Secundus shrugged again. ‘Jupiter knows,’ he said. ‘No cause that I’m aware of. Or anyone else, for that matter. Including — or so he claims — Longinus himself. All he got was the order to get his arse back to Rome asap, and that’s been that.’ He moved his head closer and dropped his voice. ‘Mind you — and naturally I’m not implying any criticism here — Caesar’s been acting a bit … well, a bit arbitrarily these past few months. Longinus is just another example.’
Arbitrarily. Oh, sure: like tired and emotional was a euphemism for pissed as a newt. Yeah, well, there were no surprises there: in my long and not inconsiderable experience of the neurotic, overbred bugger who was currently our emperor, he’d always been several sandwiches short of a picnic. In many ways, he couldn’t’ve mustered the hamper. ‘That’d be a bit more arbitrarily than usual, I assume?’ I said.
I’d spoken at normal voice level, and I saw a few heads at the nearest tables — senior civil service types to a man — turn to look at me. Secundus glanced around, grinned nervously, and lowered his voice to a whisper through clenched teeth.
‘Gods, Marcus, you stupid bastard, either shut the fuck up or keep it down, right?’ he hissed. ‘I know most of those guys, and they’re safe, but one or two I don’t. And these days you do not kid around where talking about the boss is concerned. Get me?’
The hairs rose a little on the back of my neck. Shit, he was serious; deadly serious. This wasn’t the Gaius Secundus I knew.
‘Yeah, OK, pal, I’m sorry,’ I said. I lowered my voice to match his. ‘Arbitrarily like what?’
‘Well, for a start there’s the business of the statue in the Jerusalem temple.’
‘I thought the Jews were dead against that kind of thing. Having statues of gods in temples. God, singular. Whatever.’
‘Damn right they are. Only this wasn’t one of theirs; it was one of ours.’
‘What?’ I’d raised my voice, and he winced. ‘Sorry, pal. Won’t happen again.’
‘Caesar wanted to set a statue of himself up in the Jewish holy of holies and make them burn incense to him.’
‘But that’s crazy!’
‘Tell me about it. Offend those touchy stiff-necked buggers and you’d have a mid-east war on your hands before you could say “zealot”. Caesar’s advisors managed to talk him out of it, luckily, but the idea was there. Rumour is, he’s planning to do much the same thing here, in the city. Establish a formal cult, temples, priests, sacrifices, the lot. That’s “cult” as in personal cult.’
‘Shit.’ I was appalled; even for Gaius, this was going too far. Oh, yeah, sure: worshipping a living person as divine has been standard and accepted in the East for centuries — witness Postuma’s pal, Alexander — and every provincial town, outwith the Jewish bounds, of course, has its statue of the emperor to whom it’s only polite to offer a pinch of incense, but he’s there in image to represent the power of Rome, not propria persona. And within the city boundaries we like our deified mortals to be comfortably dead first. ‘He’ll never get away with it.’
‘Who’s to stop him? He’s the emperor.’ Secundus took a swallow of his wine and raised his voice a fraction. ‘Anyway, all this is by the way. Leave it. What’s your interest in Cassius Longinus?’
‘I told you. I don’t have one.’
‘Come on, Marcus! Give me a break! With your peerless grasp of affairs I’m surprised you know the names of the current fucking consuls. That’s if you do know them; me, I wouldn’t risk a bet. And yet you come straight out with the fact that Longinus is the governor of Asia. He has something to do with the case you’re working on, hasn’t he?’
I grinned. ‘Yeah, OK. His name just came up in passing, never mind how or who gave me it: that’s strictly confidential. And it wasn’t mentioned in any sort of way that’d connect him with Surdinus’s murder, either. I was surprised to hear that he was in Rome, that’s all. Satisfied?’
‘Not really. But I suppose it’s all I’ll get.’ Secundus took an olive. ‘OK, just to fill you in on the guy. Not that you want filling in, no, of course not, perish the thought.’ I said nothing. ‘Just for the fun of it. Longinus is an old friend of the family; I mean old, long before he and Surdinus had their joint consulate. Which was why Plautius made a point of telling him about Surdinus’s death; Plautius had the consulship the year before the two of them, so he’s always had a friendly eye for Longinus. Incidentally, he was only appointed Asian governor this year, and he seems to have been doing all right — no major cock-ups, certainly, and as far as honesty goes, word has it you could play the stone-and-scissors game with him in the dark. Shit-hot jurist; he’s written books on the subject. Oh, and a straight-down-the-line Stoic, like his great-grandfather.’
The Cassius who’d put a knife into old Julius. Yeah, I got the picture, and by the sound of things great-grandson was out of the same mould: a good old-fashioned damn-your-eyes Roman with an integrity you could bend iron bars round. Interesting that he should be a Stoic, mind: Stoic philosophy seemed to be cropping up pretty frequently in connection with this case. But there again, Leonidas the estate manager had said that most of Surdinus’s friends were on the philosophical side, and he was a Stoic himself, so maybe that wasn’t so strange after all.
‘You happen to know where I can find him?’ I said. ‘Should I want to talk to him, that is.’
‘Which you don’t.’
‘Which, at present, I don’t.’
He grinned again and filled up my cup. ‘Right. He has a place on the Quirinal, off High Path and near the Shrine of Mars. You’ll probably find him there, because he hasn’t got much else to do at present but stay at home grumbling and twiddling his thumbs. You can tell him …’ He stopped. ‘Oh, hell.’
The door had just opened and a freedman-clerk had come in. He looked round, fixed on us, and came over. Secundus sighed.
‘Yes, Acastus. What is it?’ he said.
‘The departmental accounts committee meeting, sir.’ The freedman touched the brim of his cap. ‘It’s in less than an hour’s time. You asked to be reminded.’
‘Bugger, so it is.’ He stood up. ‘Sorry, Marcus, I’ll have to go. Finish the wine, OK?’ He waved at the barman. ‘My tab, Quintus, right?’ The barman nodded, and Secundus turned back to me. ‘Use my name as an introduction to Longinus if you like,’ he said. ‘Not that you’ll need to; he’s a perfectly amiable guy. And you know where to find me. Any other questions regarding the case you don’t want to know the answers to, I’ll be happy to help. Or, depending what they are, tell you to go and screw yourself. Fair enough?’
I grinned. ‘Fair enough. Thanks, pal, the next one’s on me.’
‘Damn right it is. See you remember,’ he said, and left.
I settled down and poured the last of the Massic into my cup. Yeah, well, I didn’t know how much of all that had been relevant, but it had certainly been interesting. So Longinus was in Rome, was he? And, from what Secundus had said, he’d arrived back just before Surdinus was topped. Probably coincidence, but still …
Plus — and I couldn’t see how or whether it fitted in with the murder, or indeed why the hell it should — there was the question of why the emperor had suddenly decided to bring Longinus back. Why should a paranoid bastard like Gaius go over the senate’s head and recall their top governor, who was not only holding his end up where the job was concerned, but was by all accounts so squeaky-clean-honest that you could play morra with him in the dark?