The porter recognised them from before and waved them through upstairs. They were just in time. They found Dr Nikolic outside his office door, a leather jacket pulled on over his sweater and a bunch of keys in his hand. He saw them and gave a polite, resigned smile.
‘You forgot something?’
Michael took out Gruber’s plastic wallet and handed it across. Abby had barely looked at it herself – a quick glance on their way over, huddled in a doorway, hoping no one noticed. Just enough to see a dark printout with blurry characters dim against it, and to wipe Gruber’s blood off the plastic.
But it meant something to Nikolic. He extracted the top sheet of paper and scanned it intently. He didn’t comment on the bullet hole.
‘This is a micro-CT scan of an ancient papyrus?’
‘It’s the original source for the poem we showed you earlier,’ Abby said. ‘If there’s any more of it, it’ll be in here.’
Nikolic looked surprised. ‘You have not checked yourself?’
‘We’re in a bit of a hurry,’ Michael explained.
‘And we need someone who can read Latin,’ Abby added.
Nikolic slid the papers back in the wallet. Though they’d done their best to wipe off the blood, some of the residue still streaked the plastic. Police sirens pulsed through the building, so loud they might have been in the square outside.
Michael turned to Nikolic. ‘Do you have a car? Can you get us out of Belgrade?’
Nikolic stared at him. Michael pre-empted anything he might say.
‘This printout comes from a scroll that belonged to one of Constantine’s top generals. It’s been lost until five minutes ago, never published, and right now it’s looking for a new owner.’
To Abby’s astonishment, Nikolic didn’t laugh them out of the building, or call security. He stood there for a long moment, looking between her, Michael and the wallet. He looked neither shocked nor offended – just bemused.
He shrugged, reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a car key on a rabbit’s-foot charm.
‘My car is parked around the corner.’
He led them down the stairs.
‘I can’t believe he’s doing this,’ Abby muttered to Michael. Ahead, Nikolic heard her and turned.
‘This is Serbia. You think actually this is the weirdest thing that has happened in my life?’
Nikolic’s car was a small red Fiat. Abby sat in the front, her hair down and pulled forward so that it shielded her face; Michael squeezed in the back and pretended to be asleep, lolling his head away from the window. Traffic was at a standstill: police cars had blocked several major intersections, though there didn’t seem to be any method to it. Abby kept waiting for a roadblock to appear, for someone to tap on the window and demand their papers, but it never came. They followed a series of switchback streets down through the old town, then came out on the main road. They crossed the Sava and accelerated on to the highway that cut through the grid of Novi Belgrad. Within minutes they were out of the city and driving through rolling farmland. It always surprised Abby how abruptly the city ended.
Nikolic kept his eyes on the road.
‘You wanted to be out of Belgrade? Now you are here. What next?’
Abby looked at the plastic wallet sitting on her lap. ‘Is there somewhere we can go to talk?’
Nikolic pulled the car into a Lukoil station just past the airport turning. There was a small cafe attached to the minimart: they sat at a plastic table and sipped oily coffee from plastic cups. Paper placemats advertised fast food and offered puzzles to distract children.
‘I don’t want for you to tell me what you are doing,’ Nikolic announced. ‘If the police ask me, I will say you forced me to drive you at gunpoint.’
‘Fair enough,’ Abby agreed. If the police caught them, that was going to be the least of their worries.
‘Let me see the document.’
Abby handed him the wallet. He spread the papers on the table – four sheets of blurred images, and two of Gruber’s typed transcription.
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.
Abby could see the Latin text in neat lines on the typescript. But there was more. Nikolic studied it for some minutes, then began, hesitantly:
From the garden to the cave,
The grieving father gave his son,
And buried in the hollow grave,
The trophy of his victory won.
They looked at each other with something like awe, aware they were hearing words that hadn’t been read in seventeen centuries.
