‘Under a mosque.’
‘A mosque?’ Mark looked worried. Connie tapped something into her BlackBerry and had an answer in less than thirty seconds.
‘The Fatih Mosque.’
Mark was already halfway to the door. ‘Let’s go.’
‘What about Michael?’ Abby asked. She remembered his face in the courtyard, the anguish as he turned and vanished out the gate. To lose him again so soon hurt her worse than the bullet.
But Mark wasn’t interested. ‘Dragovic is the target here.
We’ll bring Michael in sooner or later.’
‘And what about me.’ She remembered what he’d said in the cafe – three hours to be home, safe and out of this insane rat run. All she wanted to do was sleep.
‘You’re coming with us.’ He saw her face collapse and gave a mean smile. ‘We need you. You’re the bait.’
XLII
THERE’S NOTHING LIKE the threat of death to slow a man down. The last month is the slowest I’ve ever lived. Each day since I returned from Nicomedia I’ve followed the same unimpeachable routine. I rise late and go to bed early. I work my way through Ursus’s list, using the lie that Constantine has asked me to canvass their support for his sons. I visit the public baths, but avoid conversation; I never go to the forum. I’ve dismissed all my slaves except my steward, and even he isn’t taxed with my simple demands.
Sometimes I wonder if this was how Crispus spent the last week of his exile in Pula. And I wonder who’s coming for me.
The last name on my list is Porfyrius. I’ve saved him to the end – he represents things I don’t want to think about. When you’re living under a suspended death sentence, you need to keep a tight grip on your imagination.
The day I go to see him is hot and stifling: the naked sun beats down on the city, enraged by the loss of his favourite son. I spend a long time on the doorstep; I’m almost resigned to going home when at last the door opens.
‘I’m not receiving many visitors these days,’ Porfyrius apologises. ‘It’s safer.’
Through an open door I can see a table set out in the atrium, loaded with cups and plates. I don’t comment.
‘You don’t mind if we speak in the study? I’m having the atrium redecorated.’
I glance back towards the atrium – I hadn’t noticed any sign of workmen. All I see is the door, silently shut by an unseen hand.
He leads me into his study. The desk is littered with papers, plans and drawings for what looks like a temple. A slave brings us wine. I take a cup, but don’t drink.
‘Constantine asked me to come.’ The line’s so well rehearsed by now, I’ve almost forgotten it’s a lie. Porfyrius isn’t so naive.
‘I heard the Augustus had …’ A delicate pause. ‘Taken sick.’
‘He was alive the last time I saw him.’ That much is true. ‘But – he’s an old man. He’s concerned for the future of the empire.’
‘Does he have a list of troublemakers he’s worried about?’ He holds up a hand to stop me answering, and rattles off the names of half a dozen of the men I’ve been to visit in the last fortnight.
‘If you know who I’ve seen, you probably know what I’ve said to them.’
‘Probably.’
‘This is no time for factions. Whoever Constantine names as his successor, or successors, they’ll need a peaceful, united empire. People who support them will have nothing to fear.’
A shrewd look. ‘Are you making me an offer?’
‘I’m passing on a message.’ I open my hands in innocence – or impotence.
‘Consider it delivered.’ He picks up a pen from the desktop and spins it in his fingers. ‘You forget – I spent ten years in exile because I wrote a poem that offended Constantine. I’m not keen to go back.’
He puts the pen down. His hand’s shaking; it knocks against a brass lamp which is weighing down the end of a scroll. The lamp falls on the floor; the scroll ravels up, pulling back like a curtain to reveal the drawings underneath. I peer forward.
It’s an elevation of the pediment of a temple or a mausoleum, a triangular face with a wreath in the centre. And inside the wreath, a monogram: a slanted X with its top looped around.
‘The plans for my tomb,’ says Porfyrius. ‘I have an architect working on it.’
‘Are you expecting to need it soon?’
‘I’m prepared. Our generation – you, me, the Augustus himself – our time is running out. You should think about your own.’
‘Mine’s already built.’ Dug into the slopes of the valley behind my villa in Moesia, surrounded by cypresses and laurels. A lonely place. I wonder if I’ll live to see it.
