AURELIA (Roma Nova Book 4)

by Alison Morton

  ‘Leave the safe for the moment, Numerus,’ I said.

  He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. I knew what would be inside: the Tella insigniae, and some of their most ancient documents, jewellery and artefacts. And the family treasure, both physical objects and documents. Well, the three-quarters Caius had left of it.

  Mercuria beckoned me on to a second set of steps leading down from a gaping rectangular opening in the floor of the next room. I saw moving lights below us and heard voices.

  ‘It’s our people,’ she said and switched on her own torch. We started down. I pulled my coat around me, and my scarf up to my ears, but it wasn’t as cold as I feared. I missed my step and scraped my shot arm against the wall. I grunted with the pain blooming from the wound site and my jarred ribs. Mercuria took my other arm and guided me down the rest of the flight.

  At the bottom was a rough-hewn corridor with rooms without doors. As I glanced in each one, I saw pressed earth floors and stone benches each side big enough for a single person to sleep on. In the corner of one were a couple of amphorae, chipped but recognisable. In the middle room, a rickety set of empty shelves. Other pottery shards littered the other rooms. These were ancient refuge rooms used during barbarian invasions a thousand years ago, and during later wars. The people sheltering here would have been terrified, but safe.

  The doorway of the last room had a thick curtain hung across it. As Mercuria raised her hand to pull it aside, I tensed. She shook her head. Inside, a survival sleeping bag and several blankets were bunched up on a camp bed. On the stone ledge were candles, a tin, now with its lid off, containing matches, cutlery, a small first aid kit, and a roll of banknotes. A knapsack in the corner and a metal box held changes of clothes and a pair of boots. A faint smell of stale smoke hung in the air.

  Mercuria dropped the curtain. ‘I’ll get one of the vigiles forensic teams in to go through it all.’ She smiled at me. ‘Apparently, when Secretary Plico tore the prefect to shreds for not helping us before, he insisted they share their technical services with us. Now at least we can use their science people direct.’

  ‘Gods, I was working on a proposal for vigiles reform ages ago, before I went to Berlin, and that sharing proposal was one of the top items. But it was blocked.’ I flicked my hand at the closed curtain. ‘Anyway, let’s get on. Anything else?’

  She shook her head. Then her eyes narrowed.

  ‘You know, apart from in that little room, the air’s remarkably fresh,’ she said.

  ‘There’ll be concealed shafts for passive ventilation,’ I replied. ‘It was a standard feature when they built these shelters. Engineers, you know.’ We grinned at each other. ‘Most of them have been filled in by now or they’re clogged up with leaves and earth.’

  ‘But he couldn’t get out that way, could he?’

  ‘No, far too narrow. Wait. Of course. Why didn’t I think of it before?’ The painkillers must have been suppressing my brain functions more than I thought. ‘There would have been an escape tunnel. Otherwise they’d have been trapped like rats if the barbarians had got in.’

  She assigned pairs of guards to knock on the walls in each room and check for a different sound. She and I tackled the corridor wall. I had no expectation of finding Caius, but we had blocked off his refuge.

  I was tapping away when I realised what I’d missed. I stumbled back to the middle room and seized the shelving against the back wall. My ribs protested as I pulled. I caught my breath and stood back as the two guards took over.

  ‘Mercuria,’ I called.

  The back of the shelving unit had been fitted with two grab handles. A rope had been looped through them. A rope leading up through a hole in the wall.

  ‘Mars’ balls,’ Mercuria said. ‘You two,’ she nodded at the two guards, ‘go and see where that goes. Extreme caution – there may be armed resistance.’

  Even though Caius could be up there waiting ready to blast the head off anybody who approached, I wanted to be the one squirming through that tunnel. As the two soldiers disappeared, the sound of cloth brushing against rock slowly vanished, as did the flashes from their torches. Mercuria sent a runner up to the section on the surface to alert them for anybody emerging.

  ‘The plot is about a hundred and fifty metres long from the front to back wall,’ I said, running my finger against the wall in an invisible horizontal line. ‘From here they have at least a hundred metres to crawl if they want to get out the other side of the back wall.’

  ‘Surely they’d go for the shorter route to the side?’ Mercuria said. ‘That’s, what, fifty or sixty at most. I’ll send Numerus and his section outside to scout around.’

  After ten minutes I couldn’t bear the waiting and went upstairs. I walked up to the atrium, ignored Domitia Tella and made my way to the back of the house and out through the French windows. I stood on the flagged terrace watching the figures in combats searching amongst the trees and shrubs. At the far end, behind the tall oaks, there was no back gate entrance in the wall. It wasn’t the original wall, but was built on the same line of the previous one. The tunnel had to end on the other side or the escapees would be caught. I’d have to check an old map, but I was reasonably sure that until the twelfth or even thirteenth century, there would have only been woodland at the back of Domus Tellarum, not another street of houses as now.

  Where was bloody Caius? Was he hiding in the tunnel ready to murder the young soldiers?

  The optio’s radio crackled and I heard Numerus’s disembodied voice, but not his words. I stumbled after the optio who had broken into a run. I cursed my short, painful breathing and waved her on. As I turned the corner from the main street I saw, two-thirds of the way down the side wall, Numerus, radio in hand and a grim expression on his face. Another two guards pointed their weapons down at the pavement. Gods, had we got Caius? My heart thudded as we approached them.

  Numerus looked up and put his finger to his lips. He pointed at the manhole cover with its familiar SPQRN stamp and parallel grid like two combs laid spine to spine. I heard a fluttering noise, then a deeper, rasping sound. Somebody was in the drain below the manhole. A flash of light followed by an obscenity which made the optio draw her head back and the others smile. They shifted their feet and relaxed their aggressive stance; they’d recognised the voice.

  ‘That you, Sergius?’ One of the guards dropped to one knee.

  ‘Who the fuck do you think it is?’ came a voice from the grille. ‘Hades come to shag Proserpine? Get me out of here!’

  The grille came away easily, and a grinning face emerged, followed by his shoulders and arms. He pulled himself out and sat on the edge.

  ‘Language, young man,’ Numerus said and tried to frown. But I’d seen his little smile.

  ‘Sir?’

  Numerus nodded in my direction. The poor kid, all of nineteen or twenty, opened his mouth, shut it again and swallowed. ‘I apologise, lady,’ he mumbled, his face pink.

  ‘Relax, soldier,’ I said, and laughed. ‘I’ve heard worse, but Proserpine may have an argument with you.’ I looked down the tunnel entrance. ‘Where’s your oppo?’

  ‘We came to a fork in the tunnel and she took the other one.’ He glanced at Numerus. ‘Is she all right? I mean, I didn’t want to separate, but—’

  ‘That’s enough, Sergius, we’ll take it from here,’ Numerus cut him off.

  Numerus and I walked a few steps away leaving the young soldier to be ribbed by his comrades.

  ‘Well, now we know how he was getting in and out, but where does the other tunnel come out?’

  He pressed the rocker switch on his radio. ‘Aquila One. Report.’

  ‘Aquila Two. Nothing in the garden. Continuing to search.’

  ‘Aquila Three. Nothing on the perimeter. Continuing to observe.’

  ‘Aquila Zero.’ Mercuria. ‘Inactive here. Aquila One, RV in thirty, ground floor previous location. Out.’

  Numerus looked at his watch. ‘Going on Sergius’s performance, we have at
least another eight to ten minutes before the other one hits the surface and she’s fitter than him. The outside rear perimeter is fully covered, so we’ll spot any movement.’

  Fifteen minutes later I was back in the underground refuge room with a worried Mercuria. Ten more minutes went by before an exhausted guard tumbled back out of the entrance in the refuge room. She lay gasping on the floor for a few moments, then sat up. Mercuria handed her a water flask.

  ‘Report,’ Mercuria said, after the guard had taken a few gulps.

  ‘I went up the second tunnel for another ten minutes after we split up, ma’am, but it was blocked. I had to back up feet first to the fork.’

  No wonder she was exhausted.

  She took another gulp of water and a deep breath. When she looked up, her eyes were gleaming in her dirt-caked face. She fished into her jacket pocket and pulled out a small oblong object. Her wrist flexed as her hand dropped down with the weight.

  ‘But I found a load of these at the end.’

  XXXIII

  ‘We’ve recovered five hundred and thirty-two ingots of one thousand grams each overnight,’ Mercuria said to the briefing meeting the next morning. ‘All shapes and markings, worth over two hundred thousand solidi, the woman from the Oversight Commission reckons. They’re sending somebody in this morning to assess and document it.’

  She strode over to the incident board and pointed to new photos of the silver hoard in situ before they started taking it away. ‘It’s obvious from the dirt on some of the bars that this stash has been accumulated over a period, but a hundred and forty of them were cleaner, some still wrapped in acid-free paper.’ She looked round the room. ‘But no clue of Caius Tellus’s whereabouts. The surface end of the side tunnel has now been filled with rocks and the grille soldered closed. Domus Tellarum is closed and guarded, so he can’t go back there.’

  ‘What’s happened to the old lady?’

  Mercuria frowned at the guard who’d asked the question and glanced at me.

  ‘Countess Tella has been persuaded to accept the gracious invitation issued by the imperatrix to stay at the palace for the foreseeable future,’ I said in my driest voice. While she’d been uncooperative, we had no proof Tella had actively supported Caius. That was something for the lawyers to argue about.

  ‘The vigiles are continuing to question people at his previous haunts and his known friends,’ Mercuria continued. ‘They’re also stepping up inspection of hotels and guest houses and even the mansio hostels on the roads out of the city. Our troops are assisting the vigiles in watching and analysing the public CCTV. We will have him.’

  *

  I wasn’t surprised to see Prisca Monticola tripping in with the Oversight Commission inspector. Almost bouncing with energy and her eyes glinting with excitement, she threw me a grin.

  ‘The Silver Guild has a significant interest in this. Besides, you may want to refer to our records.’ She gestured to the young man behind her, his bony shoulders weighed down with two enormous file bags. He could only have been twenty and still had remnants of teenage acne.

  Mercuria led them downstairs to the custody suite. As we walked behind her, Prisca dropped back and handed me an envelope.

  ‘I think you’ll find it interesting reading.’ She gave me a smug little smile as if she’d found something we’d missed.

  ‘Thank you, Prisca – really appreciated. The next meal’s on me.’

  As we went through the barred gate and it clanged shut behind us, Prisca started at the harsh metal on metal sound. She sniffed; the air was slightly stale and smelled of human sweat and antiseptic. When one of the guards instructed Prisca’s assistant to put his bags on the security scanner belt, she stepped between them.

  ‘Is that necessary?’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ he said in a sour tone, ‘and put your handbag through after them.’

  She looked at me, her eyebrows raised. I shrugged but gave her a smile of sympathy. Difficult for civilians to understand the level of physical security we needed. The bag disappeared behind the rubber flaps. The next second the alarm screeched. One guard pushed the young assistant to the wall, another trained his weapon on Monticola. The Oversight inspector froze. Mercuria strode up to Prisca, a grim look on her face. I stepped between them.

  ‘What in Hades have you got in those bags, Prisca?’ I said.

  ‘Technical equipment.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘For testing.’ She glanced at the Oversight inspector who nodded. ‘We need to know if what you’ve found is genuine,’ she said with an impatient note in her voice.

  ‘I think you misunderstand the situation, Prisca Monticola,’ Mercuria said. ‘We invited the Oversight Commission inspector here as a consultant. You are here by your request as an observer and out of courtesy only. If I wish you to test anything, then I will ask you. You will submit your bags to physical search or you will be escorted outside and take no further part in the proceedings.’

  Prisca stuck her chin out. As the owner of one of the largest silver extraction and processing companies, she probably wasn’t used to being denied. Her whole appearance in designer suit, pearls, sleek hair and make-up exuded an indefinable air of confidence and command. Mercuria stood there, arms crossed, legs braced, the archetypal Praetorian in beige and black, refusing to compromise.

  Prisca broke first under the tense atmosphere.

  Without looking at Mercuria, she opened the offending bag the scanner had regurgitated and took out a small polished wooden box with a folded scrolled metal handle in the centre of the lid. With a theatrical gesture and a sharp look in Mercuria’s direction she snapped open the lid. Inside were a row of bottles of coloured liquids and a small flat stone. From a velvet drawstring bag she drew out a brick-shaped metal box about twenty-five by ten centimetres and five centimetres deep. There was a small green screen on the front face and a window with a transparent screen on the back.

  ‘What is this?’ Mercuria picked it up and twisted it around.

  ‘A very sensitive prototype analyser used to detect metal content.’ Prisca hovered close, watching Mercuria with anxious eyes. She didn’t quite put her hands underneath the gadget to catch it in case Mercuria dropped it, but damn near.

  ‘XRF?’ Mercuria said. ‘I thought spectrometry was still lab-based. The portable ones were considered very unreliable when I was completing my doctorate in the physics faculty. I was in pure spectroscopy, so what do I know about technological applications?’ She smiled blandly at Monticola who looked uncomfortable. ‘Shall we get on?’

  Prisca meekly followed the inspector through the metal detector arch and along the corridor to the interview room. Inside stood three tables and half a dozen plywood and metal chairs. Silver bars had been laid out, grouped in types and shapes. Monticola’s assistant glanced at the two armed guards and swallowed hard.

  ‘We’ll leave you to get on with your work,’ Mercuria said. ‘I’ll have coffee brought to you in an hour. If you need anything, ask either of the guards.’

  *

  ‘She’s a hard nut, your silver friend, isn’t she?’

  ‘You’re not bad at dishing out the superiority yourself, Doctor Mercuria,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry, ma’am, she was beginning to irritate me.’

  ‘That analyser was obviously precious to her. You know many civilians see us as insensitive squaddies without half a brain between us.’

  Us. I was slipping back, automatically aligning myself on Mercuria’s, the Praetorian, side.

  She shrugged.

  Sitting on the other side of her desk upstairs, I opened the flap of the envelope Monticola had handed me and found the copies of Festa’s phone bills, now covered with neat annotations. On top were two pages of typescript. I read it through in silence, laid it on the desk, sat back for a few moments. I reached for Mercuria’s phone.

  ‘May I?’

  She gestured with her hand, palm upwards. I pressed the red encrypt button and dialled Plico’s num
ber.

  ‘Our fugitive made some very interesting calls while he was shacked up with Festa in Vienna. Have you got a few minutes?’

  *

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ Plico said. ‘Caius was sitting there, talking the market down but using Festa to buy in silver at the lower price when it was on a run down.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what the little ratchets up are – the anomalies. When somebody starts buying again, the quantity available is diminished and the price goes up. You know, supply and demand.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Plico said testily. ‘I do know the basics of price elasticity, thank you.’ He looked up, his face frowning. ‘Can we prove any of this?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask the lawyers, but to get anywhere we’ll have to request the New Austrian police to interview every one of the people Caius talked to – general press, trade press, silver factors, market makers, metal merchants and futures dealers.’

  ‘That’ll take forever.’

  ‘Yes, and there’s another problem. They’re a secretive lot and will scream client confidentiality. My cousin, David, is a member of the Vienna Chamber as well as the bankers’ association. I’ll have a word, but don’t hold your breath.’

  ‘Keep your conversation general – I don’t want to start a panic.’

  I hated to think what his comments would have been about my previous disclosure to David. Probably throw me in the Transulium and swallow the key.

  ‘And if you connect it to all that computer and telex equipment he had installed when he was at Grosschenk’s in Berlin,’ I said, ‘he might well have started then. But the Germanic federal cops said all the trades were legal.’

  Plico threw the phone report on his desk. ‘This doesn’t get us any nearer finding him, though.’

  ‘No, but the vigiles and Praetorians are stepping up their investigation and patrols. It may have to be a hard slog.’

  ‘Are you happy with your own security?’

  ‘Now the garden and park perimeter is secured, my house is an armed camp. And you won’t let me go anywhere without Numerus and his troops.’