Newton’s Fire

by Will Adams

  ‘Oi!’ shouted one of the policemen. ‘Come back!’

  ‘I’ll only be a moment,’ Jay assured him. He hurried down the steps and through the cafe. He heard noise behind him and looked to see three policemen chasing hard. They looked so red-faced and mean that some primal instinct kicked in and Jay simply fled. He stumbled up some steps and spilled out onto the cathedral floor. He reached the aisle and ran along it towards the main doors.

  He was halfway down when the alarm finally switched off. It had been ringing so loudly that Jay could hear it still in his ears. Then he realized it wasn’t ringing. It was screaming. He looked up and saw Luke clinging to the balcony rail high above, fighting to hold on to Rachel as she dangled helplessly beneath him, while a black-bearded man on the gallery watched them as if it was entertainment.

  Behind Jay, the policemen slowed too. Slowed and looked upwards. And still Rachel screamed out for help. And still it didn’t come.

  III

  They said your life would flash before your eyes at the moment of maximum danger. But as Rachel looked up at Luke, straining with everything he had to hold on to her as she flailed above the cathedral floor, all she experienced was a terror so complete that it left no room for anything else. All she experienced was the certainty of her own imminent death and the knowledge that she was powerless to prevent it.

  Then the alarm stopped and she heard shouting and she looked down to see Jay and the police arriving like a miracle on the cathedral floor beneath her; and their presence gave Blackbeard no choice but to reach down between the stanchions, take her free hand, and help Luke hoist her back up and over the balcony rail to safety.

  She fell onto her knees on the cold stone, arms across her stomach, retching and retching as her gut tried to expel its surfeit of chemical fear; but nothing came out. Luke knelt beside her, hugged her tight against him. ‘It’ll be okay,’ he kept saying. ‘I promise.’ But his words did little to reassure her. Her father, after all, had said something similar when he’d first broken the terrible news of his diagnosis, and that hadn’t turned out okay. His slide had been astonishing in its speed and remorselessness. And then, in the weeks after his death, her mother had simply fallen apart from grief and loss and fear and guilt at having spent the family’s small wealth on futile quack remedies. And so, two months to the day after her husband’s funeral, she’d parked her battered old Renault by a level crossing, fortified herself with a bottle of gin, then had walked out onto the tracks. And, just seven months after that, Bren’s body had been shredded by an IED.

  Never show weakness; never show vulnerability. An irony of human nature, that the more you needed help the harder it was to ask for. In the wreckage of her family, Rachel had built a shell around herself in which she’d learned to rely on nobody but herself. But that shell had been shattered into a million tiny pieces as she’d hung there looking up at Luke, utterly dependent upon him, the strain of holding her written so clearly in his grimace and the blood rushing to his face and the tendons like stretched steel in his shoulders and throat. And now all the unexpressed grief and loneliness and despair of recent years sobbed itself out onto his shirt, while he held her tight and whispered words of comfort.

  Blackbeard proved to be neither a sentimental nor sympathetic man, however. He took her wrist and twisted it fiercely enough to tear her away from Luke. ‘This way,’ he said. He dragged her along the Triforium corridor into the room with the model cathedral and handcuffed her to a cast-iron radiator beneath a window. His companions frogmarched Luke in a moment later, cuffed him to the next radiator along. Their captors then went out again and there was shouting, though too muffled by doors and distance to make sense of.

  She became, suddenly, exquisitely aware of Luke; of being alone with him, of the weakness she’d just shown. She glanced his way. He was looking at her with a pained and empathetic expression on his face, as though worried by the scars the experience was sure to leave. ‘I thought I was gone,’ she said. ‘If you hadn’t held me …’

  ‘Nothing to do with me,’ he told her. ‘Your watch strap just caught on mine, that’s all.’

  Under the circumstances, Rachel’s laughter wasn’t far short of a miracle. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  I

  Croke arrived at St Paul’s to find it the heart of a perfect storm. Scores of police officers in fluorescent bibs were struggling to hold back a crowd of sightseers, thousands strong, while media helicopters swarmed above and windows and roofs sparkled with flash photography. Their driver bumped the Range Rover up onto the front plaza and parked beneath a police canopy. Walters was waiting inside the cathedral. ‘Nice work,’ said Croke acerbically.

  ‘We were unlucky,’ said Walters. ‘If the little brat hadn’t turned up trailing all those police …’

  Morgenstern held up his hands to stop them. ‘I can’t hear this,’ he said. ‘I’ll go check the crypt, see how the scanning’s coming along.’

  ‘I’ll join you in a minute,’ said Croke. He waited till he was gone, turned back to Walters. ‘What’s the damage?’

  ‘Could have been worse,’ said Walters, leading him up a spiral staircase. ‘The police wanted to speak with Luke and Rachel, make sure they were okay. We told them that they were wanted in connection with a planned atrocity, which was why they’d been trying to escape; and that the NCT insisted on talking to them before anyone else. But holding them off was still touch and go until your mate got on the case. I don’t know who he is, but Jesus he’s got some pull. He yanked the police out of there like they were on a string.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Yes. But they saw us with them. If anything happens to them now …’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Croke.

  ‘We could go down for life,’ said Walters. ‘How are we supposed not to worry?’

  ‘Did the police see our two friends up close? Close enough to identify?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And neither of them have family to kick up a fuss should they disappear, right?’

  ‘The girl’s got a brother,’ said Walters.

  ‘I thought you told me he was in a wheelchair.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So no one will listen to him, will they?’

  Walters shrugged grudgingly. ‘What about those two from the museum? Redfern and the curator? People will listen to them.’

  ‘We’re still holding them,’ said Croke. ‘Shunting them from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Something tragic is about to happen to them, I can just sense it. Then we can take care of our two friends and leak it that they escaped. Dispose of them properly and everyone will take it for granted that they’re simply on the run. You can arrange that, right?’

  They reached the top of the stairs and crossed a gallery. Pete was standing guard outside a door that he opened at their approach. There was a vast model of a cathedral inside, and Luke and Rachel cuffed to neighbouring radiators. Kieran was keeping an eye on them, and Kohen was there too, his arms folded and his mouth a sulky bow. ‘You promised they wouldn’t come to any harm!’ he protested, coming to the door.

  ‘And they haven’t,’ said Croke.

  ‘Only because I-’

  ‘Shut it,’ said Croke. ‘This is man’s work. If you’re not up to it, perhaps we should let your uncle know.’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I just said-’

  ‘Good. Then come with me. He wants you downstairs.’

  ‘I’m not leaving them. I don’t trust you. I don’t trust any of you.’

  ‘Suit yourself. But then you’ll have to tell him it was your own choice, okay?’ He waited for a grudging nod, turned to Kieran. ‘You’re the electronics’ expert, right? I need some advice.’ They left the room together. Croke briefed him as they made their way to the steps. ‘The guys downstairs are going to be filming for the White House to watch live. They’ve agreed to share the feed with us, so that our friends in Israel can watch too. But they won’t give us audio. T
he thing is, I need audio. I need their voices. Otherwise all I’ll have is footage of a bunch of guys with flashlights.’

  Kieran bit his lip. ‘I could maybe hack their system if you got me time alone with it,’ he said. ‘Maybe. But if I were them, I wouldn’t let that happen, not for a millisecond. Not with the White House on the other end.’

  ‘Then what do you suggest?’

  ‘Easiest thing, I fix you up with a buttonhole camera and mike. Won’t be as good as a primary feed, but it’ll hear everything you hear.’

  ‘Have you got the kit?’

  ‘In the office. It’s only a stone’s throw.’

  ‘Then go fetch it. And get passports for yourself and the others while you’re at it. Preferably not in your real names. You’ve got spares, right?’

  ‘Of course,’ nodded Kieran. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Israel,’ said Croke.

  II

  Cries of outrage filled the warehouse. ‘Give ourselves up?’ demanded Danel. ‘Are you crazy? They’ll send us to prison forever.’

  ‘No,’ said Avram. ‘They won’t.’

  ‘Of course they will. They’ll lock us up and throw away the keys. And we wouldn’t even have brought down the Dome.’

  Avram held up his hands against the protests. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Think about this for a moment. Think about it strategically. What are we hoping to achieve tonight? What would count as a success?’

  ‘We bring down that damned Dome,’ said Uri, to nods of approbation. ‘And then we get away.’

  Avram frowned. ‘Why would that count as a success?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Danel.

  ‘Let me tell you what will happen after we bring it down. There’ll be global outrage. You must realize that. All Europe and Asia and the whole Muslim world will revel in their outrage. They’ll convene emergency UN meetings and pass resolutions denouncing us. They’ll summon ambassadors and review aid packages and cancel trade agreements. They’ll put all kinds of pressure on our new Prime Minister, and they’ll dangle a Nobel in front of her nose too. You all know how pathetic she is. She’ll crumple like so much tinfoil, because crumpling is her nature. And so she’ll promise to have our own people — our own people — help the Arab scum build a new Dome in exactly the same place as the old Dome.’ He looked around at them, challenging them to say he was wrong. None of them did. ‘Think about that for a moment,’ he went on. ‘Not just the Dome being rebuilt, but being rebuilt with the help of Jews; because the third most holy site in Islam should obviously have priority over the holiest site of Judaism. That’s what’s going to happen. You know in your hearts it is. The question is, is that what you want?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Danel. ‘But if that’s what you think, why are you even doing this?’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you,’ said Avram. ‘Because our job tonight isn’t to take down the Dome. It’s never been that. Our job is to take the Dome down in such a manner that the Third Temple gets built in its place. It’s to take it down in such a manner that it will bring about a Jewish Greater Israel forever.’

  ‘That’s out of our hands.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ insisted Avram. ‘It’s absolutely not. Let me paint you a picture. We’re all inside the Dome. Our explosives are set and ready to go. Outside, the police, the army and the Waqf are holding back lest we trigger our charges and bring it down. Then we give them our list of demands.’

  ‘Our demands?’ frowned Danel. ‘What demands?’

  ‘Prisoner releases; though that doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that they believe they can talk us out of it. They’ll send in their best negotiators. We’ll bargain. We’ll weaken. Finally, reluctantly, we’ll agree to surrender, though only to the Israeli army, and only if there are enough of them to protect us from the vengeance of the mob. Then, just as we’re being driven away …’ He mimicked with his hands the charges blowing, the Dome collapsing. ‘Can’t you see it? It will drive the Arabs crazy. They’ll hurl themselves at the army in their lust to tear us limb from limb, as you put it. And the army willhave no choice but to fight back in self-defence. And all of this will be being broadcast live to the world, remember. It will make the usual riots look like school parades. There’ll be uprisings in Gaza and the West Bank. Our neighbour governments will be forced by their outraged publics to intervene, to throw their armies against us, and then we’ll be at war, with a clear line drawn. And all the children of Israel will be on our side of that line whether they want to be or not. It will be Jew against Arab, Israel against the world. And we will win, because the Lord is on our side, praise His Name. And when we do win, there’ll be no more Arab vermin here, no more concessions, no more talk of one state or two state solutions. There’ll just be Israel, as was promised to us millennia ago. We’ll build ourselves a Third Temple and we’ll proudly proclaim our identity and our faith. And do you honestly fear for one moment that anyone will keep you in gaol while all of this is going on? The patriots who made possible a Greater Israel? The patriots who made possible the Third Temple. Gaol? They’ll be naming streets after you. They’ll be building statues. You’ll be heroes.’ He looked exultantly around at them, yet still saw doubt on their faces.

  ‘You’re asking us to trust our lives to crowd psychology?’ asked Danel. ‘What if the Arabs don’t charge? What if our neighbours don’t declare war?’

  ‘They will,’ insisted Avram.

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Because there’s something else,’ he said. ‘Something that’s happening right now.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  Avram hesitated. Danel and his comrades were secular Zionists. They wanted a greater Israel as much as he did, but for political more than for religious reasons. Tell them what they were about to find in London, they’d laugh in his face and walk away. But show it to them … ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘It would put too many others at risk. But come to Jerusalem and you’ll see it for yourselves, I swear you will. You’ll see it long before we go in.’

  Danel looked around to gauge the mood of his comrades, nodded grudgingly. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘But we see this thing of yours or it’s off. Understood?’

  Avram nodded. ‘Understood,’ he said.

  III

  Morgenstern came to greet Croke as he arrived down in the crypt. His face was flushed and it was immediately obvious they’d found something. ‘Looks like your boy was right,’ he exulted. ‘Another cavity. Amazing these damned buildings stayed up, all these holes beneath them.’ He pointed to a triangular mosaic midway between the tombs of Wellington and Nelson. ‘It starts about six or seven feet down, best we can tell. Then there’s a landing of some kind at the head of a ramp or flight of steps.’ He gestured at the granite block holding up Nelson’s black coffin. ‘It leads beneath that thing.’

  ‘Can you tell what’s down there?’

  ‘No. We’d have to shift the coffin and the plinth to sweep the floor; and then we’d be asking our scanners to work through sixteen feet of mortar and hardcore. No chance of getting anything reliable.’

  ‘So what do we do? Another endoscope?’

  Morgenstern shook his head. ‘That won’t help either, not if the good stuff’s at the bottom of the ramp, as you’d expect. Besides, we don’t have time to drill and then take up the floor. Not if you want this done by tonight.’

  ‘And you’re sure this is the only way down?’ Croke asked drily. ‘I mean there aren’t any wells in the vicinity?’

  ‘Do you see any?’ asked Morgenstern. ‘Seriously, we’ve looked everywhere. There’s nothing. It’s pop the floor or forget about it.’

  ‘Pop the floor?’

  ‘We’re going to need a shaft at least four feet square if we’re to get it out, right? The quickest way is jackhammers, but what kind of idiot goes looking for a bomb with jackhammers? People are watching. The government is watching. There’s a limit to how far I can push this. So we’re going
to have to cut and lift. My guys tell me that if we angle slightly in as we go down, we can cut ourselves a slab like a giant cork. That way, when we’re finished, we can slather its sides with cement and slot it back in. Then we level it off and let the restorers go to work. Give it a week or two, it’ll be good as new.’

  Croke slid him a sceptical look. ‘Sure. And no one will ever know we were even here.’

  ‘Of course they’ll know we were here; but they won’t know why. And unless they’re prepared to tear the floor up again to go look, they never will. They’ll just have to accept whatever story we give them.’

  Croke nodded. It was crude but it could work. ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘We can start the cutting now while we’re arranging for a workshop crane. When it arrives, we’ll pin bolts into the sides of our cork then lift it up and out, go down and take a look.’ He gave Croke a meaningful look. ‘If you still want to, that is.’

  ‘You’re saying it’s my call?’

  ‘No. Something this big, I’m going to need clearance from back home. But there’s no point asking unless you’re still up for it.’