behind his head and lay back in his chair. 'Funny – the second time we've come across evidence that somebody is tampering with history seems a lot less startling than the first, doesn't it? The mind can get used to anything, I suppose. Well, we're getting somewhere, aren't we, Mary? The question is what we do about it. I believe the objective is clear: we get into Richborough, we find out what these beggars are up to, disrupt it if we can – and we bring Ben Kamen out.'
Mary said, 'You keep saying 'we'.'
He smiled. 'You spotted that. I think I'm having a bit of a brain wave. Look here, Mary, suddenly you're a jolly useful asset. The fact is, a citizen of a neutral country has a much better chance of passing through the Winston Line, and of travelling reasonably freely once he or she is in the protectorate itself. And we do believe Kamen was held in the same camp as your son, at Richborough. So you have a reason to go to that part of the world, don't you?'
Mary tried to imagine such a journey, coming so close to Gary a full year after seeing him, and all for a lie.
'But even if you do make it to Richborough, you'll need some reason to get close to Fiveash and Trojan and their Ahnenerbe loonies. You say you've met them, but you're a bit notorious among the Nazis because of your piece on the Peter's Well incident. We need something for you to bluff your way in with. Hmm. I expect we'll come up with something.' He glanced at the Roman spear on the wall behind him. 'We have some thinking to do. Come! Shall we walk again?'
She stood. 'A restless type, aren't you?'
'Spent too long on ships to waste the opportunity to stretch my legs… Do bring your papers with you.'
XIII
They walked across the heart of the Roman camp, heading south. The sun had climbed, but there was scattered cloud around and a bit of dampness in the air. It felt autumnal, in that lovely English word. As they walked he glanced over her papers and scribbled with a stub of pencil on a notepad.
At the camp's southern perimeter the land fell away spectacularly to reveal a river wending through its valley, and a folded landscape beyond. 'On a good day you can make out the hills of the Lake District,' Mackie said. 'Bit too murky today. Autumn mist and whatnot.'
'I wonder if the Germans will ever come this far, if you will have to build pillboxes and barbed wire fences into the line of Hadrian's Wall.'
'Let's hope not, but I suppose it's a possibility. Or on the other hand we might just push them back into the sea where they came from.'
'History really is fragile, isn't it? So many possibilities for the future open out from this very moment, from the position of the war.'
'Well, that's true,' he said. 'But I can tell you that makes it tricky for us. Everything is poised. You Americans are supporting us, but you're not yet in the war, despite Churchill's best efforts to persuade you. And there is a real risk of defeat, you know. History doesn't seem to be on our side. I mean, if you look at the global picture, you have these dreadful totalitarian empires, the German and Japanese and Italian, just gobbling up the world. It's quite possible that if Hitler ever did plant a swastika on the Wall, it would be a long time before we could get rid of him. It took centuries for the Christians to kick the Moors out of Spain, didn't it? Rudolf Hess is in York, you know, Hitler's deputy, negotiating away about an armistice. There are many in the British establishment who want to listen to him – and many more, believe me, who sympathise with Hitler's global war aims, who fear and loathe Bolshevism more even than the Nazis.'
'And all this shapes your thinking about our options.'
'Quite. We must avoid provoking the military government in the protectorate overmuch; we may after all choose to sign that armistice. And on the other hand we have to try to keep the Americans onside. It's dashed tricky all round. We must be discreet. No parties must be overly alarmed. It will have to be a covert operation, put down to a random act by the auxiliaries, perhaps. We may even be disowned by the government if we get caught.' Even as he spoke he was still doodling on his pad. 'But look, as I say, this is all speculative unless I can get backing from my highers-up, and for that we need some clear proof that this material came from the present – proof that we aren't the subject of some hoax, or misunderstanding. I have to tell you that not all the experts I've consulted are finding in our favour.' He dug a scrap of paper out of his pocket. 'Thought you might like to see this.'
It was a letter written in a neat but wavering hand. She read, 'Like Mr Dunne, I fear you have taken my playful description of duration as a dimension of space far too seriously…'
'I did hope the old boy would be a bit more supportive; he still has an audience in the government.' His eyes were unfocused, his thoughts chasing.
Mary was mystified. 'Who?'
Mackie came back to himself. 'Oh! Sorry. H.G. Wells. Wrote to him; thought he was worth a try. What we need is proof, just a grain of it.'
'What is it you're scribbling?'
'I'm just intrigued by what you said about acrostics. This Menologium is a lot more complete than the Nectovelin prophecy, and I wondered if I could make something of it.'
'I tried that. Actually it works with the epilogue.' She took a pencil and wrote down:
AMEN
'Why, so it does.' He smiled.
'But I can't make sense of the rest of it.'
'Let's have another crack. I rather enjoy ciphers and such. Got me into Bletchley for my sins.' Still walking, he wrote down the leading letters of the verses, omitting the prologue and epilogue: TEIN TNSN TTEN TINN TGON TDEN TLKN TAMN TENT
'Nothing,' she said. 'Told you.'
'Yes, but look – there's some redundancy here.'
'Redundancy?'
'A coder's term. Repeated letters. Each verse, save the last, begins and ends with the same letters, T and N. If you were encrypting this lot for transmission you'd put in some kind of summary cipher and cross the lot out. Suppose I try that.' He took an eraser and went through the line, removing the first and last letters each time: EI NS TE IN GO DE LK AM EN
Mary considered this. 'Is that another AMEN at the end?'
'No,' he said softly. 'Look – if you group the letters differently – ' He wrote out the line again.
EINSTEIN GODEL KAMEN
'Ben Kamen,' she said 'Oh my.'
'He's sent us a message,' Mackie said. 'A message through history. Clever boy, clever boy indeed. This will do the trick, I think. I must call Lindemann.' He turned on his heel and trotted back towards the farmhouse.
She followed more slowly.
She admired Mackie's pragmatism, his determination to deal with this extraordinary problem, his ability to absorb this astounding new development and act on it decisively. But she felt only profound shock at this latest discovery. Could it really be true that this message from Ben Kamen had been waiting, embedded in a document from the fifth century, written down in whatever original had existed and then transcribed into copy after copy – waiting for her to detect it, on this fall day in England?
She shivered, and hurried after Mackie, not wanting to be alone.
