Scroll- Part Two

by D B Nielsen

  We followed Karim through the mechanical doors to the voluminous interior lobby. The facility reminded me of a hospital or manufacturing plant. It contained an atmosphere of efficiency and cleanliness. The walls were predominantly white with all the structural elements – the pipes and ducts for plumbing, electrics and climate control – exposed in the manner of architectural Brutalism. The air smelled strangely sterile, recycled, almost similar to that of an airplane.

  ‘I can only give you a few hours,’ Karim said, deferring to St. John as he urged us to hurry. ‘The Director doesn’t know I’m doing this. I risk losing my job in giving you access and priority. But I will do what I can to assist the Keeper of the Seed.’ Then he added with a cheeky smile, ‘Besides, you are making an extremely generous charitable donation to our facility.’

  St. John thanked the serious young man who seemed in awe of his guest – or, at least, equal in awe to the fear he exhibited at the prospect of losing his job. But Karim obviously recognised the urgency of our need and was bound to do what he could to assist and accommodate us.

  We followed past what seemed to be endless hallways branching off from more hallways, like a geometric rabbit warren, circling the enormous circumference of the facility. Everywhere I looked seemed to be a hive of activity, from scientists to technicians scurrying about looking purposeful, in a place so vast a person could easily get lost.

  As we walked, Karim explained how the facility operated. The synchrotron, he told us, was a huge scientific machine that was designed to produce very intense beams of light. Each beamline at the facility was optimised for a specific technique, assisting in particular fields of research from medicine to archaeology, used for academic and industry research. By accelerating electrons to near light-speed, they were able to generate brilliant beams of light, part of the electromagnetic spectrum, termed “Synchrotron Light”, to study things too small to see with the naked eye.

  ‘Visible light is simply the small range of the electromagnetic spectrum that the human eye can detect,’ the young Bengali scientist was explaining to us as we lapped the facility’s circular structure, ‘and though the human eye can distinguish between millions of different colours of visible light, with each colour having a different wavelength, there is a vast range of the electromagnetic spectrum that we can’t see directly; such as radio waves, microwaves, infrared light, ultraviolet light, X-rays and gamma rays.’

  ‘What about using microscopes like they did in the past?’ I asked, finding the subject fascinating, though science wasn’t usually my thing.

  Karim nodded enthusiastically, happy to answer my question. ‘For centuries, scientists have used microscopes which are quite useful in doing their job, but they’re limited by the wavelength of the light that they use. And while optical microscopes can be used to study objects that are a few microns in size – roughly about the size of cells – to study even smaller objects like molecules and atoms, we need to use light with shorter wavelengths.’

  ‘Like X-rays,’ Sage commented.

  ‘Exactly!’ Karim smiled his approbation, making my sister blush. ‘Here at Diamond, we can generate synchrotron light from infrared through the visible range and ultraviolet up to X-rays.’

  ‘How’s this going to help us?’ I asked, curious, as we approached the end of the corridor.

  Karim paused outside the heavy, thick-paned doors leading to the laboratory, which were so futuristic that they only confirmed my speculations of a spaceship having landed in the middle of Oxfordshire.

  He continued his explanation, ‘Synchrotron light can be as much as one hundred billion times brighter than the sun which allows scientists to study samples in incredible detail, to a level that is only possible at a synchrotron. We’ve done quite a bit of work on ancient papyri. In fact, our colleagues in America were able to recover the work of Archimedes hidden under a religious text, now known as the Archimedes Palimpsest.’ He paused in his discussion and gave a rare, excited smile as he motioned to the portal in front of us. ‘Anyway, here we are.’

  Leading us through, we followed Karim into a narrow room which looked a lot like an ordinary office. In truth, it reminded me of a customer service centre where the telemarketers were placed in cubicles extending from one length of the room to the other, trying to sell insurance policies and mobile phone plans to pensioners. There was a bank of extremely high-tech computer equipment lined up against one wall, used for analysing and processing the information collected, several metal file cabinets, and a long table of the kind found in boardrooms, complete with a row of large flat-screen monitors and computer keyboards.

  ‘This is our Control Cabin – one of many,’ Karim stated, motioning for us to take a seat. ‘Each beamline shares a similarity with the others, although they are optimised for specific techniques. They all are composed of three areas – an Optics Hutch, an Experimental Hutch, and the Control Cabin where you’re seated at the moment. Let me explain to you how it works.’

  Karim gestured for us to take a seat. ‘You may have noticed that the shape of this building is completely circular. This is entirely necessary for our purposes, as we must accelerate electrons at phenomenal speeds in order to create X-rays one hundred billion times brighter than those used in hospitals. The electrons start their journey in the Linear Accelerator and then are transferred to the Booster Synchrotron at the very heart of this facility. It’s a little like Formula One cars racing round a Grand Prix circuit as the electrons accelerate to fantastic speeds in an extremely high vacuum, similar to that encountered in deep space. The Booster Synchrotron encircles this entire facility as it’s basically a stainless steel tube surrounded by magnets; one hundred and fifty-eight metres in circumference.’

  Karim’s explanation put me in mind of the particle accelerator that Tony Stark built in Iron Man 2 in the basement of his home. But this was not some fictional creation – we’d seen kilometres of the stainless steel tubing composing the Booster Synchrotron as we walked through the facility – and it was easy to imagine the electrons zooming round that circuit, gaining so much energy that they accelerated to nearly the speed of light.

  Karim continued speaking, ‘From the Booster Synchrotron, the electrons are ejected into the Storage Ring which, in itself, is over half a kilometre in circumference. And as they circulate around the Storage Ring, they pass through specially-designed magnets called “Insertion Devices” which cause the electrons to undulate to produce intense X-rays. These beams are then channelled into the Experimental Stations, such as the one that we’re in.’

  He clicked on the computer nearest to him and entered a program.

  ‘St. John, if you would like to follow me with the Scroll while the others stay here? We won’t be long,’ Karim directed, gesturing for us to remain behind as he led St. John out of the room.

  As they exited, an instructional promotional video began on the monitor for us to watch. In simple terms, the video explained that in the Optics Hutch, a sequence of components – including silicon mirrors, slits and crystals – were used to filter the various colours provided by the synchrotron light, to focus the beam down to a few hundredths of a millimetre, finer than a human hair. From there, the intense beam passed through to the Experimental Hutch, where Karim had taken St. John to set up the spectral-imaging on the Scroll. It was here in the Experimental Hutch that the beam would shine onto the Scroll and interact with the atoms and molecules within it, exposing layers of hidden ink that had been erased and were no longer visible to the naked eye. Special cameras were used to capture the interaction taking place as the light was far too intense for us to remain in the lab. Finally, from where we sat in the Control Cabin, scientists would control the experiments and be able to analyse the data provided.

  The wonderful element in all of the work done with synchrotrons was that it used non-destructive techniques to find the answers to the larger questions posed by academics and industry, assisting in the development of methods of conservation in palaeontolo
gy, archaeology, art history and forensics. Ultimately, this work was advancing the understanding of the past, to ensure significant cultural heritage would be better preserved. It was this part of my father’s work on history and archaeology that I could best understand, probably because it involved imaging.

  Karim and St. John re-entered the Control Cabin without the papyri displaying the religious text. Karim sat down at one of the computer consoles and began typing in a series of commands.

  He explained to us what he was doing. ‘As you can see, from here in the Control Cabin, scientists like myself can remotely-control the experiment, monitoring the data produced, and then analysing it.’

  ‘This is perfectly safe, right?’ I asked, uncertainly.

  Karim smiled in amusement. ‘I can assure you I have operated the synchrotron hundreds of times. I know what I’m doing.’

  He then advised us to watch the monitors closely.

  What happened next was nothing short of amazing. The special cameras of the Experimental Hutch recorded the images appearing on the Scroll.

  Using multispectral-imaging, numerous photographs of the Scroll were taken at different wavelengths of light, resulting in a digital stack of images. Karim focused on both the entirety of the text and also specific areas, ensuring we were able to read what was once written beneath the religious passage. He explained that due to their work on ancient papyri, algorithms had been written by the scientists working at Diamond Light Source to enhance particular characteristics of the imaged areas. In the case of the palimpsest, we wanted to bring out the hidden text underneath the religious text.

  The intense beams aimed at the papyri succeeded in separating the spectral signature of the original ink from the papyri underneath it, and that of the religious passage on top of it. The hidden, erased markings now became prominent.

  ‘I suspected as much,’ Karim exclaimed with deep satisfaction, leaning back in his chair. ‘Infrared light would not have been very useful in imaging the palimpsest because the ink used by the scribes didn’t have much carbon in it. You see, the ink contained here has a lot of iron, and iron absorbs ultraviolet light.’

  ‘How did you know?’ Gabriel asked, impressed.

  Karim looked smug. ‘Well, I suspected the ink used in the Scroll would be similar to that used by scribes in ancient societies like Greece and Rome. There was a standard ink recipe at the time – iron salts, such as ferrous sulphate, were mixed with tannin made from gallnuts, basically a fungus which grew on trees, and a thickener to produce a bluish-black ink. Our safest bet was to look at the Scroll under ultraviolet light, similarly useful in the case of the Archimedes Palimpsest which also used ink that contained iron.’

  ‘Can we get printouts of these images?’ St. John asked Karim, looking closely at the monitor in front of him.

  ‘Of course,’ Karim said, flashing us his toothy white smile, ‘In fact, I can go one better. I can also copy it to DVD for you.’

  AMBUSH

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  St. John’s black Audi was devouring the distance between Oxfordshire and London, making good time on the M40. On the other side of the motorway, peak hour traffic was beginning to queue up in anticipation of the usual Friday evening rush to get out of the city as commuters and young couples headed off for the weekend.

  When St. John had claimed that he and Sage had placed the Scroll overnight in a vault which belonged to the brotherhood for safekeeping, he had failed to mention that the Anakim not only owned the vault but the rest of the bank too, which was where we were now headed in order to use one of their secured rooms to view the Scroll in privacy and then return it to the vault for safekeeping.

  ITB, International Temple Bank, dated back to the Order of the Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon – more commonly known as the Knights Templar – around the beginning of the fourteenth century, and offered similar services to its members today as it did in the past. By lending vast sums of money to destitute or failing corporations, institutions, and nobility, this discreet, international bank allowed the Anakim to become the bankers for many transnational corporations, governments and ministers, and some of the most privileged families around the globe. But they differed in one respect to other lending institutions – they never borrowed money, and their safeguard was to own the assets and patents, existing and future, of the corporations they salvaged.

  There was always a price to be paid for those who were foolish with their wealth, as inflation and recession took turns in see-sawing up and down, running rampant across the globe. Stability was a myth in the business world, especially during times of global financial crisis. Yet the majority of the bank’s business was to provide advisory on corporate matters to the firms and powerful individuals who numbered amongst their clientele. Providing capital to these clients allowed them to gain and hold significant global power, politically as well as financially.

  ITB had simply followed a tried and tested formula begun with the Knights Templar and the numerous loans made to the thrones of Europe, and profited by it in those times of financial crisis. In many ways, the Templars were responsible for setting a precedent with financial bailouts, and now there were new players such as the Anakim who continued to reap the benefits of such practices. It was a murky area morally, but it had allowed the Anakim to survive after the demise of the Templars in 1307.

  And the person to thank for all this was Gabriel Chevalier.

  As Gabriel knew full well, the world had become a complicated place. Profit was to be made from political and national discord – and he owed no allegiance to any government – provided that the discord ended at some point, which it eventually did. It was then that returns were made on investments. In fact, the hard lesson he had learnt at the hands of a greedy king and a weak pope would determine his future course.

  Sage, when studying for her English Finals last year, had told me an anecdote about Lady Caroline Lamb, Lord Byron’s lover, who had once said of the famous poet that he was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”. The same could be said of Gabriel, I thought.

  The man in question now sat opposite me in the rear seat of the sleek, black sedan, one hand casually resting on the vital package positioned in between us on the leather seat. His eyes were closed, his head tilted back on the leather headrest, his breathing quiet and even, looking for all the world as if he was taking a nap on the long drive back into London, recovering from a hangover from a heavy night of clubbing.

  But I wasn’t deceived – Gabriel was awake and alert, even though, at the moment, his far too observant silver-grey eyes remained hidden behind closed lids.

  ‘Relax, ma mignonne, there is no need to watch me like a hawk,’ Gabriel murmured, cracking open one eye like the flash of a steel knife-blade, to gaze over at me. ‘I am not about to leap on you in uncontrolled carnal lust.’

  Typical that he would think about sex at a time like this – and worse still that he would refer to last night! Of all the smug, arrogant, egotistical ... Ugh! Just when I was beginning to like him too! He made me so boiling mad!

  My eyes narrowed as the others remained quiet in the comfort of the car, waiting for my response.

  ‘Don’t worry, Gabe,’ I taunted, resisting the urge to hit him, ‘I have no intention of repeating last night. I don’t intend to stroke your feathers any time soon.’ Then, under my breath, I added, ‘You conceited peacock!’

  There wasn’t a peep from the other two sitting up front, but Sage’s shoulders were shaking with suppressed laughter, which made me start to giggle in turn.

  Gabriel obviously heard my comment and, offended, opened his mouth to speak. But, before he had the opportunity, St. John said, ‘Gabriel, mon ami, do not let Saffron ruffle your feathers.’

  That was enough to tip both Sage and me over the edge and we broke down into the giggles which ended up becoming gales of laughter at Gabriel’s expense. One look at his face made me laugh so hard, I was crying. Wiping the tears from my eyes, I looked across at St. Jo
hn in profile, and his face was creased in merriment. Perhaps it wasn’t that funny, but it managed to disperse the tension in the air. I just knew that I’d never be able to tell them about my ordeal in the Underworld and, for a while, I didn’t care about any of it; I was almost as happy as when I learnt that my family was moving to England and didn’t have a care in the world but receiving my final examination results and passing my driver’s test.

  ‘Gabriel,’ St. John’s low, sombre voice cut across the laughter.

  Gabriel’s head pricked up immediately, nose almost sniffing at the air, as if he was a hound and had picked up the scent of the fox.

  ‘The metallic black Range Rover. Two cars behind, far left lane,’ St. John continued, his jade green eyes flashing up to the rear view mirror and down again as he concentrated on the driving.

  In unison, Sage and I swivelled our heads to gaze behind, in the direction of the metallic blue-black Range Rover that was tailing us. But even though I squinted hard at the car’s dark tinted windows, it was too difficult to see what or who was inside.

  Gabriel said something in French to St. John, his tone urgent and demanding, who reflexively performed a composed manoeuvre; the Audi changing over rapidly in one swift, sharp move to the right-hand lane. The Scroll, together with the packet of images and the DVD which Karim had made for us, slid off the rear seat and onto the floor, bouncing and rolling under Sage, who was seated in the passenger seat in front of me.