21st April
The chauffeured Mercedes in which Helen and I were travelling crossed Vauxhall Bridge and turned right into Millbank. We drove onwards past Tate Britain and then turned right again, stopping before wrought iron gates that were set into the facade of Thames House – the imposing London HQ of MI5.
Our driver spoke into his headset, the gates opened and he continued down a slope, stopping in an underground parking area.
Nearby was an open door where we were met by Etienne. He provided us with security badges.
Etienne accompanied us in a lift to one of the higher floors of the building where he led us to a large conference room.
Joan Stanford sat at one end of the conference table. Jenny sat at the centre of one side of the table with a laptop in front of her. Opposite Jenny were two men who I did not recognise.
‘Hello, Swan; hello, Helen,’ said Joan. ‘Please help yourselves to coffee,’ she continued, nodding towards a side table on which stood some flasks and cups. ‘Then, please join us.’
Once we were seated, Joan continued with introductions. ‘Can I introduce Colin Wells,’ she said, glancing towards one of the men, ‘and Robin Marsh? Colin is mathematician and astronomer, and Robin woks with MI6.’
Helen and I exchanged greetings with the two men.
Joan looked across to Jenny. ‘Can I ask you to summarise what you’ve all discovered, Jenny?’ she said.
Jenny tapped the keys of her laptop, and several images of undecipherable writing appeared on a large screen behind her.
‘While going through Sam Collin’s documents,’ she began. ‘I found four instances where he had marked text. Each of those sections related to an unusual occurrence in the sky.
‘A very bright object, brighter than the sun in daylight, was reported to have passed across the sky, leaving a white trail in its wake.
‘These reports each occurred at some multiple of around one thousand years, counting back from the present.
‘Thanks to Swan’s catalogue of Sam’s documents, we were quickly able to close-in on other references which described events at the missing multiples of one thousand years. We located reports of the same phenomenon at around one thousand year intervals since 10,000 BCE.’
‘What is it?’ I asked.
Jenny glanced towards Colin Wells.
‘You’ve seen a stone skim across the surface of a pond,’ Colin began. ‘The same thing can happen to any object that touches the surface of a fluid if it approaches with the correct velocity and angle. What the ancients saw was an asteroid skipping off the top of the Earth’s atmosphere and going back into space.’
‘What’s that got to do with everything that’s been happening?’ I asked.
‘We’ll see it again on the thirteenth of September this year,’ Colin replied.
I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
‘Surely you can’t get that level of precision from reports in ancient texts,’ said Helen.
‘That’s what I’d wondered at first,’ said Jenny.
‘We don’t get the precision from the ancient texts,’ Colin continued. ‘They simply told us that the phenomenon occurred and its approximate frequency. The movement of the asteroid is defined by gravity and the laws of motion.
‘Imagine one of those maths questions, written in words, which you might have read at school,’ he said.
‘I was never any good at those,’ commented Helen.
‘Imagine the question said the following,’ continued Colin, looking up at Jenny.
Jenny pressed a key on her laptop, and Colin’s hypothetical maths question appeared on the screen:
Assume that the orbit of the Earth and the orbit of an asteroid are such that the asteroid passes the Earth at a distance of fifty miles with a frequency of around once in a thousand years.
Assume that the approach angle of the asteroid is between zero and two degrees from a tangent to the atmosphere of the Earth.
Assume that the asteroid has returned on at least twelve consecutive occasions.
Calculate the following:
1 – Can such an asteroid exist?
2 – If it can exist, how big is it and how fast is it moving?
3 – If it can exist, when will it next return?
‘I said I wasn’t any good at those questions,’ said Helen.
‘Not many people would be any good with that one,’ replied Colin. ‘We needed a supercomputer to work it out.’
‘What did you find?’ I asked.
‘The asteroid can exist,’ said Colin, ‘but interestingly, so many things have to be just right for it to pass that close to the Earth at the known frequency, that there are only single solutions for its size and speed, and only two possible return dates in this millennium. One of those dates is the thirteenth of September this year.’
‘What’s the other date?’ Helen queried.
‘That date has passed, said Colin. It was the sixteenth of January this year.’
‘The day the meteorite killed Sam while he was in possession of US nuclear warhead launch data for that very day,’ I said, puzzling to make sense of the coincidences.
‘That makes the thirteenth of September the only possible remaining date for this encounter between the asteroid and the Earth,’ Colin concluded.
‘Will it bounce off the atmosphere again?’ Helen asked.
Colin was silent for a few moments. ‘I don’t know,’ he confessed.
‘I thought you said it was all defined by gravity and the laws of motion,’ I said.
‘The angle at which it will approach the Earth isn’t fully known,’ Colin explained. ‘We know that the angle is getting steeper each time, and we can calculate that when that angle exceeds two degrees, the asteroid will pass through the atmosphere and not skip off it. If the angle of the first pass was zero degrees then we calculate it can bounce off the atmosphere fifteen times.’
‘We know it’s done that at least twelve times before,’ said Jenny, ‘but we don’t know if this is trip thirteen or trip sixteen.’
‘And we don’t know if the first pass was at an angle greater than zero degrees,’ added Colin. ‘Statistically it’s more likely than not that it will hit this time.’
‘There’s one other thing,’ added Jenny. ‘One of texts that Sam identified talks about a “harbinger” that precedes the arrival of the flaming god, but we haven’t so far found any other references to clarify what that might be.’
We all sat in silence for many moments.
‘What would happen if it did hit?’ asked Helen.
‘We calculate that it’s a mile wide,’ said Colin. ‘It would be Armageddon, I’m afraid.’
I assume it will appear from the direction of Orion,’ I ventured, slotting another piece into the jigsaw.
‘Yes,’ replied Colin. ‘The nature of these things is that they’re not necessarily obvious until they touch the Earth’s atmosphere. Smaller ones in recent years have not been picked up by telescopes. At least expecting it gives a better opportunity to defend against it.’
‘If you needed a supercomputer to work it all out,’ I said to Colin, ‘how could Sam Collins have done it?’
Robin Marsh contributed to the discussion for the first time. ‘I may be able to speculate about that,’ he said. ‘When Sam was involved in the dig at Gobekli Tepe, he was also acting as an agent for MI6. As part of that role, he took other agents into the country under the cover of also being archaeologists. I was coordinator for them. One of those other agents was Tom Meadowcote.’
‘The mathematical genius who disappeared two years ago,’ I said, recalling Joan’s earlier briefing in Duck’s kitchen.
‘And the owner of Meadowcote Hall,’ concluded Joan. ‘He must have been involved in all this, and if he’s alive, he must still be.’
‘What about dealing with the asteroid?’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t world governments be coming up with a plan?’
‘We’re talking to the Americans about it,’ Joan replied. ‘We all agree that we have to be very cautious, however. If news of this got out, there’s a real fear that there would be huge political instability across the globe. You saw the effect of the Mayan prophesy on thousands of people,’ she continued, ‘and there wasn’t a shred of evidence to support the reality of that.
‘We fear that, in the face of Armageddon, conflicts would break out worldwide, and it would be impossible to maintain law and order – even in the most advanced nations.’
‘We’re only discussing it with the US president and his closest advisors.’ Robin took up the explanation. ‘They need to know everything because they’re the only ones with a capability to make some military response. In fact, they already have plans for this kind of eventuality – they have special missiles based at Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota. We’re not telling any other leaders, however, as we can’t trust any of them to keep this secret.’
‘Robin’s going to the States to take a lead in discussions,’ said Joan. ‘I’d like you to go with him, Swan.’
‘Why me?’ I said
‘Clearly Arkangel knows about the asteroid and is involved in some plan to take control of US missiles.’ Etienne spoke for the first time since entering the room. ‘Some of the data on Sam’s laptop must have been provided by someone close to the president – possibly reporting directly to Arkangel. You’ve now got the status of Arkangel’s supernatural nemesis. We think that if you’re closely involved, it may help to flush out the informer. There’s nothing to be lost now by Arkangel finding out that you’re working with us. That would have happened sooner or later anyway.’
‘I’m not going without Helen,’ I said.
‘She would serve no purpose there,’ replied Joan.
‘The world might end in five months,’ I said. ‘With the way things are going, some of us might not live long enough even to see that. I want to spend as much of whatever time is left with the woman I love more than anyone I’ve ever met.’
The room fell silent.
Helen appeared surprised, and then tears formed in her eyes.
Later, she explained that I had never before told her that I loved her.
Jenny broke the silence. ‘I think that’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard in an MI5 briefing.’
The sound of Joan’s mobile precluded further comment.
‘When?’ Joan asked in response to the caller. ‘OK, thanks,’ she said and ended the call.
‘That call was about Bishop Gerald Hunter,’ Joan explained. ‘He’s been kidnapped.’