31st March
Joan sat in Duck’s outhouse with a Greek text open on her lap.
‘That’s one of the references that was marked by Sam,’ said Jenny, pointing to a line of text. ‘It records an object streaking across the sky that, even in broad daylight, was brighter than the sun.’
‘Was it a comet?’ asked Joan.
‘No,’ said Jenny. ‘The tail of a comet would have been seen for a period as it approached the sun and then as it went away again. The ancients were good at recording those because they thought they were omens. This thing just came and went. No sightings before and no sightings after. Also, it left something akin to contrail in the sky. That means that it must have been in contact with the atmosphere.’
‘What was it?’
‘I don’t know for sure. We need some astronomy and mathematics input into this, but I’ve found similar reports on the Internet of meteors that have hit the atmosphere at a shallow angle and then bounced off – like a stone skipping across the surface of a pond. I think this could have been an asteroid doing the same thing.’
‘And you’ve found other references to the same phenomenon in Sam’s documents,’ said Joan.
‘So far, I’ve found four references that were marked by Sam which relate to similar events,’ Jenny confirmed. ‘The first was about ten thousand years ago, and the others were six thousand, two thousand and one thousand years ago.’
‘I didn’t think they wrote things down ten thousand years ago,’ Joan queried.
‘That report was from a carving at Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, where Sam did a lot of work. Those excavations made archaeologists revise their theories about the development of civilisations. That site predated Stonehenge by six thousand years.’
‘So what are you suggesting about all this?’ asked Joan.
‘This is really just a tentative hypothesis,’ Jenny replied. ‘A lot needs to be checked, and there are loads of gaps. It’s like trying to guess the picture on a jigsaw with half the pieces missing.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Joan, ‘what are you thinking?’
‘Just suppose,’ Jenny began, ‘that Sam had noted the pattern of these sightings. I’ve located four – there may be more in all these documents.’ She looked around at Sam’s papers. ‘The appearances seem to occur at multiples of one thousand years, so let us suppose he thought that the Earth was on a periodic, near collision course with an asteroid. That asteroid, however, had approached the Earth at a very shallow angle on previous occasions, and it had been travelling at sufficient speed not to be trapped by Earth’s gravity. It therefore bounced off the atmosphere and disappeared into space again until the next time.’
‘If it’s a thousand years since the last incident and it happens every thousand years, then the next visit is due,’ Joan concluded.
Jenny nodded. ‘If I can move on from wild speculation to fantasy,’ she continued, ‘suppose that someone has calculated the return date as the thirteenth of September this year, and they want to use US missile launch data to fire nuclear weapons at the asteroid.’
Joan thought for a few moments. ‘The Americans would be best placed to use their own weapons in that circumstance,’ she said, ‘so why would anyone want to take control from them?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jenny.
Joan took her phone from her pocket. ‘I’m going to have all these documents moved to Thames House today,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realise how valuable this stuff might be. I want you to go to London with it,’ she continued. ‘I’d like you to get hold of any experts you need and try to put the remaining pieces into your jigsaw.’
‘What about Duck and the farm?’ asked Jenny.
‘Robert can take over,’ Joan answered, ‘although I don’t think the farm is top of Arkangel’s priorities. He’s more concerned about what Swan might do.’
Joan raised her phone to enter a number, but before she could do so, it rang.
‘That was Etienne,’ said Joan when the call was over. ‘Leadbetter has escaped from Bovington camp.’
‘I thought he did what Swan told him to do.’
‘In a sense he has,’ Joan replied. ‘He apparently left a note for Swan saying that he would serve the wishes of the Great Lord Morrison by locating Arkangel.’
Jenny looked thoughtfully at the Greek text that Joan had just handed back to her, and her thoughts returned to Sam. ‘Was Sam an astronomer or mathematician?’
‘I’m pretty sure he wasn’t an expert in either,’ answered Joan. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I’m not an expert either,’ said Jenny, ‘but if Sam was going to get the right people and resources together for a project like taking control of US nuclear weapons, he would have to have done some very advanced and credible mathematics. I wondered if he would have been capable of that.’
Joan thought for a moment. ‘Possibly not,’ she said. ‘But he knew a man who was.’