Last Prophecy of Rome

by Iain King

Genres: International Crime & Mystery; Crime Fiction; Spy Thrillers

Synopsis

An ancient empire. A terrifying threat to the world's superpower. Only one man can stop it. Rome: maverick military historian Myles Munro is on holiday with girlfriend and journalist Helen Bridle. He's convinced a bomb is about to be detonated at the American embassy. New York: a delivery van hurtling through Wall Street blows up, showering the sky with a chilling message: America is about to be brought down like the Roman Empire. Juma, an African warlord set free by the Arab Spring, plans to make it happen. When a US senator is taken hostage, a chilling chain of events begins, and Myles finds himself caught in a race against time to stop Juma. But he's not prepared for the shocking truth that the woman he once loved - Juma's wife, Placidia - has now become a terrorist.

Release date: January 28, 2016

Publisher: Audible Studios

Print pages: 350

Sample

It was the wrong place for a holiday.

The crowds, the hassle, the noise…

Myles looked around and tried to be impressed: so this was Rome.

He gazed at the magnificent statues: gods, emperors and senators. He saw the Colosseum, where gladiators brawled and died. He studied the city walls, which tried but ultimately failed to keep out the enemy. He even visited the old grain stores, Rome’s strategic stockpile of food, which kept its citizens plump. Stores once filled by harvests from across the sea, until barbarians overran the land now known as Libya...

Helen grabbed his arm. ‘Shall we see the Pantheon?’ she suggested. She was still trying to lift his mood, and he could tell. ‘You ought to teach this stuff to your students, Myles…’

Myles shrugged. She was right: Rome was an empire built on war and conquest. Perfect material for a military historian. He should teach it.

But he knew he couldn’t. And the reason why was something he could never explain to her.

They passed a fast-food outlet, an ice-cream seller and a man hawking plastic sunglasses for five euros a pair. School groups trampled over the ancient squares. Great artefacts were being smothered by chewing gum.

As they crossed a piazza towards the Pantheon, Myles looked up at the sandstone columns guarding the entrance, then hauled open the oversized wooden doors to go inside. Helen followed close behind.

Their eyes adjusted to the gloom. The only illumination came from the single window in the centre of the ceiling. They moved towards the middle of the patterned marble floor, directly below the light. Then their gaze slowly fell down to the alcoves and statues around the side of the circular building. Constructed in 126AD, Rome’s heyday, this was a church built for worship of all the gods – long before Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and ordered the whole Roman Empire to come with him.

Bang.

Myles flinched, hunching his head into his shoulders. He crouched down and scanned around.

No one else had reacted. A few people even looked at him as if he was odd – which he knew he was.

Helen saw it first. She motioned with her eyes: the huge doors to the Pantheon had been slammed shut, and the domed ceiling amplified the sound.

Myles calmed himself.

Helen put her hand on his face, and asked if he was OK.

He was. It was just instinctive. His body had adapted to behave that way in Helmand. It would take time to unlearn.

The army thought it had cracked Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In a change since Vietnam and the Second World War, troops were now flown from the frontline in groups. They were given time in an isolated place where they could drink away their memories – together, with people who had experienced similar things. By the time they returned home they had already half-forgotten their wars.

Not Myles. His experiences had been unique, and nobody but Helen had any idea what he had been through. When he saw a street, his first thought was to wonder where someone would place a machine gun to control movement. When he saw a patch of grass, he feared an improvised explosive device – a deadly IED – could be buried underneath. When he heard a bang, he flinched.

The symptoms would be obvious in anybody else, and therefore treatable. But for Myles, an unorthodox specialist in war and a misfit by any standard, it was hard to say what behaviour was normal.

Afghanistan hadn’t made him violent. Myles would never be that. Nor had his experiences made him hateful, which was a common expression of combat trauma. But Afghanistan had turned his imagination against him. He used to dream up solutions. Now he dreamed up enemies.

‘Myles, you need to get back to the hotel,’ said Helen.

They turned around. Away from the spectacles of the long-gone empire into the commercialised narrow streets and the crowds.

They passed a homeless man in one of the alleyways. He looked tired and hungry. Myles could tell the young man didn’t have much – unshaven and with ruffled hair, he’d probably been sleeping rough for weeks. So Myles found some change and threw it towards him. The man thanked him with a nod.

Outside a Hard Rock Cafe they saw men and women in business suits. They were standing about and chatting nervously, like they didn’t belong there. Obviously foreign. Myles picked up their accents: American.

Some of them recognised Helen, but none of them reacted. Myles guessed they were used to dealing with famous people.

Then he realised: these people worked in the American Embassy, which was opposite. He could faintly hear a fire alarm, which explained why they were all outside.

Myles smiled at them. Some of them smiled back, others just ignored him. None of them were worried.

Then he looked up to see a very large cardboard box suspended from a rope. A man in dark glasses was manoeuvring it from a second-floor window of a nearby apartment block.

The man lifted his glasses.

Myles caught a sinister look in his eye. He grabbed Helen’s arm and pointed. ‘A bomb,’ he whispered. ‘It’s got to be a bomb…’

Helen tried to work out how Myles could know the dangling box contained explosives. But Myles was already amongst the crowd. ‘Move away – quickly,’ he warned. ‘It’s a bomb.’

The Embassy workers took time to react.

He was flapping them away with his long arms. A few started to move slowly, until two or three started to run. Then everybody began to run with them.

‘Helen – RUN!’ Myles could see this was the perfect terrorist trap: set off the Embassy fire alarm then blow up all the staff as they muster outside.

‘But Myles…’ queried Helen.

‘Quick!’

Senior executives, mid-level diplomats and all their support staff: they all began to flee. Helen reluctantly moved back with them.

They started to gather at the far end of the street. From there they could see what would happen – but not at a safe distance if the Englishman’s warning was right. They all watched: half-curious, half-alarmed.

Myles found himself alone in the street. He looked up at the window.

The man hauling the cardboard box was sweating nervously now. Suddenly he left the box to swing on the rope and darted into the building.

Myles rushed over to where the box was hanging. Damn the consequences.

This was one terrorist he was determined to catch…

Salah had told his wife nothing about what he was planning to do.

She had been suspicious – she had quizzed him about one of the books he had been reading. But he’d managed to conceal most of the material under his baby daughter’s bed. It was the only place to hide things in their tiny New Jersey apartment.

His best information had come from the internet. He had discovered why so many terrorists had achieved so little. Now he understood how to do so much more, since his contact in Libya had explained to him the secret of ‘smart terrorism’.

Small terrorist attacks were doomed to fail. Blowing up a few people or a single building could be explained away as the work of a lone psychopath or a disgruntled former employee. They might dominate the news for twenty-four hours, but not much longer. A celebrity romance or a scandal on Capitol Hill would soon squeeze them off the television.

Larger terrorist attacks also failed. For an Oklahoma bombing, a Mumbai massacre or even a 9/11 to succeed, it could only ever be known about after the event. That meant only survivors would hear about it – the very people whom it had failed to break. It just made them ever-more defiant and patriotic.

American patriotism – the thought of it made Salah retch. They won’t be singing ‘America the Beautiful’ after this one…

Salah had studied previous attacks against New York: the attempt to destroy the World Trade Centre with an underground car bomb in 1993; the feeble bomb attempt in Times Square of May 2010. Even planes flying into the twin towers had done less damage to America’s financial system than a few greedy traders playing with hedge funds and derivatives…

As his contact had explained, the secret to successful terrorist attacks lay not in the devastation they caused, but in the future they forced people to imagine. Smart terrorism meant convincing the public that much worse was to come.

Salah looked across at his wife. She was sleeping soundly. Quietly he slipped out of bed and moved to dress in the very ordinary clothes he had picked out several days before: jeans, a white shirt and a workman’s fluorescent vest.

Careful not to wake his seven-month-old daughter, he pulled his newly acquired American passport and flight ticket from under her cot. He placed them in his daysack, along with a spare set of clothes, a toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving foam and a disposable razor.

He’d thought hard about whether to leave a note, but eventually decided against it. She would never understand what he was trying to do. Even if she did, she would never forgive him.

And there was a greater danger – any note might be discovered before he had done his work. Salah’s wife had been an American twice as long as him. Unlike him, she had taken seriously the mantras they were taught in citizenship classes. Unlike him, she had disowned her roots in Africa.

Salah knew, if she discovered what he was going to do, she would report him.

Instead of a note, he left behind his keys. He wouldn’t need them again.

Taking a last look at his baby daughter, still snoozing serenely, he walked backwards out of the apartment. Silently he closed the door behind him, pulling it into place with a click.

He walked down the stairs and out to his delivery van. Alone in the first light of the morning, he surveyed the vehicle, walking round all four sides to check nobody could have interfered with it. He examined the tires and looked under the hood to see the engine. Everything was still dirty, which was good: it meant the FBI weren’t on to him.

Finally, he climbed into the driver’s seat and, taking another look in the street to confirm he was still alone, he bent down to check the device. Still strapped in place above the foot pedals: the bomb remained untouched.

With a last glance at his family home, he turned the ignition key, let the engine settle for a few seconds, then drove off towards the centre of New York’s financial district. To Wall Street.

On test runs over the previous weeks, Salah had noticed the scars that still marked the walls on 23 Wall Street, the former offices of JP Morgan. In 1920, it had been the site of a bomb concealed in an old cart, led by a tired horse. The carriage had been parked by a man who stepped down and left quickly – some witnesses said he looked Italian. His hundred-pound dynamite bomb had killed thirty-one people instantly, with two more dying from their wounds.

Like the Italian Wall Street bomber of 1920, Salah would never be caught. But his bomb was different. It would not leave scars on walls, but in people’s minds.

He crossed the bridge into New York State, along famous roads clogging up with the morning traffic. He drove into Manhattan with the sun behind him.

As planned, the journey was taking him ninety minutes. Perfect. He spent the time focussed – concentrating on his driving, and being grateful for the money and advice he had received from his contact back in Libya.

Finally, he turned into Wall Street, trying to stay calm as his vehicle slowed to a crawl. He heard the horns blare and watched the taxi-drivers gesticulate against the traffic jams.

Then he smirked. The jam meant he had arrived at exactly the right time: in the middle of the rush hour, when the impact would be greatest.

Soon he was opposite number 23, the site of the bomb blast from almost a century earlier. Here he manoeuvred his van onto the sidewalk, turned off the ignition, and put his daysack on his shoulder. Deliberately, he didn’t look again at the bomb under the dashboard. He just stepped down, onto the tarmac.

He closed the door behind him, locked it, and pulled on the handle to check it was locked.

Then he began walking away into the morning rush of suited bankers, city traders, treasury officials – and all the cleaners, baristas and shop assistants who worked to support them in their jobs but whom Salah knew were paid much, much less.

He was a full two hundred yards away when he first turned around to check his vehicle again. Over the heads of the walking crowds, he could see it remained in place, and was not yet causing any alarm.

No one was on to him. His contact in Libya had been loyal: the secret of the bomb had been kept.

So Salah pulled out his mobile phone, turned it on and waited for it to register a signal.

Then he dialled the number he had memorised. The number which would set off the most powerful bomb Wall Street had ever seen.

The bomb dangled outside the second-floor window, which was now empty. Myles had to reach it.

He ran to the door underneath and grabbed the handle. It was locked. He tried ramming it with his shoulder – twice – but it stayed firm.

He looked up. The explosives were still spinning on the rope above him, out of reach. He wondered whether the terrorist could escape through the back.

Then Myles saw someone emerging from the house next door – an old woman. He rushed over. ‘Move away – there’s a bomb,’ he warned. The neighbour looked confused. Myles tried to remember his Italian. ‘Una Bomba!’ He gestured ‘an explosion’.

The woman put her hands to her mouth in shock. Myles grabbed her and pointed her towards the crowd of Embassy staff, huddled at the end of the road. Helen came over to guide the confused woman away.

The house next door gave Myles an opportunity – could he run through the old woman’s house to chase the terrorist?

Myles was about to try when the door beneath the bomb opened. He looked over – the terrorist was about to run out. Sweat covered the man’s forehead. Myles caught his eye again: this time he looked scared.

The man sprinted down the road, towards the American Embassy staff. He overtook his elderly neighbour, almost knocking her over.

Myles did the same, but turned to check the woman was OK as he rushed past.

American Embassy staff were blocking the road in front of the terrorist. Myles called out to them as he ran. ‘Stop him…’

Some of the younger office workers came forward. Having watched the whole chase, they wanted to help.

But then the terrorist slowed down and allowed himself to be caught.

One of the Americans grabbed the man’s arm while two more patted him down for explosives. Others gathered round, cutting off any chance of escape.

The terrorist just looked confused. He tried to talk back to the Americans in Italian, panicking but polite. ‘Dove si trova la bomba?’ he asked.

Once Myles caught up with them he was desperate to make sure the man couldn’t use any electronic devices to set off the bomb.

One of the Embassy men retrieved some keys attached to a small remote control transmitter from the Italian’s pocket. ‘What’s this?’

The Italian gesticulated in an attempt to explain, but was gabbling too fast for anyone to understand. The man reached for the transmitter in desperation.

Myles tried to grab it first. ‘Don’t let him press it!’

But it was too late. The terrorist put his thumb to the red button and pushed.

There was no explosion. Instead, the lights on an Alfa Romeo parked not far away blinked, matched by a faint sound from the horn.

One of the Americans asked him about the hanging box.

‘Si tratta di una lavatrice,’ answered the man.

It was a washing machine. The man had been dangling it into the building by rope because it was too big to be carried up the small Italian staircase.

Myles lowered his head, paused, then simply sat down in the street. He tried to apologise to the man, but the blare of approaching police sirens meant nobody heard what he said.

The Embassy staff began drifting back to their offices, and within minutes police were swarming everywhere. They checked and confirmed that the hanging box was indeed a washing machine. It was soon swung inside the house. One of the police even helped fit it into place.

Helen put an arm on Myles’ back. Myles just sat there, thinking through what had happened. ‘I really thought it was a bomb…’

Helen knew it was best not to answer. She just nuzzled her head onto his shoulder in consolation.

A policeman approached and began speaking English with only a mild accent. ‘Are you the one who caused the disturbance?’

‘Sorry. I thought it was a bomb,’ replied Myles.

‘You understand you caused a serious panic. The old lady is being taken to hospital with chest pains – she could have died from a heart attack.’

Helen and Myles could both tell the Italian policeman was playing it up, but Myles answered calmly. ‘Sorry officer. I just tried to do the right thing.’

‘There are professionals to deal with bombs.’

Myles was about to answer back but Helen stopped him. This was a time for discretion. She put her hand on his arm and spoke for him. ‘Thank you officer. We’re sorry. We won’t cause another alarm,’ she promised.

Myles wasn’t sure she was right. If he came across another ‘bomb’ he would try to tackle it again. Maybe the same way. Alone, if he had to. He still distrusted the authorities – all authorities.

He had never trusted them, at least not since his mother had been diagnosed with bowel cancer. Myles had seen medical bureaucracy deny her the early surgical treatment she really needed. He saw her battle against authorities, both public and private, who cared only for their reputations. And he saw her fight the withering poisons of the chemotherapy they gave her. By the time she eventually died, in the week of his fourteenth birthday, Myles had no faith left in ‘the authorities’ at all. Everything since had just confirmed his view.

Even before his mother’s death, Myles had been different. As a child, he was uniquely brilliant at most academic subjects, but unable to read aloud or distinguish his left from his right. He hadn’t been able to tie his shoelaces until he was twelve, and he had no natural ability to empathise. His condition might have been labelled as dyslexia or even Asperger’s syndrome. But there was never a need for diagnosis – Myles was nice to everyone, just a little other-worldly. He had found juvenile pleasure in performing magic tricks for people and helping them solve puzzles. At school he would happily share his always perfect answers with his many friends, none of whom were close. He learned to empathise as an acquired skill and he was soon empathising more naturally than almost everybody else.

But he knew he would never fit in. He’d gone on to study history at Oxford – a university full of oddballs, but even there he felt like an outsider.

In the military they’d put him in intelligence. With his overpowered brain and lack of physical skills it should have been the perfect fit. But Captain Munro could never settle into being a normal officer. Some seniors said he had no discipline. Others said he had too much sense. In the doomed war of Iraq, his military career had ended in disgrace.

Myles had retreated into academia – where else could he go? – accepting a junior lectureship on military history back at Oxford University. There, the students loved him – partly because of his attitude, but mostly because his views were unorthodox. In his ever-popular lectures he would explain why most military historians were wrong. It annoyed the other military historians, and it gave Myles a certain reputation.

A reputation which meant nothing to him at all.

Reputation mattered to Richard Roosevelt because he knew his reputation could never be truly earned. People thought they already knew about him, just from his name.

It wasn’t the two presidents which framed people’s impressions. Dick Roosevelt didn’t remind people of Theodore or Franklin Delano, the boldest Commanders-in-Chief of their generations. Richard Roosevelt had been eclipsed by a far more historic personality, and one who was still alive: his father, Sam.

Even though Senator Sam Roosevelt would probably never run for the White House again – twice was enough – everybody knew of his heroism in the Vietnam War. He had been even more courageous on the floor of the Senate, where he had driven the Roosevelt-Wilson Act into law. It meant US citizens could be tried for crimes committed abroad, ‘Because the laws of the land must reach beyond the sea,’ he famously explained. The senior Senator frequently appeared on early evening news shows, talking to the ‘common American’ in straight language – often very straight language, which left interviewers shocked. Sam Roosevelt was loved by the American people. And some of that affection tumbled down onto his only son, Richard. Now aged thirty-one, Dick tried his best to deserve what people thought of him.

‘This way, Mr Roosevelt, sir,’ ushered a staffer.

‘Call me “Dick”,’ he replied.

As Richard was led into the Treasury building opposite number 23 Wall Street, he leant over to his executive assistant. ‘Remind me of the brief. How many people do we have working here, again?’

‘Seventy-eight on duty at the moment, a total assignment just under two hundred, sir.’

Dick nodded, then straightened his back. He readied himself to meet more of the men and women employed by Roosevelt Guardians, the private security company established by his father, of which he was now the Chief Executive.

It was as he was entering the lobby that he first noticed someone in a Roosevelt Guardian uniform looking concerned. One of his security guards – alarmed?

Dick remembered words from his speech:

‘Your job is to allay fear, so Roosevelt Guardians, you should appear calm and assured at all times…’

Dick stopped to watch. His small entourage stopped with him, knowing great men often noticed important things others missed.

The security guard had gone outside. He began pulling hard on the locked door of a delivery van. The door wouldn’t open.

One of the men beside Dick nervously tried to explain it away. ‘Er, routine procedure, sir, er, Dick, sir…’

But Richard Roosevelt kept watching. The delivery van was certainly parked in an odd place.

Then, just as the guard was about to give up in bemusement, the spectators saw another man approach. The man was foreign-looking, perhaps North African. He said something apologetic to the security guard as he took a set of keys from his pocket and went to unlock the vehicle.

The Roosevelt Guardian stepped back as the North African man climbed into the van. ‘Thank you for moving along, Sir.’

The North African man nodded as he closed the door, then contorted his body to reach something beneath the dashboard. Sweat reflected from the man’s forehead. Both Dick and the guard could see the driver was agitated.

The security guard opened the door to speak to him. ‘There’s parking further down and to the left, sir,’ he volunteered. But as he said the words, the guard spotted something and began to react.

Suddenly the driver turned and kicked the security guard in the face. As the guard recoiled, the man in the vehicle slammed the door shut and locked it.

The sight of one of his staff being assaulted shocked Richard Roosevelt. He marched out of the lobby, and broke into a run. Roosevelt rushed up to his employee, who was reeling on the pavement with a bloody nose. ‘What did you say to him?’ he asked.

‘There was a bomb, sir,’ came the reply.

Barely believing, Roosevelt looked through the van’s window at the driver. The man’s face confirmed the worst.

Roosevelt tried the door on the vehicle, but it was locked.

Quickly he grabbed a briefcase from someone passing by and swung it into the glass. The window shattered. Roosevelt flung the case to the floor, pulled up the lock and yanked open the door, catching the driver by surprise.

Roosevelt climbed into the vehicle beside the man, then dragged him from the bomb, and pressed him hard against the seat. The driver tried to unpick Roosevelt’s fingers, which were grabbing his shirt. But it was no good. Within moments the man found himself flung out of the door and crashing down onto the street. He collapsed into a gathering crowd of uniformed Roosevelt Guardians.

‘There’s a bomb in here,’ called Roosevelt through the broken window. ‘I’m going to have to drive this someplace safe.’

‘But sir…’ The Guardians watched as their Chief Executive clunked the vehicle into gear and moved off into the traffic. He was soon driving down Wall Street.

Roosevelt’s men called the police immediately. Within a minute Roosevelt was being led by a police car. Within two minutes an impressive escort had formed around the van. Loud sirens and flashing lights started clearing the traffic away, allowing the bomb-laden delivery truck to move ever faster.

Overhead a helicopter, more used to reporting on traffic jams for the New York breakfast TV shows, started to broadcast the events. ‘This must surely be the fastest anybody’s ever driven during Manhattan’s morning rush hour…’

As news leaked that the van was being driven by none other than the son of Senator Sam Roosevelt, the feed was piped live onto national TV.

The first confused reports said that Richard ‘Dick’ Roosevelt was driving a bomb around Manhattan. But the rolling news ticker soon provided the clarification: he was actually driving the bomb away. Dick Roosevelt was single-handedly saving New York.

The police escort knew where to guide him and Roosevelt followed: off Wall Street, down a side road, along another road, into an open area. About as open as it gets in Manhattan.

As he turned onto the broken ground, Roosevelt saw a young bomb disposal expert already starting to put on his protective clothing. Over the noise of police sirens and helicopters, he heard instructions from a loudhailer. ‘It’s safe here, sir – you should leave the vehicle and run away.’

Roosevelt saw the policemen flee their cars, not even bothering to shut their doors as they ran. So undignified. And on live television, too…

Instead, Dick Roosevelt calmly parked the van, turned off the ignition, opened the door, and magnanimously stepped down onto the ground.

He dusted off his hands and turned back to look at the vehicle one last time, before walking on towards the hastily assembled control area. No point running – this was his moment of majesty.

The bomb disposal expert rushed passed him – going towards the van as Roosevelt walked away from it. ‘Can I help some more?’ queried Dick.

‘No thank you, Mr Roosevelt, sir – just professionals from here on.’

It was a snub Roosevelt accepted. He had done enough already. He looked across at the crowd of policemen and agents gathering a safe distance from the van, being joined by the first news crew on the scene. They beckoned and Richard Roosevelt came. As he reached them he was mobbed by pats on the backs, applause and other praise.

But the congratulations were soon cut short. A deep boom and a sudden rush of air knocked them all to the ground.

The delivery van had been obliterated and the bomb disposal expert blown completely away.

It took several seconds for the crowd to recover themselves, and realise the sky around them was full of confetti.

Richard Roosevelt grabbed at the air and caught one of the fluttering bits of paper. He read it.

And, like the police and the assembling news crew around him, he wondered whether the message it contained could possibly be true…

Helen stayed with Myles, both sitting on the concrete as the crowds drifted away.

She had known him for less than three months – first meeting him on a training course, where he had been able to solve difficult problems but not tie his shoelaces properly.

Straight away she’d known he was different. But it was a good sort of different: even his clumsiness had a charm to it. He had a uniqueness which she found far more attractive than his height, his looks or his peculiar intelligence. To an American working in the media, where the men wore make-up and false smiles, Myles was abnormally genuine. In all her time reporting for CNN, in many places and many tough situations, Helen Bridle had never met anyone quite so special.

‘Next time a terrorist hides a bomb in a washing machine, you’re the man!’ she said with a smile, trying to console him. She was disturbed by the Embassy staff reaching for their pagers. Their mobile phones all started ringing at the same time. Something was happening.

Myles was alert again. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

Then Helen’s phone rang. She raised her eyebrows to Myles, as if to say ‘you’re about to find out’. She pressed the green ‘accept’ button to answer. ‘Helen Bridle here.’

It was one of her producers. There had been a bomb in New York. One dead, but it could have been much worse – they’d tried to blow up Wall Street.

Helen registered the information. Was this news? One dead in a terrorist bomb was a tragedy, and a bomb in New York was certainly a headline.

Her producer’s voice was animated. ‘And get this, Helen. There was a sort of confetti in the bomb. And it said, “America is about to be brought down like the Roman Empire”!’

The producer was eager to give Helen more details: about Senator Sam Roosevelt’s son Richard driving the bomb away, escorted by police live on TV. But Helen was more sombre. ‘Do people think the warning is true?’

‘Nobody knows, Helen, but it’s a gr