WILL ADAMS
Newton’s Fire

To Jonathan and Sarah

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Epilogue

Author’s Note

About the Author

Also by Will Adams

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

St Martin’s Street, London 1713

There was singing in the French Protestant Church as Erasmus and his companions turned into St Martin’s Street, but it was evidently the last act of the service, for the doors opened as they trundled by, and the congregation began trickling out, singly, in pairs and in small family clusters, bracing themselves against the wintry night.

‘You ain’t trying to save our souls now, are you, Ras?’ muttered Johann.

‘Someone needs to,’ he retorted.

‘They will after tonight.’

Erasmus spat over the side of the cart, gave the horses a tickle with his whip, peering through the darkness for the house. When he found it, he gave the reins a tug and they came to a halt.

The congregation had already largely dispersed, chased off by the cold drizzle. The church doors closed again, leaving the cobbled street empty, dark and silent, save for the creaking boards of their own cart and the muffled revelry of Leicester Fields. He passed the reins to Johann, climbed down. His left boot splashed in a puddle he hadn’t seen, and the chill of it penetrated his sole almost at once, feeling peculiarly like fear. He scowled as he strode over to the front steps, both from irritation and the need to give himself resolve. Johann was right. For all the prestige and the fine title of the man who’d given them their orders, Erasmus didn’t like this business one bit. Too many mysteries. Too much whispering in dark corners. But it wasn’t for the likes of him to doubt knights of the realm; nor to turn down their guineas neither.

He knocked three times. Nothing happened. He banged twice more, cupped his hands around his mouth, gave a holler. Still nothing. He looked around at his companions, shrugged. Sir Christopher had been adamant there would be someone here. He called out again, and finally he heard something inside. Bolts were drawn; hinges creaked. The door opened to reveal a portly, elderly man of middle height with unkempt grey hair down to his shoulders. He was dressed in black and he was holding a five-branched candelabra, so that tiny sparks of light reflected from his dark eyes. ‘Sir Christopher’s men, I take it,’ he said.

‘He said you had something for us to collect.’

‘Did he tell you what?’

Erasmus shook his head. ‘No, sir. Only that it would need ten of us.’

‘At least ten. If you’re strong.’

‘We’re strong enough.’

The old man stared at him for several moments. It made Erasmus feel like a whipped child. Despite the chill of the night, a bead of sweat trickled from his nape down his back. ‘Where’s Sir Christopher now?’ he asked.

‘Waiting, sir. With his son.’

‘Then how can I trust you’re who you say you are? Did he give you a token to show me?’

‘No, sir. Not a token. A word.’

‘What word?’

Erasmus scratched his throat. There’d been a lot to remember this evening, and memory had never exactly been his greatest strength. ‘The word was Polanus,’ he said.

‘Polanus?’

‘Yes, sir. Polanus. Or Bolanus, maybe. Balanus.’

The old man gave the first hint of a smile; though no more than a hint. ‘Close enough, I suppose.’ He glanced across at the cart. ‘Your men won’t be much help over there, will they?’

Erasmus beckoned them over. ‘Come on, lads. Work to do. Fees to earn.’

‘Have them wipe their boots,’ said the old man.

He led the way along a passage flanked by open doors, his candlelight offering brief glimpses of desks and tables strewn with papers, mirrors that stretched and shrank, dark oak-panelled walls with curtains red as slaughterhouses. Erasmus raised an eyebrow at Henry. For sure, they’d crack some jokes about this later, fortified by an ale or two; but right now he didn’t feel much like laughing.

They passed out the back of the house. The old man unlocked and opened a cellar door, releasing a draught of foul-smelling air. He didn’t even seem to notice, just went straight on down, taking the candlelight with him. They looked hesitantly at each other. It was absurd to be scared of an old man and his cellar; yet scared they were. Something here wasn’t right. Something wasn’t of this earth. The smell of it, sulphurous and evil, like a gateway to hell itself.

Erasmus shook his head at himself and his companions. He steeled himself and led the way. The cellar surprised him. From its stink, he’d expected something rotting and damp; but actually it proved clean and dry. The stench had to be coming from the jars, bottles and flasks that were crowded on the worktables and shelves, filled with colourful powders and liquids; or perhaps from the cold ashes of the great furnace against the far wall. But it was to the left-hand wall that the man went, to three oak chests lined up against it. He rested his hand on the largest, a little over five feet long, maybe three feet wide and high. It had four brass handles along either side for carrying, another pair at either end. But it had no obvious hinges, lock or lid, no way to open it.

‘Is this it, then?’ asked Erasmus. ‘These three boxes?’

‘These three boxes,’ agreed the old man. He smiled at Erasmus’s companions, hanging back at the foot of the steps. ‘Come now, gentlemen,’ he mocked. ‘We’re not scared of a few boxes, are we?’

Simeon came across, lifting his chin defiantly. ‘Ten of us?’ he asked. ‘Just for these?’

‘Try lifting it,’ suggested the old man.

Simeon nodded. He was short of stature, but he had broad shoulders and monstrously powerful arms. He took hold of the brass handles and heaved it up, raising it barely an inch from the floor before dropping it again and rubbing his palms ruefully on his breeches. He turned to Erasmus. ‘Hell’s teeth,’ he said. ‘So that’s what you did with your missus.’

Laughter settled their nerves. They clustered around the chest, took a handle each. When they were all braced, Erasmus gave the word and they lifted it up together, shuffled it over to the foot of the steps before setting it down again with a dull thump that sent shivers through the floor, shook dust from the walls. They stood there, massaging their backs and flexing their sore fingers, looking with dismay at the steep steps that faced them.

‘In the name of Christ,’ said David, staring balefully at the chest. ‘What’s in this thing?’

The old man smiled, as though he’d been hoping someone would ask. ‘The end,’ he said. ‘Or the beginning of it, at least.’

They looked at each other with bewilderment, but it was Erasmus who voiced their shared thought. ‘The end of what?’ he asked.

The old man’s smile broadened. ‘Everything,’ he said. ‘The end of everything.’

ONE
I

A country house attic, Suffolk, England, Sunday June 5th

Luke Hayward was lifting a stack of documents from the cardboard box when he glimpsed the sliver of sepia paper about two thirds of the way down. It looked altogether more intriguing than anything he’d seen so far. Stiffer and older and with a fractionally compressed edge, as though it had been cut by a blunted guillotine. His heartbeat accelerated slightly; but only slightly. Experience had taught him not to get his hopes up at such faint hints of promise.

He put the stack down on the dust sheet, lifted off and set aside the top half, then a bit more, exposing the front of a faded manila folder on which someone had scrawled S.I.N. in smudged black ink. His heart gave another kick, more pronounced this time, more warranted. His mouth was dry, he realized; he swallowed some saliva then paused to wipe his hands, deliberately taking his time. If disappointment awaited him, as surely it did, he could at least defer it a few more moments.

He crouched down, lifted up the front flap of the folder with his index finger, pulling the sheet with it a little way, too, as though glued to it by habit; but then he lifted the flap further and it released with a faint whisper and fell back and outwards; and Luke froze for a moment, staring down at it in disbelief.

Six months he’d been hunting. Six months. Yet not once in that time had he ever truly thought he was going to find anything. Not truly. Not in his heart. Not if he was honest with himself.

But he’d have recognized that handwriting anywhere.

He set the flap back down, rose to his full height, took a pair of white cotton archivist’s gloves from his pocket and pulled them on over his fingers like a surgeon prepping for an operation. He smoothed the dust sheet out over the attic floorboards, brushed away some dust and grit of fallen plaster, then opened the folder all the way. There were four sheets of the paper, he could now see, not just one. He fanned them out a little. Each bore the tell-tale creases of once having been folded into quarters and slit along one edge to make a miniature notebook, much as he’d sometimes done himself as a child, playing at being a spy. Almost certainly alchemical papers, then, for it had been one of the great man’s quirks to dedicate such notebooks to his alchemical studies. But the sheets had been unfolded many years ago, and the decades spent weighted down near the foot of this tall stack of papers had pressed them flat.

It was too gloomy here for Luke to read. He carefully picked up the top sheet, took it to the nearest window. The light was better here, but still not ideal, for the panes were small, dirty and obscured by fingers of ivy. Besides, the writing had blurred and faded a little over the centuries, perhaps from these less than ideal conditions, exposed to extremes of heat and cold and damp. Add to that the characteristic tightness and closeness of his handwriting, and the arcane subject matter of the text, and it took Luke a good two minutes just to make sense of the top three lines.

Saturn will put into your hand a deep glittering mineral wch in his mine is grown of first matter of all metals. If this mineral after its preparation wch he will show until thee is in a strong sublimation mixed, with three parts

The passage stopped abruptly mid-sentence. Beneath it, though upside down, thanks to Isaac Newton’s quirk with the notebooks, was a citation from St. Didier’s Triomphe Hermetique, one of the alchemical texts the great man had most admired. It had been published in 1689, if Luke’s memory served, though Newton hadn’t got hold of his own copy until 1690. Luke held the sheet up to the window again. When he squinted hard at the paper itself, he could just about make out a watermark: a horn at the top, the capitalized letters IR beneath it. He knew the paper well. Newton had bought a large stock of it in the mid 1680s; had used it, on and off, until around 1695. Put together with the Saint-Didier citation, it dated this paper to first half of the 1690s; most probably from autumn 1692 to late 1693, the most intense period of alchemical experimentation and study in Newton’s life.

Luke’s hand was trembling a little, he noticed. As an academic specialising in the Scientific Revolution, he’d seen thousands of pages of Newton’s handwriting and annotations over the years; and many hundreds in the past year alone, when dismissal from the university had given him the time to begin the research for his long-planned biography. But none had affected him quite like this, for they’d all been in libraries and museums and private collections. They’d all been known about, studied, debated.

But this was new. This could be anything.

He turned the page over. Again the patchwork writing, passages in English, French and Latin. It had been Newton’s practice, when studying any new field, to read the acknowledged authorities in it, preferably in their original language, copying out any passages that particularly caught his eye. Luke recognized a citation from Philatheles and two lines from the Emerald Tablet, but otherwise the extracts were unfamiliar.

He returned the page to its folder, picked up the second sheet, hesitated. He’d promised Penelope Martyn he’d let her know at once should he find anything. He also needed to photograph these pages and email them to his client’s lawyer. But he couldn’t resist another quick look. This sheet too was filled with alchemical passages; but there was something else overleaf, something different: four words scrawled so fiercely near its foot that Newton had evidently damaged his quill while doing it, for the ink was thick and blotted.

Fatio O my Fatio

He set the page carefully down, conscious of a warmth in his throat and cheeks, flushing slightly with vicarious embarrassment, as though he’d walked in by accident on someone’s private shame. And, just for a moment, he felt uncertain what to do.

No. That wasn’t quite true. He knew exactly what he was going to do.

It was just that he felt wretched about doing it.

II

The Amalfi coast road, Italy

Vernon Croke could sense Irina struggling to maintain her silence as they wended the sharp, high hairpins just fast enough for their tyres to screech on the sun-baked roads, for she knew better than to question his tactics or to imply criticism, especially in front of other people, even if only his driver Manfredo. But they had to drop by the villa to pick up their things before heading on to Naples airport, and when they were safely inside he decided to let her off her leash.

‘I didn’t know you spoke German,’ he said.

‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘Honestly, I don’t. My grandmother lived in the Black Forest. I stayed with her sometimes. I’m sure I told you about her.’

Croke smiled reassuringly. ‘So you got the gist, then?’

She nodded twice. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, with a curiously plaintive indignation. ‘How could you do business with such a man?’

‘You mean, how could we do business with him?’ He went to the bar to fix them each a Bloody Mary. ‘Very easily, my dear. He happens to be exceedingly rich.’

‘And you’re not?’

Croke shrugged. It was true that he lived rich, what with the villas and cars and the private jet; but those were the necessary trappings for his kind of business, and most were rented. But he couldn’t say that without ruining the illusion; nor could he exactly hold Irina’s reaction to their recent meeting against her, for fastidiousness was one of the qualities he liked her for. And their recent host had been one of the more repellent men Croke had ever met, bloated and pale, and glistening with expensive scents that couldn’t quite disguise the noxious smells beneath, like so much bleach poured into a toilet. He’d kept glancing hungrily at Irina throughout their meeting, licking his lips as if she were the last pastry on the plate. And then, after uncapping his fountain pen and seemingly poised to sign the contract, he’d paused, looked up at Croke and had switched to German. ‘Your assistant keeps smirking at me,’ he’d said.

‘I’m sure she doesn’t.’

‘She’s been smirking at me this whole meeting.’

It had been the first time Croke had met his host, but he was familiar with the type. Deny the accusation, he’d protest about being called a liar, and then it would be a matter of face; and you never knew where you stood with such men on a matter of face. ‘Irina is young and new,’ he’d therefore replied, in his most emollient German. ‘I’m sure she meant nothing by it. I’m sure she’s extremely sorry for the offence she has given.’

‘I don’t like women who smirk.’

‘What man does?’

‘She needs taking in hand. That’s what she needs.’

Croke had nodded. ‘I’ll see to it as soon as I get her home.’

‘I’ll see to it for you,’ said the man. ‘Consider it my gift. To celebrate our deal.’

Croke had glanced sideways. The faint sheen on Irina’s forehead had been his first hint that she could speak German after all. He’d turned back to his host.

‘Call me superstitious,’ he’d said, ‘but I never celebrate a deal before the ink’s dry.’

‘Call me superstitious,’ his host had returned, ‘but I never make a deal unless I have a bottle of champagne on ice.’ And he’d looked around at his two bodyguards at that moment: nothing dramatic, just enough to put them on alert.

Irina had been with Croke since the debacle in Doha. She’d proved attentive, smart, discreet, loyal, quick to learn and fun to bed. Everything he could have asked. On the other hand, his safety was now at stake; not to mention a potentially lucrative relationship.

‘Well?’ his host had pressed, pen poised above the dotted line. ‘Do we have a deal?’

Something unfamiliar had fluttered inside Croke’s chest at that moment; and he’d realized, not without a certain perverse pleasure, that it was fear. It was an unexpected drawback of success, that it allowed you to cut risk out of your life. But risk was excitement; risk was joy. So he’d looked unflinchingly up into his host’s gaze. ‘Go fuck yourself,’ he’d said.

A pinch of garlic salt in the Bloody Marys, a dash of Tabasco, ice cubes and a slice of lemon. He was a traditionalist when it came to drinks. He took the heavy crystal tumblers over to Irina, gave her hers. She took a large swallow. Her eyes gleamed and her jaw muscles tightened. ‘You considered his offer,’ she said bitterly. ‘I saw you considering it.’

‘I considered the situation,’ he said mildly. ‘It’s not the same thing at all. Besides, if it makes you feel better, it wasn’t about you.’

She snorted at that. ‘It felt like it was about me.’

‘I’m sure it did. But it wasn’t. If it had really been about you, he’d never have signed the contract. We might not even have got out of there alive. It was about me. Specifically, he wanted to know if he could trust me, or whether I was the kind of man who could be bribed or bullied into giving up something I valued.’

‘I thought you were going to say yes,’ she said, the slight quaver in her voice betraying the way her world had trembled beneath her feet. ‘I thought you were going to give me to that … that monster.’

‘But that’s the point,’ said Croke. ‘It wouldn’t have been a gift. Not under coercion like that. It would have been tribute.’

She took another gulp, frowned and shook her head. ‘I don’t see—’

‘Tribute is something demanded by the stronger party and paid by the weaker,’ explained Croke. ‘I don’t pay tribute. I never pay tribute. It sends all the wrong signals. It lets people know you can be pushed around. Gifts, on the other hand, are what equals exchange freely and willingly. They’re a valuable part of what I do; they’re how I form bonds with other powerful people, how I build my influence. Here’s a tip for you: in situations like this morning, where you find yourself at a temporary disadvantage, do whatever you can to achieve parity first, and only then show generosity. Otherwise it will be misinterpreted as weakness. Do you understand?’

She sat a little heavily down in one of the white leather armchairs. ‘My head,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t feel so good.’

‘A reaction to the tension, I expect.’

‘Yes.’

‘Or perhaps to what I put in your Bloody Mary.’

She frowned a moment then looked in dismay down at her drink. But it was already too late. She tried to push herself up but collapsed back down again.

‘You really should have let me know you spoke German,’ he told her. ‘I need to be able to trust the people around me.’

She tried to say something, maybe explain herself, but nothing came out. The tumbler slipped from her weakening grasp and shattered on the polished marble floor, tomato juice spreading like blood around the translucent shards. Her eyes glazed and her head lolled forward, a little pinkish drool leaking out onto her white blouse.

The door banged open, Manfredo and Vig sprinting in, handguns already drawn, alarmed by the tinkle of breaking glass. ‘It’s all right,’ Croke assured them. He nodded at Irina, slumped unconscious in her armchair. He turned to Manfredo. ‘Take her back to our friend from this morning, would you,’ he said. ‘Tell her she comes with my compliments, to celebrate our deal.’

Manfredo holstered his gun. ‘Yes, sir. And afterwards?’

‘Meet us at the airport. We wouldn’t want to miss our slot.’

‘No, sir. Anything else?’

Croke knocked back the dregs of his Bloody Mary, set his glass down on the counter. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’d better call Francesca in Geneva for me. We should probably let her know I’ll be needing a new assistant.’

TWO
I

‘You found them,’ said Penelope Martyn in an awed murmur, when Luke tracked her to her kitchen. ‘I don’t believe it.’

Luke allowed himself a smile. ‘I don’t either,’ he admitted.

‘And? Are they … are they what you were hoping?’

He didn’t quite know how to answer that. Her house was grand but badly rundown; and he’d got the distinct impression, when they’d chatted earlier, that a windfall would be more than welcome. ‘They’re alchemical papers,’ he said carefully. ‘Four sheets, written front and back. Citations from other authors, as far as I’ve been able to tell.’

‘Oh.’ She tried, unsuccessfully, to keep the shadow of disappointment from her expression. ‘So not his original work then?’

‘I’m afraid not.’ He’d already explained to her the sliding scale of value for Newton’s papers: the highly prized letters he’d written to both his famous and lesser-known friends; the coveted annotations for Principia Mathematica and Opticks; the significantly lesser interest in his theological and alchemical writings, especially those that didn’t represent Newton’s own thinking, but were merely his transcriptions of other authors. ‘It could have been worse,’ he said. ‘They could have been his papers from the Royal Mint.’

‘Newton was at the Royal Mint?’

‘He joined just a year or two after he wrote these pages, as it happens. Ran the place for decades. Oversaw a complete recoinage of the realm.’

She shook her head. ‘Why would a man like Newton take a job like that?’

Luke shrugged. It was a question that had vexed many academics over the years, and no one had really come up with a satisfactory explanation. ‘The Principia Mathematica had made him a star,’ he said. ‘We think maybe he wanted to go to London to bask in all that glory. The Royal Mint was his ticket. And the money was pretty good too, especially after he was appointed Master.’

‘Oh, well.’ She touched the papers with her fingertip. ‘Is there anything of interest in them?’

‘I haven’t been through them properly yet,’ Luke told her. ‘I wanted to show them to you at once. Besides …’ He gestured at the cramped handwriting, the upside-down passages, the esoteric words, the passages in Latin and French, indicating how hard they were to read. ‘But there is at least one thing.’

‘Yes?’

He pointed out the four words to her. Then, unsure of her eyesight, he read them out aloud. ‘It says “Fatio O my Fatio”.’

‘I don’t understand.’ She frowned. ‘Who’s Fatio? What’s Fatio?’

‘It’s a who.’ He stooped to unzip his laptop case, pulled out his digital camera. ‘A he, to be precise. Nicolas Fatio de Duillier. A young Swiss mathematician who became a close friend of Newton’s in the early 1690s. Perhaps even a very close friend.’

‘Very close?’ She tipped her head to one side. ‘You’re not implying …?’

Luke smiled. ‘It’s possible. Some people certainly think so.’

‘Sir Isaac Newton? And some young Swiss man?’

‘There’s no evidence whatsoever that anything physical ever happened between them,’ said Luke, setting the first page square on the tablecloth, the better to photograph it. ‘Though they did spend a week together in London one time, when no one else even knew that Fatio was in the country.’ He checked the image in his digital display, turned the page over to photograph its reverse. ‘And Newton later implored him to live with him in Cambridge.’

‘My word.’ She let out a bark of a laugh. ‘Maybe that’s why Uncle Bernie wanted these papers.’

Luke set the second page in place. ‘How do you mean?’

A little colour pinked her cheeks. ‘They called them “confirmed bachelors” in my day,’ she said, with just a hint of a smile, as though unaccustomed to revealing family skeletons, yet rather enjoying it. ‘“Not the marrying kind”. I had no idea what that actually meant. I simply assumed Uncle Bernie hadn’t yet met the right woman. I even hoped I’d be able to help find her for him myself. He was so nice to me. The only Martyn who truly welcomed me into the family. But then I called on him without warning one afternoon.’ She gave another of her barking laughs and blushed even deeper. ‘Well, I’m sure you can imagine.’

‘Must have been a shock,’ said Luke, photographing the third paper.

‘For both of us,’ she admitted. ‘All three of us, I should say. We girls were so naïve back then. You wouldn’t believe.’

He photographed the back of the last page, held up his camera. ‘May I email these off? The sooner my client gets them, the sooner he’ll make an offer. If he wants them, that is.’

‘And I’m not obliged to accept, you said?’

‘Of course not. All he asks is the opportunity to make the first bid.’ His client’s lawyer had been absurdly emphatic about that, repeating it at every opportunity. ‘You’ll be perfectly free to accept it, reject it or negotiate something better.’ The house was too remote for his own WiFi service, but Penelope had assured him earlier that he’d be welcome to use the wired broadband she’d had put in to tempt her grandkids to come and visit. He plugged his laptop into her router, transferred the photographs, attached them to an email and sent them on their way. The high resolution files were big, however, and her connection was slow. ‘This could take a while,’ he said.

‘We’ll have a nice cup of tea,’ said Penelope.

He toured the walls as her old kettle struggled to the boil, looking at family photographs. A surly lot, for the most part, with long noses and sour upper lips, posing grudgingly for the camera. But then he reached a picture of a young woman with short brown hair and an enchanting smile leaning against the driver door of an old grey-blue Rover.

‘My great-niece Rachel,’ Penelope said, appearing at his side with a plate of shortbread biscuits. ‘She’s one of your lot.’

‘My lot?’

‘An academic. She’s doing her doctorate at Caius College, Cambridge. She wants to be a lecturer like you.’

‘Ah,’ said Luke, a touch guiltily. He’d used old university letterheaded paper for his correspondence with Penelope; and somehow he’d neglected to let her know about their parting of the ways following his convictions for assault and offences against the Terrorism Act. ‘What’s her field?’ he asked.

‘The archaeology and history of the ancient Near East, I think. Something like that, anyway. Between you and me, I find it terribly hard to follow.’

‘She looks nice.’

‘As opposed to my own brood, you mean?’

‘I didn’t mean that at all,’ protested Luke, a little too hotly. ‘I just meant that she looks nice.’ His laptop beeped, sparing his further blushes. He went to check it. The battery was running low. ‘Mind if I recharge?’ he asked.

‘Be my guest.’ She pointed him to a spare socket, cleared her throat, now suffering from awkwardness of her own. ‘I hate to ask,’ she said, ‘but do you have any idea exactly how interested your client might be in these particular papers?’

Luke hesitated. He’d already given her a ballpark estimate and was reluctant to do more. Go too low and she’d think he was trying to fleece her; go too high and he’d be setting her up for disappointment. He checked his screen to find that the photographs were on their way, gave her a blandly optimistic smile. ‘I guess we’ll find out soon enough,’ he said.

II

Vernon Croke clenched a crystal tumbler of bourbon as he stared through the window of Naples’ private jet terminal, watching airport security guards mill like ants around his plane.

It was like this everywhere.

The cabins of modern jet aircraft were pressurized as a matter of course. They flew so high that the thinness of the air would otherwise kill their passengers and crew. Their cargo holds, on the other hand, were often left unpressurized. In such aircraft the pressurized and unpressurized compartments had to be securely sealed off from each other lest some unfortunate accident provoke a catastrophic depressurisation.

There’d been times recently, however, when certain international agencies had found themselves frustrated by this. Times when they’d regretted the lack of an airlock system that would enable passage between the pressurized and unpressurized parts. Such a system could even allow an external hatch to be opened in mid-flight: to jettison potentially embarrassing evidence, say, or to parachute agents or supplies into hostile territory. Cargo planes were too slow, low and visible for such sensitive work, but no one looked twice at a private jet cruising at 25,000 feet. That was what the CIA had assured Croke, at least, when they’d offered him this plane ahead of a Department of Justice investigation into rendition flights. What with the generous discount, and its sophisticated comms systems, it had seemed too good an opportunity to refuse. But there were times he regretted his decision, for the plane’s peculiarities of design invariably drew extra scrutiny wherever he went. ‘How much longer?’ he asked Vig.

‘Five minutes, sir.’

‘They said that ten minutes ago.’

The bodyguard shrugged. ‘Another drink?’

Croke shook his head. ‘I have calls to make,’ he said. ‘I can’t make them here. Anyone could be listening.’

The door opened. An airport security guard beckoned. They were cleared. Croke strode briskly across the concourse. ‘Are we secure?’ he asked Craig Bray, his pilot, waiting at the head of the cockpit steps.

‘Just done a full sweep,’ Bray assured him. ‘We’re secure.’

The comms suite was towards the front. Croke had turned it into his on-board office, from where he could manage his small empire in perfect confidence. He went there now, checked his messages. All were routine except for one from Max Walters, boss of his London office. He called him at once. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Just got an email from our Newton friend,’ said Walters.

Croke sat up a little. ‘Has he found something?’

‘Four pages, sir. Up near Thetford in some old biddy’s attic. I wouldn’t have disturbed you, except that there’s a list of twelve letters on the back of one of the pages, which is one of the things you told me to look out for, right?’

‘Yes,’ said Croke. ‘Send them to me.’

‘Already on their way, sir. I just wanted to alert you.’

‘Good work.’

‘Thanks. If you want the originals, I’m free this afternoon and I’ve still got that Riyadh cash. And I’ve put Kieran and Pete on notice.’

‘Let me take a look,’ said Croke. ‘I’ll call you back.’ He downloaded and opened the email, found the twelve letters in four groups of three in a perplexing passage on the back of the third page. He brought up an online King James’ Version, went straight to Exodus, scrolled down for the relevant passage and split the screen to check email against scripture. Then he sat back in his seat, his heart pumping.

A perfect match.

Over the past six months or so, his friends in Jerusalem and the southern United States had been increasingly in his ear, urging him to ramp up the hunt for these papers, claiming they needed them found by a very specific date. That date was the day after tomorrow, Tuesday 7 June.

Mostly, Croke was his father’s son, feeling only mild disdain for religion and related superstitions. But there were other times, times like these, when his mother’s blood would assert itself and he’d glimpse the vast hinterland of the unknown. He called Walters back. ‘I want those papers,’ he told him. ‘I want them today. I don’t care what they cost. Just get them for me.’

‘What if she won’t sell?’

‘Find a way. That’s what I pay you for, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And I want all copies of these photographs destroyed. And this woman and your Newton expert are to keep their mouths shut. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir. And when I get the originals, where do you want them sent?’

Croke hesitated. His father’s seventy-fifth birthday wasn’t until next weekend, and his flight-path back to the States would near enough take him over the UK. And what was the point of a private plane, after all, if not for moments like this? ‘I’ll try to do a fly-by,’ he said. ‘Are there any airports up that way?’

‘Cambridge and Norwich for sure. There are bound to be others.’

‘Fine. I’ll let you know.’ He ended the call then spent a few moments staring at Newton’s cryptic message, trying to puzzle it out. But it was too obscure for him; he couldn’t make head nor tail of it.

It was time to call in the expert.

It was time for Avram.

III

The Old City, Jerusalem

There was another aftershock that afternoon, half an hour or so after Avram Kohen returned from the hospital. It was mild, as tremors went; barely enough to rattle the crockery in his cupboards and set off an intruder alarm further down the street. Yet it sent a shiver through Avram all the same. What with the news he’d had earlier, it was as though the Lord Himself, praise His Name, had come into his home to tell him bluntly that there were to be no more deferments, no more excuses.

This was to happen now.

His heart swelled within his chest. His eyes began to water. And then, just like that, his phone began to ring.

‘Shalom,’ said Avram, picking up. He heard soft breathing and three distinct clicks before the caller disconnected. He put the receiver down, his heart racing, hands a little clammy. This was how he had to communicate these days, since learning that his security had been compromised. He went to his bedroom, rolled up the rug, levered up the terracotta tile to get at the steel safe beneath. He punched the password into the keypad, opened its door, took out the small laptop, the satellite modem and his security keys, and carried them all up the wooden ladder onto his flat roof.

The afternoon was cloudless and fiercely hot, exacerbating the stench seeping from all the sewers in the Old City that had been fractured by the earthquake, and hadn’t yet been repaired. He sat with his back to the low perimeter wall as he aimed his modem north. From the corner of his eye he could see the Dome of the Rock, lording it over the Old City of Jerusalem like some conceited golden toad. But he didn’t look away. He’d taken this house precisely because of this view, for he’d known it would act on him like a scourge.

Three thousand years before, King Solomon had built his temple upon that sacred mount. The Babylonians had torn it down some four hundred years later, but Cyrus had authorized its rebuilding and then Herod had renovated and expanded it. In 70 AD, the Romans had destroyed it again, punishment for the Jewish uprising. Then the Muslims had arrived. Aware that this was Judaism’s holiest site, in 691 Abd al-Malik had built his wretched Dome upon it. And there it had remained ever since, a golden thorn in the heart of every Jew.

Many years before, Avram had dedicated his life to pulling that thorn free. Yet he’d gradually come to realize that bringing down the Dome wouldn’t be enough. World opinion, after all, would be outraged; and Israel’s craven leaders would doubtless succumb to pressure to rebuild it. And what sacrilege that would be! Not merely a Dome, but a Dome enabled by Jews. So he had come to the conclusion that it had to be brought down in such a way that only a Third Temple could be built in its place: in such a way that the Promised Land would be theirs forever.

The satellite modem finally acquired its signal. He typed in clearance codes from his security key to make the call. ‘You’ve found the papers,’ he stated when Croke picked up. ‘Didn’t I tell you that you would?’

‘I’ve just emailed you photographs,’ said Croke. ‘Check the bottom of the sixth side and call me back.’

The file opened with teasing slowness on Avram’s screen, a courtesan at her veils. It was all he could do not to slap his machine. But finally the page appeared.

Received from E.A.

12 plain panels and blocks SW, 2 linen rolls

S T C, E S D, L A A, B O J

Papers J.D. J.T.

On completion, E.A. asks that ye whole be in SALOMANS HOUSE well concealed.

Something splashed against Avram’s wrist. He looked up, half expecting clouds to have appeared, but the sky was of an almost impossible blue, so that he realized he was crying. He stood and paced around his roof, the tears now spilling freely down his wrinkled cheeks. He stopped, clenched a fist, shook it at the Temple Mount, at the insect workers striving so futilely to repair its earthquake cracks. Only now could he acknowledge, even to himself, how his faith had begun to falter this past year or so, despite his best efforts.

Never again, he vowed. Never again.

First things first. The message still needed interpreting. He was intimately familiar with Newton’s studies of the Tanakh and the Kabbalah, with his writings on ancient kingdoms and the sacred cubit. But this lay outside that. He needed to talk to his nephew.

‘Jakob,’ he said, when the young man answered his phone. ‘It’s me. Uncle Avram.’

‘Uncle? What is it?’

‘You were right: the papers do exist. We’ve just found them.’ He talked Jakob through what had happened, read out the cryptic message.

‘“In Salomans House well concealed”,’ echoed Jakob, when he was done. ‘Then that must be where we’ll find it.’

‘Yes. Of course. But where is Saloman’s House?’

‘It’s here,’ said Jakob. ‘In London.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It was Sir Francis Bacon. He wrote a book called The New Atlantis. Salomon’s House appears in it: a kind of prototype research institute that was the direct inspiration for the Royal Society. And listen: Newton became the Royal Society’s president. And one of his first big decisions was to move the Society out of Gresham College into two adjoining buildings in a place called Crane Court. He had them gutted and rebuilt to his exact specifications.’

‘That’s it, then,’ said Avram, a little awed. ‘We’ve got it.’

‘It’s not that simple,’ cautioned Jakob. ‘The Royal Society moved out of Crane Court back in 1780. And now no one knows which buildings they occupied there.’

‘Someone must,’ Avram protested.

‘I give you my word, Uncle,’ said Jakob. ‘I tried to find out myself two years ago. But its exact address isn’t in any of the histories, there aren’t any commemorative plaques outside and there’s nothing online. Well, nothing definitive, at least. I spent days searching, I assure you.’

‘What about old London directories and maps?’

‘No use. Where they give an address at all, it’s just the Royal Society, Crane Court, never a number. I even approached the Royal Society itself, asked to consult their old minute books and property deeds; but they’d shipped them all off to some storage facility in Wales to save money, only to lose them in the floods.’

‘I don’t believe this, Jakob. Someone must know.’

‘I’m sorry, Uncle. They don’t. And even if you could find the old address, which you can’t, there’s no guarantee it would help. Crane Court isn’t what it used to be. They’ve demolished some buildings, knocked others together, turned some into offices and restaurants and apartment blocks. Even if we knew what numbers they had back then, the chances are high they’d have changed by now.’

‘We’ll find it,’ insisted Avram. ‘It’s destined. And, when we do, you’re going to have to escort it here personally. Are you ready? Do you have everything you need?’

‘Yes, Uncle.’

‘You’ll have to arrange it with our friends. I’ll be too busy myself.’

‘As you wish, Uncle.’

‘Shalom, Jakob. Till Jerusalem, then. It will be good to see you again.’ He rang off, called Croke once more, told him what he’d learned.

Croke grunted in disappointment. ‘That’s too bad,’ he said. ‘But I can have my London people look into it next week, see if your nephew is right about—’

‘No,’ said Avram. ‘This can’t wait. Discovering these papers today, it’s not a coincidence. It’s a sign. The day after tomorrow is the seventh of June. That’s the very day my people took Jerusalem back from the Muslims.’ His mind flickered briefly to the moment nearly fifty years before when, as a young conscript, he’d stood outside the Golden Gate and stared in amazement up at the Temple Mount, waiting for the bulldozers that for some inexplicable reason had never come. ‘The 49th anniversary. The date foretold by the Prophet Daniel. The exact date.’

‘I’m sorry. There’s too much to arrange by Tuesday. You have to see that.’

‘Not Tuesday. Monday.’

‘But you just said—’

‘The Jewish day begins and ends at dusk. We’re going to need the cover of darkness for our assault. That therefore means tomorrow night. People will start rising for the first call to prayer around three a.m. our time, which is one a.m. London time. We have to have seized the Dome by then. And I’m not giving the order to attack unless I know it’s already on its way. So you have a maximum of thirty hours to find it and get it in the air.’

‘Thirty hours? It’s not possible.’

‘It is possible. It has to be.’

‘I don’t understand,’ grumbled Croke. ‘Why do you even have to seize the place at all? Why not just bring it down with those Predators I got you?’

Avram sighed. It was like talking to a boulder sometimes. ‘You do know what this place is called?’ he asked.

Croke sounded puzzled. ‘You mean the Dome?’

‘No. I mean the Dome of the Rock. The rock that we Jews know as the Foundation Stone. The same Foundation Stone from which Adam himself was made by the Lord, praise His Name. The same Foundation Stone on which Abraham offered his son Isaac in sacrifice. The same Foundation Stone on which, for hundreds of years, the Holy of Holies housed the Ark of the Covenant. The navel of the world, the place where heaven meets earth, the holiest site in all Creation. And you want me to launch missiles at it?’

‘Ah,’ said Croke.

‘Yes,’ said Avram. ‘Ah.’

‘So what did you need those Predators for?’ asked Croke. ‘Do you know how difficult they were to get hold of?’

‘Turn on your television set tomorrow night. You’ll see for yourself.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Croke. ‘I really don’t think we’ve got enough time.’

‘But we do,’ insisted Avram. ‘The Lord, praise His Name, makes hard demands of His servants; but He never asks the impossible. There has to be a way. Find it, my friend. Find it – and we’ll both get what we want.’

THREE
I

Back upstairs in the attic, Luke worked his way methodically through the remainder of Bernard Martyn’s belongings. He didn’t expect to find anything more, and he didn’t; but you had to make certain of such things. He finished the last box and was starting to replace things as he’d found them when he heard an engine outside, tyres crunching on gravel. Car doors opened and closed. Men bantered. He checked his watch. It was barely two hours since he’d sent off the photographs, so it seemed unlikely to have anything to do with him. He dragged a trunk across floorboards, scouring up dust that caught in his eyes and throat, making him blink and cough. An old cardboard box next, lifting it from beneath to make sure its bottom didn’t—

‘Doctor Hayward?’ A woman calling up from below. ‘Doctor Hayward?’

Luke put the box down. ‘Penelope? Is that you?’

‘Could you come down, please? There are some gentlemen …’

‘On my way.’ He wiped off his hands, wended between stacked tea chests, old furniture and other broken or discarded belongings. He reached the head of the steep attic staircase to find Penelope already near the top, gripping the handrail with both hands and climbing sideways, one step at a time.

‘This is Steven,’ she said, glancing back at the forty-something man with thinning fair hair in a slick pearl-grey suit right behind her. ‘He’s from your lawyers.’

Luke nodded to him. ‘You got here quick.’

‘You know clients,’ shrugged Steven.

Footsteps below. A second man came into view. He was tall and dark with gold hoop earrings and a trimmed black beard. But the most startling thing about him was that he was carrying Luke’s laptop in his left hand, tapping away on it with his right. ‘Problem, boss,’ he said, glancing up. ‘Our friend here only went and sent those photos to someone else.’

Steven closed his eyes. He clenched both hands and took a deep breath, as though trying to control his rage. If so, he had limited success. He pushed past Penelope and marched to the top of the stairs, pressed Luke back against the far wall. ‘You did what?’ he demanded.

Luke wanted to be indignant. These men were brazenly invading his privacy, after all. But he was simply too unnerved. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said weakly.

‘He logged out of his main account,’ said Blackbeard, still down below. ‘Then he logged back in to another account under a new name and emailed the photos to someone called Rachel Parkes.’

‘Rachel Parkes?’ demanded Steven. ‘Who the fuck is she?’

‘No one,’ said Luke. ‘I’ve never even heard of anyone called …’ But then he remembered that photograph on the kitchen wall, the young woman with the enchanting smile, and he looked down at Penelope with dismay. She’d frozen on the second-top step, and was trying her best to shrink into invisibility, but her expression gave her away.

Steven saw it at once. ‘You hag,’ he yelled. ‘You stupid fucking hag!’ He went back to the top of the stairs and grabbed for her face. She cried out and leaned away from him. Her ankle turned on the step; she lost hold of the handrail and fell sideways. Luke pushed past Steven in an effort to save her, but her hand slipped through his and he had to watch in horror as she tumbled down the steps, pummelled by her own impetus. She hit the landing floor so hard that her neck audibly snapped, then she settled motionless on her back.

There was a moment of shocked stillness before Luke hurried down to kneel beside her. He felt for a pulse, for any sign of life. Nothing. Her eyes were already glazing. He felt sick, furious. He turned to Steven who was making his way calmly back down the steps. ‘You killed her,’ he said.

‘She shouldn’t have sent that fucking email, should she?’ His callousness jolted Luke, reminded him how alone he was. That was when the third man arrived, and he really put the fear of god into Luke. It wasn’t just his shaven head, or the shrunken white T-shirt that showed off his tattoos and body-builder’s physique. It was the overt meanness of his face, the kind of man who met the world with cruelty and violence, because he liked it that way. Without a word, he went to stand beside Blackbeard, pointedly cutting Luke off from the main body of the house.

‘I need to call an ambulance,’ said Luke, his voice cracking just a little.

‘I thought you said she was dead.’

‘I’m not a doctor, am I?’ He tried to push between Blackbeard and the bruiser, but they stood firm. ‘This is ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Let me through.’ But even he could hear his own fear.

‘Boss?’ asked Blackbeard.

Steven reached the foot of the steps. He didn’t answer for another moment or so, thinking the situation through. But finally he came to his decision. ‘Take him,’ he said.

II

Naples Airport wasn’t done with Vernon Croke quite yet. The control tower bumped him from his take-off slot to allow some Russian oligarch off first. He sat there seething. However much you earned, there was always someone left to kick sand in your face. It was how the game worked. And even trying to compete was dizzyingly expensive, especially when you found out how unforgiving a ratchet pride could be. Every car had to be faster than last year’s; every boat fancier, every villa plusher. One step backwards and people would whisper that you were on the slide. Last year, as a consequence, Croke had spent three million dollars more than he’d taken in. Three million dollars! And this year was tracking even worse. He needed something good to happen, that was the blunt truth of it. He needed Jerusalem to come off. But there was no point undertaking so risky a venture unless he could guarantee a major payday. And that meant talking to Grant.

Croke had no way to contact Grant directly, for the man took his security far too seriously, but he sent word out into the ether, and it wasn’t long before Grant called him. ‘What do you want?’ Grant asked.

‘Our Jerusalem project,’ said Croke. ‘We’ve had movement.’ He talked him through the day’s developments, withholding Avram’s absurd deadline and their ignorance of where in Crane Court to look until the end.

‘Hell,’ grunted Grant. ‘You had me excited.’

‘There’s still one possibility,’ said Croke. ‘We search the whole block. Every building.’

‘You’re shitting me, right?’ laughed Grant. ‘How do you expect to pull that off?’

‘By calling in a bomb threat,’ said Croke. ‘We’ll have the whole place evacuated then send in people in to check it out. Which is why I needed to speak to you.’

‘Forget it,’ said Grant tersely. ‘You know we can’t have our fingerprints anywhere near this. That’s why we hired you.’

‘I don’t need you for that. I’m going to go to our beloved Vice President.’ With the president still in recovery from the recent attempt on his life, she was in charge of the administration, so it made sense to use her while they could.

‘She’ll do it for you, will she?’

‘Not for me. For God.’

‘Ah. Thaddeus.’ Grant allowed himself a moment’s thought. ‘He’d have to talk directly to her, you realize? Her team have gotten pretty good at running interference.’

‘I thought they were all true believers too,’ said Croke.

‘They’re DC insiders. They believe whatever will win them the next vote.’ Grant paused then asked: ‘So why the call? You don’t need my approval for that.’

‘There’s no time for me to arrange covert delivery. Not by tomorrow night. So, if we find it, I’m going to have to take it in through the front door myself. And, to put it bluntly, I’m not doing that for free.’

‘Fair enough,’ agreed Grant. ‘How much?’

‘A hundred.’

Grant laughed loudly. ‘A hundred? Are you crazy?’

‘Let’s not fuck with each other,’ said Croke. ‘I may not know your real name, or who you represent, but I’m not stupid either. We have to be talking the owners and CEOs of some big fucking corporations. Fortune 100 kind of big. The kind whose slush funds can buy small countries. That’s what all this secrecy is about, because you can’t risk word leaking about what America’s business elite are up to.’

‘Get to the point.’

‘If this project succeeds, it’ll be worth tens of billions in revenue to them. Hundreds of billions. You gave me five years to make it happen. Five years is an eternity for your modern CEO. I can deliver it on Tuesday. Doing so, however, will mean risking my reputation, my freedom and my life. And you expect me to do it for free?’

‘There’s a pretty big gap between free and a hundred million dollars.’

‘A hundred’s my price. Take it or leave it.’

‘Then I’ll leave it, thanks.’

‘I’m impressed,’ said Croke. ‘I had you down as a spokesman, if I’m honest. Some kind of lobbyist. I didn’t realize you had the authority to make trillion dollar calls without even asking.’

Grant sighed. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll check. But don’t expect an answer today, not on a Sunday. My friends are fierce about family time. Tell you what: why don’t you set things rolling, and I’ll call you back as soon as I get an answer.’

‘Sure,’ laughed Croke. ‘And when will that be? On Wednesday, by any chance? Why hire me if you think I’m that stupid?’

Another sigh. ‘Fine. Give me a few minutes. I’ll see what I can do.’

III

Luke had no hope of fighting his way past Blackbeard and the bruiser. But Steven was another matter. He flung himself backwards, catching Steven by surprise, knocking him down. He scrambled over him, his feet on his chest and face as he sprinted up the steps.

Someone tap-tackled him. He went tumbling. He span as he fell, kicked out blindly, caught the bruiser in his throat, sent him crashing. He turned and scrambled up into the attic, zigzaging between broken furniture and dust-sheeted mounds that glowed like weary ghosts. He pulled over a stack behind him to hamper the pursuit and glassware and crockery shattered, littering the floor with shards. His jacket was hanging from a rusted nail, his mobile, wallet and keys in its pockets; but he didn’t have time to stop for it. He ran down a short passage to a window that led out onto the roof. He tried to lift the sash but it was painted shut, so he smashed the glass out with his elbow and dived through its empty heart, twisting in the air to avoid the daggers of dirty glass on the sloped roof, hitting with his shoulder instead, tumbling down into the leaded valley between two gables. He thrust out his foot to stop his momentum and it went straight through an old red roof tile whose two halves snapped back together like a mantrap. The bruiser reached out the window for him but Luke pulled himself free, hobbled along the gable valley to the roof edge, took half a step back. The house looked incomparably higher from up here than from down below. And there was no easy way down. Its walls were thick with ivy, and there were iron drainpipes at either corner, but he didn’t much fancy trusting his life to either of those.

He turned around. The bruiser had clambered out the window. Someone passed him a handgun from inside. No, not a handgun. A taser. Not that that was so much better. Luke scrambled up a gable, old tiles buckling and snapping beneath him, precipitating small terracotta avalanches. He crossed the ridge, descended into the neighbouring valley, then up another ridge. The far slope fell away to nothing. He’d reached the edge of the house. He had no option but to tightrope walk along the ridge towards the rear, arms out wide for balance. The old tiles were slick with moss; his left foot went from beneath him and he tumbled down the sloped roof. Desperately, he tried to stop himself but the camber was too steep. He fell over the edge, flinging out his hands to grab the ivy-tangled gutter. His momentum was too much for it. One end ripped free from its mountings, swinging him out and then back in a wild arc towards the house, so that he hit it like a wrecking ball, hard enough to make him lose his grip. He grabbed ivy as the gutter fell away behind him, shattering into shrapnel on the patio beneath.

Noises above. He looked up to see the bruiser peering cautiously over the edge. He wrested a roof tile free and hurled it down at Luke’s face, but it veered at the last moment, bounced off his back before smashing on the flagstones. The bruiser stooped for another tile. Luke looked down. He was way too high to drop uninjured to the patio, but a few feet to his right the patio gave way to a grassy bank. He tried to edge along the wall to it, but clumps of ivy kept ripping away in his hands so that he had to scrabble desperately for grip with the sides of his shoes. Another tile smashed into the wall above his head, showering him with red dust and fragments. He kept edging sideways until finally he was above the bank. He kicked away from the wall, spinning in mid-air, bending his legs to brace himself as he hit the bank then tumbled down onto the lawn.

The impact punched all the air from his lungs, left him wheezing and dazed. He staggered to his feet, wobbled over to the sanctuary of the surrounding woods, sucking in air as he went, bewildered by how suddenly his world had been flipped on its head. The front door banged and footsteps raced across gravel. He could hear the bruiser yelling directions from the roof, like the helicopter pilot in a police chase. Luke fled deeper into the trees, hurdled a fallen timber. Earth clumped on his soles and he almost fell over a tripwire of ground ivy. Crows screeched from trees as he passed, giving his position away. The woods thinned. He burst out into open wasteland, knee deep with ferns, nettles and reedy grass, flecked with bluebells, dandelions and thistles. An abandoned compound of some kind lay ahead. Military, to judge from the rusting MOD ‘Keep Out’ signs, the fence topped with triple strands of barbed wire. Rabbits had burrowed fat holes beneath it, like intrepid POWs, but none were big enough for him.

There were vast fields of root crops to his left, far too exposed for him to risk crossing, so he turned right instead, ran alongside the fence. Someone had thrown a tattered green tarpaulin over the barbed wire – kids wanting to play inside the compound, no doubt. He tried to haul himself up and over, but the mesh was too old and too loose, so that it bellied out towards him and bit into his fingers. Then he heard voices shockingly close behind and he glimpsed colour and movement in the trees. No time to climb. No time to flee. As his two pursuers burst out into the clearing behind him, Luke threw himself down amid the ferns and nettles, and prayed that he hadn’t been seen.

FOUR
I

Rachel Parkes rested the tea tray on an upraised knee as she turned the doorknob of Professor Armstrong’s office, pushed it open and then hurried through, setting the tray down gratefully on the edge of his oak desk so that she could finally scratch the tip of her nose, which had been itching dreadfully all the way up the stairs.

‘Not there,’ sighed the professor, taking off his reading glasses as he looked up from his paperwork. ‘The coffee table.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I mean, you do realize why they call it a coffee table? It’s not just a whim, you know.’

‘I had an itch,’ she told him. ‘On my nose.’

‘How fascinating,’ he said. ‘Do you have any other bodily sensations you wish to tell me about?’

‘Not currently, Professor,’ she said, transferring the tray as requested. ‘But I can keep you informed.’

He shook his head at her as he came over to the table, poured himself a cup. ‘You call this tea?’ he asked.

‘That’s what it claimed on the box.’

‘I’ll be glad when Karen gets back.’

‘Me, too.’

His eyes narrowed; his lips pinched tight. ‘How’s the budget report?’ he asked. ‘I trust you’ll have it ready for me this evening, as you promised.’

‘I never promised it this evening,’ she said. ‘I promised it first thing tomorrow.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘If there’s no difference, you won’t mind waiting.’

‘I’d like to look it over at home tonight.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t. I have my appointment.’

‘Your appointment? Today may be a Sunday, Miss Parkes, but it’s still a workday.’

‘You knew about this. I cleared it last week.’

‘Remind me.’

Behind her back, Rachel clenched a fist. He knew exactly where she was going, and why. He just wanted to make her say it for some perverse reason of his own, perhaps so that he could deliver another lecture on the folly of Afghanistan, graveyard of empires. Damned if she’d let him use her brother that way. Damned if she would. ‘It’s private,’ she said. ‘And the budget report will be on your desk first thing tomorrow, as I promised.’

‘I plan to be in very early.’

‘It will be waiting for you.’ She nodded a little too curtly, tried to soften it with an afterthought of a smile. But he wasn’t even looking at her any more. He simply waved her away with a patronising little flick of his right hand, then stirred a pinch of sugar into his tea.

II

Max Walters – the man who’d called himself Steven – burst from the trees expecting to see Luke; but there was no sign of him, just an overgrown glade bordered by fields and a derelict MOD compound. He swore beneath his breath. The fierceness of the chase had kept him from thinking about the old woman, but now his mind went back to her. He felt no remorse. She’d brought her fate on herself by sending that email. However, he did regret the shit-storm it was likely to kick off.

He tried to game it out. Luke would call the police, that was for sure, and the police would visit the house to check his story out. The smashed window, the broken roof tiles and guttering would all corroborate his account. And they hadn’t thought to wear gloves, so they’d have left their fingerprints everywhere. His own were on the police database for various youthful follies, and both Kieran and Pete had records too. This was a total fucking disaster. Then he remembered that Luke had form of his own. It was one of the reasons he’d hired him in the first place, for just such an eventuality as this. He had no idea of Walters’ real name, and his only point of contact with him was via an anonymous email address that would be easy enough to scrub. He began to glimpse a way out of this.

‘Any sign?’ he called out to Kieran, who was wading through the ferns and nettles, looking for Luke.

Kieran shook his head. ‘He has to be in here somewhere. If he’d gone for the fields, we’d have spotted him for sure.’

‘But what if he has got away? What if he’s calling the police right now?’

‘How? His mobile was in his jacket pocket back in the attic.’

‘What if he meets someone? What if he finds a house or a payphone?’

Kieran nodded gloomily. ‘We need to get out of here.’

They turned, began jogging their way back.

‘The email the old bat sent,’ asked Walters. ‘Any way to tell if this Rachel Parkes woman has seen it yet?’

‘Not unless she replies. She hadn’t when I looked.’

‘But she’s likely to, right? An email like that, a sweet old biddy asking her for help.’

‘I’d have thought so.’

‘Then let’s assume she hasn’t got it yet. So if we can delete it somehow, she’ll never even know it was sent, right?’

‘Easier said than done. We can’t do it remotely, not unless she’s been incredibly sloppy with her passwords. 123456. RachelP. Shit like that. I can run through the most-likelies, but we’d have to get extremely lucky. And her service provider will lock us out if we get it wrong too often. Then she’ll know for sure that something stinks.’

‘So give me a better idea.’

‘We send her another email from the old bat. Have her say that her account’s been hacked and that her last email was a virus, please delete it without opening. Or we could even attach a Trojan to it ourselves.’

‘And what happens if Parkes finds out that the old girl was already dead when that email was sent?’

‘There’s no way of doing this clean and fast,’ said Kieran. ‘This is lesser-of-evils’ territory we’re in.’

‘Fuck!’ Walters made to punch a tree, but that wouldn’t help. ‘What if she lives locally? What if we could get inside her house?’

‘Then it would be a piece of piss,’ nodded Kieran. ‘Everyone keeps themselves permanently logged in these days. Nine times out of ten, you just turn on the first device you find and you’re in. Even if not, I can easily hack in or rig something up. Something untraceable.’

‘You’ve got your kit with you?’

‘In the car. Never leave home without it.’

‘Good,’ said Walters. ‘Then let’s get busy. We’ve got work to do.’

FIVE
I

A wasp had taken an uncomfortable interest in Luke’s hair, buzzing around his collar and ears. And something large and ticklish was making its way up inside his trouser leg. But he lay absolutely still until his heartbeat had moderated a little, until he’d heard nothing but birdsong for at least five minutes. He got carefully to his knees, peered through the grasses and the ferns. No sign of them. He rose to a stoop then ran away from the house, chased by little flurries of panic.

Now what?

He needed to call the police, of course, but how? His mobile was back in the attic and he couldn’t see any houses, not so much as a farm building. These were the Fens, after all, about the least-densely populated part of England. He checked his pockets, found some pound coins and other loose change; hardly enough to fund a new life in South America, but better than nothing. He headed onwards, listening intently. Engines kept screeching in the far distance, motorcycles at full throttle. He’d seen signs earlier for some biker festival; presumably they were gathering for it. He reached a farm track, followed it between fields of rape and wild poppies. An automated irrigation system began to spray, painting rainbows in the sky. A farmhouse ahead, a sagging roof and lichen shadows on its cream walls. He rang its doorbell, banged and shouted. No one answered. He considered, briefly, smashing a window. But it was too late to help Penelope, and his record would make life tough enough with the police without adding a burglary charge, so he turned and hurried on.

A flight of fighter jets queued to land at a nearby air-force base, noses up like snotty guests. Mildenhall, most likely. There had to be houses that way. He reached more woods, ground crackling with dried branches and twigs, emerged onto a winding country lane. It looked faintly familiar. He’d got a little lost earlier, trying to find Penelope’s house. If this was the road he thought it was, there should be a T-junction ahead, with a road that led down to a hamlet with a pub.

There was no traffic at all. All those people moaning about overpopulation should move here. He’d been jogging five minutes before he heard a car coming up fast behind. He stepped off the lane to wave it down when, looking back through a hedgerow on a bend, he glimpsed its black bodywork and tinted windows. He threw himself down and the SUV sped on by. He tried to catch its licence plate, but it was going too fast. It slowed for the T-junction, indicated right, and vanished from sight.

There were sirens in the distance as he hurried down the hill. He ignored them. The hamlet’s pub was old, low and thatched, with a beer garden to one side and a car park on the other. He caught sight of his reflection in the front windows and was shocked by what a mess he looked. He decided to go around back in hope of a rear door and a payphone.

A handwritten sign offered a warm welcome to anyone attending BikerFest. That invitation had been gladly accepted, if the fifteen or so motorcycles parked outside the low, modern extension were anything to go by. Luke slipped inside. It proved to be a games annexe, large and gloomy except for two spotlit pool tables and a dartboard, plus a bank of fruit machines and arcade games. Middle-aged bikers with grey-streaked hair, black leather jackets and spotted bandannas drank pints of soupy ale. The payphone was next to a large varnished pine table, where two bikers were keeping an eye on a great mound of wallets and keys. One of them grinned at him as he passed, daring him to try his luck. Luke turned his back on him to dial the emergency services. A bored-sounding woman answered. ‘Name?’

‘Hayward. Luke Hayward.’

‘Address?’ she asked.

‘Martyn’s Hall,’ he said. ‘Near Mildenhall.’

‘Is this about the fire?’

‘Fire?’ he frowned. ‘No. This is …’ Then he remembered the sirens and stopped dead. Steven and his friends must have set fire to the house, destroying any and all evidence that they’d ever been there. And his own car was sitting outside the front door! Shit! If they been smart enough to disable it before they’d left, the police would inevitably conclude that he’d killed Penelope himself, then had set fire to her house intending to cover his tracks only to find himself trapped there by a car that wouldn’t start. They’d run his licence, get his name, learn of his convictions for assault and making threats against the authorities. And what would his defence be? An absurd story about a mysterious Newton collector, an anonymous lawyer and a generic email address. They’d laugh themselves sick.

‘Sir? Are you still there, sir?’

He muttered a curse, slammed down the phone. This was a nightmare. He needed to think. If the police got hold of him now, they wouldn’t bother looking for other explanations, they’d arrest him and charge him and lock him away, giving those three men all the time in the world to cover their tracks. He was screwed. He was completely screwed.

It was only then that he remembered the email Penelope Martyn had sent her niece. Not much, but something; a piece of evidence that would corroborate his account. And it had freaked those men out, that was for sure. But maybe it had freaked them out badly enough to do something about it. Cambridge was just forty minutes drive away, after all.

The phone took cards, not coins. He had just enough change to buy one from a dispenser. He called Directory Enquiries, had them put him through to Caius College. ‘Rachel Parkes, please,’ he said.

‘She’s not here,’ said a man. ‘May I take a message?’

‘I need to speak to her now. Do you have a mobile number for her?’

‘I couldn’t possibly give out that kind of information.’

‘Then can you at least get a message to her?’

Hesitancy in his voice. Anxiety that this might actually be serious. ‘I’m afraid Ms Parkes is out of Cambridge this afternoon, and she doesn’t have a mobile. I could ask her to contact you if she calls in.’

Luke hesitated. He could hardly wait here all day on the off chance. ‘I’ll try again later,’ he said. He put the phone down, stood there in thought. What he really needed was someone to look for Rachel on his behalf, someone who knew Cambridge and who trusted him enough to do it without asking awkward questions.

Pelham, then.

He called Directory Enquiries again, asked for his friend’s home number. It just rang and rang. Probably out with one of his women, though maybe he’d be at his lab, even on a Sunday afternoon. For all his protestations, the man was a workaholic. And why not? His company paid him a fortune to do the kinds of R&D he’d gladly done for free at his old college. But, for the life of him, Luke couldn’t remember what his company was called. They’d moved into purpose-built laboratories at a Cambridge science park a couple of years back. Luke had taken Maria to the opening. But what the hell were they—

The pub doors suddenly slammed open. He span around to see policemen flooding in from the main bar and the car park, truncheons in their hands.

‘Raid!’ yelled one of the bikers. ‘It’s the pigs!’

II

‘Twenty million,’ said Grant, when finally he rang back. ‘That’s the highest I can go.’

‘One hundred,’ replied Croke. ‘That’s the lowest I can go.’

‘Seriously, my friend. You don’t know the people I work with. They think you’re trying to take advantage of them. They hate people taking advantage. There’s no chance whatsoever that they’d go for forty, let alone a hundred.’

‘That’s a shame,’ said Croke. He looked out his window at the French Riviera thirty thousand feet beneath, the distinctive shapes of its marinas, the white specks of the cocaine super-yachts. It wasn’t just how much they cost in themselves; it was their berthing fees and running costs. It was the salaries for their crews.

‘So we’re agreed, then? Twenty million.’

‘I’m not risking my life for twenty mill.’

A beat of silence. Two beats. ‘Thirty, then. I can probably go as high as thirty.’

‘Ninety,’ said Croke. ‘For what your friends will be getting, ninety’s a steal.’

‘You know nothing about my friends.’

‘I know they’ll be getting a steal at ninety.’

‘Fine,’ sighed Grant. ‘Call it fifty. But success-only, understood? No crying about near misses.’

They settled on seventy. Less than Croke had hoped; more than he’d expected. Now for the next stage. He called Avram in Jerusalem. ‘I need you to speak to Thaddeus for me,’ he told him.

‘Why me?’

‘Because I don’t speak his language.’

‘You don’t speak American?’ asked Avram, puzzled.

‘I don’t speak Bible.’

Avram grunted. ‘And what do you want me to say to him?’

‘Everything you told me before. Why you’re so confident about finding it. Why this is the time. Why it has to be tomorrow night. I need him to do something he won’t want to do. I need him excited. I need him rash.’

‘Leave it to me.’

‘Good. And when he’s ready, have him give me a call.’

III

The police raid was surely meant for Luke; but the bikers didn’t realize that. And they evidently had something to hide. A moment of stillness, as though neither side could quite believe the presence of the other. Then a pool-cue blurred and a policeman’s cheek burst red. War cries of pain, anger, fear and defiance. The two bikers near Luke stood up and sent their table toppling, pint glasses, wallets and keys crashing to the floor. A wash of foamy ale swept a keychain to Luke’s feet. He crouched and picked it up without even thinking, walked briskly into the washroom. The sash window was half up and he rolled beneath it, out onto the gravelled car park. He clicked the remote on the key-fob. The lights of a black-and-chrome Harley flashed. He straddled it, kicked it off its stand and started it up. Two bikers had escaped from the washroom after him. They yelled and tried to grab him. He twisted the throttle and squirted between them.

A police car screeched across the car park exit. Luke slithered to a halt, pulled a sharp turn, roared up a grassy bank into the beer garden, weaving between tables as men grabbed their pints and women grabbed their kids. He tore through a tangle of white and red roses, bumped down a bank onto a lane, raced away up a hill. He hadn’t ridden a bike in years, not since his student days, and that bike had been nothing like this beast. Yet the skills returned quickly. He leaned into corners, trusting the bike a little more with every moment. But the spike of adrenalin soon began to ebb, allowing dismay to take its place. He was a fugitive now. The police would take it for granted he’d fled because he’d killed Penelope. Even more than before, he’d become his own only hope of proving himself innocent.

He came up fast behind a green Volvo as it slowed for a blind corner, overtook it in a blur. At a junction, he glimpsed motorcyclists approaching from his right. They accelerated when they saw him, fell in behind, caught up fast. Of all the days to nick a Harley, he’d chosen BikerFest! He took a corner too fast, began fishtailing wildly, fighting desperately to regain control. A roundabout ahead, a long line of traffic to his right, held back by an old artic labouring up the hill towards it. He muttered a prayer and gave it everything, flashing past the lorry’s bumper with nothing to spare, earning himself an indignant ‘parp’. He was going so fast that he was late on the brakes and couldn’t help but ride up the far verge, his back tyre sliding around, the casing pressing hot against his leg.

The line of traffic had balked the bikers behind him, earning him maybe thirty seconds grace. He hurtled past fields of mustard and barley, took a slip road down onto dual carriageway and swung straight out into the overtaking lane. A glance around, no sign of pursuit. He breathed a little easier. Sheer speed made him feel almost euphoric, stirring his spirits like a battle-cry. Wind buffeted his body, forcing him to hunker down and squint. He lost track of time and distance, simply putting in the miles. He overtook an accidental convoy of lorries, belatedly saw a sign for a place called Cherry Hinton. Cherry Hinton was the name of Pelham’s science park, he was sure of it. He braked and cut across traffic, missing the slip road itself but managing to bump across a narrow strip of grass onto it. Then it was up through the gears and away.

SIX
I

Rachel found Bren out in the garden, reading an old copy of Jane’s in the shade of an oak. She could tell he was angry from the stiffness in his posture and because he didn’t look up as she approached, not even when she stooped to kiss his forehead.

‘You were supposed to be here half an hour ago,’ he said, turning another page with his right hand, holding it down against the breeze with the stump of his left elbow.

‘I’m sorry.’ She showed him the fronts and backs of her hands as witnesses for the defence, though she’d cleaned the oil off as best she could. ‘More trouble with the Murcielago.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t call it that,’ said Bren. ‘I wish you wouldn’t keep making jokes about of it. It’s a heap of fucking junk. Why can’t you buy something that works?’

There was a bench nearby. She pushed him over to it then sat beside him, covered his hand with hers. ‘You know why I can’t,’ she said.

‘Then why not just get rid of the damned thing? There’s a perfectly good bus service.’

‘No, there isn’t.’ The nearest stop was two miles away, as Bren well knew, and the new timetable meant that she’d either have ten minutes with him each visit, or over three hours, neither of which was ideal. Besides, a car – even one as unreliable as hers – meant they could drive to a nearby pub or take an impromptu picnic in the woods. But she said none of this, for he was only letting off steam. Instead she reached into her bag. ‘I brought you something.’

He took it from her, pulled away the flimsy tissue paper. He enjoyed presents but he found unwrapping them hard. When he saw the jacket, he couldn’t prevent his smile, which made her smile too. It was from a charity shop, sure, but it was a book he’d mentioned as an aside during her last visit, his way of asking without asking. His smile quickly vanished, though; he looked, suddenly, ashamed. His eyes began to water, causing her far more anguish than his reproaches ever could. He bowed his head and covered his face and then his shoulders began to hump. She put her arms around him, held his cheek against her chest until he’d gathered himself once more. Then she gave him a moment or two longer to wipe his eyes. ‘I’ll get a better car soon,’ she promised. ‘As soon as the royalties start coming in.’

That made him smile. ‘What was it called again?’

‘Cynic Philosophy in Second Century Anatolia.’

‘That’s the baby,’ he said. ‘Title like that, it’ll be flying off the shelves. And don’t forget the foreign language rights. That’s where the real money is.’

‘I don’t want you getting too excited,’ she said, ‘but I had a call from L.A.’

‘I’m not surprised. It’s got Oscars written all over it. And it’s not just the box-office, you know, it’s the merchandising.’

‘That’s what they say.’

‘We’ll sell little Diogenes dolls. When you turn them upside down, they’ll shake a fist and yell “Get off my lawn!” That was Diogenes, wasn’t it?’

‘Close enough.’

They looked fondly at each other. Bren took her hand with his good one, interlaced fingers with her, shook his head. ‘I don’t know why I do it,’ he said. ‘You come all the way out here for me, and I just make you feel bad.’

‘Shh,’ she said.

‘You do so much for me, and all I ever do is make you feel bad.’

‘You’re my brother,’ she said. ‘All you ever do is make me feel good.’ She felt in danger of welling up, so she consulted her watch to clear her head, brace herself for the ordeal ahead. This place was only partly paid for by the Ministry of Defence; what remained was far too much for Rachel’s paltry income from the library and her occasional bartending. Their lives, therefore, depended upon the continuing goodwill of the care home’s management team. If they hardened their hearts today, Rachel didn’t know what they’d do. Bren would go crazy without his army friends, yet the publicly-funded homes within any kind of distance seemed almost designed to drive costly veterans like him to suicide.

‘We should head in,’ said Bren. ‘No point being late.’

Rachel took a deep breath. ‘No,’ she agreed. No point indeed.

II

There was no sign of Pelham’s Alfa in the largely deserted Cherry Hinton Science Park; but, now that Luke was here, he might as well ask. He left the Harley hidden behind a line of wheelie-bins, hurried up the front steps into reception. An elderly guard was behind the desk, doing a crossword puzzle while listening to local radio. The way he looked Luke up and down reminded him of what a mess he was. He did his best to appear confident all the same. ‘Pelham Redfern, please,’ he said.

‘And you are?’

The radio pipped the hour; the news came on. He belatedly realized he couldn’t give his real name, lest the police already had put out an alert. Yet it had to be a name Pelham would recognize; someone he’d want to see. ‘Jay Cowan,’ he said.

The guard nodded, made his call. It seemed Pelham was here after all. He gave him Jay’s name, raised an eyebrow in surprise at the warmth of the response. ‘Mr Redfern will be down in a minute,’ he said.

Luke nodded at the washroom door. ‘May I? Been a hell of a day.’

The guard smiled. ‘I’d guessed that much for myself,’ he said.

Even though he’d been expecting it, Luke was still startled by the figure that confronted him in the washroom mirror. His face was filthy, his hair spiked, his shirt spattered. There were no towels, only a blow-dry machine, so he tore off handfuls of toilet paper, squirted soap from a dispenser, and went to work. He was still at it when the door opened and Pelham walked in, wearing a faded Zanzibar T-shirt and blue jeans that slouched around his hips like a gunslinger’s belt. He was as tall, broad and shaggily handsome as ever, yet much heavier in the gut too, like a retired second-row forward making up for the diet years. ‘Luke, mate,’ he frowned. ‘They told me it was Jay.’

‘Yes. Sorry about that. Listen: do I have any credit in the bank with you?’

‘Of course you do,’ said Pelham. ‘You know that. Why? What’s going on?’

‘Can we get out of here? I’ll tell you on the way.’

Pelham nodded. ‘Give us a minute,’ he said. ‘There’s some stuff I need to shut down. Then I’m all yours.’

III

They hit turbulence over the massif central. The jet shuddered and dropped sharply enough for Croke to slop a little of his bourbon. He muttered irritably as he wiped it away. Then his phone rang. Thaddeus. ‘Is it true what Avram tells me?’ he asked breathlessly. ‘That you’ve found it?’

‘No. But we have found the papers. And we’re confident they tell us where it is.’

‘That’s wonderful news! Just wonderful.’ But then his tone became more guarded. ‘Avram said you needed to speak to me. What about?’

‘I need to know if you’re in or not.’

‘Of course I’m in.’ He sounded baffled. ‘Why would you even ask?’

‘Forgive me, Reverend,’ said Croke. ‘But my experience has been that, whenever there’s been an urgent decision to make, you’ve notified your colleagues on your Third Temple Committee. You’ve solicited their opinions. You’ve preached long and no doubt worthy sermons at each other. You’ve checked your scriptures for relevant texts and you’ve prayed for guidance. And by the time you’ve all reached a conclusion, the opportunity is across the border and into another country.’

‘I sit on a committee,’ said Thaddeus. ‘That’s how committees work.’

‘Today’s Sunday,’ said Croke. ‘As Avram no doubt explained to you, this has to happen tomorrow night or not at all. Let me say that again: tomorrow night or not at all.’

‘I know the schedule.’

‘Add in the time difference and we now have less than thirty hours to find this thing and ship it to Israel. So there’s no time to notify your colleagues. There’s no time for sermons or for prayer. It’s go for it or let it slide. Me, I’m in. I’m all in. I’m on my way to England now, because I’ll be needed there, my plane and me. But I need to know that everyone else is all in too; because if anyone holds back, we all go down.’

‘God created our universe six thousand years ago, Mr Croke,’ said Thaddeus. ‘It says so in the Bible. Four thousand years before Christ, two thousand years since. Those six thousand years are the first six days of God’s creation. And on the seventh day He rested. On the seventh day. The thousand year rule of Christ on earth is about to start, Mr Croke. The Rapture and the Last Judgement. That is a plain biblical fact. Look around you. The signs are everywhere. Wars, famines, pestilence, earthquakes, the demise of the whore of Rome. I’ve been preparing for this my whole life. So yes I’m all in, as you put it. I was born all in. What do you need?’

‘I need you to call the White House for me.’

Thaddeus laughed. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘You just said you were all in.’

‘You don’t understand how these things work,’ said Thaddeus. ‘There are rules. There are protocols. The biggest of which is that I never contact her. She contacts me.’

‘You said last year that she knew about all this. You told me she was excited and had asked to be kept informed.’

‘She was and she did.’

‘Well, then. Inform her. Let her know that we’ve found the papers, that they’re pointing us to some buildings in Central London. Tell her that you believe absolutely that we’ll find it there, because this is God’s plan and His seventh day is about to dawn, and He wouldn’t have sent us all these signs unless He meant for us to succeed. Convince her that this is the mission God has appointed for her, that this is her time, that she is the one.’

‘This is the time,’ said Thaddeus. ‘She is the one. She’s the Esther for our age.’

‘It’s not me you need to convince, Reverend. It’s her. And when you’ve convinced her, you’re going to need to fly up to Washington to be with her and keep her strong, or her advisors will talk her out of it again.’

‘I can’t. I have duties here. My congregation.’

Same as it ever was, sighed Croke. All in until he actually had to do something. ‘I remember the Book of Esther,’ he said. ‘My mother used to read it to me at bedtime. There was a Thaddeus in it, wasn’t there? That old Jew who refused to bow to the prince, the one who sparked all the trouble.’

‘His name was Mordecai.’

‘Mordecai, Thaddeus. I knew it was something like that.’ He shifted his phone to his other ear. ‘And don’t I recall that this Mordecai-Thaddeus guy had another important role in the story? Wasn’t he was the one who, when Esther got scared, convinced her that God had made her queen precisely for that moment, that she needed to do His will whatever the consequences?’

Silence as Thaddeus digested this. ‘You don’t know her very well, do you,’ he said. ‘She isn’t the kind of person you can give orders to.’

‘I’m not suggesting you give her orders. I’m suggesting that you tell her what we’re on the brink of, then see how she responds.’

‘How do you expect her to respond?’

‘I think she’ll ask what she can do to help,’ said Croke. ‘And when she does, this is what you’re going to tell her.’

SEVEN
I

The earthquake had torn fissures in many of Jerusalem’s streets, yet the resultant congestion wasn’t as bad as it might have been, for tourists had cancelled their bookings by the planeload, spooked by the threat of aftershocks, food shortages and riots, by reports of sewage on the streets and the first whispers of contagious diseases.

A bus took Avram from Jaffa Gate to King George. From there he had to walk. He hurried up Strauss into the ultra-Orthodox quarter of Mea Shearim. The streets here were strewn with torn fly-posters and other litter, and there was graffiti everywhere. The squalor dismayed him, as it always did, for it reflected so poorly on the devout, and gave unnecessary fuel to those who mocked the Haredim as all prayer and no fasting.

He paused outside a grocer’s, picked up a lemon, glanced back. Only men in view, all of them dressed in the distinctive black frock coats and broad-brimmed hats of the ultra-Orthodox. This wasn’t his favourite quarter of Jerusalem, sure, but it made it child’s play to check for a tail.

He turned right at Yesheskel. The earthquake had sheared the front off an apartment building, leaving the street narrowed by skips and scaffolding. He entered the religious bookshop to find Shlomo himself behind the counter. He looked startled to see Avram, but he covered it quickly. ‘Yes?’ Shlomo asked. ‘May I help.’

‘My great-nephew’s bar mitzvah is next week,’ said Avram. ‘I’m looking for something special.’

‘We keep our special stock in the back.’ The bookseller handed over to an assistant, a plump and soft young man, beard wispy as undergrowth after a drought. Then he led Avram back to his office, where they greeted each other more warmly. ‘This must be important,’ said Shlomo pointedly. ‘You wouldn’t have come here otherwise.’

‘It’s time,’ said Avram.

Shlomo nodded. ‘And you decided this yourself, did you? Without consulting me or my men?’

‘The Lord decided, praise His Name,’ said Avram. ‘It’s tomorrow night. We need to start preparing now.’

‘Tomorrow night? Are you crazy? Haven’t you seen the extra soldiers they’ve brought in?’

‘They’re guarding the perimeter,’ said Avram. ‘We’ll be attacking from inside the perimeter.’

‘And the Waqf? They’ve doubled their numbers too.’

‘The Waqf!’ mocked Avram. ‘Old men with sticks.’

‘And the heifer?’ asked Shlomo.

The question blindsided Avram. With everything else going on, he’d forgotten about the heifer. But he didn’t let it show. ‘What about her?’

‘You have her?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘How could we do this otherwise?’

Shlomo looked stunned. ‘You never said.’

‘No. Because last time we got anywhere close, we found her one morning with her throat slit. So this time I kept my mouth shut. Can you blame me?’

‘How old?’

‘Her third birthday was three weeks ago,’ he said. ‘The day of the earthquake. The hour of the earthquake.’

‘Then it is true,’ said Shlomo, awed. ‘It is time.’

‘What have I been telling you?’

‘And the sacrifice? When do we do it?’

‘Tonight.’

‘No,’ said Shlomo. ‘I can’t get my men together that soon.’

‘Your men?’

‘Of course. A perfect red heifer. The first for two thousand years. And you expect us not to be there?’

‘I’m afraid there isn’t time for—’

‘Then we make time. For this, we make time. First thing tomorrow morning. I can have them ready by then. Where is she?’

‘Near Megiddo,’ said Avram. ‘But I—’

‘There’s a car park by the archaeological site. We’ll meet you there. Seven o’clock tomorrow morning.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Seven o’clock.’ He got to his feet, the meeting over. ‘And then tomorrow night we’ll do this thing, just as we’ve planned. Tomorrow night, we take the Mount back for Israel and the Lord.’

II

‘What happened to the Alfa?’ asked Luke, climbing in passenger side of a red BMW convertible. ‘I thought you’d never sell that beast.’

‘And I never will,’ said Pelham, belting himself in. ‘She’s in the shop. Some bastard telephone pole leapt out in front of us, fucked her bonnet right up.’

‘There ought to be a law.’

‘There is, apparently. But I’m the one it holds liable, would you believe? One rule for us, another for telephone poles.’ He turned on the ignition, made to lower the roof.

‘You couldn’t leave that up for the moment, could you?’ asked Luke.

‘Sure,’ said Pelham. He glanced quizzically at him. ‘Why?’

‘There are some bikers out looking for me. And the police.’

‘The police?’

‘It’s nothing to make you ashamed of me. I swear it isn’t.’

‘Of course not, mate. I know you better than that.’

Luke nodded. After the day he’d had, such a simple vote of confidence moved him more than he could say. ‘If the police do stop us, just tell them I turned up out of the blue. You know nothing about anything. I’ll back you up, I promise.’

‘You quiet ones, eh,’ grinned Pelham, pulling away. ‘What was it? A bank?’

‘That’s where the money is,’ agreed Luke.

They reached the junction with the main road. ‘Where are we going?’ asked Pelham.

‘I need to find a woman.’

‘What have I been telling you?’

‘Her name’s Rachel Parkes,’ said Luke. ‘She works at Caius College. But she’s not there this afternoon. I already checked.’

Pelham slid him a glance. ‘You haven’t turned into some weird stalker-man, have you?’

‘Look who’s talking.’

‘Fair enough.’ Pelham pulled out his phone. ‘Caius, right?’

‘Yes. Why? Do you know someone there?’

Pelham grinned as he scrolled through his address book. ‘Mate, I know someone everywhere.’

III

The man had a Midwest accent, and he sounded to be in his fifties or even his sixties, though Croke had been wrong in such assessments before. ‘You don’t need to know my name,’ he said. ‘But my boss was just called by a friend of yours. A reverend friend.’

‘Ah,’ said Croke. So this was the Office of the Vice President calling. Instinctively he set down his glass and sat up a little straighter, only to smile when he caught himself at it.

‘We’ll speak only this once,’ said the man. ‘If you ever breathe a word about it, you’ll regret it.’

‘I’ll bet it turns your wife on when you talk like that,’ said Croke.

‘Don’t get smart with me. You’ve already made a bad impression coming in through the back door like this.’

‘Would I have got in through the front?’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘Maybe not to you.’

‘If we’re going to work together—’

‘We’re going to work together just fine. You know why? Because your boss just ordered you to help us, or we wouldn’t be talking. So stop wasting my time and get on with it.’

A rustling of paper. ‘I’m reading your CIA file,’ said the man. ‘Fascinating stuff.’

Croke took a sip of bourbon. ‘I do my best.’

‘Front companies in D.C., London and Hong Kong. I’ll bet they could do with an audit.’

‘They’re not front companies. They provide high-level business intelligence and security consultancy services.’

‘That’s not what it says here. It says here they’re cover for your arms deals.’

‘Is this really what you want to talk about?’

A page was turned. ‘Your father is Dr Arthur Croke, I believe. The guy who used to run our USAF lab up in Rome.’

‘He still runs it.’

‘Really?’ He sounded genuinely surprised. ‘I thought he’d had to have retired by now. I mean, god, he was getting on when I met him. And that has to be twenty years ago, at least.’

‘He’s been running it thirty-three years,’ said Croke, with genuine pride.

‘A fine man. A real American patriot. His whole life dedicated to his country.’

‘Yes.’

‘So despite some of these … startling things I’m reading in your file, we’d have no reason to doubt that you’re a patriot too; no reason to fear you’d ever do anything to harm our nation or bring shame upon your father.’

‘Quite right.’

‘Good. So the story’s going to run like this: in your work as an arms dealer – forgive me, as a security consultant – you sometimes bump up against people of dubious character. It so happens that two of those people have recently and separately warned you of an attack being planned on our great ally Britain. As a loyal American citizen, you naturally passed this intelligence on to us. It happens to tally with some chatter we’ve been picking up ourselves. We’re therefore about to warn the Brits that we fear some bad guys are planning an atrocity in and around Crane Court. The good news is that your sources are prepared to pass along new info as they get it. The bad news is that they’ll only speak to you. But you’ve agreed to be our middleman, passing that information on in real time.’

Croke snorted. ‘So if this turns to shit, you can put all the blame on me.’

‘Of course. What did you expect? Now, you’re already on your way to England, right? Which airport?’

‘Cambridge.’

‘We’re shifting you to City of London. One of our people will meet you there. His name’s Richard Morgenstern.’ He gave Croke his cell and other contact details. ‘He’s seconded to a new counterterrorism group the Brits have just set up; but he’s loyal to us. To us personally, I mean. To my boss.’

‘Does he know what we’re looking for?’

‘He knows what. We had to tell him that much. But he doesn’t know why. My boss just told him that finding it was her number one priority right now. That’s all he needed to know. He’s a true patriot.’

‘Another one. Excellent. We can sing anthems together.’

‘We’re not going to talk again, you and me. Everything is to go through Morgenstern. And if you ever breathe one word about our involvement in all this, you’re a dead man. Am I clear?’

Croke smiled. ‘As crystal,’ he said.

EIGHT
I

Before setting fire to Penelope Martyn’s house, Max Walters had flipped through her address book to find out where Rachel Parkes lived. Now he pulled up opposite her front door. There was no sign of life inside, and when he tried her telephone he was switched over to voice mail. He glanced around at Kieran, who was monitoring the old bat’s email account on his laptop. ‘Any reply yet?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Okay,’ Walters said. ‘Let’s do it.’

They waited for a cyclist to pass, crossed the road. The afternoon had grown sticky, hinting at storms. A communal front path led to a shared front door with buzzers for the top and bottom floor flats. He rang the ground-floor bell. No reply. An elderly couple walking slowly by along the pavement darted suspicious looks at them. Walters smiled cordially and wished them a good afternoon, but it did no good. They kept glancing around as they crossed the road and went inside a house opposite. Then their net curtains began to twitch. ‘Shit,’ muttered Walters.

‘Maybe there’s a back way in,’ suggested Kieran.

They walked to the end of the street, turned left. ‘What about those locks?’ asked Walters. ‘Any problem?’

‘The Yale’s a piece of piss,’ Pete assured him. ‘The Chubb’ll be a bit harder. Say a minute for the pair. Plenty of time for those old farts to see us and call the cops.’

They turned up the next street. An unbroken terrace blocked any hope of breaking into Parkes’ flat through a rear window. ‘Maybe we’d better wait until dark,’ said Kieran.

Walters snorted. ‘Today’s about the longest bloody day of the year. And what if she opens her email while we’re waiting?’ He took a deep breath. He hadn’t yet reported this mess to Croke, hoping to sort it all out first. But he couldn’t put it off any longer. He didn’t want Pete and Kieran listening in, however, so he walked off a little way before calling Croke’s number.

‘Have you got my papers?’ asked Croke.

‘Yes,’ said Walters. ‘But there’s been a hitch.’

‘A hitch?’ asked Croke.

Walters had meant to play it cool, but somehow the story came blurting out. Croke had that effect on him. ‘We’re outside the girl’s place now,’ he finished. ‘But there are curtains twitching everywhere.’

‘I don’t believe this,’ said Croke acidly. ‘I ask you to buy me some papers, and instead I get arson and a dead woman. And now you’re worried about curtains?’

‘We work for one of your companies, sir. If we’re arrested, it’ll lead the police straight back to you. I wanted to make absolutely sure you think it’s worth the risk.’

Silence. ‘Okay,’ said Croke finally. ‘Stay where you are. I’ll see what I can arrange.’

II

Pelham scrolled for a number then jammed his phone between shoulder and ear. ‘Hey, gorgeous,’ he said. ‘It’s me. Yeah. Listen, that friend of yours at Caius. Sonia, isn’t it? You couldn’t give her a call for me, could you? Brilliant. I need to get hold of a girl there. Rachel something …’ He glanced across at Luke for a prompt.

‘Rachel Parkes,’ said Luke.

‘Rachel Parkes,’ relayed Pelham. He listened a moment, laughed loudly. ‘No. Nothing like that, I promise. A favour for a mate.’ He laughed again. ‘What do you mean? I’ve got plenty of mates. I just won’t introduce you or you’ll run off with one of them.’ He nodded vigorously. ‘Yeah, anything you can get. Mobile, home phone, address, whatever. Thanks, sweetheart. Love you.’ He killed the call, turned to Luke. ‘Miriam,’ he said. ‘I think she might be the one.’

‘You always think they might be the one.’

‘Keeps the heart young, falling in love. Try it yourself sometime.’

‘Maybe next week. This week I’m focusing on staying alive.’

‘You’ll need something to write on when she calls back.’ He gestured at his glove compartment. ‘Have a rootle around in there.’

‘Jesus, mate,’ said Luke, as he precipitated a small avalanche of candy bars and boiled sweets.

‘Better give me one of those,’ said Pelham. ‘Wouldn’t want to faint from sugar deficiency; not with all these telephone poles around.’

‘Was that when the last one attacked?’ asked Luke, finding himself a stubby pencil and a notepad. ‘While you were feeding?’

‘What are you? A claims adjuster?’ He tore the wrapper off one with his teeth, stuffed the molten mess inside into his mouth. He was still chewing when his phone rang, had to give himself a couple of moments to swallow it away. ‘Hey, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Any joy?’ He listened a moment, grinned. ‘You’re a star.’ He called out phone numbers and an address for Luke to jot down. ‘Thanks, gorgeous,’ he said. ‘And we’re still on for tomorrow, yeah? Great. Then take care, now.’ He ended the call and handed Luke his phone so that he could try the various numbers. Without success. ‘Do you want to go sit outside her place?’ asked Pelham. ‘You can’t consider yourself a proper stalker until you’ve done that.’

‘How far is it?’

Pelham turned on his GPS, typed in her address. ‘Other side of town,’ he said. ‘Twenty minutes or so.’ He gave Luke a pointed look. ‘Just about long enough for you to tell me what the fuck’s going on.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Luke. He took a moment to order his thoughts. ‘Remember that business with the Uni?’

Pelham nodded soberly. ‘Of course.’

‘I tried to get myself another job, but I was way too toxic. It was clearly going to be a year or two before the whole thing died down, so I decided to make a virtue of necessity, write my book. I’d been talking about it long enough.’

‘Telling me.’

‘I had some savings, but it was still going to be pretty tight, you know; so I put the word out that if there was any work—’

‘I asked around,’ said Pelham. ‘I swear I did. But you know how things are.’

‘I wasn’t having a go. I’m just explaining the background. Because around last Christmas this guy rings out of the blue. He tells me his name is Steven, though I doubt now that it really was. He says that he’s a lawyer and that he’s got a possible job for me. One of his clients is apparently a Newton obsessive.’

‘You should get on famously, then.’

‘This client had commissioned him to track down all of Newton’s papers still missing from the Sotheby’s auction. You know about that, right?’

‘Do I?’ asked Pelham. He pulled up at a set of lights, indicated to turn left. ‘Tell you what: why don’t you give me the refresher?’

III

Richard Morgenstern sounded young, enthusiastic, and distinctly Texan. ‘Great to hear from you, sir,’ he boomed, when Croke called him. ‘ I’m on my way to City Airport now. You’re not there already, are you?’

‘No. But I need something done and I hoped you’d be able to help.’

‘If I can, I will. Anything for a man like you.’

‘A man like me?’

‘A friend of hers. She called me herself, you know? I mean, hell, I saw her a few times during the campaign, and once at the Academy. But I never spoke to her before. And she wasn’t my Commander-in-Chief then. It’s not the same, is it?’

‘No. I guess not.’

‘You know what she told me? She told me this is her number one priority right now. She said this trumps everything.’ He laughed a little giddily, as though he still couldn’t quite believe it. ‘So tell me what you need. If it’s in my power—’

‘There’s an email that could be problematic,’ said Croke. ‘I need it deleted.’

‘Civilian or government.’

‘Civilian.’

‘Hell,’ said Morgenstern. ‘It would be. Reading an email’s easy. We get copies of everything sent anywhere. But deleting one is hard. The service providers can be real assholes. They like evidence of threat or wrongdoing. They like warrants. Can we take this to the courts?’

‘No,’ said Croke.

‘Then I don’t know what to suggest.’

‘How about the police?’ asked Croke. ‘Will they do what you ask without going to a judge?’ He outlined his idea.

Morgenstern laughed. ‘That shouldn’t be a problem,’ he said. ‘I’ll get on to it now. I’ll call back if I have any trouble; otherwise you can assume it’s taken care of, and I’ll see you on the ground in thirty.’

‘Thanks,’ said Croke. ‘I’ll let my people know to expect company.’

NINE
I

It wasn’t easy, giving an abbreviated history of the Newton papers. Luke had to start way back. ‘Okay,’ he told Pelham. ‘Newton never married or had children, so he left all his papers to his niece Catherine. Her daughter married into the Portsmouth family, who offered them to Cambridge University back in the 1870s. Cambridge only wanted the scientific ones, so the rest were eventually auctioned off by Sotheby’s in 1936. Sotheby’s kept a record of who bought every lot. Most of the buyers were well-known dealers, but there were some private collectors too. The economist John Maynard Keynes bought a huge number of the alchemical lots; and a Sephardic Jew called Yahuda bought a bunch of theological papers that were later used to support the case for a Jewish homeland.’

‘You what?’ asked Pelham.

‘I know it sounds strange, but the British were occupying Palestine at the time. Newton was the great man of British science, so his belief in the restoration of a Jewish state really meant something.’

‘And Newton wanted a Jewish state, did he?’

Luke nodded. ‘A lot of them did back then,’ he said. ‘They believed it was a necessary precondition of the Second Coming. But the point is that we know where the great majority of lots ended up. Keynes left all his to King’s College Cambridge, for example. Yahuda’s eventually went to the National Library of Israel.’ He glanced at Pelham. ‘Remember when Jay went to Jerusalem that time? That was to see the Yahuda archive.’

‘But some of the Sotheby’s lots have gone missing,’ suggested Pelham. ‘And this lawyer hired you to find them.’

‘More or less. It was good money, it meshed perfectly with my research and it wasn’t particularly demanding. I mean it’s not exactly Sherlock Holmes. Mostly it’s afternoons in reference libraries and public records offices, or writing letters and waiting for replies. The lawyer kept pushing me, but honestly there was only so much I could do. People have been hunting for the damned things for years, after all. It wasn’t as if I was likely to do any better.’

‘But you did?’

‘There were these buyers we call the three Ms,’ said Luke. ‘They have no connection with each other, except that they each bought one of the missing lots, and their surnames all begin with the letter M. May, Manning and Martin. Not much to go on, but I figured I could narrow it down. For example, they most likely lived in or around London. Any further away, they’d likely have bid through a dealer. And if they’d made a special trip for the auction, then surely they’d have bought more than one lot.’

Pelham nodded. ‘Makes sense.’

‘So I went through various 1936 London and Home Counties directories for plausible candidates, then tracked descendants through obits and wills and the like.’

‘Sounds a hoot.’

‘It was, curiously. Or a distraction, at least. Anyway, I got no joy from that, so I tried alternate spellings instead. Mays, for example. Munnings. Martyn with a “y” rather than an “i”.’

‘Ah,’ said Pelham. ‘I sense we’re getting somewhere.’

‘A Bernard Martyn lived in an apartment in Bruton Place in 1936, just a short stroll from Sotheby’s. I checked into him: a particle physicist with a special interest in light.’

‘So bound to be interested in Newton?’

‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? And likely to be pretty well off, too, with an address like that. Not that these lots were expensive; not for what they were. Ten to fifteen guineas, that kind of thing. About £500 in modern money. The entire collection only raised nine grand.’

‘What would they be worth now?’

‘God knows. They don’t often come up for sale. And it depends massively on how interesting it is. Twenty or thirty grand for anything half decent. And if it’s unusual, if it hints at original thinking …’ He shook his head. ‘A hundred grand easily. Quite possibly two or even three.’

‘No wonder your client wanted them.’

‘Anyway, Bernard Martyn died back in 1969. He was childless, so his estate passed to his nephew George. George died too, a few years back, leaving the residue to his widow Penelope. I tracked her down to the family pile in the Fens, so I wrote to ask her if, by any chance, she knew where Bernard Martyn’s belongings were. They’re up in my attic, she replied, covered by dust sheets. No one’s looked at them in decades.’

‘So you got in your car and drove on down?’

‘And what should I find in one of the boxes,’ agreed Luke, ‘but four pages of Isaac Newton’s alchemical notes?’ He told Pelham everything that had happened since, finishing with his arrival at Cherry Hinton Science Park.

‘Bugger me,’ said Pelham. ‘You have had a day.’

‘So you see why I need Rachel Parkes. Her aunt’s email and those photos are all I’ve got. If those bastards delete them, I’m toast.’

II

The policeman was uncommonly tall and thin, so that he looked disconcertingly like a marionette as he climbed out of his patrol car. And he kept dabbing at his septum with his index finger, as if tickled by allergies.

‘Thanks for getting here so quickly,’ said Walters, shaking him by his hand.

‘Sod all else going on,’ said the policeman. ‘Never is, round here.’ He folded his arms and leaned back against his car. ‘So you’re counterterrorism, right?’

‘We can’t discuss that, I’m afraid.’

‘I’ve been thinking of getting a transfer myself, see if I can’t get some proper action. What’s it like with your mob?’

‘I’m sorry. We really can’t discuss it.’

He grunted and reached back inside his car for his cap. ‘So what do you need me for?’ he asked. ‘The governor only told me where to come.’

‘There’s a house we want to look inside. But we can’t have the locals complaining, so we need to show them we’re on the side of the angels.’

‘Mannequin duty, huh. Ah, well.’ He gave the house a gloomy look. ‘So this is part of the great terrorist nexus, eh? Should me and the boys be keeping an eye on it?’

Walters shook his head. ‘It’s information we’re after, not bad guys.’

‘If you say so.’

‘And not a word about this, right? Not to anyone. We’re talking national security here.’

‘So I was told.’

‘Good.’

Walters joined Kieran and Pete by Parkes’ front door. The locks put up little fight. They spread out inside, taking different rooms. The kitchen was clean but cramped, with shabby units and a noisy fridge. Walters peeled himself a satsuma as he flipped through a stack of bills.

‘Two bedrooms,’ said Kieran, appearing at the door. ‘One’s an old biddy’s; the landlady, I assume. The other is Parkes’. Her desk’s set up for a laptop, but there’s no laptop. She must have it with her.’

‘Any other devices?’

‘None that I can find.’

‘Shit. Then what do we do?’

‘They have broadband. I can put an intercept on the router. When she logs on, we’ll piggyback in with her, then hijack her ID and disrupt her connection. She’ll assume it’s a glitch with her router or her machine. By the time she’s turned everything off and on again, the email will be history. She’ll never even know it was there.’

‘How long to set up?’

‘Five minutes. Maybe ten.’

Walters nodded. ‘Then get to it,’ he said.

III

Noxious smells and unnerving clanking noises were coming from beneath the bonnet of Rachel’s Rover as she bunny-hopped along her street. She clutched the steering wheel tight and let out a heartfelt curse. Everything seemed to be going wrong today. The meeting at her brother’s care home had been a near disaster. When you had nothing with which to bargain, you made rash promises instead. Ten grand by the end of the month. How on earth was she to find that? She was already pushing her luck at both her jobs. Her room was as cheap as Cambridge could offer, she’d pared every surplus expense from her life, had nothing left to sell. She could ask Aunt Penelope for help, but her pride revolted at the thought. If Penny’s odious sons found out she’d given Bren any more money, they’d cut her off from her grandkids out of sheer spite. Rachel would never forgive herself if—

A police car was parked outside her house, a gangling officer leaning against it. And she could have sworn she saw movement in the front room, even though Betty was in Ireland for a fortnight. Her heart sank. They couldn’t have been burgled, could they? Not on top of everything else. She parked and hurried across. ‘What is it?’ she asked the policeman. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Do you live here, ma’am?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Why?’

The front door opened and three men came out; plain-clothes officers, presumably. They looked big and purposeful and more than a little mean.

‘This young lady lives here,’ the policeman told them.

The eldest of the three was blond-headed, about forty, wearing an expensive pale-grey suit. When he looked at her, he gave a little double blink that she found strangely unnerving. ‘Rachel Parkes?’ he asked, coming towards her.

‘That’s right. Why? Who are you? What’s going on? Has there been a break-in?’

‘No. Nothing like that.’ He nodded at her front door. ‘Perhaps we could talk inside.’

Something about him and his companions gave her the creeps. The last thing she wanted was to be alone with them. ‘What’s wrong with out here?’ she asked.

‘Very well.’ He touched her shoulder to turn her away from the policeman, then adopted the falsely sombre expression of one about to deliver tragic news.

Her heart plunged. Bren had done it, the thing she’d feared he’d do, too proud to be a burden. ‘My brother,’ she said.

The man shook his head. ‘Your aunt. Penelope Martyn.’

The relief was dizzying; she had to put a hand on the railing to steady herself. Then came a strange mix of grief and guilt and puzzlement. ‘That’s terrible,’ she said. ‘But why tell me? I’m not her next of kin.’

‘There was a fire,’ he said. ‘We have reason to believe it was set deliberately. Do you know a young man called Luke Hayward?’

‘Luke Hayward?’ She shook her head. ‘No. Why? Was it him?’

‘Let’s just say his name rang some rather loud bells. Let’s just say we’re very keen to talk to him. Which is where you come in.’

‘Me?’

‘You’ll appreciate I can’t tell you too much. This is an active murder investigation. But have you checked your email recently?’

The question took her by surprise. ‘No. Why?’

‘Your aunt sent you a message just before she died. It may be nothing. It may be everything. If so …’ He spread his hands to indicate how self-evidently valuable it could prove, then beckoned to one of his companions, a man with gold earrings, glossy black hair and a trimmed black beard. He stepped forwards and opened up a laptop for her, like a waiter with a humidor.

‘You want me to check? Out here?’

‘I did suggest we go inside.’

‘Do you guys have ID?’

The man shook his head. ‘We were off duty when the call came in. All hands to the pump.’

‘Leave me your details. I’ll forward you the email if I find it.’

‘This is a murder enquiry,’ he said. ‘Your aunt’s killer might be getting away right now.’

Rachel sighed and turned to the policeman. ‘And you vouch for this, do you?’

He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. ‘I don’t know the specifics, ma’am,’ he said. ‘But these gentlemen are with the security services, yes; and my orders certainly came down from on high.’

It wasn’t the most fortunate choice of words. Rachel’s brother had been sentenced to life in a wheelchair because of orders handed down from on high. Anger cleared her mind and gave her courage. She turned back to blond-hair. ‘What were you doing inside my house?’ she asked.

That double blink again. It gave him away. ‘I beg your pardon.’

‘You heard me. Why were you inside my house if it’s an email you’re after? Were you going through my things?’

‘This is a time-sensitive investigation,’ he said. ‘Your aunt’s killer is on the loose. Are you trying to help him?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then just log in, will you?’

‘Like hell I will!’

She span on her heel, squeezed between two parked cars, hurried back across the road, fishing out her car keys as she went. The man called out for her to stop but she ignored him. Something thumped into the small of her back and her whole body jolted. She fell into the road, her limbs twitching, her muscles drained and feeble, saliva leaking from her mouth to form a small pool on the sunlit black tarmac. Polished shoes arrived beside her face. The man crouched to grab her collar. He hauled her to her feet then pressed the nodes of his taser against her throat. Though still dazed, it occurred to Rachel how bizarre this all was, being assaulted so brazenly while a policeman just stood there and let them.

The waiter held out his humidor once more. She didn’t want to submit, but she was scared and alone and she found herself complying. Her hands kept breaking into spasms so that she had to type with a single finger. She entered her username, was almost through her password when an engine roared in the street behind and a horn tooted loudly and she turned in bewilderment to see a red BMW hurtling with lethal speed towards their little group.

TEN
I

Avram crossed the Jaffa Road and was instantly in a different world, the ultra-Orthodox black uniforms of Mea Shearim replaced by the garish shorts and T-shirts of Ben Yahuda. He bought a card at a kiosk, found a payphone, dialled one of the several numbers he’d taken the trouble to memorize. ‘It’s me,’ he said, when Danel picked up.

‘It’s happening, then,’ said Danel. Half statement, half question.

‘Bring everyone you can trust,’ Avram told him. ‘Netanya, tomorrow afternoon. Same place, same time.’

‘It is,’ said Danel. ‘It’s really happening.’

‘Tomorrow afternoon.’ He finished the call, walked briskly to another bank of phones. ‘I need the truck,’ he said, when Ephraim answered.

‘When?’

‘This afternoon. Tonight.’

‘I sold the last one,’ said Ephraim. ‘I’ve got a new one. It’s dark blue and a little bigger. But shabby. I was going to repaint it this week.’

‘Shabby is fine. As long as it runs.’

‘It runs beautifully. I’ll leave it for you now.’

Avram moved on again for his third call. An abrasively cheerful young American woman answered. When he asked for Francis, she told him to hold, then went away singing a spiritual. Her voice faded and the minutes passed, so that Avram began to fear he’d been cut off. But then suddenly a man came on. ‘This is Francis. Who are you?’

‘You know who.’

‘Oh.’ Silence stretched out. ‘What do you want?’

Avram lowered his voice, less from the fear of being overheard than from shame. ‘I need a cow,’ he said.

‘That’s why we’re here,’ said Francis.

‘I need her by seven o’clock tomorrow morning.’

Francis laughed. ‘That’s not possible. You know it isn’t. Not perfect. Not three years old.’

‘You told me once that you didn’t believe the nine previous heifers could all have been perfect reds. You told me once that if we couldn’t breed even one, despite our huge herds, our varieties of cattle and our modern genetic techniques, then it defied credibility that the ancients had found even one truly perfect one, let alone nine. You did tell me that, didn’t you?’

‘And I believe it.’

‘I believe it too.’ He took a deep breath before diving headlong into the heresy. ‘I think that many things claimed as absolute in the Tanakh were in fact not absolute. I think too many of my brethren use literalism to show off how devout they are. That is not how one honours the Lord, praise His Name. That is the way one defies Him.’

A beat of silence, then: ‘Tomorrow morning?’

‘Seven o’clock. As good as you’ve got. And at least three years old. We can honour that much. And her documentation will have to be convincing. My companions will want to check. Oh, and make it seem like she turned three at the precise hour of the earthquake.’

‘You’re asking too much. There isn’t time.’

‘And we’ll need the whole place to ourselves. You should be there, to answer questions. But not your volunteers. They’ll only say something stupid.’

‘You’re not listening. There isn’t time.’

‘No,’ said Avram. ‘You’re the one not listening. Call America if you need authority. Thaddeus will explain. But this has to happen. This is going to happen. Seven o’clock tomorrow morning. Be ready.’ And he put the phone down before Francis could argue further.

II

Rachel was too groggy to do anything but stand there dumbly as the BMW rushed towards her. But the men were quicker, leaping out of its way. It swerved at the last moment, pulled up with a screech beside her. The passenger door flew open and an athletic-looking, dark-headed young man grabbed her wrist, pulled her sideways onto his lap, her legs still dangling out. Blond-hair lunged for her, but the driver stamped on the accelerator and the BMW surged away, acceleration banging the door against her shins. They reached the junction with the main road and passing traffic forced the driver to hit his brakes. The door flew open again, allowing her to bring her feet fully inside so that the passenger could close the door. She looked around. The three men were chasing hard, fury in their eyes. They were almost upon them when a barely-existent gap opened in the traffic and the driver squirted out into it, forcing oncoming cars to brake sharply, leaving them honking like indignant geese.

‘Who the hell are you people?’ asked Rachel, still in the passenger’s lap. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Those men back there,’ said the passenger. ‘Was that a policeman with them?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fuck!’ he said.

The driver grimaced. ‘You reckon they got my licence?’

‘Don’t know, mate,’ said his passenger. ‘Probably. Can they trace it?’

The driver shook his head. ‘Won’t be easy. The company rented it for me.’

‘Hey!’ Rachel had to shout for attention. ‘Who are you people? What’s going on?’

The passenger grimaced, uncertain how to answer. He offered her his hand to shake, which was somewhat awkward with her still in his lap. ‘My name’s Luke Hayward,’ he said. ‘I knew your—’

‘Luke Hayward?’ she said. She pushed away from him in horror, spilling over onto the back seats. ‘You killed my aunt.’

‘No,’ he said, turning around to face her, holding his palms up to diminish any threat she might feel. ‘That’s not true. I swear it’s not true. It was those men back there. That man with the fair hair.’

‘They were police. You’re saying the police killed Aunt Penny?’

‘They weren’t police,’ he insisted. ‘They were with a policeman. It’s not the same thing.’

‘He was on duty. He said his orders came down from on high.’

‘They tasered you in the back,’ said Luke. ‘Are you really going to take the word of men who’d taser you in the back over the people who saved you from them?’

She sought for a good comeback, couldn’t find one. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ she asked weakly.

‘I don’t know,’ said Luke. ‘Not everything, anyway. But those men were at your aunt’s house earlier. They found out that she’d sent you an email she wasn’t supposed to send, and that fair-haired guy lost his rag. She was trying to get away from him when she fell down the attic stairs.’

‘You were there? You saw it happen?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why not report it?’

‘I tried.’

He launched into an extraordinary story about rooftop escapes, a phone call from a local pub, swarms of police. She listened in mounting horror. Fifteen minutes ago, she wouldn’t have believed a word of it. But now she did, she believed him completely. ‘This email my aunt sent,’ she said. ‘That man was talking about it too. He wanted me to forward it to him.’

He shook his head. ‘I doubt it. I’ll bet he just wanted to delete it.’

‘Why? What is it?’

‘This is going to sound crazy,’ he told her.

‘Crazier than everything else?’

‘Okay. It’s photographs of some old papers that your aunt wanted valued.’ He must have read bewilderment on her face, for he went on: ‘They’re valuable, don’t get me wrong. They were written by Sir Isaac Newton. Your aunt’s great-uncle bought them at Sotheby’s back in the 1930s. His name was Bernard Martyn. He was a physicist who worked for—’

‘Great-uncle Bernie,’ nodded Rachel. ‘Mum used to talk about him.’

‘I’m a Newton scholar,’ said Luke. ‘Those guys hired me to find his missing papers. I tracked your great-uncle’s lot to your aunt’s attic. I took pictures and emailed them off because my client had first refusal. Your aunt was happy with that. But she didn’t know what a good price would be.’

Rachel felt hollow. ‘So she emailed the pictures to me?’

Luke nodded. ‘I think she reckoned you could have them valued for her somehow. But then those guys showed up.’

‘Who are they? Who’s this client of yours?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you were working for them.’

‘They never told me their names. They never told me anything.’

‘And you didn’t think that odd?’ said Rachel. ‘You didn’t think that suspicious?’

‘These are the lost papers of Isaac bloody Newton we’re talking about, not nuclear fucking secrets. I just assumed it was some cranky old collector. How could I know this would happen?’

‘My Aunt Penny’s dead,’ said Rachel furiously. ‘She’s dead because you led those men to her.’

Luke blinked as though she’d slapped him. He was about to defend himself but then thought better of it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry. If I’d had the first idea …’

The driver glanced around, spoke into the silence. ‘Listen, love, I’m sorry too, and all that, but we weren’t the ones who killed your aunt or zapped you with that taser. This email is the only evidence there is of what really happened this afternoon. If they can delete it somehow, they’ll get away with this and maybe even put my mate here in the slammer for the rest of his life for something they did. Is that what you want?’

‘Why should I trust you any more than them?’

He reached into his pocket, pulled out his mobile, tossed it to her. ‘I got your address from a woman called Sonia, forget her surname, but she teaches law at Caius. She’s mates with a friend of mine called Miriam. Call Sonia. She’ll vouch for Miriam. Then call Miriam. She’ll vouch for me.’

‘And what’s your name?’

‘Redfern. Pelham Redfern.’

A bell tinkled faintly in Rachel’s memory. ‘I know that name,’ she said. ‘You’re the bastard who went out with Vicky Andrews.’

‘Ah,’ said Pelham. He scratched his throat uncomfortably. ‘Yes. Vicky. We did see each other for a—’

‘You broke her heart.’

‘Yes, well, sadly not every romance is destined to end in confetti and—’

‘She found you in bed with her sister.’

‘Oh, for god’s sake, mate,’ said Luke. ‘You bedded her sister?’

‘More accurate to say that she bedded me,’ shrugged Pelham. ‘Some serious sibling rivalry issues there, if you ask me, with muggins here caught in the middle. And somehow I’m the bad guy?’

Luke turned helplessly back to Rachel. ‘Okay, fine,’ he said. ‘Maybe you can’t trust us. Not like that. But we’re not conmen or villains or anything like that, I swear we’re not. We’re people like you. Our friends are your friends.’

Rachel hesitated. She wanted to be angry with him, she wanted to be suspicious, but there was something about him that she instinctively trusted, and it would have been dishonest to deny it. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Let’s say I believe you. What now?’

ELEVEN
I

Walters had been so intent on catching the BMW that he’d neglected to memorize its licence number. ‘The plates,’ he said, whirling around on Pete and Kieran. ‘Tell me you got their plates.’

‘I did,’ said Pete, jotting the number down before he could forget it.

‘That was him in the passenger seat,’ muttered Kieran. ‘The one from the old bat’s house.’

‘I know.’ Walters clenched a fist. He’d thought he’d been so smart setting that fire. He’d taken it for granted that the police would have nabbed Luke by now, would be scoffing at his story, preparing charges of manslaughter and arson. Instead, he now had the girl and the driver as witnesses for his defence; and even their tame policeman had become a liability, a thread that could be followed back through his boss, first to Croke and then to them. Walters looked at him. He was standing open-mouthed in the road, radio in hand, evidently wanting to call it in but not knowing what to say. Walters marched over to him, clapped him on his arm. ‘Good work,’ he said. ‘If you still want to join us, I’ll put in a word for you.’

‘Yes,’ said the policeman uncertainly. ‘Thanks.’

‘And keep all this to yourself, right? National security. Above even your boss’s clearance. Can’t say any more. Not until you join us.’ He flashed him a smile, strode to the SUV. They all piled in and pulled away, leaving the policeman still standing there dumbly, doing his best mannequin yet.

‘What now, boss?’ asked Pete.

‘We find that BMW and get rid of that fucking email.’ He turned to Kieran. ‘How much of her password did you get?’

‘First six characters. Should be enough to break the rest.’ He set a programme running, turned to Pete. ‘Give us their licence number, then.’ He tapped it in, ran a search. ‘It’s a rental,’ he announced, thirty seconds later. ‘Company called Jonson’s Cars.’

‘Where are they?’ asked Walters.

‘Head office is St Albans,’ said Kieran, checking his screen. ‘But they’ve got a dealership here in Cambridge.’

‘Open Sundays?’

‘For another hour.’

‘Then give me their address. Let’s pay them a visit.’

II

‘What now?’ asked Pelham rhetorically. ‘What do you mean, what now? You check for your aunt’s damned email.’

Rachel nodded. She logged in on his phone and there it was.

‘My dearest Rachel,

The most extraordinary thing – some Isaac Newton papers have just been unearthed in my attic! It seems your Great-great uncle Bernard bought them at Sotheby’s for next to nothing, and now they’re worth a small fortune! And we always thought him the unworldly one! Anyway, I thought of you and your brother at once. Bernie doted on your mother, though she wasn’t much more than a girl when he died. I’m sure he’d have wanted to help.

Now this is all supposed to be terribly hush-hush, but apparently some terrifically wealthy collector is about make me an offer. Naturally I haven’t the first idea what the papers might be worth, and the nice young man who found them will only say they should fetch £20,000 or more. That would be wonderful, of course, and I

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