Another visit to the thrift shop for a bulky coat, shoes, and a scarf for my hair. I offered to substitute for the woman running the kiosk at the intersection. I’d seen her shuffling from foot to foot like she had collapsed arches; she was more than pleased to take a break when she saw the size of the tip I gave her.
Selling papers, nicotine, toys and condoms was not that entertaining. Business was slow, the customers rude, and nobody wanted to chat. Boredom was starting to creep in and drag me into brain-fade when I spotted a homely guy, dark hair, medium height, regular clothes and walking too slowly past Aidan’s office, trying not to look at it. He returned five minutes later. I caught him on my cell camera the second time. He started to come over to me. I stuffed my cellphone in my pocket and smiled.
‘Gazette, dear?’
‘Er, yes.’ As he handed me the coins, he hesitated.
‘What is it, dear? You look a bit lost. First time in the big city?’ I asked in a patronising voice.
‘Oh, no. I’m just wondering what happened to the therapist. I thought I’d got the address wrong when I saw it was closed.’ He pointed to his street map. ‘This is the right place, isn’t it?’
I took his map, opened a couple of folds and saw Aidan’s office was marked. ‘Yes, that’s the right place,’ I said. ‘There was a bit of a crash here a few days ago, and the drivers went at it like a couple of gladiators. You should have seen them! The caretaker tried to stop the fight, but one of them bashed him in the face. Serve him right, pompous git! Some girl was screaming her head off. I saw Mr Hirenses come out with his lovely young receptionist.’ I half-leered. ‘An ambulance turned up, then the custodes. There were people rushing everywhere.’
‘But why is the therapist still closed?’ he persisted.
‘Oh,’ I sounded bored, ‘I don’t really know, dear. I think somebody said there’d been a death in the family.’ I sighed, trying to sound bitter. ‘Nobody tells me anything, you know.’
He thanked me, and I watched him go off down the road. He looked so nondescript, he just faded into the street scene. I waited half an hour in case he came back or somebody else was watching. I dug the old woman out of the café and gave her back the kiosk keys. I reminded her to forget I was here, hinting she was playing an important role in a national security matter. She looked both excited and flattered.
Right on time, Flavius turned up at our new meeting point.
‘Anything?’ he asked.
‘Yes. A completely beige man turned up at the kiosk opposite Hirenses, trying not to appear interested in Aidan.’ I transferred the photo to his phone. ‘He looked depressed, melancholic, somehow.’
‘Gods! Don’t start feeling sorry for them.’
‘Oh, please!’ I threw a scornful look at him. ‘He looked so atypical for a bad guy, that’s all. Maybe he’s one of the bystanders we missed during the extraction?’
Five hours later, we met in the palace park. Crouching in a tiny clearing full of cigarette butts, Flavius gave me not only a name – Trosius – but an address, fixed number and place of work. We hurried over to the central civic buildings just in time to spot this Trosius leaving the Biblioteca Publica where he worked. A librarian? Librarians involved in fomenting revolution? My brain seized up. Now I was on another planet.
‘Actually, he’s their IT specialist, which is interesting,’ Flavius said. Glasses perched on our noses, we read the noticeboard like a pair of avid culture-vultures, only turning away to follow Trosius when we saw him exit the library and disappear around the corner.
We were tracking him into the old part of the town, narrow lanes with overhanging timber-framed houses from medieval times, when he disappeared. Flavius was on point ten metres forward of me on the same side as Trosius. I crossed the road and closed the gap in seconds. Flavius stood back a half-metre short of the entrance to a narrow passageway between two houses. Unfortunately, it was nearly straight: no jutting corners on the houses, no wood uprights to block the view. You could see and so be seen all the way along.
We bunched together like a sightseeing couple. Flavius fished out a gaudy map from his back pocket and started folding the pleats back on themselves. I’d often laughed at his lost tourist technique, but had to admit it made for a great cover. Lucky for us, Trosius wasn’t the least aware he was being followed. The passageway opened up at the end into a plaza beyond which was the Via Nova. We ambled on like good tourists, exchanging admiring and inane remarks in semi-loud English. I looked at Flavius like I was following his every word, but kept our target in view over his shoulder.
Trosius headed for the cluster of tables in the centre of the plaza, joining two men at one of the middle ones. The maroon umbrellas not only kept the sun’s heat off the eaters and drinkers, but in the bright light they shaded faces from view.
Although there were a few other people browsing shop windows or walking across the plaza, there weren’t enough. We couldn’t get nearer to the three men without drawing attention to ourselves. Trosius and the others were absorbed in their conversation, but we watched them the whole time as we moved along into the shaded side of the square. While Flavius gazed into a shop window, I shifted around and made a face at him like I was cajoling him to buy me something, and fired off a few quick-shot photos of them over Flavius’s shoulder. Then I crouched down and gestured as if I wanted to take a shot of Flavius from a worm’s eye view with the old buildings as backdrop. I fired off a few of Trosius’s table. Thank Juno the lens had a polarising lens and auto balance.
Huddling together, Flavius’s arm around my shoulders, we stared at the images on the screen. Neither of us could say anything. But I’d seen the faces with my own eyes. I could hardly believe it then. There was no doubting the thickset figure of Caeco nor his short, wiry companion: Petronax.
‘Bloody hell!’ hissed Flavius. His eyes bulged as he flicked through the pictures for a second time.
‘Move along to the next window,’ I whispered back. I grabbed his arm and we shuffled along to a high-end ceramics shop. The glossy faïence and replica samian ware in the window failed to make any impact on us today.
‘Where’s Petronax’s security team?’ I murmured.
As head of Internal Security, he took a minder or two with him everywhere he went. Flavius recovered enough to scan the plaza. He unfolded and refolded his map, frowning like he was lost, but he checked every metre on the ground. I covered the upper storeys and roof. Internal security people were drawn from regular forces, so they were usually pretty easy for us to detect.
‘Nothing,’ Flavius muttered.
‘Me neither.’
Either Petronax was supremely confident and was alone or he was using unknown civilians. Not only couldn’t we see them here, we didn’t have a clue what they looked like or what their capacities were.
‘A large brandy, please.’
I gulped it down and ordered another. I drank the second one more slowly. We’d retreated to the covered area of a bar on the Via Nova, the green awning darkening the bright sunlight. Sports photos were scattered around the walls inside, famous faces showing full-teeth grins. The bartender was intent on a screen at the end of the counter, and sneaking a cigarette. Flavius pretended to read the paper, but I knew he’d been equally shocked.
In the seven years I’d served in the PGSF, I’d seen instances of greed, power hunger and bitterness. Even elite force personnel were human. But betrayal? Rarely. The last time I knew about was Robbia seven years ago. She’d been on the take from drug dealers and tried to kill me when I’d found her out. Tacita’s attack was a curveball, I thought, but now Petronax of all people was meeting clandestinely with Trosius and Caeco, two known conspirators. And Caeco was supposed to be in custody under interrogation. How in Hades had he gotten out? Petronax, the scornful side of my brain replied.
It all slotted into place – Petronax must have been the one who planted that letter and the photos of me. But why? I knew he didn’t like me – an understatement – but th
is was beyond the personal.
‘I have to get back.’ Flavius’s expression was flat, his eyes drained.
‘Sure.’ I nodded. ‘Go carefully. And watch that bastard Petronax.’
I took a circuitous route back to Dania’s, exercising extreme caution.
I was sneaking in the back when she caught me on the stairs. ‘Gods! I’ve been so worried! Where in Hades have you been?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Wandering around the big city by yourself like an idiot,’ she said in a raised voice, making a face at me. ‘Whatever will I tell my aunt?’ Her fingers twisted and flicked, signalling silently: Scarabs. Unknown plain clothes.
Pluto in Hades.
‘Oh, Dania, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to be a bother,’ and I started some sobbing noises. Find anything? I signalled back.
She shook her head in response to my mime. ‘Well, go up to your room and get some rest. We’ll talk in the morning.’
I stumbled along the corridor like I’d been in the arena all day, unlocked the door, slammed it shut, but I remained outside. I crept back along the corridor. Dania pulled me into her office and switched on the news channel. I fished out my pyramid and placed it on the table.
We stared at each other. I took a few long breaths to steady myself.
‘Thank you,’ I began. ‘I really, really did not want to bring down any trouble on your head.’ I hesitated, watching Dania, carefully evaluating her reaction.
She replied with a very rude word, which roughly translated as “Don’t be such a fricking idiot”. ‘Just tell me what you want me to do,’ she added aloud.
‘Look, Dania, a small affair has completely run out of control. The worst thing is that I don’t know who the good guys or bad guys are any more. How did they think about looking here?’
‘They’re searching for you under your real name.’ Her voice was stone-cold sober. I saw an uncharacteristically nervous look on her face as she showed me a leaflet with my face staring out. I grabbed it and read through. I started shivering. She guided me to her couch before I fell down. My hand clamped over my mouth, I shook my head at her. I thought I was going to throw up.
I’d been proscribed.
Shit.
I was stripped of my citizenship and excluded from all protection under the law. It was open season on me. With attitude. Anybody informing on me could be paid a reward plus a portion of my assets; the state would take the rest. Nothing would go to Allegra, Gil or Tonia; they, Nonna and all the Mitelae would be blighted. Conrad. He had to divorce me, and immediately, or he’d be dragged in. I should count myself lucky they didn’t decapitate proscriptees and stick their head on a spear in the Forum any more.
‘They’ve said all the usual crap about desperate criminal, threat to national security and so on,’ Dania said. She snorted, snatched the leaflet from my nerveless hand and threw it in the corner. She tipped her chin at me, encouraging me to finish the glass of water she’d thrust at me.
‘You’re not on the news, the Internet or the vidchannel, which is odd,’ she said. ‘Taking these leaflets round, it’ll get out anyway.’
‘Yes, but this’ll be slower. Why are they doing it that way?’ I said, mostly to myself. I couldn’t move. My brain was still numb. I took some deep breaths and concentrated for a few moments, running my tongue inside along my teeth. ‘I have to leave here immediately.’
‘Very clever. That’ll be so easy!’ Dania replied with awful sarcasm.
‘I will not stay here. You know the penalties for helping proscriptees.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ She said it forcefully enough, but I saw a flicker of fear. She’d taken six years of solid hard work and little sleep to build her life up from nothing.
‘End of discussion,’ I said. ‘I’m out of here.’
Early evening, shouting, raucous laughter and bumping of bodies on furniture from loudmouth, borderline drunk young profis swamped the restaurant. Dania had put a sign outside ‘Happy hour for the under thirties’ and caught a load of office workers. She’d drafted in extra staff, and they were handling it with good humour. Then in came definitely drunk students and it all went to hell.
She called the custodes, but she and the bar staff tried to throw the rowdies out in the meantime. The twenty or so drunks started to fight in the street, testosterone flowing freely. The girls stood there egging them on; some joined in. When the scarabs arrived, they broke up the fight, gave Dania a mouthful about irresponsibility, and shoved the happy crowd into blue vans to spend a night in the cells. In the confusion, I slithered off down a side alley. Around the corner, I slid into the passenger’s seat of the battered pickup truck waiting there.
I sat in silence, breathing slowly to reduce my heart rate. The truck engine rumbled and coughed. I was bone weary. I glanced at Flavius as he concentrated on innocent-seeming evasion manoeuvres as he drove out of the centre. He wore a coarse-weave shirt and jeans and looked exhausted. I didn’t ask where he’d found the students. I was just grateful.
He paused by the river and threw his cellphone and comms set over the parapet. We drove into a block of lock-up units between an old apartment block and a junkyard. Flavius killed the lights. A metallic clash and thud made me jump. Another from nearby. I leapt out, knife ready. Flavius rolled out and crouched, his back to mine. We hardly breathed as we circled and scanned.
Nobody. Nothing.
‘Some bloody cat,’ he said under his breath after a few minutes. The thin metal door of one of the garages swayed as he jerked it open. He drove the truck in. I ran in and dragged the door closed behind us. We stood in the safe dark for a few seconds.
‘The shit’s hit the fan,’ he started. ‘I’m out now, too.’
I stared at him, but only saw the reflection from the dashboard lights in his eyes.
‘What happened?’
‘Paula received a text warning from an ex that they were coming for your ART team. She told us to run.’
We slept in the back of the truck, wrapped in prickly felt blankets, but grateful for the respite. I woke early, cold and startled by the Stygian blackness and smell of metal and sweat. I turned over on the ridged truck floor. My body ached, but not as much as my mind. I was being hunted with maximum effort and one of my most loyal colleagues was a fugitive with me. Where the hell was Conrad in all this? I’d called him repeatedly on the encrypted supermobile. No reply. But I wasn’t entirely sure he would talk to me if he did pick up.
Flavius woke, eyes wary in a tense face, and dragged himself up. We gathered our things and walked down to the river to find coffee and something to eat. After a night in a dirty truck, we blended perfectly into the dockside canteen. I tried not to gag on the heavy smoke as I swallowed scalding coffee and attacked a wonderful bacon roll dripping with grease. The exquisite salt flavour burst in my mouth and I tasted heaven. Maybe I was just hungry.
‘We have to find a secure base,’ Flavius whispered. He pretended he was reading a curled-edged tabloid. I glanced at him, stifling my surprise. Why had he said something that obvious?
‘We can’t go to Dania’s,’ I said. ‘She’s already had the scarabs in. I won’t endanger her any more.’
‘There’s one place,’ he suggested and stared at me, his eyes searching my face.
I caught my breath. I realised where he was going. I hadn’t been happy when I’d contacted the other two “old friends” but I figured it would be brief and temporary. Now he was suggesting something much more dangerous.
‘No,’ I hissed at him. ‘No way. I am not involving him.’
‘Do you ever listen to yourself?’ he retorted. ‘You talk the biggest load of balls sometimes!’ I heard his voice harden and saw the cords in his neck stand out. ‘He probably knows all about it anyway. You left him with one of the best information networks around. Being his efficient self, he’s bound to have refined it. Pollius and Dania have probably reported your contact. Moreover, he’s got the resources we need,’ he added, br
utally frank. He sat there watching me chew this over.
I was tired and, to be honest, discouraged. Not easy to make balanced decisions when your thoughts and feelings are floundering like beached eels. Flavius made perfect sense, but could I face disrupting a life I’d carefully left protected? Apart from the dubious legality of it all, I would be treading on some extremely sensitive personal ground. I drank another cup of coffee to think about it.
I tried Conrad again. Nothing. I risked a second call, this time home. All I heard was a voice recording with a strange voice, saying nobody was available and please to leave a message. Who in hell was that? I knew every member of our household, and that voice didn’t belong to any of them. I cut the call and stared at the blank mini-screen. My hand started trembling. Hades. They’d already intercepted and diverted comms at the house.
By now, the custodes would be on full alert, my picture on every patrol person’s el-pad. They couldn’t track me, now I’d ditched the tracker and badge. I hoped the supermobile shielding still worked, but they’d slog at it in the traditional way. The PGSF were more dangerous. It would only need one scanner to pick us up from an image captured from the public feed and a squad would be rousted to grab us. And only Jupiter knew who Petronax had in his private army.
More urgently, I had to find out what was going on at home; if the children were safe. And Nonna and Helena. I shut my eyes for some relief but opened them again almost instantly to block out terrifying images of my family in danger forming in my head.
‘Enough.’ I wiped the grease from my fingers, threw the rest of my coffee down my throat and stood up. ‘We have no other workable option. Let’s do it.’
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