…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 dangers 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
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.
‘Wollen Sie etwas kaufen?’ came a voice behind him.
Myles turned to see the stern face of the newsagent. He didn’t understand what the man had said, but guessed it was a complaint — Myles had been reading magazines in the shop for too long without actually buying anything.
Myles didn’t want to be noticed, so he smiled and put on an apologetic face. Then he drew out a five euro note from the money he had taken from the bus, handed it to the shopkeeper and waited for the change.
The shopkeeper muttered a grumble. Myles pretended not to notice the comment, mainly because he didn’t understand what the man had said. If the newsagent realised he had been holding a magazine he couldn’t read for twenty minutes it might raise suspicions.
With his change and the magazine, Myles left the shop. Immediately, he faced a row of workers leaving the building he wanted to investigate.