Last Prophecy of Rome

by Iain King

  ‘You give us the cure or we kill you,’ said the man.

  Myles shook his head. ‘I’ve been infected with the plague,’ he replied. ‘I will die in two or three days anyway.’

  The man who had held the syringe grabbed Helen, who was visibly becoming weak again. She did not resist. ‘You give us the cure or we kill her…’ said the man, smiling as if he thought he had found Myles’ weak spot.

  But Myles’ logic was too robust. ‘She also has the plague. She will die soon, too.’ Myles shrugged, as if to say ‘it doesn’t matter what you do’. He had disarmed them.

  The three men looked at each other. Finally, they realised: they needed to cut a deal. Eventually one of them spoke to Myles. ‘OK, what do you want for the cure?’ he asked.

  Myles paused before he answered. Then he raised three fingers. ‘Three things,’ he said.

  The leading Somali raised his eyebrows, stunned by Myles’ audacity. Then he motioned for Myles to make his demands.

  ‘First,’ said Myles, ‘I want you to agree that Helen gets the first dose. She’s been infected for longer than any of us. She needs the medicine most of all.’

  ‘And your second demand, Mr Munro?’

  ‘Do you agree to the first?’

  The Somali gang men looked at each other. One of them started speaking in a foreign dialect, but the other cut him short. Then, based on only eye contact between them – eye contact which made Myles sceptical – the leading African nodded. ‘OK, we agree: she gets the first dose.’

  ‘Good,’ said Myles. ‘Second, I go free.

  ‘Agreed – on the condition that we get to go free too,’ said the Somali. ‘We’re not going to the police.’

  Myles accepted the point. ‘OK, agreed,’ said Myles. ‘And third, you tell me who sent you.’

  The three men looked at each other again. This was a hard one. Another foreign-language argument ensued. It began to look as though the answer was going to be no – they would refuse to say who they were working for.

  Helen broke in. ‘Look, guys. We know you were sent by either Juma or Placidia,’ she said. ‘So who was it: Juma or Placidia? Or do you want to die of this disease?’ Helen coughed as she finished her sentence. It was a guttural cough and she bent over double. The men looked frightened just watching her.

  Myles was sure he knew what the answer would be: plague was a mass killer. Placidia-the-idealist wouldn’t use something so indiscriminate. They would have been sent by Juma-the-psychopath.

  Then the answer came: ‘Placidia.’

  Myles’ eyes widened in disbelief. He tried to hide it. ‘Placidia? Really?’

  The Somalis all nodded in unison. One of them even explained how Placidia had told them exactly which tomb to open, after studying some old books.

  Helen glanced an ‘I told you so’ look at Myles, before coughing again.

  Myles was stunned. He checked again, but the men seemed convincing enough. They were sincere. ‘Why were you so unwilling to say who sent you a few moments ago?’ he asked.

  ‘Because Placidia has our families and she will get them American citizenship if we succeed,’ explained one of the men. ‘But she said that if her name was mentioned then we would get nothing, and our families may die.’

  Myles tried to make sense of it. Was Placidia really so sure of her plan that she thought she could promise US citizenship? And more importantly, was Placidia really planning to infect millions with a deadly illness? What had happened to Placidia to make her change?

  One of the Somalis tugged at Myles’ arm, distracting him. ‘Mr Englishman. So we get the cure, right?’

  Helen could see Myles was still stunned by the confirmation that Placidia was willing to commit mass murder. She stepped in. ‘Yes, you have a deal,’ she said, erupting into more coughs. She collapsed to the floor, still coughing.

  The Somalis turned to Myles. They wanted him to lead them to their cure. For Myles, the power he had over the three men standing around him gave him no satisfaction at all.

  Myles realised that the woman he loved was very close to death.

  And the woman he had loved in the past had become a psychopathic mass-murderer.

  Forty-Five

  Istanbul, Turkey

  Breaking into a pharmacy in Istanbul would be easy. Finding the right antibiotics to steal would be harder. Escaping without being caught would be harder still. Doing it all with three untrustworthy gangsters before any of them weakened from the plague – or infected anyone else – was a huge challenge. Myles wasn’t sure it could be done at all. But as he looked at Helen, whose life depended on him succeeding, he knew he had to try.

  He led the men out of the excavation tent, and looked around, trying to guess where in the vast city of Istanbul would be the nearest stock of emergency medicine. The light from a road lined with shops was visible just inside the city walls. He gestured towards it: they would walk through the large Roman gate, then look for an illuminated green cross – the universal sign for a pharmacy, an old symbol dating from Roman times which meant a place of healing.

  Juma’s men followed Myles eagerly. Too eagerly. They were desperate. Myles wondered how Placidia had sent them here without any protection against the disease they were about to spread.

  He was trying to think ahead. They needed antibiotics, but which ones? There were so many types, many of them dedicated to treating specific conditions. A normal pharmacy wouldn’t have antibiotics designed to cure bubonic plague, so he’d need to find a general one, a ‘broad spectrum’ antibiotic. It also needed to be powerful and fast-acting.

  He wondered some more. If the Somalis had been sent here without a cure, did they hope to somehow spread the plague without catching it themselves? Or did they know they’d been sent on a suicide mission?

  As the team of four approached the floodlit gate in the city walls, now left permanently open for traffic, Myles reflected on just how absurd his situation was. He had infected with a fatal disease the men he was now leading, yet they were following him for a cure. They had been sent here by Placidia, who knew about antibiotics – but had not bothered to supply them with any.

  Myles knew he was missing something. Something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t work out what.

  The men entered the city and started walking down the street of shops. No pharmacy was in sight. As they continued – down a hill and round a corner – more shopfronts came into view ahead of them. Still no pharmacy. Myles began to wonder how long it would take.

  Then one of the Somalis tugged on Myles’ arm. The man said something in his mother tongue.

  ‘A green cross, he says,’ came the translation. ‘Down that side street.’

  The man pointed, and he was correct: on a street which branched off to the right, partly hidden by the curve of the road and a bus stop, was the sign for a pharmacy.

  Myles sensed the expectation amongst the three men. They imagined the sign meant they would survive, but Myles knew it was far too early to be sure.

  The four of them jogged to the shopfront. A large window display was advertising a slimming drug. None of them could read the promotional material, which was in Turkish, but the message was obvious: these pills will help you lose weight fast. Another display was promoting vitamins at bargain prices, and there was an offer on teeth-whitening products.

  Myles looked past them all, towards the back of the shop. There he saw a counter and shelves full of more conventional remedies. Vanity products at the front, medicines at the back.

  Myles knew he would need to get properly inside the pharmacy to get the antibiotics they needed. ‘We need to break in,’ he whispered.

  The Somalis indicated agreement. Myles checked no one else was around, then inspected the door lock while the others looked around for something to break the glass. One of them found a metal bin a little way down the street, and wrenched it from the bolts which fixed it in place. He dragged it over and threw it at the glass.

  It bounced off. None of them w
as surprised: the glass was thick and the rubbish bin light.

  The metal bumped noisily onto the ground. It rolled near another of the Somalis, who also picked it up and tried to hurl it towards the window.

  Even though the throw was much harder this time, the metal bin only managed to scratch the glass a little.

  ‘It’s thickened glass. The bin’s not heavy enough to break it,’ explained Myles. ‘We have to use the bin with our weight.’

  The Somalis looked unsure. Myles clarified. ‘We use it as a battering ram, OK?’

  The men nodded. Myles told them to stand a few metres back from the middle of the largest window, then got them to link up with him, in two lines of two. Myles held the bin at the front, pointing the base squarely at the window display. ‘Three, two, one…’

  The four men rushed forward, straight into the glass. The window flexed then shattered. Myles and the man beside him fell forward, their elbows caught in the dieting promotion. Broken glass was everywhere.

  Then a loud alarm screeched out.

  Myles tried to clamber into the shopfront window. The Somalis supported his legs, trying to help but actually making it harder. Eventually Myles was in, his ears punished by the sound of the alarm which was even louder inside the shop.

  It took several seconds to get around the weight-loss pictures and signs, which had fallen on their sides. He had to wade through broken glass, then out of the window display to reach the main part of the shop. Then he rushed to the back, to the medicine counter.

  Quickly he scanned the shelves for antibiotics. The labels weren’t helpful – some were in Turkish, others just listed commercial brand names.

  He pulled out the drawers. The first was empty. The second one contained a file folder which he lifted out and opened. The file listed conditions and recommended medicines next to them. Myles scanned through it.

  Acid reflux

  Actinic Keratosis

  Acute Anaemia…

  There were too many to choose from – but, of course, no listing for ‘Bubonic Plague’. He skipped forward.

  Feline Carcinoma

  Feline Hypothyroidism

  Fever Blisters Treatment…

  The alarm kept ringing. He needed to do this faster. The police would be here soon. He thought of bringing in the three men, still waiting outside, but realised that would only slow him down. He needed to think. What common condition was the bubonic plague most like?

  Myles tried to shut the alarm from his mind. Then he flicked towards ‘S’, near the end of the file.

  Syphilis: prescription – Penicillin

  Myles spun round to the drawers of medicine behind him. Within moments he spotted the name of the drug he needed and jumped onto a plastic stool to collect it from the top shelf. There was plenty there. He grabbed as much as he could carry – easily enough to cure Helen, himself and the three Somalis – then headed back through the shop.

  The alarm had been going for almost two minutes. Outside, he could see the three Somalis waiting for him, and looking very anxious. ‘Did you get it?’ asked one.

  ‘Yes, I got it,’ said Myles, clambering forward.

  They were blocking the hole in the window.

  ‘Show me,’ one of them demanded.

  Myles held up the packets. There was a picture on them to indicate it was a treatment for venereal diseases. Myles had remembered: syphilis was bacterial and treatment for it was once the most common use of antibiotics.

  The noise of the alarm was joined by the faint scream of police sirens – distant, but approaching fast. The four men would need to exit the scene immediately.

  Two of the Somalis offered Myles a hand to help him climb through back out through the window. Myles moved towards them as best he could, hindered by a clumsy manner and his tall frame in the confined space.

  Then the Somalis pushed into the window display. The display knocked him to the ground. They grabbed the antibiotics from his hand as he fell. The life-saving medicine for Helen: gone. Within moments they had run away.

  By the time Myles was back on his feet and clambering out of the window, the Somalis were too far away to catch.

  Worse, Myles could hear the police sirens. The authorities were just round the corner.Myles knew he had just moments to decide what to do. Should he take some more medicine from the pharmacy, or hide from the police?

  He heard one of the police cars stop nearby. Instinctively, he jumped down, out of the shop window and into the street. Instantly he regretted it. He should have got some more antibiotics for Helen.

  But it was too late for that. He had to hide.

  Two doors down was a narrow alleyway. Myles ran towards it. There he crouched in the dark passage, hoping no one would notice him. It was a second later that he saw two Turkish policemen walk down the street, looking up at the pharmacy with the smashed window. They were adjusting their hats as if they had just come from a car.

  Myles wondered what to do. He desperately needed the medicine for Helen. And every minute mattered.

  The alarm stopped. Everything became quiet again.

  From the gloom of the passageway, Myles heard the squelch of a radio. The policemen seemed to be reporting on the scene before them.

  After a few more seconds, the radio controller came back with instructions. It was in Turkish. Myles wondered what they were being told: guard the premises? Reinforcements on the way? Myles hoped the police would just cordon off the crime scene with tape, then leave to write a report or do whatever else the bureaucrats demanded of them. He waited and hoped, desperately thinking of Helen, and wondering how long she could survive.

  He wondered whether there was something else which could save her, and remembered the tomb. Why had the Somalis dug up a grave from 169AD in a cemetery that was famous for a much later plague? He hoped their mistake meant Helen had only a weaker version of the disease.

  Briefly he thought of giving himself in. He could tell them about Helen and she’d get proper treatment. But they might not believe him. When he told them she had bubonic plague, they definitely wouldn’t believe him. At best there would be a delay, and to Helen the delay would be fatal.

  Myles waited another minute. The problem tumbled through his mind, while he wondered how quickly the plague would weaken him. He wasn’t feeling weak yet. He still had a chance…

  In the half-light of the alleyway, he searched for – and found – a way to climb up the back wall. Silently reaching the top, he peered over: parking spaces, fed by a narrow lane, only just wide enough for most cars. Since the parking spaces and lane must be connected to one of the streets, Myles decided to take the chance. He jumped down, cushioning the noise of his landing as much as possible.

  He listened around him: there didn’t seem to be a reaction from the policemen. He had managed to exit unnoticed.

  Bent over to keep low, Myles followed the lane. It went round two corners, then emerged onto the main street.

  Straight ahead of Myles was a police car: the vehicle used by the officers now guarding the pharmacy.

  Myles checked again. Still no one around.

  Then he approached the car. The front passenger door was open. Myles leant inside, reached for the handbrake, then released it.

  He leant back out again, closed the door behind him, and walked to the back of the vehicle. Gently, he gave it a push.

  As the police car started moving, Myles darted back to the relative cover of the lane. He waited and watched. The policemen came running from the pharmacy, chasing the police car as it rolled down the hill. This was Myles’ chance.

  Quickly he ran back along the side street, to the pharmacy. He crawled up through the hole in the front window, and to the back of the store. Up again on the stool, he grabbed some more antibiotics. This time he stuffed a few packets into his pockets in case he was robbed of them again. He also took some injectable vials of an emergency anti-viral drug as a precaution, and grabbed a few strips of the slimming pills advertised in the window.
Not to slim, for something else…

  Then he jumped down, and went as far back into the store as he could. There he found a green bar across a small door: the fire exit.

  Myles pressed onto the green bar and peeked outside before stepping through: he was back in the lane and the parking spaces. Still alone. So Myles closed the fire exit behind him and made his way out, returning to the spot on the main street he’d been only a few moments before.

  The Turkish policemen were within sight but distant. They seemed to have managed to climb into their car as it rolled, stopping it. But now they were arguing with each other.

  Coolly, Myles ignored them. He walked out of the shadows, up the main street and towards the gate in the Roman walls. Neighbours woken by the commotion of police sirens and shop alarms may have noticed him. They may have remembered him because of his height. But none of them would have connected him with the crime scene. Only the policemen could have done that, and they were too busy quarrelling about their runaway car.

  Once through the Roman gate and out of the inhabited area on the edge of the city, Myles checked no one was watching or following him. Then, confident he was alone, Myles ran the remaining distance towards Helen in the excavation tent. He knew he had to get to her as soon as he could.

  As he ran, history flickered back into his mind. He tried to remember what was special about the plague of 169AD…

  As he approached the tent, Myles saw shadows moving on the canvas. He could tell there was not just Helen inside. There were voices. Anguished voices. The Somalis.

  Myles had to confront them. In one swift motion, he lifted up the flaps on the entrance to the tent and leapt inside.

  Forty-Six

  Cemetery of Emperor Justinian, Istanbul

  As Myles entered the tent, he immediately saw the three men who had taken the antibiotics from him. They were clutching their stomachs and arguing. They seemed to be in pain.