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
‘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
‘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
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 behalf?’ 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.
II
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
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.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I
‘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.’
