Julius: “If it is, don’t you think Lachy and I should have code names, you know, like Maverick or Goose?”
“I’d like to be called Blade,” Lachlan said.
“And I’d like Bullfighter,” Julius said.
“Blade? Bullfighter?”
Julius said, “Pretty rugged and heroic, huh? We’ve been thinking about this while we’ve been waiting for you.”
“Clearly,” Zoe said. “How about Tweedledum and Tweedledee? Romulus and Remus?”
“Aw, no! Not twin code names,” Lachlan said. “Anything but twin names.”
“Sorry, boys, but there’s only one rule when it comes to call signs.”
“And that is?”
“You never get to pick your own.” Zoe smiled. “And sometimes your nickname can change. Look at me, I used to be known as Bloody Mary, until I met this little one.” A nod at Lily. “And now everyone calls me Princess. Be patient, you’ll get call signs when the occasion calls for it. Because, yes, this mission is about as secret as it gets.”
Now, speeding west along the A303, they were heading for a place that of all people Alby had led them to.
The military air base outside Dubai. Two days previously. Just after Earl McShane’s cargo plane had smashed into the Burj al Arab.
Jack West had stood on the tarmac, crouched low over Alby and Lily, while armed men and CIA agents calling themselves attaches spoke into cell phones, a black pillar of smoke rising into the sky above the Burj al Arab in the distance.
“Talk to me, Alby,” Jack had said.
During the meeting, Alby had deciphered one of Wizard’s more obscure notes: the reference to the “Titanic Sinking and Rising.” But he had hinted to Jack that there was more to it.
Alby said, “I also know what one of the symbols on Wizard’s summary sheet means.”
Jack had pulled out the summary sheet.
“The symbol at the bottom right,” Alby said. “Next to the ‘Titanic Sinking’ reference.”
“Yes…” West had said.
“It’s not a symbol. It’s a diagram.”
“Of what?”
Alby had looked up at West seriously. “It’s a diagram of the layout of Stonehenge.”
STONEHENGE
THE HONDA crested a rise, and without warning the cluster of great stones came into view.
Zoe inhaled sharply.
Of course she had been here before, several times. Everyone in the UK had. But the scale of the site, the sheerbravura of it, always took her by surprise.
Stonehenge.
Quite simply, Stonehenge was stunning.
A source of fascination to her for a long time, Zoe knew all the myths: that this ring of towering stones was an ancient calendar; or an ancient observatory; that the bluestones—the smaller six-foot-high dolerite stones that formed a horseshoe-shaped arc within the far more famous trilithons—had been brought to the Salisbury Plain around the year 2700B.C. by some unknown tribe from the Preseli Hillsover 150 miles away in distant Wales. To this day, many believe that the bluestones, even on bitterly cold winter days, remain warm to the touch.
It would be another 150 years, around 2,570B.C., before the spectacular trilithons were raised around this minihenge of bluestones. But the date is important: in 2,570B.C. the Egyptian pharaoh Khufu was completing his famous work on the Giza plateau in Egypt, the Great Pyramid.
Over the years, Zoe knew, cosmologists and astrologers had tried to link Stonehenge with the Great Pyramid, but without success. The only confirmed link was the closely matching dates of their construction.
Other peculiarities of Stonehenge intrigued her.
Like the rare green cyanobacterium that grew on the great trilithons themselves. A variety of lichen, it was a true oddity, an uncommon hybrid of algae and fungus that grew only on exposed coastlines—yet Stonehenge was fifty miles from the nearest sea, the Bristol Channel. The mosslike substance gave the stones a mottled, uneven aspect.
And then, of course, there were the unexplained theories about the site’s location: the unique way the Sun and Moon rise over the fifty-first parallel; and the unusually high number of neolithic sites running the length of the British Isles on the same degree of longitude as Stonehenge.
In the final analysis, only one thing about Stonehenge could be said with any degree of certainty: for over 4,500 years it had withstood the ravages of wind, rain, and time itself, offering a multitude of questions and very few answers.
“OK,” Zoe said as she drove. “How are we going to tackle this? Thoughts anyone?”
“Thoughts?” Lachlan said. “How about this: that there’s no precedent for what we’re about to do. Over the years, scholars and wackos have linked Stonehenge with the Sun and the Moon, with virgins and druids, with
