Constantinople – April 337
I sit on the bench in the courtyard of my house. My fingers pluck at my belt, twisting it so that the brass lion on the buckle catches the sun. I slide my thumbnail into the cuts and scratches in the metal. This was my cingulum, the sword belt I wore that day and ever since. But is it the same belt? The leather’s worn out three or four times and been changed, made longer; several of the plates have fallen off and had to be replaced. Just as Constantine and I are the same men we were on that campaign, and yet strangers to ourselves. The old lion’s brass skin is scuffed and dull.
There’s a commotion at the door. I wait for my steward to tell me who it is, but he doesn’t come. Instead, four soldiers in blood-red tunics and burnished armour burst in from my dreams and a scarred centurion says, ‘Come with us.’
XV
Rome – Present Day
‘IF YOU STRUGGLE, we will kill you.’
The man forced her into the car and pushed her down on the back seat. A cloth went over her head: a smell attacked her, and she wondered if it was chloroform. She tried to hold her breath, but her heart was beating too fast.
It was only aftershave, she realised, sickly sweet and drenching the blindfold with the smell of lilies. The car started to move. A hand on the back of her head kept her face pressed against the leather seat.
This is how it happens, she thought numbly. They come in the night and take you. Maybe they kill you, maybe they’re satisfied just to rummage around and break a few bits. But you’re never the same. She’d heard the story a thousand times in the field: brown eyes, blue eyes, always the same dead tears.
The car drove. All Abby could do was focus on the sounds around her: the rattle of a loose seatbelt; the revolutions of the engine; the occasional tick of the indicator. If she’d been a spy in a film, she might have counted off seconds and turns to work out their route. But she was frightened and far from help: it was all she could do to keep the panic from overwhelming her.
She heard a siren in the distance. Hope gripped her. Had someone seen her? Called the police? Arranged a rescue? The siren grew louder until it must have been right behind them. She felt their car slow down, then drift towards the kerb. She wanted to rip off the blindfold, leap up in her seat and shout for help. The hand on her head pushed down harder.
And then it passed. The Doppler wail stretched into the distance and faded away. She was alone again.
She vomited on the leather seat.
The car stopped in darkness. The hand pulled Abby up and dragged her out. She was still blindfolded, but she knew they must have turned a light on when she heard them swearing about the mess she’d made of their seat.
I can understand what they’re saying, she thought. It took her another moment to realise they were speaking Serbo-Croat. She closed her eyes, though under the blindfold it made no difference.
They led her up a flight of stairs, handling her carelessly, knocking her shins and stubbing her toes on obstacles she couldn’t see. Then the floor levelled off. She heard the sweep and thump of doors opening and closing. At last she stopped. The hand pulled the blindfold off her head.
She thought they must have brought her to a museum. She was standing in the middle of a black, windowless room. Silver spotlights in the ceiling picked out exhibits on the walls: slabs of white stone carved into friezes of gods and beasts, tendrilled plants or simply stern inscriptions. Most had rough edges, as if they’d been hastily chiselled away from some larger structure. A desk stood in the middle of the room, steel legs and a black marble top with nothing on it. Behind it, in a leather chair that dwarfed him, sat a slight man with greying hair. He was wearing a black suit and a white, open-necked shirt. He looked as if he was getting ready to go out for the evening. In his lap, he cradled a chrome-handled pistol.
He pointed the gun at her, smiling as he saw her flinch away.
‘Abigail Cormac. Have you ever wondered why you’re not dead?’
She just stared at him. ‘Who are you?’
He waved the gun towards the pieces on the walls. ‘A collector. A dealer. I buy and sell.’
She looked at his face: the sharp cheekbones and angular jaw, the eyes sunk so deep no light reached them. It was infinitely more real than the snatched, blurry photograph she’d seen in the British Library; also some years older. The skin had toughened, the hair retreated. He’d grown a small beard that had flecked grey. But there remained some quality, the same ferocious intensity, that even the camera couldn’t blur.
‘You’re Zoltán Dragović.’
The eyes narrowed. His bloodless lips stretched tight. He trained the gun back at her and flipped a catch on the side. She heard the guard behind her take a step sideways.
‘Are you going to shoot me?’ Get on with it! she wanted to scream. End this now! ‘Why did you bring me here?’
‘To answer my questions,’ he snapped. The gun didn’t move. The chrome barrel threw starbursts of reflected light on the walls. ‘Like, for example, why you aren’t dead already?’
‘I don’t –’
‘You should have died in Kotor Bay. I sent a man – his name was Sloba. I want to know why didn’t he kill you?’
‘I don’t remember.’ It came out as a croak. She was desperate for water, desperate to sit down before she fainted. ‘He shot me.’
‘He never came back.’
‘I don’t know what happened to him.’
‘No one does. You will say, perhaps he ran away.’ He held up the gun, as if he were addressing it and not her. ‘Impossibility. My men do not run away. If they try, I always find them. And him I cannot find.’
Abby rubbed her eyes, hoping she’d wake up and find this was all a nightmare. ‘He killed Michael. I saw him.’
‘If I cannot find Sloba, it means he is dead.’ Dragović swung lazily in his chair, like a boat swaying on its anchor. ‘Let me give you some facts, Miss Cormac. Sloba came to the villa in a car. When the police arrived, this car was still there.’
Look at the man, not at the gun. That’s what they’d taught in her Hostile Environment training, years ago. Looking at the gun makes it more likely he’ll use it. That didn’t make it any easier.
‘You were lying on the floor with Sloba’s bullets in you. In your shoulder, but not in your heart or brain. Why? Sloba was not a careless or a sentimental man. If he let you live, it means he was dead.’
Look at the man. ‘I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you want to know.’
‘Who else was there?’
‘No one. Just Michael and me.’
But was that true? She thought back to something they’d said in hospital. Somebody rang the police. Her memories were so scrambled it was hard to be sure of anything, but she didn’t think it had been her. It rang false.
So who else was there?
Dragović rolled back on his chair and stood. He sauntered over to the wall and examined one of the stone plaques. This one was painted, not carved, the colours washed out but still clear. A mummified man, wrapped in bandages, stretched out a hand from a stone sarcophagus, while a bearded Christ reached to stand him up. A dog played at his feet.