Dawn Warner had meetings all day in town. It was so late when she got out, she had to hustle her driver along with a promise of an extra day off to run a few red lights so that she could catch the last Acela Express to New York City.
The floodlights on the Metropolitan Museum of Art grand classical facade came on as she arrived in her Uber from Penn Station. Growing up on the Upper East Side, she’d been coming here since she was a child. On a summer Friday this late, the great temple-like Fifth Avenue steps were mostly gray and empty. Clopping up the steps in her Louboutins, she passed only a few tired Asian tourists and a pathetic old mumbling homeless woman surrounded by a half dozen can-filled bags.
It was dim inside as she passed beneath the oculus skylight domes. As she waited on line to get her pin at the reception desk, she yawned, looking around at the ancient Greek statuary. Back through the deserted corridors, her eyes kept getting drawn to one piece in particular. It was the great marble of Perseus proudly holding the head of Medusa aloft.
From the desk, she quickly made her way into the north gallery. It took her two minutes of walking through the Ancient Egypt wing to get to its main attraction, the Temple of Dendur.
It was actually closed off with a velvet rope, but she stepped over it as she had been instructed. Beyond the doorway in the stunning cavernous installation space, a figure was facing the temple, sitting on one of the stone blocks by the pool.
Ethan Weber smiled as he turned around.
With his salt-and-pepper buzz cut, the famous billionaire had an almost George Clooney thing going on.
But he seemed thinner than the last time she’d met him six months before, Warner thought as she got closer. She’d read in a Fast Company article that like some other Silicon Valley moguls, he’d recently been on a stoic philosophy fasting kick.
She really didn’t think it was doing a lot for him, she noted as she arrived in front of him. Always thin, he now looked sort of skeletal. In the dim museum lighting, his shadow-filled eyes were like skull sockets, and when he yawned, she couldn’t help but think of Munch’s The Scream.
“Do you actually know why this structure is here, Dawn?” the billionaire said to her, casually crossing his legs as she sat beside him.
“You mean the temple itself? No, not really,” Warner said.
“It was a gift to the United States from Egypt after the assassination of J.F.K.,” Weber explained. “With the gift, they especially cited their condolences to Jacqueline. She actually lived across the street here on Fifth Avenue and could stare down at it from her apartment window with John Jr. and Caroline.”
“Noble gesture,” Warner said.
“Yes, quite,” Weber said, gazing up at the magnificent sandstone behemoth. “Most widows are lucky to get a casserole. But that’s not the reason I come here. I come here because of him.”
He pointed to an Egyptian figure carved into the stone.
“He looks like a pharaoh, doesn’t he? But he’s not. It’s a trick. He’s actually Augustus, the Roman emperor.”
“I didn’t know that,” Dawn Warner said.
“Augustus Caesar was perhaps the greatest Roman emperor of all. Rome ruled Egypt during his long, happy reign, and this temple was originally a gift from him to the people of Egypt.”
Ethan Weber crossed his thin arms.
“Some think Augustus was great because of how clever he was. He was as much and perhaps even more of a military dictator than Julius Caesar, who had preceded him, but unlike the glory hound Caesar, he was smart enough to hide it. To cloak his ruthless will to power behind the grand facade of service to the Republic.
“And he did serve it,” he said, cocking his head up at the figure. “Despite all his devious machinations, and I would claim because of them, the Roman Empire lasted several, maybe even as much as five centuries, longer than it would have.”
Ethan Weber sat and silently stared at the temple.
Warner was deft enough a bureaucrat to say nothing when the powers that be were in guru mode.
Then after a minute or two, he sighed.
“How’s our friend?” he finally said.
“He’s fine,” Dawn said. “Much, much better. He has the senator’s estate all to himself like I told you. There’s a small golf course. A lake. He goes out in the morning and feeds the ducks. Gandalf is doing much better.”
“Gandalf?” Ethan Weber said, puzzled.
“That’s his code name. Security needed a code name for him. He chose it himself.”
“Oh, he must love that,” Ethan Weber said with another sorrow-tinged sigh. “I’m glad he’s doing okay. I really am.”
Dawn Warner resumed silent mode. She didn’t touch that one. Not with a hundred-thousand-foot pole, she thought.
“I assume you’re doing everything you can to staunch the shitstorm in Denver, so you needn’t mention it,” Weber said. “I asked you to come because I wanted to invite you to the meeting. Considering our situation, I managed to reschedule. We’re on for Monday evening.”
“Back in Wyoming?” Warner said.
“No, in San Francisco. They’ll be leaving from the airport right after.”
“Do you really think that makes sense for all of us to be there? It’s a bit, um, overt, isn’t it?”
“I know, Dawn. It is a bit. I wouldn’t even ask but here’s the thing. They’re not stupid. They have people in the same places we do. We have to assume they know everything that’s going on. The bit of a bind we’re in. You know as well as I do how much it’s all about saving face for them. If you are there, it will comfort them that there is no law enforcement risk on their end. No risk of embarrassment. That the matter is being handled smoothly by all their partners.”
“I see,” Dawn Warner said. “Okay. Of course. That actually makes a lot of sense. If you need me there, Ethan, then I’ll be there. I’ll make it happen.”
“Thanks, partner,” Ethan said, standing and offering his hand. “We’ll keep it between you and me, then.”
“And Augustus,” Warner said, tossing a chin at the temple as they shook.