Rubicon, page 14
“Albert,” said his wife, gazing off into the distance, “that was a long time ago. What the Romans did - no one does that anymore.”
“No, that’s true. Now we just drop bombs on people and kill them that way. And we don’t have to come out to a colosseum to watch it; we can do that right at home in our living rooms, can’t we?”
“Well, I really don’t see how you can compare things then and now,” she persisted. But before her husband could reply, the bus lurched forward and the guide began another short description of the next place on the tour.
What the Britisher had said reminded Hart of what Caulfield had said about Orwell and Huxley: The relentless surveillance of l984, and the gentler, but in certain ways more pervasive, control exercised in the scientific utopia described in Brave New World. Everyone’s need for food and shelter met; everyone satisfied with their place in life by proper conditioning and tension relieving drugs; sex removed from the constraints of both birth and love; and, shaping everything else, entertainment designed to produce not just an emotional but a physical response, what Huxley in his fable called ‘the feelies.’
He got off the bus at the next stop and for several hours wandered, part of the crowd, through the vast broken monuments and shattered remains of what had once been the capitol of an empire that had seemed destined to last as long as there was life on earth. As he walked among the towering cypress and the huge blocks of overturned stone, he worked at the various pieces of what he had heard and what he knew: how Rome had changed from a republic in which every citizen fought in its wars to an empire in which generals led seasoned veterans whose only loyalty was to themselves; from a republic in which - how had that Britisher on the bus put it? – each citizen took part in civic life, to an empire in which citizens were kept obedient by countless mindless games and endless bloody slaughter.
Hart did not stop at the obvious parallels between what happened to Rome when it stopped being a republic and what had happened to his own country after the wars of the twentieth century. No one could argue that democracy in America was what it had been two hundred years ago; the country was too big, too industrialized, too specialized and spread out for that. But that was a far cry from having no democracy at all. No, it was not the same, he told himself; no one was elected to anything in Rome once the time of the Caesars started. There was no freedom of discussion, no real debate, not even in the senate, once Caesar crossed the Rubicon and power came to depend solely, or mainly, on the possession of force.
Hart turned around and gazed once more at the Colosseum, shining in all its shattered, aging grandeur in the rose-colored sun, and then he started walking back to the hotel.
He was almost there, just the other side of the Piazza Navona, when he saw it on the front page of a newspaper. He would not have noticed, mixed in as it was with the newspapers of half a dozen other European countries, if the editors of the British paper had not run his photograph with the story of how the same U.S. Senator who had narrowly missed being murdered in his home was now rumored to be missing and perhaps even dead.
It was the stuff of tabloid journalism. Bobby Hart had not been seen in nearly a week, not since the night that armed gunmen broke into his fashionable Georgetown house and in a burst of gunfire killed Dieter Shoenfeld, one of Europe’s best known publishers. Though representatives in Hart’s office claimed he had gone into seclusion the day after the Shoenfeld murder, no one seems to have heard from him since. This has led to speculation - “Speculation!” Hart swore out loud - that something has happened to the senator and that, for reasons of their own, the authorities were not talking about it. Knowledgeable sources insisted that there was growing concern that the senator may have been kidnapped by the same people who tried to kill him and is now being held hostage somewhere, perhaps outside the country in some Middle Eastern nation.
“Damn,” muttered Hart under his breath as he tucked the paper under his arm and strode in earnest toward the hotel.
The entrance to the Rafael Hotel was on a narrow cobblestone street with barely enough room for three or four cars to park facing straight in. The doorman was leaning against the wall, a cigarette dangling in his fingers, speaking to a dark, well-dressed man in a double-breasted suit. When he saw Hart approach, he ground the cigarette out with the heel of his shoe, and opened the door.
“I wonder, Mr. Hart, if we might have a word?”
The well-dressed stranger had his hand on Hart’s arm, turning him back toward the blue Mercedes Hart had just squeezed past. Hart was so surprised at hearing anyone use his name that he was sitting in the back seat of the car before he quite knew what had happened. Then he tried to get out. He reached for the door handle, but the door had been locked. The car began to move, backing away from the hotel, then turning down the narrow cobblestone street. There were two men in the car, a driver, whose face he had not seen, and the one who had forced him inside, now sitting next to him. Hart demanded that he stop the car and let him out. The answer surprised him.
“Why, Mr. Hart? Do you have other plans for dinner?”
“Is that where I’m going - dinner? I didn’t even know I had been invited.”
The driver navigated several sharp-edged corners until he was out on the thoroughfare that ran next to the Tiber, and then, with St. Peter’s Basilica glowing iridescent in the falling Roman sun, turned left and headed toward the Palatine Hill.
“How have you enjoyed Rome so far, Mr. Hart?” He asked this in the casual manner of one who is both interested and thinks he can help. “Probably not a very intelligent question, given the fact you’ve only just got here, to say nothing of the reason you’ve come.”
He spoke impeccable English, clearer, crisper than an American, but without the traces of a British accent. He had almost certainly gone to school at one of the best universities in the Middle East; probably, thought Hart, in Egypt, where the British influence had produced something more than imitation. His hand lay comfortably on the seat between them. He wore gold cufflinks and an expensive but understated watch. Hart thought he knew who he was.
“You must be Mohammed al Farabi.”
The question seemed to dazzle the Egyptian by its ignorance.
“Am I...? No. But yes, I can see why you might have jumped to that conclusion. No, I am not; but that is where you are going, or rather, whom you are going to see. Unless, of course, you really would prefer to have the driver stop and let you out.” As soon as he said it, he began to shake his head, apologizing for an unforgivable breach of etiquette. “What I meant to say, is that we would be glad to take you back to your hotel - if that is your preference. Though, I can assure you, Mohammed al Farabi would be deeply disappointed.”
Hart wondered if it was true, if the man really would take him back and then drive away without a second thought. For all this Egyptian stranger’s well-bred manners, he had, just a few minutes ago, forced Hart into a car and driven off with him. And now he made it seem like there was nothing the slightest bit unusual in any of it.
“That depends,” said Hart with a serious look.
“I’m sorry - what depends?”
“Whether I ask you to take me back to my hotel depends on what you tell me. First of all, who are you and where are you taking me?”
“My name is not important. It is enough that you know that I am taking you to see the man whose name you just mentioned, Mohammed al Farabi, whom you have come all this way to see. Or are we mistaken on that point?”
Hart ignored the question. There were other things he wanted to know.
“How do you know why I’m here, why I’ve come to Rome?”
With rare precision, the stranger nodded briefly and exactly. He became quite serious.
“Dieter Shoenfeld had made arrangements - through me - to meet with Mohammed al Farabi, here, in Rome, tomorrow afternoon. There were reasons Mohammed al Farabi was willing to meet with him. He will tell you if he so chooses. But one of the reasons was that Mr. Shoenfeld advised me that he had kept you informed of much of what he had learned. That was why we thought you might come. We knew from all the published reports that Mr. Shoenfeld had been murdered in your home, and that there was some reason to suppose that you had also been a target. Then, when we heard that you had disappeared, that no one knew where you were - it seemed at least a possibility that you would come here; that before he died Mr. Shoenfeld had told you he had a meeting with Mohammed al Farabi and that you decided you should come in his place. We are very glad that you did.”
“Very glad...?” Hart started to ask, but the Egyptian gave him a look that told him that the reason would soon be clear.
They were now close to where Hart had been before, the Circus Maximus, or what was left of it.
“Why did you come for me? Why not wait until tomorrow and the original, scheduled meeting.”
“Because it was not safe. We could not know it was you until I saw you. We could not know that someone else had not found out where Dieter Shoenfeld was going - and who he was going there to meet. I can assure you, Mr. Hart, that the same people who had him murdered, and would like to murder you, are more than willing to get rid of anyone else who knows anything about them and what they are trying to do.” He looked at Hart in a way that left no doubt how serious he was when he added, “You’re really quite lucky to still be alive. If you were a Muslin, a member of the faith, I would have to say that you must be one of the favored few chosen by Allah to do God’s work.” A thin, enigmatic smile cut across his wide, smooth mouth. “Perhaps, even though you are not a believer, that may still be true.”
The driver turned away from the race course of the Circus Maximus and the ancient ghosts of Roman chariots and headed onto the Palatine Hill. Ten minutes later, he stopped in front of the guarded gate of a high-walled villa and rolled down the window. Holding an automatic weapon in his arms, the guard looked inside and then, stepping back, waved them through.
“Dieter told me that Mohammed al Farabi had been in Cairo, but that he now lived here, in Rome.”
“Cairo was not safe. It never had been, really, but then, after what happened, after they took him away....”
“Took him away?”
The stranger’s eyes, so bold and full of confidence, suddenly became modest and self-effacing; his manner, so rigorously correct and self-assured, became almost humble. Hart turned to see what he was looking at, what had produced this remarkable change.
Standing directly in front of the car, with a short cropped black beard and piercing black eyes, was someone who seemed to have leaped straight from the pages of the Arabian Nights. He held his head not just erect, like some well-trained soldier, but with the proud, and indifferent, defiance of a man bred from birth to the habit of command. It was not the command of others that made the habit so impressive; it was the control he exercised over himself. Hart sensed immediately that he was in the presence of a rare intelligence, a man who liked deserts and the cleanliness of barren places, someone who could both laugh and cry at the vanities of the world.
Chapter Fifteen
“Good evening, Senator Hart. I am Mohammed al Farabi,” said the man as he stepped out of the shadows. “I was very sorry to hear about poor Mr. Shoenfeld. But I’m glad you’re safe and that now, finally, we can talk. Please, come inside. We’ll have something for dinner.”
They sat on a loggia overlooking much of what was left of ancient Rome. The headlights from the traffic in the distance had the look of a torch-bearing army. The scent of jasmine filled the warm night air.
“Augustus, I am told, was born not far from here and, so the story goes, wanted to live in the same simple house when he became emperor. He was forced, however - perhaps by circumstances, perhaps by his wife - to build a palace instead. The irony, if it is an irony, is that because he did what he had not wanted to do, all the emperors who followed him wanted to do the same thing: build, each one of them, a palace of his own. Most men live by imitation, Senator Hart; the only difference between them what they choose to imitate.”
A breeze, gentle as a woman’s breath, gave a moment’s life to the white silk draperies that hung from the loggia’s stone columns, which, taking it in, then let it go and hung limp again. Dinner was served by a small tribe of servants who materialized and vanished in strict accordance with their task. It was as if the air itself were filled with an intelligence that could foresee, and arrange, each thing that was needed.
“My family has always been in Egypt. I am told by those who know such things that there is no record of a time in which the name al Farabi did not exist. There was a man of that name quite famous, nearly a thousand years ago, but whether I am a direct descendent of his or not - I think would be too much to claim.” Mohammed al Farabi turned to Hart, sitting immediately on his right, and allowed himself a modest smile. “But I have read his works, or tried to.
“In more recent times my family turned to commerce. My father, and his father before him, were bankers, men of great wealth; and because wealth always attracts followers, men of no small influence. They were prudent men, both of them; men who knew how to keep their own counsel, men who understood - or thought they understood - that there are limits beyond which one must not go in trying to change things. They learned to accommodate those in power. I, on the other hand, was young and of course had nothing like their patience. I was also, to tell the whole truth of it, used to being rich.”
The sparkle in his eye showed that he understood that if he had seen things differently than his father and grandfather had it was only possible because of what they had done for him. Hart was drawn to him in ways he had not expected. He had come to talk to someone he had thought must be one of the dispossessed, an outcast living hand to mouth on the margins of society, and found instead a merchant prince.
“I had money, or rather my family had it. It never occurred to me to think how difficult it had been to acquire or how difficult it might be to keep. I only thought about how to use it; and of course, I used it badly: fast cars, fast women, all the usual things.” With a shrug of his shoulders, he mocked any thought that what he had done in his youth required regret much less any need of redemption. “Fast cars, fast women,” he repeated, his warm voice filled with irony and nostalgia. “Just between us, I kept a few of the cars.”
They talked through dinner, or rather Mohammed al Farabi talked, telling Hart about his youthful indiscretions, but in a way that told more about his education, what he had learned growing up in a place in which being frivolous had at least the advantage of being safe.
“If you had money no one cared what you did. As long, of course, as you paid off all the right people, the people in government who claimed to be your friends. They were always taking out loans from the bank; loans, as both sides understood, that would never be paid back. But what did that matter when there was so much money to go around. I did not notice. That was simply how things were done.
“And then it happened, one of those things that suddenly change everything. A friend of my father’s, a man he had known since university, was arrested. This was all the more remarkable because he was the publisher of one of the most conservative newspapers in Egypt, a paper that had always taken a strong line against the fundamentalists and extremists, those who were trying to bring down the government. But he had made the mistake - what turned out to be the very serious mistake - of writing an editorial in which he argued that it was time to begin to lift the restrictions on the right of free assembly and free speech; that the failure to do so would only increase the growing discontent with the government and give support to those who were advocating violent resistance. He was taken into custody. There were no formal charges, no formal sentence. He was just kept there, in prison, and on more than one occasion beaten nearly to death. When they released him, almost a year later, he was just a shell of the man he used to be.
“What happened to my father’s friend, a man I had known my whole life, changed everything. I talked to my father about what we could do. He was so angered by what had been done, that he did not hesitate when I told him what I wanted to do, though he knew better than anyone what was likely to happen because of it.”
The servants, as if summoned by a wish, cleared the table and brought coffee. With a small silver spoon, Farabi slowly stirred sugar into his cup. The expression in his eyes became pensive and somber.
“What did you do?” asked Hart, quietly and without hurry. He was interested in what Farabi was telling him, and understood that it was part of the larger story, a necessary preface, as it were, to what Hart had come to learn. “What was it that you wanted that only your father’s anger allowed you to have?”
Farabi looked up. A bright smile glittered in his dark eyes.
“I bought the paper.”
“You bought the...?”
“Yes, and the first editorial I wrote was all about what the government had done, how they were willing to stifle the voices even of those who supported them the moment there was disagreement on anything.”
“What happened?” asked Hart, astonished.
“Nothing, at first. They thought I was a young hothead; a rich playboy with no discipline, who had taken over the paper as a lark, a moment’s youthful passion that would never last. I surprised them. Here,” he said, smiling gently into the night, “let me pour you more coffee.”
