‘Yet for some like Everett, the Roman tradition of worship came to have more attraction,’ Jack said.
Morgan nodded. ‘The letters show that he still saw himself as a follower of Pelagius, and some of his theological views would have seemed heretical to Catholic purists. But the Roman liturgy, the rituals, above all the music, seemed to offer him great spiritual comfort.’
‘What Jeremy said in London yesterday about Sir Christopher Wren, missing the beauty of the old rituals,’ Costas murmured. ‘Speaking as a Greek Orthodox, I can understand that.’
‘That was what mattered to Everett. But his fundamental faith remained unchanged.’
‘And the thought police were a long way from a remote valley in Californa,’ Jack murmured.
‘I believe that was part of the plan. He came here to safeguard what he had with him, to a country where religious freedom had provided a haven for all Christian denominations. He still needed to be careful, to pick the time and place to reveal what he had, to find some way of passing on the secret.’
‘So he arrived here in 1912,’ Costas said.
Morgan nodded. ‘He sailed to New York, gained American citizenship, then worked his way west. After what Jeremy told me, I now believe that what he did took huge strength, a decision to preserve an extraordinary treasure not for his own benefit but for humanity, for the future. Once he’d been assured of his children’s upbringing, he made the greatest sacrifice a father can ever make, and walked away assuming he would never see them again.’
‘I only hope it was worth it,’ Costas said.
‘That’s what we’re here to find out,’ Jack replied, turning to Morgan. ‘Do you know anything more about his life, anything that might give us clues?’
Morgan paused. ‘August 1914. Europe is torn apart. Britain mobilizes. The First World War begins.’
‘He goes to fight?’ Costas said.
Morgan nodded. ‘In the folly and horror of the First World War, people often forget that many at the time believed it was a just war, a war against impending evil. Everett felt morally compelled to join. Winston Churchill wrote about men like him.’ Morgan leaned back so he could read the inscription below a framed portrait on the wall, showing a young man in uniform. ‘“Coming of his own free will, with no national call or obligation, a stranger from across the ocean, to fight and die in our ranks, he had it in his power to pay tribute to our cause of exceptional value. He conceived that not merely national causes but international causes of the highest importance were involved, and must now be decided by arms.”’ Morgan paused. ‘That’s a friend of Churchill’s, Lieutenant Harvey Butters, Royal Field Artillery, an American killed on the Somme in 1916. J. Paul Getty was a great admirer of these men, Americans who volunteered to fight German imperialism even before the United States joined the war.’
‘So Everett returns to Europe,’ Costas said.
‘He went north to Canada and enlisted in the British Army. By early 1916 he was an officer in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, on the Western Front. In June that year he was gassed and wounded in a terrible battle at Hulluch, near Loos. During his recuperation his mathematical skills were discovered, and he was transferred to British Military Intelligence, the original MI1. He worked in the War Office in London, and then was seconded to Naval Intelligence at the Admiralty down the road, in a top-secret complex known as Room 40. He was a codebreaker.’
‘No kidding.’ Jeremy leaned forward, excited. ‘Cryptography.’
‘They were desperate for people like him,’ Morgan continued. ‘And he was recruited by intelligence just in time. What happened next may well have won the war.’
‘Go on,’ Jack said.
‘Ever heard of the Zimmerman telegram?’
‘Yes!’ Jeremy exclaimed. ‘Of course! It’s what brought America into the First World War.’
‘A coded telegram dispatched in January 1917 by Arthur Zimmerman, German foreign secretary, to the German ambassador in Mexico,’ Morgan continued. ‘It revealed the German intention to begin unrestricted submarine warfare against American shipping, and to help Mexico reconquer the southern States. The plan seems ludicrous now, but it was deadly serious then. The British intercepted and decrypted the telegram, then passed it on to the US ambassador to Britain. Sentiment in the United States was already pretty anti-German because of earlier U-boat sinkings that had killed Americans. A month after the telegram was deciphered, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany.’
‘Let me guess,’ Costas said. ‘The decipherment was done in the British Admiralty Room 40.’
‘Correct. The Room 40 codebreakers had a book for an earlier version of the cipher that had been captured from a German agent in the Middle East, but the decryption of the telegram by the London team was still a work of genius.’
‘And Everett was involved.’
‘His name was never released. After the war, the British went to extraordinary lengths to keep the activities of their codebreakers secret, and only ever released enough to tell the essential story. Some of the Room 40 codebreakers of the First World War went on to work at Bletchley Park in the Second World War, and their names will never be known.’
Costas whistled. ‘So Everett really did have a place in history. Bringing America into the First World War.’
‘If you think that’s a place in history, wait for what I’ve got to say next.’
‘Go on,’ Jack said.
‘A lot of the stuff is still classified. But I do know he worked alongside the two men whose names were released and celebrated after the war, the Reverend William Montgomery and Nigel de Grey. Of those two, Montgomery is the one who concerns us most. He was a Presbyterian minister, a civilian recruited by British Military Intelligence. He was a noted authority on St Augustine, and a translator of theological works from German. He was best known for his translation of Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical Jesus.’
Jack suddenly felt the hairs prick up on the back of his neck. ‘Say that again.’
‘Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus.’
The historical Jesus. Jack felt himself tense up with excitement. He thought for a moment, his mind racing, then spoke quietly. ‘So we’ve got two men, both brilliant codebreakers, Everett and Montgomery, both passionate about the life of Christ. One a Catholic convert, the other a Presbyterian minister. Everett is guardian of an extraordinary ancient document, something he’s hidden away. Maybe the horror of that war, his near-death experience on the front, perhaps a soldier’s conviction that he will not survive, gives him an overwhelming need to share the secret, to ensure that the torch is kept alight.’
‘He tells Montgomery,’ Costas said.
‘They devise a code,’ Jeremy murmured.
‘Pure speculation, but if it happened, it probably happened here,’ Morgan said.
Jack looked startled. ‘You mean here? In California?’
‘In Santa Paula. Where Everett spent the rest of his life. A small nunnery in the hills, where Everett had found what he was looking for when he arrived in America before the war. Peace, seclusion, a community whose fold he could enter effortlessly, where he could follow his faith and seek the time and place to pass on his secret.’
‘Just like the emperor Claudius, two thousand years before,’ Jeremy murmured. ‘And just like Claudius, the tide of history seems to have overtaken his plans, the First World War erupting like a latter-day Vesuvius.’
‘Could Everett and Montgomery have been here together during the war?’ Costas said.
‘May 1917,’ Morgan replied. ‘Publication of the Zimmerman telegram had just brought America into the war. The two men were invited to the United States to help set up the fledgling US codebreaking unit. It was all top secret. I can’t prove it, but there was enough time for a fleeting visit to California.’