Newton’s Fire (25 page)

‘Maybe we should each have a go,’ suggested Luke.

‘Yes. Or maybe you could allow me some silence in which to work.’

‘Fine,’ said Luke. ‘We’ll leave you to it.’

The farm was a few kilometres north-west of Megiddo Junction, an old kibbutz that had died twelve years before from internal rifts and a lack of new blood. Thaddeus and his friends had bought it cheap, sold off the surplus arable land and then switched its remaining cattle facilities from dairy to beef. They’d refurbished the dormitories for their American volunteers and had added state-of-the-art farming facilities, including a laboratory for testing, treating and preserving semen samples. Then they’d set about breeding themselves a red heifer.

The yard was dark and deserted when Avram parked outside the main house. But a light came on inside even as Shlomo pulled up alongside him, and then Francis came out, dressed with unusual modesty in tattered farmhand clothes, deliberately downplaying his status here. Avram nodded at him. He beckoned for them to follow him to a cavernous barn, pungent with animal smells. Huge strip lights flashed and shuddered like a silent storm before finally coming on. Certificates, photograph albums and other documentation for the heifer lay on a pair of worktables inside the door. Another pair of tables against the end wall were arrayed with bowls, knives, vestments and everything else they’d need for the sacrifice itself. Water splashed into a ritual bath opposite the door, while the wall behind it was covered intriguingly by a vast white sheet. And, to their left, a wooden altar had been built beneath an expanse of open roof.

Yet, for all these marvels, Shlomo and his men had eyes for just one thing.

And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying: This is the statute of the law which the Lord hath commanded: Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer, faultless, wherein there is no blemish, and upon which there never came yoke.

A red heifer, faultless, wherein there is no blemish. And there she was, caged in a steel pen in the corner of the barn, trembling a little, shying away from the sudden light and the crowd of staring men.

Purity was impossible in this world. Try as one might, one simply couldn’t avoid death and dirt and disease. Yet no observant Jew had been allowed to enter the grounds of the Temple while tainted. And certainly none would ever even contemplate intruding impure upon the Holy of Holies. That would have been a terrible sacrilege. On the other hand, Jews had still needed to visit the Temple. Before each visit, therefore, they’d cleansed themselves with ritual bathing and the anointment of ashes from a perfect red heifer.

Nine times in history such a heifer had been identified, sacrificed and burned. But then the Romans had destroyed the Temple and there’d been no more ashes. With the exact location of the Holy of Holies lost to human knowledge, few observant Jews would now dare walk upon the Temple Mount, let alone enter the Dome of the Rock, lest by accident they trespass on that most sacred space. Only by anointing themselves with the ashes of a new red heifer, therefore, could Shlomo and his men so much as venture onto the Mount. Only with a new heifer could they and their brethren bring down the Dome and build the Third Temple.

They edged tentatively towards her, almost as frightened as she was. They clustered around the small pen, leaned over the steel bars, yet not getting too close, as though scared that something cataclysmic might happen. But then one of them touched her by accident and instantly the spell was broken. Their hands were all over her, and they were babbling and laughing as they sought in vain the one white hair that might disqualify her, the one whisker.

Avram glanced at Francis. He looked serenely confident. Whatever dyes, tweezers or other tricks he’d used, they’d surely fool a dozen city boys like this. Reassured, he went to join them and share their joy as the truth dawned exultantly on them.

The heifer was real. The moment was real.

The time of the Third Temple had come.

Rachel opened the curtains a little way to allow some morning in. A cyclist wobbled by outside, and a yawning man trudged gloomily towards the river. Everything seemed so normal. She nodded at Jay’s phone. ‘You think he’d mind if we called Pelham’s sister? See how she’s getting on, if she needs any help?’

Luke shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t put it past them to be monitoring her phone. If they are, they’ll be able to trace incoming calls. They’ll be here in no time.’

She closed her eyes a moment. ‘I keep forgetting.’

Reproductions of portraits of famous people were hanging either side of the kitchen door. Rachel hadn’t noticed them in the earlier gloom, but now one caught her eye – the Kneller portrait Luke had mentioned earlier as the model for the Newton sculpture. She pointed it out to him. He grinned and murmured: ‘Jay would give his right arm to see what we’ve seen.’

Rachel nodded. Jay liked his scientists, that was for sure. And neatness, too. Each picture had its counterpart on the other side of the door: Einstein matched with Newton; Faraday with Curie; Linnaeus with Darwin; Edison with Tesla. She went to his bookshelves. They were arranged primarily by subject matter but then by size, with the largest to the left. Five whole shelves were devoted to writings by or about Newton. He also had extensive collections on alchemy, chemistry and other sciences. Luke smiled mischievously and pulled down a history of electricity, flipped to its index.

‘What are you looking for?’ she asked.

‘These Babylonian batteries of yours. I think you made them up.’ He showed the index to her. ‘See. Nothing here.’

‘That’s because they’re
Baghdad
batteries,’ she said, pointing out the entry to him.

‘Damn it,’ he said. He turned to the page and began to read. Then a puzzled look furrowed his brow.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

He closed the book. ‘These batteries. How would you describe what they did? At their simplest level, I mean.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m not with you.’

‘They used acid to turn base metals into gold, right? Doesn’t that remind you of something?’

Now she saw it. ‘Alchemy?’ she frowned.

‘Alchemy was essentially based on texts written in and around Alexandria during the early centuries AD,’ said Luke. ‘But that doesn’t mean the idea originated there. Baghdad was one of Alexandria’s major trading partners. Is it really so far-fetched to imagine merchants gossiping about these miraculous vessels they’d seen that used acid to turn other metals into gold? And is it such a great leap to believe that Alexandrians would have coveted this know-how and sought to replicate it for themselves?’

‘They’d have done anything for it.’

‘They’d have failed, of course. But the effort was the thing. The belief that it was possible, if you just got the mix of ingredients exactly right, or if you used a particular mineral as a catalyst, or maybe if you were pure enough of heart or you waited until Saturn was in conjunction with Venus. And so they wrote down their ideas and aspirations and experiments, and
that’s
the stuff that your Harranian friends preserved as their sacred texts, and which eventually reached Europe.’

‘Alchemy based upon a misunderstanding of primitive electroplating?’ Rachel gave a joyful laugh. ‘What a wonderful idea.’

‘It would mean awarding Newton the coconut for his theory about electricity as the philosopher’s stone. And if it was part of what he was working on during 1693, it could even explain his breakdown too. Hallucinations, confusion and long-term cognitive damage are
exactly
the symptoms you’d expect from exposing yourself to a series of electrical shocks.’

Rachel nodded. ‘So he stopped his experiments and his hallucinations stopped too.’

‘He stopped doing them himself, at least. As President of the Royal Society, he appointed his own Curator of Experiments and had him concentrate almost exclusively on electricity.’

‘Looking for the philosopher’s stone by proxy?’

‘Isn’t that what you’d have done? Hire some poor wannabe to take the shocks and the visions on your behal
f
?’ He glanced at the door. ‘Maybe we’re getting carried away. Let’s run it by Jay, see what he thinks.’

They went through to the kitchen. Jay was so absorbed in his decipherment that he didn’t even notice them. He simply carried on scribbling on his pad, trying out words then crossing them out. He gave a cry of excitement as he tore off a sheet of paper and started afresh. Luke and Rachel watched as he wrote rapidly and confidently, then clenched a fist in triumph.

‘Success?’ asked Luke.

Jay whirled around. He shook his head and made to turn over the pad, but Luke put his hand on Jay’s to stop him, allowing him and Rachel could see what he’d written.

As above it shines

So below it shines

Ye monument

Of Sir

Christopher Wren

Croke returned to the basement gallery in good time to witness the drill breaching the chamber beneath. It took another fifteen minutes, however, to remove the various bits and then feed down the endoscope.

Morgenstern came to stand beside him. ‘I spoke to our friend in Washington earlier. Our Vice President wants to watch live when we find it. But if he wakes her and there’s nothing there, he’ll have my ass for breakfast. So the way I figure it, we take a quick peek ourselves. If it’s there, we pull the endoscope back up, give her a call and pretend like we’ve just broken through. Otherwise, we let her sleep. Agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

They clustered around a laptop to watch the feed as the camera burrowed its way down, its integrated lighting flaring in the narrow borehole. Suddenly it emerged into the chamber and went dim. The operator adjusted his controls and the screen brightened once again. A block of stone came into view below, ghostly figures on every side. Yet it was hard to see anything clearly, making it both miraculous and frustrating at the same time.

The endoscope snaked lower and lower. Then Croke saw something that made him freeze. ‘The floor,’ he said tightly. ‘Zoom in on the floor.’

The operator nodded; the camera focused. They all leaned closer to the screen. Yes. It was as he’d thought. There
were
footprints in the dust.
Trainer
footprints. He closed his eyes in disbelief. So that’s where Luke and the girl had been hiding. Even more frustratingly, they must have sneaked away while they’d been drilling, or the coach driver wouldn’t have been able to pick them up and drive them to London.

He turned abruptly, strode out of the gallery to the well. He noted in stony silence the dangling rope and the black gash in the shaft wall two-thirds of the way down. Anger washed over him in a great wave, but he didn’t have time to indulge it. Whatever secrets were down there, Luke and Rachel already knew them. And they had a five-hour head start too.

He had some serious catching up to do.

‘The Monument of Sir Christopher Wren,’ murmured Rachel. ‘That’s the London Monument, right? I mean, Wren did build it, yes?’

‘Yes,’ said Luke. ‘Him and Hooke.’

‘You don’t look convinced.’

‘Hooke and Newton loathed each other,’ said Luke. ‘I can’t imagine them willingly collaborating on a project.’

‘What else could it be?’ asked Jay.

Luke nodded and went through to the front room, looked out the window; but of course there was no view of it from there, hidden by the houses opposite and all the other buildings put up in the three hundred and fifty years since the Great Fire. ‘As above it shines, so below it shines,’ he said. ‘What do you think it means?’

‘If you’d give me some more context,’ said Jay, ‘maybe I could tell you.’

Luke glanced at his laptop, wondering whether the time had come. Then he recalled the grief he’d brought down on Pelham. The last thing he wanted on his conscience was more collateral damage among his friends. ‘We think Newton may have hidden something valuable,’ he said. ‘We think this may tell us where.’

‘The Monument has a flaming golden urn on its top,’ nodded Jay. ‘To symbolize the Great Fire. That must be the “As above, it shines”.’

‘And the “as below”?’

‘There’s a vault,’ said Jay. ‘Wren built it to conduct astronomical experiments. Or so he claimed. But he never used it much. All the traffic threw off his instruments.’

‘Then that must be it,’ said Rachel. ‘Is it still there?’

Jay nodded. ‘I tried to visit it once. They wouldn’t let me in. The only access is through a trapdoor in the floor at the foot of the main staircase, so they have to keep it closed during the day. But they said I’d be welcome to see it if I ever got there before they opened.’

‘And when’s that?’ asked Rachel.

Jay brought up the Monument’s home page on one of his screens. ‘Eight thirty,’ he said. ‘You can make it if you leave right now. You can catch a train from Queenstown Road.’

‘Aren’t you coming?’ asked Rachel.

He shook his head vigorously. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘Not during rush hour. Too many people.’

‘We can take a taxi,’ said Luke.

‘We’ll never get one here in time. They’re always booked up at this time of day. The train’s your only hope, believe me. And you have to leave right now. Come back afterwards. Tell me about it.’

Rachel nodded. ‘We’ll take pictures.’

‘Good. Great.’

‘What if we have any questions?’ asked Luke. ‘You know Wren and Hooke far better than I do.’

‘Call me.’ He wrote down his numbers, gave them to Luke.