Jake felt nicely sozzled despite the modest intake. Only four beers that evening, yet there was a warmth inside him, a pleasant glow behind his eyes. For once he decided to halt the drinking there and turn in for the night. He paused at the landing, pleased with this little display of willpower. A storm was roiling over the Bosphorus – it was dry on the European side of the city, but curtains of rain swirled out to sea like the sides of some grand jellyfish. The mass of Asia was silhouetted by the regular crack of lightning, a black hump against the photo-flash white.
A solitary figure, still and slow-breathing, as if meditating. Or preparing for action. Jake sought the amber cone of a smoker. But in Istanbul you could light up indoors.
He was breaking in.
The journalist’s pulse quickened as his thoughts turned to Britton. For days he’d barely contemplated the man – but now he was overwhelmed afresh by all the suspicions he’d had in London. Yet he also saw the idiocy of his strategy. For if people were really following Britton, what the blazes did he intend to do when he encountered them? He was as much of a fighter as he was a lover.
Then a thunderbolt illuminated the balcony, and to his astonishment he saw it was Florence, staring up into the clouds.
Jake stepped onto the balcony. “Crazy, isn’t it?”
Florence jumped. “Jesus!” She relaxed, leaned against the wall. “You scared me, Jake. Anyway, what’s crazy?”
“That people once believed you could read the future in random discharges of electricity.”
Florence gave a half-laugh and looked up again. The sky was overcast, but forked lightning crackled across the underside of the cloud, like the boughs of some electrified oak tree. Or a brain, now Jake thought of it. The cloud-mass was exactly like a glowing brain, the lightning its network of blood vessels.
“I thought you went to bed hours ago,” he said.
“I did, but I couldn’t sleep. What have you been doing?”
“I vanquished the barman on the pool table. And then I went through Britton’s notes again.”
Lightning scored the atmosphere once more, almost violet this time.
“Find anything interesting?”
“Britton underlines a lot about Rome’s expansion,” he said. “How one minor town suddenly starts beating up all its neighbours, and within three-quarters of a century it rules all Italy.”
“Rome’s domination of the Mediterranean in microcosm.”
The wind was despicable and Jake hugged his arms around his chest; he noticed Florence wasn’t wearing a coat. “You must be freezing. Want my jacket?”
Yet there were no goose bumps on her neck.
“Your chivalry’s impeccable, sir,” she said. “But I’m fine. Come on, let’s go inside. The best of the lightning’s over.”
They sat on a sofa to watch the storm approach until raindrops rattled the windowpanes and the sky was lost behind rivulets of water.
“What else caught your eye in Britton’s notes?” asked Florence.
Jake retrieved the pages he’d been studying. “Britton emphasises how the Romans neglected religion in the last century of the Republic,” he said. “And how that was also a time of great turmoil for Rome.”
Florence nodded. “Spartacus and the slave revolt for a start. And it didn’t end there – the entire century was marked by unrest. All these super-powerful senators were striving to be top dog, often by force. The old checks and balances on democracy were lost. I make it seven civil wars in a century, culminating in Antony and Cleopatra and all that.”
“Ah, the star-crossed lovers,” said Jake. “Who end up getting clobbered by Julius Caesar’s nephew Octavian, if memory serves.”
“So there is a reason you’re historical correspondent.” Florence smiled at him.
“After he triumphed over Antony and Cleopatra, he did away with democracy, invented the post of emperor and consigned the Republic to the dustbin.” Jake was showing off now. “And the Romans actually welcomed it – a bit like Germany embracing Hitler in the 1930s. Anything for a bit of peace and quiet.”
“Good analogy,” said Florence, moving closer. “Under both leaders the cult of personality flourished. And just as Hitler became ‘der Führer’, Octavian was renamed ‘Augustus’, as a mark of the Roman people’s respect. Augustus brought back all the old religious rites that had been neglected in the previous century, Etruscan augury chief among them. Even Augustus’s tomb was in the shape of an Etruscan burial mound. By the end of his life Augustus was considered a living God – he was the greatest emperor of them all. No wonder a month is still named after him.”
“Odd you should mention the change of title,” said Jake. “Because Britton is constantly underlining stuff about the ‘Augustus’ thing. How it literally means –”
“Augur,” she finished.
Thunder echoed over Istanbul once more.