The Archimedes Stratagem Page 3

  Ozymandias had been right. It had been rash of him to wander the streets without an armed escort. He should have gone to the legion camp in Nicopolis and arranged for backup. Once again, he tried to break free of the men’s iron grasp, but it was futile. They had muscles like the ones Hercules had on the statues, and they might as well be made of marble for all the good Flaminius’ struggles were doing him.

  ‘Let him free,’ said a voice. ‘He’s not a prisoner. Far from it.’

  A lantern flared. Flaminius looked around him. They bounced over another bump in the road and the lantern shook back and forth. But even in the crazy swinging shadows Flaminius recognised the man who sat on the other side.

  ‘What do you think you’re up to, Apuleius Victor?’ he demanded. ‘You know full well who I am.’

  ‘Yes, I know who you are,’ Apuleius Victor told him.

  Looking at this retired gladiator who had gone on to become impresario of a “family” of gladiators, Flaminius realised that he was the athlete gone to seed who Ozymandias had seen. So the two gladiators were the men who had been tailing them.

  ‘Have you joined the other side?’ he asked.

  Apuleius Victor shook his head. ‘I’m still working for myself,’ he said, ‘The gladiator game has been unproductive of late, since my family mysteriously vanished in the night. But we know who’s responsible for that, don’t we?’

  ‘You seemed to be building up your stock again.’ Flaminius indicated the two big men. But Apuleius Victor shook his head again.

  ‘Civic guards,’ he said, ‘on loan from the prefect. ‘As far as the family goes, I’m finished. And that makes me all the more eager to work in that other field, the one we mentioned on our last meeting.’

  ‘You’re still the prefect’s agent?’ Flaminius asked. ‘Did Haterius Nepos tell you to do this? Snatch me from the street and drag me off like a prisoner?’

  Apuleius Victor smiled coldly. ‘Not in so many words,’ he said. ‘But news came that you had been seen again in the Greek Quarter, after you had dropped out from sight for several days. And after the prefect received a visit from the emperor’s emissaries, he decided that you were the man he needed.’

  Flaminius rubbed his bruises. ‘If I’m so important,’ he said, ‘why didn’t you just ask me?’

  Apuleius Victor laughed. ‘You’re a wayward fellow,’ he said, ‘not easily bent to a man’s will. You might have argued, wanted to go your own way.’ He slammed a fist against the wooden wall of the carriage. ‘This ensures that you can’t argue. A fast carriage to your next mission.’

  Flaminius was furious. ‘You’re right. I would have refused, if you’d asked. Not out of waywardness, though. My current mission is of the utmost importance.’ He still had no idea, of course, of how to find Arctos in the second biggest city of the empire. ‘Let me go this instant!’ Still the carriage hurtled through the streets. By now they must be nearing the city walls. He had to return to Ozymandias and get back on the trail. ‘Let me go…’ He broke off. ‘Are you going anywhere near the gladiators’ school?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘We’re going that way,’ the impresario admitted.

  ‘Good,’ said Flaminius. ‘Let me off there and we’ll say no more of this. Tell Haterius Nepos that if he wants my help he can wait. I’ve got more important business. Whatever this problem is, it can’t be as vital as my own. Tell him to get the civic guard to investigate. I’m going to pay a visit to the gladiators’ school and then get back to my mission.’

  ‘We’re not stopping at the school,’ said Apuleius Victor. ‘And I doubt that your mission could be of any greater importance than what the prefect wants of you.’

  Flaminius felt the frustration of a general whose every move is countered by the enemy. He was getting nowhere. It might be time to resort to extreme measures.

  ‘Stop the carriage now,’ he demanded, snatching a dagger from the belt of the man on his right. The two gladiators tried to grab his forearm, but they couldn’t stop him pressing the blade close to the impresario’s carotid artery. Apuleius Victor met his gaze and laughed.

  The carriage rumbled to a halt. ‘There’s no need for this,’ Apuleius Victor said, batting Flaminius’ hand away. ‘We’re there.’

  He flung open the doors. The driver had halted outside the towering walls of the amphitheatre itself. Flaminius could hear the roar of the crowd even from their current position.

  He gave a resentful sigh. ‘Just what is all this about?’ he asked.

  Apuleius Victor’s face was bleak. ‘A plot against the life of his imperial majesty,’ he said in a low voice.

  —3—

  Flaminius laughed hollowly. ‘That’s old news,’ he told the impresario.

  Apuleius Victor’s face was sharp. ‘You mean that you knew already?’ he said. ‘But you told me you were investigating the rebels in the Thebaid and their links with the missing gladiators. Nothing about an assassination attempt.’

  ‘I didn’t know it for certain,’ Flaminius said, ‘not when we last spoke. But since then I’ve received confirmation—from the arch conspirator himself.’

  Apuleius Victor studied him for a moment. Beyond the wall, the roar of the crowd grew to a climax. Flaminius pictured the scene in the arena. It was morning, so the venators would be fighting the beasts. Some mountain of hide and bone would gore and trample a lightly armoured hunter, or else a hunter had brought down some beast.

  ‘I think you’d better discuss this with the prefect,’ the impresario said. At his nod the civic guards ushered Flaminius out into the full glare of the late morning sun. Apuleius Victor jumped down to join them.

  They were just outside the Nicopolis amphitheatre. Nearby stood the camp of the Twenty Second Legion, and on the far side of the arena, Flaminius knew, was Apuleius Victor’s gladiator school. There his lancehead brooch, his insignia as an imperial agent, still lay concealed in his former cell.

  A small gateway in the wall led to a flight of stone steps and it was up these that the civic guards took him, Apuleius Victor followed behind them, unspeaking. From somewhere high above came the shrill notes of a lyre.

  The prefect was one of the few people other than Flaminius who knew that the emperor intented to visit Alexandria on the final day of the festivities, to make a surprise appearance in the imperial box of this very amphitheatre. The whole idea was very hush-hush. The only other person to know apart from Haterius Nepos was Avidius Pollio, legate of the Twenty Second, who had informed Flaminius solely because he needed to know for what stakes they were playing.

  Should the enigmatic Arctos stage his revolt while the emperor was here, it would be disastrous. But although Arctos knew the emperor’s intentions—how, who could say, but the rebel leader was apparently a member of the Roman Senate, and privy to the emperor’s deepest secrets—he did not know which day the emperor would be making his visit. Not yet!

  The dank stone walls ended, and Flaminius came out of the torchlit gloom and into the light of an open space. As his eyes adjusted, he saw below him the sands of the arena, shimmering like silver. A horseman galloped away from a speeding leopard. Even as Flaminius watched from his vantage point, the big cat leapt up and brought down the man’s whinnying horse. The venator hit the dust and even as he was struggling to his feet, the leopard was on him.

  There was a sea of faces in the encircling seats, mouths open in greedy horror as the creature shook the bloody carcase like a broken doll.

  ‘The man was a fool to try to get away,’ said a voice nearby. ‘He should have met the danger head on. Such is the price of cowardice.’

  Flaminius was still blinking from the glare. He saw that the lower part of the imperial box, which he realised was where he was now standing, was crowded with figures. In their midst, tended upon by pretty slave girls, played to by lyre players, lolling on cushions, was a man wearing the headdress and kohl of an Egyptian pharaoh. Sitting primly nearby were several Romans, men and women.

  He strode down the
steps. ‘Fancy dress today, is it, prefect?’

  Haterius Nepos gave Apuleius Victor and the two civic guards a dark look.

  The kohl he wore transformed it into the petulant glare of an ageing catamite. Beneath his pharaonic regalia he was the same bearded old bore Flaminius remembered from their brief encounter last Saturnalia, ruddy faced and with an apoplectic look to his bulging eyes.

  He removed his headdress and mopped his brow, revealing a very Roman shock of black hair. ‘Haterius Nepos thought this man was to be brought here under guard,’ he said. ‘That was your advice, after all, Apuleius Victor.’

  Sitting down beside the prefect, Flaminius helped himself to a roast dormouse from the tray a slave girl was holding. He grinned at her.

  ‘Don’t forget, Haterius,’ he addressed the prefect, ‘we’re social equals, you and me. You can’t just have me dragged here like some plebe.’ Down in the arena, the leopard was being driven back into a cage by Nubian slaves.

  Haterius Nepos drew himself up, his belly and chins wobbling. Every time Flaminius spoke to him, he would squint at them in apparent incredulity. Flaminius had found it very off-putting during their rather stilted conversation in the legion headquarters last Saturnalia, until he realised the prefect reacted like this to everyone, unaware of what he was doing. His habit of speaking about himself in the third person was even more galling.

  But whenever the prefect spoke, his eyes flashed like those of Olympian Jupiter. ‘What in Jove’s name are you babbling about, fellow?’ he asked. ‘You’re an equestrian tribune of the legion. Haterius Nepos is prefect of Egypt. A direct representative of his imperial majesty.’

  ‘As am I,’ said Flaminius, wishing he had his lancehead brooch; it was so very useful when he was pulling rank on pompous, middle aged fools of officials. ‘I’m an imperial agent.’

  ‘Indeed you are!’ The prefect seized greedily at this morsel. ‘And that is why Haterius Nepos had Apuleius Victor bring you here. He says that you have been resistant to authority in the past.’

  ‘Only to his authority,’ Flaminius said. ‘That was when he had the cheek to try recruiting me into his petty espionage ring for your civic guard. And now I’m being dragged into your presence like a prisoner, while in the midst of an important mission.’

  ‘The emperor’s life is at stake!’ the prefect hissed.

  Two trumpeters standing on ledges to either side of the imperial box blew their trumpets to announce the appearance of several convicts, who staggered out from beneath a portcullis into the middle of the arena and stood there looking every which way, each anticipating an horrific demise.

  ‘You know as well as Haterius Nepos does,’ the prefect said, beckoning Flaminius close so only the two of them could hear, ‘that the emperor is planning to make an appearance in this very place at noon of the final day of the celebrations. Only three people in the province are privy to that information. And now we learn that someone is plotting to kill him. Does that mean nothing to you, imperial agent?’

  Apuleius Victor joined them. ‘Apparently our keen young friend was already aware of this,’ he told the prefect. Flaminius munched at the dormouse, which was excellent. ‘For some reason he has been keeping it to himself.’

  ‘I’m on a secret mission,’ Flaminius spluttered, spraying the vicinity with half-digested dormouse. ‘I’m not obliged to tell anyone what I know. As a matter of interest, prefect, how did you learn about the plot?’

  Haterius Nepos brushed fastidiously at his robe. He fixed Flaminius with a cold glare. ‘This office received a message from the emperor himself. A warning that his imperial majesty had learnt of a threat to himself in Egypt.’

  Flaminius’ eyes widened. ‘Myself, I learnt it from the horse’s mouth,’ he said, ‘from the rebel leader in his encampment in the Delta. How did Hadrian find out in, where is he, Ephesus? Rhodes?’

  The prefect shrugged. ‘His imperial majesty has a very efficient intelligence network.’

  ‘I should know,’ said Flaminius indignantly; ‘I’m it. I’m in charge of intelligence in this province. And I’ve only just found out the truth.’

  Was there another spy network operated by the emperor?

  ‘It seems you’re lacking the necessary… intelligence,’ said the perfect snidely. ‘But his imperial majesty is not.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘And you can report that to him next time you see him.’

  ‘Who brought this message?’ Flaminius asked. ‘Are you sure you can trust them?’

  The prefect produced a scroll. ‘The imperial seal,’ he said, indicating the broken wax.

  Flaminius examined the seal, which he recognised as genuine, and skimmed through the contents. ‘… “believed that forces are at work intending to assassinate his imperial majesty on his appearance offshore… method not known as yet… assassin yet to be identified but description has been given to the bearers of this message” …’ He looked up. ‘Who are the bearers of this message?’ he asked urgently. It sounded like they were people he ought to talk to. ‘Are they here?’

  ‘The messengers are not here,’ said Haterius Nepos. ‘After their troubled journey, they went to rest at the imperial waystation. It seems that they had problems with pirates and, shipwrecked in an obscure part of the Delta, had to travel to Alexandria on foot.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘Two Praetorians, Gnaeus Rutilio Victorinus and Lucius Crassus Piso,’ the prefect said. ‘As you can see, they bore a message from the emperor, sealed with the imperial seal itself. Do you doubt it?’

  Flaminius checked the seal again. ‘And they came to warn you of a plot against the emperor...’ Down in the arena, lions were pursuing the convicts, those who were not already red streaks of guts in the sand. ‘What else did they say?’

  ‘They advised Haterius Nepos to put his best man on the case,’ the prefect said. ‘Apuleius Victor suggested you. You are the imperial agent, after all.’

  Flaminius relaxed. ‘I’m already investigating the same plot,’ he said, ‘although I have drawn a blank since returning from the Delta. I’m looking for the man who is the arch conspirator, a Roman senator.’ He told the prefect how he had identified Arctos from his gold senatorial ring.

  ‘Ridiculous,’ the prefect sneered. ‘No senator is present in Egypt without my say-so. The only ones this office is cognisant of are the legate himself, and the young broad-stripe tribunes who serve him.’

  Tribunes were divided into those of equestrian rank like Flaminius—usually men in their twenties—and tribunes in late adolescence, of senatorial family, like his old friend Karus, who had used his command of a cohort as a springboard into a career in public service.

  ‘These Praetorians managed to get past your security net,’ Flaminius said. ‘They didn’t pass any customs post, but they got as far as your presence with no trouble…’

  ‘They were imperial messengers!’ the prefect objected.

  ‘They could have been anyone,’ Flaminius told him. ‘And let me make quite clear to you, based on recent experience, despite all the river patrols and civic guards and any number of security precautions, it is perfectly possible for any fugitive to pass quietly through the province without drawing attention to themselves. I should know, I’ve done it.’

  The prefect purpled. Apuleius Victor looked from one to the other, incredulous. ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘I’m telling you that your security system could do with an overhaul,’ said Flaminius. ‘But I think we’re getting away from the point. The point is that Arctos, whoever he is, is behind the entire plot. And he is a senator, whatever the prefect thinks. Present in Egypt without the emperor’s permission, but he is aware that this is a highly important province.’

  ‘Everyone knows that,’ said Haterius Nepos smugly.

  ‘So if it is a hotbed of sedition,’ said Flaminius cuttingly, ‘as it has clearly become during your prefecture, then it is an ideal place to stage a bid for power.’

  ‘Are you attempting t
o blame Haterius Nepos for this situation?’ the prefect demanded. ‘Enough of your impudence. This office had you brought here for a very important reason. You can consider yourself under orders now, reporting to Apuleius Victor…’

  ‘I don’t have the time for this,’ said Flaminius wearily.

  ‘Now listen, young man,’ said the prefect. ‘You are indeed a young man, and clearly the whole business of being an imperial agent has gone to your head somewhere along the way. This arrogance is most unattractive. And it won’t get you anywhere in life. Haterius Nepos is the prefect of this province and if he requests your aid in this matter, you will provide it.’

  ‘Especially,’ Apuleius Victor murmured, ‘since it’s already your mission here. You say you’ve been in contact with the rebels? And the rebel leader?’

  ‘I led a group of river pirates in an attack on his encampment.’ Flaminius glossed over the fine details. ‘We wiped out his command group, but other cells of the rebellion are known to exist all the way from here to the Thebaid. The desert and the Delta are both home to native rebels, not to mention renegade gladiators. But Arctos escaped. I received word that he was coming to Alexandria to meet with a co-conspirator in the Library, but his whereabouts are now unknown. To me, at any rate. What did these Praetorians have to say?’

  ‘Simply that they have received word of a plot,’ the prefect said, ‘and that his imperial majesty sent them ahead to ensure that the plotters were exposed and brought to justice. They have a description of the chief plotter…’

  ‘They know what he looks like?’ Flaminius asked. ‘Arctos always wore a visored helmet.’

  The prefect and Apuleius Victor exchanged glances. ‘They maintain that they do,’ the prefect said, ‘although they did not give him a name. They said that he was a young fellow, and that that was all they knew.’