New Pompeii (25 page)

It was a Taser.

And every single Roman who’d been watching had seen Felix writhing on the ground under a stream of blue lightning.

Smoke and mirrors
, Nick thought. He hadn’t seen what had happened next. Felix had still been convulsing when he’d been dragged away. Where had they taken him?

Whelan crossed the atrium to the staircase, smacking the ball of his fist into his palm. And now he could be clearly heard, calling for Astridge. McMahon followed him. “I want Harris found,” McMahon said. “I want him found, and I want him removed.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“I want him dead.”

Nick swallowed hard.
Harris
. He edged back to the bed.
Harris
. McMahon had used that name when they’d first met. Asked him if he’d ever met a James Harris. But dead?

They actually wanted him dead?

It could have just been a figure of speech. But something was ringing deep in the back of his head. Something that told him that McMahon wasn’t fooling around.

“Harold!” The architect’s bellow echoed in the atrium. It didn’t contain any concern. Rather, it was laced with the thick treacle of disdain. “Great to see you back, but I think Mark has now brought his little problem under control.”

Nick looked back towards the shutter, but couldn’t hear Whelan’s reply. Instead he saw a flutter of movement. He lunged for his tablet. The device had only just flickered to life when the shutter was wrenched open.

“Yes,” said Astridge, grinning down at him. “I thought I’d seen him come in here.”

Nick assumed an open-mouthed expression he hoped would be mistaken for academic confusion. It seemed to work, although McMahon cast him a guarded look as he joined the other men in the atrium. He kept tight hold of the tablet, his shield against an accusation of eavesdropping.

“Working hard after his exploits, no doubt.”

McMahon turned towards Nick. Drops of sweat were gathering on his brow. “Find anything useful?”

“Only that Professor Samson didn’t really know much about Roman history.”

The grin on the architect’s face grew wider. “Really? He was always lecturing me on the subject.”

McMahon grunted. “We didn’t appoint him specifically to work on this project.” He tilted his head towards his operations chief. “Mark has filled me in on what happened. But what I really want to know is: how much did you just overhear? We all heard you shuffling around in there.”

Parry. Nick held up the tablet. “Shit,” he said. “Look, I’ve just been chasing some guy across town the night after having the shit kicked out of me.” He paused, trying to look suitably embarrassed. “I wasn’t working. I was asleep.”

McMahon gave a sudden snort of laughter. “Well, you seem to have earned your pay cheque. And proved Mark right.”

Proved Mark right?
Nick glanced at Astridge and saw his confusion mirrored on the architect’s face.

“Ironic though,” said Astridge, his voice wavering, “that Whelan brings you here to point out my mistakes, and you end up reporting his. Now if you can just tell him how to sort out the rest of the disorder in my town…”

“This is
our
town.”

Nick shrank back as McMahon turned to the architect. “This is our town,” he repeated. “Mine and Mark’s. And you work for us. Just like Nick. So don’t forget that.”

Whelan let a few seconds’ silence hang in the air before speaking. “The town is quiet tonight,” he said. “But we’re still having regular problems outside the Temple of Isis. And the town’s authorities don’t seem particularly interested in doing anything about it.”

Nick nodded. “Have you spoken with Barbatus?”

“We’ve sent him a message. But as I said, he doesn’t seem too interested in getting involved. But Roman mobs were frequent. How did the emperors cope?”

“Some put soldiers on the streets…”

“We don’t have enough men – and I don’t want to dilute the power of the imperial eagle by using it too often.”

“Then it boils down to the old cliché of bread and circuses.”

“The people are well fed.”

“So you need to entertain them. They’re bored – and frightened.”

Whelan considered this. He turned to McMahon. “We could bring forward our launch events?”

“Fine. It’s your call. Yours and your young advisor’s.”

K
IRSTEN SWITCHED OFF
the computer and headed for the stairs. Her brain was only just overpowering her instinct to run. After all, she didn’t want them to know what she’d been researching. But the voices had been clear and loud. The girl had left the library soon after Kirsten had seen her staring at her. And now she was back with a couple of porters in tow.

“She was in here,” said a female voice. “I’ve not seen her before – and with the news saying that stuff about a madwoman on the loose…”

“You did the right thing.”

Kirsten sprinted up the single winding staircase, which led to all four levels. She headed to the third floor and ducked inside, trying to hide among the bookshelves while peering through the windows that overlooked the lawn.

More porters were coming. At least another two. Four to search the building. She had to keep hidden. Or else be taken back to NovusPart. To be dealt with once and for all in that pit.

In her time, the porters had all been ex-policemen and she had no reason to think that wasn’t the case now. Old and grey, but not stupid. And trained to search a building. Kirsten looked round the floor, and saw nothing but shelves. There was only one door, back to the staircase. She had nowhere to go. She was going to be caught.

Footsteps echoed in the stairwell but continued up to the top floor. Ex-police, she thought again. They’d keep two downstairs, while the others swept the building from top to bottom. One guarding the stairwell while the other searched the floor. But maybe they only had four porters on duty. Which meant only one person to sweep the rooms while the other stayed on the staircase.

It was her only chance. Kirsten edged away from the door to the back of the room in perfect line with the exit. She crouched, trying to peer through the bookshelves. If the porter came in and moved right, she’d go left. If he came in and went left, she’d go right. Try to keep behind him as he made his sweep.

A couple of minutes passed before her plan was put to the test. The door swung open and a large, fat porter took a couple of steps into the room. After a few seconds, he went right. Kirsten moved in the opposite direction, hugging the back wall and then slipping down the side of a bookcase. The porter continued his sweep. He didn’t find her.

As the door snapped shut, Kirsten felt herself exhale. She crawled over to the windows and saw four figures crossing the lawn, back towards the lodge. But she couldn’t go yet. They’d still be looking for her.

After ten minutes her terror had turned to boredom. She looked along the shelves. The nearest held scientific journals; she moved on quickly, idly pulling out bound up copies of a history periodical. Then she saw them:
College Life
, the annual college magazine, row upon row of issues. From battered copies decades old, to the crisp clean volumes of the previous year.

Her fingers trembled as she searched for the correct year. Each magazine had identical content: a brief overview of the previous year; news from fellows and old members; clubs and society events; obituaries; and a matriculation list. She paused at a page of photographs. One shot showed three young men: McMahon, Whelan and Arlen stared back at her.

She put the issue to one side and started to look at the years following their arrival at the college. She paid particular attention to the matriculation photographs, the group shot of all the new students taken in each year. She scanned each photograph in turn, taking her time, but also in a hurry. Alert for any sound of footsteps on the stairs.

But they were already too late. Because she’d found him. The student by the bath. The one who had spoken to her.

Kirsten gripped the magazine tighter. The door to the staircase had opened. Light footsteps. She heard the door shut, but whoever had entered was now walking in near silence. She was being hunted, and she had no idea which way she should feint.

She braced herself to run. Perhaps if she caught them by surprise she might get past. But it was too late. A man stepped in front of her. He was holding something to his ear, a flicker of a smile on his face.

“Yes, Marcus,” he said. “She’s just where you said she would be.”

“M
AKING ANY PROGRESS
,
Dr
Houghton?”

Nick stopped by the pool. He’d been heading towards the street when the chef had appeared in the atrium. Mary was grinning at him, her cheeks slightly flushed, holding a small bowl of fruit and nuts. He presumed she was on her way upstairs to McMahon.

“Sort of… I’m actually heading out for breakfast.”

“Something wrong with my cooking?”

“No,” said Nick, just a little too quickly. “But it’s my job to…” He let his voice trail off. From the look on her face, she was clearly teasing him. He would only end up digging himself in deeper if he tried a witty response. “I’ve never seen you out in town,” he said.

“No.” Her eyes narrowed as if she was trying to work something out. “So, are you getting any closer, Dr Houghton?”

“Closer to what?”

“Working out what makes the people tick.”

Nick shrugged. In truth, he wasn’t. But he’d only just started, and a project of this size would take a lot of time. If he’d be given enough was another matter entirely.

Mary laughed, and made for the stairs. “Well,” she said, “don’t spend too long trying to solve the past, when the real riddle is working out the future.”

Nick watched her go. Working out the future. Pop psychology that sounded good but didn’t make sense. As Cicero wrote, if you don’t know your history, you remain for ever a child.

Which would have been a good response, if he’d thought of it sooner. Nick headed for the atrium corridor. The next time he bumped into Mary, he’d have to raise it with her again.

He headed to a nearby
taberna
. No matter the impact on the chef’s professional pride, eating out provided him with the best opportunity to get close to the people he was meant to be monitoring. He could hear what people were saying without them scurrying away like he had the plague. And very occasionally he got to speak with them directly.

“Excuse me?”

Nick looked up from his bread. A man and woman were standing in front of him. From their dress it was clear they weren’t wealthy, but they weren’t slaves either. Ordinary Romans. Well, as ordinary as they could look, living fifteen hundred years after the end of their Empire.

“Yes?” Nick said. He had sat at the end of the bar, with his back to the street – just in case he needed to make a quick exit. But these Romans didn’t look aggressive.

“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” asked the man. He pointed at Nick’s white-banded wrist.

“I don’t know what you mean…”

“We can tell. By the way you talk.”

And the way he looked.

“We wanted to thank you for saving us,” said the woman, cutting in. “We all thought…” There were tears in her eyes. “We all thought we were going to die.”

Nick put down the last of his bread, not really knowing what to say. “Augustus saved you,” he said. “I’m just here to do his bidding.”

The woman smiled with sympathy. As if she was complicit in his lie. She reached forward and took hold of his hands, bowing her head. A couple of tears trickled down her face. “You are good people,” she whispered.

Nick looked about him, slightly embarrassed. He slid his hands from the woman’s grip. A couple of the other customers were nodding in agreement; however, the majority seemed unmoved. One man bristled with hostility. Which meant, although Nick wanted to speak with the pair further, it was probably time to leave.

“Thank you,” he said, getting up from the counter. He looked round the bar again. He desperately wanted to be able to talk freely with every person he saw staring back at him, but every one of them would only respond to him as a stranger.

A sudden thought struck him, a memory from his undergraduate days. At the time, he’d not really understood it. “It is impossible to measure something without affecting it.” The guy who’d told him the line had been studying physics, and his statement related only to the smallest particles of matter. But that same phenomenon was going to end his research. Because he’d come to find the people of Pompeii, and he’d found they weren’t really here. They’d already been lost in the ash of the volcano.

“Pullus!”

Nick stumbled back on to the street. He could tell the people in the
taberna
were already talking about him. The hum of conversation was almost drowned out by the noise from the street. But not quite.

“Pullus!” It was Patrick, with Maggie and Noah. A couple of NovusPart security guards were walking a few paces behind. “We were told you’d be out here.”

Noah was pulling at Maggie’s
stola
. The kid looked like he’d been cooped up for too long. He could probably use a trip over to the amphitheatre to burn off some energy. The Astridge woman didn’t seem to notice.

“I seem to recall you comparing this town with Barcelona, Dr Houghton. Did you get beaten senseless there, too?”

With all that had happened, Nick had almost forgotten his encounter with the Good Samaritan. But the bruises were probably still visible on his face. And from the look on Maggie’s, she seemed determined to remind him.

“I guess I was tempting fate.”

“You certainly were.” Maggie tipped her head towards her guards. “Fortunately, Mr Whelan provides us with protection when we want to go into town. Mind you, we’re not here to hang around the forum, or take part in an orgy.” She turned her full glare on him. “That’s where you were, wasn’t it? Some sort of Roman party? Patrick told me they found your clothes on the floor of a whorehouse.”

Nick felt his cheeks flush. Before he could reply she had turned, dragging Noah with her, away along the
via
. The guards followed in her wake, but Patrick stayed close. “I said ‘seedy bar’,” the translator said, somewhat defensively.