Secrets of the Dead

artefact. Maybe to do with the reign of Constantine.’

Nikolic looked her dead in the eye, his expression unfathomable.

‘You’re absolutely right.’

‘I am?’

‘It does sound crazy. You think this happens in real life, that someone walks into your office with a piece of paper or a map that leads to long lost buried treasure?’ He stood. ‘I cannot help you.’

Abby and Michael stayed seated.

‘The poem’s genuine, if that’s what you’re worried about,’ said Michael.

‘You have the original?’ Michael nodded. ‘Maybe if you let me see I can decide myself. And from which institution do you come from, by the way?’

‘We work for the EU.’ Michael flashed his EULEX ID from his wallet. ‘I’m with the Customs directorate. We’re investigating a ring of art smugglers and this was one of the antiquities we intercepted.’

‘We think there might be other treasures,’ Abby added. ‘All we want to know is if this poem gives any hint of what they might be.’

Still standing, Nikolic picked up the paper and studied it.

‘This word – signum. Do you know what it means?’

‘Sign,’ said Michael. ‘“The saving sign that lights the path ahead.”’

‘So. It is an important word in the life of Constantine. Before his great battle at Milvian Bridge, he saw a cross of light in the sky and heard the words “In hoc signo vinces” – “In this sign you will conquer.” You know what this sign was?’

‘The X-P symbol,’ said Abby.

‘Chi-rho,’ Nikolic corrected her. ‘The first two letters of the name of Christ in Greek. And, if you think ideogrammatically, the X is the shape of a cross and the P superimposed on it is the man.’

Abby remembered the necklace, now locked in a safe in Whitehall.

‘Though, actually, this is not a true Christogram. This one is called a staurogram. From the Greek word stavros, meaning “cross”.’

‘OK.’

‘But the original account of this battle of Milvian Bridge was written in Greek. You know the Greek equivalent of signum?’ They shook their heads. ‘Tropaion. Now this has many meanings, too. It can be a trophy or a war memorial, or the standard that the army carries into battle.’

Another searching glance.

‘You know about Constantine’s battle standard?’

‘The labarum,’ Abby said. She remembered something Dr Gruber had said at the Landesmuseum in Trier. ‘The chi-rho symbol that he saw in his vision. He turned it into a golden standard surrounded by jewels.’

She waited for him to reply. But Nikolic had folded his arms and was staring at her, as if he expected something.

‘You wanted to know something from the age of Constantine that is extremely valuable? A treasure of the first historical significance which has been lost for centuries?’

The penny dropped. ‘You’re saying the poem could refer to the actual labarum. The trophy that Constantine’s army carried?’

He shrugged. ‘Why not?’

‘But what happened to it?’ Michael asked. ‘A treasure like that can’t just have got lost – I mean, the Byzantine Empire lasted until almost five hundred years ago. Isn’t it in a museum somewhere?’

‘You think because something is important people look after it? Even Constantine’s tomb, in Istanbul, has not survived.

When the Turks conquered Constantinople they destroyed his mausoleum, which was the Church of the Holy Apostles, and built their own mosque on the site.’

He turned to the map on the wall and drew a line with his finger across the Balkans, from the Adriatic to the Black Sea.

‘This region has been the frontier for more than two thousand years. Alexander the Great? To the east and south, his empire stretched as far as India and Egypt. But to north and west, it went through Kosovo. The Roman diocese of Moesia – modern Serbia – was tossed back and forth between the eastern and western emperors; when the western empire fell in 476, this city Singidunum – Belgrade – was a fortress looking down on the barbarians across the Danube. Then the Ottomans, the Austro-Hungarians through to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. You know one of the reasons we fought Croatia in the nineties? Because they were western Catholics, and we were eastern Orthodox – a legacy of the division of the Byzantine Empire in the eleventh century. A frontier means wars. So yes – things get lost.’

He pulled a book off one of the shelves and flipped through it. ‘This is a Byzantine account of Constantine’s life, written in the ninth century. After describing the labarum and its use at the Milvian Bridge, the author says, “It still exists today, and is kept as the greatest treasure in the imperial palace, for if any enemy or evil force threatens the city, its power will destroy them.”’

‘So that was’ – Michael did the sums – ‘twelve hundred years ago. Nothing since?’

‘Constantinople was sacked in 1204 by the army of the Fourth Crusade. Many of its treasures were lost or hidden; some were brought back to Venice by the crusaders. The Byzantines reconquered the city, but it fell to the