The security guard stepped back again. He seemed surprised how the lead was killing Myles, but happy the deadly metal was so effective.
Gasping on the floor now, Myles tried to stand again. This time he slipped down, moving towards the ventilation machine. Pretending it was an accident, he used his elbow to hit the switch, turning it on. The turbines hummed into action, the fan blades turned, and soon huge volumes of air were bellowing out of the main tubes. The storage room was tight and confined, meaning the air swirled around, cycling and recycling like a small tornado.
Juma’s man started to look worried. He kept his pistol pointed at Myles and became even more anxious, and put both hands on his gun. The Somali’s eyes were wide with fear. The air blasting from the ventilation machine was scaring him. He motioned again at the lead powder, and this time shouted ‘Eat’ at Myles over the noise.
Myles nodded, but he still pretended not to be able to control his body. He heaved and rasped on the floor as he struggled towards the bag of lead powder.
Checking his surroundings, Myles looked around for his escape route. There was a window — closed — directly behind him, next to the light switch. Then he checked again on the Somali, who looked about to pull the trigger.
Holding his stomach as if he was very ill, Myles picked up the whole bag of lead dust. He made out he was going to pour it all into his mouth, but he missed.
The powder rained down near the ventilation machine, which whipped it aloft. Within moments the inside of the storage room was thick with the airborne lead.
The Somali protected his eyes. But he could still see Myles through the dust and levelled his pistol at him. Very close range: he couldn’t miss. An easy kill. The dust hadn’t blinded the man. Instead, he was about to fire.
Myles caught the man’s eyes through the swirling cloud and knew this was it.
He dived towards the light switch as the guard squeezed the trigger.
Forty
Helen imagined how Myles would have used the fifteen minutes since they had spoken. It was enough time to clear a scene of fingerprints and make a good escape. She pictured him, tall and strong, calmly walking away from the American sauce factory in Germany.
She took her second phone out again and dialled the code for Germany, +49, followed by 110 — the number for the emergency services in the country.
‘Emergency services — police, please,’ she said. ‘I’d like to report a major crime.’
Helen explained: the crime was being committed in the American Steak Sauce factory, which was somewhere in Germany but she didn’t have the address. Then she explained how lead powder was being added to the ingredients, and that stockpiles of the poisonous metal could be found in the food storage room.
‘Can I take your name, please?’ asked the anonymous voice on the line.
‘No, you cannot,’ said Helen. She didn’t want the tip-off traced to her too quickly. Using a pay-as-you-go phone in Turkey which wasn’t registered in her name would make it hard for the police to know it was her. But she knew all emergency calls were recorded. When the recording was played back there was a good chance her voice would be recognised. She was, after all, a frequent contributor to international news broadcasts. Once she was identified, they would ask how she found out about the sauce factory, and that could implicate Myles. In time, it would help the authorities catch him.
As the phone call ended, Helen wondered whether the police would actually investigate. Probably, she thought. And if not, she could find a German newspaper or magazine who would be very interested in the story. Either way, the sauce poisoning operation would soon be closed down.
But Helen wasn’t satisfied. Placidia’s ‘Last Prophecy of Rome’ was about more than lead poisoning. After all, nobody thought toxic metal was the main reason why the Roman Empire collapsed. She had to uncover the rest of it. That meant she had to imagine what Placidia had imagined. She had to put herself in the mind of a woman she hated.
Helen also realised she had a deeper, more personal motive for her investigation. She guessed something had happened between Myles and Placidia at university, probably something romantic. She could forgive Myles his past. But something about his involvement with Placidia meant he still had deep respect for the woman — despite what she was doing now. Helen wanted to prove to Myles that the woman was a terrorist, and that she was doing terrible things.
Helen needed Myles to abandon his feelings for the woman completely. That was why she had come here — to Istanbul.
She looked up at the majestic Roman walls which once defended the city. Orange floodlights illuminated the structure while modern roads and buildings overlooked much of the ancient brickwork. Once this had been Constantinople: the second most important place in the Roman world and the eastern capital when the Empire split. This city led a successor empire for a thousand years after Rome fell. Now, Constantinople had become Istanbul, the most advanced city in a country trying to join the European Union. Roman ruins were being overtaken by modern architecture.
If Placidia tried to come here she would surely be arrested. But Placidia could send others, and it was those people Helen had to find.
She walked on, knowing she was now close to the new excavation site. The huge city walls may have kept out the hordes from the east, but they could not keep out the plague. She tried to imagine how the Roman inhabitants had panicked as their population succumbed to the disease. Helen remembered her research — how the Romans had first given dignified burials to the victims, then been forced to place the bodies in mass graves just outside the city walls. Bubonic plague had struck several times. One wave of the illness, in 541 and 542, had wiped out half the population.
Then Helen saw the large canvas tent which was covering the earthwork. The excavation site was exactly where it was meant to be, indicating the paperwork filed in the municipal records office was correct. She watched for several minutes before she approached, pushing her hair behind her ear to listen.
Nothing was happening. It was near midnight and nobody seemed to be working on the site. Perhaps it meant the excavation was genuine, but Helen’s journalistic instincts kept her sceptical. She waited for several more minutes, until she found herself distracted by thoughts of Myles. Then she decided to approach.
The entrance to the tent around the excavations was sealed with thin rope. Looking round behind her to check nobody was watching, Helen carefully untied the main knot and unthreaded the cord until the door was open.
She peered inside. It was dark, but she could see a large hole in the middle of the tent, which looked deep. Scaffolding had been placed inside, and an aluminium ladder led down. Also in the tent she saw some benches and clear plastic bags, which seemed to be full of soil, although it was too dark to be certain.
Helen took out her unregistered mobile phone and pressed on the keypad. It glowed and she tried to direct the light towards the interior of the tent. The plastic bags did contain samples of soil.
Then she saw what looked like a large chest, connected to a cable which led back outside the tent. Helen was new to archaeology, but the chest didn’t seem like it belonged at the site. It looked too scientific: there were dials and buttons on the front.