“Round them up?” I frowned.
“The king’s decree also has the perverse effect of making something you Romans are so proud of-your distinctive form of dress-into something more like a mark of shame,” Pythion added.
“Never!” declared Gaius Cassius, clutching the folds of his toga.
Our host cleared his throat. “Ah, but we have strayed from the original question: How is Gordianus to operate freely in Ephesus? That’s the really clever part. Since leaving Egypt, Gordianus has been posing not as a Roman but as a native Alexandrian, a young man of Greek descent-”
“But his accent!” protested Pythion.
“-who’s lost the power of speech. The slave girl traveling with him will do all the talking, at least in public. A rather brilliant ruse, I think.”
“Provided he can maintain such a pretense,” said Gaius Cassius. “But don’t you see, Posidonius, that you’ve just demolished your own argument for trusting this young man? First you say he’s completely honest, then you tell us he’s traveling under a false identity, pretending to be something he’s not. Which is it? Is Gordianus a man incapable of deception, or is he a master deceiver, capable of fooling even Mithridates’s minions?”
Posidonius shook his head. “You Romans do always insist that the answer to every question must be one thing or its opposite. Sometimes the answer lies in the middle, or elsewhere altogether. The world is rather more complicated and unpredictable than any of us thought, as we’ve learned in the last year or so. Can we trust Gordianus to be loyal to Rome? I think we can. Can he deceive those who wish harm to Rome? I hope he can, for all our sakes. It was you, Cassius, who suggested that Gordianus might be suitable for our purpose.”
“What purpose?” I asked. “And what did you mean a moment ago, Governor, when you said, ‘A spy is exactly what we would like him to be’?”
Gaius Cassius looked at me sternly. “If you possess even half your father’s talents, I think you might serve Rome very well indeed.”
“You know my father?” I felt a stab of homesickness.
“Of course I do. Everyone in Rome knows the Finder. Well, anyone who’s ever had to dig up dirt on a rival, or clear himself of some trumped-up charge. I’ve been to your house more than once, young man, seeking your father’s help. To be sure, my last visit was a number of years ago; you must have been hardly more than a child, which explains why we never met. Your father is the man who can pick any lock, yet never steals; the man who can follow anyone anywhere without being seen, yet never stabs a man in the back; the man who knows every secret, yet who never whispers a word of them. If you’re made of the same stuff, I think you just might be able to pull off this masquerade of being mute, at least long enough to be of some use to us.”
“What is he talking about?” I looked at Posidonius, who answered.
“Think, Gordianus! While every other Roman is desperately attempting to get out of Ephesus, you’re determined to get in. That could make you very valuable to us, especially if you manage to reach your old tutor. That would bring you into the king’s court, perhaps even give you access to his inner circle. Eyes and ears are what we lack in Ephesus. Eyes to see what Mithridates is up to, ears to overhear his plans.”
“But no mouth to give yourself away,” added Gaius Cassius, with a mirthless laugh.
“You want me to be a spy for you?”
“A spy for Rome,” said Gaius Cassius.
I shook my head. “I have no training for that sort of thing. I don’t know secret codes, or how to put on disguises. I have no military experience. How would I know which bits of information are valuable, and which bits are worthless?”
“You wouldn’t need to know any of those things,” said Gaius Cassius. “You would merely be the sand-gatherer, not the sieve.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will simply report what you observe; another will determine what details are important, and relay the information back to us. Perhaps”-he smiled-“even using a secret code, as you suggest.”
“I would ‘report’? Report to whom?”
“To the agent above you, of course. The man assigned to monitor you and your activities.”
“And who would that be?” I looked from Posidonius to Gaius Cassius, then at Pythion and Pythodorus, and finally at the empty couch across from mine. It occurred to me that the sixth guest had yet to arrive.
At that moment a large, shadowy figure came bustling across the garden, his features obscured by the gathering shadows of nightfall.
“Apologies, Posidonius, for being late,” he called out. I gave a start, for his voice was familiar. As he emerged into the artificial twilight of the dining room, I recognized Samson, the Alexandrian Jew from the Phoenix.
VIII
“Samson!” I exclaimed.
The newly arrived dinner guest went about settling his oversized physique on a dining couch that was too small for him. “So you can speak,” he said.
I turned to Posidonius. “What is Samson doing here?”
My host laughed. “Samson? Is that the name he’s traveling under? Appropriate, I suppose, if not very original. At least it will be easy to remember.”
The big Jew shrugged. “I didn’t choose the name. This young Roman’s slave calls me that.” He smiled. “She’s a bit of a flirt.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, but I bit my tongue.
“It seems rather impertinent, for a slave to be assigning nicknames,” said Gaius Cassius. He was clearly one of those Romans who believed the world would be a better place if only everyone would stop coddling their slaves.
Samson grinned. “As far as I’m concerned, Governor, that lovely girl can call me anything she likes-as long as she doesn’t try to play barber.”
The others laughed, apparently at some joke that went over my head.
“‘Samson’ let it be, then,” said Posidonius. “We shall call you nothing else, at least not until you return from Ephesus.”
The man called Samson nodded. He appeared to already know and be known to everyone present, since he addressed them by name. “Is it true, Pythion, what they’re saying down at the waterfront-that Mithridates has put a bounty on your head?”
Pythion choked on the wine he was drinking. “A bounty?”
“Proclamations have gone out far and wide. Some refugees who just arrived from Caunus were talking about it.”
“What sort of proclamations?”
“You’re a wanted man, dead or alive. So is Pythodorus, and your father, too.”
“How much is the king offering?” asked Pythion.
“Mithridates will pay forty talents for each of you, if brought to him alive. Only twenty talents if it’s just your head.”
While the two brothers impulsively touched their throats, Gaius Cassius whistled. “How in Hades can Mithridates offer such extravagant rewards?”
“When he captured the island of Cos, he opened the foreign treasuries kept there and seized all the contents,” said Posidonius. “Added to all his other recent acquisitions, that must make him the richest man in the world. The king has more money than he knows what to do with. Money for troops, for weapons, for bounties.”
“He had no right to plunder the treasuries at Cos,” said Samson. All trace of amusement vanished from his face. “Those riches belonged to neutral parties, to men and nations with whom Mithridates has no quarrel.”
“You speak of Egypt,” I said, remembering that the loss of the Egyptian treasury on the island of Cos had done much to turn the Egyptian people against the deposed king. Along with the tangible assets in the Egyptian treasury, Mithridates had taken into his custody the son of King Ptolemy as well. The young prince had been sent to the faraway island to keep him safe from the palace intrigues of Alexandria, only to fall into Mithridates’s hands. Protective custody, Mithridates called it. Kidnapping, said others.