Florence Chung leaned her forehead against the window of the private jet and stared at Rome. The hills of Lazio had given way to the city itself: sprawling and confused, the Tiber slithering through it. St Peter’s rose above the cityscape like a Baroque wedding cake, and – a heart in mouth moment – there was the Colosseum. It was stunted by comparison with modern Rome. Yet it seemed dogged somehow, unwilling to erode under the bombardment of time. Finally they were over the Forum; Florence had visited Rome often and still the sight of it humbled her.
Another roar of “Happy Birthday to you!” interrupted her cogitations.
Florence glared at her compatriots. What was officially a Chinese trade delegation had departed Addis that morning, but her team had played the part of a Shanghai business trip too well in that they were all roaring drunk. Florence had always felt superior to the China-born, and now she was reminded why. The middle class was desperate to emulate westerners; for the men that meant Anglo-Saxon feats of drinking. The result was this bilious little jamboree.
“Happy Birthday to you!”
She snorted. It was nobody’s birthday – the game was for everyone to charge their glasses until at some unknowable moment they downed their drinks and sang a verse.
Florence closed her ears to the carousing and recited the incantations to herself again. First, the paean to dii consentes, the pitiless, advisers of the supreme God Tin. Istanbul would always be special to her – it was the place where she’d first managed to tune into the frequency. Then from Ethiopia had come the incantation to dii novensiles, casters of lightning. An extra je ne sais quoi had coursed through her veins since then – like mercury or liquid iron, white heat … Florence couldn’t explain it, but that inscription had done something biological to her. Her period hadn’t come for one thing. It was a worry, but never mind – with each discovery she had gained in potency. A glow emanated from her lower body at the thought and she wriggled in her seat, suddenly aroused. What was still to be found? It could only be an incantation to those numinous powers closest to the Great All-Seeing Eye, dii superiores, who advised Tin on when to throw the most dreaded thunderbolt of all: that of destruction.
Florence’s prescience was burgeoning; indeed it was on her reading of the portents that they had travelled to Italy. But the final weapon in her armoury was missing – the ability to do to others what had been done to Roger Britton. The last inscription would be the key to it all, and without it her augury would forever be vague.
She had to have it.
“Happy Birthday to you!”
Florence scowled at the party. Then she leaned back, succumbing to her memories. Like so many spies, her initial motivation on joining a secret service had been the thrill of it all. Despite her advantages in life she’d always lacked confidence in her intellect. She had a decent enough brain; she could learn by rote and through sheer hard graft she had made it to Oxbridge. Yet Florence felt self-conscious around people with real intelligence: the ability to make connections. People like Jake. So Gods, what a buzz it was to be headhunted by the land of her forefathers, to play her part in making China the most powerful nation on earth. And at this, the dawn of China’s millennium. Her peers may have been hoovered up by the chambers of the Square Mile, but Florence was part of something bigger. Something with the seductive scent of danger about it – and plenty of cash on offer too.
Then they had told her to become an archaeologist.
She smirked to recall how bitter she was at the start, scraping away in the dirt with a trowel while her friends sashayed through the Old Bailey. But then she began to understand what her paymasters had in mind for her, and a third motivation crept in alongside the excitement and the money. The most insidious vice of all: power.
With her growing capabilities, the lust for it had elbowed lesser foibles aside. She bit her lip, aroused once again. Soon she had slipped into the realm of daydream, indulging herself with thoughts of how far she could go and what she might become. Were her handlers mentoring others to be fulguriatores? If not, and if she acquired the next inscription – why, then the People’s Republic of China would be in thrall to Florence Chung, rather than the other way around. Energy radiated through her at the thought, a crackle that began in her cranium and ran down her nervous system, through her bone marrow, the organs in her abdomen. It was an unnerving sensation. But an exciting one.
The fantasy was interrupted by her ears popping; they were coming in to land. The sensation reminded her she was still human, composed of flesh and bone.
No Augustus yet.