Istanbul in January can be an ugly city. Mass housing on the outskirts, rising from barren earth like dragon’s teeth; the harbour mucky and whipped into scum; the cityscape bleak against iron-shod skies. Istanbullus hurried along in anoraks and scarves, carrying themselves with all the grace of Londoners in rush hour. Only the mosques relieved the eye. The minarets rose in thickets, like bulrushes, pointing out the heavens.
Florence had booked a hotel in the Sultanahmet district, where the cobbles and wooden houses were more to Jake’s taste. And he was relieved to see alcohol on sale everywhere – perhaps the Laphroaig he’d bought in the airport was unnecessary. Better safe than sorry, though. He had been caught short in Islamic countries before.
Florence had barely talked on the flight, engrossing herself in Britton’s legacy. But if anything was hidden there it had eluded her, and she had grown infuriated.
“Why the heck did he leave us Life of Constantine?” she muttered as they took the sea air on the little toe of the European continent. “Eusebius lived two hundred years before John the Lydian. And this of all of his works! Chapter after chapter about what a devout Christian the emperor was – you’d never guess Constantine murdered his own family.”
Jake didn’t reply. He had learned that the archaeologist had moods in which she was best handled like a poisonous flower: from a distance and with gloves on. Instead he gazed out to Asia Minor, once gifted to Rome in the will of a Greek king.
Work at the Agya Sophia began at 9 a.m. the next day. The neighbouring Blue Mosque is the more famous sight, but it was the Agya Sophia that filled Jake with awe. The Sophia’s crowning glory is a dome some hundred feet wide – during construction many had said that it could never support itself. The clay-red leviathan fell away beneath the rim, arch upon balustrade upon buttress.
“A true monument to devotion,” said Jake. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
He glanced at Florence, expecting scorn – but she was smiling at him.
A representative from the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul gave the pair a tour. Dr Adnan Gul had an explosion of pewter hair, skin like a used teabag and a nicotine-yellow moustache. Jake warmed to him at once. They entered through the Portal of the Emperor, with its forty-foot doors of oak and iron. Within was the biggest room he had ever set foot in, hewn from marble of blue and volcanic pink.
The scale of the undertaking hit him in full.
*
Jenny peered over the balcony. The people below were like matchsticks, but she could identify Wolsey by his shock of blond hair. He stood with palms flat as if steadying himself, and his mouth was a dot of black.
Her radio crackled.
“Can you see him?” said Jess Medcalf. “Coming through the really big door.”
“I’ve got him,” she replied. “I take it that’s Chung?”
“That’s her,” said Medcalf. “I don’t know if you can tell from up there, but man, she is a hottie.”
Jenny’s radio crackled again.
“We don’t know who the third guy is,” said Alexander Guilherme, who had attached himself to an Indian tour group. “A Turk, by the looks of it. They met outside – by appointment, I would say. It was all very formal.”
Jenny’s eyes went right, to where Medcalf was inspecting a brass chandelier strung from a hundred and twenty feet up. She smiled. They were a good team. But so they needed to be. Jenny felt another surge of adrenaline at what they were about to do.