‘Oh don’t let that fool you, he may’ve calmed down a bit over the years but he’s still sharp as a tack: speaks very highly of you by the way, and let me tell you, he doesn’t do that about many people. It was thanks to him that you didn’t run into trouble at the airport.’ Flora winced and Braithwaite continued. ‘And now he wants to make sure nothing happens while you’re here. I hope you realise you’ve got yourself mixed up with some pretty unpleasant characters, don’t you?’
‘Mike Hayek said as much.’
‘Did he say any more?’
‘He said they were something to do with the people who smashed up the lab at Pompeii,’ replied Flora. ‘And presumably the same people who were at the airport…’ she stopped in mid-sentence as though struck dumb. ‘Hold on a minute, Stephen. Assuming Giles Smith or someone he works with sent that man to rescue me at the airport –’
‘You only met one of them. Let’s say there were quite a few Friends around that day.’
‘Which means they knew I was in danger and they obviously could’ve got me straight to the aircraft without going through the terminal if they’d wanted to….’ Her voice trailed off once more.
‘Keep going, Flora. Glad to know you haven’t forgotten your training after all,’ the Dean said, still smiling.
The colour drained from her face. ‘But that’s the whole point… they didn’t want to. They were using me as bait...’
‘Fieldcraft, Flora. You know how it is.’ he said. The smile had gone. ‘Rather than arrest those men, the Italians wanted to find out who they’re working for. And in fairness, the chances of your coming to any harm were minimal otherwise I’d have advised them not to go ahead.’
‘Oh, well, that’s a huge relief,’ said Flora, her voice dripping with sarcasm as she got up to leave.
‘Please sit down, Flora. I haven’t finished.’
Red in the face, she continued towards the door, burning with fury at these men – it would be bloody men, she fumed – who’d got her into this.
‘Flora, there are things you need to know.’
At this she stopped and turned to face him. There was something indefinably decent in the lined, kindly face looking up at her from the depths of the ancient armchair that held her back. ‘Stephen, I’m sorry if I was abrupt just now but I don’t like being used. I resigned from The Firm four years ago, remember?’
‘Come and sit down, Flora. There are one or two things I need to explain.’
‘Such as?’
‘Without your help, you do realise this entire operation is likely to fail?’ he asked.
Flora frowned. ‘I’m still not sure what the operation is. I know I’m supposed to act as some big-shot collector’s blue-stocking sidekick. The ACT want to set up a sting in the US and they need my help.’
‘Something like that,’ replied Braithwaite. ‘It’s not just this case, it’s about breaking the link between the organised crime gangs in Italy – the tombaroli who do the grunt work daren’t even stick so much as a trowel in the ground without their say-so – and the money men at the other end. If you help solve this case, you won’t just be helping a few policemen and the odd spook improve their annual statistics, there’s the whole cultural element too. That’s what’s really important.’
‘I’ll remember to have that chiselled on my gravestone.’
Braithwaite smiled. ‘I’m sure it won’t come to that,’ He looked at her intently. ‘I flatter myself that I know you, Flora. With a mind like yours you could’ve earned a fortune in the legal profession or in the City, but instead you chose to be a badly-paid academic. We do it for love. It doesn’t pay the bills –’
Flora snorted. ‘Tell me about it,’ she said.
The Dean continued. ‘Not only does it not pay the bills, but sometimes the objects of our affection – just like the real flesh and blood ones – don’t always repay us in quite the way we’d like but we stick with them none the less. Just like Giles and his American friend, Mr Hayek, told you, you can walk away from this any time you like. I just don’t see you doing so, that’s all. Not you.’
Flora’s first instinct was to rail and scream at him. Cheap, emotional blackmail, and she wasn’t going to fall for it. But then a small, calm voice told her that however much she hated to admit it, everything Stephen Braithwaite had said was true. She cared about her work and even though the job – not to mention her students – got her down at times, her passion for the ancient world and the excitement that bringing it to light gave her, wouldn’t let her stand by while some thieving low-life made off with priceless eye-witness accounts of the first-century. Mentally, she cursed them all – good guys and bad guys together. She bit her lip. ‘Don’t worry, Stephen. I told Mike Hayek I’d see it through and I will.’
‘Good, splendid, I hoped you’d see it like that,’ he said. ‘What none of us can work out is the motive. Seems most odd to go to such a lot of effort to pinch a few codices that you’d expect only crusty old academics – present company excepted,’ he added quickly, ‘to be interested in. Now, an intact Phidias bust or Nefertiti’s tomb, those I could understand someone killing for – I’d be tempted myself – but this defeats me. Anything in the texts caught your eye?’
‘Not yet.’
The Dean raised both enormous snowy eyebrows at once. ‘Waiting for divine inspiration are you?’
She laughed. ‘I’ll leave that kind of thing to Donald Sumter. No it’s the encrypted stuff that’s looking most promising. Thanks to the copper grids, I’ve made a bit of headway with deciphering some of it – that’s what I’ve been working on since I got back.’
‘What do you think it is?’
‘It’s too early to stick my neck out,’ she said. ‘But I think it may be from The Seven Stars.’
The eyebrows went up again. ‘So you think the work exists as a distinct text?’
‘It’s looking that way. Trouble is, so few of the finds had been properly recorded and catalogued by the time the robbery happened, that we’ve lost our best chance of proving it.’
‘So let’s get this straight. Your friend Moretti found originals of The Wars, The Antiquities – minus the Testimonium Flavianum of course – some personal correspondence and possibly an encrypted copy of something that might be The Seven Stars. And that’s it?’ asked Braithwaite, standing up and gazing out of the window into the quad where one of the gardeners was mowing arrow-straight stripes in the immaculate turf.
‘No, they also found some of the keys to the ciphers.’
‘Still doesn’t seem worth killing for, does it? We’re all missing something, Flora, and I’m blessed if I know what it is.’
Chapter Twenty-five
Rome AD 64
The Campus Vaticanus, the scrubby plain around the Circus Gai et Neronis – Caligula and Nero’s Circus – and the fields stretching down to the Tiber, were covered by a new city: a Rome comprised of makeshift shelters; tents made from blankets; wooden huts, anything that would give shelter from the sun to the tens of thousands of homeless refugees encamped there. Hungry children wandered around while stray dogs competed for scraps. Elsewhere, trails of smoke from cooking fires wound upwards, merging imperceptibly into the smoggy, high-summer overcast, and already the effects of a lack of sanitation had begun to compete with the stench of burning and decay in Roman nostrils.
The inferno had raged for five days and a quarter of the city, including most of the imperial palace itself, stood in smoking ruins.
‘I think that could’ve gone better, don’t you, Josephus?’ Nero pulled off the leather gloves he wore for chariot-racing and sat with his elbows resting on his knees. He watched as the silent, sunburned hordes streamed out of the arena which bore his name, kicking up clouds of dust as they went. The spina, the central divide of the Circus Gai et Neronis was decorated with a grisly forest of crosses and charred wooden stakes: on the former, the emperor had arranged a mass crucifixion of Christians, including Peter and many of his followers; the latter bor
e the greasy, burnt traces of those who had been transformed into human torches for the crowd’s amusement.
The cries and shrieks of those condemned to a lingering death on the crosses had subsided to a harrowing chorus of groaning and pleading that jarred on the listener’s nerves like fingernails on a slate: as he looked across the imperial box at his host, he noticed that even the notoriously callous Nero seemed disturbed by the sound.
‘The whole human torch thing doesn’t really work in daylight, does it?’ Nero’s tone became petulant as though complaining about rain on his birthday.
‘I think people have had enough of suffering, sir,’ he replied. ‘It was probably a bit soon after the fire.’
‘They liked my display of chariot-driving though, didn’t they?’ he said hopefully, like a small child seeking a parent’s approbation . ‘I could hear them cheering me.’ Josephus made no reply and looked away. Nero’s idea of using human torches to illuminate his triumphal passage around the Circus had raised little more than dutiful applause from those who felt they might be being watched. Bolder souls, perhaps with less to lose, had greeted him with catcalls and accusations of having started the fire himself. The uprising of public hatred against the Christians that the three-day festival of executions and games was supposed to create had failed to materialise. ‘We’ve got five hundred more to execute, Josephus, what do you think I should do?’
Josephus wasn’t sure how to reply. Nero’s reputation for asking people what they thought and then turning on them when they gave the wrong answer was well deserved. ‘Is Paul among the captives?’
‘No. I asked the Praetorians to check. Just the typical credulous riff-raff: the usual suspects. They must be made to pay for their treason.’
‘Then why not set them to work tearing down the damaged buildings or digging temporary latrines for the people living rough out there?’ he jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards the squatter camp that spread across the Campus Vaticanus from horizon to horizon.
‘Good idea, I can always crucify them afterwards...’ Nero stopped mid-sentence and a puzzled frown came across his face. ‘Hold on a minute, forget the Christians, you mentioned people living rough. What are they doing for food and water do you think?’
Josephus did a double-take. ‘Looking at the state of them I think they’re not far off starving to death and if there isn’t an outbreak of disease, I’ll be amazed. You do realise people are drinking from the Aqua Alsietina rather than going all the way down to the cisterns by the Aemilian Bridge?’
‘But the Alsietina’s water’s not fit for human consumption, it’s only supposed to be used for irrigation. Everybody knows that.’
‘That’s my point, sir. They’re not just going to sit up here and die quietly. You’re days away at most from food riots and the city – what’s left of it – will soon be full of people carrying diseases.’ For the first time, Josephus saw Nero not as the all-powerful tyrant but as a frightened young man out of his depth.
He clutched at Josephus’ arm as though afraid he might leave. ‘What do you think I should do?’
‘It’s not for me to say, sir, but I’d close the Alsietina and put guards on it to stop any illegal tappings, organise carts to carry water to distribution points all along this side of the Tiber, order your engineers to build new siphons from the Aqua Appia and the Aqua Anio to get a permanent water supply established and start a daily bread distribution this afternoon. If you don’t, there’s every chance the mob will turn against you.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Nero, nodding vigorously. ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself. The people will love me for this. How can I ever thank you?’
The question was supposed to be rhetorical but Josephus took a deep breath and spoke. ‘Actually, there are a couple of things, sir.’
‘Very well, name them,’ he replied, eyeing him suspiciously.
‘I’d like more manpower to help me look for Paul.’
They both knew that in the newly-devastated city, manpower was in short supply but Nero meekly nodded his head. ‘I think I can manage that,’ he replied. ‘What else?’
‘Favours for friends.’
‘Such as?’ Nero said, narrowing his eyes.
‘Let Alityros go back to doing what he does best. He’s an actor, not a soldier and he’s more of a hindrance than a help to me most of the time.’
‘Very well. I’ll mention it to Poppaea, it was her idea in the first place to make him work for you.’
‘I know,’ said Josephus. ‘Then there’s Giora.’
‘What of him?’
‘He wants to go home. You freed him two years ago. He’s been a loyal servant to the empire but he misses his family.’
Nero thought for a moment. ‘I thought he was pivotal to your operation.’
Josephus hesitated. He was treading on thin ice. ‘He was but he’s tired and homesick – it’s not for me to say, but I think he’s done more than enough to earn his freedom. If we’re to crush this wretched cult then all I need is one loyal intelligent man to replace him, preferably one with good connections in the empire.’
The look of suspicion returned to Nero’s face. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say you had someone in mind.’
‘I have, sir. Titus Flavius Vespasianus.’
‘Vespasian?’ shouted Nero, going puce in the face and almost choking. ‘A senator, a condemned criminal and you want him to work for you?’
‘Not for me, sir, I wouldn’t be so presumptuous. I’d like him to help me, if he’s willing to.’
‘You realise where he is?’
‘In the condemned cell of the Mamertine Jail at a guess.’
‘Correct,’ said the emperor. ‘Your timing’s impeccable. His execution was to be the star turn in the arena tomorrow.’ Nero waved him away, turning his back. ‘Have him, do as you will, just don’t let him near any of my recitals.’ Josephus bowed his head in compliance. ‘That it?’ Nero asked.
‘That’s all, sir. And I’m most grateful.’
With not another word to Josephus, Nero stood up and called for his attendants to fetch his carriage. Nobody paid the young Judean any attention as they prepared for the imperial departure and after a few minutes he was alone, his sole company the soldiers guarding the spina, the last few spectators unable to tear themselves away from the ghastly sights stretched along its length, and the groaning victims themselves.
Josephus lifted the catch on the side gate of the imperial box and walked down the gangway between the tiers of sun-bleached wooden benches to the low fence separating the crowd from the blood-stained sand of the arena. Vaulting over, he made his way towards the spina, looking for Peter. The guards paid him no heed as he walked towards the obelisk which marked its centre point. Just after the obelisk, he found him – not as history records, crucified head-down, but in the normal position, assuming such things can be described as normal. Peter’s head had slumped forwards onto his chest and a scrawny crow, which had settled on top of the vertical post, flew off at Josephus’ approach. ‘Now do you understand?’ Josephus called up to him, but there was no reply: death had come quickly. ‘I hope it hurt, you sanctimonious old bastard,’ he said, turning his back on the inert form and heading across the sand towards the eastern exit. The first of the seven stars had fallen from the sky.
Unnoticed by Josephus, two pairs of eyes followed his progress. The men sat in the last row of the north grandstand under the shade of the Circus’s canvas awnings and watched him intently. They spoke in Aramaic. ‘You sure that’s him?’ asked the first.
‘No doubt about it, I’d recognise him anywhere. Get it right and he won’t suspect a thing before it’s too late.’
‘Don’t worry, you can rely on me, Paul.’
Chapter Twenty-six
Oxford
For an entire blissful week Flora was able to convince herself that she’d got her old life back. Her work days passed in a pleasurable blur – lost in translation as she called it – surroun
ded by copies of first-century texts, some in Latin, others in Aramaic, Coptic or Greek, many encrypted by unknown scribes into a confusing jumble of letters. Her social life regained some of its normality too; there was even a voicemail from her ex-boyfriend, telling her he’d been posted to train as a flying instructor at a base she’d never heard of somewhere amidst the potato fields of Lincolnshire, and would she call him. To her immense satisfaction, she was able to delete the message without the slightest pang of regret: perhaps time does heal after all, she mused.
As for the call from Francesco Moretti, she wasn’t sure what to think. He sounded nervous, guarded even, and afterwards she hadn’t a clue why he’d called: the Carabinieri had no more news about the break-in, no new finds had turned up at the dig and given that he didn’t seem to want to bring up the subject of Anna, she thought it best not to do so either.
On Saturday she went to the theatre with friends and out for a curry afterwards. It was almost midnight as she turned into the street that led to her cottage and she paid no attention to the silver-grey Ford that had been sitting behind her all the way from the city centre but now continued south towards the ring-road.
The following morning she’d just settled down with a mug of tea and the Sunday papers, with the delicious prospect of doing precisely nothing stretching ahead of her, when the phone rang. It could have been one of a dozen people, but Flora’s sixth sense told her it wasn’t going to be good news: it wasn’t. Mike Hayek was friendly but to the point. In the guise of Benjamin Grossman, Special Agent Cohen had been making a nuisance of himself in the sale rooms of Tel Aviv and Istanbul. He was now in Geneva where Lavinia Crump’s services were urgently required to cast an expert eye over a number of antiquities on sale at Sotheby’s. ‘Come on, cheer up, Flora,’ he said, in response to her unenthusiastic replies. ‘You’ll be staying at the Hotel Beau Rivage.’
‘Is that good?’
He laughed. ‘At fifteen hundred Swiss Francs a night it better had be.’
‘Well I’m glad you’re paying, not me. When do I leave?’
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