Secrets of the Dead

for the ages.’

Some movement at the base of the tomb. A soldier climbs a ladder and passes up what looks like a long spear draped in white cloth. Constantine takes it, and, as he lifts it, the cloth comes away revealing a new standard. A tall pole plated in gold, with the imperial banner hanging from a golden crosspiece. A wreath spun from gems and gold wire crowns the top, and set within it, silhouetted against the dawn, the superimposed letters X-P.

‘This is God’s sign.’

He times it perfectly. The sun comes over the top of the tomb and wraps him in its radiance. Glittering shafts of light shoot from the jewels in the standard and play over the faces of the watching army. In that moment, even I might believe.

Maxentius’s soldiers don’t survive the first charge. Normally, you wouldn’t send cavalry at well-formed infantry, but Constantine guesses that these men – levies and auxiliaries, mostly – don’t have the stomach for a fight. We charge down the slope and the human wall crumbles. Maxentius tries to flee across his pontoon bridge, but in the chaos of the rout the ropes break and he’s pitched into the water. We fish him out half a mile downstream, when the corpse washes against the pilings of the Milvian Bridge. I cut off his head myself for Constantine to show the citizens of Rome.

Constantinople – April 337

I sit on the bench in the courtyard of my house. My fingers pluck at my belt, twisting it so that the brass lion on the buckle catches the sun. I slide my thumbnail into the cuts and scratches in the metal. This was my cingulum, the sword belt I wore that day and ever since. But is it the same belt? The leather’s worn out three or four times and been changed, made longer; several of the plates have fallen off and had to be replaced. Just as Constantine and I are the same men we were on that campaign, and yet strangers to ourselves. The old lion’s brass skin is scuffed and dull.

There’s a commotion at the door. I wait for my steward to tell me who it is, but he doesn’t come. Instead, four soldiers in blood-red tunics and burnished armour burst in from my dreams and a scarred centurion says, ‘Come with us.’

XV

Rome – Present Day

‘IF YOU STRUGGLE, we will kill you.’

The man forced her into the car and pushed her down on the back seat. A cloth went over her head: a smell attacked her, and she wondered if it was chloroform. She tried to hold her breath, but her heart was beating too fast.

It was only aftershave, she realised, sickly sweet and drenching the blindfold with the smell of lilies. The car started to move. A hand on the back of her head kept her face pressed against the leather seat.

This is how it happens, she thought numbly. They come in the night and take you. Maybe they kill you, maybe they’re satisfied just to rummage around and break a few bits. But you’re never the same. She’d heard the story a thousand times in the field: brown eyes, blue eyes, always the same dead tears.

The car drove. All Abby could do was focus on the sounds around her: the rattle of a loose seatbelt; the revolutions of the engine; the occasional tick of the indicator. If she’d been a spy in a film, she might have counted off seconds and turns to work out their route. But she was frightened and far from help: it was all she could do to keep the panic from overwhelming her.

She heard a siren in the distance. Hope gripped her. Had someone seen her? Called the police? Arranged a rescue? The siren grew louder until it must have been right behind them. She felt their car slow down, then drift towards the kerb. She wanted to rip off the blindfold, leap up in her seat and shout for help. The hand on her head pushed down harder.

And then it passed. The Doppler wail stretched into the distance and faded away. She was alone again.

She vomited on the leather seat.

The car stopped in darkness. The hand pulled Abby up and dragged her out. She was still blindfolded, but she knew they must have turned a light on when she heard them swearing about the mess she’d made of their seat.

I can understand what they’re saying, she thought. It took her another moment to realise they were speaking Serbo-Croat. She closed her eyes, though under the blindfold it made no difference.

They led her up a flight of stairs, handling her carelessly, knocking her shins and stubbing her toes on obstacles she couldn’t see. Then the floor levelled off. She heard the sweep and thump of doors opening and closing. At last she stopped. The hand pulled the blindfold off her head.

She thought they must have brought her to a museum. She was standing in the middle of a black, windowless room. Silver spotlights in the ceiling picked out exhibits on the walls: slabs of white stone carved into friezes of gods and beasts, tendrilled plants or simply stern inscriptions. Most had rough edges, as if they’d been hastily chiselled away from some larger structure. A desk stood in the middle of the room, steel legs and a black marble top with nothing on it. Behind it, in a leather chair that dwarfed him, sat a slight man with greying hair. He was wearing a black suit and a white, open-necked shirt. He looked as if he was getting ready to go out for the evening. In his lap, he cradled a chrome-handled pistol.

He pointed the gun at her, smiling as he saw her flinch away.

‘Abigail Cormac. Have you ever wondered why you’re not dead?’

She just stared at him. ‘Who are you?’

He waved the gun towards the pieces on the walls. ‘A collector. A dealer. I buy and sell.’

She looked at his face: the sharp cheekbones and angular jaw, the eyes sunk so deep no light reached them. It was infinitely more real than the snatched, blurry photograph she’d seen in the British Library; also some years older. The skin had toughened, the hair retreated. He’d grown a small beard that had flecked grey. But there remained some quality, the same ferocious intensity, that even the camera couldn’t blur.

‘You’re Zoltan Dragovic.’