Newton’s Fire

‘You’ve always said that you couldn’t tell us until the day itself, because it would put too many other people in jeopardy if any of us were captured and interrogated. Fair enough. We accepted that. But today is the day itself and now we want to know.’

‘It’s still too early.’ He held up his hands to quell their protests. ‘You all knew there’d be risks. We’re about to take one of the biggest right now: driving two vehicles filled with munitions and other supplies into the heart of Jerusalem, then hoisting them onto our backs and carrying them in plain sight into the Old City. Anything could go wrong. Anything. And if it does, the more of us who know the whole plan, the more dangerous it will be for our other partners.’ He turned to Danel. ‘You didn’t believe that I’d get you your first tranche of money. I did. You didn’t believe that I’d come through with the missiles, the explosives, the guns and all our other supplies. I did. Everything I’ve promised, I’ve delivered. So please trust me just a little longer. Wait until we’re safely inside the Old City and-’

‘Once we’re inside the Old City it will be too late for us to back out.’

Their faces were implacable. Avram knew he had to give them something. ‘Very well,’ he sighed. ‘What exactly do you want to know?’

‘I just told you: we’re going to be in a building that’s set to blow, completely surrounded by the police and the army, with an Arab mob baying for our blood. You promised us a foolproof plan for getting away, free and clear. We want to know what it is.’

‘Ah,’ said Avram. He smiled around at them all. ‘Then I’m afraid I may have misled you a little. We’re not going to be getting away free and clear. We’re going to be giving ourselves up.’

II

The woman at the minicab company had promised to have a driver at Jay’s house within ten minutes. It had actually taken twenty-four minutes and thirty-seven seconds from the moment he’d put down the phone. Jay had therefore sat wordlessly in the back as they’d headed north, his arms folded, glaring daggers at the driver’s nape. Roadworks around Elephant amp; Castle squeezed traffic into a single lane, bringing them to a virtual standstill. And now, to cap it all, Blackfriars Bridge had frozen up altogether.

Anxiety was a mangle inside his chest. He didn’t trust Croke, that was the truth of it. Which meant that Luke and Rachel weren’t safe. He couldn’t just sit passively in the back of the cab any longer. ‘I’m walking,’ he told the driver, handing him the exact sum on the meter, for he knew it was important not to give tips for shoddy service.

‘Fuck you too, mate,’ said the driver.

Jay half walked, half ran across the remainder of the bridge then up Ludgate Hill to St Paul’s, the obvious cause of the gridlock. The police had surrounded it and an evacuation was in progress, hundreds of tourists milling around on the plaza while fire alarms shrilled away inside. He looked for but couldn’t see either Luke or Rachel. Maybe they’d got away. Or maybe they were still in there. He nodded good morning to the police officers by the main entrance as he tried to walk between them. They laughed and told him to scram. He went around the corner. A teacher, in tears, was counting pupil heads. Apart from her, everyone seemed remarkably calm, almost jovial. But then he heard a cry by the Paternoster Square exit. A ring of spectators quickly formed around an elderly woman who’d collapsed on the flagstones. Police officers from the crypt cafe entrance came to help, leaving the door unguarded. Jay glanced around then ducked his head and slipped inside.

‘Oi!’ shouted one of the policemen. ‘Come back!’

‘I’ll only be a moment,’ Jay assured him. He hurried down the steps and through the cafe. He heard noise behind him and looked to see three policemen chasing hard. They looked so red-faced and mean that some primal instinct kicked in and Jay simply fled. He stumbled up some steps and spilled out onto the cathedral floor. He reached the aisle and ran along it towards the main doors.

He was halfway down when the alarm finally switched off. It had been ringing so loudly that Jay could hear it still in his ears. Then he realized it wasn’t ringing. It was screaming. He looked up and saw Luke clinging to the balcony rail high above, fighting to hold on to Rachel as she dangled helplessly beneath him, while a black-bearded man on the gallery watched them as if it was entertainment.

Behind Jay, the policemen slowed too. Slowed and looked upwards. And still Rachel screamed out for help. And still it didn’t come.

III

They said your life would flash before your eyes at the moment of maximum danger. But as Rachel looked up at Luke, straining with everything he had to hold on to her as she flailed above the cathedral floor, all she experienced was a terror so complete that it left no room for anything else. All she experienced was the certainty of her own imminent death and the knowledge that she was powerless to prevent it.

Then the alarm stopped and she heard shouting and she looked down to see Jay and the police arriving like a miracle on the cathedral floor beneath her; and their presence gave Blackbeard no choice but to reach down between the stanchions, take her free hand, and help Luke hoist her back up and over the balcony rail to safety.

She fell onto her knees on the cold stone, arms across her stomach, retching and retching as her gut tried to expel its surfeit of chemical fear; but nothing came out. Luke knelt beside her, hugged her tight against him. ‘It’ll be okay,’ he kept saying. ‘I promise.’ But his words did little to reassure her. Her father, after all, had said something similar when he’d first broken the terrible news of his diagnosis, and that hadn’t turned out okay. His slide had been astonishing in its speed and remorselessness. And then, in the weeks after his death, her mother had simply fallen apart from grief and loss and fear and guilt at having spent the family’s small wealth on futile quack remedies. And so, two months to the day after her husband’s funeral, she’d parked her battered old Renault by a level crossing, fortified herself with a bottle of gin, then had walked out onto the tracks. And, just seven months after that, Bren’s body had been shredded by an IED.

Never show weakness; never show vulnerability. An irony of human nature, that the more you needed help the harder it was to ask for. In the wreckage of her family, Rachel had built a shell around herself in which she’d learned to rely on nobody but herself. But that shell had been shattered into a million tiny pieces as she’d hung there looking up at Luke, utterly dependent upon him, the strain of holding her written so clearly in his grimace and the blood rushing to his face and the tendons like stretched steel in his shoulders and throat. And now all the unexpressed grief and loneliness and despair of recent years sobbed itself out onto his shirt, while he held her tight and whispered words of comfort.

Blackbeard proved to be neither a sentimental nor sympathetic man, however. He took her wrist and twisted it fiercely enough to tear her away from Luke. ‘This way,’ he said. He dragged her along the Triforium corridor into the room with the model cathedral and handcuffed her to a cast-iron radiator beneath a window. His companions frogmarched Luke in a moment later, cuffed him to the next radiator along. Their captors then went out again and there was shouting, though too muffled by doors and distance to make sense of.

She became, suddenly, exquisitely aware of Luke; of being alone with him, of the weakness she’d just shown. She glanced his way. He was looking at her with a pained and empathetic expression on his face, as though worried by the scars the experience was sure to leave. ‘I thought I was gone,’ she said. ‘If you hadn’t held me …’

‘Nothing to do with me,’ he told her. ‘Your watch strap just caught on mine, that’s all.’

Under the circumstances, Rachel’s laughter wasn’t far short of a miracle. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

THIRTY-FOUR