‘Look at me.’ She twisted her head around like a miscreant child, refusing to meet his gaze. ‘
‘We’re picking up chatter from Dragovic’s people – more than we’ve had in months. Whatever Michael was involved in was something huge, way beyond the low-grade smuggling stuff we had on him. And we don’t have a fucking clue what it is.’
She stopped struggling and stared at him, looking for comfort in his grey eyes and finding none.
‘I don’t know either. I don’t even know why I’m alive.’
‘You’ve got something.’
She pointed to her bag. ‘Everything I have in the world is right there.’
‘Think back. Something Michael told you? Something he gave you?’
‘I suppose he could have left something in my flat.’
‘We went through it pretty thoroughly.’ He saw her expression. ‘Sorry. You weren’t there to let us in.’
She pulled away from his grip, and this time he let her go. But a thought was forming in her head, a way out of the labyrinth that Jessop and Michael and Dragovic had spun around her.
‘Can you get me into Camp Bondsteel?’
XXII
ANOTHER SUN IS setting as the dust of another day begins to settle. The shopkeepers hang their shutters; the smiths and potters douse their fires for the night. Behind closed doors, pickpockets flex their fingers, murderers sharpen their knives, and jealous wives stir poison in their husbands’ wine.
I wait on the hillside watching copper sunlight streak the sea below. I’m standing sentry duty, patrolling the frontier between day and night. I don’t know who I’m looking for; I’m hoping I’ll know him when I see him. I’m alone. Simeon wanted to come, but I sent him away. His story about the message left in the church hardly seems credible – but I’m curious to see where it leads.
The statue of Venus stands in a small square where five roads meet, on the southern slopes of the city overlooking the sea. Inevitably, prostitutes use it as a rendezvous, though there aren’t so many about tonight. Perhaps my watching puts them off.
Like sentries the world over, my mind wanders and I remember …
… tumbling out of bed in the darkness, pulling on my coarse wool cloak and trying not to wake the others. The night was so cold that the waterskins have frozen solid and cracked open. It’s the darkest day of the darkest month, in one of the darkest places on earth.
Constantine opens the door and we slip out. Across the parade ground, along behind the headquarters and past the stables. At this hour, the world exists as smells and sounds: woodsmoke from the ovens, sheep bleating in their pen as they wait for the butcher, the slurp of a horse munching hay from the byre. The main gate is locked, but there’s a postern in the east tower and the sentry’s asleep.
Beyond the walls, our boots crunch the frosty grass. We’ve crossed a frontier; we’re beyond the edge of the world. We scramble over the earthen dyke, down into the valley and across the stream, up the facing hill. My head hurts with the cold but it’s a good pain: clean and pure.
At the top of the hill stands a copse of three birch trees and a holly bush. There’s light in the sky now, though no sun. Constantine halts, orients himself to the bluest part of the horizon, and waits. His misting breath makes a nimbus of the air around him.
‘If the Tribune finds out we left camp without permission, we’ll have night-time guard duty for a week,’ I grumble (it must be early in our lives, this memory; I don’t think we’re more than sixteen). ‘Or worse. What if the locals find us, two Roman soldiers on the wrong side of the wall?’
Constantine draws his sword and points it at the horizon, then swings it round behind us. ‘Do you know what the difference is between here and there?’
‘Better-looking women?’ I guess.
He points back to the fort, dimly visible on the ridge behind us. ‘That wall. Behind it, no one fears attack. In front, there’s nothing worth defending.’
‘Does that make you feel better about standing here freezing to death and listening to the shadows?’
He’s not paying me any attention. ‘Do you know why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why the empire means peace?’
‘Because our armies beat the fight out of anyone who threatens us.’
‘Conformity.’ He’s still looking at the fort behind us. ‘There are fourteen thousand miles of frontier in our empire, and on every one of them there’s a fort that looks like that, and the same men inside speaking the same language. Whether you’re looking at the Danube, the Nile or the Tyne you taste the same food, hear the same songs, praise the same gods.’
I stamp my feet and wonder how I’ll explain frostbite to the centurion. Constantine turns to me.
‘Why do we pray to the gods?’
