Time Rocks

by Brian Sellars

  *

  Stonehenge was busy as you’d expect it to be in summer, but not unusually so. I saw no evidence of the reported crowds of excited people trying to see where Jack had disappeared. Sadness washed over me as I peered over the fence at the dig site. It was deserted. The trenches had been back filled and the turf re-laid. A man I didn’t know was stalking between the grassy scars scribbling on a clip board pad and peering around with an officious gaze. At the ancient stones a loony druid was wandering about dressed in long robes and an ivy crown. He appeared to be trying to anoint Japanese tourists with sheep dung. I wondered if it was him who had given the press all that aliens’ nonsense. There was no sign of the professor and I began to worry that my bouncy bus trip might be a waste of time.

  Feeling panicky and annoyed, I headed for the Visitor Centre car park, trying to recall if the professor had given any hint on the ‘phone that he was not going to be there. It was a relief to see his camper van still parked on its familiar spot.

  Stealing myself for a possible reprimand, I rapped on the camper van’s door. The professor opened it, greeting me with unexpected serenity. ‘Tori, you are entirely predictable,’ he chided warmly. ‘I knew you’d come. My only surprise is that you didn’t turn up yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I really do have to see you. Please don’t be cross.’

  ‘Come in, come in. As punishment, you shall make the tea.’ Laughing he directed me to the galley where two china mugs with tea bags already in place waited beside a kettle.

  For over an hour we talked, drank tea and ate Hob Nobs. He showed me the site video log on his battered laptop, pausing it now and again on various still photographs. Afterwards he made a copy for me on DVD.

  I learned that the dig had not been cancelled because of crowds of people getting in the way, even despite the eccentric druid. It was the Mackenzie Carmichael people. They had withdrawn funding, and pulled the plug.

  ‘English Heritage is furious,’ he said, taking a dusty sheet of computer paper from a filing cabinet. ‘To be candid,’ he went on, whispering, as if he thought he might be overheard. ‘I never really understood their involvement here.’ Rejecting the sheet of paper he riffled through others until he found the one he wanted. ‘You see this geophysical survey? It’s theirs. They wouldn’t let me use ours.’ He skimmed the sheet of paper onto the table in front of me. ‘They absolutely insisted on using this. Their own people produced it with secret equipment. They claimed they had mislaid our survey results.’

  I gaped at the colour coded squiggles and smudges plotted on the computer print. I could make no sense of it. ‘Is it different to yours?’

  The professor slid into his seat opposite me and wrapped his blunt fingers round his tea mug. ‘Oh better by far,’ he admitted. ‘In fact, remarkably so. The clarity of detail is quite amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it.’ He pointed out various ink plots to underline his opinion.

  ‘To be frank, Tori, I’m not even sure how they did it: caesium vapour magnetometry, inter-site magnetic susceptibility, GP radar, planar electrical resistance….’

  ‘Stop! That’s all Chinese to me. Stop it.’

  ‘Sorry, I’m afraid I go on a bit,’ he apologised. ‘What I mean is, they had some very clever equipment and people. They swept the site at a brisk pace, then showed me exactly where they wanted me to dig.’

  ‘But as project director shouldn’t that have been your decision?’

  ‘Absolutely!’ he cried, splashing tea on the table. ‘And I got pretty steamed up about it too. Pointless in the end though. As usual these days, it always comes back to money. They had the whip hand because they were paying. I complained to English Heritage, and in all fairness, I must say they were none too happy about it either. They promised they’d sort it out. I think they would have too, in time, but such things move slowly in large organisations. So, I had no choice but to start on the trenches as laid down by MCF.’

  ‘And now they’ve closed you down?’

  He shuffled awkwardly in his seat and dropped his gaze. ‘I know. And don’t think I haven’t asked myself why? The whole thing is very fishy. I’ve checked all the logs and the finds. I’ve been over every detail, but I can’t see why.’

  ‘Did they ever mention the thing that Jack found?’

  ‘Never. Though personally I’m certain that’s not it. The police explained all that to me.’

  ‘Why do you think they were so keen on digging trenches where their geophysics scan indicated, and not yours? I mean, most of our lot wondered why they could not have allowed both.’

  Dabbing his brow with his handkerchief, he laughed nervously, and slid out of his seat at the dining table. ‘Oh, very loyal I’m sure, but their scan was so much better. I’m rather glad we excavated where we did.’ He coughed, hiding his eyes from me. We both knew he was lying. He’d complained from the start about the trench locations, and now he was hiding something, but what?

  ‘I was given full access to all the information. I can assure you, Tori, I made a professional assessment.’

  ‘I’m sorry, professor. I didn’t mean to imply - I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘I’m not upset. I’m fine, it’s just that I’ve been over all this with the authorities, and I’m sworn to secrecy, as indeed are you. We probably shouldn’t even be having this conversation. No doubt we’ve already broken the Official Secrets Act.’

  ‘Shall I make more tea?’ I asked. He looked pale and stressed, and I wondered what I had said that had struck him so deeply. I don’t see how it could be about Jack’s silver gizmo. It was me who had told him about it, and I’d showed him my photographs of Jack holding it.

  Agreeing to tea he turned to the window and gazed out at the coaches and cars coming and going in the busy car park beyond the hedge and fence.

  ‘What do you know of the Mackenzie Carmichael Foundation?’ I asked, bringing him down suddenly from his thoughts.

  ‘Huh, not much, but enough to know that I never want to work with them again.’ He shook his head and returned to his seat. ‘A bad lot, Tori. Steer clear of them. Have you looked them up on the internet? There’s very little to see. However, in my rather strange job, I’m uniquely placed to make some very interesting friends from time to time. I asked a couple of my old students to do a little poking around for me. They’re both politicians now, one’s a junior minister.’ He tapped the side of his nose with his index finger.

  ‘The first thing they told me is that MCF, is paranoid about publicity. It spends millions trying to stop information about its activities and employees getting into the public domain. Luckily, this just made my chums even more determined to get something on them. Even so, they didn’t find much. MCF is powerful, secretive and ruthless. Sir Mackenzie-Carmichael is the shrewdest investor in history, or perhaps the luckiest. He is a multi-billionaire who made his money on the stock market. My friends said he just appeared from nowhere. They could find nothing about him before 1987.’

  He searched his jacket pockets, produced a note book and thumbed through its battered pages. ‘Now, I had to write this bit down. I’m afraid such things are not my – err what’s it? Bag. You may know that 1987 was the year of the great stock market crash. The Dow Jones in New York fell a record 508 points. In London 50 billion pounds was wiped off the value of shares in a single afternoon. And that’s when plain Mister Carmichael, suddenly appeared and made billions. Since then he’s been knighted, acquired a double barrelled surname, strode out with various leaders at Chequers, Saint Petersburg, and Camp David, and been wined and dined at the White House, the Forbidden City and Buckingham Palace.’

  ‘You seem to have learned quite a lot.’

  Pale faced, he glanced guiltily across the table at me. I worried that he might get all stressed again if I pursued that line directly, so I changed tack. ‘I’ve heard they fund scholarships and do charitable works around the world.’

  ‘True yes, and you can read all about that on the i
nternet - no secrets there. They can’t wait to tell you how much money they give away. But if you look behind the headlines and all those smiley head shots, you’ll find it’s mainly in Africa, and always in countries whose leaders are greedy and corrupt.’

  ‘I’ve had an invitation to meet him.’ I felt really strange telling him this.

  He swallowed and gawped at me astonished. ‘Wow! I mean – err – well really. What do they want?’

  ‘Lord knows. The only thing they told me is that I can’t tell anybody. Your friends are right about the secrecy thing. I really got a full taste of that yesterday. I met this woman. She told me I’m going to be picked up tomorrow and taken to their headquarters.

  ‘Good gracious. What do your parents say?’

  ‘Oh they haven’t said anything about it,’ I told him. OK - OK, I know it’s a sort of lie, even though strictly speaking it’s the truth, but I will probably tell my dad before I go – maybe.

  ………