The Death Relic

45

Conversation was non-existent for the first seventeen minutes of the trip, which shocked and pleased Jones. He had expected a one-sided verbal barrage that would leave him hard of hearing in his right ear. Instead, he got the silent treatment. No words. No profanity. Not even a growl to express her anger.

In Jones’s mind, it couldn’t have gone better.

Unfortunately, he made a rookie mistake while weaving through traffic on Federal Highway 307. He leaned forward to check the side mirror and accidentally made eye contact with Maria. It lasted less than a second — nothing more than a fleeting glance in which no words were spoken — but somehow it opened the floodgates. Before he knew it, emotions poured out like water through a broken dam.

She said, ‘I’m sorry about my behaviour back there. I didn’t mean to yell at you guys over something so stupid. But sometimes — I don’t know — sometimes I feel so unappreciated, like my opinions don’t make a damn bit of difference.’ Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. She wiped them away with the back of her hand. ‘Do you ever feel like that?’

Jones, who rarely shared his feelings with anyone, squirmed in his seat. Normally, he would crack a joke to avoid a serious conversation, but he sensed that simply wouldn’t cut it. He knew he was dealing with someone in a fragile state and the wrong response would only make things worse. So he opted to talk about his past. ‘Not any more. But I used to feel that way all the time.’

‘Really? What changed?’

‘Just about everything.’

She looked at him, waiting for details. ‘Like what?’

He took a deep breath. This was going to get messy. ‘You and me, we come from completely different backgrounds — different countries, different families, different lifestyles — but we ended up in the same place because we let something beat us down. Unlike you, I had all the love and support I could get at home. My parents were great. They worked hard to make sure I had everything I needed, but they always had time for me, whether it was to help me with my homework or to smack my ass with a wooden spoon when I was bad. And let me tell you, I was a handful at times. Even worse than I am now.’

She smiled when she pictured him as a child.

‘For me, problems were non-existent at home. They started the moment I walked out the door and tried to fit in with my classmates. In my hometown, white faces were the norm. In a town of three thousand people, there were less than fifty minorities. Not black people, mind you, minorities. It was so bad that I used to keep track of them in a notebook.’ He laughed at the memory. ‘I’ve always been a numbers guy, so I used to find solace in charts and graphs. At any one time, I could tell you exactly how many blacks, Asians, or Hispanics there were in my town and where they lived. I actually learned about Venn diagrams when the Chang family moved down the street. They were Chinese Jews, which forced me to change my entire system.’

She laughed despite her confusion. ‘Why did you track minorities?’

‘Why? Because I was looking for allies. If the shit ever hit the fan, I wanted to know where I should run to first. I figured the Jacksons were more likely to help me than Billy Bob’s parents. By the way, that’s the name of a real kid. The bastard kicked my ass. Twice.’

‘Did that happen a lot?’

‘What?’

‘Fights.’

He shrugged. ‘I was smart, skinny and black. I was a walking kick-me sign.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ she said sympathetically.

‘Really? I thought I told you I was black.’

She smiled. ‘Nope. Never came up.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it came up quite a bit for me. Believe it or not, the physical beatings were easier to handle than the mental ones. Most of the time it wasn’t blatant. I didn’t grow up in the deep south or the 1800s. It’s not like people called me nigger to my face — at least not very often. I’m talking about small things, the things that make a person feel bad about themselves. Snide remarks, backhanded compliments, jokes that went a little too far. My teenage years were pretty rough. I felt like I was alone in the world, and no matter what I did or how hard I tried, I would always be looked down upon by society. I was a person without self-esteem.’

She nodded in understanding. She felt the same way after years of abuse from her father. Not physical abuse, but mental. Whether it was his comments about her intelligence, his insults about her looks or weight, or his general disregard for women, she learned to hate herself at an early age. Her mother tried to comfort her and tell her everything would be all right, but when she died there was no one left to protect Maria. By then, she’d already been shipped off to boarding school, where she fought long and hard to turn her life around.

Eventually, she learned to use the hatred she had felt for her father as fuel for revenge. She scratched and clawed and beat all the odds to become a rising star in the field of archaeology. Unfortunately, what should have been her crowning achievement — the discovery of the Catacombs of Orvieto and all of the secrets hidden within — was marred by the death of her father. Instead of having the chance to rub it in his face, she found herself linked to the crimes he had committed before his murder. Crimes against the Vatican itself.

Even in death, her father made her suffer.

‘What did you do to change?’ she asked.

He glanced at her. ‘Well, I was tired of being an outcast in my hometown, so I joined the one team in the world where they treat everybody the same.’

‘Which team is that?’

‘The military,’ he said with a smile. ‘Of course, everybody is treated like shit in the military, but that’s a lot better than being the only one who’s treated like shit.’

‘Misery loves company.’

He nodded. ‘Before long, I was getting more respect at the academy than I had in high school — probably because I’d toughened up over the years. Other cadets in my class struggled with the abuse. They weren’t used to the insults or the cruelty. For me, it felt like home. I figured there was only so much they could do to me. They could scream and rant and get in my face, but they weren’t allowed to kick my ass like Billy Bob. If they did, their ass was grass, not mine. That fact alone gave me inner peace. So did my performance at SERE. That’s when I knew I had found my calling.’

‘What’s SERE?’ she asked.

‘It used to be a training programme at the academy. It stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. I’m not allowed to talk about the specifics, but let’s just say it was so difficult that the academy was forced to shut it down because it was too damn hard. During my first year, I heard all kinds of horror stories about it from the upperclassmen. They made it sound like a concentration camp, as if only the lucky ones survived. I figured a skinny sucker like myself would be broken within hours, but somehow I thrived. By the end of the programme, I was so damn confident I felt like I could take on the world. Ironically, the thing that was supposed to break me made me stronger. Ever since then, I haven’t looked back.’

She took a deep breath. ‘I’m having trouble with that.’

‘With what?’

‘The past,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t know how to let go of it. That’s something I never learned how to do. Sometimes I let it consume me.’

He nodded. ‘I know.’

‘You know?’

‘Of course I know. I’ve known since I met you in Milan. But guess what? That’s not necessarily a bad thing for an archaeologist. You should be worried about the past.’

She smiled. ‘That’s a very good point.’

‘Besides, the past made you into the person you are today, so it can’t be all bad. Now all you have to do is figure out how to use it to your advantage. You need to find a new direction to channel your passion. If you like, I’d be happy to make a suggestion.’

‘Is that so?’ she said, laughing. ‘What did you have in mind?’

He grinned. ‘Let’s go back to the hotel and research the Maya.’