Another storm was brewing as they made for the hotel; the clouds roiled overhead as if the heavens themselves had turned restless. The few Istanbullus on the streets scurried past with collars upturned.
“There’s something I don’t get,” said Florence as they paced beside the Byzantine city wall. “The cistern was built in 532 AD. That’s two centuries after Eusebius wrote Life of Constantine. How did he know Alexander and Medusa would be there?”
“You’re forgetting something,” said Jake. “John the Lydian – Britton knew he was involved in this somehow.”
“Of course.” Florence was clear-eyed. “The scholar who translated the Etruscan calendar into Byzantine Greek. He was alive in 532.”
“Perhaps John the Lydian was a closet pagan too,” said Jake. “Maybe he cracked Eusebius’s code, just like we did.”
By keeping the divine faith, I am made a partaker of the light of truth. Guided by the light of truth, I advance in the knowledge of the divine faith.
“But Britton was wrong about one thing,” he continued. “John the Lydian’s legacy wasn’t hidden in the Agya Sophia at all. It was underneath Constantinople.”
“John the Lydian was a bureaucrat as well as a scholar,” Florence said. “In his day he was a powerful man – he could have seen to it that the statues remained in place when the cistern was enlarged.”
“For all we knew he moved them into the reservoir from somewhere else entirely,” said Jake. “But whoever installed them, it was a masterstroke. The water-level kept the inscriptions secret for the best part of two millennia.”
“I only wish Roger had been there to see it.”
Jake sought a distraction. This was his moment of triumph – if he was ever going to sleep with her it would be that very evening. He didn’t want her getting weepy.
“What did the inscription actually say?” he asked.
At once Florence’s mentor was forgotten. “It’s the most complete Etruscan writing I’ve ever found,” she said. “Sensational, in fact. And definitely from the Book of Thunder. It’s an incantation to dii consentes. The pitiless ones. They were Gods of fate, the advisers of Tin, the Etruscans’ supreme deity.”
Florence produced the shirt and began gleefully reading by the streetlight. On her tongue the extinct language sounded almost feral; it gave Jake the shivers. She was interrupted by the crack of thunder over the European mainland to the north-west, and lightning licked the underside of the clouds like a forked tongue. It was answered immediately by the stirring of the breeze, as though the wind was gearing itself up to meet the challenge of its brother element.
“Let’s get back to the hotel,” she said, quickening her pace. “It’s looking ugly up there.”
“It’s only two blocks away,” said Jake. “If the heavens open we can sprint.”
Florence’s reply was to seize him by the lapels of his coat and haul him into an alcove in the city wall. For a horrifying moment Jake thought she was pouncing on him.
Any second now we’ll be kissing.
But the kiss never came.
“What’s wrong?” said Jake. “What is it?”
The archaeologist silenced him with a finger to the lips. Her eyes darted in the direction of their hotel.
“Be quiet,” she mouthed.
Jake pressed himself into the shadows, all the old suspicions returning in force.
I’ll level with you, Mr Wolsey. I think I’m being followed.
Together they skulked in the darkness; time passed and despite himself Jake began shivering in the chill.
“I’m sorry,” whispered Florence. “I don’t know what came over me. I suddenly felt so … so paranoid.”
For a moment Jake thought she was going to cry.
“Let’s get you back,” he said, leading her out of the alcove. “You need a hot bath. And we’ve earned a stiff drink.”
“What must you think of me?” she said when they were within sight of the hotel. “I lost the plot back there.”
“Forget about it. It’s been a mad few days. And –”
Jake broke off mid-sentence. Two pedestrians on the other side of the street had abandoned their natural trajectory to make a beeline for them. They were wearing masks. Jake’s heart-rate doubled and the glut of adrenaline made him want to gag. Next there were guns in their hands.
The crack of a whip: it seemed to burst from the air itself.
The shorter gunman staggered. A hand went to his neck. He began clucking. Then he ripped off his mask, and with astonishment Jake saw it wasn’t a he at all – it was the flame-haired tourist whose picture he’d taken at the Agya Sophia. The woman’s eyes were rolling in her head and she dropped her pistol with a clatter.
“I can’t breathe,” she rasped. “I can’t breathe …”
At first Jake couldn’t work out what was happening. But two heartbeats later bubbles began foaming through her fingers. Then she let go of her neck and the blood squirted in a four-foot arc, as if the cork had been popped from a shaken bottle of champagne. There was a second crack as another bullet scythed the air. It hit the woman between the eyes and her skull was evacuated in a cloud of red. Instantly the strangulated gasps ceased and Jess Medcalf collapsed to the ground with the ragdoll swiftness of the newly-dead.