The First Apostle

scruffy students probably accessing high-quality porn sites.”

She paused and looked critically at him. “You’ll fit right in.”

Bronson had opted for a rudimentary disguise. He’d stopped shaving, though it would take a couple of days before his beard became really noticeable, and had discarded his usual collar and tie for a sloppy T-shirt, jeans and trainers.

Ten minutes later they entered the first of the Internet cafes Angela had identified.

Three machines were available, so they ordered two coffees and started trawling the Web.

“Are you happy with Jeremy’s suggestion about the ‘PO’ standing for per ordo?”

Angela asked.

“Yes. I think we should just take that as established and try and find out who ‘LDA’

was. The other thing he suggested was that the carving was probably first century A.D. And, Angela, we have to be quick. After what happened to Jackie, I’m only staying on this machine for an hour. Whether or not we’ve found anything by then, we get up and leave. OK?”

Angela nodded her agreement. “Let’s start the simple way,” she said, typed “LDA”

into Google, pressed the return key and leaned forward expectantly.

The result didn’t surprise them: almost one and a half million hits, but as far as they could see from a quick scan, none of any use unless you were searching for the London Development Agency or the Learning Disabilities Association.

“That would have been too easy,” Bronson muttered. “Let’s refine the search. Try and find a list of Roman senators and see if any of them fit the bill.”

That was easier said than done, and by the end of the hour Bronson had allotted, they’d found details about the lives of numerous individual senators but no list they could peruse.

“OK,” Bronson said, with a quick glance at his watch. “One last try. Put ‘Roman senate LDA’ and see what comes up.”

Angela input the phrase and they waited for the search engine to deliver its results.

“Nothing,” Angela said, scrolling down the page.

“Wait,” Bronson said. “What’s that?” He pointed at an entry entitled “Pax Romana”

that included a reference to “LDA and Aurora.” “Try that,” he said.

Angela clicked on it. On the left-hand side was a long list of Roman names, below the title “Regular members.”

“What the hell is this?” Bronson wondered aloud.

“Oh, I know,” Angela said, scrolling up and down. “I’ve heard of this. It’s a kind of online novel about ancient Rome. You can read it, or write material for it, if you want. You can even learn quite a bit.”

Bronson ran his eyes down the list of names, then stopped. “I’ll be damned. Look—is that serendipity or what?” And he pointed at the name “Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus” about three-quarters of the way down. “The contributors must be using the names of real historical Romans.”

Angela copied the name and input it into Google.

“He certainly was real,” she said, looking at the screen, “and he was a consul in sixteen B.C. Maybe Jeremy was wrong about the age of the inscription. It could have been fifty or so years older.”

Bronson leaned over and clicked the mouse. “It might be even simpler than that,” he said. “It seems this was a fairly common family name. On this list there are nine people all called Domitius Ahenobarbus, five of them with the first name Gnaeus, and the other four Lucius. Three of the four named Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus were consuls: the one you found in sixteen B.C., plus two others, in ninety-four B.C.

and fifty-four B.C.”

“What about the fourth Lucius?”

Bronson clicked another link. “Here he is—but he looks a bit different. ‘Like the others, this man was born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, but his full name was Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, also known as Nero Claudius Drusus Germanicus. Just to complicate things, when he ascended the imperial throne in fifty-four A.D., he took the name Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus.’ ”

He scrolled down, then chuckled. “But he’s better known to us as the emperor who fiddled while Rome burned.”

“Nero? You think that inscription might refer to Nero?”

Bronson shook his head. “I doubt it, though that does fit better with Jeremy’s estimated date. He suggested that the initials probably referred to a consul or senator. Just say for a moment that the inscription was prepared on Nero’s orders—wouldn’t it be more likely to read ‘PO NCCD,’ to reflect his imperial name?”

“Perhaps the inscription was carved before he became emperor?” Angela suggested.

“Or maybe it was intended to be personal, to emphasize that whoever had carved the stone knew a lot about Nero, and maybe was even related to him.”

“We’re out of here,” Bronson said, looking at his watch and standing up to leave.

“So you reckon Nero’s worth another look?”

“Absolutely,” Angela agreed. “Let’s find another cybercafe. ”

II

They walked the quarter mile or so to the second cybercafe’ Angela had located earlier. This one was almost empty, presumably due to the time of day, and they sat down at the PC at the end of the line, closest to the back wall of the cafe’.

“So where do we go from here?” Angela asked.

“Bloody good question. I’m still not convinced we’re even on the right track, but we’ve got to start somewhere. Look, forget ‘LDA’ for the moment. Jeremy suggested that the other letters on the stone—‘MAM’— were probably those of the mason who carved it. But what if there’s another explanation?”

“I’m listening.”

“This is a bit tenuous, so bear with me. Assume that the ‘PO LDA’ does mean ‘by the order of Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus,’ and that we are talking about Nero himself.

Jeremy guessed that meant the stone was inscribed on Nero’s instructions. But let’s suppose it wasn’t. Maybe Nero ordered something completely different to be done—some other action—and another person, someone with the initials ‘MAM,’ decided that this event should be recorded.”

“I’m sorry, you’ve lost me.”

“Take a present-day example. You’ll quite often see monuments and inscribed stones in Britain commemorating some event: the names of local residents who died in a war, or details of a building that once stood on the spot, that kind of thing.

Sometimes there’s a note at the end explaining that the stone, or whatever, was paid for by the Rotary Club or some other group. The point is that the people who paid for the stone had nothing to do with the event the inscription described. They just arranged for the memorial to be erected. Maybe this is something similar.”

“You mean that Nero did something that could be described by the expression ‘here lie the liars,’ but someone else—‘MAM’—ordered the stone to be prepared as a record of what Nero had done?”

“Exactly. And that suggests that whatever Nero did might have been illegal or private, nothing to do with his position as emperor. So what we have to do is find out if he was connected to anyone with the initials ‘MAM.’ If he was, we might have something. If he wasn’t, it’s back to the drawing board.”

That search took very little time. Within a few minutes they had a possible match.

“This guy might fit the bill,” Angela said. “His name was Marcus Asinius Marcellus, and he was a senator during the reigns of both Claudius and Nero. What’s most interesting is that he should have been executed in A.D. sixty because of his involvement in a plot to forge a will. All his accomplices were put to the sword, but Nero spared his life. I wonder why?”

“That’s worth chasing.”

Angela scrolled down the page. “Ah, here we are. Marcellus was distantly related to the Emperor. That’s probably why Nero gave him a break.”

“Yes, that could be the link.”