Secrets of the Dead

assembled bishops with a mild gaze.

‘This sounds very reasonable to me,’ he remarks. ‘Nearly identical to my own beliefs. In fact, if you added something to be clear that the Son is made of the same substance as the Father …’

‘Homoousios’ – his translator supplies the Greek word.

‘… then who could possibly argue with it?’

His eyes sweep the room, and come to rest on Eusebius, still standing, waiting to be recognised.

‘Bishop?’

Eusebius licks his lips and clears his throat. His hand tugs at a stray thread in his robe, winding it around his fat finger until the tip goes red.

‘I –’

He’s defeated. He can call Constantine a heretic, or he can accept the compromise. Suicide or surrender.

He spreads his arms wide. ‘Who could possibly argue with this?’

Constantine smiles, delighted. The rest of the bishops – most of them – stamp their feet and applaud. Eusebius’s smile lasts exactly as long as it takes for Constantine’s gaze to move off him.

Looking back now, I’m surprised I remember it so clearly. I haven’t thought about it often since. What happened so soon afterwards drove it out of my mind and changed everything. This is the broken stub of a story that never happened. It doesn’t fit.

You can say that fathers and sons are the same substance. You can write it in a creed subscribed by two hundred and forty-seven eminent Christians (Arius and two other zealots refused and went into exile). That doesn’t make it true.

The father creates the son. They’re not the same.

XXXIII

Belgrade, Serbia – Present Day

THIS CITY SINGIDUNUM – Belgrade – was a fortress looking down on the barbarians across the Danube, Nikolic had said. The fortress was still there, now called the Kalemegdan Citadel. Over time the Roman foundations had been built on by medieval Serbs, Ottoman Turks and Austro-Hungarians: almost two thousand years of fortification. A reproduction red banner hung from a lamp post, emblazoned with a golden lion and the words Leg IIII Flavia Felix, in honour of the ‘lucky’ fourth legion who’d originally built the fort. Seeing it there was a shock. Abby remembered peering through the magnifier in Shai Levin’s lab, seeing the same lion and the same inscription on the dead man’s belt buckle.

Was he here? Am I following him?

Now the castle was a park, a leafy enclave where paths wound through the old fortifications, sprawled over the end of the promontory where the Sava and the Danube met. In summer it was a popular destination for tourists and locals alike. This late in the autumn it was usually reserved for a few dog-walkers and joggers – but today seemed to be an exception. Metal barriers cordoned off a route along one of the lower paths; athletic men with numbers pinned to their chests milled about, waiting for some kind of race to begin. A few hardy spectators lined the barricades. A lone ice-cream vendor stood by his cart near the entrance, reading a magazine.

A plastic panel gave a map of the citadel, and a brief history. ‘Kalemegdan means “Battleground Fortress”,’ Michael read. ‘Looks peaceful enough today.’ He studied the map. ‘Gruber said he’d meet us by the Victory Monument.’

They followed a stony path around the edge of the summit to the very tip of the promontory, where a brick terrace thrust out high above the Sava. A white column stood on it, supporting a copper-green god striding forward into the air: twenty feet tall, naked, with absurdly sculpted muscles and a laurel crown circling his head. Below the terrace, steep bluffs dropped towards the river. A black sign in Serbian and English warned: Walking in this area you risk your life.

Gruber hadn’t arrived.

‘I’ll wait by the monument,’ Michael told Abby. ‘You keep out of sight. Just in case anything goes wrong.’

She stood by the parapet and stared down at the two rivers. Even in this city of a million and half inhabitants, she could feel the wilderness. Look one way and you saw the concrete high-rises of Novi Belgrad, the traffic crossing the bridges and the rusting derricks of the docks. But look the other way, up the river, and you saw an overwhelming forest, seeming to stretch unbroken eastwards to the horizon. It was easy to imagine a Roman sentry standing there at the end of the world – the river the colour of lead, the sky the colour of smoke – scanning the forest and wondering what might stir from within it.

She shook herself free of the illusion: this wasn’t the time for daydreaming. She glanced back at the monument. Michael was standing there, but not alone: he was chatting to a young blonde woman with a pushchair, talking easily and laughing about something. In the distance, the race announcer barked instructions through a loudspeaker.

She shook her head again and tried to keep down the jealousy. Michael was the sort of person others warmed to: in a foreign country, a language he barely spoke, he could still strike up a conversation. Particularly if the other person was young, attractive and female.

Michael leaned over the pushchair and ruffled the child’s hair. He said something to the woman; she laughed and pulled back, flapping her arm at him in a mock-scolding gesture. Still laughing, she waved goodbye and started wheeling the pushchair back along the path. Michael looked across the terrace and caught Abby’s eye. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. Nothing to worry about.

But someone was coming from around the wall behind him – a tall, thin man in a long black coat, with walnut- brown skin and a bristling black moustache. Gruber. He had a briefcase in one hand and an umbrella in the other. He walked stiffly, ill at ease; he saw Michael and crossed straight to him, not noticing Abby loitering by the parapet.

She watched it in dumbshow. Michael reached to shake Gruber’s hand, smiling broadly; Gruber’s hands stayed sunk in his coat pockets. He said something terse. Michael nodded, still smiling. He lifted up the blue zip-up bag