‘I can add up.’
‘Interior?’ I said. ‘Anything to add?’
He bowed his head and didn’t speak for a few moments.
‘I can’t disagree with the magister militum.’
‘Very well. I admit, privately, I’ve had my fears, but I’m well aware I could be allowing my personal view to taint my judgement. Caius and I have hated one another since we were children. I was responsible for putting him away in a Prussian jail for twelve years. His criminal partner tried to kill me at the time and Caius threatened the same when he came out. I also think he was behind the attacks on my daughter and my farm. But I have no proof. Now my people live and work under armed guard and my daughter has fled to America.’ I paused for breath. ‘I’ve been too distracted, maybe with deliberate intent.’
Their faces said it all.
‘I don’t suppose you could suggest one of Plico’s people, er, fix things?’ the magister said, a hopeful note in his voice.
‘Extra-judicial murder?’ I frowned at him.
‘I agree that in normal circumstances it would be deplorable,’ he said, ‘but it would be a quick solution.’
‘I do understand your point, Magister,’ I replied. ‘Years ago when we were hunting Caius Tellus for murder, my senior centurion asked if he could shoot to kill if he had Caius in his sights. I was strongly tempted, believe me. Now I wonder if I should have bent the rules for the sake of Roma Nova.’ I let out a long breath. ‘But that would have made us as bad as him.’
Two years ago, I’d turned down Miklós’s offer for the same reason.
‘Then what do you suggest, Aurelia?’
*
After they left I sent for Plico, but he was busy with the praetor urbanus. He’d drop by my office first thing tomorrow, his assistant assured me. I hesitated. I could insist, but one thing about Plico, he knew how to prioritise. If he thought whatever he was doing was more important than reporting to me, then it would be that important.
Claudia handed me a report off the wire. Now I knew where Plico was. A riot had broken out in the harbour area and a fierce fire was threatening to reduce the state food warehouses to ash. I could hear multiple sirens through the windows. What on earth was going on out there? I grabbed my telephone handset. It was jerked out of my hand. My chair moved under me. No, the floor had moved. Claudia stumbled and grabbed onto the desk. The whole building was shaking. We staggered to the window. The boom of the explosion slammed down on us. Windows bulged inward, then crazed into glass webs. Claudia fell back on the carpet. I grabbed a chair and steadied myself. Only the windows being strengthened security glass saved us being ripped to shreds. Outside, flames raged high into the early evening sky. The roar thudded in our ears. It was the petroleum plant across the river. Black billowing clouds followed, then more fire vehicle sirens.
‘Gods, oh gods,’ Claudia shouted, her face streaked with tears. She sniffed, grabbed a tissue and started to wipe her face. Before she’d finished, a Praetorian burst in.
‘Major Fabia has radioed you’re to be escorted to the safe bunker, Minister.’ He looked as grim as if he was in a war zone.
‘Wait five,’ I snapped back at him. ‘Claudia, telex. Cipher blocks. Now!’ I grabbed my blue minister’s box, stashed the legations’ lists and codes in it, the contents of my personal safe and my file on Caius Tellus. I flung my photo of Marina on top.
Claudia ran to my personal secure telex, flipped the control panel open and reached inside. She extracted two rectangles with twin circuit boards and cables, rows of multiple connector pins each long side, and handed them to me.
‘It’s like the Great Fire out there,’ she whispered, looking through the crazed window.
Gods, I hoped not. Apart from the hundreds of lives lost, it had destroyed half of ancient Rome.
The guard’s radio crackled and he thrust it at me.
‘Mitela, Fabia. Relay from Volusenia – it’s started. Out.’
XVII
From the bunker control room, we watched the public news reports and the CCTV, although it was blurred and full of static. I’d initiated our emergency plan and until the situation clarified we’d run the ministry from here. Claudia, now restored to her cool efficiency, supervised incoming information and liaised with the foreign delegations in the city as well as our legations abroad. Banks of desks were now occupied by my people, a little uncomfortable working in such close quarters, but quietly getting on despite the tension you could almost taste in the air.
I couldn’t sit still. I walked up and down in front of the black and white screens, seeing twenty vigiles tenders spraying foam at the petroleum fire and tackling the warehouses. Others, plus some military, had barriered off the docks area. As we watched the images flicker from one part of the city to another, we saw more military patrolling in groups. People were panicking, running and screaming, trying to rescue things as fires sprang up in several districts.
‘Where did those fires come from?’ Fulvia, my diplomatic security chief, so suave and calm normally, jabbed her finger at different screens. ‘What in Hades are the vigiles doing?’ She was right – it was bizarre.
‘Find me a city map,’ I said.
She instructed one of her staffers to call out the locations and we plotted the fires. We got there at the same time.
‘Some bastard’s setting the fires,’ she growled.
‘Give me your radio,’ I ordered the guard. ‘Fabia? Mitela. Somebody’s deliberately firing the districts. If the vigiles can’t cope, tell the magister to get his engineers there with their auxiliary fire vehicles. Stat.’
Her answer made my blood run cold.
‘What do you mean, they’ve been confined to barracks? Who the hell gave that instruction? It’s an emergency. Tell him I’m ordering them to turn out.’
It was chaotic in the streets and the thick smoke was obscuring everything, including the CCTV. I had to hope the interior ministry had initiated their disaster plan, but I realised that was a false hope. Even from the blurred images, we watched helpless as looters moved in. And the vigiles seemed to have melted away.
We were interrupted by a telephone call from the palace, summoning the council to an immediate emergency session. The guard lifted his radio to call for secure transport.
‘No, there’s another way. Give me a minute.’
I beckoned Claudia and Fulvia over and tore off a length of paper from the nearest teleprinter. I wrote as I spoke. ‘Listen. It’s all going to Hades out there. I have to go to the palace now. If for any reason I’m not back within twelve hours, here’s my temporary authority to keep the ministry going. Do what you have to do.’
‘Consiliaria, I must come with you,’ Claudia protested.
‘No, I need you to stay with our people.’
Fulvia nodded and I went.
*
‘What’s your name, soldier?’
‘Atrius, Second Cohort, consiliaria.’ he replied from his considerable height.
‘Very well, Atrius, you are to completely forget where we are going once we’ve got there.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
We hurried along a secondary corridor to the service area then down a flight of steps to the engineering plant room. I entered the combination into the keypad and pushed the door open. At the back, almost hidden by the main boiler was a plain door with a chemical hazard sign and another keypad lock. It opened to reveal racks of plastic bottles and a janitor’s sink. Flicking the light on, I pushed the door shut behind us. I grabbed the fire extinguisher and swung it away from its wall bracket, revealing a small compartment in the base. Inside was a large, old-fashioned key.
I pressed a moulding on the bracket and the wall slid back to reveal a wooden door, plain but clearly old. Hefting the key, I unlocked it. A long tunnel stretched ahead of us.
‘Switch the cupboard light
off, Atrius.’
*
A grim-faced Fabia met us at the other end of the tunnel which came out in the old palace kitchens, now used as utility and storage areas. We walked in silence through the domestic hall, not looking at any of the staff casting curious looks at us. As we approached the anteroom I saw at least a dozen PGSF in the corridors and another two at the door.
‘Eight councillors are here. We’re expecting at least three more,’ she said tersely and glanced at her watch.
‘Wait a minute, Fabia, that would make only twelve out of twenty-eight. We wouldn’t be quorate.’
‘I’m expecting the colonel in the next half-hour. She’s hoping to find another two, but to be honest, I think we’re past that.’
‘What do you mean?’
She looked uncharacteristically nervous. ‘I’d prefer to let the colonel explain.’
‘Now wait a minute, nobody can suspend the legal decision-making process arbitrarily.’
‘It seems that somebody can.’
We hurried through to the council room. Even here at the back of the palace, the glow from the fires raging down in the city shone through the tall diamond-paned windows.
Severina looked haggard. Her hair was messy, her dress wrinkled as if she’d been lying down in it. I bowed, but she waved her hand as if dismissing such niceties.
‘Thank Juno! Aurelia. You’re my cousin. You won’t let me down, will you?’
‘Of course not, Severina. What’s the matter?’
‘I’ve done something stupid.’
‘What?’
‘Caius.’
‘What have you done?
She shook her head.
I seized her hands and shook them. ‘Tell me, Severina. Now!’
‘It’s all falling apart. People are rioting. It’s like Hades. I didn’t know what to do.’ She looked up. ‘Julian was shouting at me, Silvia begging me not to give in to Caius. It seemed the only way. He’s strong, he knows what to do.’
I looked at Fabia. She nodded.
‘Severina, I want you to stay here with Major Fabia. I’ll be back shortly.’
I ran like the Furies were after me into the family quarters. I burst into the living room, only to find the barrel of a hunting rifle in my face. I froze, then relaxed when I saw who it was.
‘Julian! Where’s your sister?’
‘I’m here, Aunt Aurelia.’ Silvia emerged from behind her mother’s china cabinet.
‘Thank the gods!’
‘Sorry about the gun, Aunt Aurelia, but I thought it was that bastard Caius Tellus.’
‘Look, I know it’s rough at the moment, but tell me as quickly as you can what in Hades your mother has done?’
They exchanged terrified glances. Then Silvia drew herself up.
‘She’s given him plenipotentiary powers.’
Pluto in Tartarus.
‘Why in Hades didn’t she give either or both of you that? You’re both emancipated!’
Young as they were, they had more strength of character than Severina would ever have. The imperial council would have supported and advised them. And Silvia was her mother’s natural heir, not bloody Caius.
‘He’s played her for a fool, before and after he went to the EUS,’ Julian said. ‘She wouldn’t take any notice, saying we didn’t understand. She wouldn’t listen to Dad either.’
‘Where is Fabianus?’
‘He went to see Caius to try and reason with him,’ Julian continued. ‘I told him it was a waste of time as well as dangerous, but he went.’ He looked over at the far wall at a portrait of his father and said nothing more. Fabianus always believed reason would solve everything. Too much of an optimist for these times.
Silvia’s face was white. Then I noticed she had a knife in her hand, like a pugio dagger carried by ceremonial guards. She saw my gaze.
‘It’s Julian’s.’ She glanced at her brother. ‘I have to feel I can do something when that man comes after me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The night before last, he was here with some of his weird friends. For drinks and dinner. Others were there, normal people, but he was dominating the whole thing. Mama seemed cowed by him – she was tongue-tied in talking to him.’ She shivered. ‘He was overpowering in an uncomfortable way. He stroked my arm. I couldn’t bear it and pulled away. He smiled at me. He knew exactly how revolted I was. He whispered to me, “Soon”. Then Mama took me aside and told me he was proposing an alliance between our families. I had to sit opposite him through the whole horrible dinner.’ She looked away.
‘She can’t make you do that, Silvia. Didn’t your father say anything?’
‘Of course, but she wouldn’t listen. She said I was being selfish by refusing. That’s why Dad has gone to see Caius – to tell him to keep away from us.’
‘I’ll shoot the bastard if he comes near her again,’ Julian added.
‘Right, come with me. Both of you.’
They exchanged glances, Julian nodded and both grabbed small backpacks.
‘What are those?’ I said.
‘Things have been so unsettled the past couple of days I told Silvia to put a few essentials together. Just in case.’ His brown eyes looked steadily into mine.
I nodded in answer.
Back in the council room, Fabia raised an eyebrow at the sight of Julian toting the rifle but said nothing. Silvia slid her knife into her backpack and dropped her bag as she put her arms round her mother. She must have loved Severina very much to do that after everything I’d just heard.
Fabia drew me aside. Without saying a word she handed me a semi-automatic, military issue, which I thrust in my loden coat pocket. The weight of it distorted the fall of the coat. I felt awkward in my office suit and shoes.
‘The colonel’s on her way here. None of the three councillors would come with her.’
‘Juno, they must be shit-scared to refuse Volusenia.’
‘She said two were packing and preparing to go to the airport.’
‘What! What in Hades is the matter with these people? Their place is here.’
‘Apparently not,’ Fabia replied.
‘Jupiter give me strength.’
Almost as an answer, Volusenia marched in with half a dozen people in civvies. But their sharp eyes, stance and the strength radiating from them gave them away – PGSF. She nodded at me, saluted Severina and waited.
Severina glanced round the room, her eyes darting from once face to another. I didn’t know what she was looking for, but eventually her butterfly gaze came to rest on me. She seemed to want to say something and her mouth moved, but no sound came out.
Volusenia took a step towards Severina, but the imperatrix still said nothing; she slumped in her chair and looked down. Volusenia’s face tightened – the tiniest flicker of anger. The next second it was extinguished.
‘Mama?’ Silvia knelt down by her mother’s chair. ‘What is it?’
Severina looked at her daughter as if she was a stranger. Her throat constricted as she swallowed hard. She reached out and touched her daughter’s hair.
‘Silvia, you must go. Now. You must escape. Go.’
Severina stood up, hugged Silvia, then kissed the top of her head. She pushed her daughter towards me. ‘Help her, Aurelia.’
Silvia looked at her mother, appalled at being pushed away. But Severina had covered her face with her hands as if hiding herself from the world.
We all stood frozen by the collapse of power and order. It was only broken by a crackle from a radio. One of Volusenia’s troops lifted his set to his ear and listened intently. Then he bent and whispered in Volusenia’s ear. She nodded and took the radio. She paused long enough to say, ‘Caius Tellus is on his way. With a mob.’
The few councillors who had struggled through the fire and panic
to get here gasped; Quirinia dropped onto a chair.
‘How long have we got?’ I asked.
‘About ten minutes.’ She looked at me steadily. ‘We can extend that to twenty, perhaps twenty-five.’ I knew what she was asking. I took a deep breath and let it out, releasing deep regret with it.
‘You are authorised,’ I said in the most neutral tone I could muster.
‘Volusenia,’ she spoke into the radio, her eyes on me. ‘Code word Horatius. Execute.’
I closed my own. I might have just condemned twenty elite soldiers to their deaths. Like the ancient Horatius, these Romans ‘on the bridge’ would die before allowing Caius to succeed. I heard a step behind me. Julian had come to attention and saluted Volusenia.
‘My station, Colonel?’
‘You are excused, Julianus Apulius. You must guard your sister.’
‘With respect, ma’am, we have discussed this. My duty is here with my mother. I shall stay.’
She tried to stare him down, but he refused to break.
‘Very well. You guard the door to the anteroom and let no man or woman pass.’
‘Understood.’ He bent down, kissed his sister on her forehead, his mother on her cheek, bowed to her, then set off for the door.
I sat at the table and wrote fast and furiously. I waited until Volusenia had given her orders to Fabia, then gestured her over to where Silvia and I were standing.
‘Volusenia Minor,’ I said in a low voice, ‘as the head of the senior family, I require you to escort Silvia Apulia away from here and take her abroad to Vienna. You must leave now.’ I handed her the written order and a small pouch. ‘Memorise this address.’ I handed her a slip of paper. ‘Wait for me there. Do not approach the Vienna legation at present.’
‘Are you joking, consiliaria? My post is here. Now, if you’ll excuse me…’
‘No, I will not. I am giving you an instruction as the imperatrix’s senior minister and you will comply.’
She looked as if she wanted to tear me into scraps and feed me to the animals in the arena.
‘Colonel, I need somebody tough and determined enough to get Silvia Apulia away. I know I can trust you to do this.’ I lowered my voice almost to a whisper. ‘It’s only a matter of time before Caius Tellus comes through that door and you’re wasting it. Fabia is perfectly capable of commanding the troops here. Silvia will need your skills and resolve to get her through this. Come with me.’
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