Newton’s Fire (2 page)

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.

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.’

‘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.’