‘His trial was scheduled to start today.’ Plico’s face was grim.
‘Oh, gods, it’s going to start again. He’s haunted me since I was a child.’ I swallowed hard and took a second, smaller sip of the brandy. The light-headedness and trembling receded.
‘I’ve sent a recce team to Berlin to do the preliminaries, whatever the local scarabs think. He obviously had help – he’s got enough money to buy it. Or his great-aunt has.’
‘Countess Tella would never condone such an action.’
‘Of course she wouldn’t, but you know what a devious bugger he is. He’d have charmed it out of her.’
He passed the Brandenburg police telex to me and waited in silence until I’d read it through. I itched to get back to Berlin, much as I disliked it now.
‘What plane am I on?’
‘I’ve got one standing by but you’re obviously not fit, so I’ll have to send somebody else. Pity. You’d have been perfect.’
‘Nothing wrong with me. It was the shock, and I think I’ve got a minor bug. I’ll get some antibiotics to settle it.’
‘Nothing doing. In fact, I’m sending you for a full physical. You look terrible.’
*
The medic probed, poked and took samples. She flitted around, packaging up tubes of my blood, pee and saliva swab, labelled it all with quick fingers then sat at her desk to scribble notes. She had dark brown hair, and hazel eyes not unlike Caius’s, but with none of the mockery or hatred.
Despite what Plico said, I was going after Caius. After I’d refused him in Roma Nova and banned him from coming near any of my family, he’d tried to kill me in Berlin, then nearly had me convicted for murder. His debt account was over the limit and I was going to settle it once and for all.
XXII
‘How in Hades can somebody not know they’re pregnant?’ Plico threw the pen on his desk. It landed right in the middle of the doctor’s report. ‘All that puking and you must have noticed you’d missed your period. You’re not some dim-witted adolescent out of a Septarium tenament.’
‘I thought it was stress and a stomach bug.’ I studied my twitching fingers. I felt stupid enough without him going on about it. Recovering from my broken foot and waiting for Caius’s trial, let alone my lack of emotional life, the last thing I’d thought about was contraception. Besides, Roma Novans rarely used it; we loved having children and we loved them, unlike most of our fellow Europeans who thought having a child without a husband was somehow shameful. Ridiculous. Roma Nova would have sunk centuries ago with such a paternalistic restriction.
Then Miklós came into my life. Inside I glowed. Miklós’s child, and mine. A child made from love. I closed my eyes and savoured the thought. Then a roll of anger when I thought of Miklós’s desertion. My child. Not his. Entirely mine. Miklós didn’t want to be part of my life. This child would never be part of his. She would be raised as a true Roma Novan.
‘Well, that’s you off operations for several months.’ Plico’s flat voice dragged me back into the real world. He reached for a file on his rack. ‘There’s an opening in Vienna, desk-based, as part of the political staff. Your experience and fluent Germanic make you ideal for it.’
‘No, I’m going after Caius.’
‘Not a prayer. I’m not explaining to the imperatrix that I’ve sent her pregnant adopted daughter into the field to pursue the most dangerous and vicious bastard alive. She’d have my balls.’
An idea not without merit.
‘And you could take Marina with you if you accept the Vienna posting. It would be a good experience for her to see a bit of the world. In perfect time for their Winter Fair with all that tinsel and lights. She’ll be in heaven.’
‘With Caius still at large? You’re joking. None of us is secure until he’s brought down. At least here she’s well guarded.’
‘Maybe, but you’re still not going after him.’ He gave me a sly look. ‘At least we know now what you were doing in that missing thirty-six hours.’ Before I could respond, he added, ‘And I won’t report you for misusing the intelligence database in Berlin to look up Hungarian smugglers for very personal reasons.’
*
I drove to the palace, still fuming at Plico. I thought about writing a curse tablet and sticking it in the boot of his car. The logical part of my mind said he was right. But ever since I had stared Caius down in that Berlin courthouse, I knew he had lost his dominance over me. And I was eager to prove it. But my first duty and pleasure, no, my joy, was to care for my growing baby. Nothing showed, it was only six weeks, but I stroked my stomach with my hand, keeping the other firmly on the steering wheel. My basic fitness was still good and would protect the baby as long as I was careful with my diet. If I wanted to catch Caius, I had a six-to-eight-week window before I became too slow or endangered the baby.
Justina greeted me with a big smile pinned on her face. Juno. Plico had copied the report to her. Was nothing private?
‘My dear Aurelia, come, sit down and rest. Your mother would have been absolutely delighted at the news. You must be careful, especially after the worry of the trial. My gynaecologist will care for you, naturally, and supervise your diet and exercise herself.’
‘Imperatrix, Aunt Justina, I’m not ill. Thank you, but I’d prefer my own doctor and I’m not giving up work for the next seven months.’
‘Let’s be clear, Aurelia. Marina isn’t a strong child and House Mitela needs a second heir. The medical report says your blood counts are low, so you need rest, a proper diet and supplements.’
Hades. She’d trained as a doctor as a young woman, and worked in the refugee camps full of malnourished Austrians and Germanics immediately after the Great War finished in 1935 so I couldn’t argue with her prescription. And she was right about another heir.
‘I promise I’ll take it carefully, but I won’t be cocooned either.’
*
Waiting in the meeting room at the Foreign Ministry made a change from Plico’s dull, paper-strewn office. The foundations of the building were original, dating back to the fifth century. The archaeologists had exposed an ornate mosaic hunting scene now protected by glass in one corner of this grandiose room. A tall man, with grey-red hair to his shoulders and a torc round his neck, wielding a spear and about to stick a wild boar, was reckoned to be Prince Bacausus, the father-in-law of founder Apulius. His square face with its jutting chin certainly reminded me of his descendant, Justina, in one of her determined moods.
The door opened and Plico entered, talking to Senior Centurion Numerus, whom I hadn’t seen since we’d arrested those Prussians in the snowstorm nearly two years ago.
‘Major!’ He saluted and we clasped forearms.
‘Fantastic to see you again, Numerus. You look well.’
He shrugged, then tilted his head. ‘I gather you’ve been up to your own adventures in the north from what Secretary Plico tells me.’
‘Not ones I wish to repeat. How’s the search going?’
Numerus had led the recce team to Berlin, four of them altogether. Liaising with Fabia, now second in command of the entire legation detachment, they’d found no sign of Caius.
‘He’s vanished completely. Fabia’s used every informant she could think of and piled the pressure on the local police. I had the pleasure of hearing her, er, conversation with some dickhead called Scholz.’ He glanced at me. ‘Doesn’t like you, does he?’
‘Understatement. Bastard nearly got me locked up for Mars knows how long.’ I turned to Plico. ‘So what’s next?’
He shrugged. ‘He’s the Prussian police’s problem really. We have no jurisdiction, but—’
‘That’s never stopped you before. Or any other secretary.’
‘As I was going to say before you jumped on me, we’re not leaving it to them. Numerus here is assembling a second team which will start a parallel but covert search for Caius. Your report was good, but what Numerus needs from you is detail of everything you saw, heard or even smelled in connection with Caius in Berli
n. The answer is there. We just need to dig it out.’
*
After a full day with Numerus and two of his team, my brain was as shredded as mincemeat. I hadn’t expected anything less. He might be going grey on top but underneath he was as sharp and tough as he’d been in my anti-smuggling unit. He was especially interested in interviewing Grosschenk’s chauffeur, and the informer, Ernst Beck, who I’d packed off to Bavaria.
‘But they were Grosschenk’s men – hard nuts,’ I said.
‘Yes, but they would have seen Caius Tellus and possibly overheard conversations between him and Grosschenk. You know yourself how all the tiny things that seem insignificant at the time slot into place when you look at them under different circumstances.’ He pulled a page out of his folder. ‘That tough that kidnapped you and Prisca Monticola, Fischer, is inside for the next few years, but this might be interesting.’ His voice was slightly raised and his eyes gleamed. The sheet was headed ‘Königlich-Preußische Polizei’ and marked ‘Streng geheim’ – a copy of a top secret Prussian police document.
‘Where did you get that?’
He grinned. ‘The quartermaster asked us to trial some experimental scanning equipment in the field. It’s the only positive thing we brought back.’
The chauffeur had been put into witness protection; no real surprise, perhaps a sign of thoroughness by the Prussian police. But Numerus was right to be excited; this document showed his new name and address – in Vienna.
‘Well, Fussy-Pants Plico won’t let me out in the field, but if I take up his offer of the Vienna posting, I’ll be inside the Germanic Federation. I have a few contacts via my business interests there. Best of all, we’ll be able to have a private word with the chauffeur on neutral ground.’
*
‘Of course, Marina can come back here. What a ridiculous question.’ Justina was as no-nonsense as usual. ‘She’s had a lovely holiday with you but now she needs to get back into her routine here.’ I cringed at the irony of it. But I was in no different a place than many others working for the Roma Nova government, or indeed members of the Twelve Families. My own mother, Felicia, had been fostered at the palace as a girl and grown as close as a sister to Justina, which was why she now treated me as if I was a wayward daughter. Perhaps her grandson, Julian, and Marina would bond in the same way; Mitela and Apulia had always been close since the foundation of Roma Nova fifteen hundred years ago. It never hurt to look to the future.
‘Severina’s pregnant again,’ Justina broke into my thoughts, ‘so you’ll have company when your baby is born.’ The idea of sharing baby chit-chat with Justina’s dippy daughter made my heart sink. Severina was my friend, with a kind heart but a shallow brain. Her ability to connect with every member of every Roma Novan family of equestrian rank upwards and to remember everything about them was an impressive talent and left me a social inadequate standing in a corner by myself. But she couldn’t string a political or strategic thought together and sat silent in the imperial council meetings, bored to tears, and tried to avoid the policy sessions Justina held every week on top of that.
But no ruler, or ruler-in-waiting, could indulge in a politically idle life. Severina would have to face that uncomfortable fact and remember her duty to her country. Of course, I’d be there to advise and help, but she’d have to step up to the bar herself.
‘Aurelia?’
‘I apologise, Imperatrix. I was a million miles away, thinking about the things I must do before I leave next week,’ I lied.
*
I caught up with Prisca Monticola who had been elected on to the Silver Guild council as international relations specialist. We sat in the atrium by the tall windows as the last glimmer of light disappeared, she with a glass of Castra Lucillan white from last year’s vintage, me with an unexciting fruit juice.
‘They think I’m the very devil of an adventurer after that business in Berlin.’ She grinned, then sipped her wine. ‘But it gets me some good trips abroad.’ Not that she couldn’t afford to jet off anywhere she pleased.
‘Heard anything more about anomalies in the silver trade?’ I asked.
‘Meaning?’ She raised an eyebrow, but her expression was neutral rather than hostile.
‘Meaning has it settled down after Caius’s smuggling activities stopped? And what about the Prussians and Rammelsberg?’
She set her glass down carefully on the coffee table between us.
‘When Caius Tellus was convicted, the price rose slightly, both spot and consumer, and stabilised. The effect spread and calmed the whole European market. There are still some minor blips from time to time in the Germanic centres – the big one in Frankfurt, plus Munich and, strangely, Vienna. Nothing so serious to cause me to call the Oversight Commission but—’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe I’m over-sensitised, but I can’t help feeling something’s unsettling it at the moment.’
‘How long has it been doing this?’
‘Only a week or two.’ She fished out a notebook from her handbag and leafed through the pages. ‘Here. Ten days ago exactly.’
The columns of figures, dates and squiggles made no sense to me.
‘Sorry, it’s coded.’ She gave a quick smile and pointed a purple-lacquered fingernail at the top of a half-completed page. ‘The price fell for a day, picked up again, but not at the same level, then it fell even further and picked up again, but not even to the level of the first fall. And it’s been slowly ratcheting down. It recovered a little the day before yesterday. With Rammelsberg production carefully controlled, I’d expect to see prices continuing to rise steadily. I checked with colleagues on the London Metal Exchange but they hadn’t recorded anything special there. It’s the centre of the physical silver trade in the world, so they’d notice. Although one said they’d been hearing funny rumours about the purity of Roma Nova silver.’
‘Speculators?’
‘Well, investors,’ she frowned at me, ‘have been paying higher premiums on physical silver as demand has been outstripping supply. But that should force the price up, not down.’
I said nothing, but Caius escaping and this very recent instability clicked together in my mind.
XXIII
Vienna was a strange place, in one way similar to Byzantium – a city too big for its surroundings; dozens of palaces, cathedrals, wide carriageways and esplanades, museums and opera houses to serve an empire. Both cities once had empires that had stretched from mountains, plains, rich pastures and fields to great rivers and dominion over strategic seaports and included multiple ethnic groups. Before the Great War, the Austrian Empire had been one of the world’s great powers, the second largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire and an industrial and cultural powerhouse. Vienna was known as the city of dreams and music, but was now the city of conferences, town planners and tourists.
We’d traded with Austria for centuries since before the Habsburgs had taken over from the Babenburgs; one of Justina’s ancestors had been the brother of Theodora Comnena, the Byzantine princess who’d become the first Duchess of Austria in the 1100s. We had history. But the Great War removed the last Habsburg as effective ruler, although his daughter, Maria Amalia, played a token part now as a state figurehead in New Austria. I was scheduled to meet her sometime in the next few weeks when the nuncia presented me.
At Wien-Maria-Theresia Airport I shrugged my coat on and waited by the luggage carousel as it squeaked and groaned, tumbling cases round in front of tense passengers trying to spot theirs from the sea of black bags.
‘Frau Gräfin Mitela?’
A neat dark-suited man with a solemn look on his face had materialised next to me. Behind him was an airport service employee resting his arm on a trolley and looking bored.
‘My name is Herr Peters, I’m the deputy service manager. Please follow me.’
Not again.
‘I’d rather wait for my luggage first.’
‘Karl will see to that and deliver it to your legation’s car which is waiting outside.
’ His face relaxed a centimetre. ‘I will escort you through immigration.’
I was whisked past the queues full of people shuffling tired feet, grasping passports and staring at me with resentful faces as I went ahead of them. We emerged into a semi-circular arrivals hall, edged with shops, a sprinkling of chairs and tables and the smell of coffee. A dark-purple-suited woman with a gold eagle badge on her jacket lapel moved towards me and flipped open a small leather wallet and showed me the familiar crowned eagle Praetorian ID badge.
‘Captain Licinia, head of the legation security detail. Welcome to Vienna, Countess.’ She relieved me of my cabin bag. Following the service manager, she ushered me towards the front entrance where a black Mercedes with tinted windows waited.
Riding along the grey concrete of the Ost Autobahn towards the centre of Vienna, and looking over at the far hills through the rain, I was struck how ordinary and quiet it looked. What would it have been like for the Roman legionaries shivering in the cold seventeen hundred years ago in this frontier town of Vindobona with the threat of Mars knew how many hundreds of wild Germanic tribespeople across the Danube wanting to tear you apart? I shuddered, but the idea of the havoc Caius could wreak was to me no less terrifying.
Plico had told me this was a proper job with ‘no cloak and dagger stuff’, but it looked like an intelligence job to me. As a legation political officer, my duties included researching and reporting on internal New Austrian political and Europe-wide issues, building a network of contacts with the government, think tanks, academic and business communities and, here was the crux of it, engaging with them to gather information and lobby on behalf of Roma Nova. I was supposed to concentrate on security policy, defence policy and justice / home affairs. And what would I do in my spare time?
I’d been allocated an office on the first floor of the legation on Marc-Aurel-Straße. The Austrians had been so grateful for Roma Nova’s legions’ support at the Battle of Vienna in 1683 to halt the Ottoman advance into Europe, that they offered the imperatrix at the time the pick of locations for the rebuilt legation. In a moment of hubris, she’d sent surveyors to Vienna to find the site of the principia, the heart of the ancient Roman Vindobona camp, and chosen the site shown in their survey. Unfortunately, it proved to be inaccurate, although it was still within the original castra limits. Her descendant in the late 1800s had lobbied the city to change the legation street name to Marc-Aurel-Straße, so honour was felt to be satisfied.
AURELIA (Roma Nova Book 4) Page 18