Wolf in Shadow-eARC (45 page)

An earthen track ran due west from the fort. She was a little disappointed not to see a famous Roman road. Presumably they had not yet all been built. She noticed a cluster of small white constructions about the size of a garden shed lining the track some distance away. Some were pyramidal and others like squat columns.

“Frankie, what are those?”

“Tombs of wealthy citizens. Roman law prohibited burial of corpses within city limits for hygienic reasons. That’s how archaeologists know that Roman cities were abandoned as going concerns long before English immigrants moved into an empty land. They found corpses were buried within the city walls.”

The Welsh tradition remembered English barbarians swarming over British land and had another explanation for the corpses.

“Frankie, why are we dressed like this?” Rhian asked.

“Because these are the clothes one would wear in Roman London.”

“I had Armani on and you wore British Home Stores,” Rhian said plaintively. “So how come I am the slave and you the lady?”

“Ah, I hoped you wouldn’t pick up on that. I suppose the answer is superior breeding,” Frankie said, with a smile. “You’re native British from the badlands to the west, and my ancestors were from within the Empire.”

Rhian let that one go.

“So why are you holding a very un-Roman mobile phone, and why didn’t the centurion comment?”

“It has no equivalent here, so for him it didn’t exist.”

“He noticed the plastic shopping bag,” Rhian said, raising it up to display its seventies psychedelic artwork.

“Yes, but he will have seen something more Roman-like. I don’t know, maybe a weaved basket or some such.”

Rhian digested this for a moment.

“Frankie.”

“Yes, Rhian?” Frankie said, somewhat tetchily.

“Why was he speaking English if he was Roman?”

“What makes you think he was?”

“What?”

Rhian replayed the conversation in her head. The centurion had suggested she was a “ghastly little Brit,” but he had used a single word. She focused hard.
Britunculi
, he had called the natives
Britunculi
. It seemed that language was mutable here and you heard the meaning, not the words.

Frankie consulted the phone, which called her a clumsy bitch before telling her to go into the city and find London Bridge.

Rhian gazed out over the swampy marshland of what would one day be the West End, the costliest real estate on Earth. Right now you couldn’t give it away. In front of them the River Thames meandered across the landscape. It was much wider than its modern equivalent and its banks were not well defined. Mudflat islands amongst riverlets that left and joined the main stream became increasingly drier and more grassy inland until they became marshy ground rather than muddy water. Small boats plied up and down the waterway. Some of the larger had single masts with square sails.

A small river on their right flowed down to the Thames. That, Rhian thought, must be the River Fleet, as in Fleet Street. The modern road was presumably located where a wooden bridge crossed the water just a few meters upstream from the Thames on the first truly dry ground. The Fleet was one of London’s lost waterways, subsumed into the sewage system of the modern city.

The women followed a dry, hard-packed path that followed the wall, deviating between pools protected by combat air patrols of thousands of midgies.

“I bet this place is riddled with malaria,” Frankie said darkly.

“Shouldn’t we have brought flyspray?” Rhian asked.

“It isn’t real, honey, remember that. Sure, we can be killed here and we really would die, but we can’t bring a disease home with us.”

“That is so reassuring, Frankie. Thank you for sharing.”

“Don’t mention it. Here’s Aldersgate.”

The city gate was much smaller than the one into the fort and was open and unguarded. They entered Londinium unchallenged.

With a little digging, Jamerson unearthed the research project application in economic psychology funded by Shternberg. Unfortunately, it was written in a torturous jargon that might as well have been ancient Hittite for all the meaning he could discern. He recalled an acquaintance at college who had read psychology and economics before securing a highly lucrative position in The City. What was his name, Wartly something? Wartly-Trumpton, that was it. His friends called him Tethers, for some reason. A few phone calls and he had tracked the fellow down. The Old Boy Network still counted for something.

They met over a staggeringly expensive lunch that his banking friend insisted on paying for. Jameson was inclined to let him, knowing it would probably be charged to expenses. This decision was confirmed when his companion ordered a bottle of wine costing a couple of thousand pounds. Eventually they came to the brandy and coffees, and societal norms allowed them to get down to the business at hand.

“So what are you doing these days, Jameson? I heard you had gone into Intelligence after leaving the army, spooks and all that.”

Which was surprisingly accurate, Jameson thought. The Old Boy Network cut both ways.

“Don’t answer that question,” Tethers said. “I wouldn’t want you to have to kill me.”

Tethers laughed uproariously at his own joke, making Jameson seriously wish he could kill him. The man stopped laughing and looked at him with sharp eyes that belied the hail-fellow façade. Wartly-Trumpton had been one of the shinier knives in Cambridge’s academic drawer. No doubt that was why he had risen so high in the bank.

“Business good?” Jameson asked politely, not giving a damn about the answer.

“Never better, sport, we have a new axis at the Bank to unload on the muppets before freefall. Lots of burning of the old midnight oil.”

“What?” Jameson asked, wondering whether Wortly-Trumpton had shoved too much white powder up his nose.

“Axes are shares we are pushing and muppets are potential investors,” Wortly-Trumpton replied. He saw that Jameson was still in the dark.

“Look, you buy up the derivatives of some asset, tangible or intangible. It could be the value of the euro or the price of tin. Currently we have cornered the market on wheat. That creates a shortage and drives up the price. At that point you dump the whole lot on your clients. The price drops faster than a tart’s knickers when you flood the market. Then you buy in again when the muppets panic and try to cut their losses.”

“Isn’t that what used to be called a pump-and-dump?” Jameson asked.

“Certainly not.” Wortly-Trumpton was affronted. “Pump-and-dumps are criminal, while derivative trading is perfectly legal. The art is to rip the other guy’s face off before he can do it to you.”

“And you still have clients?” Jameson asked.

“Certainly, they always hope to find a bigger fool to dump the crap on before it plummets. Often the little people with their over-mortgaged suburban semis fill this role, or, if all else fails, the taxpayer. Pretty much the same group, really.”

Jameson remembered something else about Wortly-Trumpton. Not only was he bright, but he was also a complete and utter four-letter shit. He was the sort of guy who follows you into a revolving door but comes out in front, who is first into the pub but the last to reach the bar and buy a round.

“Have a look at this, Tethers, old chap, and tell me what you think,” Jameson said, handing over the research application.

He indicated to the waiter for another coffee, while Tethers skimmed through the document.

“Clever, but it won’t work,” Tethers said, throwing the application on the table.

“Please explain.”

“They are trying to put together a model to predict movements in the markets. The approach is new but still pointless.”

“Go on.”

“Back in the eighties, natural scientists started using computer models to analyze and predict natural events. It occurred to the chaps in the city that these models might be able to predict when share prices were going to move up or down and how far. But it all went tits-up, of course.”

“How so?”

“Natural science models are probabilistic. They deal fine with large-scale events. They tell you nothing about small-scale events, which are not probabilistic but chaotic, and hence unpredictable—see?”

“No,” Jameson said.

“Okay, look at it this way. Ask a climatologist what the average temperature of London will be at midday over the course of a decade, he can give a pretty accurate estimate. Ask him what the temperature will be on midday on the first of June, 2020, and he can only make a wild guess. It depends on too many imponderables. A model can tell when the market is over-depressed or inflated and is ripe for correction, but anyone can do that. It can’t tell you when that correction will be triggered. That depends on unpredictable events, such as an earthquake in Japan, a terrorist attack in New York, or a war in the Middle East. And it’s the timing that is important, to know when to buy and sell. The trick is to sell to a bigger fool right at the peak of the market. Everyone knows a collapse is due but not when, you see. You don’t want to get left holding the baby when the music stops,” Tethers said, mixing his metaphors.

“I see.”

“This outline,” Tethers tapped the application, “tries a new approach of measuring the psychology of the investors. It is based on the observation that the market collapses when more investors take fright and try to sell, then hope to find a bigger fool and keep on buying.”

“You’re saying that the market crashes when traders unconsciously decide to crash it as a group.”

“Correct, and that depends on imponderables, as the trigger can be anything. Even something relatively unimportant, like a rumor, can start a crash.”

“You know what drives the financial markets, Commander, fear, fear and greed, but mostly fear,” Jameson muttered.

“What?”

“Just something someone said,” Jameson replied.

“Well, your friend is right, and Whitechapel University—strange place for a university—are trying to model mob psychology as it pertains to financial markets. Won’t work, they might as well try to predict the future. How could you know when something will happen that causes the market to take fright?”

“Sounds like a plot for a thriller.”

“Yah, but not in real life, unless you can arrange an earthquake under London or the Great Storm of ’87 on cue.”

Jameson’s imagination lurched down a horrific route before common sense re-grounded him. Why would anyone bother playing the markets with that level of power at their disposal?

Tethers finished his brandy.

“Nice to see you again, Jameson, but I’ve got to go. There must be an old lady with some savings somewhere that the bank hasn’t yet stolen.”

And with that, Tethers Wartly-Trumpton was gone, leaving before Jameson realized that he had been stuck with the bill.

A huge cheer erupted from a large oval wooden structure that towered over the north of the city, just to the southeast of the fort.

“Tottenham Hotspur must be playing a game at home,” Rhian said.

“That’s the gladiatorial amphitheatre,” Frankie said. “The Romans didn’t play team games. They preferred blood sports.”

“I do know that, Frankie. I’ve seen
Gladiator.
”

“Sorry, I can be a bit didactic at times.”

Rhian would probably have agreed if she knew what didactic meant.

“And you’ve never seen Millwall play if you think football isn’t a blood sport.”

“I don’t know much about football. I did once have a boyfriend who took me to rugby matches. That was quite fun.”

That figured, Rhian thought. Football was the Welsh national sport, but in England it was the working-class sport. The upper classes played rugger. What was the English saying? Football is a gentlemen’s game for louts, and rugby is a louts’ game for gentlemen. Best change the subject.

“Did you see
Gladiator
, Frankie?”

“Certainly did. Not a bad movie but unhistorical, so unhistorical that I had to see it three times to confirm my first impressions.”

“Yeeees,” Rhian said. “Russell Crowe does look quite fit in a kilt and armor.”

Rhian was surprised how much wasteland the city walls enclosed. The area directly in front of them contained only badly built native roundhouses. Long thatched roofs hung almost to the ground like ill-fitting wigs. Animals grazed between them: goats, chickens, and a few sheep. A quick mental calculation suggested that St. Pauls Cathedral occupied this space in modern London.

They passed by a construction site where a building was going up. The main two-story section was complete except for the roof. A polyhedral tower with a cross section not unlike a fifty-pence coin was still being raised at the rear. Men worked, clad only in loincloths under the supervision of a foreman who wore a fawn short-sleeved tunic that reached to his knees. He had a sort of horizontal cross on a pole with weights hanging off on string that he was using to check wall alignments.

“Are those men slaves?” Rhian asked, slightly shocked.

“Yes, but in this place so are you, honey. Half the population of the city or more are slaves, including the doctors and clerks. Some of the latter will have bought themselves out and be freedmen, occupying the middle ground between the free and enslaved.”

They walked on in silence. The buildings were clustered more thickly towards the center of the city and along the river. These followed a pattern of white-plastered walls and red-tiled roofs but otherwise came in different sizes and shapes. Some had inverted V-sloped roofs while in others the roof fell only to one side. Most were two stories high and only had narrow slit windows on the upper floor. Each one was like a little fort. This was a frontier town on the edge of the civilized world.

“It must be gloomy inside these places,” Rhian said.

“They probably have central courts or light wells,” Frankie replied.

“It would be amazing to see an interior,” Rhian said wistfully.

“Not a good idea, honey. We should keep our interaction with the locals to a minimum to avoid being sucked into this reality. Did I tell you not to eat or drink anything?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m telling you now.”