"What are you going to do with Arieson?" asked Remo.
"You'll see," said Chiun.
"I'd feel a lot better if I knew."
"I'd feel a lot better if you knew, too. But you don't, do you?"
Before they went to the Vatican, Chiun insisted on walking the streets of Rome. Some of the ancient marblework had been preserved, the old Forum looking like a partial skeleton of marble, withered in the adjacent modern street. They passed the old home of the Vestal Virgins, pagan priestesses, on whose example modern convent life in the Catholic Church was modeled. And then, of course, the bitter little remnants of the old temples to the old gods that were no more.
Before Christianity there were only these gods in what was called the civilized world. For every attribute-love, drinking, war, the sea-there was a special god. From Venus to Neptune these gods ruled the daily lives of the people and received their offerings.
But with the advent of Christianity, with the promise of eternal life, with a god who had died for his people, an unseen God from the Hebrews, the great temples became empty, and the last priests lived alone without followers, without offerings, tending the statues of their cults.
And when the priests were gone, when the coffers built up over hundreds and hundreds of years were finally empty, either Christians set up their churches in these pagan temples, or as Remo saw now, the buildings just decayed. Standing before the site of the Great Temple of jupiter, where once thousands would crowd in for feasts, Remo saw just a worn simple marble slab in the dirt of Rome with a bronze inscription saying there had been a huge temple here.
"They were good cults," said Chiun. "You knew where they stood. It was clean. You gave a god something, he gave you something back. None of this suffering for love, and an affliction as some kind of reward. We never thought Christianity would catch on, but see, here we are, and it has."
"I was raised by nuns in an orphanage. I'm going to feel funny in the Vatican."
"Don't. Remember, the Borgias were once popes and we have worked there. Ah, Rome, who would have thought you would last so long," said Chiun, waving a hand at the city on the Tiber which had once ruled the world, and now was only bad traffic and picturesque marble remnants. And of course, the Vatican, the great Vatican, where once a fighting arena had stood.
Outside the large columns, Italian police and soldiers had sealed off the entire state-within-a-state. From St. Peter's, little groups of men could be seen hacking away at each other. Some wore striped pantaloons and velvet hats. They were the Swiss Guards, who protected the post. Once they had actually fought other little armies, but now they were only ceremonial.
Until, as Remo found out, the morning when they threw over their papal banners, shouted to hell with peace, and engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a group of Turks brought in by a strange man with a muscled neck whose eves seemed to glow.
This they learned from the carabinieri, who warned Remo and Chiun not to enter.
"It's terrible, terrible what's happening in that holy site," said the carabinieri. "But we cannot enter."
"Why not?" asked Remo.
"The Vatican is another state. Someone has to invite us in. We have not been invited. And no one will do anything in there until the pope is free."
"Is he a prisoner?"
"We think so," said the carabinieri.
A head went rolling along St. Peter's courtyard, lopped off by a Turkish scimitar.
"Horrible," said Chiun.
The carabinieri covered his eyes. "Horrible," he agreed.
"Yes, amateurs making a mess of things. Well, that's to be expected with what's let loose. Come, Remo. This is not the way to enter the Vatican. You can just tell Mr. Arieson is inside. Look at that enthusiasm for a bad stroke."
The way to enter the Vatican was the way Augustus Caesar would enter the arena. "Through tunnels, protected from his citizens in case they rioted. These tunnels later became part of the catacombs of Rome.
The catacomb Remo and Chiun wanted was underneath a restaurant. Chum calculated where the entrance used to be according to his old lessons, to which, he stressed, he devoted himself as a child, unlike Remo, and sent a fingernail into old plaster. Vibrating it within the rhythms of the molecules, he collapsed the entire wall, to the despairing shouts of the restaurant owner, who had stored olives and garlic and fresh tomatoes down there in the basement. They were all ruined now.
"We're in service of the pope," said Chiun. "Send your bill to the Vatican."
Before them rising out of the rubble was a high entrance, larger than most modern doors. On either side of this entrance were frescoes of gods and goddesses making love, playing, and dancing. Remo noticed the clothes on the gods were quite skimpy. Chiun led the way, explaining the tale of the artist who painted these frescoes. In the palace of Augustus Caesar nearby, people were being killed. Everyone thought it was Augustus' wife, Livia, again with that great Italian attraction to poison. Actually, it was a minor assassin employing the artist as a conduit to the cooks.
The assassin knew the artist could buy his freedom, and was in love with another slave whose freedom he wished to buy also. So he used the artist for access to the palace. The House of Sinanju came along in the employ of Augustus, discovered the plot, eliminated the competition with ease, and brought the artist before Augustus.
Augustus, a wise ruler, understood the artist was only a slave, expected to be weak, and let him live. But the cook, a free man, he had crucified because more was expected of a free man than a slave.
"It is a beautiful little story," said Chiun.
"What's beautiful about a crucifixion?" asked Remo. The tunnels had a strange glaze from the underearth about them. It made Remo's skin crawl.
Remo saw an old-style fresco with fine color tones but crude lines. It reminded him of one room of the treasures of Sinanju. He had seen that room on his first visit to Sinanju. There were statues and jewels and gold, and then Remo remembered, it was the room that had the indentation in the mahogany floor. He tried to remember what had made that indentation. But he couldn't. When one has taken on four thousand years of accumulated treasure in one afternoon, everything tends to blur. Besides, never having received tribute, he didn't care about it too much.
They walked three miles under the Vatican and then Chiun turned into a doorway with stone steps leading steeply upward. Above them they could hear laughter, and screams and cries and the clashing of swords.
"Disgraceful," said Chiun. "But you have to expect this now."
They pushed through a wood-and-steel door at the top of the steps opening into a vast room where tapestries hung from the walls. Ornate furniture was placed a few feet from the walls and nothing stood in the center of the room where the inlaid pink and gold marble floor was covered now by the slime of blood.
Swiss Guards swung their halberds in wide, deadly arcs against a group of Turks fighting with scimitars. Sometimes a big-bladed halberd would strike clean and a head would go rolling, or an arm would be neatly severed. More often than not it missed, striking only a glancing blow, spilling more blood. The scimitar, less useful for arm-length fighting than the long-poled halberd, was very effective at close range. It could disembowel the guards right through their velvet blouses.