Perfiditas

Title Page

Praise for
PERFIDITAS

Book II in the Roma Nova series

“Alison Morton has built a fascinating, exotic world! Carina’s a bright, sassy detective with a winning dry sense of humour. I warmed to her quickly and wanted to find out how she dealt with the problems thrown in her path. The plot is pretty snappy too and gets off to a quick start which made it easy to keep turning the pages. There are a fair number of alternative historical fictions where Rome never disappeared, but for my money this is one of the better ones.”

–
Simon Scarrow,
author of the Eagle (Macro and Cato) series

“I can’t resist an alternative history and Alison Morton writes one of the best. Powerful storytelling, vivid characters and a page-turning plot makes Alison Morton’s
PERFIDITAS
a must read.”

–
Jean Fullerton,
author of the historical East London novels

“Pure enjoyment! A clever, complex plot set in the beguilingly convincing fictional country of Roma Nova. Scenes and characters are sometimes so vividly described that I felt I was watching a movie. This compelling tale rendered me inseparable from my copy right up to the last turn of the page.”

–
Sue Cook
, writer and broadcaster

Historical Note

What if King Harold had won the Battle of Hastings in 1066? Or if Julius Caesar had taken notice of the warning that assassins wanted to murder him on the Ides of March? Or the Spanish Armada had defeated and conquered England in 1588? Suppose Christianity had remained a Middle East minor cult? Intriguing questions, indeed. Alternate (or alternative) history stories allow us to explore them.

Whether infused with every last detail of their world as in S M Stirling’s
The Peshawar Lancers
, or lighter, where the alternative world is used as a setting for an adventure or thriller, such as Kate Johnson’s
The UnTied Kingdom
, alternate history stories are underpinned by three things: the point of divergence when the alternate timeline split from our timeline; how that world looks and works; and how things changed after the split.

PERFIDITAS
focuses on one main character, Carina Mitela, and her struggle to defeat a conspiracy entwined with personal and professional betrayal. I have dropped background history about Roma Nova into the novel only where it impacts on the story. Nobody likes a straight history lesson in the middle of a thriller! But if you are interested in a little more information about the mysterious Roma Nova, read on...

What happened in our timeline

Of course, our timeline may turn out to be somebody else’s alternate as shown in Philip K Dick’s
The Grasshopper Lies Heavy
, the story within the story in
The Man in the High Castle
. Nothing is fixed. But for the sake of convenience I will take ours as the default.

The Western Roman Empire didn’t ‘fall’ in a cataclysmic event as often portrayed in film and television; it localised and eventually dissolved like chain mail fragmenting into separate links, giving way to rump states, local city states and petty kingdoms. The Eastern Roman Empire survived, albeit as the much diminished city state of Byzantium until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Muslim Ottoman Empire.

Some scholars think that Christianity fatally weakened the traditional Roman way of life and was a significant factor in the collapse. Emperor Constantine’s personal conversion to Christianity in AD 313 was a turning point for the new religion. By AD 394, his several times successor, Theodosius, banned all traditional Roman religious practice, closed and destroyed temples and dismissed all priests. The sacred flame that had burned for over a thousand years in the College of Vestals was extinguished and the Vestal Virgins expelled. The Altar of Victory, said to guard the fortune of Rome, was hauled away from the Senate building and disappeared from history. The Roman senatorial families pleaded for religious tolerance, but Theodosius made any pagan practice, even dropping a pinch of incense on a family altar in a private home, into a capital offence. And his ‘religious police’ driven by the austere and ambitious bishop Ambrosius of Milan, became increasingly active in pursuing pagans...

The alternate Roma Nova timeline

In AD 395, three months after Theodosius’s final decree banning all pagan religious activity, four hundred Romans loyal to the old gods, and so in danger of execution, trekked north out of Italy to a semi-mountainous area similar to modern Slovenia. Led by Senator Apulius and twelve other senatorial families, they established a colony based initially on land owned by Apulius’s Celtic father-in-law. By purchase, alliance and conquest, this grew into Roma Nova.

Norman Davies in
Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe
reminds us that:

…in order to survive, newborn states need to possess a set of viable internal organs, including a functioning executive, a defence force, a revenue system and a diplomatic force. If they possess none of these things, they lack the means to sustain an autonomous existence and they perish before they can breathe and flourish.

I would add history, willpower and adaptability as essential factors. Roma Nova survived by changing its social structure; as men constantly fought to defend the new colony, women took over the social, political and economic roles, weaving new power and influence networks based on family structures. Eventually, daughters as well as sons had to put on armour and carry weapons to defend their homeland and their way of life. Service to the state was valued higher than personal advantage, echoing Roman Republican virtues, and the women heading the families guarded and enhanced these values to provide a core philosophy throughout the centuries.

Roma Nova’s continued existence has been favoured by three factors: the discovery and exploitation of high-grade silver in their mountains, their efficient technology, and their robust response to any threat. Remembering their Byzantine cousins’ defeat in the Fall of Constantinople, Roma Novan troops assisted the western nations at the Battle of Vienna in 1683 to halt the Ottoman advance into Europe. Nearly two hundred years later, they used their diplomatic skills to help forge an alliance to push Napoleon IV back across the Rhine as he attempted to expand his grandfather’s empire.

Prioritising survival, Roma Nova remained neutral in the Great War of the 20th century which lasted from 1925 to 1935. The Greater German Empire, stretching from Jutland in the north, Alsace in the west, Tyrol in the south and Bulgaria in the east, was broken up afterwards into its former small kingdoms, duchies and counties. Some became republics. There was no sign of an Austrian-born corporal with a short, square moustache.

Thirty years before the action of
PERFIDITAS
in the early 21st century, Roma Nova was nearly destroyed by a coup, a brutal male-dominated consulship and civil war. A weak leader, sclerotic and outmoded systems that had not developed since the last great reform in the 1700s and a neglected economy let in a clever and ruthless tyrant. But with characteristic resilience, the families’ structures fought back and reconstructed their society, re-learning the basic principles of Republican virtue, while subtly changing it to a more representational model for modern times. Today, the tiny country has become one of the highest per capita income states in the world.

Part I: Conspiracy

I

‘Captain Carina Mitela?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Who is this?’

‘
Custodes
XI Station. An emergency token with your code has been handed in. We’re holding the presenter.’

Juno.

I dropped everything and headed for the tunnel connecting our headquarters to the police station. The duty sergeant, with a typical cop’s bland expression but trying to conceal a speculative gleam in her eyes, handed me the token without a word.

As we walked to the interview rooms, I stared at the thirty-nine millimetre diameter disc, made to resemble a casino chip, indigo blue polycarbonate shielding the tiny microprocessor. The last one I’d had in was from an informant handling incoming diplomatic baggage at the airport; her sharp eyes had spotted a very undiplomatic cargo of compact assault rifles. Sure, Roma Nova was a small country, hidden away between New Austria and Italy, but we weren’t stupid or sloppy. Working with the Intelligence section, I’d traced the weapons back to their Balkan Republic origins and led a covert service unit to destroy their warehouse.

The figure I saw today through the smartplex observation window of the public interview room was slumped over, elbows on the table, hands braced her under her chin, her long black hair looking like it hadn’t seen a brush for days. Mossia Antonia. She owned and ran one of the toughest, and most exclusive, training gyms in the country. Right now, she looked like a street vagrant.

I shucked off my uniform of beige shirt and pants and black tee, and pulled on the casuals the
custodes
duty sergeant had found in lost property for me, ignoring the smell of stale food and cooking fat clinging to them.

Mossia jerked her head up as I entered the room.

‘
Salve
, Mossia. What’s the problem?’ I plunked myself down on the other chair, crossed my arms and waited.

‘Bruna?’ She blinked and shook her head like she didn’t believe what she saw.

I opened my hand in a gesture inviting her to talk.

‘Aidan has disappeared,’ she said, looking down and rubbing the table with her index finger. Inlaid with coffee rings from careless mugs, the plastic surface reflected the impacts of hard-tipped pens and handcuff scrapes.

‘Are you sure?’

She nodded.

‘How do you know? Aidan has other clients apart from yours. Maybe he’s gone on vacation, or been called away.’

Her head came up at that. ‘His first duty is to me – I pay him a damned good retainer to look after my clients.’

‘So what makes you think he’s not coming back?’

‘This.’

She pulled out a folded piece of paper with black, sloping writing. I read it, laid it down on the table, and leaned back in my chair. Then I picked it up and read it again. I couldn’t believe it. He wrote he couldn’t bear it any longer; he’d had enough of her unfair working practices. He resigned with immediate effect and would make sure her clients knew exactly why he’d done it. I pinched the bridge of my nose to make sure I was awake.

‘He took nearly a thousand
solidi
from the cash drawer and my gold pen.’ Mossia jabbed the air with her finger. ‘Whatever. What really bugs me are those lies.’ Her face was rigid and her eyes blazing. ‘I could kill him for that.’ Her chair crashed backwards to the ground with the force of her jumping up. She started pacing around the room like a lion in the arena.

I wasn’t surprised at her anger. She worked her people hard, but looked after them. I knew her employment packages were first-class; as an anonymous shareholder, I’d seen her accounts.

‘You’ve reported him to the
custodes
as a missing person?’

‘I’m reporting it to you.’

‘Why? I’m not the
custodes
.’

‘Well, you’re something like that.’ Ninety-eight per cent of my colleagues in the Praetorian Guard Special Forces would take offence at that, but I let it pass.

She came to rest by the table and looked down at me.

‘What?’ I said.

‘It’s personal.’

‘Were you sleeping with him?’

Her shoulders slumped and she crossed her arms across her chest.

‘Silly sod.’

She pulled a small moue.

I stretched over and touched her forearm in sympathy. I shot a side glance at the watch on my outstretched wrist. Hades!

‘I’ll have the
custodes
log it,’ I said and stood up. ‘You go home now or, better, back to the gym. The
custodes
will let you know of any developments.’

She took a full stride toward me, so near that she was all but touching me. ‘What do you mean? Aren’t you going to do anything about it?’

‘Okay, it’s bloody annoying, it’s hurtful, whatever, but it’s hardly a case for an emergency token. Leave it with the
custodes
.’

I stepped away and pushed my chair under the edge of the table.

‘Come on, Mossia, time to go. Think of the money you’re not making while you’re wasting time here.’

She shot me a vicious look. The anger was rolling off her. She took a deep breath, gazed unseeing at the dirty beige walls for a minute or so.

Had I been too harsh? A stab of guilt prodded me. I’d known Mossia for years, but my schedule was crushing and I was behind already.

I knocked on the door which opened inwards revealing a blue-uniformed
custos
.

‘We’re finished here,’ I told him.

I looked at Mossia’s taut, silent figure. ‘The
custos
will see you out. I’ll stop by the gym if I hear anything.’

‘Well, screw you!’ She turned her back to me and stalked out without another word.

‘Everything all right, Captain?’ the duty sergeant asked me as I changed back into my uniform.

‘Yes, thanks,’ I said, and pinned my name badge and insignia back on. The Department of Justice
custodes
were both wary and polite with us. Back in Eastern America I’d grown up in, city cops had never liked feds either. Many of my PGSF colleagues sneered at the
custodes
and used the public’s name for them – scarab, or dung beetle. I’d been a DJ
custos
once.

‘Thanks for sending the alert through – I hope it hasn’t been too disruptive.’ I smiled at her as she escorted me back to the tunnel door. ‘I’m not so sure myself what that was about.’

‘No problem, ma’am.’

As the tunnel doors swished open, I felt my irritation at Mossia unwrap itself and flood back. What in Hades was she playing at? By the time I arrived at our end, I was annoyed for not being able to figure out whether she’d told me something significant or not.

The PGSF general office was plain, cramped and a mess. With the new regime, the whole floor was due for a refit. None of us could wait for it – I’d been tempted to heft a paint brush myself. Back at my desk, I checked my presentation but couldn’t concentrate as I went back through the interview with Mossia. What had I missed?

‘What’s the frown for?’

‘Um?’

‘Deaf again?’ came the mocking voice. Daniel.

‘Funny,’ I said in a sour tone. His ready, attractive smile reflected in his brown eyes. He could usually lift me out of the dumps, even though he irritated the hell out of me the other half of the time.

‘I think I stepped into an alternate universe earlier on. Or maybe I’m losing it in this one. I just can’t see the problem, but I know there is one.’

‘Tell me,’ he encouraged. Major Daniel Stern was a tough operational type, but he wasn’t dumb. And, when he tried, he could listen. ‘Why don’t you think it’s boy meets girl. After a while, he wants out, he grabs the cash and scarpers, leaving girl behind, hurting badly?’

‘Scarpers? What’s that?’

When we spoke English together, Daniel sometimes used weird words from his early days. Something to do with his uncle being brought up in England.

‘Leaves, decamps, does a flit, vamooses.’

‘No, it doesn’t fit Mossia. She doesn’t make emotional bonds. Ever. She’s not cold-hearted – just desperate to protect herself. Her parents divorced and dumped her in the gladiator training camp when she was fourteen. Apparently, the
lanista
was more than keen to take her after he’d seen Mossia scrapping in her school playground. Can you imagine how hard that was?’ I shot a glance up at him. He shrugged.

‘No,’ I continued, ‘it’s not the personal so much as the lies he wrote.’

‘Okay, so what about the boyfriend?’

‘She gets a lot of clients via his counselling practice. It brings him into direct access to the great and the good.’ I looked away for a moment. ‘I’ve used him on several occasions for contacting all sorts of people. He’s a very discreet intermediary. That’s why I gave him a token. He’s the most cynical and egotistical person I’ve ever met. Shell harder than Aquae Caesaris granite and about as much emotion.’

‘I thought everybody liked him, you included.’

‘Sure. He’s beautiful, sexy, charming, fun to be with. But I’ve never seen or heard of him partying with anybody but clients. He gives them the physical and emotional attention they need.’

Daniel smirked.

‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘But it’s always on a commercial basis. And they pay. I’ve seen him sometimes when he thinks nobody’s watching and, while he doesn’t sneer, I’d say he was pretty cynical about the whole thing. That letter was completely off. It conflicted with everything I know about Aidan.’

‘Don’t worry.’ Daniel chuckled. ‘The ransom note will be along soon.’

‘Maybe, but you know what? It was his token she brought in, not hers.’

I played around with some final notes for the big meeting that afternoon but couldn’t concentrate. I looked around the office at nothing in particular and chewed my el-pad stylus.

After five minutes, Daniel looked across the room at me. ‘You’re not going to let this go, are you?’ He gave me an exasperated look. ‘So, where’s the letter?’

‘Mossia grabbed it back as if her life depended on it. I’ve made a copy from memory.’

‘Yuk!’ said Daniel, after reading it. ‘He’s really putting the boot in.’

‘Exactly. He’d never write so melodramatically. But then, do we really know him?’

‘You know what? You’re starting to sound like a cross between an agony aunt and Sigmund Freud. Let’s grab some lunch.’ Daniel liked eating. A lot.

The mess hall was packed. We couldn’t find anywhere but at the end of one of the long tables with Daniel’s Active Response Team. All outrageously fit, and boisterous, they acted like high schoolers. In reality, they were magnificent soldiers; they could have been the model for the Hollywood stereotype. Daniel called them his boys (even though half were girls). They followed him without question because he was as crazy as them.

‘So when are you going to give up all that mental stuff and join us, Captain?’ Galla, one of the senior NCOs was grinning at me. She’d helped rescue me in New York seven years ago when I’d been hunted by a government-sponsored killer.

‘I have so much else to do than run around on open moors, climb up sheer rocks, wade through mud firing a weapon and shrieking like a banshee.’

‘We don’t shriek like banshees, ma’am!’ said Galla. ‘We leave that to Daniel – I mean, Major Stern.’

Laughter broke out with a lot of mock punching, elbowing and shouting. How anybody didn’t get a headache being around them, I didn’t know. But they had more honours, decorations and awed admiration than any other team.

I preferred a silent approach. Daniel called it sneaky; I called it effective.

‘Carina?’ I looked up. Julia Sella, our training major – no, newly appointed Lieutenant Colonel Sella, no less. ‘Everything ready? Let me know if you need anything.’ Even her brown hair was soft and wavy, in tune with her personality. My mentor during my first confused days in the PGSF, and my friend now.

‘Thanks, ma’am,’ I said. ‘I think I’m set. If it all falls apart, I’ll just wing it.’

She smiled back ruefully. ‘Yes, I know you probably will, but don’t try it too often. Both you and the unit have a lot riding on this.’