“You idiot!” shouted Jenny. “You absolute idiot!”
“Why?” said Jake. “What did I do wrong?”
“I can’t believe you emailed him. Don’t you realize we read all your correspondence? Christ Jake, don’t you read the Guardian? It’s not exactly a big secret nowadays.”
Jake’s faced turned wan. “Oh yeah.”
“Now they know exactly where you’re supposed to be meeting him. They’ll grab him for certain. That’s if he is a real person, of course.”
“It’s no problem. We just email him again and tell him not to go there.”
Jenny shook her head. “Honestly, Jake, it’s a miracle you lasted this long. From now on every email you send him will be intercepted. MI6 won’t let it through. Plus anything you receive from the scientist will actually be from them. If he exists he’s going to the Spanish Steps now, no matter what.”
With the help of Google they ascertained that Dr Nesta existed. He had been a leading light at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before moving to Geneva, where he had worked with some leading quantum physicists. But there had been a fall from grace. A gossipy profile in the New Scientist revealed Nesta was attempting to detect elements of the supernatural using maths and quantum theory. The work had not been received well and his funding was to end. Jake felt queasy reading the article; he had a fair idea why the scientist and historian were in touch.
He didn’t tell Jenny of his suspicions. Of course, he had filled her in on Eusebius and his Life of Constantine – but trying to convince her of the living reality of the technology? She’d think he was mad.
Jenny phoned the Large Hadron Collider, claiming to be a research student from Cambridge. The receptionist informed her Nesta had taken leave at short notice – he had just walked out of the building. She asked for his mobile number, to be told they were “not at liberty to divulge personal information”. He wouldn’t even pass on a message – Dr Nesta had said it was a family emergency and he specifically asked not to be contacted.
Jake put his head in his hands. “He’s lost. Jesus, I’ve cost a man his life. And we haven’t got a chance of stopping them. Because Nesta won’t even be there, will he? They’ll kill him as well, at their own convenience.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” she said. “You’re still not thinking like us. Of course he’ll be there.”
Jake looked up. “What do you mean?”
“They know that I’ll be telling you all this. Which means they know that you know Dr Nesta will be there, no matter what. That’s why they won’t change the rendezvous.”
“I don’t understand.” Jake clenched his hair in his fists; it had been two days since he had showered and when he let go the strands remained vertical.
“They’ve analyzed your personality, Jake. They’ve run psychological tests, studied your emails and phone conversations. So they know you’ll probably try and get him out anyway. Because that’s what you’re like. And then of course they’ll get you too.”
“Well, we do have to go and get him,” Jake blurted. “Of course we do.”
He paused to consider what had just come out of his mouth.
Blimey. You’re actually not a bad guy, Jake.
“We can’t go to Italy,” Jenny was saying. “Don’t be an idiot. This is exactly what they want, I’ve just explained it all to you.”
“They’ll kill him though. Won’t they?”
She was silent.
“And he was trying to help us.”
“Jake, they’ll grab us too. There’s no way we can get him out of there. I’m sorry.”
“So you’ll let him be murdered.”
It was Jenny’s turn to put her head in her hands.
You only wanted to be one of the goodies.
She sighed. “Well … I suppose we could go and have a look at the lie of the land.”
Heston paid for the tickets without argument, and wired them a fighting fund of £25,000.
“Buy whatever you want, bribe whoever you want. Just get the story.”
With a glorious rush Jake realized the newspaper was right behind him. He was the arrowhead at the tip of a vast editorial machine, the cutting-edge of British journalism, on a story that all Fleet Street was desperate to own. It was an exhilarating sensation.
“Lives lost in pursuit of the tooth fairy,” his boss had crowed. “It’s amazing stuff.”
Heston thought they could bring down the government.
But Jake’s decision to go to Italy was not wholly altruistic. Whatever Britton and Nesta had been talking about, he had to know.
It prompted the other thought which had been squatting in Jake’s mind – that no matter what they did, the success or failure of this endeavour was already decided.
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.