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Following is the complete text of "Return of the Legends," the story of a businessman who launches a DNA grave-robbing expedition to retrieve the genetic remains of history's most famous corpses, and the dark horrors that only three people — a scientist with a substance abuse problem, a sexy TV news producer and a teenage girl — can stop.
The author, J.D. Lasica, attended the Squaw Valley Community of Writers summer workshop for fiction and screenwriting. The novel was edited by Tom Jenks, former fiction editor of Esquire.
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. This novel makes reference to a number of real-life persons, places and situations. For instance, the remains of Albert Einstein, the remnants of Elvis Presley, the blood-stained cuffs of the doctor who performed Abraham Lincoln's autopsy, the marijuana roaches in the back seat of John Lennon's station wagon, the existence of the sacred relic at Notre Dame Cathedral — all of that happens to be true.
But the characters, incidents and events surrounding these matters are purely fictitious. At least for the moment.
— Inscription over Shakespeare's wooden coffin on the floor of the
Prologue
The three dark figures skimmed across the cold marble floor of St. Peter's Basilica. Sharon Silvero raised her eyes to Michelangelo's majestic dome, challenging the stares of the saints overhead. She genuflected, crossed herself, and smiled.
Kasparian and Bundt entered the confessional, where the advance team had stashed three uniforms of the sampietrini, the Vatican work crew. They changed quickly and found the door at the south wall of the basilica that led down to the ancient Roman necropolis. Silvero used the first pass key. The door groaned open.
The grave team members eased down the steep concrete stairway through layers of history, moving past exposed masonry and the ponderous foundation walls of the original basilica, built by Constantine in the fourth century. They circled downward, as if traveling back in time, twisting through claustrophobic stone passages. Finally they reached the entrance at the foundation's base.
Silvero plunged through the narrow opening and emerged in another world. She staggered forward on the stone floor into a cramped, brick-walled street. She shone her big spelunker's flashlight from side to side, taking in the two rows of Roman mausoleums that had been buried for sixteen centuries.
"The Roman Street of the Dead," she whispered.
The elegant redbrick burial houses had a surreal freshness to them, as if the tombs had been built two years ago, not two millennia. Low-slung gabled roofs rose over the columned doorways of Roman family vaults. She peered inside the nearest tomb and flashed her light. Inside were marble sarcophagi, cremation urns, stucco statues of Egyptian and Greco-Roman gods, prancing Pans, leering satyrs — a bacchanalian free-for-all.
It was deadly silent down here, so quiet that Silvero swore she heard her heart thumping.
"Creepy as shit," Bundt said, his puffy cheeks glowing an eerie red.
Kasparian, the anointed team leader, frowned. "Which way?"
She aimed her light to the left, up the sloping hill, and began moving through the subterranean world. The weight of the basilica pressed down on them.
After a minute she stopped and pulled out her map of the excavations — confusing down here, passageways snaking every which way — and she dropped to her knees at the entrance of the nearest tomb to get oriented. She grasped the cold brick wall to balance herself and skimmed her searchlight across the ceiling. She spotted the ancient mosaic of Christ as the Sun God, tunic flowing, ascending to heaven in a chariot drawn by white horses.
"Incredible," she said.
"Keep that pretty ass moving," Kasparian snapped, nudging the nuzzle of his Walther PPK between the cheeks of her overalls.
She turned, temper flaring, and briefly considered killing him. After all, what did she have to lose? She was the walking dead. But then her father's words came to her: Retrieve the bones — nothing else mattered.
They continued through the stone-sided tunnels and soon entered a small courtyard. Then they found a narrow alleyway that rose sharply to their right. Silvero's flashlight glinted off the faded plaster of the Red Wall — Peter's bones, she knew, were on the other side. Near the end of the alley they climbed the spiral metal staircase leading up to the underground chapel. She used the second key.
Bundt put on his infrared glasses, and they entered.
At one end of the small, rectangular chapel stood the stone remains of Constantine's ancient pedestal shrine. On the far wall, immediately opposite the shrine, was a door that led up to the Confessio, the sunken area just in front of the high altar. In front of that door, Bundt now reported, were two electronic sensing devices: a pair of infrared beams, set 12 inches and 30 inches off the floor; and a microwave motion sensor.
"Looks like the Church's gone high-tech on us," Bundt said.
Bundt set his bag gently on the floor and pulled out a small black box — a microwave transmitter — pre-adjusted to the right frequency by the advance team. Bundt aimed it at the motion detector and activated the switch to flood the signal.
"We can move around now," Bundt said. "Just nothing too sudden. And keep your distance from those infrared beams at the far door." The security system had obviously been set up to prevent a break-in from the basilica above, not from the Roman necropolis below.
"This way," Silvero said, and led the way past Constantine's shrine, its slabs of porphyry sparkling dark purple in the glimmer of flashlights. She ducked through a jagged hole in the wall, shimmied through a cramped passageway, and came to a walled-in chamber. This was it: the repository.
Through the bars of a heavy bronze-grill gate, her flashlight trembled against the mottled blue-white wall tomb. The wall flickered with jumbles of Latin graffiti inscribed by early Christian pilgrims. Below the scrawlings, barely five feet from them, was a small floodlit cavity hollowed out of wall, covered with a glass pane. The tomb of the Prince of the Apostles.
"Stand clear," Bundt said, and went to work with his battery-powered reciprocating saw.
To Silvero, in the stillness of the chapel, the whirrr seemed deafening. The high-speed carbon blade made short work of the bronze gate. After three minutes, the opening was big enough and they slipped through the broken bars.
They crouched in front of the small window of the repository. The bones seemed to glow in their transparent plexiglass containers, nineteen boxes in all, with fragments of Peter's femurs, tibias, mandibles resting on white foam rubber.
Bundt drew out a glove and a tube of liquid nitrogen. He aimed the nozzle and sprayed the bulletproof glass in quick, even bursts. The polycarbonate plastic pane frosted up. He waited several seconds. Then he smashed the window with the butt of his gun handle. It cracked like an eggshell.
The two men grabbed the boxes and stashed them in the big cloth satchel. Then the three of them retraced their steps, hurrying through the thin passageway and back into the chapel. Bundt turned off the microwave transmitter and placed it into the bag. Kasparian opened the door to the necropolis — then stopped.
A noise came from the necropolis below — the sound of a footstep close by, scraping against a stone step.
"Who is it?" Silvero whispered. "What is it?"
Kasparian stared into the dark stairway, then quickly closed and locked the door. He turned and paced to the heavy wood doors at the chapel's far end.
"Can't go that way," Silvero said. "That leads up to the high altar. You'll trip the alarm."
Kasparian checked his gun clip. "They already know we're here."
Suddenly, the door handle to the necropolis wobbled. Kasparian signaled for Bundt to jimmy open the heavy Confessio door. Bundt hesitated for a moment. Then he bolted across the room, tripping the infrared beams.
Bundt crouched and began to work the door's antique lock. Behind Silvero, the necropolis door handle whipped back and forth.
Bundt cursed and slammed his hand against the heavy door to the Confessio. "Can't jimmy it. No time."
Silvero grabbed the reciprocating saw from the tool bag and pushed Bundt aside. The blade came alive, and she began cutting through the ancient wood. Within thirty seconds she'd sliced a ragged semi-circle around the bolt lock. She threw her shoulder into the door and heaved it open.
Silvero, Kasparian and Bundt scrambled up the double flight of marble stairs, circling past the burning votive lamps that played against the rails of the balustrade. They flew down three short steps into the enormous space beneath the basilica dome, just below the huge Latin letters, deep blue on a gold backdrop, that circled the interior of the dome: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church and give you the keys to heaven." They dashed, saints staring, across the marble floor to the south side of the basilica. Silvero found the exit and the three figures plunged into the courtyard.
Kasparian took out his cell phone and hit the precoded number. He barked into the receiver, "Stubblefield. Get us out of here."
They tore through the night, through lawns and hedge-lined gardens, past the ministerial-looking Government Palace, and headed toward the heliport landing pad at the west end of Vatican City. Far behind them, behind a row of yucca trees, Silvero heard a commotion of voices.
Guards.
They reached the wall of a fat, squat fortified tower. Silvero stopped and scanned it with her flashlight. They headed left, skirting the wall's left side — "Firma!" A Swiss guard leaped from behind the wall, breastplate flashing.
She dropped her flashlight in fright, but not before glimpsing the guard's face. Just a boy, no more than 19, looking very frightened, clasping his spearlike halberd to cut off their path.
Kasparian drew his Walther semi-automatic pistol, pointed, and fired twice. The guard crumpled and rolled away in agony, a gusher of blood streaming from his throat. Kasparian smiled and pumped three more bullets into the guard's prone body. Then, shouts in Italian to the rear of them, very near.
And a deep, angry rumble coming from overhead.
Silvero started for the heliport, carrying the satchel of bones. She tore across the grassy field and stooped down at the edge of the landing pad. Suddenly, a brilliant light startled her from above. Dust choked her throat, the air ripped at her hair, her head swam with the roar.
She pitched the bag into the chopper, then tried to climb in. Just then, someone grabbed her from behind and she fell backward. Kasparian and Bundt clambered aboard while she lay on the ground, choking on the whirlwind.
The chopper rose a few feet, then seemed to hesitate. Kasparian looked down at her — and smiled. But then his eyes flew wide, he grasped his bloodied left shoulder, and he fell hard to the ground. She turned and saw a band of guards bearing down on them, guns glinting in the moonlight.
The chopper dipped down. She lurched forward. Bundt grabbed her shoulders and pulled her aboard. He yelled to the cockpit, "Up up up!"
"Not yet!" she screamed above the roar. She remembered her father's orders: Leave nothing behind. She steadied her aim. It took three tries before the bullet entered Kasparian's skull.
Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust encloséd here;
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.
Church of the Holy Trinity in Stratford, penned by Shakespeare himself
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