Obelisk

by Stephen Baxter

Marcus summoned a runner. Then he set about finding an office suitable for interviews.

  Armstrong raised his eyebrows, but did not object.

  It took forty minutes for Osman Pasa to be brought to the palace from his suite at the Savoy.

  Pasa’s title was vizier, but Imogen understood this was something of a formality; power under the Ottoman sultan Mehmed V lay with parliament, and the vizier had little influence outside the court. Pasa was an elegant man, perhaps fifty, his dark complexion set off by the sharp, silver-grey suit he wore. He spoke fluent Latin, the nearest thing to a common international language, and Imogen translated for the Major.

  ‘The fire-lance was of course a Roman artefact,’ Pasa said languidly. ‘Captured during the Seljuk war of 1071, as the Christian calendar has it. It has languished on palace walls or in museums ever since. This seemed an appropriate occasion to hand it back. After all, that conflict, so little known to western historians, was a turning point in the fortunes of the Romans …’

  The East Roman empire, with its capital at Constantinople, had survived the collapse of its western counterpart. But the explosive advance of Islam in the seventh century had seen it lose Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, even Egypt to the Arabs. And in the new millennium the Seljuk Turks assaulted Asia Minor, the very heart of the empire.

  ‘As something of an amateur student of history myself, I’ve always been convinced that if not for the fire-lances, Asia Minor would have been lost,’ the vizier said. ‘And the final decline of the empire would have been assured. But the fire-lances, just like this one, and other gadgets like crude bombs, turned the tide. The Seljuk armies had nothing like them, and were driven back.

  ‘It’s said that gunpowder was brought to Constantinople by a single man, a Chinese dissident who fled the Sung emperors and came wandering down the Silk Road. And he carried a new idea out of China, as many ideas had travelled to the west before – silk, paper … In China, as you may know, gunpowder was an accidental discovery of Taoist chemists who sought an elixir of life.’ Pasa grunted. ‘What they discovered was a recipe for death. Of course, the East Romans had always used Greek fire against the Islamic armies; they knew how to develop super-weapons, and how to keep them secret. As a result, they had a monopoly on gunpowder weapons in Europe for two hundred years. Remarkable, isn’t it, the difference one man can make?’

  Imogen pressed the vizier, ‘But as to the fire-lance itself – you did not intend to hand over a live weapon to the prince, did you?’

  ‘Of course not.’ He glanced at Marcus, quite relaxed. ‘There should have been no gunpowder in it at all – only black pepper – certainly not such a potent modern mix. To place such a weapon in the hands of a young man so liable to, ahem, confusion? It would have been asking for trouble.’

  Imogen said, ‘And did the lance leave your possession at any time before you handed it over to the prince?’

  ‘Yes. Both Roman and British soldiers, and British police, checked over the weapon and its box.’ He glanced meaningfully at Armstrong.

  ‘I oversaw some of this myself,’ the Major said. ‘We were looking for poison – doped needles, that sort of thing; we thought that was the most likely way one might get at the prince. We missed the gunpowder, I admit.’

  ‘A bit of an oversight,’ Marcus said in English, mocking the Major’s tone.

  Armstrong eyed him stonily. ‘We’re not as experienced with assassinations and palace coups as you are in your ancient empire, prefect.’

  ‘Really?’ Osman Pasa asked, glaring at Armstrong. ‘I wonder if these questions of yours are directed at the right party, prefect.’

  Armstrong just laughed at him.

  They asked further questions of the Ottoman diplomat, but learned nothing new.

  Prince Philippe was fat, fifty, his face red and puffy, his hair elaborately coiffed. He smelled of perfume, pomade and Roman vodka.

  As he tried to squeeze his ample frame into a hard, upright English chair, Armstrong murmured to Imogen, ‘Always the same, the Frenchies. Every diplomatic occasion they send over a prince of the blood – if not Fat Phil here, one if his equally unappealing brothers. They know these Orleanist princes get up the noses of our Bourbon royal family.’

  Philippe’s own gift to Gavrilo had been a remarkable jewelled cane, still in the possession of the Romans, beautiful and quite harmless. What Philippe chose to talk about, however, was the gift Gavrilo had handed to him. It was a bit of cloth mounted in a glass case, very old, coarsely woven. It bore a red cross, faded with time, and was stained with rust-brown splashes.

  ‘It is a relic of my own ancestor,’ Philippe said, speaking defiant French. ‘Georges de Boulogne took the cross of Christ in 1203; this was stitched to his tunic when he died before the walls of Constantinople …’

  The East Romans had always had a prickly relationship with the crusades. Those great military missions, aimed at recovering the Holy Land from the Muslims, were seen from Constantinople as grabs for power by the popes in Rome, who hoped to rule the squabbling statelets of Christendom. At last resentment had boiled over, and western Christians assaulted the capital of the east Christian power. But by now the East Romans had advanced weapons, bombs and mines, cannon, rockets, even handguns, at a time when gunpowder was still entirely unknown west of Constantinople. The crusaders were scattered; the city was saved.

  ‘The cross was ripped from the chest of my fallen ancestor, and stored in some vault in Constantinople for eight hundred years. And now here it is,’ Philippe said. ‘Hurled back in my face!’

  Imogen frowned. ‘Perhaps the Romans meant to honour you, and the memory of Georges.’

  Philippe said dismissively, ‘Perhaps there is honour in defeat for you British; not for us. Remember, we have kept the Romans at bay for centuries, while you sit behind la Manche building ships …’

  This was an old gripe. Even before the East Romans had acquired their fire-lances, Orthodox Christendom had spread far from Constantinople, with the conversion of Bulgaria, Georgia, Russia, Serbia. When in the thirteenth century the Mongols had erupted from central Asia to assault Georgia and Russia, the East Romans struck back, using their firearms to drive off the ferocious nomads: the Battle of Kiev in 1240 was remembered as the day the Mongols were repelled, and a dream reborn. After this victory a new geographically contiguous empire was born, absorbing the Orthodox countries, sweeping from the Balkans to the Baltic.

  By then the secret of gunpowder was out; the Mongols acquired it from the Chinese, and through them the technology was adopted by Islam and western Christendom. But the East Romans were the first to reorganise their society as a gunpowder empire, with an expansion of mining and manufacture, government control of resources, the raising of vast armies, and a centralising of the state. To do this they reached back consciously to the forms of the old Roman Empire. By 1300 the Caesars once more wore the imperial purple, and legions armed with muskets and field artillery marched in Central Asia.

  The empire cautiously expanded, east across Asia, south into Mesopotamia and Persia, and west into Europe. By 1500, Europe had been partitioned between the Roman and French spheres, with a hinterland of petty German and Italian statelets between the two – ironically, Rome itself was an independent city state, governed by the pope.

  ‘We stood against them,’ the French prince said bitterly. ‘If not for France the eagle standard would fly in London as it does in Baghdad and Vladivostok—’

  ‘I’m sure we’re all jolly grateful to you Frenchies,’ Armstrong said dryly. ‘But getting back to the matter in hand …’

  Marcus said, ‘You regarded the gift of your ancestor’s cross as an insult. Was it grievous enough to kill for?’

  Philippe sneered. ‘I would not trouble myself to spit upon a dissolute boy like Gavrilo. The Caesar will feel France’s wrath at the next round of trade negotiations.’

  ‘His motive i
s flimsy,’ Marcus said after the prince had gone.

  Armstrong said, ‘Flimsy unless he, or the Ottoman, or both, wanted to start a war. You heard what he said about trade negotiations. There are always factions in such courts spoiling for a fight …’

  As they argued about motives, Imogen, impatient, felt convinced they were on the wrong track. She begged leave to take some lunch, and left them to it.

  She walked back to the Hall of Ambassadors. A butler on the palace staff brought her lunch: a sandwich and a glass of fresh milk.

  Eating slowly, she peered up at Michelangelo’s marvellous ceiling. She knew that historians thought it an irony that King Henry, who had enriched himself by plundering the wealth of the Church through the English Reformation, had used those funds to hire great artists like Michelangelo who could not find suitably wealthy sponsors in the impoverished city states of Catholic Italy, trapped as they were between the flaring ambitions of the French and Roman empires. She was grateful the work had not been harmed by the previous night’s fire.

  The others kept talking of motives. Certainly you could say that both Ottoman and French had a motive to murder Gavrilo, if you really believed that one of them wanted to start a war. Conceivably Philippe also had a personal motive, if he felt insulted by the crusader rag. But Philippe certainly did not have the means, as far as she could see, however strong his motive, for there was absolutely no evidence he had ever come into physical contact with the fire-lance.

  Perhaps Osman Pasa could have done it. But he wasn’t alone in handling the murder weapon; the British and Roman authorities had both had a hold of it, and could perhaps have tampered with it. She supposed some of the Romans might have a motive to do down Caesar’s son, if they despised his reign sufficiently – even if it meant their own death. What she couldn’t work out was what possible motive the British could have for killing Gavrilo. After all, he was here to be betrothed to a British princess. And yet the means existed.

  Means, not motive, had to be the key to this murder: everybody involved had a motive, if you looked hard enough, and so it was only means that could lead to the truth. That was what she kept telling Marcus, and here she was forgetting it herself.

  On impulse she made her way back to Gavrilo’s reception room, alone. The police stationed there recognised her and allowed her in.

  She looked again at the bloodstained carpet, the fire-damaged walls. Aware of the stern warnings not to disturb anything, she knelt down, peering at the weapon and the damage it had caused: the smashed chair, the remains of the lance itself, the trigger, the traces of the fuse. The timer was a mass of components, like the innards of a watch. The parts gleamed, finely worked. The trigger was simpler, but was just as well made. It looked remarkably clean, she thought. Too clean, perhaps. She leaned closer yet, holding her hair back from her forehead.

  And she saw something. A trace she longed to take away. She left it in place.

  She sat back on her heels, thinking hard. A British peeler, standing alongside a Roman centurion, watched her cautiously.

  Then she walked slowly back to the office Marcus had requisitioned.

  Marcus and Armstrong were still arguing about motives.

  Marcus said, ‘Perhaps we should suspect the Pope, then, Major! After all, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to a church door in Wittenberg, a Roman city. Was it all a Roman plot to destabilise the Vatican? Or what of the natives of the Americas? If the Romans had not blocked off trade routes to the east, Columbus would never have sailed …’

  ‘Now you’re being absurd.’

  ‘Of course I am. But my point is … Oh! Never mind.’

  As Imogen sat down, Armstrong folded his arms. ‘I think we’ve spent enough time on this. It seems perfectly obvious that the culprit is our Ottoman friend, for his was the gift that turned out to be the murder weapon. He had the motive, he had the means. I think the best thing we can do now is announce our conclusions to our superiors.’

  ‘And risk a war?’ Imogen asked softly. ‘Without being sure, Major?’

  They both looked at her. Marcus said, ‘Miss Brodsworth? Do you have something?’

  She considered the conclusion she had been forced to come to, hoping to find holes in it. Unfortunately it seemed to her as complete and perfect as the jewelled cane Philippe had given to Gavrilo.

  ‘Means and motive,’ she said to Armstrong and Marcus. ‘We kept talking about motive. But the means was the key to this crime. How was it committed? That would tell us who. That was what I was thinking after my lunch. I went back to Gavrilo’s reception room. I suppose I hoped I would find some bit of evidence, something clinching, which would establish the means beyond doubt, no matter what the motive. Perhaps I was being absurd …’

  ‘Yes,’ said Armstrong heavily. ‘You were. What did you imagine you would spot that evaded the Criminal Investigation Department?’

  Marcus hushed him. ‘What have you found, Miss Brodsworth? Tell us plainly.’

  She took a breath, avoiding Armstrong’s eye. ‘A shred of tobacco.’

  ‘What?’

  Armstrong said with a dangerous calm, ‘This sounds like nonsense to me, Miss Brodsworth, and dangerous nonsense at that.’ He made to stand up, pushing back his chair. ‘I think it’s time you were removed from this comical investigation—’

  ‘Sit down,’ said Marcus. And for the first time Imogen thought she could hear the authority of the Caesars in his voice.

  Armstrong, glowering, complied.

  Marcus asked, ‘A shred of tobacco?’

  ‘There was something odd about that trigger mechanism,’ she said. ‘I don’t pretend to understand the clockwork of the timer. But the trigger itself was such a simple thing. And perhaps it’s because it is so simple, there is something about it nobody seems to have noticed.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It was never fired. Even though the bomb detonated, the trigger never fired. You can see it quite clearly from the cleanness of the hammer. And so, I wondered, what was it that could have lit the fuse?’

  ‘Ah. And when you looked closer …’

  ‘I found a shred of tobacco, stuck in the trigger mechanism of the bomb. I left it in place for the detectives to find – I’ll show you later, prefect.’

  ‘Well, well.’ Marcus turned to the Major.

  For long seconds Armstrong stared at them stonily. Then he relaxed, subtly. ‘Miss Brodsworth, I now rather regret getting you out of your bed this morning.’

  Marcus faced him. ‘You were the only smoker, Major. The legionaries would have removed any weapon from you – even your matches, a lighter. But you walked into the presence of Gavrilo with a lit cigarette in your mouth.’

  Armstrong shrugged. ‘I suppose you may as well know the rest. It was simple enough to rig the fire-lance and the box; we worked on it through the night after purloining it from the Ottoman’s room on his first arrival at the palace.

  ‘I always had it in the back of my mind that I might need a backup, though. And I was quite right. Bloody cheap bit of American clockwork – I could hear the timer fail even while I stood beside the prince, smelling his wine-sodden breath. I knew the lance wasn’t going to go off of its own accord. So, just as I was leaving …’ He mimed reaching down with a lit cigarette to light the fuse.

  ‘As simple as that,’ Marcus said, marvelling.

  ‘It was always a cock-eyed sort of plot,’ Armstrong admitted. ‘But I thought we’d get away with it. I never had much faith that the earnest peelers of Scotland Yard would work out what had happened. Besides, I thought that the incident itself would soon be overwhelmed by a storm of diplomatic notes and ultimatums. The balance of power is, after all, precarious.’ He mimed a series of topplings. ‘And so, after the assassination of a crown prince, the empires would fall into war, one after the other.’

  Imogen shook her head. ‘But why wo
uld you want that?’

  Marcus added more sternly, ‘You and whoever is behind you.’

  ‘National interest,’ Armstrong said simply. ‘The guiding light of all British policy, Miss Brodsworth. The Ottomans and French have a pact, you see, of mutual protection against the Romans. They both rightly fear the rather awesome arsenal of weapons the Romans have developed in their Chinese wars. If war came it would be the pair of them against the Romans, a war of two fronts, and a right mess it would be.’

  Marcus listened, stone-faced. ‘And the British?’

  ‘We would come in on whichever side was winning. The Romans, even, if necessary, though I would expect that antique empire to implode. For what we want is not victory for one side or the other.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘Oil,’ Armstrong said simply. ‘Those oceans of oil, locked up under Baghdad, and in the Caucasus – all under the sway of the Romans. Oil that will drive our industries, and our own testudos, and especially our ships – we are a maritime nation, and you may know we recently converted most of our ships from coal. It’s oil we need, prefect, oil to fight the wars of the twentieth century, and it’s oil we mean to take.’

  Imogen said, ‘If war comes from this, the slaughter will be immense.’

  ‘Miss Brodsworth, you will never grasp the solemn contemplation of empires.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘and listening to you I’m jolly glad of it.’

  Marcus said coldly, ‘By cable, the Emperor will hear of this within the hour.’

  Armstrong was relaxed. ‘Fine. Everything I’ve told you is for your benefit only – I’ve come to feel rather fond of you two idiots. Tell Caesar what you like. No evidence will be found; my boys will make sure of that. The death of Gavrilo will no doubt be put down to an accident, muddy and unresolved. And even if some link were proven between the death and myself, the British government would deny all knowledge of it. I would be seen as a rogue, a maverick acting without instruction.’

  Imogen stared at him. ‘And is that the truth? That His Majesty’s government knows nothing about this dreadful plot?’