AURELIA (Roma Nova Book 4)

by Alison Morton

  I jerked my head back, but not before I had felt a tingle run through my cheeks. He said nothing, but grabbed me by the waist and lifted me on to the back of his horse. The animal fidgeted as I settled on him.

  ‘Don’t wriggle or you’ll fall off,’ he said.

  He looped the reins over the front of the horse’s head and led me back to the legation without saying another word. He lifted me down at the front gate and rang the bell. I caught my breath at his touch and looked up at his face. But before I could thank him, he’d mounted his horse and gave me a final wave. I didn’t even know his name.

  I captured his image from the legation CCTV camera feed. Nothing on our system, but the New Austrians had him pegged as a smuggler operating in the Hungarian Outlands, but no concrete evidence. His name was Niklaus Farkas, known as Miklós, twenty-three, son of a small farmer from north-west Hungary. The Prussians wanted to talk to him – he was marked on their system as a ‘person of interest’.

  Of course, we couldn’t find an address in Berlin for him. He was one of those people who lived below the radar of normal life. But his horse had to be housed somewhere, so he must be near stables or on a farm. I couldn’t explain why I was so drawn to him; it was more than a mere attack of lust. Something inside me had leapt up in recognition, a sense of a long wait over.

  Before I could pursue it, a large envelope stuffed with questions arrived from the Berlin Court. I worked through them for the next two days and asked Sharp Nose, the lawyer, to check my answers. She tutted and redrafted them all.

  Caius’s trial for smuggling was set for two weeks after I sent the questions back. Plico wouldn’t let me go home even for a visit. In the meantime, I had nothing to do, no assigned role – I wasn’t a trained diplomat. My search for the horse rider had ground to a standstill. My thirst to find out more about him was threatening to invade and possess my mind. In desperation, I offered to do some analysis work for the military office. The centurion in charge looked over her glasses and said it was well below my competence; a little boring, in fact, but if I was sure?

  I was fascinated by a new satellite surveillance tool they were trialling. You could see people eating their sandwiches in the park, but not quite what filling was between the bread slices. The feed was relayed from Roma Nova, and all overseas legations had been allocated the task of surveying their own countries in their downtime. I suppose it saved the Defence Ministry at home some of its budget.

  I used it to scan the ‘sites of interest’ on the list the supervisor had allocated me, checking principally for changes and signs of vehicle movements or new buildings at strategic sites against the latest editions of large-scale maps and still photos we had of the same areas. Perhaps in the future these systems would scan this automatically; it would save a lot of muscle and eye strain. I was finishing the section in eastern Brandenburg when I spotted an entirely new building on the edge of the woods about two hundred metres from the gate of a Prussian army base. Rectangular and open on two sides, hay stacked up at one end, it must have been a small barn. Not significant, I told myself and batted down the curl of excitement beginning to open inside me. I noted it in the file and decided to take a mid-morning break. I stretched my arms and shoulders, relishing the thought of a cup of strong coffee.

  ‘Most useful for tracking troop movements, especially when they run their exercises,’ a voice startled me. The military attaché was standing behind me. His breath was warm and full of onions. His stomach bulging over his belt testified to too many rich meals and a lack of exercise. From the green T-shirt showing at the neck of his beige uniform shirt he was a regular infantryman. He’d bagged a plum, safe posting at the end of his career and neglected to keep up his fitness. He pushed right up against my chair. I shifted a little further forward, but he followed. Hades.

  ‘Shame you won’t be here to see the next one,’ he said. ‘You could have come out with me on observation.’ He leant forward. ‘I don’t suppose you’d—’

  ‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ Fabia cut in with a file in her hand and slapped some papers down in front of me, ‘could you sign these off? The signals captain needs them urgently and there’s no other field rank around.’

  The attaché scowled at her, saw the sheets were marked ‘Eyes Only’ and had no choice but to move off.

  ‘Thank you, Fabia,’ I breathed, not even a whisper.

  She bent over as if explaining something to me. ‘A pleasure,’ she whispered. ‘He’s a real pain.’

  ‘You’re telling me. That’s the second time he’s cornered me. I have to get out of here for a few hours or I’ll go insane.’ I gave her what I hoped was an innocent look. ‘Tell me how the car pool works.’

  *

  I drove east out of the city on the Frankfurter Chaussee, attempting to convince myself it was coincidence. But that building I’d spotted on the overhead had to be a small barn, ideal for keeping a horse discreetly. The minor road leading to the army camp was tarmac, but halfway along, a narrow unmade track led through trees. I hesitated, then turned on to it and pushed down on the accelerator, bumping along between tall trees as if I were a rally driver. What an idiot! I hit the brake a few metres further on as the track widened out to a small farmyard complete with chicken run and vegetable garden.

  I cut the engine and looked round. Everything was quiet; no sign of life except chickens scratching the hard ground, and clucking. Stacked on one open side of the barn were oblong bales of hay. In the covered corner, the roof soaring over it, stood a prefabricated building, an industrial unit but with windows. Troughs of straggly plants stretching for the sun hung from the window frames. To the side was a stall and tack area. For one horse.

  After another glance round, I walked over to the building and peered through a window. Two chairs, an old-fashioned table with pieces of horse bridle, a pot of polish and a rag; a bureau piled with papers; bookshelves stuffed full. Two intricate patterned rugs with long fringes covered most of the floor. A leather jacket embraced the back of one of the chairs.

  ‘Had a good look?’

  I nearly fell over as I whipped round. There he was – tall, imposing, electrifying. I swallowed hard. ‘Niklaus, no, Miklós Farkas, I believe.’

  ‘Very good!’ He clapped his hands slowly.

  I flushed under his scrutiny.

  ‘Your recognition software really does exist then – it’s not merely a rumour.’

  I frowned at him. It was supposed to be a secret.

  ‘I may be a wanderer but I’m not ignorant or stupid.’

  ‘I didn’t think you were.’

  ‘What are you doing here, Aurelia?’

  ‘How do you know my name?’

  ‘I know many things about you.’

  ‘Why? Are you spying on me?’

  He smiled, a knowing, sexy smile. I had the uncomfortable feeling of being outmanoeuvred. ‘Now tell me, what are you really doing here, spying on me?’ he said.

  ‘I’m leaving Berlin soon and I didn’t want to go without seeing you again.’ I couldn’t believe I’d said that. Just like an angst-ridden sixteen-year-old on her first date.

  He came over to me and touched my hair with his fingers. He brought his hand down the side of my neck, then to my lips. I closed my eyes for a second, relishing the electric sensation rolling through me. When I opened them, I found his dark ones full of passion. He kissed me gently, then more urgently. Desire spread through me and intensified. He pulled back for a moment and looked at me as if he wanted to devour me. His arm gripped my waist and pulled me to him.

  ‘Neither did I.’

  *

  I lay afterwards, my body stretched over the length of his, my hand on his chest gliding slowly over the fine curling hair covering his soft skin. A sense of completeness filled me, of relief that I hadn’t imagined the message his smile carried. But the miracle had happened.

  I was dying to ask him why he had stopped Grosschenk’s car that evening and if he was the horseman watching Fabia collect
me from the ditch. And what was he doing in the Tiergarten Park the day I was there? Coincidence? Had he been following me? But I didn’t want to break the delicate, lazy mood of complete relaxation. He stirred. I felt his lips brush my forehead and he murmured something in a language I didn’t understand.

  ‘Miklós, can I ask you something?’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘How did you—?’

  ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ he murmured, half answering my question, ‘but here in Berlin you’ve always been holed up in your legation. I thought I’d have to burgle it to get to you.’

  I traced the ridge of his collarbone with my finger, and laughed.

  ‘You could have rung the bell.’

  I felt the answering chuckle within him through his ribcage.

  ‘Imagine it, me rolling up to the front door; “Please may I see the spy I met in Grunewald? You know, the one with the broken foot who was nearly shot by the silver smugglers?”’

  I pulled myself up on to my forearms.

  ‘How do you know about the silver?’

  ‘I may be in the informal import–export business, but there are some areas you really don’t go into. Roma Novan silver is one of those. But we all know about it.’

  ‘“We all?”’

  ‘Nothing doing.’ He laughed and pulled me down to him.

  When I next woke, I lay with my head in the hollow of his shoulder. His hand ran lazily down my spine, causing such ripples of pleasure that if I died tomorrow I would count my life as complete.

  When he stopped and dozed, my brain came out of the soup of satisfaction. He still hadn’t said why he had been tracking me. He’d near as Hades admitted to being a smuggler, a criminal, although he’d never been charged, let alone convicted. Why was he interested in me? Cynical as he seemed to be, he wasn’t stupid enough to think he’d get information out of me, or any favours such as looking the other way. Apart from my personal convictions, that kind of betrayal earned a long sentence in a hard prison, or worse, in the silver mines at Truscium.

  Should I even be in bed with him? My head told me rationally I was an intelligence agent, not a police officer, so it wasn’t my concern. My heart told me I’d never love anybody in this way ever again.

  I raised my head to say something jokey but caught sight of a puckered indentation in his shoulder, about twenty millimetres, the size of a solidus coin. A gunshot scar. I touched it. He blinked and caught my hand.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘Don’t ask.’

  When anybody said ‘don’t’ the immediate impulse was to do the thing forbidden.

  ‘Too late. Tell me.’ I fixed my eyes on his, silently trying to command him. He looked at me out of the depths of those dark eyes for a full minute. ‘You won’t like the answer and you definitely won’t like me if I tell you.’

  I gave him a little shake, then looked away. ‘I don’t know how to say this any other way, but I think I can take it. Whatever it is, I’ll forgive you. It can’t be that bad. And I’m not some sweet innocent.’ I smiled at him to encourage him.

  ‘Very well.’ He half sat up and pulled me to him. He kissed the top of my head then took a deep breath. ‘What were you doing a year and a bit ago?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Up on a very cold mountain.’

  I tensed. ‘I was hunting smugglers, if you must know.’ I couldn’t look at him, but babbled on. ‘One of them wounded one of my troops in the arm and winged my ear. I think I shot him, but he bloody well skied off down the mountain. He had the nerve to laugh at me.’

  He leant over and kissed the scar on my lobe. ‘I’m so sorry about your ear. I only wanted to fire a warning shot over your head.’

  XIII

  He let me hit him until my temper wore itself out. He lay there silent as I pummelled him. His face was expressionless as if he’d surrendered to my fury. When I eventually finished, I sat on the edge of the bed, shaking, and turned my back on him, overcome with embarrassment at myself and bone-deep anger with him at making me lose control.

  I felt the movement through the mattress as he sat up and pulled me to him. I stiffened and resisted for a moment, but his warm body and earthy masculine smell were overwhelming. He circled me with his arms, cradling me, as if to absorb my hurt.

  *

  A little later, when it was dark outside, he laid me gently down and left the bed. I shivered and stared at the ceiling; being alone was unnatural. After a few minutes, the smell of coffee, warm bread and cheese spread from the kitchen. The emptiness inside me wasn’t merely upset; I was starving. As he returned, he glanced at me, hesitated and set the tray down on the table by the bed.

  ‘Here, for energy,’ he said, and pushed an oval pastry into my hand. It resembled a panis focacius that the Italians called focaccia. It burst in my mouth at the first bite, herbs and cheese delighting my senses.

  ‘Gods, what’s this?’ I said, almost forgetting my anger.

  ‘Pogača. Easy to bake in the fire and eat on the move.’

  I stared at him. I could see him hiding up in some remote wood, biting through the crusts, the crumbs irrelevant as he flung himself on his horse and galloped off to avoid border guards or police. The horse was ideal; no engine noise, no reliance on finding petrol or diesel, warm to sleep against and perfect for navigating woods, open plain and even towns. He sipped his coffee and looked directly at me.

  ‘You’re a good shot, Aurelia. It hurt like hell. I had to hole up for weeks. I know you were doing your job, but I swore at you long and hard once I’d come through the fever. The old man in the mountain hut who took me in thought I was going to croak. Nobody has ever touched me before. I swore at myself and then I cursed you to destruction. I was determined to find you and have my revenge.’

  His look was so hard, fear curled through me. I was here, naked in every sense and nobody knew where I was. This man was strong and fuelled by desire for retribution.

  ‘I did find you,’ he continued, ‘in Roma Nova and discovered your name, but two days later you came here. Bátor and I rode fast to follow you. I’ve watched you from your first beer sitting by the Spree. You Praetorians are good. I was impressed by how responsive they were when Grosschenk tried to kidnap you and the silver woman. And you are very much one of them.’

  He took the coffee cup from my hand that was trembling by now.

  ‘But when I rode in front of Grosschenk’s car and saw you trapped there, it hit me. I couldn’t carry on. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt you.’

  I stared up at him, caught between fright and surprise.

  He laughed. That same rich, deep and frankly sexy laugh I’d heard even through the blizzard. The same one as when Joachim and I went to interview Grosschenk’s injured heavy after the kidnap attempt. It broke the crust of my fear.

  ‘It was you in the hospital, wasn’t it?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. You nearly had me there.’

  ‘What were you doing there, anyway?’

  ‘Trying to visit a friend.’ He shrugged. ‘Well, somebody who’d done some work for me.’

  ‘Another smuggler?’

  ‘What a thing to say about somebody you don’t know!’ His indignation was coated with mockery. Then he grinned. ‘No he isn’t, but something must have been wrong – there was a police guard by the nurses’ desk, so I left it. I was joking with one of the nurses about being in the wrong corridor and laughed at her reply.’

  ‘You’re a slippery bastard, you know.’

  ‘Probably,’ he chuckled, and touched my nose with the tip of his finger. He bent over and kissed my lips. ‘But a lovable one.’

  *

  I woke with the daylight, sensing I was being watched. Miklós was staring at my face, as if trying to imprint it. There was no smile.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Whatever happens, I will always remember this,’ he said, ‘well after you’ve forgotten.’

  ‘No, I don’t want to
forget. I want you with me. Come back with me to Roma Nova.’

  He laughed. ‘What would I do there? I can’t live in a city.’

  ‘We’ll live at the farm – it’s beautiful, open, near the mountains.’

  ‘I left the farm when I was a boy. No more.’

  I didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t slip away from me like this. I sat up and turned my back on him.

  ‘So is that all this means for you?’ I said, looking at the wall. ‘A quick shag?’

  He grabbed my shoulders and pulled me down on to the bed. I tried to keep my back to him, but he turned me over to face him.

  ‘Never use such a stupid word to describe the precious thing we’ve shared.’ He shook me. ‘I’m not your pet at your beck and call, and you’re no spoilt brat. So stop acting like one.’

  I gasped at his hard tone, but he was right.

  ‘Miklós, I can’t leave you now.’

  ‘I have no right to ask you to come with me. You know what I do. If I’m caught, I may be years in some Russian gulag or a Western prison.’

  ‘Then come back with me after the trial. You’ll have everything you need. You won’t have to take such risks.’

  ‘No. After a few months we’ll be so sick of each other, and start resenting the smallest things. You’ll be immersed in your work and family, I’ll get restless and start trading again. Imagine the horror of meeting across that line. Again. We’d never be so lucky as we have been. You’d have to track me down and you’d die inside doing it. But I know you’re Roman enough to do it even if your heart was breaking.’

  Without looking at me, he left the bed, and pulled on shirt and trousers. I watched every stretch of his arm and bend of his back. Then he left the room.

  Numbed by the truth of what he had said, I stumbled out of bed. Shaking with effort and emotion, I dressed in silence and without bothering how anything looked.

  Outside, he half walked, half pushed me towards my car.

  ‘Miklós, I—’

  ‘Shush, just go. And don’t look back.’

  I swallowed hard, fell into the seat and started the engine. His eyes were liquid. He bent down, and with one graceful movement stretched and kissed me softly on the lips.