‘Jesus!’ Buckingham exploded and pushed herself up from the table. ‘How fucking heavy-handed? Don’t tell me they…’
‘They murdered Professor Campion and his wife.’
‘What! You… That man was one of the few human beings I ever respected. Dammit!’ She returned to the table leaning forward, palms flat on the precious wood. Secker could hear her breathing. ‘Well… what’s done…’ she said, fixing her assistant with a truly terrifying stare. ‘Go on.’
‘A pair of Van Lee’s men followed Wetherall and Bates and drove their car off the road. They survived, but the car was…’ He flicked his fingers in the air to signify the vehicle going up in smoke. Van Lee’s men then cornered them when they returned to the Marine Institute late last night. They got nothing from them and were themselves ambushed by a navy team led by Captain Jerry Derham.’
‘Sounds like an utter shambles.’
‘Not at all. We have all the copies or they have been destroyed.’
‘How do you know the copy in the car was not retrieved by the navy?’
‘Van Lee informs me that would not have been possible. Glena, we have effectively stopped NATO in its tracks. I would suspect that we shall see the ships returning to port and the Exclusion Zone—’
‘Don’t be a bloody fool, Secker!’ Buckingham’s eyes were ablaze. ‘Even if we have the original documents and all the copies have been destroyed, you’re forgetting Newman.’
‘But he’s—’
‘He’s out there with a copy of the document from the Titanic and the scientific knowledge to know what it means. As you pointed out, he is a clever man. He was certainly not foolish enough to trust us, now, was he?’
‘No, but—’
‘And he must have known Van Lee’s men were tailing him from the house in Plymouth. He owes us no favours, does he?’
‘No,’ Hans Secker agreed again, sighed and looked at the table.
‘You may — I repeat, may — have snatched the Egbert Fortescue materials from NATO, but there are other forces railed against us now. I want Professor Max Newman, preferably alive, here in this building so that I may pick his very ample brain. But if that isn’t possible, I want that brain… deactivated.’
29
The morning after the lab was wrecked, Kate was stuck in early morning traffic on Interstate 264 just outside Norfolk when her cell phone trilled. A pain shot through her side and she winced as she leaned forward to punch the ‘receive’ button.
‘Jerry. What’s happened?’
‘Hi, Kate. Looks like Newman’s completely vanished. Can we meet up this morning for a briefing?’
‘Sure. I’m on my way to the institute. Lou’s already there. You want to hook up at the cafeteria?’ She glanced at the dash, then the traffic. ‘Half an hour?’
There were a few people at the tables closest to the counter. Kate ordered and spotted Lou at a table near the back wall. Derham appeared as she walked over. A few minutes later he joined them with a large cappuccino in his hand.
‘Better bring us up to speed,’ Lou said, taking a sip of coffee.
‘We’ve searched Newman’s place in Plymouth. Someone had already gone over it.’
‘No clue as to where he’s gone?’
‘We’ve checked. He’s left the States; been skipping through airlines and continents. We lost him after he flew out of Bangkok.’
‘To where?’
‘Damascus. Syrians wouldn’t help us.’
‘So obviously Newman has been working for someone,’ Kate said.
‘And he either fell out with them or he’s double-dealing,’ Lou added.
Kate shuddered. ‘This is all getting a bit…’
‘Out of hand?’ Derham offered.
‘I was thinking “crazy” actually. A few days ago we were in Bermuda working on a pilgrim shipwreck. It’s all a bit much to take, to be honest.’
‘I hear you. But that’s just the way it is. And, although I hate to upset you even more, you have to accept that you two are in the greatest danger.’
‘And I guess we’re no closer to retrieving a copy of the Fortescue document?’ Lou said, placing his mug on the table.
‘No. My tech guys will be working today on the smashed-up scanner from your lab. They may be able to recover something useful.’
The scientists did not look encouraged. ‘We’re pretty much left with nothing,’ Kate said without meeting Derham’s eyes. ‘We had Egbert Fortescue’s papers and lost them. We’ve learned that Newman is a spy and he has a copy of the material. And, even if we were to retrieve the equations, my godfather was convinced not all the calculations were there and that Fortescue must have developed the work on the Titanic before it went down, so that’s all gone too!’
They were quiet for a moment, the sounds of the espresso machine and the chat of the other customers a backdrop to their thoughts. Lou started to fiddle with a packet of sugar in his bandaged hand, tossed it down and took a sip from his coffee.
‘Newman realized straight away that there was more to the Fortescue document than a bunch of jumbled equations,’ Kate remarked.
‘George Campion did say the man was a fine scientist.’
‘But it even took George a while to see the cold fusion material. Newman wouldn’t have seen that immediately.’
‘I think that’s not really the point,’ Derham said. ‘That document is inflammatory enough without the work that Fortescue was doing immediately before his death. It includes an alternative way to create atomic energy that could be cheaper, cleaner, safer, easier to produce than the methods we use today. The cold fusion stuff is the icing on the cake.’
‘Some icing!’ Lou exclaimed.
‘But we don’t know that it is at all practicable,’ Kate said.
‘Sure,’ Derham replied. ‘But if we put cold fusion aside, the basic work Rutherford and Fortescue were doing could itself lead to some really significant advances in energy production. There are agencies out there that cannot be too careful. They are always on the lookout for anything that could threaten the conventional energy supply lines they control.’
‘What?’
‘Well, think about it, guys,’ Derham said. ‘The mere suggestion of an efficient powerful new form of harness-able energy would make some people very unhappy. On the one hand you have governments spending vast fortunes building conventional power stations, while on the other, private corporations earn hundreds of billions from oil, petrol, gas.’
‘And Newman has had the EF document for what… thirty-six hours? He would have got to the cold fusion stuff,’ Lou said.
‘Which is incomplete,’ Kate reminded them.
‘Yes, but it could be enough. It could be reverse-engineered, couldn’t it?’ Jerry Derham asked.
‘Search me. I’m just a marine archaeologist!’ Kate spat. ‘A very pissed-off one.’
‘All right.’ Derham put his hands up. ‘Let’s calm down.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ Kate persisted. ‘This is the sort of thing you’re used to. You’re military. I’m not… we’re not.’
‘Understood.’
‘I just want to get on with my work.’ She flicked her hair behind her ear.
‘But there’s nothing to work on here now, is there, Kate?’ Lou interjected wearily.
Kate looked round at him seriously. ‘No, you’re right. There isn’t.’
30
It took Lou and Kate two hours to clear up the lab. They went through the motions mostly in miserable silence, exchanging the odd word despondently. It seemed as though every single item in the room had been moved, every piece of paper displaced, every piece of glassware smashed.