Sixty-Two
Darkness closed in. Myles felt his body drift, as if it had lost its weight. He imagined himself rise out of the chamber which had threatened to become his tomb. He was floating.
Visions invaded his mind. Dreams from ancient Rome: he pictured the Hun, the barbarian warriors from the east who had outmatched the Romans in battle. He remembered the descriptions of them — narrow-eyed, with squat heads and flat faces. The Romans had always described the Asiatic horsemen as ugly, using words of intolerance. He remembered how the leader of the barbarians, Attila-the-Hun, had held civilisation to ransom. When Rome couldn’t pay, the ‘eternal city’ was ransacked and it never recovered from the rampage of 455 AD. It meant that Rome’s last military expedition — to Libya, in 468 AD — was a fiasco, and soon the Roman Empire was formally declared dead. An imperial order was the death certificate, signed in 476 AD.
Myles imagined the Hun presenting the official paper to him now. He was being asked to sign the end of the Roman Empire. To sign away civilisation, to sign away his life… Myles refused to take the pen, but someone grasped his wrist. He was being forced to sign.
Myles mustered his strength. He tried to move his arm, to keep it away from the paper, but he was too weak. Finally, he just managed to throw his arm sideways. Whoever was grasping it was knocked to the ground. The paper was taken away. Myles knew the Empire’s death certificate would be brought back to him soon.
He became aware of the person who had grabbed his wrists. The person, who Myles had thrown to the floor, was in pain. Myles looked over and recognised the narrow Asiatic eyes described in the ancient texts.
Myles had been captured by the Hun.
He became aware of his surroundings: the flat walls of a nomadic tent, the sort used by the barbarian horseback riders, who had been ancient Rome’s final adversary. The tent had been painted green, like the steppes of Asia from where the horsemen had come. Then he saw another Hun approach him with a spear. Myles could not resist. He felt pain as the weapon was plunged into his arm. Then he felt weak. His entire being was slipping away. Like the Roman Empire, he was passing into history.
The thoughts dribbled away until he could think no more.
It took many more hours for the drowsiness to pass, although Myles had lost his ability to feel time passing. Only gradually did Myles realise he had conjured pictures of ancient Rome and imagined himself there. History had mingled with the present.
Slowly, Myles recognised he was in a sick bay. The tent was not the home of barbarian horsemen, but a green surgical curtain. It surrounded the stretcher-bed, to which he had been strapped.
‘Hello?’ he asked, although he wasn’t sure who he was asking.
An Asiatic health orderly came to Myles’ bedside. She was soon joined by a more senior-looking doctor with a peculiar logo on his breast pocket. The doctor’s face also marked him as from the Far East. Myles saw a few Chinese characters on some well-kept medical equipment.
‘So you’re awake, then?’ said the doctor in an oriental accent.
‘Yes, thank you,’ Myles replied — awake but groggy. He wasn’t sure what to ask first: where was he? How had he got there? Who was looking after him?
The doctor saw his confusion and smiled. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘You’ve been with us for a while now, and there’s no sign of any problems at all with your head.’
The doctor reached over for an MRI scan and passed it to Myles. Myles tried to understand the image, which was on a large sheet of photographic film. It just looked like a picture of a brain in shades of grey. He looked back up at the doctor. ‘Er, thank you,’ he said, turning it sideways to see if it made more sense. It didn’t.
‘We did other tests on you as well,’ explained the doctor. ‘You’ve got elevated levels of calcium in your blood, and it looks like you’ve been exposed to some sort of disease recently, but it’s nothing too serious,’ he said, smiling. ‘Basically you’re fine.’
Myles barely absorbed the doctor’s words. He was still staring at his brain scan, and pointed at the edge of the scan, where his skull looked like it was nicked.
‘Yes, it’s a small fracture,’ said the doctor, nodding. ‘Probably caused by the explosion — or the fall. But you were lucky. You were the only survivor we found.’
Myles was obviously still very confused. He was sure Juma was still alive. ‘You only found one vehicle?’ he asked.
‘There may have been others, but they would have driven off before we arrived.’ The doctor explained how workers had seen two fireballs in the desert, just over the horizon. They’d gone to investigate — taking heavy security with them, of course. There they had found the dead bodies and the single overturned vehicle, which they pulled away to discover Myles. He had been lifted out on a stretcher, semi-conscious the whole time. ‘It’s not our business to ask whether it was an accident or what you Americans call a “shoot-out”,’ said the doctor.
‘I’m not American,’ said Myles. He wondered about his words as he said them. He wasn’t American, it was true. But in his culture, his attitudes and his outlook on life, he realised he had much in common with many from the United States. He was even in love with a woman from New York. He was certainly more American than the medical team who had just saved his life.
‘You said “workers”,’ he added. ‘How many workers do you have here?’
‘We have about fifty managers from China, then about two-hundred-and-fifty locals working on the rigs,’ said the doctor.
Suddenly the commercial logo on the doctor’s clothes made sense: oil. ‘So you’re the guys that bought up Iraq’s oil after the American troops left?’ asked Myles.
‘That’s right,’ nodded the doctor. ‘You guys did the fighting, we’re making the profit.’ The doctor smiled apologetically. Myles thought about arguing the point, but realised there was no need. The doctor already understood many Americans resented China buying up Iraq’s mineral resources.
‘Doctor, you know the Romans towards the end of their Empire relied on grain being shipped in from abroad, from North Africa,’ Myles explained. ‘When those lands fell to the barbarians they lost their last chance.’
‘You need rest.’
Myles accepted the doctor was right. Only now did he realise how tired he was. Not since he had been in custody in London had he had a proper night’s sleep. The medical team had wired him up to a drip, providing him with fluids which his body craved. His muscles were sore. Myles knew he was a wreck.
‘You said I had high levels of calcium in my blood,’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said the doctor. ‘Looks like you’ve been eating chalk!’
Myles paused to absorb the information. ‘Not lead?’
The doctor smiled. ‘No, lead and other heavy metals were fine. The elevated calcium won’t do much — it might even strengthen your bones. It is abnormal, but not dangerous. It needs to come down, and it will in a few days.’
‘Calcium, not lead?’
The doctor looked slightly offended. He was wondering why the tall Westerner was querying his medical advice. ‘Yes, calcium,’ he confirmed again. ‘Your lead levels were absolutely normal. Should they not be?’
Myles’ mind was still ticking over. ‘And you tested my blood for infections, too?’
‘Yes. You’d recently been exposed to smallpox, we think, but because you were vaccinated against it, the disease didn’t take hold.’ The doctor leant back and became authoritative. ‘You definitely need rest,’ he said. ‘Now, is there anything I can bring you? A book? TV?’