Last Prophecy of Rome

by Iain King

  Initially they found nothing. So more police cars came, with more officers inside them. Myles, they assumed, had gone to ground, which meant the police had to be efficient. They would check everywhere, looking in every possible hiding place. It was still just a few minutes since their man had been positively identified in Connaught Square – by the anti-terrorism police who had shot the African gunman. So they knew Myles could not be far. Myles would not be able to escape their cordon…

  But he already had.

  As the police were spreading out through Speakers’ Corner, Myles was walking behind the London-to-Oxford coach. As the driver finished stowing the baggage from the pavement side of the vehicle, Myles opened the roadside compartment. He bent down, slipped in, and closed the luggage door behind him. The driver had returned to his seat and started the bus moving while the police were still checking faces in Hyde Park.

  Myles escaped just before the cordon was set up.

  He wondered whether any of the traffic had seen him sneak aboard. He had stepped in front of a taxi to climb into the underbelly of the coach. But unless the police set up an instant roadblock, it would probably be several hours before the information trickled back. And by that time, Myles would be far away.

  Myles felt the vehicle move off, and heard the sounds of London traffic passing by. He used the journey to plan his next moves. He needed to tell Helen he was safe, and for that he would send an email. But he couldn’t use his own email account – the police would be watching that. So, when he got to Oxford, he would set up a fresh account at an internet café and contact her through an alias.

  He wouldn’t be able to go back to his flat – too dangerous. That meant he needed to get clothes, money and food. Since he had an hour and a half in the coach’s luggage compartment, he was able to look through some of the bags. In the half-light, Myles was lucky enough to find a fresh shirt and a coat which almost matched his tall frame. Getting dressed in the confines of the moving compartment took longer than he wanted it to – he was jolted and thrown as the bus turned corners – but he managed. He also found a small purple backpack, a cigarette lighter, some sandwiches and some money – euros. He took them all, promising to himself that his actions in the coming days would justify this small act of theft.

  Myles realised that leaving the bus might be harder than getting on board. And having rummaged through much of the luggage on board, he had to exit before people collected their bags. So he waited until the bus was starting to drive more slowly, indicating it had reached the busy city streets of Oxford, then opened the compartment. He looked at the streets and saw he had timed it right: he was in his hometown. And when the vehicle was travelling slowly enough, he rolled out onto his feet, stumbled, and fell onto the pavement. He was soon up again and tried walking along the street as if nothing had happened.

  No one had seen him disembark, although watching the bus as it drove off, the storage compartment door still open, Myles knew he would be tracked soon. He had to be fast.

  First, he went into an internet café frequented by students in the city. There he created a new email account and typed out a quick message:

  Helen,

  We need a better cursus than this.

  Yours.

  He left the message unsigned, knowing Helen would look up the word ‘cursus’ and, when she found out it was the Roman postal system, guess the email came from him. It was cryptic, but Myles hoped she would understand: they needed a code which would allow them to communicate in secret. He knew the police would probably understand the message too, but he had faith that Helen would think of a way to evade their eavesdropping. He pressed ‘send’.

  Then Myles went to the Bodleian Library, Oxford University’s central library. In case the librarian at the door knew he was on the run and might report him, Myles entered through an open fire escape, ducking his head in case the entrance was monitored by CCTV. He made his way to the Politics, Philosophy and Economics Reading Room, where he hunted down the one book he needed most. He scanned along the shelves until he found it – The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – and carried it to one of the desks.

  The first instalment of the book had been published in 1776 – making it exactly the same age as the United States – and had been reprinted several times since. He opened it carefully, then read from the old-fashioned text at the first page he saw.

  The fabric of a mighty state, which has been reared by the labours of successive ages, could not be overturned by the misfortune of a single day…

  He soon realised he didn’t have enough time to get the information he needed from it now. Even Placidia, perhaps the brightest person he’d ever known, had taken months to get through this book. Myles would need more time with it.

  So he nudged each of the six volumes off the desk, and caught them with his purple backpack. Stealing library books was bad. Taking them from the Bodleian would cost him his lectureship. But he knew he had no choice. Casually he slung the backpack over his shoulder and moved back towards the fire exit, unplugging the walk-through scanner which detected stolen books before he passed through.

  As he came out onto the street, he saw two of his students. Worried that they might make contact, he walked the other way, where a bus was about to pick up passengers. Instinctively, Myles jumped aboard, even though he didn’t know where the bus would take him.

  By now he had been in the city for almost an hour, and it was two and a half hours since his unexpected escape from the courtroom. People had already seen him in Oxford – the manhunt would reach him soon. He had to keep moving.

  Myles thought through his options: to stay in Oxford would be very dangerous. Even staying in Britain could be risky. But how could he travel abroad? And how could he prove his innocence? Most important of all, how could he stop the plot to bring down America? The problems ticked through his mind without any sort of solution emerging.

  The bus had moved out of the centre of Oxford onto one of the main routes feeding the city. It passed through suburbs and grassy areas. Myles decided to get out at the next stop. He rang the bell, and stepped down as the doors opened.

  He was alone again. As the bus drove off, he noticed a small café servicing lorry drivers – their vehicles were parked up next to it, having just come off the motorway nearby.

  Recognising it could be his last chance to eat before he was properly on the run, Myles decided to go inside and sit at one of the tables. He was wondering where to go next when he saw a bottle of All-American Steak Sauce. He looked on the label: Made in the Teutoburg Forest, Germany.

  Teutoburg Forest: where a huge Roman army had been wiped out by barbarians. The imperial army had been tricked then ambushed – the defeat was a complete surprise. It was when Rome was still growing, and ruled by its first emperor, Emperor Augustus. Teutoburg Forest – the forest that defeated the Empire.

  Myles remembered how Juma had thrown a bottle of the sauce at him in the taxi in Libya. He remembered Juma’s cocky expression, like it was a private joke – a ‘You’ll find out soon enough’ kind of joke.

  He knew where he was going next.

  Like most students, Myles’ time as an undergraduate had been about more than just academic study. University had also taught him about the world, and about himself. It was during one of the three–and-a-half-month summer breaks that Myles had decided to explore Europe. Not by train, like most of the other young adults enjoying their time at Oxford – Myles never had the money for one of the ‘Eurorail’ passes which enabled the bearer to travel on almost any rail service on the continental mainland. Instead, Myles had moved around without paying any money at all. He had procured rides from car drivers all over the continent, right from Bergen in Norway to Spain and Gibraltar.

  Hitch-hiking, Myles had discovered, required skills similar to those of an old-school maritime navigator: travelling on winds blowing in all sorts of directions, strong and weak, to reach a particular destination. It meant understanding how tr
affic flowed over long distances. Better to ask a driver for a major town than somewhere none of the drivers would know. Vehicles using more minor routes tended to be less useful that those travelling on motorways. Motorway service stations were the best place to pick up new rides.

  Myles memorised the address label on the steak sauce bottle, then stepped outside and walked along the row of lorries parked there. The number plates gave him the information he needed: there was a German vehicle, but the plate started with the letter M, indicating it was from Munich. Slightly better was a Polish vehicle from Warsaw. That was likely to take a more northerly route through Germany, taking him closer to where he needed to go.

  Double-checking he was on the eastbound carriageway – he didn’t want to take a lorry the wrong way – Myles bent down to tie his shoelace while he checked no one was watching.

  All clear.

  Then he quietly hauled his bag on to the Polish lorry and climbed up after it. He took a minute to make room for himself amongst the cargo: boxes of empty beer bottles being taken back for cleaning and refilling. Myles only needed to wait a few minutes more before the driver, who had taken a short toilet break, rejoined his lorry, put it into gear and drove off.

  Travelling this way was more uncomfortable than on the bus to Oxford. Myles was also less sure of the route. He thought through what he should do at Dover: should he try to disembark before the truck boarded the ferry? Or should he stay on board and hope no one searched through the cargo? Whatever he did would be risky. Since he wanted to leave the country, he reasoned travelling unnoticed on a Polish cargo lorry was probably one of the best ways to do it. He might as well stay where he was.

  Free from the stress of custody and the escape, and despite knowing police and other authorities were searching for him, Myles found himself finally relaxing. Lulled by the movement of the lorry, soon he was asleep. He slept through the last miles of the journey to Dover. He even slept as the vehicle boarded the ferry. He would have been caught if any of the border and immigration officials at the main port scrutinised the vehicles travelling out of Britain as closely as those travelling into it. The modern-day migration crisis was the distraction which let Myles slip away.

  Day VI

  Thirty-Seven

  Oostende, Belgium

  Myles was jolted awake by the ferry bumping against the dockside in Belgium. He had reached Oostende. Here the port officials were more interested in the various cargoes. Myles heard a conversation close to the vehicle and imagined papers were being verified. When the back of the vehicle was opened up, he prepared himself to run. But the check was only cursory. Soon the lorry was back on the road and travelling east.

  Inside, there was just enough light for him to read from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Myles knew this book had explained the end of Rome far more comprehensively than any before it. Even though many other histories of the empire had been written in the almost two-hundred-and-fifty years since, all had been based on it or reacted to it. None had bettered it. There must be something in it. Something important…

  He scrolled down the list of contents, and skimmed through the sub-headings.

  ...Thirst of fame and military glory as a vice…

  ...Patriotism, and its decay and replacement by honour and religion…

  ...Latent causes of decay and corruption in the long peace of the Empire…

  It was clear that Gibbon, perhaps the greatest ever scholar on Rome, traced the roots of the city-empire’s collapse right back. He was looking for causes in the Empire’s most stable period, the years 96AD to 180AD, three centuries before Rome finally fell.

  …Imperial government, an absolute monarchy disguised as a commonwealth...

  …Hereditary monarchy, form of government presenting the greatest scope for ridicule…

  …Betrayals and dishonesty…

  Myles turned again through the pages, and came across one of the book’s most famous quotes.

  If all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West… The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted for so long.

  Myles pondered the words, wondering what they could mean for the possible decline and fall of the United States, and whatever Juma was planning.

  Jostled by the movement of the truck, he couldn’t steady his thoughts enough to crack the puzzle. He tried again, but it was no use: smuggled aboard the cramped inside of a beer lorry was no way to read a book like this. He stuffed it back into his bag.

  Myles tried to work out when the lorry would next stop: the Polish lorry driver had taken a break in Oxford, about three hours before he reached Dover. He had then been able to take another break while the ferry crossed the English Channel. That meant there would probably be one more major stop before the driver reached Poland, and there was a good chance it would be somewhere in north-western Germany, roughly halfway between the channel port and the final destination.

  When the stop came, Myles duly waited a few moments – enough time for the driver to move away from his vehicle – then climbed out of the hole he had made for himself among the boxes. He was in the parking lot of a large German motorway service station. With the sun already past its highest point in the sky, Myles moved over to the main building, trying to walk as inconspicuously as possible.

  Myles went to the toilet block and found the showers were freely available. Unsure when the chance would next arise, he took the opportunity to get clean, washing his body with someone else’s shampoo, which had been left in the cubicle. He dried himself with paper towels, wondering how other people without a regular address managed to cope. Perhaps they didn’t.

  Next to the service station restaurant was an internet terminal. He tried to log on, but credit card details were needed to buy time online. So he loitered nearby, looking at the maps and atlases in the shop. From the map, he managed to work out where he was – only about two hundred and fifty miles from the town where American Steak Sauce was produced. Then a mother being distracted by her children left an internet machine with time still running. Myles moved over to the console.

  He logged onto his new email account. There was only one message, and it was from someone he’d never heard of – a Dr Neil Bheel.

  Myles clicked to open it.

  Thanks,

  Good to hear from you and glad you’re safe. I’ve got a new phone, so when you’ve got a chance, give me a call on 001 776 455 410.

  Yours, Neil.

  He looked at the name again. Dr Neil Bheel. It was a surname he’d never heard before, and what sort of cruel parent would choose a first name which rhymes?

  Then he understood, and smiled to himself.

  He made a mental note of the number – easily done, since 1776 was the year Gibbon had started publishing his masterpiece. 455 and 410 were the years Rome had been sacked by barbarians. Then he wrote back a quick message, saying he would call when he could, and deleted the account.

  Hitch-hiking the remaining distance up to the sauce factory was harder than Myles had remembered from his time as a youth. He was older now and looked less innocent to the people who might pick him up. He had to wait almost half an hour at the service station before he was offered his first lift – a youngish-couple in a yellow Skoda – which dropped him about thirty miles from his destination. From there, he was able to take a bus, then another bus. He paid with the euros he had stolen from the luggage compartment travelling to Oxford. The last two miles he had to walk.

  Eventually he reached the sauce factory and wondered at the d
angers it concealed. An obscure industrial site in northern Germany seemed an unlikely base for a plot against the United States, but Myles reminded himself that he was just a short distance from Hamburg, where an unnoticed terrorist cell had planned the attacks of 9/11.

  He approached.

  Thirty-Eight

  Bielefeld, Germany

  Myles wanted to observe the factory first. He needed to understand it, to know just how normal – or abnormal – it was. He knew he would need a good vantage point: somewhere he could wait for a long time without causing suspicion.

  He walked around the factory site. There was nowhere obvious to go: no café or bar to sit and drink while he watched the main gate. There was no bus stop where he could wait for a bus which never came. Not even a telephone box.

  Myles decided his best option was a newsagent. Wandering in, he picked up a German-language magazine from one of the middle shelves and pretended to make sense of it while he studied the factory gates through the windows. For half an hour he calmly observed the place, trying to work out whatever he could.

  It seemed like an old-style operation. As the end of the working day approached, a few people started to trickle away. Many more followed in the minutes immediately after the shift ended. He looked at them. Several were from ethnic minorities – mainly Turkish-looking, and about two-thirds were men. Most were dressed in fairly cheap clothes, some of them had unhealthy-looking skin and many looked unfit. From their faces as they left, he could tell few of them were thinking about the work they had just finished. Instead, they were focussed on getting home or whatever else they had planned for the evening. None of them looked Somali or like they knew Juma, and there was no hint that this was the centre of a plot to destroy a superpower. He was sure almost all of them were innocent.