Newton’s Fire

by Will Adams

  ‘Anew?’ said Pelham. ‘Not much of a message, is it?’

  ‘You have to read the whole room,’ said Olivia. She bought up the photo of the four Masons studying their plan while workmen laid stones on the hill behind. ‘What’s going on here?’ she asked rhetorically. ‘They’re building.’ Now she scrolled forwards to the final double panel. ‘And here’s the Temple of Solomon, eternal symbol of the holy city. Put our cabal in the middle and what have you got?’

  ‘Christ,’ muttered Luke. ‘They were building a new Jerusalem.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  I

  ‘A new Jerusalem?’ said Rachel. ‘Here in Oxford?’

  ‘Or maybe not here,’ said Olivia. ‘Maybe that’s why the vault’s empty. I mean, don’t get me wrong, of course Ashmole would have wanted it here. He was a vain man and this was his building. But he died long before Evelyn, and decades before Newton or Wren; and none of those three had any personal stake in this place. And, for people like that, Oxford was never the new Jerusalem.’

  ‘Where, then?’

  ‘London, of course,’ she said. ‘Capital city of the Church of England. And finding a suitable spot would hardly have been a challenge. Wren was rebuilding the whole damned place.’ She shook her head in disbelief at the magnitude of it all. ‘I need to call Albie,’ she said. ‘He has to see this.’

  ‘No, Olivia,’ said Pelham.

  ‘Yes. Can’t you see how important this is? There are implications. Huge implications.’ She opened her address book, picked up the handset, began to dial. But then she stopped abruptly and dropped the handset like it had scalded her. ‘It echoed,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that what happens when people are listening?’

  ‘Stay here,’ said Luke. He hurried through the darkened lobby to the shuttered front windows, slid a shutter latch, opened it just enough to see shadows in the two cars parked across the street. He latched the shutter again, checked that the windows and front door were securely bolted, returned to Olivia’s office. ‘They’re there,’ he said.

  ‘Our friends from earlier?’ asked Pelham.

  Luke shook his head. ‘Different cars. And if they’re tapping our phones, I’d say police.’

  ‘How did they find us?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘Maybe they worked out Sous Ashmolean for themselves,’ said Pelham.

  ‘Then what are they waiting for?’

  ‘Reinforcements?’ suggested Luke. ‘A warrant?’ He turned to Olivia. ‘Is there a back way out?’

  Olivia nodded. ‘There’s a fire escape upstairs. It leads onto the alley.’

  ‘Is it alarmed?’

  ‘I turned it off when we came in.’

  ‘I’ll go check,’ said Pelham. ‘You guys get everything together.’

  Luke zipped Olivia’s laptop away in its case, pocketed the digital camera, went with Rachel to the door.

  ‘Come on,’ he said to Olivia.

  ‘No,’ said Olivia. ‘I’m staying.’

  ‘You have to come,’ begged Rachel. ‘These people are bastards.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ she said fiercely. ‘This is my museum. Damned if I’m going to let them run loose in here without being around to watch.’

  Pelham came back in. ‘They’re out back too,’ he grimaced.

  ‘How many?’ asked Olivia.

  ‘I saw three. There could be more.’

  ‘Oh, hell,’ said Rachel. ‘We’re trapped.’

  II

  Croke sat in the back of the Range Rover as the NCT convoy sped west along the M4, passing other traffic in a blur. ‘The police won’t try to stop us, right?’ he asked Morgenstern.

  ‘We know what we’re doing.’

  Croke nodded. Morgenstern had impressed him not just with his swift switch of focus to Oxford, but also with his willingness to carry on searching Crane Court merely to keep the media distracted. They reached their exit. Roads narrowed, traffic thickened.

  A call came in on Morgenstern’s cell. He frowned as he listened, turned to Croke. ‘Someone inside the museum started to make a call, then hung up,’ he said. ‘And they just checked out the fire escape.’

  ‘They’re on to us.’

  Morgenstern nodded. ‘Shall I send the police in?’

  ‘How long till we get there?’

  ‘Another four minutes. Maybe five.’

  ‘If anyone comes out, have them grab them. Otherwise they’re to hold off.’

  He watched out the window as Morgenstern relayed the order. Sunday night in Oxford, everything closed, quiet, dead, the few pedestrians startled by the sudden rampage of their convoy, faces bleached by their headlights. They slowed before turning into Broad Street, not wanting to attract unnecessary attention, pulled up outside the museum. Croke got out along with everyone else. Morgenstern had hand-picked this team himself; with all the media still in London, there was no great need for him to stay covert. A few NCT men hurried around the museum’s sides, while others went down to the basement door. But Morgenstern and Croke and the remainder marched straight up the front steps. ‘What now?’ asked Morgenstern.

  Croke shrugged. ‘We knock,’ he said.

  III

  The double rap on the front door sent a shudder through Luke and the others. ‘We know you’re in there,’ shouted a man. He sounded American. ‘Open up or we’ll come in anyway.’

  They looked helplessly at each other. Only Olivia had anything to suggest. ‘The well,’ she said. ‘You’ll have hide back in the vault.’

  ‘They know we’re in here,’ said Luke. ‘They’ll find us.’

  ‘They know someone’s in here,’ countered Olivia. ‘They don’t know who or how many. If you three hide-’

  ‘You two,’ said Pelham to Luke and Rachel. ‘They saw me on the fire escape. Besides, even if I made it down the well, I’d never make it back up.’ He patted his gut regretfully. ‘Wages of sin, and all that.’

  ‘We’re not leaving you,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ said Pelham. ‘Olivia and I can credibly claim to be working on a new exhibition. That won’t wash if you’re found here too. And if they think you’re on the loose, they’ll treat us better from fear of you raising the alarm. Speaking of which …’ He scrawled a phone-number on a scrap of paper. ‘My sister,’ he told Luke. ‘She’s a lawyer and she’s fierce. Call her if you possibly can.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Another knock on the front door, louder and more insistent. They hurried to the well. ‘How will we get back out?’ asked Rachel, staring down.

  ‘The rope, of course,’ said Pelham.

  ‘But we can’t leave it dangling there or they’ll be bound to see it. It’ll lead them straight to us.’

  ‘I’ll take care of that,’ said Olivia. ‘Just get down there.’ She turned and vanished back up the steps.

  ‘You won’t get anywhere looking like that,’ said Pelham, nodding at Luke’s filthy shirt. He stripped off his jacket and gave it to him.

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ said Luke. He felt Pelham’s wallet and car keys in the pockets, offered them back.

  ‘You’ll need them more than me,’ said Pelham. ‘Just call my sister.’

  Something crashed against the front door. They were breaking their way in.

  ‘Quickly,’ said Pelham.

  Luke zipped Pelham’s jacket inside Olivia’s laptop case to keep it clean, slung the strap over his shoulder, grabbed the rope and slid down fireman style, the rope rubbing hot against his palms. He swung inside the passage and helped Rachel in after him, then began hurriedly to rebuild the wall. Footsteps above. Olivia. The rope slithered upwards. A few moments later it tumbled down again, a plastic bucket knotted to its end so that it danced like a hanged man a foot or so above the water, clattering the walls. Despite everything, Luke couldn’t help but smile. Anyone looking down now would assume it was part of the feature.

  The basement lights went out, leaving it pitch black. Rachel switched on the lamp but turned it away from the shaft so that it w
ouldn’t give them away. A minute passed. He heard footsteps running above, men yelling. The lights flickered back on. He had only one brick left to complete the wall, but each time he tried to fit it in, it pushed its neighbours out into the well. He muttered a soft curse and gave up.

  Through the small remaining gap he could see the rope swinging in slow ellipses, like the weight of a pendulum. Anyone who looked down would be bound to notice. He reached out through the small gap, let the rope nudge his fingers, moderating its motion a little. It swung away again, then back, allowing him to slow it a fraction more. But then he heard footsteps above and men talking and he had no choice but to withdraw his hand and watch as the rope continued its gentle oscillation, hoping against hope that it wouldn’t be seen.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I

  Croke was first through the splintered museum door, but the NCT search and secure team quickly left him behind. Four of them went upstairs; the remainder ran down, checking doors as they went, shouting instruction at each other, turning on lights. A yell from the staircase. Croke and Morgenstern hurried to check it out. A massively built thirty-something man and a grey-haired woman were sitting side by side at a desk in a cramped office: Pelham Redfern and Olivia Campbell, to judge from the descriptions he’d been given. They were both wearing headphones attached to a single small handset, and both were doing their very best to look shocked.

  ‘What is this?’ protested the woman, taking off her headphones, getting to her feet. ‘What’s going on? Who are you people?’

  ‘Skip the bullshit,’ said Morgenstern. ‘We’re not in the mood.’

  ‘What are you doing here? How did you get in? You haven’t damaged my door, have you?’

  ‘You should have answered when we knocked.’

  ‘We didn’t hear you.’ She held up her headphones. ‘How were we supposed to hear you?’

  Croke walked over to the desk, put an earphone to his ear. Nothing. He gave her a wry look. She clicked the play button and a woman began explaining how to produce oxygen by chemical reaction. ‘Our new audio-guide,’ she said. ‘I was showing it to Mr Redfern. We’re planning a new exhibition and we’ll need to do one of these for it.’

  ‘Why bother with headphones?’ scoffed Morgenstern. ‘Who were you going to disturb?’

  She picked up the handset. ‘These things only work with headphones. We can’t have people playing them out loud in the museum, or it would ruin everyone else’s experience, wouldn’t it?’

  For the blink of a moment, Croke almost bought it. But then he remembered the aborted phone call, the figure scoping out the rear alley. ‘Sure,’ he mocked. He turned to Redfern. ‘You were in Cambridge earlier today.’

  ‘Is that against the law?’

  ‘You picked up two people there. A man and a woman.’

  ‘Your accent?’ frowned Redfern. ‘It’s American, isn’t it? I trust you won’t mind my asking what authority you have to question me?’

  Croke glanced at Morgenstern. Morgenstern nodded at the door. They went outside for a murmured conference. ‘They’re lying,’ said Croke. ‘The others were here.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Morgenstern, nodding at his squad leader, who was indicating to them that the museum was clear. ‘But they’re not here now.’

  ‘These two know where they’ve gone. We need to make them tell us.’

  Morgenstern shook his head. ‘If you mean what I think you mean, forget about it. The Brits are too squeamish. Especially as the woman really is curator of this place, and she’s claiming Redfern as her guest.’

  ‘Then what do we do?’

  ‘We can put pressure on them. Charge them with obstructing justice, abetting a murderer. They’re soft. They’ll break soon enough.’

  Croke shook his head. ‘I don’t want them entering the system. I can’t risk them talking to lawyers.’

  Morgenstern nodded. ‘I can have them driven up to Birmingham for interrogation. Then have them transferred to London instead. We can bounce them around for at least twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Good. Do it.’

  An NCT officer approached, holding up some dust-covered women’s clothes. ‘Found these in the washroom, sir,’ he said.

  Morgenstern and Croke shared a glance. They matched what Rachel Parkes had been wearing. And some splashes of water on the blouse indicated she’d been there recently.

  ‘How the hell did they get out?’ scowled Croke.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘They can’t have got far. I want everyone you can spare out hunting. Have them watch the train and bus stations. Taxi companies. And have them look for couples.’

  Morgenstern passed on the orders, then they headed downstairs together into the basement where two NCT operatives were scanning the floor with ground penetrating radar. ‘There’s something down there,’ said one. ‘A chamber of some kind. And metal. Iron for sure. And I know this will sound crazy, but maybe gold too.’

  ‘It’s not crazy. How can we get down there?’

  The man grimaced. ‘It won’t be easy. It’s at least ten feet deep. We’ll need specialist cutting and lifting equipment. If I put the order in now, we should be able to get it here by morning. All goes well, we can pop the floor early tomorrow afternoon.’

  Morgenstern glanced at Croke. ‘Will that work for you?’

  Croke pulled a face. To meet Avram’s deadline, he’d need to depart City Airport no later than midnight tomorrow. Allowing a few hours for transporting it there, and for the inevitable fuck-ups along the way, and they were pushing it tight. ‘It’ll work if it’s down there,’ he said. ‘But what if it’s not?’

  ‘We could take a look first, if you’d like,’ said the man.

  ‘How?’

  He put his hand on one of the display cabinets. ‘First we move this thing,’ he said. He crouched down and touched where one of its feet was bolted to the floor. ‘Then we drill directly beneath here. A small-diameter hole all the way down to the chamber.’ He made a circle with his finger and thumb. ‘It’ll have be about yea wide because of the width-depth ratios. Once we’re through, we can feed down an endoscope. You know endoscopes, right? Miniature cameras with integrated lighting and a fish-eye lens on the end of a long fibre-optic cable, like the ones they stick up your arse when they’re-’

  ‘I know endoscopes,’ Croke assured him.

  ‘We use them a lot for surveillance,’ said the man. ‘They’ll show us everything down there. If you still want to, we’ll have time to take up the floor. If not, we just pull the endoscope back out, plug the hole with filler and bolt the cabinet back in place. No one will ever be the wiser.’

  ‘Have you got everything you need?’ asked Morgenstern.

  The man shrugged. ‘We’ve got a drill in the van, but isn’t long enough. And we don’t have enough cable for our endoscope. This is a very unusual job. But we can get started now and have the necessary extensions here in a couple of hours. That should give us a first look around sunrise, which is about the earliest we could hope to get the heavy cutting and lifting equipment here anyway.’

  Croke glanced at Morgenstern. ‘When does this place open tomorrow?’

  ‘It doesn’t. Not on a Monday. It’s ours all day.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Croke. ‘Let’s do it.’

  II

  Luke and Rachel made their way back to the vault, on the basis that they were far more likely to be overheard if they stayed near the well shaft. They turned off the lamp to save its batteries, then sat in the darkness with their backs to the Emerald Tablet.

  ‘So how come Newton?’ asked Rachel.

  Luke shrugged. ‘He caught my imagination, I suppose.’

  ‘You’re writing a biography of the man,’ she teased. ‘You’ll need to have something better than that on the blurb.’

  Luke laughed. ‘Okay. There’s this story about him I first heard when I was a kid. It’s kind of a nerd’s fantasy. You’ll find this hard to believe, I suspect, but I was a bit of a nerd my
self back then.’

  Rachel feigned shock. ‘No. Get away with you.’

  ‘This was 1697 or thereabouts. Newton was in a really bitter dispute with Leibniz over who invented the calculus. They both did, as it happens, but each was convinced the other had stolen the idea from them. The Brits supported Newton. The Europeans backed Leibniz. One of Leibniz’s mates, an Italian called Johann Bernoulli, devised a pair of mathematical puzzles that proved too fiendish for Europe’s top minds to crack, so he came up with a cunning plan. He sent them to Newton, hoping he’d fail too, thus wrecking his reputation for genius. Newton received them after a day at the Royal Mint. The following morning he sent off the answers to the Royal Society. They published them anonymously, but everyone knew. Even Bernoulli. You know what he said? He said: “You can tell the lion by its claw.” I just loved that. I used to daydream people saying it about me. Mind you, I was ten at the time.’ He laughed and tipped his head to the side. ‘Your turn,’ he said. ‘How come archaeology?’

  Rachel sighed. ‘I don’t know. I guess it meant something at the time.’ The question seemed to make her restless. She stood and turned on the lamp, took a circuit of the walls.

  ‘Tweed suits you,’ Luke told her, as she came back around. ‘You’ll make a fine professor.’

  ‘It itches like you wouldn’t believe,’ she said. Her gaze slid from him to the Emerald Tablet inscription behind him, and then she frowned. ‘How about that?’ she murmured, to herself as much as Luke. ‘An acrostic.’

  He turned to read the first letter of each line. ‘Balinus?’ he frowned.

  She nodded. ‘It’s what the Harranians called Apollonius of Tyana.’

  ‘If that was meant to make things clearer for me,’ said Luke, ‘you might want to give it another shot.’

  ‘Apollonius was a Turkish holy man from the time of Jesus. We found a lot of his cult objects on my excavation in Antioch. And one of my colleagues from the dig is the authority on the guy.’