Myles accepted the answer. ‘How many guests in total?’
‘I think about one hundred and eighty — just under two hundred.’
‘Anyone who Juma might want to assassinate?’
‘A few former central bankers maybe. But I can’t see how their death would bring about the end of America.’ Roosevelt paused again. Then a thought suddenly struck him: could he be the target? His eyes asked Myles the question.
Myles raised his eyebrows, then weighed it up. ‘It’s possible. Juma’s already killed one Senator Roosevelt. He might want to kill another.’
Dick Roosevelt inhaled slowly. He was trying to remain calm when clearly he was frightened. ‘I don’t see why he would want to kill me. I hardly know the guy.’ Then he tried to shrug off the danger. He chuckled a shallow laugh.
But the faces of Myles and Helen were serious. Helen leant forward and held his wrist firmly. ‘You need to stay in a safe place, Dick,’ she suggested.
‘I can stay in the CCTV centre at the conference — it’s about the safest place there is.’
Myles agreed. But he kept pressing Roosevelt. ‘Could Juma hate the Roosevelt Guardians? Or something else you stand for?’
‘I’ve made clear that I’m a Christian,’ admitted Roosevelt. ‘As a Senator, I’m committed to bringing Christian values to America. There were battles between Christians and pagans in ancient Rome, right?’
‘Right,’ agreed Myles. ‘But if Juma wanted to strike a blow against the Church there would be lots of easier ways to do it.’
Roosevelt paused again. He was thinking it all through. ‘Well I doubt it’s anything to do with the Roosevelt Guardians,’ he said. ‘I know Juma has his own militia, but private security firms hardly compete with each other. We tend to work together as much as we can.’
Myles gazed out of the window as the people carrier passed through the city. The streets seemed much more tense than on his last visit. ‘Have we heard anything from Placidia?’ he asked.
‘Somehow she turned up in the middle of the refugees,’ answered Helen, tetchily. ‘She’s become an interview junkie — talking to all the broadcasters she can find about how bad the West has been to “her people”.’
‘So she’s not convincing, then?’ asked Myles, smiling slightly.
‘No. Ask any woman you know: that lady’s a fraud. I asked the Italian police whether they’d arrest her for terrorism. They said they were just waiting for the warrant.’
‘I’m sure she’s broken the law,’ agreed Myles, ‘but Placidia doesn’t seem to be trying to harm people. She sent us to a plague site without the plague, and tricked Juma’s men to put harmless calcium into the sauce rather than lead.’
‘Empty threats don’t make her harmless,’ huffed the Senator. ‘And if she uploaded that stuff onto the Senate computers, then she’s heartless.’
‘Maybe,’ said Myles. ‘But she’s not trying to cause harm. She said she was trying to save America and I believe her.’
‘Save America from whom?’ asked the Senator.
‘She refused to say,’ said Myles. He shook his head, still baffled, as he tried to sum up. ‘OK, so the plot to bring down America, Placidia’s “Last Prophecy of Rome”, is this: between one and two thousand malnourished Africans camped in Rome seeking asylum. Meanwhile, we expect an attack against the currency conference — a conference attended by financiers nobody’s heard of, and which is already very well protected by Roosevelt Guardians,’ he said, his tone indicating they were clearly missing something.
‘Not just my men,’ added Dick. ‘When the threat level rose, I brought in Homeland Security. Remember Susan, who used to work for my father — well she’s here. And she brought half the US military along with her.’ Dick could see the others were surprised. ‘In fact, now they’re doing most of it — Marines and Special Forces. Roosevelt Guardians are just doing the minor stuff — like the CCTV. This has become too serious for a private security firm.’
Myles and Helen were relieved. They respected the Roosevelt Guardians, but they trusted the elite US troops more. Myles was impressed that Dick Roosevelt had been sensible enough to call in support, probably missing out on profits. ‘That’s very public-spirited of you, Dick,’ he said.
‘Not really — it’s more like good business sense,’ admitted Dick. ‘If I kept this contract just for Roosevelt Guardians, and someone like Juma breaks through, the damage to our reputation would destroy the firm.’
Helen was still concentrating on the Roman angle. ‘But how can they do it? Myles: was there a single day or event which brought down the Roman Empire?’
‘Not really,’ said Myles, shaking his head. ‘The city was ransacked by barbarians a few times, but over the course of generations. Romans lost a few battles, but they often won again soon after. Rome fell slowly.’
‘So, historically, none of this makes any sense?’
Myles pulled a face. Some of it made sense, parts he couldn’t say in front of Dick and Helen…
The people carrier was slowing towards the conference centre. They passed an old Roman statue — a much-loved senator killed off by a jealous emperor — now grey with smoke accumulated over the centuries. Myles studied it as they passed it, trying to learn whatever it was willing to teach him.
‘Sometimes history makes no sense until it’s over,’ he said, thinking to himself. ‘And then it makes all the sense in the world.’
The people carrier halted in a small queue of vehicles. Several cars ahead, a roadblock was manned by Italian policemen. Roosevelt leant over to explain. ‘We’re still more than a mile from the conference centre,’ he said, apologising. ‘This is security in depth. There’s another check further up, then the US military scanning people on foot nearer the entrance.’
Myles was struck — security was much tighter than on his last visit.
‘Good, huh?’ said Helen. ‘I did a story on conference security yesterday. I really can’t see how anyone could break in.’
The people carrier crawled towards the checkpoint. As they approached, the driver folded down the sun visor. A special pass had been fastened to the underside, and when the police saw it they waved the vehicle through. Roosevelt turned to Myles for a reaction. Myles was absorbed in his thoughts. He noticed the heavy concrete blocks on the main routes as they came nearer the building. It would be very hard to drive a vehicle-borne bomb into the conference centre.
‘Have you planned for rocket-propelled grenades, too?’ asked Myles.
‘Why — does Juma have them?’
‘He does, yes. Or at least, he did have in Iraq.’
Roosevelt weighed the idea in his head. ‘Good question. It would be hard for someone to get close enough, I think. But it might be possible — just. They wouldn’t be able to do much damage, though, and they’d be caught almost as soon as they fired it.’
Myles nodded. As they came closer to the building itself, he saw increasing numbers of police, US Marines and Roosevelt Guardians patrolling key points. Men in plain clothes hung around, watching all that happened. Myles noticed they all had the same lapel badge.
The people carrier was directed towards a parking space. The driver pulled up and Roosevelt led the way out of the vehicle, closely followed by Helen and Myles.
As they walked towards the conference centre they were funnelled into lines. Myles looked ahead: everything was being scanned. The US Marines questioned everybody who went through. One man was sweating and was asked to strip down to his underwear, until the Marine was satisfied he wasn’t concealing a suicide-vest of some sort.
Helen was shocked. ‘If they ask me to do that, I’m just gonna turn around,’ she insisted.