Secrets of the Dead

by Tom Harper

  Abby’s heart beat a little faster. The octagonal shape was exactly like Diocletian’s mausoleum in Split. Could this be Constantine’s? She opened the guidebook again.

  ‘Behind the main mosque stands the türbe or tomb of Mehmet the Conqueror, reconstructed in the Baroque style after the earthquake …’

  She should have known. And yet she still found the parallel intriguing. Mehmet the Conqueror and Constantine the Unconquered. Two men separated by religion and geography and a thousand years, but both wanting the world to know they had dominated. Two men who, for all their differences, had chosen to be buried in the same place. Was it Mehmet’s way of conquering the past – burying Constantine beneath him the same way the mosque buried the church? Abby didn’t think so. It was affinity, not rivalry, that had brought him here. He wanted the company.

  Gruber: There are certain places where power abides. This was one of them – she could feel it. She thought of the dead man in Kosovo, Gaius Valerius Maximus, and wondered if he’d walked through this same courtyard, in the service of the Emperor who first built it.

  She snapped a few more pictures, finished her circuit of the mosque and went back out on to the street. A taxi rolled by, the same number as before. She pretended to hail it and got in.

  ‘Well?’ Mark said.

  She clipped on her seatbelt as the car started moving. ‘I didn’t see Dragović, if that’s what you were expecting. There’s a lot of building work going on, though. It looks as if they’ve excavated down near the foundations. That might give him a way in.’

  ‘We’ll get on to the Culture Ministry. Perhaps we can slip a couple of people into the crews to look out for anything dubious.’

  His phone buzzed. He tapped the screen, read the message and grunted.

  ‘No sign of Dragović moving yet. We’re watching the airports in all his known haunts. We’ve also put out the word to our networks. Nothing yet.’

  Abby remembered the man in the black room in Rome, his silver gun against her head. She shivered.

  ‘Will he suspect anything?’

  ‘We gave the necklace and the text to a man called Giacomo in Belgrade.’

  ‘I’ve met him.’

  Mark’s head flicked up; he gave her a suspicious stare. ‘You’ve got some interesting connections. When we get you back to London, we’ll have to sit down and have a conversation about all the people you’ve met.’

  ‘Can’t wait.’

  They drove past a vast brick aqueduct, so huge that buses could easily drive through its arches. Just beyond it, Barry stopped the taxi on the kerb by a park. Mark ushered Abby out.

  ‘Go back and keep an eye on the mosque,’ he told Barry. ‘Call if anything happens. And no guns,’ he added. ‘If we start shooting up a mosque, we’ll have another fatwa on our hands before we know it. Starting from Whitehall.’

  The taxi roared away and carved an aggressive U-turn across seven lanes of traffic. If Barry was trying to impersonate a Turkish taxi driver, he had the cover perfect. Almost as soon as he’d gone, an unmarked blue hatchback pulled up in its place. Mark and Abby climbed in; Abby wondered how many SIS agents – she assumed they were SIS – were swarming around Istanbul.

  ‘Where now?’

  ‘You wait at the hotel with Connie. I need to go to the consulate to talk to some people.’

  The thought of sitting in another hotel room, watching canned TV and waiting for other people to decide her fate made her ill.

  ‘Isn’t there something I can do?’

  ‘Leave it to the professionals.’ He was so condescending she wanted to slap him. ‘Even if we did trust you – which we don’t – there’s nothing you can do.’

  Thanks for spelling that out.

  ‘So what was that business at the mosque for? If Dragović’s people are watching me, you think they’re going to believe I just turn up, take a few photos and go back to the hotel? Don’t you think you can make it a little more convincing?’

  ‘What did you have in mind?’ Mark was looking out of the window, not really listening. Abby thought quickly.

  ‘There must be some kind of historical library in Istanbul. Somewhere that would have books about the Fatih Mosque, Constantine’s mausoleum and so on. Someone must have done some archaeological work on it in the last five hundred years.’

  ‘Are you a historian?’

  ‘I’m a lawyer. You get pretty good digging through a mountain of old documents looking for evidence. And as far as Dragović knows, I’m supposed to be looking for ways to sneak in underneath the mosque. Maybe I’ll even find something.’

  Mark tapped away at the screen of his phone. Abby wondered if it substituted for thought.

  ‘OK.’

  The palace stood at the eastern end of the peninsula, bordered by nothing but the sea. Not a palace in the monolithic western style, like Blenheim or Versailles – solid monuments to power. This was an eastern palace: a complex organism that grew and sprawled over centuries, a place of shady courtyards and quiet corners where lovers and plotters could listen and conspire.

  Most of the site was a park: broad paths winding between oaks and elms, with the sea sparkling through the trees. Abby let herself in through a gate, trying to ignore the Connie-shaped shadow that followed twenty yards back. She walked past Hagia Eirene – the Church of Holy Peace, one of the oldest in Istanbul – and around to the one courtyard where classical columns and porticoes still held their own against the surrounding minarets and domes. Somehow, after two thousand years, there was still nothing that said ‘museum’ quite like Graeco-Roman architecture.

  She’d called ahead. The receptionist showed her through to the library at the back of the building, a long room whose high windows looked out across the grounds to the pointed towers of the main palace gate. The librarian had perfect English and a perfect smile: in no time, a small pile of books and journals had appeared on the oak table beside her. Abby started reading.

  From the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, she learned that the first construction on the mosque site had been a circular mausoleum built by Constantine for himself. His son Constantius had added a cruciform church; emperors had been buried there until 1028, when they ran out of room.

  The article listed references for further reading, including a contemporary description of the mausoleum by the Bishop Eusebius, Constantine’s biographer.

  The building stood impossibly high, every inch glinting with gemstones of every colour. The roof was gilded, reflecting back the sun’s rays to dazzle watchers for miles around.

  It sounded like the sort of place you might keep your most valuable treasure. Abby read on through later, less evocative historians, skimming through pages of argument and counter-argument, speculation and guesswork. It seemed that no one had managed to add much definite about Constantine’s mausoleum since Eusebius – and with the mosque now planted on top of it, no one was likely to either.

  At the bottom of the pile was a dog-eared archaeology journal. It mentioned an excavation done in the 1940s, which had found traces of Byzantine stonework, and a colonnaded cistern under the mosque courtyard. It observed that the mihrab inside the mosque – the holy niche that directed worshippers towards Mecca – wasn’t centred on the mosque walls. Anomalies and asymmetries in architecture often happened if a new building was built on old foundations, the authors said: by looking at what didn’t line up, you could infer what lay underneath.

  That jogged something in Abby’s mind, an uneasy asymmetry in her own thoughts. It niggled, but she couldn’t place it. She read on.

  ‘During the excavations in the 1950s, the Director of Tombs reported the discovery of a Byzantine chamber under the mihrab of the modern mosque, accessible via a tunnel from the cellar of Mehmet the Conqueror’s mausoleum.’

  She stared: her head spun. She felt herself trembling as she read the final sentence of the conclusion.

  ‘Perhaps the original Roman structure, last resting place of the emperor Constantine, has at last
been found.’

  She went over to the librarian and flashed her most beguiling smile.

  ‘Is there still a Director of Tombs in Istanbul?’

  He nodded. ‘This office is part of the General Directorate of Monuments and Museums.’

  ‘Where can I find him?’

  He looked surprised. ‘Here in this building. The office is upstairs. I can call for you if you want.’ Abby hesitated, then nodded. The librarian picked up the phone and spoke briefly. ‘One moment.’

  A minute later, Abby heard high heels clacking on the wooden floor. The door opened and in walked a tall, strikingly beautiful woman with long black hair and an elegant dark dress. Her lips, her nails and her shoes were all bright red; her eyes were shadowed a shimmering aquamarine. Abby had rarely felt so drab – a disgrace to every ideal of femininity.

  ‘Dr Yasemin Ipek,’ the woman introduced herself. And then, seeing the doubt in Abby’s face, ‘I am the Director of Tombs.’

  It was hard to imagine her scrambling around in dank, ancient holes underground.

  ‘I understand you are interested in the tomb of Constantine the Great?’ She smiled. ‘I have many tombs in my directorate. Sadly, his has been lost for centuries.’

  Abby pointed to the article and quoted the last line. ‘It says here there’s a Byzantine chamber right underneath the holiest point of the mosque.’

  Dr Ipek nodded. ‘I have read about this excavation. One of the directors of this museum, Professor Firatli, conducted it after the war. In fact, if you go into the crypt underneath Mehmet’s mausoleum, you can still see the wooden boards they put up to close the passage.’

  ‘Have you ever opened it?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘How about in the 1940s? Do you know if they found anything down there? Any kind of relic or artefact?’

  Dr Ipek narrowed her eyes. ‘There is nothing in the records.’

  ‘Is it possible to open the chamber?’

  Abby could see the warmth fading from Dr Ipek’s face; a discreet glance at the silver wristwatch.

  ‘It is closed for structural reasons. The chamber is directly under the wall of the mosque, and we have many earthquakes here. You would have to apply for a permit from the minister directly.’

  She saw Abby’s disappointment and relented a little. ‘You were thinking perhaps you will find Constantine’s lost sarcophagus under there?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder the same. But Professor Firatli was a scholar. If he had discovered something, he would have reported it.’ She smiled to herself. ‘Poor Constantine. He should have kept to his original plan and been buried in Rome. Then his tomb would have survived, and today he would be safe in the Vatican Museum.’

  Abby blinked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Constantine did not always intend to be buried in Constantinople, not until very late in his life. He built a mausoleum in Rome, which still stands at Tor Pignattara. When he changed his plan, he had his mother, the Dowager Empress Helena, buried there instead. You can still see her sarcophagus in the Vatican Museum.’

  She carried on speaking, but Abby didn’t hear it. Her mind was racing, trying to compute all the names and dates she’d heard in the last few days.

  CONSTANTINUS INVICTUS IMP AUG XXI.

  XXI. Twenty-one probably means the twenty-first year of Constantine’s reign, which would date the poem to 326 or 327. For what that’s worth.

  ‘When did Constantine change his mind about where he wanted to be buried?’ she asked.

  ‘His mother died in 328. So far as we can tell, he did not start building the mausoleum in Constantinople until near his death. Nine years later.’

  Abby’s mouth was dry. She knew she had to get this right.

  ‘So if someone was writing about Constantine’s tomb in the year 326 …’

  Yasemin Ipek, Director of Tombs, finished the sentence for her.

  ‘… almost certainly, he meant the mausoleum in Rome.’

  ‘And you said it still survives.’

  ‘On the outskirts of Rome. It is just a ruin now.’ She smiled. ‘If you are interested in underground passages, I think this is the place for you. It stands above the catacomb of Saints Marcellus and Peter.’

  ‘Excuse me.’

  Abby ran out of the library. Connie was waiting in the corridor, pretending to examine some Ottoman vases. She saw Abby coming and moved to cut her off, but Abby wasn’t trying to get past her.

  ‘We’re in the wrong place.’

  XLIV

  Constantinople – June 337

  I SIT ALONE in my study, scratching at a roll of parchment. I woke before dawn and couldn’t get back to sleep; there’s a tightness in my chest that makes it hard to breathe, as if something is fighting to get out from inside my heart. Just when I started to drift off, the family of swallows who’ve made their home under the tiles of my colonnade started feeding their young and woke me all over again.

  I’m trapped in a nightmare and there’s only one way it can end. In half an hour last night, Asterius tore up so many things I believed. Now I’m buried in the ruins of my own Chamber of Records, snatching at scraps that disintegrate in my hands.

  The whole city’s in a daze. Baths and markets are shut, the hippodrome gates chained and locked. From my study I can hear people wandering through the streets, wailing and crying as if they’ve lost their own children. It’s been going on for two weeks, though tonight it will be over. By then, Constantine’s body will have been laid in the great porphyry sarcophagus that’s waiting for him in his mausoleum, taking his place among the twelve apostles of Christ. What they’ll say when they find out who their new companion in eternity is, I can’t imagine.

  Today it ends. I’m sitting here in my white toga, my hair washed and my boots polished, dressed for the funeral. Constantius, Constantine’s second son, has made it back from Antioch. With the speed he arrived, they’re probably eating horsemeat all the way across Asia Minor. The dissent that worried Flavius Ursus hasn’t crystallised into any public demonstration. I’d like to think I’ve played my part, but mostly I think it’s because there’s no alternative.

  It doesn’t matter. Today, I’ll process behind the coffin like a captive barbarian. Tomorrow morning, if Ursus keeps his bargain, I’ll be on a wagon heading home to Moesia.

  I’ve almost reached the end of my scroll – the one I began two months ago at the library. I read down the list of names I made that day: Eusebius of Nicomedia, Aurelius Symmachus, Asterius the Sophist, Porfyrius. Any one of them might have killed Alexander, or ordered it, though in the balance of everything else they’ve done I suppose it would barely twitch the scales.

  In this city, not all murders are crimes. And not all criminals are guilty.

  In the last few inches of papyrus, I copy out the poem I found in the Chamber of Records. Perhaps it has nothing to do with Alexander’s death, but its elusive meaning haunts me.

  To reach the living, navigate the dead …

  I’ve been navigating the dead these last ten years, eyes downcast, trying not to see the ghosts that surround me. I haven’t reached the living.

  But copying out the poem, I notice something new. Every line is the same length – not almost or approximately, but exactly – and the eight lines are spaced so that the whole text forms a perfect square block.

  I don’t know why I didn’t notice it before. I puzzle over it, wondering what it means. Whoever wrote it certainly took great care to make it so. Just writing the lines to be the same length must have needed an immense creative effort.

  I stare at it. One moment I don’t see it, the next moment it’s there, as if a god had whispered it in my ear. I run over to my drawer and pull out the necklace they found in the library by Alexander’s body. A golden square, with the monogram in the centre. So similar to Constantine’s, but subtly different.

  I lay it over the poem on the piece of paper I found in the Scrinia Memor
iae. It fits perfectly – the square of text and the square of gold, exactly the same size.

  Porfyrius was a poet. When I asked him why he was exiled, he told me, ‘a poem and a mistake’.

  Porfyrius had the same unusual monogram on the design for his tomb.

  Porfyrius was in the library that day.

  The toga’s a stately garment, not made for running. Several times, it threatens to trip me up; once, it almost unravels completely. It’s hard pushing my way through the crowds that have already gathered to watch the funeral. It’s going to be the greatest piece of theatre in the whole brief history of the city. The few hundred yards to Porfyrius’s villa take almost half an hour. At the palace, the procession will already be forming up.

  Porfyrius has gone. He hasn’t even bothered to lock the door – perhaps he isn’t expecting to come back. A neglected silence hangs over the house, as though its owner died unexpectedly and hasn’t been found yet. The whole house is empty, not even a single slave, though nothing’s been packed or put away. The long table that I saw before is still standing in the atrium, stacked with plates and bowls ready for serving.

  I go to his study and rummage on the shelves for the plans to his mausoleum. It would be a shame to need your tomb before it’s ready. I unroll them on the desk. The word Roma is scribbled on the top left-hand corner – presumably he wants to be buried in Rome. I doubt he’ll get there.

  There are three drawings. The first shows the front, with its strange labarum-like monogram filling the pediment. The second illustrates the paintings intended for the wall. The third shows the niche at the back of the tomb where the remains will be buried. A stone plaque’s been drawn on the wall, and written on it – clearly, so the masons make no mistake – are two lines of poetry.

  To reach the living navigate the dead,

  Beyond the shadow burns the sun.

  The story’s clear enough. Porfyrius found out that Alexander had uncovered his poem and attacked him in the library. In the struggle, Alexander ripped the gold necklace off Porfyrius: it slid under the bookshelf, and Porfyrius didn’t have time to retrieve it. Perhaps Symmachus was there, too. That would explain how he ended up with Alexander’s document case. He kept it, but then he got cold feet. He tried to arrange to hand it back, but did it so clumsily he got caught instead.