Last Act In Palmyra mdf-6 Read online

  I growled. This was worse news than being asked to attend Vespasian or one of his sons.

  Anacrites was the official Chief Spy at the Palace. We were old antagonists. Our rivalry was the most bitter kind: purely professional. He liked to see himself as an expert at dealing with tricky characters in dangerous locations, but the truth was he led too soft a life and had lost the knack; besides, Vespasian kept him short of resources, so he was beset by pathetic subordinates and never had a ready bribe to hand, Lack of small change is fatal in our job.

  Whenever Anacrites bungled some sensitive commission, he knew Vespasian would send me in to put his mistakes right. (I provided my own resources; I came cheap.) My successes had aroused his permanent jealousy. Now, although his habit was always to appear friendly in public, I knew that one day Anacrites meant to fix me for good.

  I gave his messenger another piece of colourful career advice, then stomped in for what was bound to be a tense confrontation. Anacrites' office was about the size of my mother's lamp store. Spies were not accorded respect under Vespasian; he had never cared who might be overheard insulting him. Vespasian had Rome to rebuild, and took the rash view that his public achievements would sufficiently enhance his reputation without the need to resort to terror tactics.

  Under this relaxed regime Anacrites was visibly struggling. He had equipped himself with a folding bronze chair, but sat crushed up in one corner of the room in order to make space for his clerk. The clerk was a big, misshapen lump of Thracian sheep's fat in a flashy red tunic that he must have stolen off a balcony parapet whilst it was hanging out to air. His huge feet took up most of the floor in their ungainly sandals, ink and lamp oil spilled on their thongs. Even with Anacrites sitting there, this clerk managed to suggest that he was the important person visitors ought to address.

  The room gave off a faintly unprofessional impression. It had an odd scent of turpentine corn plasters and cold toasted bread. Scattered all around were crumpled scrolls and wax tablets that I took to be expenses claims. Probably claims by Anacrites and his runners which the Emperor had refused to pay. Vespasian was notoriously tight, and spies have no sense of discretion when requesting travel refunds.

  As I went in, the master of espionage was chewing a stylus and staring dreamily at a fly on the wall. Once he saw me, Anacrites straightened up and looked important. He hit his knee with a crack that made the clerk wince, and me too; then he sank back pretending to be unconcerned. I winked at the clerk. He knew what a bastard he worked for, yet openly dared to grin back at me.

  Anacrites affected tunics in discreet shades of stone and buff as if he were pretending to merge into backgrounds, but his clothes always had a slightly racy cut, and his hair lay oiled back from his temples so precisely I felt my nostrils curl. The vanity in his appearance matched his view of himself professionally. He was a good public speaker, able to mislead with easy grace. I never trust men who have nicely manicured fingernails and a deceitful way with words.

  My dusty boot knocked into a group of scrolls. 'What's this? More poisonous accusations against innocent citizens?'

  'Falco, just you attend to your business, and I'll look after mine.' He managed to imply that his business was deeply relevant and intriguing, while my motives and methods smelt like a barrel of dead squid.

  'A pleasure,' I agreed. 'Must have received the wrong message. Someone claimed you needed me – '

  'I sent for you.' He had to act as if he were giving me orders. I ignored the insult – temporarily.

  I pressed a small copper into his clerk's hand. 'Go out and buy yourself an apple.' Anacrites looked furious at me interfering with his staff. While he was still thinking up a countermand, the Thracian skipped. I slumped on to the clerk's vacant stool, spreading myself across most of the office, and grabbed a scroll to look through nosily.

  'That document is confidential, Falco.'

  I carried on unrolling the papyrus, raising an eyebrow. 'Dear gods, I hope it is! You won't want this muck being made public…' I dropped the scroll behind my stool, out of his reach. He went pink with annoyance at not being able to see which secrets I had been looking at.

  Actually, I had not bothered to read it. Nothing but nonsense ever came through this office. Most of the sly schemes Anacrites was pursuing would sound ludicrous to the average stroller in the Forum. I preferred not to upset myself by finding out.

  'Falco, you're making my office untidy!'

  'So spill the message and I'll go.'

  Anacrites was too professional to squabble. Pulling himself together, he lowered his voice. 'We ought to be on the same side,' he commented, like a drunken old friend reaching the point where he wants to tell you just why he shoved his elderly father over the cliff. 'I don't know what makes us always seem so incompatible!'

  I could suggest reasons. He was a sinister shark with devious motives who manipulated everyone. He received a good salary for working as little as possible. I was just a freelance hero doing his best in a hard world, meanly paid for it, and always in arrears. Anacrites stayed in the Palace and dabbled in sophisticated concepts, while I was out saving the empire, getting filthy and beaten up.

  I smiled quietly. 'I've no idea.'

  He knew I was lying. Then he hit me with the words I dread to hear from bureaucrats: 'Time we made it all up, then! Marcus Didius, old friend, let's go out for a drink…'

  Chapter III

  He hauled me off to a thermopolium the Palace secretaries use. I had been there before. It was always full of ghastly types who liked to think they ruled the world. When secretariat papyrus beetles go out to socialise they have to burrow among their own kind.

  They can't even find a decent hole. This was a shabby stand-up wine bar where the air smelt sour and one glance around the clientele explained it. The few pots of food looked caked with week-old crusts of gravy on their rims; nobody was eating from them. In a chipped dish a dry old gherkin tried to look impressive beneath a pair of copulating flies. A misshapen, bad-tempered male skivvy flung herb twigs into pannikins of hot wine boiled down to the colour of dried blood.

  Even halfway through the morning, eight or ten inky blots in dingy tunics were Crammed up against one another, all talking about their terrible jobs and their lost chances for promotion. They swigged drearily as if someone had just told them the Parthians had wiped out five thousand Roman veterans and the price of olive oil had slumped. I felt ill just looking at them.

  Anacrites ordered. I knew I was in trouble when he also settled the bill.

  'What's this? I expect a Palace employee to dash for the latrine door whenever a reckoning hoves into view!'

  'You like your joke, Falco.' What made him think it was a joke?

  'Your health,' I said politely, trying not to sound as if actually I wished him a plague of warts and Tiber fever.

  'Yours too! So, Falco, here we are…' From a beautiful woman slipping out of her tunic, this could have been a promising remark. From him it stank.

  'Here we are,' I growled back, intending to be somewhere else as soon as possible. Then I sniffed at my drink, which smelt like thin vinegar, and waited in silence for him to come to the point. Trying to rush Anacrites only made him dawdle more.

  After what seemed like half an hour, though I had only managed to swallow a digit of the awful wine, he struck: 'I've been hearing all about your German adventure.' I smiled to myself as he tried to insinuate an admiring tone into his basic hostility. 'How was it?'

  'Fine, if you like gloomy weather, legionary swank, and amazing examples of ineptitude among the higher ranks. Fine, if you like to winter in a forest where the ferocity of the animals is excelled only by the bad mood of the trousered barbarians who are holding spears to your throat.'

  'You do love to talk!'

  'And I hate wasting time. What's the point of this fake banter, Anacrites?'

  He gave me a soothing smile, meant to patronise. 'The Emperor happens to want another extraterritorial expedition – by somebody discr
eet.'

  My response may have sounded cynical. 'You mean he's instructed you to do the job yourself, but you're keen to duck? Is the mission just dangerous, or does it involve an inconvenient journey, a foul climate, a total lack of civilised amenities, and a tyrannical king who likes his Romans laced on a spit over a very hot fire?'

  'Oh, the place is civilised.'

  That applied to very few corners outside the Empire – the one thing these tended to have in common was a determination to stay outside. It led to an unfriendly reception for our envoys. The more we pretended to arrive with peaceful intentions, the more certain they felt that we had their country earmarked for annexation. 'I don't like the sound of that! Before you bother asking, my answer's no.'

  Anacrites was keeping his face expressionless. He sipped his wine. I had seen him quaff fine fifteen-year-old Alban, and I knew he could tell the difference. It amused me to watch his strange, light eyes flicker as he tried not to mind drinking this bitter brew in company he also despised. He asked,

  'What makes you so certain the old man instructed me to go myself?'

  'Anacrites, when he wants me, he tells me so in person.'

  'Maybe he asked my opinion, and I warned him you were unreceptive to work from the Palace nowadays.'

  'I've always been unreceptive.' I was reluctant to mention my recent kick in the teeth, though in fact Anacrites had been present when my request for promotion was turned down by Vespasian's son Domitian. I even suspected Anacrites was behind that act of imperial graciousness. He must have noticed my anger.

  'I find your feelings perfectly understandable,' the Chief Spy said in what he must have hoped was a winning way, apparently unaware he was risking several broken ribs. 'You had a big investment in getting promoted. It must have been a bad shock being turned down. I suppose this spells the end of your relationship with the Camillus girl?'

  'I'll handle my own feelings. And don't speculate about my girl'

  'Sorry!' he murmured meekly. I felt my teeth grind. 'Look, Falco, I thought I might be able to do you a favour here. The Emperor put me in charge of this; I can commission whoever I want. After what happened the other day at the Palace, you may welcome an opportunity to get as far away from Rome as possible…'

  Sometimes Anacrites sounded as though he had been listening at my doorlatch while I talked life over with Helena. As we lived on the sixth floor, it was unlikely any of his minions had flogged up to eavesdrop, but I took a firmer grip on my winecup while my eyes narrowed.

  'There's no need to go on to the defensive, Falco!' He could be too observant for anybody's good. Then he shrugged, raising his hands easily. 'Suit yourself. If I can't identify a suitable envoy I can always go myself.'

  'Why, where is it?' I asked, without intending to.

  'Nabataea.'

  'Arabia Petraia?'

  'Does that surprise you?'

  'No.'

  I had hung around the Forum often enough to consider myself an expert in foreign policy. Most of the gossipmongers on the steps of the Temple of Saturn had never stepped outside Rome, or at least had gone no further than whichever little villa in central Italy their grandfathers came from; unlike them I had seen the edge of the Empire. I knew what went on at the frontier, and when the Emperor looked beyond it I knew what his preoccupations were.

  Nabataea lay between our troubled lands in Judaea, which Vespasian and his son Titus had recently pacified, and the imperial province of Egypt. It was the meeting point of several great trade routes across Arabia from the Far East: spices and peppers, gemstones and sea pearls, exotic woods and incense. By policing these caravan routes the Nabataeans kept the country safe for merchants, and charged highly for the service. At Petra, their secretively guarded stronghold, they had established a key centre of trade. Their customs levies were notorious, and since Rome was the most voracious customer for luxury goods, in the end it was Rome who paid. I could see exactly why Vespasian might now be wondering whether the rich and powerful Nabataeans should be encouraged to join the Empire and bring their vital, lucrative trading post under our direct control.

  Anacrites mistook my silence for interest in his proposal. He gave me the usual flattery about this being a task very few agents could tackle.

  'You mean you've already asked ten other people, and they all developed sick headaches!'

  'It could be a job to get you noticed.'

  'You mean if I do it well, the assumption will be it can't have been so difficult after all.'

  'You've been around too long!' He grinned. Momentarily I liked him more than usual. 'You seemed the ideal candidate, Falco.'

  'Oh come off it! I've never been outside Europe!'

  'You have connections with the East.'

  I laughed shortly. 'Only the fact my brother died there!'

  'It gives you an interest – '

  'Correct! An interest in making sure I never visit the damned desert myself.'

  I told Anacrites to wrap himself in a vine leaf and jump head first into an amphora of rancid oil, then I derisively poured what remained in my winecup back into his flagon, and marched off.

  Behind me I knew the Chief Spy wore an indulgent smile. He was sure I would think over his fascinating proposition, then come creeping back.

  Anacrites was forgetting about Helena.

  Chapter IV

  Guiltily I recalled my attention to the baby elephant.

  Helena was looking at me. She said nothing, but she gave me a certain still, quiet stare. It had the same effect on me as walking down a dark alley between high buildings in a known haunt of robbers with knives.

  There was no need to mention that I had been offered a new mission; Helena knew. Now my problem was not trying to find a way of telling her, but sounding as if I had intended to come clean all along. I disguised a sigh. Helena looked away.

  'We'll give the elephant a rest,' Thalia grumbled, coming back to us. 'Is he being a good boy?' She meant the python. Presumably.

  'He's a treat,' Helena answered, in the same dry tone. 'Thalia, what were you saying about a possible job for Marcus?'

  'Oh, it's nothing.'

  'If it was nothing,' I said, 'you wouldn't have thought of mentioning it.'

  'Just a girl.'

  'Marcus likes jobs involving girls,' Helena commented.

  'I bet he does!'

  'I met a nice one once,' I put in reminiscently. The girl I once met took my hand, fairly nicely.

  'He's all talk,' Thalia consoled her.

  'Well, he thinks he's a poet.'

  'That's right: all lip and libido!' I joined in, for self-protection.

  'Pure swank,' said Thalia. 'Like the bastard who ran off with my water organist.'

  'Is this your missing person?' I forced myself to show an interest, partly to insert some professional grit but mainly to distract Helena from guessing I had been called to the Palace again.

  Thalia spread herself on the arena seats. The effect was dramatic. I made sure I was gazing out towards the elephant. 'Don't rush me, as the High Priest said to the acolyte… Sophrona, her name was.'

  'It would be.' All the cheap skirts who pretended to play musical instruments were called Sophrona nowadays.

  'She was really good, Falco!' I knew what that meant. (Actually, coming from Thalia it meant she was really good.) 'She could play,' Thalia confirmed. 'There were plenty of parasites taking advantage of the Emperor's interest.' She was referring to Nero, the water-organ fanatic, not our present endearing specimen. Vespasian's most famous musical trait was going to sleep during Nero's lyre performances, for which he had been lucky to escape with nothing worse than a few months' exile. 'A true artiste, Sophrona was.'

  'Musicianship?' I queried innocently.

  'A lovely touch… And looks! When Sophrona pumped out her tunes men rose in their seats.'

  I took it at face value, not looking at Helena, who was supposed to have been politely brought up. Nevertheless I heard her giggling shamelessly before she asked,
'Had she been with you long?'

  'Virtually from babyhood. Her mother was a lanky chorus dancer in a mime group I once ran into. Reckoned she couldn't look after a child. Couldn't be bothered, more like. I saved the scrap, fostered her out until she was a useful age, then taught her what I could. She was too tall for an acrobat, but luckily she turned out to be musical, so when I saw that the hydraulus was the instrument of the moment I grabbed the chance and got Sophrona trained. I paid for it, at a time when I wasn't doing so well as nowadays, so I'm annoyed at losing her.'

  'Tell us what happened, Thalia?' I asked. 'How could an expert like you be so careless as to lose valuable talent from your troupe?'

  'It wasn't me who lost her!' Thalia snorted. 'That fool Fronto. He was showing some prospective patrons around -Eastern visitors. He reckoned they were theatrical entrepreneurs, but they were time-wasters.'

  'Just wanted a free gawp at the menagerie?'

  'And at female tumblers with no clothes on. The rest of us could see we hadn't much hope of them hiring us for anything. Even if they had done it would have been all sodomy and mean tips. So nobody took much notice. It was just before the panther got loose and munched up Fronto; naturally things grew rather hectic after that. The Syrians did pay us another hopeful visit, but we pulled down the awnings. They must have left Rome, and then we realised Sophrona had gone too.'

  'A man in it?'

  'Oh bound to be!'

  I noticed Helena smiling again as Thalia exploded with contempt. Then Helena asked, 'At least you know they were Syrian. So who were these visitors?'

  'No idea. Fronto was the man in charge,' Thalia grumbled, as if she were accusing him of seedy moral habits. 'Once Fronto ended up inside the panther, all we could remember was that they spoke Greek with a very funny accent, wore stripy robes, and seemed to think somewhere called "the ten Towns" was the tops in civic life.'

  'I've heard of the Decapolis,' I said. 'It's a Greek federation in central Syria. That's a long way to go looking for a musician who's done a moonlight.'