roman Empire. These exhibits, too, were full of light and color, with computer animation and games and plenty of buttons to push to keep the kids amused. “A little sad, don’t you think?” MacLeod commented. “Those men were once the most powerful men in the entire world, and now no one even remembers them.”

  “We of all people know that power doesn’t guarantee Immortality, Duncan.” MacLeod nodded in agreement. “Which is, in fact, part of the point of my new exhibition.”

  “I thought you must have an agenda, Marcus. It’s not like you to glorify Rome like this.”

  “Ah, no, no, my friend, just the opposite. Consider this exhibition as a tribute to the assimilated. A memorial to the societies that were lost to history when the Romans came through like a giant steamroller, flattened their native cultures, carried off their best and brightest, and turned everyone into second-class Romans.” Constantine stopped at one display in the center of the next section of walkway. As far as MacLeod could tell, it was a waist-high circular railing about six feet in diameter that enclosed nothing but floor. Constantine fit his key into a control box under the railing and turned it. “Watch,” he said.

  Suddenly, a round column of light appeared in the center of the enclosure, filling the space from floor to ceiling. MacLeod watched, waiting for something more to happen. After a moment, he prompted, “And … ?”

  “Patience,” Constantine counseled, looking more than a little like a wizard conjuring a spirit as he gestured at the light. “It takes a moment for it to warm up.”

  MacLeod saw a word begin to spiral down the column of light. Etruscan. “Hologram?” he asked, and Constantine nodded. Then there were more words. Samnite, Umbrian, Carthaginian, Sardinian. Faster. MacLeod realized he was watching a roll call of the assimilated. The technology fascinated him. Corsican, Corinthian, Syrian, Numidian, Celtiberian, Cimbri, Teuton, Egyptian. Like in a whirlwind, the names of vanquished peoples spun down from the ceiling, sucked into the floor. Samaritan, Dacian, Thracian, Illyrian, Macedonian, Epirote, Parthian, Helvetii. Faster and faster the vortex spun, the names descending fast and furious—Caledonian Maeatae Arverni Senones Nervii Galatian—so fast MacLeod could no longer read every one, could only pick out random cultures before they disappeared without a trace. Insubrian, Gaesatae, Boii, Iberian, Belgae, Suebi, Iceni, Parisii.

  Finally the last name was consumed by the floor and all that remained was the column of light. Constantine turned off his new toy. MacLeod shook his head in wonder, and asked, “Whatever happened to the days when museums were places with dusty relics in big oak cases?”

  “Just keeping up with the times, Duncan—we have to compete with EuroDisney now.” He gestured for MacLeod to follow him into the next room of the carefully orchestrated exhibition. “We still keep a couple of cases around, for purists like yourself.” A Plexiglas case taller than MacLeod filled the center of
the cubicle, accessible from all sides. On a nearly transparent pedestal, parallel to the floor, rested an Egyptian sarcophagus. Above it, apparently hovering as if by magic, several smaller artifacts were suspended by fishing line. The arrangement seemed a little off, a large space left empty on the right side of the display, but MacLeod’s attention was drawn to the sarcophagus.

  “Marcus, that’s Nefertiri’s.” MacLeod remembered the day he’d freed the handmaiden of Cleopatra from her two-thousand-year imprisonment in that sarcophagus. He also remembered the day he’d been forced to kill her.

  “I guess you might call it a little selfish, wanting to get a curator’s exclusive, but I called in a few favors from some of our kind. I wanted to bring a few pieces to the public that had never been on exhibit before. Pieces like this drinking horn from my old friend Bato the Illyrian”—he pointed out a translucent vessel carved from alabaster—“some rare pieces that could exemplify the beauty and sophistication of one of the cultures we destroyed or that in some way would symbolize the brutality we were capable of.”

  MacLeod had raised an eyebrow at Constantine’s “we.” Since his arrival he’d suspected that this exhibition was Constantine’s way of trying to make amends, to atone in some small way for what he felt were the sins of his past. It certainly explained the exhibition’s scale—it must have taken years to design. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Constantine’s own money was funding it—he knew the modest Musée could never afford an installation so state-of-the-art. But MacLeod said nothing about it, noting with wry sadness instead, “I don’t think Nefertiri will need it back. And I think she’d be pleased that her people were being remembered.”

  Constantine seemed a bit relieved that MacLeod approved. “Recognize this one?” he asked, pointing to one of the artifacts “floating” in the case on hidden wires.

  A Celtic torque gleamed in the case’s spotlight, the golden terminals at the ends of the elaborate neckpiece clasped together to form a delicate ring, finely wrought and crafted by artisans whose skills had rarely been equaled. “Ceirdwyn’s?”

  “How’d you guess? She rarely lets it out. I nearly had to pry it off of her. You should have seen the look she gave me when I asked if I might borrow her sword, as well.”

  “She brought it out when her husband Steven was killed.”

  Constantine looked grim. “Sad business, that.” He was silent for a moment, then went on. “The Celts were such an amazing people, Duncan. You should have seen them—they were passionate, they were spontaneous. They loved life with a gusto I’d never thought was possible. And then the Romans came through and we made them…” Constantine seemed at a loss for the right words.

  “English?” MacLeod ventured with a wicked grin, and they both laughed. He looked at the next item in the case. The footlong piece of iron was flat black next to the gleaming torque, maybe an inch in diameter, and marked only with a ring of rusty oxidation about halfway up the shaft. “What’s that?”

  “Slave boy from the northern provinces was crucified by his Roman master because the master’s wife tried to seduce him.”

  MacLeod looked more closely at the nail and shuddered. “Nasty way to die, even for one of us.”

  “You should have seen the master’s wife.” Now it was Constantine’s turn to shudder. “Personally, I think crucifixion was the better part of the deal. The slave kept one of the nails as a souvenir. Sick sense of humor, if you ask me.”

  MacLeod pointed out the empty section of the case. “So what goes here? A piece of the One True Cross?”

  “Actually, that’s why I asked you to come by.”

  Ah, here it comes, MacLeod thought. “Somehow I knew you wouldn’t make a lunch date just because you enjoyed the company, Marcus.”

  Constantine, a little embarrassed, asked, “That transparent, am I?”

  MacLeod smiled. “Whatever I have is yours. You know that.” He looked around the room. “But I don’t know what I have that would fit in with all of this.”

  “Paul Karros’s sword?”

  “Karros?” MacLeod was intrigued.

  “I tried to locate him and found out you had…taken care of him, as it were. I thought you might have kept the sword. It was a gladius, an iron short sword, beautiful piece of work. He used it during the Spartacan revolt, you know. He was Thracian, like Spartacus, trained as a—”

  “I know, trained as a gladiator to fight in the Roman games. He must have told me a thousand times,” MacLeod explained.

  “Really? I didn’t realize you were that close.”

  “We were once,” MacLeod said quietly, and Constantine needed no further explanation. They’d all been there.

  “So you do have the sword?” Constantine asked eagerly.

  MacLeod nodded. “I know where I can get my hands on it. Tuesday soon enough?”

  “Perfect. The exhibition opens on Wednesday.” Constantine looked pleased. “Well, that was simple enough—and I didn’t even have to spring for lunch,” he added with a devilish look at MacLeod, who thought he could almost detect a small gleam of victory in his eyes.

  “Uh-uh, not so fast,” MacLeod said, shaking his head. “You still owe me, Marcus. And this time I pick the restaurant. I don’t think we’ll be welcome at Chez Nous again.”

  “What did you do, Duncan?” Constantine scolded with fatherly concern.

  “It’s a long story. But no lame excuses about curation emergencies next time.”

  Constantine acted shocked at the very notion. “Lame? Not lame at all, I assure you. Look at this.” He led MacLeod toward another case, this one made of a tinted plastic. “I spent the entire day wrestling French Customs for this piece—you thought facing Karros was tough. But if I hadn’t, it would have ended up in some bureaucratic warehouse next to the Ark of the Covenant.” MacLeod stopped and looked closely at Constantine for a moment, then decided it must just be museum humor. With Constantine, you couldn’t always tell when he was kidding. “It will come as no surprise to you, I’m sure, that the Israelis don’t look kindly on removing antiquities from the country. You’d better have your paperwork in order. In triplicate.”

  Constantine flipped a switch at the back of the case and a dim light illuminated the contents. An old, worn fragment of papyrus, apparently blank in the half-light. MacLeod looked at it for a moment. “Am I waiting for it to warm up?” he asked.

  “No holograms here, my friend. This is the real thing. But I believe we can help it out a bit with the magic of technology.” He flipped another switch, bathing the scrap in infrared light, and suddenly MacLeod could make out a tiny, delicate script covering the papyrus. Hebrew, he realized, very old. He looked up at Constantine, questioning.

  “A fragment of the Torah, Duncan.” Both Constantine’s voice and face conveyed a reverence MacLeod had not expected from a man who could be considered an ancient relic himself. “Recovered from Masada. It just arrived today from my student, Avram Mordecai.”

  To get a better look at the delicate writing, MacLeod moved closer to the Torah.

  Chapter Three

  Warsaw: January 18, 1943

  MacLeod moved closer to the Torah, taking the precious scroll carefully from the shaking hands of the man who clutched it to his chest for protection. “Rebbe, please, we must hurry “

  “My son, he is gut?” Rabbi Mendelsohn asked for perhaps the third time in the ten minutes since MacLeod had roused him from his sleep in the predawn gloom. The old man was smaller than MacLeod had expected, stooped and bowed with the effects of age and three years of deprivation, confined behind the formidable walls of the Jewish Ghetto. Only the rabbi’s clothes, carefully patched and mended and hanging from his gaunt frame, bespoke the strong, robust man his son Shimon had described to MacLeod in such loving detail back in Paris.

  “Shimon is fine, zai’er gut,” MacLeod reassured him. MacLeod knew only a little Yiddish, although Shimon Mendelsohn had tried to teach him all he could before MacLeod left. The rabbi’s Polish was rusty
, Yiddish having been the language of daily life and commerce in Warsaw’s Jewish community for centuries, but quickly they’d discovered they could communicate in a rough pastiche of the two languages, mixed with a little German, a little Russian. It was enough. “He’s living with monks outside of Paris. He is safe there.”

  “Safe.” The old man savored the word and his eyes grew bright with unshed tears. “Danken Gott, Shimon is safe,” he repeated to himself while MacLeod set the Torah down carefully by the rabbi’s hat on a low table near the door. The table and an old wing chair were the only furnishings left in the room. “Then his story has been told?” Rabbi Mendelsohn asked him, tugging eagerly on MacLeod’s sleeve for emphasis. “The West knows? Shimon has told them?”

  How to tell the old man the messenger had gotten out safely, but not the message? How to tell him his only son fought his way to the West to proclaim the word, eager to expose for all the world the atrocities of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the world had turned its back on him? How to tell him Shimon Mendelsohn had escaped the death camps, broken the news that the Germans were systematically destroying his people, and instead of finding aid, found only apathy and disbelief?

  He didn’t have to tell him. The rabbi, no stranger to the human heart, read it in his face, saw the despair and the shame in his eyes.

  “They didn’t have ears to hear him, did they?” A deep sigh of resignation seemed to stoop the old man’s shoulders even more. “Everyone’s got their own problems. Their own war.” He sat heavily in the wing chair, tugging nervously on his graying beard. “Nobody’s got time for the tsores of a bunch of ‘worthless Jews’ in Poland.” He spit out the words with surprising venom.

  “Rebbe, it’s not like that,” MacLeod protested.

  “No, Mr. MacLeod? Then you tell me what it is like.”

  The silence between them was long and heavy. MacLeod couldn’t tell him, not in Yiddish, not in Polish, not in any language on earth, because there was no rational explanation he could find for the Allies’ disregard of Shimon’s plea for help. He tried a different approach. “Shimon feels that if you and your wife can join him and get to England, or even America, to bear witness with him—”