Secrets of the Dead

XXV

Kosovo – Present Day

THEY LEFT CAMP Bondsteel and drove north, back up the highway towards Pristina. Abby was getting sick of the sight of it. Jessop had wanted Sanchez to come with them, but his commanding officer flat out refused. The best Jessop got out of him was a KFOR map, which Sanchez marked where he thought the tomb had been.

Rain sluiced over the windscreen; tarpaulined lorries veered and swayed uneasily in front of them. Abby fished a cigarette out of her pocket and fumbled under the dashboard for the cigarette lighter. All she found was an empty socket.

‘They call it a power socket these days,’ said Jessop, laughing at her. He took a plastic lighter out of his pocket and reached across to light the cigarette.

‘Thanks.’ Abby tapped the bulge in her pocket. ‘Want one?’

‘I quit.’

She glanced across and saw he was smiling. ‘So how come you still carry the lighter?’

‘In case of emergencies.’

Mitrovica was a shabby, low-rise town squeezed between two rivers. During the war it had seen some of the worst atrocities; even now it was a divided city. French soldiers guarded the bridges; minarets and bell towers contested the skyline. Abby had hoped to avoid it, but the main road was closed for repairs. They drove in across a causeway on a floodplain. Rusted cars littered the shoreline. Across the river a crumbling factory pumped out smoke and pollution.

While Abby drove, Jessop tapped away at his phone.

‘What sort of a spy are you?’ she mocked him. ‘Shouldn’t you at least look where we’re going?’

‘I’m reading about it. Apparently, the Romans were up here in a big way. Lead and silver mining. We’re only about eighty miles from Niš.’

‘Is that a good thing?’

‘It’s where the Emperor Constantine was born. Remember, I said the symbol on your necklace was his monogram?’

Abby slouched lower in her seat. She still hadn’t told Jessop about the scroll in Trier. She had Gruber’s translation in her pocket, a hard wad, but somehow, the moment had passed.

‘So – what? Do you think this was Constantine’s tomb?’

More taps on the phone. ‘It says here Constantine was buried in Istanbul. The Church of the Holy Apostles, if you’re interested.’ He put the phone down in defeat. ‘I don’t know.’

Abby switched on the radio and kept her eyes on the road. She thought Jessop was watching her, and felt herself recoil. However nice he’s being, he’s still a spy, she reminded herself.

North of Mitrovica the road got quieter. Jessop put his phone away and stared out of the window. They were in a river valley, green fields on the valley floor giving way to thickly wooded hillsides and mountains beyond. Tall haystacks like beehives lined the fields at the sides of the road.

Something was puzzling Jessop. ‘The signs are different,’ he said. ‘Serbian?’

‘Up here, they almost run a parallel state. A lot of them only take Serbian money, too.’

Jessop shook his head in disbelief. ‘This whole so-called country’s barely the size of Somerset. You’d think that would be small enough for them, without trying to subdivide it again.’

‘They still think they’re part of Serbia. If NATO hadn’t conquered it, they would be.’

‘Maybe they should have thought of that before they started massacring Albanians.’

‘Maybe.’

Jessop gave her a sideways look. ‘It says in your file you’re supposed to be an idealist.’

From the corner of her eye, she saw a steel cross standing proud on a ridge overlooking the road. ‘That was a long time ago.’

They lapsed into silence. A military lorry with a German flag on the back drove past in the opposite direction. In the rear-view mirror Abby saw bored soldiers sitting with their rifles.

‘Do you think you should have brought back-up?’ she asked.

‘London’s assessment is that the countryside up here is fairly peaceful.’

‘It isn’t London who’ll be getting shot at if things go wrong.’

‘I’m aware of that.’ Jessop squinted at the map. ‘I think our turn should be just around the next corner.’

They slowed to a crawl. Abby checked her mirror. There’d been a little red Opel behind them for a while, but she hadn’t seen it for the last few miles. ‘Is that it?’

It was a dirt track with a strip of weeds down the middle. It blended with the surrounding fields so well they might not have noticed it, if there hadn’t been a white shrine standing on the corner. A bedraggled bouquet wilted at its base, testament to some too-familiar road tragedy.

Jessop stared at the map. ‘Let’s try it.’

The track was heavily rutted. Abby engaged the Landcruiser’s four-wheel drive, wrestling to keep it moving through the mud. Jessop leaned forward and peered through the rain-spattered windscreen.

‘Do those tyre-marks look fresh to you?’

Abby didn’t have time to look. The track had crossed the valley and begun to climb through the trees, where the slope and protruding rocks added new complications. Rivulets streamed down the track, gouging away the soft earth. Under the tree canopy, the day was almost black.

She crested the hill, spun the car around a sharp bend – and stopped so fast she almost stalled the car. A black pick-up truck stood parked across the road, blocking it completely. Two men in dark blue camouflage fatigues and balaclavas were standing beside it, AK-47s cradled in their arms.

‘KFOR are supposed to make sure this doesn’t happen,’ Jessop said. He had his phone out and was frantically tapping the screen. ‘They’re supposed to keep the roads open.’

‘Looks like someone didn’t get the memo.’ She was surprised how steady she felt. Crazy though it was, she knew what to do in these sorts of situation – had faced them dozens of times before. The scenery changed, but the actors never did: pick-up trucks and men with guns.

She reached in her pocket for the cigarette pack, then raised her hands so that the gunmen could see. One man walked forward; the other stayed by the truck, weapon pointed at the Toyota’s radiator.

The man drew level and gestured her to wind down the window. Dark eyes surveyed her from the balaclava’s moon-holes. He looked surprised to see the woman driving.

‘Papers, please?’ he grunted in English.

Abby fished out a cigarette with her teeth, then offered him the pack. He took it without thanks.

‘Is it OK to reach in my bag?’ She’d spoken in Serbian. The eyes squinted; the head nodded.

‘What are you doing here?’

Abby jerked her head at the side of the Landcruiser and thanked God for the stickers on the side. ‘EULEX. We’re supporting the environment ministry.’

She fumbled in her bag and handed the passport to the guard. He opened to the page with the twenty-euro note slipped inside.

‘And your friend?’

‘Some expert from London. He wants to see the trees.’

The twenty euros disappeared into a pocket. ‘Wait here.’

He walked back to the pick-up and conferred with his companion. He took out a silver mobile phone and started talking vigorously. The gun pointed at the car didn’t move.

‘What did you tell them?’ Jessop asked.

Abby stared ahead and tried to control her breathing. ‘He thinks we’re looking for illegal wood.’

‘Illegal wood?’

‘Seventy per cent of Kosovars use log fires for heating their homes. Outside the cities life can be pretty primitive. Even in the towns, the electricity supply’s mediocre at best. Illegal logging’s a big problem.’

‘And he thinks we’re hot on the trail?’

By the pick-up truck, the guard was still talking earnestly into his phone. ‘Who knows what he thinks? Or who he’s telling. Those uniforms are Serbian police.’

‘Are they allowed –?’

‘Have you still got that lighter?’

Jessop held it out, but his hands were trembling so badly he couldn’t spark the flint. Abby took it from him and lit her last cigarette.

‘This is the Balkans,’ she said through a mouthful of smoke. ‘Uniforms mean nothing. In Bosnia in the nineties, Milošević sent the Serbian army over the border, gave them new badges, and suddenly they were the Bosnian army.’ She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be some sort of expert?’

‘I’m a generalist.’

In front of them, the guard finished his call and put the phone away. It flashed like a knife where the headlights caught it. He slung his gun on his shoulder, then walked slowly back to their car.

‘Is everything OK?’ Abby asked, reaching to take the passport back.

After that, she barely knew what happened. He dropped the passport, grabbed her wrist and pulled her forward. His other hand yanked open the door. She tumbled out of the car and landed at his feet in the mud.

A rough hand grabbed her collar and hauled her to her feet, pushing her against the side of the car. On the passenger side, Jessop was being ushered out of the car at gunpoint by the other policeman. Abby felt her hands being forced behind her back and zipped together with cable ties. She didn’t resist.

They dragged her to the pick-up truck and lifted her between them into the back. Jessop followed. One of the guards climbed in with them, the other got in the cab. The pick-up lurched forward: Abby slid back on the wet floor and slammed into the tailgate. The guard, hanging on to a cargo strap, followed her all the way with his AK-47. The truck bounced on the rutted track, flinging Abby and Jessop about like a pair of corpses. With her hands tied behind her, she couldn’t even break the impact. The wound in her shoulder screamed in agony. She lay face down, tasting blood and rain and steel on her tongue, and waited for it to end.

The rain on her back got heavier; the air grew lighter. She twisted around and looked up. Thick forests climbed on to high mountain slopes, but the sky above was open. They must have come out into a valley.

She rolled around to face Jessop. ‘Where are they taking us?’

‘Serbia. It can’t be more than a few miles. Once we’re across the border, they – fuck!’

The truck stopped with a bang, so abrupt that Abby and Jessop were thrown into the air and fell hard. Even the guard banged his head. He slid open the window that connected with the cab and shouted in to the driver. Any answer was drowned by the complaint of the engine, revving and groaning, but not moving.

And suddenly it cut out. All Abby could hear now was the rain drumming on the bed of the truck, and the sweep of the wind through the trees. The guard opened the tailgate, jumped down and went forward to the cab. She heard him arguing with the driver, swearing about something broken, though she didn’t know the words.

She curled in a ball, huddling against Jessop for warmth. Her sodden clothes encased her like ice; the heat had left her.

‘It’s OK,’ Jessop whispered in her ear. ‘I called it in. The cavalry are coming.’

But that required hope, and she had none. She lay there and waited for the rain to dissolve her to nothing.

She must have closed her eyes, because when she opened them the guard was crouched over her, shaking her awake. Her head pounded; her body shivered so hard she thought it would break apart.

Through the pain and the noise in her skull, she realised he was speaking Serbian.

‘Get up. He’s almost here.’

He pulled her upright and lifted her down to the ground. Jessop was already there. They’d come into a wild open meadow cupped between the mountains and the forest, a forlorn and lonely place. One track led down from the forest to the east; a second came down the valley from the north and met it at a crossroads where the pick-up had broken down. Two black Range Rovers were driving towards them, spraying mud behind the tyres. In the distance, Abby heard a roar like a waterfall.

The guard glanced nervously at the sky. He herded Abby and Jessop against the side of the truck and stood back, sweeping his gun from one to the other. The Range Rovers pulled off the track on to the grass, forming a rough triangle with the pick-up. Men in jeans and black parkas jumped out; one opened the rear door of the front car.

A slim figure in a long wool coat stepped out, daintily avoiding the mud, and walked towards them. He looked smaller in that vast landscape than he had in his office in Rome, but the aura of power that surrounded him was undiminished. Even the bodyguards seemed to keep a wary distance.

‘Dragović,’ Jessop mumbled beside her.

Dragović stopped a few paces in front of them. He ignored Abby, but gave Jessop a long, piercing look. He shook his head.

‘It’s not Lascaris.’

He pulled a pistol from under his parka and aimed it at Jessop’s head. The distant noise grew louder. Abby heard Jessop shouting desperate pleas, twisting like a dog on a leash. The whole earth seemed to be trembling underneath her. The wind rose, blowing rain against her face. Dragović stepped back.

The flash from the muzzle split the world in two. The pick-up shuddered as the bullets slammed Jessop’s body against it. Blood spattered her face, warmer than the rain. Dragović’s gun swung towards her. He was shouting something, but through the ringing in her ears and the roar behind she couldn’t understand.

This is the way it ends.

And suddenly the gun was gone. Dragović had turned, was running back to the Range Rover. Before she could wonder, a hand grabbed her throat. One of the guards had his face almost touching hers, screaming words she could barely make out. ‘Did you call the fucking cops? Did your friend?’

A dying memory flickered in her mind, Jessop fiddling with his phone just before they were captured. The cavalry are coming. She hadn’t believed him.

‘I don’t know.’

He pulled her away from the truck, spun her around and yanked her hair so that her face pointed at the sky.

‘What the fuck is that?’

A black helicopter came over the hilltop and raced up the valley towards them. It had a snub nose and a squat body; wheels poked from the undercarriage like talons. It yawed in the wind, and as it banked around Abby saw KFOR stencilled in white on the fuselage.

The men around her scattered. She saw Dragović diving into the back of his Range Rover, mud spatters up the back of his expensive trousers. Even before the door shut, the car started to move back up the valley. The second Range Rover followed.

The helicopter came right overhead. Abby felt the beat of its rotors like body blows, the draught sucking her off the ground and whipping the rain hard against her. She waited for it to pan out like the movies: for the ziplines to snake down and a platoon of hard-as-nails soldiers to land and take out the bad guys.

The helicopter flew by, following the Range Rovers. One of her captors appeared from around the pick-up and grabbed her arm, manacled behind her back. He was still wearing the blue police uniform he’d had on for the roadblock.

They saw the uniforms from the helicopter, Abby realised. They think the guards are Kosovo Police.

The guard jammed the gun in her ribs and started screaming about killing her there if she didn’t come. Leaving Jessop’s corpse slumped by the truck, he dragged her across the meadow and towards the trees on the far side of the valley. The other policeman followed. The ground had looked flat from the car, but underfoot she found it much more uneven, studded with sudden hummocks and low embankments that bulged under the earth, like toys left under a carpet. With her hands tied behind her back, her wet clothes straitjacketing her and the guard hauling her on faster than she could run, she jerked and flailed like a fish on a line.

The roar, quieter now, changed to a high-pitched whine. She craned her neck around. A few hundred yards up the valley, the helicopter had overtaken Dragović’s Range Rover and was coming in to land in the middle of the track. The doors slid open as it touched down with a spray of dirt. A dozen soldiers scrambled out, fanning into a rough roadblock. The two Range Rovers swerved off the track and tore across open ground to get to the forest.

She’d slowed down. The guard jerked her forward again, cracking her shin on a half-buried rock. She stumbled forward, kicked through the long wet grass and staggered into the forest. From the safety of the trees, Abby’s captors turned and looked back.

The helicopter was airborne again, following the Range Rovers towards the tree line. Why don’t they shoot? A few rounds would have stopped Dragović dead – she could see the silhouette of the heavy machine gun sticking out from the Blackhawk’s side. The helicopter hovered overhead, a cat toying with a mouse, but didn’t pounce.

They’re not allowed to, she thought dully. She’d read the mandate; she knew the rules of engagement. Dragović in their sights, and they couldn’t pull the trigger. All the troops on the ground could do was follow. Some were running after the Range Rovers; the rest were advancing down the valley towards the wrecked pick-up. Had they seen her? Would they catch her in time?

Abby felt cold steel against her wrists. The guard had pulled out his knife. Before she could feel afraid, there was a sudden jerk, and then her hands were free.

‘Now you run faster,’ the guard said. He jabbed his gun into the small of her back and she obeyed. She staggered through the trees, fighting the slope, the wet clothes, the mud and slick leaves – all trying to push her back into the gun.

A shot rang through the forest behind her. Instinct threw her to the ground, but she hadn’t been hit. When she looked back, she saw the Serb crouched on all fours, clutching his leg where blood spilled from it. The other guard ran to his side, loosing an undirected burst of bullets into the trees.

His back was turned. Abby saw her chance and ran.

Time stopped. She was in a world of leaves and mud and lead, of shots and shouts and no horizon beyond the next tree. She ran, weaving wildly. Her legs ached from pushing against the soaked jeans, her lungs were bursting, her shoulder hurt so much she wondered if she’d even feel the bullet if it came.

The trees thinned as she came out in a small clearing where a rock face reared out of the forest floor. A low fissure opened into it, with black mounds of freshly dug earth around it and a strip of tape tied across it. Next to the entrance, a bleached ram’s skull grinned at her from the stick it had been planted on. Somewhere, not far away, she heard running footsteps.

Even in her panic she felt the darkness of the place, the pull of a malevolent gravity willing her into the cave. A breeze stirred the hairs on the back of her neck; the wild part of her mind told her it was Michael’s ghost trying to tell her something. A warning? A blessing? She took in the tape on the door, the cigarette butts trampled into the ground and the foil ration packs scattered among the bushes. This must be the place she’d come for. It had seemed so important. Now she hardly cared.

But the footsteps were getting closer, and she’d run out of options. She ducked into the cave.

The light from outside didn’t reach far. Panicked by the darkness, she patted her pocket and felt Jessop’s lighter. She flicked it on. The flame gleamed off smooth-cut walls, too straight for a cave. A passage, leading into the rock.

A few yards in, it opened into a low, rectangular chamber with a curved roof. A stone trough ran across one end, with a niche in the wall above it where a statue might once have stood. Faded paintings in ochres, greens and blues covered every inch of the walls. By the light of the flame Abby saw a boat crossing a fish-filled sea; ivy tendrils winding around painted columns; a goddess in a gauzy dress descending to a sleeping hero, flanked by lions and the moon and the sun. There was writing, too, but try as she might she couldn’t make out the crumbling letters.

It’s a tomb, Abby thought. The stone trough was a sarcophagus – she could see the lid leaning against it, the white scrapes on the stone where Michael and Sanchez had prised it off.

She took her thumb off the lighter so it wouldn’t give her away. She sat on the floor in darkness, her wet clothes colder than death. She was shivering, though she barely noticed. She pressed her thumb against the lighter’s steel, just to feel the heat.

She thought of the skeleton ripped from his grave, and wondered if this would be her tomb, too. A life for a life, a corpse for a corpse. She remembered Shai Levin. Most likely he was stabbed through the heart. It was an effort to think that this chamber belonged to a man who once lived and breathed as she did. Probably rich. Lived a violent life. A man who had planned and commissioned his tomb for posterity, never imagining that seventeen centuries later it would be lost in an unpopulated corner of a contested country.

Noise from outside the cave. Shouts, the clatter of rocks. She lifted her head. A dull bang rolled down the passage and she knew, with the intuition of the grave, that someone else had died.

The daylight at the end of the passage went out.

She had nowhere to hide. If she was going to die, at least she’d make the bastard look at her. Soft footsteps padded down the passage, slow and cautious. She flicked on the lighter. The ghosts of gods and heroes peered down from the wasting paint and waited to claim her. The man in the passage – was it a man? – came nearer. For a moment, he existed in perfect darkness – beyond the day, before the flame. The breeze blew in his scent, dead leaves and wet soil, the smell of an open grave.

He stepped forward. His face swam in and out of the firelight. Deep shadows swallowed his cheeks, so that all she could see was the thrust of his skull, the curly grey hair matted flat by the rain.

Her head spun. She heard the gods calling her on and laughing. She must have died. She lifted the lighter, and the shadows dropped away from his face.

‘Michael?’