Will Adams: Newton’s Fire

‘I don’t understand.’ She frowned. ‘Who’s Fatio? What’s Fatio?’

‘It’s a who.’ He stooped to unzip his laptop case, pulled out his digital camera. ‘A he, to be precise. Nicolas Fatio de Duillier. A young Swiss mathematician who became a close friend of Newton’s in the early 1690s. Perhaps even a very close friend.’

‘ Very close?’ She tipped her head to one side. ‘You’re not implying …?’

Luke smiled. ‘It’s possible. Some people certainly think so.’

‘Sir Isaac Newton? And some young Swiss man?’

‘There’s no evidence whatsoever that anything physical ever happened between them,’ said Luke, setting the first page square on the tablecloth, the better to photograph it. ‘Though they did spend a week together in London one time, when no one else even knew that Fatio was in the country.’ He checked the image in his digital display, turned the page over to photograph its reverse. ‘And Newton later implored him to live with him in Cambridge.’

‘My word.’ She let out a bark of a laugh. ‘Maybe that’s why Uncle Bernie wanted these papers.’

Luke set the second page in place. ‘How do you mean?’

A little colour pinked her cheeks. ‘They called them “confirmed bachelors” in my day,’ she said, with just a hint of a smile, as though unaccustomed to revealing family skeletons, yet rather enjoying it. ‘“Not the marrying kind”. I had no idea what that actually meant. I simply assumed Uncle Bernie hadn’t yet met the right woman. I even hoped I’d be able to help find her for him myself. He was so nice to me. The only Martyn who truly welcomed me into the family. But then I called on him without warning one afternoon.’ She gave another of her barking laughs and blushed even deeper. ‘Well, I’m sure you can imagine.’

‘Must have been a shock,’ said Luke, photographing the third paper.

‘For both of us,’ she admitted. ‘All three of us, I should say. We girls were so naive back then. You wouldn’t believe.’

He photographed the back of the last page, held up his camera. ‘May I email these off? The sooner my client gets them, the sooner he’ll make an offer. If he wants them, that is.’

‘And I’m not obliged to accept, you said?’

‘Of course not. All he asks is the opportunity to make the first bid.’ His client’s lawyer had been absurdly emphatic about that, repeating it at every opportunity. ‘You’ll be perfectly free to accept it, reject it or negotiate something better.’ The house was too remote for his own WiFi service, but Penelope had assured him earlier that he’d be welcome to use the wired broadband she’d had put in to tempt her grandkids to come and visit. He plugged his laptop into her router, transferred the photographs, attached them to an email and sent them on their way. The high resolution files were big, however, and her connection was slow. ‘This could take a while,’ he said.

‘We’ll have a nice cup of tea,’ said Penelope.

He toured the walls as her old kettle struggled to the boil, looking at family photographs. A surly lot, for the most part, with long noses and sour upper lips, posing grudgingly for the camera. But then he reached a picture of a young woman with short brown hair and an enchanting smile leaning against the driver door of an old grey-blue Rover.

‘My great-niece Rachel,’ Penelope said, appearing at his side with a plate of shortbread biscuits. ‘She’s one of your lot.’

‘My lot?’

‘An academic. She’s doing her doctorate at Caius College, Cambridge. She wants to be a lecturer like you.’

‘Ah,’ said Luke, a touch guiltily. He’d used old university letterheaded paper for his correspondence with Penelope; and somehow he’d neglected to let her know about their parting of the ways following his convictions for assault and offences against the Terrorism Act. ‘What’s her field?’ he asked.

‘The archaeology and history of the ancient Near East, I think. Something like that, anyway. Between you and me, I find it terribly hard to follow.’

‘She looks nice.’

‘As opposed to my own brood, you mean?’

‘I didn’t mean that at all,’ protested Luke, a little too hotly. ‘I just meant that she looks nice.’ His laptop beeped, sparing his further blushes. He went to check it. The battery was running low. ‘Mind if I recharge?’ he asked.

‘Be my guest.’ She pointed him to a spare socket, cleared her throat, now suffering from awkwardness of her own. ‘I hate to ask,’ she said, ‘but do you have any idea exactly how interested your client might be in these particular papers?’

Luke hesitated. He’d already given her a ballpark estimate and was reluctant to do more. Go too low and she’d think he was trying to fleece her; go too high and he’d be setting her up for disappointment. He checked his screen to find that the photographs were on their way, gave her a blandly optimistic smile. ‘I guess we’ll find out soon enough,’ he said.

Vernon Croke clenched a crystal tumbler of bourbon as he stared through the window of Naples’ private jet terminal, watching airport security guards mill like ants around his plane.

It was like this everywhere.

The cabins of modern jet aircraft were pressurized as a matter of course. They flew so high that the thinness of the air would otherwise kill their passengers and crew. Their cargo holds, on the other hand, were often left unpressurized. In such aircraft the pressurized and unpressurized compartments had to be securely sealed off from each other lest some unfortunate accident provoke a catastrophic depressurisation.

There’d been times recently, however, when certain international agencies had found themselves frustrated by this. Times when they’d regretted the lack of an airlock system that would enable passage between the pressurized and unpressurized parts. Such a system could even allow an external hatch to be opened in mid-flight: to jettison potentially embarrassing evidence, say, or to parachute agents or supplies into hostile territory. Cargo planes were too slow, low and visible for such sensitive work, but no one looked twice at a private jet cruising at 25,000 feet. That was what the CIA had assured Croke, at least, when they’d offered him this plane ahead of a Department of Justice investigation into rendition flights. What with the generous discount, and its sophisticated comms systems, it had seemed too good an opportunity to refuse. But there were times he regretted his decision, for the plane’s peculiarities of design invariably drew extra scrutiny wherever he went. ‘How much longer?’ he asked Vig.

‘Five minutes, sir.’

‘They said that ten minutes ago.’

The bodyguard shrugged. ‘Another drink?’

Croke shook his head. ‘I have calls to make,’ he said. ‘I can’t make them here. Anyone could be listening.’

The door opened. An airport security guard beckoned. They were cleared. Croke strode briskly across the concourse. ‘Are we secure?’ he asked Craig Bray, his pilot, waiting at the head of the cockpit steps.

‘Just done a full sweep,’ Bray assured him. ‘We’re secure.’

The comms suite was towards the front. Croke had turned it into his on-board office, from where he could manage his small empire in perfect confidence. He went there now, checked his messages. All were routine except for one from Max Walters, boss of his London office. He called him at once. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Just got an email from our Newton friend,’ said Walters.

Croke sat up a little. ‘Has he found something?’

‘Four pages, sir. Up near Thetford in some old biddy’s attic. I wouldn’t have disturbed you, except that there’s a list of twelve letters on the back of one of the pages, which is one of the things you told me to look out for, right?’