Daniel stayed at the kitchen table, covering sheets with calculations. Suddenly he looked up, dazed and rushed to his laptop. He typed ‘1755 flood’ into Google. As he read through the results, his face drained of colour. Jack and Mina looked at him, as he frantically scribbled more calculations. After a while, he turned to Mina and Jack, horror-struck, and motioned for them to approach the screen.
‘Jack was right. It is a date. I thought to myself, we have a date, 1755, the year the letter was sent to Safed from Hildersham. It’s a weird letter. There’s no other correspondence between the two places. What if Alejandro Cardozo and his family fled Portugal for some imperative reason and needed to write to say the tablet was safe? What if something dramatic happened in 1755? Well something did happen that year: the Lisbon earthquake. It’s one of the worst earthquakes ever recorded in history and it was followed by a horrifying tidal wave on November 1st, 1755, at about 10.25 am. It killed over sixty thousand people.’
Mina did not respond. Her smile had vanished. She was thinking back to the letter Yeshua had written to his brother. It was dated December 1755. So Yeshua had left Lisbon with his family after the earthquake. Had he known how to use the tablet, surely he’d have left the city weeks beforehand. So why had he taken the tablet with him? She could only conclude that it was his duty to preserve the family’s treasure out of respect for his ancestors. And, as it said in his letter, he’d keep on taking care of the tablet until the day it could be returned to the Jerusalem temple and used appropriately. ‘Simply stupefying,’ thought Mina.
‘When and where will the next natural disaster hit?’ asked Jack, whose brain, as ever, was trying to ignore the horrifying details and move to practical considerations.
‘Oh I think I know,’ said Daniel.
‘So, tell us!’ said Jack and Mina in unison.
‘I calculated backwards from 1755 to find out what the date would have been in Babylonian terms… I used an online calculator. It seems that some astronomers spend a lot of time writing such software. To cut a long story short, the next gigantic natural disaster, whatever form it takes — earthquake, flood, eruption or other — will happen on 26th December, 2014. But we have no idea where it will hit. I wish we still possessed the stone tablet I found in Mosul. Maybe the clue was there? What are we supposed to do? I mean, we can’t exactly make a list of all the great rivers, volcanoes, seismic faults in the world and warn everyone living nearby, can we?’
Daniel came running into the room where Jack was re-checking his calculations.
‘Jack! Mina has found out where it will hit.’
They both went to the kitchen.
‘Boys,’ said Mina, ‘I’m pretty sure it will hit in the middle of the Indian Ocean. I’ve calculated the planetary and star alignment described in the text, and it corresponds roughly to the sky map on the 26th above the middle of the Indian Ocean.’
Jack looked at her calculations dubiously, but Daniel seemed uplifted. ‘Jack, let’s assume Mina is right. How bad do you think this could be? I mean, really, an earthquake in an ocean isn’t going to do much is it?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe you’re wrong about the location.’
‘Maybe. In any case, we have ten years to prepare, to do more research, and warn the appropriate authorities.’ Mina smiled and felt more hopeful than she had in weeks.
Mina, Jack and the Bamarts were relaxing in the living room. They could at last enjoy a peaceful afternoon together, without fear. Jack kept stealing glances at Mina. He still could not believe they had survived their ordeal and were having tea and scones in this delightful cottage. They had a decade to prepare for the worst.
‘Mina?’ asked Jack, idly stroking her hand.
‘Yes?’
‘Would you like to spend the Christmas holiday with me?’
‘I’d love that. With everything we’ve been through, I’d completely forgotten about Christmas. I’ll need to call my parents first, they expected me to be back home over the holidays.’
‘I don’t know how you managed that in England!’ said Daniel.
‘Managed what?’
‘Well, not noticing it was Christmas! People go nuts over Christmas in this country. You must have noticed the decorations, the Father Christmases and decorated crackers all over Cambridge?’
‘Nope. I’ve been immersed in the ancient tablet world the entire time,’ she replied. ‘Where are we going?’ She asked Jack, ‘West Virginia?’
‘No. I was thinking of somewhere more exotic,’ he broke off, smiling.
‘Won’t your family be disappointed not to see you?’
‘Not at all. They’re expecting me.’
‘But where?’ asked a tantalised Mina.
‘In Thailand. My mother and sister are already out there, on their first vacation outside the US.’
‘I’ll call my parents right away,’ answered Mina, she jumped up and turned to Daniel, ‘May I use the landline, Daniel?’
‘Of course,’ he replied, almost managing to conceal his jealousy.
She walked into the small study where Joshua kept his phone. It suddenly struck her that she hadn’t spoken to her parents since she had arrived in Iraq earlier in the month. She felt awful. ‘They must be terribly worried,’ she thought. That said, they had no reason to suspect anything was wrong. She couldn’t possibly tell them what she had gone through. Could she even let them know she was in Britain? She’d try not to lie, but she wouldn’t volunteer any information they didn’t ask her for directly.
‘Hi Mum!’ she said when the line finally connected.
‘Mina! Are you alright?’ asked her mother.
‘I’m fine, Mum.’
She heard her mother excitedly call her father to the phone.
‘Hi darling,’ said her father.
‘Hi Dad.’
‘Professor Almeini called us two weeks ago,’ he said, ‘he was worried about you. He thought you’d left the country? Things look terrible in Mosul, at least from what we can gather from the news.’
‘The media always exaggerate everything. You know that, Dad. I’m safe. I’ve met a very nice man. That’s why I’ve been out of reach for a few weeks. His name is Major Jack Hillcliff.’
Mina’s mother grabbed the phone.
‘A Major?’ she asked, excitedly.
‘Yes Mum. He’s a Major in the US army and he’s invited me to join his family for Christmas. Do you mind?’
‘Mina?’ her dad was back on the phone.
‘Yes?’
‘Is this Major next to you? I want to talk to him.’
‘I’ll get him. He’s in the next room.’
Mina took a deep breath and rushed into the living room. She quickly explained to Jack what had been said, and more importantly, what had been omitted from the conversation. They walked back to the study together.
‘Dr Osman?’ said Jack.
‘That’s me,’ said Mina’s father.
‘Hi. I’m Jack Hillcliff.’
‘I hear you’ve invited my daughter for the coming holidays.’
‘Yes I have. I hope that is alright with you?’
‘Well, young man, I need to know a little more about you, before agreeing to this out of the blue!’
‘Well Sir, I’m thirty-five years old. I’m a retired Major from the US army, and I’m a trained water engineer. I’m currently working under contract with a few NGOs to bring proper water supplies to villages in the Mosuli countryside.’
‘Good, good,’ said Mina’s father.
