Secrets of the Dead

by Tom Harper

  Beyond the shadow burns the sun,

  The saving sign that lights the path ahead,

  Unconquered brilliance of a life begun.

  A chill passed through her as she read it. She thought she could feel the blood pressing on the bandages. She remembered what Jenny had said: It’s too personal, isn’t it? Like a sort of message from beyond the grave.

  ‘Do you know what it is?’

  ‘The language fits with a date somewhere around the fourth century. The imagery is Neoplatonic, and this word “unconquered” – invictus – is a standard epithet for Roman emperors of this period.’

  ‘But do you know who wrote it?’

  Gruber scratched his throat, where his collar had chafed it.

  ‘The first two lines match an inscription on a gravestone which was once in the Imperial Forum Museum in Rome. The other two lines do not appear anywhere in the classical corpus. So far as I can establish, it is an entirely new discovery.’

  No wonder you wanted to keep your hands on it. She folded the paper and put it in her bag, then cast about for something to say, but couldn’t think of anything.

  ‘Did you do the translation yourself?’

  ‘Herr Lascaris wanted his money’s worth from me.’ He saw her confusion and laughed. ‘Perhaps I should have said. For this work, he promised he would pay me one hundred thousand euros.’

  A hopeful look.

  ‘Perhaps you will honour his agreement?’

  X

  Constantinople – April 337

  I’M DISTRACTED. I should be thinking about the task at hand, but every time I try to concentrate my mind slips the leash and is back in the past. I’m lying on a couch in the triclinium of my house, poring over Alexander’s papers by the light of a bronze lamp. Even the slaves have gone to bed.

  Alexander’s Chronicon lies open, walking me through my own history. What strikes me most, in the years after Constantine’s acclamation, is the great profusion of names. Maxentius named Augustus … Severus Caesar killed … Licinius named emperor by Galerius. Names which once carried so much power. Now their statues have been pulled down and their names are never spoken. Not unless someone whispers them off a page in the deep darkness of the night.

  Trier – March 307 – Thirty years ago …

  When the army acclaimed Constantine emperor, Galerius responded as he always did: with bad grace and a play for time. He accepted Constantine’s accession – he didn’t have the strength to oppose him – but gave him the junior rank of Caesar, rather than the senior rank of Augustus, which Constantine should have inherited from his father. If Galerius hoped to provoke Constantine into an act of treachery, he was disappointed. Constantine accepted the slight without demur, and sent his credentials to Galerius to show he would willingly serve under him.

  But emperors aren’t what they used to be. For more than two hundred years after the first Caesar Augustus, one man ruled the empire as sole proprietor. In the last thirty years, it’s become a joint enterprise. I still wonder why. Did the empire become so bloated that no one man could manage it? Or did men somehow shrink in stature, unable to fill the purple shoes of the giants who made Rome? Whichever it is, the ramifications are obvious. Emperors are like rabbits: either there is one, or there are many. Diocletian split his empire into two, then expanded it to four. Some of those four had sons who needed an inheritance; others abdicated, then thought better of it. At last count, there were six men claiming the title of Imperator Invictus – unconquered emperor.

  Six men, each jealous of the others, can’t all stay unconquered for long.

  Two of those men are a father and son called Maximian and Maxentius. Old Maximian was persuaded to abdicate five years ago, but retirement didn’t agree with him. Young Maxentius was overlooked for promotion, like Constantine, but found an obliging corps of praetorian guards in Rome who, for a consideration, were willing to drape him in purple. They’re an impossible family, each as bad as the other. Both have dainty flushes on their cheeks that make them look permanently embarrassed, and wide, feminine eyes that have seen every wickedness imaginable.

  But today they’re on their best behaviour. They’ve come to Constantine’s capital at Trier to celebrate the marriage of Maxentius’s sister Fausta to Constantine. It’s actually Constantine’s second marriage, but his first needn’t detain us. It certainly didn’t detain him, when a quick divorce offered the opportunity for a more advantageous match.

  Everyone’s pretending it’s a completely normal occasion. No one’s so crass as to mention the fact that this happy day is also a calculated act of treachery. By allying himself with the pair of father-and-son usurpers, Constantine is leaving Galerius no choice but to move against him.

  ‘Maximian and Maxentius could have made peace with Galerius and combined to crush me,’ Constantine explained, when I warned him against the match. ‘If Galerius wants to come after me now, he’ll have to attack my new brother- and father-in-law first.’

  ‘You’ll be obliged to defend them,’ I pointed out.

  Constantine smiled. ‘Perhaps.’

  For now, harmony reigns. We’re gathered in the throne room of Constantine’s palace, which is decked with garlands and the light of a hundred torches. The marital bed stands in the centre of the room draped with a purple cloth, embroidered in gold with scenes of hunts and battles. It’s only symbolic. The real action will happen elsewhere, later.

  I hear singing as the bride approaches, the glow of torches from the chamber beyond. Slaves throw open the doors and there she stands. A veil spun from russet silk covers her face, and her dress is belted under her breasts with a cord tied in the intricate knot of Hercules. The bridegroom’s supposed to unpick it, though knowing Constantine, he’ll probably just cut it.

  Her attendants lift her over the threshold – carefully. You don’t want to drop an emperor’s bride in front of him. Everyone’s watching. I’ve seen brides shrink under the attention, but Fausta seems to be enjoying it. She’s only fifteen, but there’s nothing of the virgin in her pose. Under her dress, one leg’s cocked slightly forward, thrusting out her hips and arching her back. As if she’s daring us to imagine what’s going to happen that night.

  Constantine steps forward, a torch in his hand and his auspex beside him. The auspex is supposed to read the entrails, though there’ll be no blood sacrifice at Constantine’s wedding. Constantine takes Fausta’s hand and asks her name in the ritual fashion.

  ‘Wherever you are Gaius, I am Gaia,’ she replies, the words so ancient no one knows what they mean.

  When Constantine married the first time, I stood beside him as auspex. Now that he’s an emperor, only a fellow emperor will do. I try not to let it bother me.

  Constantine hands her the torch. His brother-in-law-to-be Maxentius passes him a gold ewer filled with water, and Constantine gives that to Fausta, too. Then he pulls back her veil.

  Whatever the political merits of the marriage, there’s no denying its physical compensations. The family resemblance comes out well in Fausta: the long-lashed eyes and buttery skin, so effeminate on her father and brother, give her a voluptuous beauty. She’s at an age where her body’s plumped up like ripe fruit, breasts and hips and thighs swelling under her gown, while her face still keeps its childish innocence. A dangerous age.

  Constantine leads her to the marriage bed. They recline there in a stylised embrace, while the guests queue to congratulate them. There are three emperors here and precedence is a nightmare, but there’s no question who should go first. Constantine’s mother, the Dowager Empress Helena. She’s sixty, but still the most commanding woman in the room: high cheekbones and a stern mouth, blue eyes that miss nothing, no hint of a stoop in those bony shoulders. Rumour says she was the daughter of a brothel keeper, but I’ve known her all my life and never dared ask. Underneath the applications of white powders and Tyrian vermilion it’s impossible to tell what she’s thinking. Perhaps she’s wishing this was a Christian ceremony. Perhaps she’s
thinking she’s seen this scene played out before: when Constantine’s father divorced her to make a more expedient marriage.

  In fact, the parallel’s even more excruciatingly exact. Constantine’s father divorced Helena to marry one of old Maximian’s daughters; now Constantine has shrugged off his first wife to marry another of the fecund old man’s children. His uncle-in-law will become his brother-in-law. Even the women of that family are serial usurpers.

  A small boy barges into the line behind Helena and grabs the skirts of her dress. No one else would dare touch her, but Crispus is her only grandson and can tap a seam of indulgence that even Constantine can’t access. Perhaps he reminds her of Constantine as a boy: even if you’d only ever seen Constantine’s profile on coins, you’d know Crispus was his son. He has the same round face, the same brilliant light in his eyes. Helena lifts him up on to the bed. Constantine hugs him and ruffles his hair; Fausta lets him give her a kiss on the cheek. She smiles, though it doesn’t reach her eyes. The look she gives him makes me think of a cuckoo sizing up another bird’s eggs.

  Crispus’s tutor, a skinny man with a long beard, runs up and pulls him back off the bed. The crowd laugh.

  ‘What will become of him, do you think? The boy, Crispus.’

  A courtier, I can’t remember his name, has sidled up behind me. He tips his cup towards the marriage bed, as if toasting the happy couple’s health.

  ‘Will the Emperor push him aside, do you think?’

  I hate these guessing games. ‘He’s still Constantine’s firstborn son,’ I say firmly. ‘Constantine, of all men, won’t abandon him.’

  Constantine knows what it’s like to see your mother jilted for a younger, better-connected woman. Not that it’s stopped him doing exactly the same thing.

  Too many wives and too many emperors, and too many sons repeating their fathers’ mistakes. No wonder the empire’s always at war with itself.

  XI

  Thalys Train, Near Rheims – Present Day

  WHAT WAS MICHAEL doing with a seventeen-hundred-year-old scroll?

  Why was he willing to pay a hundred thousand euros to read it, when he didn’t even know what it would say?

  Where did he get that kind of money?

  The questions chased themselves around her head as she sat in her seat and stared out of the rain-spattered windows. An illuminated readout above the carriage door registered their speed. 287 kmh. Hurtling along – going where?

  Michael had always had money. If she was honest, it had been part of his appeal. Not the money itself, but his way with it, the easy extravagances. Growing up as the daughter of a minister, indulgence wasn’t just a practical impossibility: it was a moral outrage. Being with someone who spent his money without doubts or regrets had been a gush of freedom. His ridiculous car, which even the gangsters in Pristina wouldn’t touch; the champagne and fine wines that flowed every time he entered a restaurant; the hotel suites whenever they went away. Each time Abby thought she’d got used to it and couldn’t be shocked, he’d find some new way of spending money that appalled and thrilled her all over again. And if she said anything, he’d shrug and give her a kiss on the forehead.

  You can’t take it with you.

  A phone started to trill. She didn’t recognise the sound: it was only when other passengers started staring at her that she realised it was hers. It was the first time she’d heard it ring. She jabbed the button.

  ‘Abby? It’s Mark.’ She needed a moment to place the name. ‘From the Foreign Office. Are you out of the country?’

  She hesitated. How does he know? The ringtone must have sounded different.

  ‘There wasn’t much to do in London,’ she said. ‘I thought a change of scene might help.’

  ‘Right. Gosh. No stopping you. Are you going to come back?’

  ‘I’m on my way home now.’

  ‘Wonderful. Give me a bell when you’re back and we’ll arrange for you to come in.’

  ‘Have you got a job for me?’

  ‘We’ll have a chat.’

  London

  Mark met her and brought her up to the office. Once again, the vast and empty corridors overwhelmed her. Statues of Victorian statesmen dressed as Roman generals lurked in the shadows, one empire to another. Classical Graces peered down from a ceiling frieze. Trust, Fortitude, Justice … Everything she’d once believed in.

  Mark led her back to the third-floor meeting room. It overlooked a vast marbled atrium, where a hundred years ago an imperial monarch had taken homage from her far-flung subjects. Now it was mostly used for seminars and cocktail parties.

  ‘How was the trip? Somewhere nice?’

  ‘I went to Paris.’

  ‘Mmm, lovely. Gorgeous this time of year. Did you make it to the Matisse exhibition? How long were you there? Stay somewhere nice? Sugar?’

  It was all small talk as he pottered about making coffee, but she had the feeling he was paying close attention to her answers.

  ‘When can I come back to work?’

  ‘Champing at the bit, eh?’ His pomposity was breathtaking.

  I was ducking bullets in war zones while you were still round the back of the bike shed playing with dirty magazines, Abby told him silently.

  ‘HR are worried about your “well-being”.’ He held up his fingers in quotation marks. ‘They’re insisting on a full assessment – medical, psychiatric, the works – before they’ll bring you off the bench.’

  She put on her best sane face. ‘Psychiatric assessment?’

  ‘You’ve suffered severe physical trauma, stress, and bereavement. Your file says there was also some memory loss.’

  ‘Short-term. Haven’t they ever heard of getting back on the bike?’

  ‘We’re just watching out for you.’ He took off his glasses and gave her a nothing-shall-come-between us look. It made her want to punch him.

  ‘So why did you want to see me?’

  ‘I didn’t.’ A self-deprecating grin. ‘I’m just the go-between, really. Chai-wallah. Hello.’

  A man had appeared at the door. He came in and locked it behind him. He had iron-grey hair chopped short and awkward, a hard face and an economical precision in his movements that reminded Abby of soldiers she’d known.

  ‘Mrs Cormac, my name is Jessop.’

  ‘Jessop’s from Vauxhall,’ Mark explained.

  He means SIS, Abby thought. Often known as MI6, as their incongruous job adverts put it.

  Jessop seated himself across the table from her and unzipped his bag. Out came a small, pen-shaped piece of plastic.

  ‘Does that squirt poison ink or something?’ Nerves made her flippant.

  ‘Voice recorder.’ Jessop pushed a button on the end of the device. A red light went on.

  ‘This interview is taking place under the terms of the Official Secrets Act. Please state your name and confirm you’re aware this conversation is being recorded.’

  Interview? ‘What’s this got to do with the Official Secrets Act?’

  ‘Just bureaucracy,’ Mark assured her. ‘Dotting the i’s and t’s. It’s as much for your protection as anything.’

  It’s good to know I’m protected. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘We don’t believe that Michael Lascaris’s death was an accident.’

  Abby almost threw her coffee over him. ‘Of course it wasn’t an accident. They broke in and murdered him.’

  ‘People can still be murdered accidentally,’ Mark said. Trying to smooth the waters. ‘The wrong place at the wrong time, that sort of thing. What Mr Jessop’s saying is that he doesn’t think this was one of those scenarios.’

  ‘We think Michael Lascaris was targeted,’ Jessop confirmed.

  Abby tried to control her breathing. ‘And?’

  ‘In an earlier statement, you said you believed the villa in Montenegro belonged to an Italian judge.’

  ‘That’s what Michael told me.’

  ‘In fact, it’s registered to a charter yacht outfit in Venice, which is a
wholly owned subsidiary of a shipping company based in Zagreb. The ultimate beneficial owner is believed to be Zoltán Dragović.’

  ‘Should I know him?’

  ‘You worked in the Balkans and you never heard of Zoltán Dragović?’ said Jessop.

  Mark looked up from his pad. ‘She suffered some memory loss,’ he offered. Always happy to help.

  But the memories were coming back. Abby put her hands on the table and looked at Jessop.

  ‘He’s a gangster.’

  Jessop gave a dry laugh. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

  ‘You can see it doesn’t look good,’ Mark put in. ‘A senior EU customs official staying in a house that belongs to one of the most wanted men in Europe.’

  ‘Michael didn’t know,’ Abby insisted.

  ‘Did you ever hear him mention Dragović?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Have you been in touch with any of Michael’s associates since you returned to England?’

  ‘Associates?’ She stared at him in disbelief. ‘You’re making him sound like some kind of criminal.’

  ‘Colleagues? Friends? Family?’

  ‘I visited his sister in York. I wanted to offer my condolences.’

  ‘How did you get her address?’

  ‘Someone sent it to me.’ She glanced desperately at Mark, but he was writing something and didn’t look up. ‘Wasn’t it you?’

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Come on, she told herself. You’ve been through worse than this. Sitting in a shack in some godforsaken corner of the earth, the only unarmed person in the room. The awful smell of sweat, blood and rifle grease. Men – some of them just boys – jabbing guns at her, their nostrils flaring from the cocaine that gave them their courage. Her only protection then had been a piece of paper from a court five thousand miles away.

  But that was there – the outer darkness, as some of the old Foreign Office hands still called it. This was home. All those years, all those hellholes, what kept her alive hadn’t been her pieces of paper or her diplomatic accreditation. It had been faith – unwavering belief that whatever fatuous, bureaucratic mistakes her government might make, it was a force for good in the world. And now that same government had her locked in a room, twisting her words with unspoken allegations and lies.