Secrets of the Dead

‘I do.’ She took the gold necklace out of her bag and passed it across. Still wearing his white gloves, he held it up between finger and thumb and squinted at it through the magnifier he kept on his desk. His eye went as big as a tennis ball.

‘Did he find this with the manuscript?’

Abby blew out a long stream of smoke. She hadn’t smoked in years – she was already feeling dizzy. ‘I didn’t know he even had the manuscript until you told me.’

‘Do you know what it is?’

‘An old Christian symbol.’

‘It’s a variant on the Christogram – the monogram of the Emperor Constantine. You know this story? He had a vision the night before a battle, an angel came and showed him the sign. It’s like the Greek letters X and P, which are the first two letters of Christos – Christ – in Greek. He made a jewelled model of this sign, the labarum, and carried it into the battle as his standard. He won the battle – and ever since we are all Christians in Europe.’

‘Could it relate to the manuscript?’

‘The Christogram has been in use ever since Constantine. You can go into any church here in Trier and find it today, probably. The most I can say is that the necklace looks like late antique workmanship.’

‘What about the ink? You said if it contained iron it would be after ad 300.’

‘Preliminary analysis suggests the ink is the gall-iron variety. And there is the language. Most papyrus scrolls that have survived are written in Greek. This one is in Latin, which suggests it dates to the fourth century after Christ. The Roman Empire was changing in this period.’ He waved out the window to the high basilica. ‘Regrettably, Trier did not keep the Emperor Constantine’s affection. He built a new capital – Constantinople, now Istanbul – a new Rome for a new Christian empire.’

But Abby wasn’t interested in Gruber’s history lecture. She could feel her heart throbbing against the bandages.

‘How do you know it’s Latin?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘You said this manuscript’s in Latin. But you also told me you haven’t managed to analyse the scan yet. So how do you know what the language is?’

Gruber stood. ‘Thank you for your interest, Frau Cormac, but I think you must be leaving. I am a busy man; I have given you already too much time.’ He moved around the desk to open the office door, but Abby stepped in his way, blocking him in next to the machine. She put her hand on the glass hatch.

‘If you send me away now, I’m taking this with me.’

Gruber’s moustache twitched. ‘That is theft.’

‘You’re welcome to call the police.’

‘But you cannot read the manuscript. If you even try, you will destroy it.’

‘There are other machines like this in the world. I’ll try them.’

Leverage, they’d called it on her Foreign Office-approved training courses. Out on the field they’d just called it squeezing the bastards.

Gruber sank back and sat on the edge of his desk. ‘You think someone else will help you? An unknown woman with a manuscript that has probably been stolen. Maybe you try to take it to an American university. The Americans will confiscate it. They will lock it away in a warehouse without temperature or humidity controls, and in ten or twenty years, if anyone thinks to look, they will find nothing but dust.’

Abby picked up Gruber’s pack of cigarettes and offered him one. He took it with a rueful sigh and let her light it.

‘Danke.’

She took a drag on her own cigarette and wondered if two made it a habit. ‘Why don’t we start with the truth?’

‘What I said was the truth.’ He saw her anger coming and waved it back. ‘The computational power necessary is immense – possibly weeks of machine time. Even when we have the image, it is not like just reading a book. Every letter must be deciphered, checked, corrected.’

He looked down and blew smoke at his shoes.

‘But, I admit, I was curious about this document with no past and no owner. I have analysed a few lines.’

He leaned back over his desk and reached in the drawer. Out came a sheet of notepaper covered in what looked like childish scribbles. Only when Abby leaned closer could she see it was writing – fragments of text written and crossed out, rewritten and recrossed out, until the words ran out of room and escaped further down the page, only to be caught up and savaged again. It looked like the ravings of a madman.

‘On the back.’

This was neater. Three paragraphs, four lines each. One in Latin, one in German and the third in English.

To reach the living, navigate the dead,

Beyond the shadow burns the sun,

The saving sign that lights the path ahead,

Unconquered brilliance of a life begun.

A chill passed through her as she read it. She thought she could feel the blood pressing on the bandages. She remembered what Jenny had said: It’s too personal, isn’t it? Like a sort of message from beyond the