Secrets of the Dead (33 page)

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 they’d bought from a sports shop and patted it, as you would a horse.

Gruber won’t dare count that much money in public
, Michael had predicted.
He’ll have a quick look, see what he’s expecting

–
and find out it’s ninety thousand short when it’s too late
.

Gruber unzipped the bag and peered inside. The frown on his face deepened. On the far side of the terrace, the ice-cream seller wandered past, looking for customers.

Gruber pointed at the parapet. For a moment, Abby thought he’d seen her. Michael seemed to argue, then put up his hands in a have-it-your-way gesture and followed Gruber across. They stopped a few yards away. Michael rested the bag on the low wall.

A cold wind blew across the Sava, carrying their conversation to Abby.

‘It’s all there,’ Michael said.

‘I would like to be sure.’

‘And I’d like to be sure you’ve brought what you promised.’ Michael kept his hand on the bag.

Gruber unbuttoned his coat and reached inside. Abby turned and leaned against the parapet, her back to the river, as if studying the citadel walls. By the gate, the child in the pushchair had unbuckled herself and run across to the ice-cream seller. Her mother hurried after her. In the distance, Abby heard shouts and the blast of air-horns. The race must have started.

Gruber pulled out a plastic wallet with a few sheets of paper inside. ‘I would not have come if I did not have it. A reconstruction of the text, and my own transcription.’

‘Anything interesting?’

‘I would say so.’ He put a hand on the bag. ‘
If
everything is in order.’

Michael stepped back. ‘Be my guest.’

He glanced along the wall and met Abby’s gaze. He gave a small nod.

They hadn’t planned for this.
Was he expecting her to mug Gruber in broad daylight?
She began moving towards them.
Concentrating
on trying to peel apart the wad of euros in the bag without being noticed, Gruber didn’t see her. The folder had disappeared back inside his coat.

Gruber’s head snapped up. ‘You said a hundred thousand euros. This is not enough.’

‘You’ll get the rest when we’ve verified the document.’ Michael was speaking quickly, improvising. ‘We have to know that what’s in there is worth it.’ His eyes darted over Gruber’s shoulder and motioned Abby forward.
Come on
. She took another step.

A child’s scream cut the chilly air. Abby, Gruber and Michael all whipped around. The ice-cream seller had stopped halfway across the terrace, the steel lid of his cart raised as if to serve the girl from the pushchair. A long-nosed black pistol had appeared in his hand.

Instinct took over; Abby threw herself to the ground, just before the shot rang out. The terrace became a cauldron of frantic screams and chaotic footsteps. She peered up, and saw the ice-cream man running towards the bag on the parapet.

Michael and Gruber had vanished.

The gunman ran to the wall and ripped open the bag. He glanced inside, then threw it on the ground and peered down over the edge. He raised his pistol, aiming for something at the foot of the wall.

That’s where Michael went
. There was nowhere else. Without thinking, Abby lifted herself up and launched herself at the gunman. He had one eye closed and the other trained on his target: he didn’t see her. Not knowing what else to do, she put out her arms and barged into him.

Agony exploded through the wound in her shoulder, worse than being shot because this time she felt every shred of pain. The man buckled under the impact, but didn’t go down. Abby
wrapped
her arms around his legs and clung on, rolling and writhing as he tried to shake her off. Then something struck her hard on the head. Pain flashed through her skull and she let go.

The ice-cream man kicked her away and looked back over the wall. He raised his gun again – but didn’t fire. From down below, she could hear shouts and motion.

Trying to keep low, crying with the pain in her side, she hauled herself just high enough to peer over the parapet. Thirty-odd men in singlets and shorts were running along the path at the foot of the wall, egged on by a handful of spectators. One or two glanced up at the commotion on the terrace above; most kept their eyes on the ground.

The wall was too high for Michael to have jumped – but there was scaffolding against it where masons had been repairing the ancient brickwork. Plastic sheeting flapped from the poles, sheltering anyone working inside.

The leading racers had just passed the bottom of the scaffolding. As the rest came level, a flap of plastic billowed out. Michael and Gruber ran out from the scaffold tower and plunged in among the athletes. There were shouts, a couple of angry shoves, but Michael and Gruber sprinted along, staying within the pack. The gunman followed them with his pistol, but two moving targets in a sea of people, jostling and overtaking all the time, were too difficult. He didn’t risk it.

The terrace had emptied – Abby and the gunman were the only ones left. He glanced down at her; she rolled herself in a ball and prayed he didn’t know who she was.

He hesitated. More shouts echoed across the terrace, and these were different: not panicked or confused, but threatening and authoritative. Abby peered through her fingers.

A soldier in combat fatigues was standing on the wall of
the
citadel, aiming a rifle at the ice-cream seller. A second soldier had come out of the gate and was advancing, rifle at his shoulder. For a confused second, Abby wondered if another war had begun; or if the ancient legionaries who’d guarded this spot had been reincarnated in modern dress. Then she remembered the military museum inside the citadel. The guards must have heard the shots.

The gunman threw his pistol over the wall and raised his arms. He looked calm, almost resigned – a man for whom this had happened before, would probably happen again. He stood still. But his mouth was moving, rapid-fire muttering apparently to himself. Looking closer, Abby saw a silver earpiece with a small microphone clipped on his ear.

He’s on the phone
. He could have been talking to anyone around the world, but Abby guessed it was a whole lot closer than that. She began to crawl away. She had to find Michael and warn him.

The soldiers saw her moving and paused. ‘Stay down!’ they shouted, first in Serbian and then, in English, ‘
Down!
’ She didn’t listen to them. She didn’t think they’d shoot a civilian, particularly one who might be a tourist. She scrambled to her feet and started to move. Every step sent more jolts of pain into her shoulder; she wanted to run, but could only stagger like a drunk. Shouts rang after her, but nothing more. The guards were too preoccupied with the gunman.

She came around the corner of a brick defile and left the terrace behind. Police sirens wailed in the distance. She limped along a paved road through the trees, searching for Michael and Gruber. The shots had sparked chaos. Dozens of people were running through the woods, strung out like peasants fleeing an advancing army.

She’d barely gone a hundred yards when she heard fresh
shouts
behind her. Two more soldiers had appeared. Were they looking for her? They must have opened the bag, seen the money inside and decided maybe she wasn’t as much a victim as she’d seemed. She pulled off her coat and stuffed it in a bin by a tree, hoping the colour change would be enough.
Where was Michael?

The shouts suddenly changed, became more urgent: not looking for someone, but finding them. She risked a glance back. One of the soldiers was standing up against a tree, gun held against his body like something out of a war movie. The other had dropped to one knee and was squinting down the rifle sight.

Abby followed the line of the gun. Fifty yards away a dark-haired woman in a red windcheater was facing the soldier, arms raised, face white with terror. She looked about Abby’s age.

They’ve got the wrong girl
.

She felt sorry for her double – but the soldiers would find out their mistake soon enough. She turned her back and walked away, passing through the old Ottoman gate, jostling with the panicked crowds. Ahead, she thought she saw two men – one in a green anorak, the other in a long black coat. She forced herself to lengthen her stride, swallowing the pain that twisted like a knife in her shoulder.

‘
Michael!
’ she called.

Michael and Gruber stopped and turned. Michael gave an unobtrusive nod; Gruber looked as if he was going to be sick.

Ten paces ahead of her, a man in a New York Mets baseball cap stopped as well. He had a fat camera bag around his neck, unzipped as if he’d been interrupted in the middle of taking a photograph.

Too late, Abby noticed the silver Bluetooth headset clipped on his ear.

The man pulled a small pistol from the camera bag. He raised it, aimed towards Michael and fired.

Constantinople – May 337

I’VE ARRIVED AT
the Church of Holy Peace. Constantine’s words at Nicaea are still echoing in my ears.

Am I the only man in the world who wants peace?

You were
, I think,
and the world didn’t want it
. Last week a thousand soldiers marched past this church on their way to the Persian war. There hasn’t been a year in the last decade when Constantine hasn’t led his army on campaign, accumulating victory titles faster than the masons can recut the inscriptions on his monuments. If I were a younger man, with clearer views, I’d despise him for the hypocrisy. But all I feel is pity.

Even early in the morning, the church is busy. Paupers queue at a side door, where two women are doling out bread and milk. Serious young men with new-grown beards walk in twos and threes across the courtyard, clutching sheaves of paper. A group of children sit under a plane tree with writing tablets, taking instruction from a stern priest. It’s like its own village.

A priest is standing by the church door, greeting people as they enter. He sees me approach and offers a warm smile.

‘Peace be with you.’

All I can think of is Symmachus, slumped by his fishpond. ‘I want to see Eusebius.’

The smile doesn’t falter. ‘The Bishop left this morning for his home in Nicomedia. His work here was finished.’

‘Of course.’

‘You look tired, brother. Will you come and break bread with us?’

He’s still smiling, still solicitous.

‘Is it true,’ I ask him, ‘that part of your ritual is drinking blood?’

‘We share in the blood of Christ.’

‘I hope you drown in it.’

I wait just long enough to enjoy the look on his face, then spin on my heel and walk away. I’m halfway across the courtyard when I hear a voice calling my name.

‘Gaius Valerius?’

It’s Simeon the deacon, hurrying across the square. He looks well rested, pleased to see me. Not as if he murdered someone last night.

‘I’ve been meaning to find you,’ he says.

‘I could say the same.’

‘I’d like to get Alexander’s books back. Someone should finish his history.’

The
Chronicon
– the true compendium of all the history of the world, illuminating the pattern of God’s purpose. Except it was a myth, a benevolent past that never existed.