Rule of God (Book Three of the Dominium Dei Trilogy) Read online

  That was the magic word, Athanasius thought. Commerce. This was the true work of the Lord’s Vineyard.

  “All of you are more than military men. Your families are wealthy, beyond the equestrian ranks. Like General Trajan, your wealth and power here can grow far beyond your service to Rome.”

  Now the two legates were extremely interested, hanging on every parsed and patiently strung word coming from Dovilin’s lips.

  “Your families have olives, oil and grains. Mine has wine.”

  “I see how you can sell much Dovilin wine through us to our legions and the local governors of Asia Minor,” said Legate XVI. “But I fail to see how much you and your household staff could purchase from us.”

  “You forget the Christians in the caves all over Cappadocia, gentlemen. Hundreds of thousands. Individually, they have little in possessions or money. But as a whole they are a market bigger than any single capital in Asia Minor. Who best to serve them than your family businesses? We all benefit, and Caesar will reward you like he has others who do business with me.”

  “This is true,” said Legate XII. “The Flavians know the East, and three governors so far in Asia Minor have been drawn from our ranks.”

  Throughout this exchange, the assassin from Ephesus hadn’t blinked once, Athanasius thought, his eyes still fixed on him as one of the servant girls brought in some sweets for dessert and slipped Athanasius a note.

  The assassin saw Athanasius palm it.

  “Then here is to all of you and your promotions,” said Dovilin, holding up his cup. “And to your XII Fulminate and XVI Flavia legions.”

  To which they all cheered each other and drank.

  Athanasius quickly glanced down at the note. It was from Cota and it simply read:

  media noctis inclinatio

  So Cota wanted a midnight rendezvous at the Angel’s Vault, Athanasius noted. When he looked up again, the assassin in the corner was gone.

  It was past midnight when Athanasius hurried outside the villa toward the stables, long after the legates had left with plenty of amphorae of wine, but presumably leaving behind the assassin to make short work of him. How? Was his long presence at the meeting and sudden disappearance meant to torture him? Whatever Dovilin’s intentions, it was certain he was not meant to survive this night.

  Athanasius calmly walked into the bunkhouse, bracing himself to meet his assassin, but found nobody waiting for him. He grabbed his sack and poked his head out.

  He could hear the girls washing the ceramics and utensils of the supper and chatting with each other at the kitchen, and he could see Brutus off by himself smoking some kind of rolled-up leaf and looking at the sky.

  He quietly worked his way around the bunkhouse to the back and merged with the shadows between the vineyard rows. Once he was a safe distance away, he broke into a run. In the morning the Dovilins would know he was gone for good. None of that mattered anymore, though, because if he survived what he had to do, he was never coming back to this place.

  • • •

  As Athanasius was fleeing the estate, the assassin Orion took his seat with Dovilin in the villa’s courtyard. He real name was Patraeus, and he was upset that Dovilin had not allowed him to kill Athanasius on sight. Now his target was out of sight, and Dovilin not only seemed unconcerned but intent on wasting even more time by pouring them both some more wine.

  Dovilin said, “I thought Athanasius was killed as Chiron in Rome a month ago.”

  “No, sir. He escaped somehow and killed the garrison commander on Patmos and then made it to Ephesus and again evaded capture.”

  Dovilin sipped his cup thoughtfully. “That doesn’t sound terribly efficient of our organization, does it?”

  “He clearly had help from the inside, sir,” Patraeus said, and finally took a sip of his cup. He preferred to avoid any wine while on a hunt, and the Dovilin brand was reputed to be more powerful than most, but it appeared he would insult his host otherwise.

  “Inside where, Patraeus?” Dovilin demanded. “Inside the Dei? Inside Rome? Inside the Church?”

  “Very hard to tell which is which these days, sir.”

  “Isn’t it?” Dovilin agreed, seeming to relax. “I knew it was Athanasius the moment I saw him on my doorstep.”

  Patraeus sincerely doubted that. “Then why didn’t you kill him?”

  “I will,” he said. “As soon as he leads us to the true identity of Cerberus.”

  “Look, sir. I was supposed to kill him on sight, send his head back to Rome in a box.”

  “You’ll get your head to send to Domitian in the morning, Patraeus, and I’ll get Cerberus.”

  Patraeus opened his mouth to say something when he felt a tug inside his throat. Everything inside him began to constrict, and he dropped to his knees gagging.

  Poison!

  “You have been as much a help to the Dei in your death as you were in life, Patraeus,” Dovilin was saying, although the words began to slur in Patraeus’s head. “This poison came from a tiny vial in Athanasius’s sack. I believe it was intended for our Lord and God Domitian. From your delayed reaction, it appears to be a Dei formula that would have circumvented the palace wine taster and reached Caesar’s lips…”

  By then Dovilin’s words were but a distant hum, his presence a mere shadow, leaving only a final, fleeting thought to escape with the assassin’s spirit.

  Loose ends.

  III

  Athanasius made it to the olive tree in the courtyard outside the winery, aware of two snipers walking along the second story of the façade. He could see their silhouettes in the moonlight. But that appeared to be all the security there was, just a couple of guards on the lookout ready to sound any alarms. He then saw a dark figure in the mouth of the winepress cave below—Cota, waving him over. She seemed to be holding a basket.

  It was too far and he risked being spotted by the snipers once he left the cover of branches. So he waited until the nearest sniper turned his back, then he darted to the cliff, kissing the wall as he worked his way to the winepresses. The loud chirping of locusts covered the sound of his steps. Once inside Cota couldn’t wait and wrapped her arms around him.

  “Such speed and stealth, Samuel!” she said and pressed her lips to his face.

  He took her by the hand and led her toward the vault doors in back, where a torch flickered on the wall. “The faster we get to the Angel’s Vault, the more time we have together. Are there guards?”

  “Only locks,” she said breathlessly, “and I have the keys.”

  He grabbed the three on a ring she dangled out of her hand. “Samuel!”

  He smelled the alcohol on her breath. It would make things easier for him shortly, but not now. “Quiet, Cota, and I promise you a revelation.”

  “Oh!”

  He opened the vault door at the back of the winepress cave and found the interior guard station empty as promised. He tried to open the heavy door to the Angel’s Vault, but the first two keys didn’t work. He tried the third one. With a sharp push he finally turned the rough tumblers and it opened.

  He took up the torch, stepped in and saw the amphorae lined up like the treasures of a pharaoh’s tomb.

  “Get comfortable,” he told Cota, who seemed both perturbed and yet aroused by his take-charge manner.

  “Samuel, you are full of surprises,” she said as she spread linen and a few small pillows across the floor.

  “A man has to preserve an air of mystery, you know,” he said as he kneeled before one of the imperial amphorae and opened his sack. He dug his hand in to find his vial of poison but couldn’t feel it. He dug further.

  “What are you looking for?” Cota asked. “I’m right here.”

  “I had an exotic aphrodisiac from the Far East I thought we’d try with some of this wine,” he said, shaking out everything from his pack on the floor in a panic. “You don’t think anybody in Rome would miss it if we helped ourselves to a couple of cups from an open amphorae, do you?”

 
Cota didn’t reply.

  “Do you?” he asked again, and turned around in time to see Vibius raise a thick forearm holding a mallet.

  “Actually, I do,” Vibius said, bringing the mallet down on his head.

  He was back in the dark of his nightmares again, this time no Gabrielle to be found. He was gagging on refuse, unable to breathe, an unbearable pressure upon his back. He felt like he was about to explode. Suddenly a halo of light appeared around him, the dark shadow rose, and he raised his head up out of the pomace of the lagar to gasp for air as grape skins and pulp filtered down through holes into the cavern below. In front of him he could see a horrified Cota on the ground in tears while her husband Vibius barked orders to Brutus and the guards manning the screw press.

  “Again!” he shouted.

  Athanasius heard the creak of the capstan, pulleys and ropes as the boulder above him began to lower, shaking the lagar below him. He wanted to crawl out, but he had no strength in his legs, and feared his body would be cut in two.

  “Please, Vibius!” Cota screamed as the boulder came down.

  Athanasius buried his face in the rotting grape pulp, turning to flatten his head as much as possible, bracing his shoulders and hips and praying his bones didn’t smash to dust under the weight bearing down upon him.

  It pushed him down, unbelievable pressure, and he worked his tongue to free an airhole in one of the drainage holes to breathe. His temples were in a vise, and he was sure his head was about to crack open like a melon, and then he heard a crack and feared the worse.

  Vibius must have heard it too, because the screw press wheel began to turn and the boulder lifted off Athanasius’s body, broken for sure.

  “Well, it looks like you won’t be walking out of here alive, Athanasius. So why don’t you tell us what you’re after.”

  He could barely open his jaw, and when he did, he spat out grape stems and seeds. “Domitian,” he groaned. “Poison.”

  “And you realize what that would have done to us, don’t you?” Vibius shouted in his face. “The Roman legions here would wipe us out. All of us. Including the underground church. Is that what you wanted?”

  “No.”

  “Well, let me tell you what I want, spy. I want you to tell me who Cerberus is.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Vibius dangled the Tear of Joy necklace in front of Athanasius’s face as he lay in the pit. “I think you do.”

  “He doesn’t,” said a voice, and Athanasius glanced up to see Gabrielle with a crossbow. He blinked twice, because he didn’t believe it, and then she actually shot an arrow into Vibius’s arm and screamed, “Samuel!”

  He felt the rumble above and with all the strength he could muster rolled out of the lagar and got up on one knee. He started to wobble as Vibius pulled the arrow out of his shoulder and came at him with it.

  “The Dei says die!” he screamed.

  Athanasius ducked and straightened his knee out enough for Vibius to trip over it and fall into the lagar.

  “Stop!” he screamed to Brutus and the rest at the wheel.

  But his cry only made them stop too suddenly. The windlass snapped, and the boulder dropped on Vibius, his blood spurting into the drains toward the fermentation pits.

  “Vibius!” Cota screamed, running over. “Vibius!”

  Athanasius staggered to his feet, amazed he could even stand upright. He saw Gabrielle in the back by the gate to the tunnels, waving him over. “Hurry!”

  Brutus and the guards stood in shock, and Athanasius knew why. It wasn’t his head that was going to roll; it was going to be theirs. Unless they brought his to Dovilin first.

  “Run, Gabrielle!”

  He chased her into the dark, cursing himself for his failure to kill Domitian by poison and praying Virtus was having better luck in Rome.

  A handful of anonymous but aristocratic Romans were waiting for Croesus when his commercial flagship Poseidon anchored in Ostia. But the slain shipowner and Dei chief from Ephesus never appeared. So their small line of regal chariots departed along the Appian Way back to Rome, where Virtus, who had spotted them from aboard the ship before it arrived, followed them by taxi to a plain, four-story building not far from the Palatine. He checked into the inn across the street and made sure to get a room with a balcony view of the building.

  For several days Virtus watched the golden chariots and litters that rode in and out of the house in Rome, where rich and powerful members of the senate and Roman society came to pray with one another and pay tribute to the Dei. Among them he noted Senator Celsus, cousin of the slain Croesus of Ephesus, and Senator Sura, father of the master of the Games Ludlumus. But there were many more as well, and it was the lesser-known junior members that he did not recognize that worried him most, and he did his best to memorize their faces.

  After two weeks he became familiar with the cycle of groups and began to get a better picture of the circles in which the Dei had influence, many of which were diametrically opposed politically and culturally. Others seemed to have strong ties to the wine, oil and commercial shipping industries. He noted no outward forms of identification, and no large group meetings. Only these small group meetings held weekly.

  Fairly acclimated to Rome again, Virtus was now ready to make contact with this man Stephanus whom Athanasius had told him about, and to place the servant of Flavius Clemens inside the palace with the help of his Praetorian comrades. Not that any of this would be necessary, of course. Athanasius was the smartest master assassin that Virtus had ever met, and the power of the Lord was with him. No doubt he already had everything in Asia Minor well in hand.

  • • •

  Deep within the bowels of the mountain range, Athanasius and Gabrielle moved through twisting corridors, chased by Dovilin’s men who now wore Minotaur masks to hide their identities among the sleeping Christians now awakening with screams. Gabrielle led the way down a grim shaft, helping them to temporarily lose the Minotaurs.

  “Where are you going?” he asked her. “You’re taking us down, not up.”

  “I’m taking you to Cerberus,” she told him.

  They ran through a narrow, winding passage that ended in a large, circular cavern. They carefully made their way around the edge, then Gabrielle held up her torch to reveal an abyss ready to swallow them whole.

  “I can see why the Roman legions don’t come down here,” he breathed.

  “Stay close to the wall.”

  They followed the ledge to a series of narrow steps that took them down to yet another ledge, which led into a tall tunnel. He could hear the sound of water and they soon entered a terraced cavern with waterfalls all around. He looked up to see water spilling out from two levels up and disappearing into cavern depths below.

  “This way,” she said, pushing them through a flooded tunnel.

  “Does this ever fill up?”

  “Often,” she said, as they slogged through the waist-deep water.

  The tunnel opened up and sloped down into a large grotto.

  “Slide,” she said, jumping down.

  He followed her down the water chute through a series of pools, before they were caught in a power channel at the bottom. He thought they were going to drown as they tumbled toward the bowels of the deep, but then almost as suddenly they broke the surface of a serene underground lake and climbed out.

  “We’re close,” she said.

  “I should hope so,” Athanasius replied with breathless incredulity, thinking this made his escape through the Great Drain look like bath play in comparison.

  They entered a great and solemn cavern, with golden stalactites creating columns from the floor to the ceiling. They almost looked Doric in style, these natural formations, Athanasius thought in wonder.

  There in the middle of the columns, lying on blankets and hides next to a natural spring, was a very old man with very dark skin. In his youth he must have been quite strong. But in his old age, his legs had withered somehow and he was lame. This pit see
med to have been his home for years, and the only way he survived, Athanasius guessed, was with the help of Gabrielle.

  Gabrielle said, “This is him, Cerberus. Samuel Ben-Deker. But I heard Dovilin’s son call him Athanasius.”

  Athanasius stood flat-footed as Cerberus looked him over with ram-like eyes. “Welcome, Athanasius of Athens,” he said, his voice like the rumble of the waters in the cavern. “You have the key to Rome, I have the key to Asia Minor. Let’s see why the Dei never wanted us to meet, but the last apostle did.”

  IV

  Cerberus seemed all too aware that his time on this earth was quickly drawing to a close, and he wasted no words. “I’m called Cerberus, because like the three-headed dog of Greek mythology who guards the doors to Hades, I guard the three doors to the Dei, the secret of its origins. You, Athanasius, though you do not know it, guard the secret to its destiny.”

  Athanasius, sinking down on his knees beside the old man, said, “I want to know everything.”

  “The first thing you must know is that the Dei is only thirty years old, but the powers behind it are much, much older,” Cerberus told him. “I come from a family of stargazers and assassins, cousins to the Dovilins. We have been assassins for hire, run out of Cappadocia, since the days of the Hittite kings, and before that Egypt. My side of the family took a different turn when my great-grandfather followed the stars to Bethlehem to assassinate Jesus at his birth on orders from King Herod. But three stargazers from the East convinced him otherwise, and my family ever since has served the Lord.”

  Athanasius nodded. “But not the Dei.”

  “No. As I told you, the spirit of the Dei goes back centuries, to before the pharaohs of Egypt and the fall of Atlantis, all the way to the creation of the universe. They follow the stars in everything they do, from the founding of Rome to great military campaigns to the planting of crops.”