Hail to the Chiefs (4)

[hwrnmnbsol]

"Why?" I ask simply.

"I think you have the wrong idea," says Burr. "I'm not going to blow up the Basilica of Saint Peter. The Chiefs are."

"No they aren't," I say obstinately. "They don’t have anything to blow it up with."

"That's good to know," says Burr. Oh, well done, moron.

"No," Burr continues, "I guess technically they're not actually going to do the blowing up, but they'll take the credit for it. That's why I've lured them here, chasing after old Formosus again. No insult intended, Your Grace."

"None taken," Formosus replies mildly.

"We have a little selective demolition to do here," continues Burr, "and it struck me we could kill two birds with one stone. By luring in the Chiefs to their doom and giving them the rap for destroying the Vatican, I can have my cake, and they can eat me too." Burr looks very satisfied with himself.

"Oh, for the love of Pete," snarls Nixon. He's still sprawled on the floor, having recovered the use of his mouth well ahead of any other motor control. "If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a bad guy who keeps his victims alive so he can tell them his dumb-ass plan."

"I entirely agree," says Burr. He draws his pistol, cocks it, and blows off the top of Nixon's head.


Nixon stops talking. I guess that's something. He lies still with something black and oily seeping out of the top of his ruined skull. He's no longer too pretty to shoot. I can't look at that surprised cunning face any longer.

"What selective demolition?" I ask.

"Do you," Burr asks seriously, "have a problem with my telling you my dumb-ass plan?"

"I want to hear the whole damned thing," I announce.

"Good!" says Burr brightly. "Because it's a rather good plan, I think." He holsters his pistol, pulls a Bowie knife and begins stripping the ends of his blasting wire.

"Did you know," Burr says, "that the Vatican Hill used to be the ass-end of Rome? It was across the river from where all the nice stuff was – the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak. When barbarians attacked Rome, they always camped here, in this desolate place where they could keep an eye on the walled city, and usually died of disease in large numbers. That's probably where the cemetery got started."

Burr screws the wires to the posts of the detonator. "Yep, at one point Vatican Hill was basically Boot Hill. There was a whole necropolis over here, with ossaries and mausoleums and shrines dedicated to every pagan god imaginable, all piled on top of each other. Well, that and the circus." Burr waggles his knife in a circle. "You know how it is. Nobody wants the sports arena in their backyard. So Nero put it over here, with the dead people. Yeah, that Nero."

I brush plaster dust out of my hair. "Okay, so we were in a bad neighborhood. So what?" I ask.

"Well," says Burr, "Christianity, as you probably know, didn't take off right away. Saint Peter was the first emissary to bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to Rome. The Romans liked the Good News so much, they crucified Peter upside-down in the circus. Nasty business, being crucified upside down. It's just like being crucified right-side-up, but you can't even get a decent tan." Burr chuckles at his joke. I don't. Burr scowls and moves on.

"Anyway, they buried Peter right there on the spot, smack in the middle of the Circus," he says. "The Romans gave him a shrine and everything, I guess as an object lesson to the remaining Christians they hadn't burned. And then the circus went out of business, so there was nothing but this crappy deserted shrine to Peter out here. Some Christians came out and secretly prayed there, but otherwise nobody came to the Vatican except to bury their dead."

I spit out more dust. Where is all the dust coming from? I look up. There's a crack in the plaster of the archway above my head. I can see an eye looking through it – an intense, possibly homicidal eye. Lincoln? I quickly look at Burr, but he's too caught up in his own story to notice. Formosus is turning out Nixon's pockets.

"Pretty soon," continues Burr, "Christianity starts to gain in popularity. A few people at a time come out of the closet, so to speak, as outright Christians. Then a few more, rich people. Within a single generation, Christianity goes from pariah sect to being the fashionable religion. And then Emperor Constantine converts. Suddenly Christianity is in the money."

I lean back against the column at my back and try not to tense up. The crack above me widens subtly. The eye peers at the ruin of Nixon. I think I see a gleam in that eye, a gleam of wrath. Yep, Lincoln.

"So now Rome is suddenly crawling with Christians, who don't have a nice place to pray. They want to build a temple – a ginormous temple, the biggest the world has ever seen. But where to put it? Rome is an old, overcrowded city. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting ten other dead cats, which are being used to prop up the neighboring buildings. Where to build? And then they have the brilliant idea: how about building the temple over the bones of Saint Peter, the first pope of Christianity?"

"Righteoush!" proclaims Formosus, pumping a two-fingered fist.

"Yeah," says Burr, rolling his eyes. "So, anyway, the only fly in that ointment was the sprawling labyrinth of graves littering the Vatican Hill. But do you think the Christians gave two shits about a bunch of pagan graves? If you said 'Yes', you don't understand how this game is played. And that, my friend, is how Saint Peter's Basilica came to be built over the largest, richest, weirdest graveyard known to the civilized world…."

The ceiling explodes above my head and disgorges a single, angry, mahogany-colored Abraham Lincoln. He swings a shovel and almost knocks Burr's block off, sending him tumbling away from the detonator apparatus. Simultaneously, gunfire and panicked shouts break out from back to the west. Somehow I cannot imagine the Chiefs shouting, let alone in a panic, and so I assume that the tables have been turned on the ambush.

Formosus comes up hissing from picking Nixon's pockets. He comes clawing at Lincoln. Lincoln wheels around and snaps off a long-limbed roundhouse kick, knocking the undead pope sprawling to the ground. Then, from behind a row of tombs, Grant hoves into view and throws a smoke grenade. The lights go out, goggles or no goggles.

…heyyyy. Where did the Chiefs get grenades? They must have snuck them in, palmed them somehow. Honest Abe's honesty probably died when Booth shot up his brains.

I start to feel my way along the floor, crawling for where I last saw Nixon's body. Something hisses, and a claw with the strength of iron grabs me by the collar. In a panic I pull the spearhead of Longinus out of my sleeve and stab blindly. Something croaks, inhaling sharply with agony, and the fey hand jerks away. The spearhead spins out of my hand and lands some distance away on the hard floor, tinkling musically. I am temporarily free. I crawl towards where I heard the weapon fall.

There are chaotic footsteps, scattered bursts of gunfire. Somebody trips over me and curses; a moment later I hear them cry out in pain, gurgling wetly before falling silent. There are shouts in Italian and something Slavic. I press myself flat on the floor and belly-crawl as fast as I can towards where I think the spear that killed Jesus fell.

Something metal presses against my cheek. I still can't see, but there's no question it's the barrel of a gun. "Come on," whispers the voice of Burr. "You have to hear the rest of the story. Can't take no for an answer."

He jerks me to my feet. I can't see my hand in front of my face, but somehow Burr can see, at least a little bit. His arms are impossibly strong and his grip is like a band of iron. I jog along with him, and when I stumble Burr hauls me along by main force.

"Those tombs of the pagans are still down here, you know," says Burr, as if he hadn't been interrupted in telling his story. We take a sharp right, and now the smoke has faded enough for me to see that we're in a less used section of the tombs. This area isn't plastered and decorated and finished to befit the rulers of the most powerful religion on the planet. This area looks like an archaeological dig. "See, the level we're on are the grottoes of the Christians – the tombs of the popes, important Catholic kings and queens, that sort of thing. But below us are the mausoleums and death-houses of the pagans. They weren't even demolished; they were just covered up, and the Basilica's foundations were laid directly overhead."

A gate blocks off an opening in the wall. Burr rears back and kicks it in; the wrought-iron fencing flies back into the room, and Burr drags me through the archway. This is an empty tomb, with a narrow unadorned stair dropping still lower. I can see that the unused wire of the detonator trails down this staircase.

"So what?" I say. "Is this some kind of crazy vendetta, where you're going to blow up the Basilica for building over the graves of a few dead non-Christians?"

"No!" barks Burr, disappointed. He forces me towards the stair. "This isn't about religion! This isn't even about ideas, or vengeance, or anything like that." It's dark down there, and I've lost my night-vision goggles.

"This is about money," says Burr, pushing me down into the blackness. "The treasure of the ages, artefacts from the dawn of civilization. MINE."

And here is a map of the Necropolis level below the grottoes.