by Olly Jarvis
‘He’s stealing it,’ Lizzie said, glancing at Ella. ‘Couldn’t you get struck off for this?’
‘Duress of circumstance,’ Ella replied, seeing the irony. ‘It’s a defence to a crime if you’re fleeing for your life.’
Lizzie gazed at her, speechless.
Broady was inside now, bending down under the dash. In a matter of seconds, the engine started. He did a big U-turn across the road and pulled up alongside them. ‘Get in.’
They grabbed the bags and jumped in, pushing the luggage over the back seat into the boot once they were moving.
‘I don’t know where I’m headed,’ he said as he sped off up the carriageway.
Ella saw a signpost. ‘Newcastle. We can get a train anywhere from there.’
Broady put his foot down.
Their relief grew with each mile they put between them and their pursuers. Ella’s thoughts kept returning to what had happened on the causeway. The others were lost in thought too, the silence broken eventually by Broady. ‘Hey, Jay,’ he said, glancing up at Jay’s reflection in the rear-view mirror. ‘Did you get a look at the shooter’s face?’
‘Fleeting,’ he replied. ‘He looked Chinese, East Asian, anyway.’
Broady refocused on the road ahead. ‘Thought so too.’
Ella glanced over at him. ‘Do you think Greg was telling the truth?’
‘Not a chance,’ said Broady. ‘But I reckon he believed it, poor kid.’
They carried on in silence.
Ella turned to see Lizzie nodding off on Jay’s shoulder, the car’s movement repeatedly jolting her awake. Jay had his laptop open. ‘I’ve been thinking about that Shawnee warrior,’ he said.
Broady looked in the rear-view again. ‘Tecumseh?’
‘Yeah, Tecumseh.’ He paused as if deciding whether he was going to say something stupid. ‘He was born in 1769, right?’
‘Yup,’ Broady replied.
‘Maybe the comet of 1769 made him a great warrior?’
Ella scoffed. ‘He might’ve been told it was his destiny to be great, and he fulfilled it.’ She rotated her body so she could see over the seat. ‘It must be about believing in something.’
‘You’re saying the comets don’t have a physical effect on people?’
‘That’s impossible,’ she replied. ‘It’s about people believing in the power of the comet and then making a choice to behave in a certain way.’
‘Why is it impossible?’ queried Broady. ‘We all get energy from the sun.’ He gestured up at the sky. ‘Gives us vitamin D, skin colour.’ He glanced over at Ella. ‘Look at plants, they all need the sun to live, and if it’s in the right spot, with just the right amount of light, it will thrive above its neighbours.’
‘That’s different, you’re talking about weather,’ Ella said, trying to find an opposing position.
‘Isn’t that what we’re talking about?’ he said, giving her one of his intense stares. ‘Space weather?’
She struggled for a counter-argument. ‘There’s a correlation between events and comets, that much is proved by the pattern in Genesis,’ she conceded. ‘But I’m a lawyer, I need concrete evidence that there is something more than humanity’s reaction to seeing a comet.’
‘It’s weird though,’ said Jay, ‘that Matthew put 1769 in there, you know, when nothing happened except Tecumseh’s birth and a great comet.’
Broady nodded. ‘Give me some of the other dates when nothing happened?’
Jay scrolled down. ‘1888 is one,’ he said. ‘I checked it out last night, Comet Barnard was over Europe.’
Lizzie, who had been half-dozing during the conversation, opened her eyes. ‘When was Hitler born?’
Ella felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. ‘1888.’
There was a tangible hush.
‘What about the year zero,’ asked Broady.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Jay asked, ‘but it’s not here.’
Ella was trying to resist being drawn in but couldn’t resist saying: ‘The experts now agree Jesus was born in 4 BC.’
‘That’s there,’ Jay exclaimed. Then, more quietly. ‘But I couldn’t find a comet sighting for that year.’
‘Are you nuts?’ said Broady. ‘You forgot the Bible?’
Jay looked blank.
Broady tutted. ‘The Star of Bethlehem.’
Jay’s mouth fell open.
Ella tried to rationalise the coincidence. ‘So, you’re comparing Jesus Christ to Adolf Hitler?’
Broady flicked his head. ‘Course not.’ He seemed to be brooding for a moment. ‘But you’ve got to say, one was as good as the other was bad, haven’t you?’
‘But you are saying,’ said Jay, ‘That maybe Jesus wasn’t the son of God?’
Broady scoffed. ‘I ain’t saying nothing.’ He adjusted the sun visor. ‘Maybe God sent the comet?’
Ella was too tired to smirk.
Jay wasn’t laughing. ‘What, to give Jesus the word of God?’
Broady shrugged. ‘I don’t know what I’m saying, it’s just weird, ’tis all.’ He shut up.
‘Don’t you think it’s strange?’ said Jay, leaning forward between the front seats. ‘That no one seems to have noticed this link between comets and all these historical events.’
‘We did notice,’ said Lizzie. ‘For thousands of years.’
Jay looked around at her.
‘It’s in so many ancient writings. We just forgot, unlearned it somehow.’
‘She’s right,’ said Broady. ‘Clouds got in the way. Or maybe we just stopped looking up. Too busy with our phones and all the shit going down on the ground.’
Broady’s analogy had a chilling resonance.
‘The answers are already out there,’ Ella muttered to herself.
Chapter Sixty-Four
They dumped the car down by the quayside and walked up the hill towards Newcastle Station, stopping at a café under the Tyne Bridge to take stock.
Broady bought four Americanos in paper cups and splashed milk into three of them.
Jay was already making the use of the Wi-Fi. ‘This Chinese guy,’ he said, looking at the screen.
‘Who, Chan?’ said Ella, savouring a gulp of coffee.
‘Yeah, Ying-Kwong Chan. He’s an expert on ancient Chinese scrolls.’
‘I’ve never heard of him,’ said Ella.
‘I’m reading here how a comet in AD 35 was seen as an indicator of the forthcoming defeat of Gongshan Shu, the Emperor of Chenngdu.’
‘Maybe Chan helped Matthew to compile one definitive document,’ said Broady. ‘Genesis.’
‘Let’s just think this through for a minute,’ said Lizzie ‘So, Matthew puts together a list of comets that link to historical events.’
Ella nodded.
Lizzie continued to think aloud, ‘He’s interested in the relationship between the two.’ She paused. ‘So why does he have to disappear, he’s got all the stuff he needs?’
Jay and Ella were now scrolling through the dots on Genesis. Ella tapped the screen. ‘Maybe not the first one.’ She turned the computer around. ‘9500 BC. It’s pre-history. There couldn’t be any written record of a comet, or of any kind of invasion. This is even before the invention of the wheel, pre-pottery.’
‘So, where did Matthew get the dot from?’ asked Broady
‘I wish I knew.’ She shrugged. ‘This date must be the key to everything.’ She leaned forward. ‘It’s the beginning of the pattern, the first event.’
‘Hang on,’ said Jay. ‘I thought this was all about what Kline was planning, based on whatever Genesis is? The future?’
Ella stirred the milk around her cup in swirls. ‘Cycles.’
The others stared at her, waiting for more.
‘Didn’t you say Kline said it’s all about cycles?’ She looked at Lizzie and took out the plastic stirrer and dropped it on the table. ‘Every cycle has a beginning and an end.’ Ella tried to develop her line of thought but she was too exhausted.
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‘OK, when’s the most recent dot?’ Lizzie asked.
Jay peered back at the screen. ‘March, now. We’re on the 29th so it’s happened or will in the next two days.’
‘Of course,’ said Broady, slapping his head. ‘The comet we saw at Lindisfarne.’ He pulled the laptop towards him and typed in to google.
Ella watched him read.
‘Yeah, it’s closest to the earth on the last night of March.’ He showed the others the screen. ‘You’ll be able to see it from pretty much anywhere in the northern hemisphere. It says here it will be closest over the Middle East, Turkey or Syria.’
Lizzie’s eyes widened. ‘I bet whatever Kline is planning is connected to that date,’ she said.
‘And I’ll wager Matthew worked out what that was,’ said Ella, feeling a chill run down her spine. ‘Let’s go.’
Jay finished off his drink. ‘We’ll never be able to work that out in time.’
‘We can,’ said Broady. ‘That’s why people are trying to kill us.’
Ella tried to put that observation out of her mind. ‘First, we have to work out that first dot in 9500 BC.’
‘Yeah,’ said Lizzie. ‘I bet that explains everything.’
They decided to stick with the plan to take the first train south, which was to York. Ella pulled one of Broady’s baseball caps low over her head and went to the ticket office, paying cash for four tickets. They headed for the platform where the train was waiting. They got four seats around a table in a half-empty carriage and stared anxiously out of the window, scouring the platform for any signs of people searching for them. They were beginning to look bedraggled, having spent the last few days on the road, and Ella could tell Broady was in no condition to keep going at such a frenetic pace. She fiddled nervously with her pay-as-you-go phone, in two minds about calling Jim, her clerk. They needed hotel rooms and it was too risky to book anything on her own card.
The train pulled out of the station. Ella breathed a sigh of relief as they crossed over the Tyne. The familiar sound of Jay gently tapping on the keys of his laptop over the hum of the train beating out its rhythm on the tracks soon brought sleep.
Ella was woken by the sound of Lizzie shouting, ‘Aristotle!’
A couple of lads drinking tins of lager looked over from the other side of the aisle.
Jay stopped typing.
‘What if Aristotle believed?’ she said.
‘Believed what?’ asked Jay.
‘In the power of comets.’ They were all listening now. ‘Socrates taught Plato. Plato taught Aristotle and he taught Alexander.’ Lizzie took the laptop. ‘They were passing on the knowledge. Look at all the stuff Aristotle wrote about comets, he was obsessed. He understood something about them. Is that what made Alexander believe in his invincibility, what gave Alexander the edge?’
‘But what’s your evidence?’ said Ella.
Lizzie scoffed. ‘The first man to write books about comets, to properly study them is the tutor of the greatest war leader of all time. Coincidence?’
Even Ella found it hard to dismiss out of hand. She asked, ‘And who did Alexander pass the knowledge to?’
‘Maybe he didn’t,’ Lizzie replied. ‘He died young. Maybe he didn’t even care about the next generation. He was a warlord, not an academic.’
Broady scratched his head. ‘You know what, I’ve been thinking about Isaac Newton.’ His brow furrowed. ‘It’s kind of weird, but he also spent his last years working on comets.’
‘All right,’ said Ella in a cynical tone. ‘Even assuming some past polymaths saw comets as important—’
‘And present,’ Jay interrupted, ‘if you include Matthew.’
‘OK.’ She paused. ‘But if they knew more than we do today, then why don’t they tell us about the first dot in 9500 BC?’
Nobody had an answer.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Ella, her eyes darting around. ‘Maybe they did.’ She stared at Lizzie. ‘Plato – Timaeus and Critias.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Lizzie. ‘How did we miss it?’
‘Miss what?’ asked Broady.
‘Atlantis,’ said Ella, her voice sounding almost reverent. ‘The more we widen the lens, the more everything in history seems to be linked.’
‘I don’t get it,’ said Jay.
‘In his book Timaeus and Critias, written around 360 BC,’ Lizzie replied, ‘Plato wrote about a huge lost island called Atlantis, an advanced civilization – a kind of utopia. He said it was the size of Libya and Asia Minor combined. All destroyed by fire and earthquakes in one night, lost underwater.’
‘But it’s just a myth, right?’ Jay said, sounding uncertain. ‘Is there any evidence the place ever existed?’
‘None,’ said Ella. ‘Just incredibly detailed accounts about it from Plato.’
‘Yeah,’ said Lizzie. ‘From the type of building materials they used, metals, even the layout of the city and who their enemies were.’
‘That’s right, Plato even wrote about their conquests,’ said Ella. ‘Their wars, and ultimately their downfall due to avarice and greed.’
‘The story was passed down from Socrates and before him a man called Solon,’ said Lizzie. ‘The night when Atlantis sunk without trace was calculated by Plato to be about 9500 BC.’
‘The date of the first dot,’ observed Jay.
‘So, where did he say this island was?’ asked Broady.
‘All we know is west of the Pillars of Hercules,’ Lizzie replied. ‘People think that’s the Straits of Gibraltar, the gateway to the Med.’
‘So, west could be pretty much anywhere in the Atlantic?’ said Jay.
Lizzie nodded.
The train pulled into York Station.
‘But I thought we didn’t have cities or any kind of organisation back then,’ said Jay. ‘Farming hadn’t begun.’
Broady got up and pulled the bags off the rack. ‘So, Plato was bullshitting, right?’
Ella swung her bag over her shoulder. ‘Nothing would surprise me anymore.’ She led the way down the aisle towards the doors.
Chapter Sixty-Five
As they got out of the train, Ella’s eyes darted from left to right, checking for anything untoward on the platform.
‘Let’s just get away from here,’ she said.
The others followed her out of the station and around the corner along the old city walls. Ella could feel the sun on her face.
Jay put a hand on Ella’s shoulder, which slowed her down. ‘Are you saying it was a comet that destroyed Atlantis?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s just a myth but—’
Broady cut in, ‘But the whole thing is nuts.’
Ella was beginning to rethink everything she’d learned about history. She took them to the open space around the Law Courts and found a place to sit across the road on the grass hill of Clifford’s Tower, a ruined castle built after the Norman invasion.
They lay back on the steep bank, taking a moment to digest their latest conversation.
‘We’re drifting,’ said Ella, unable to relax for long. She sat up and fiddled with the strap on her holdall. ‘We need a plan.’
Broady suddenly sat up, then grimaced, putting a hand to his wound.
‘What is it?’ Ella asked, sensing the urgency.
‘Show me the photos of the wallpaper again.’
As soon as she’d got them up on her phone, Broady grabbed it from her. He swiped the pictures across the screen, backwards and forwards. Then he looked at Ella and said, ‘Newton.’
‘What about him?’ Ella demanded.
‘You know I said he was obsessed with comets – that’s all he was working on when he died?’
‘Yes?’
Broady became more animated. ‘It’s accepted by astronomers that it was the great comet of 1680 that he used to confirm his theory of gravity. It’s the comet that inspired him.’
‘How?’ asked Jay.
Broady’s eyes widened. ‘By calculating the trajectory!’
> The others stared at him, nonplussed.
‘The curves on Matthew’s walls – it’s the trajectories of the comets – their relationship to the earth.’
Ella was open-mouthed, in awe of Broady’s brilliance. ‘But…’ she ventured, trying to process this information. ‘But there’s a pattern.’
Broady nodded. ‘It’s crazy, like there’s a link between them.’
‘Is that so surprising?’ offered Jay. ‘There’s maths, patterns and cycles in all nature, why not comets?’
‘And check this out,’ Broady said, pointing to the picture. ‘That’s the first dot, right?’
Jay confirmed it.
‘How come Matthew knew the trajectory? He’s got a curve there.’
‘He worked it out. He knew the rest of the pattern,’ said Jay.
Before anyone had time to reflect, the phone Jay had given Ella pinged. She read the message.
It’s Harris, we need to talk – you’re in a great deal of danger.
Ella showed the others.
‘Bit late for that,’ said Lizzie.
Jay rubbed his head. ‘How did she get that number?’ He examined the text again.
Ella’s phone pinged again. She read out the text.
Come back to the train station.
‘What the hell?’ said Broady, getting up.
‘I don’t trust her,’ said Jay. ‘Your inquiry is over if we do what she says.’
Ella was in two minds.
Lizzie stared at her, eyes imploring.
Ella stood up, took a deep breath then dropped her phone on the ground and stamped on it. ‘If they’ve traced us, so have others.’ She swivelled her foot to pulverise the handset.
‘Let’s go,’ she said, heading off towards the shopping precinct.
The others followed, checking about them as they went. They hurried past a man dressed as a Viking, leading a group of school children holding plastic shields up the street.
‘In here,’ said Ella, darting into a clothes shop and then sauntering along a rail, pulling out a few items while she tried to think.