The journalist found it gratifying to see how many other clichés of spy-craft were reality. Jenny’s counter-surveillance routines were copious. She doubled back on herself, crisscrossed the street, changed bus and Metro routes exhaustively. And she insisted it was safest to meet Dr Nesta in public, where there was less chance of being eavesdropped on and more avenues of escape. On the clean phone line they agreed to meet in the old Roman forum, where they could blend in with the tourists.
Jake tried to make a joke of it: “Should we ask him if the fishing in Leningrad is good this time of year?”
Jenny ignored him. He could detect a sense of humour lurking somewhere beneath the surface, but it was as if it had been hermetically sealed from the world.
They met the physicist under the shoulder of the Colosseum. For a statement of raw power the stadium retained considerable elegance in its columns and arches, yet it was brutally functional too. Jake pointed out the numerals marked over gates that once admitted the mob: Roman crowd control.
Dr Nesta was elderly and pigeon-toed with round spectacles that seemed to exaggerate his eyes. He reminded Jake of a puffin come down from the colony to share its secrets, and looking at his shuffling walk an almost motherly sensation welled in the journalist.
“I hope when I have told you what I must, you will not think me too mad,” Dr Nesta began. “So. What do you already know of Roger’s work?”
Jake filled him in as they promenaded through the political heart of ancient Rome. He spoke of the trail set by Eusebius; the new inscriptions; the desperation of the men and women who hunted them. With each revelation Dr Nesta’s eyes widened until it seemed he was more eye than man. Jake left out one detail: that he believed in the same thing as Britton. Jenny had to see the proof of that for herself.
Dr Nesta stopped under a triumphal arch erected to honour Constantine after his victory following the vision. “By this sign conquer,” he said grandly. “But it was not by any Christian sign that Rome mastered the world.” Instinctively Dr Nesta crossed himself. “Roger was killed because he realized that what my ancestors believed was … it was true.”
Jake saw the twist of a smile pass over Jenny’s features.
“Well, you have not run away.” Dr Nesta clasped his hands together. “That is a good start. Now I can show you the mathematics and the science to prove it.”
“Dr Nesta,” began Jenny. “You said you had information about Roger Britton.”
“Signora,” he interrupted, “I can tell you now that they called down a lightning strike on his head!”
She regarded him with pity.
“You don’t believe me, of course. Why would you? But he knows it’s true.” Dr Nesta wheeled to face Jake. “I can see it in his face.”
Jake made no reply.
“Let us proceed this way,” said Dr Nesta, gesturing onward. “And I shall give you the science.”
They wandered into the Forum itself. This was where Cicero made his prosecutions and defences, where his head would end up on a stake; where Mark Antony delivered the funerary oration to Julius Caesar. And where before all that, Etruscan kings had drained the swamps and thrown up shrines to their forgotten Gods. The temples were reduced to white fingers, rising from the ground to point out the lost greatness of Rome.
“I was engaged in the hunt for the Holy Grail of modern physics,” Dr Nesta said. “The Grand Unified Theory. You are scientifically minded I assume?”
Jake looked awkward.
“I did physics at A Level,” Jenny offered. “And I’m half-decent at maths.”
“Then please interrupt if I start patronizing you,” said Dr Nesta. “You are aware, I am sure, that the two great breakthroughs in physics of the last century – Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum mechanics – cannot both be correct. They contradict each other. The search for the theory that marries the two has cost vast fortunes without success.”
Jenny nodded. The Large Hadron Collider – a tunnel under the Swiss border through which particles were fired at almost the speed of light – had devoured two billion euros in construction alone.
“My attempt to solve this problem led me to develop a new theory, one that combines quantum physics and relativity. It was this that led me to Professor Britton. Or, should I say, led Professor Britton to me.”
A group of Portuguese schoolchildren clattered past – all braces, puffer jackets, perfect skin. Once the hubbub subsided Dr Nesta continued, “Relativity applies to things on a big scale. Snooker balls, planets, us. But a different set of rules seems to apply at a quantum level. That is to say, to tiny things – neutrons, electrons and so on. Mathematicians have always assumed Einstein’s theory of relativity was correct, so they have always tried to redefine quantum theory to fit with Einstein. I took the other approach.” He raised an eyebrow. “I threw relativity out of the window, signora.”
“So Einstein was wrong then?” said Jenny.
“You are cynical, of course,” said Dr Nesta. “So are my colleagues. They cannot accept it. Their brains are inured to new concepts. But I tell you, relativity is a false religion. Einstein himself admitted it. When he was an elderly man he told a friend his work would not stand the test of time. Perhaps he’d got it wrong after all.”
“How does this relate to the Etruscans?” asked Jake.
“I’m getting to that. Please bear with me.” Dr Nesta’s expression was both smile and grimace. “Under my theory there is no curved space-time. There is no constant speed of light. All of Einstein’s findings I refute. There are simply two types of energy – a positive energy and a negative energy. Like the Yin and Yang in the old eastern philosophies.”
Something in this was beginning to make Jenny uneasy.
“This idea is not new, of course,” he went on. “But it was discarded because it did not fit with relativity. Of course, now we have forsaken Einstein this does not cause a problem. Indeed, we can strike out his other great fallacy – the belief that it is impossible to create energy out of nothing.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Jenny said, “How?”
“The answer is in the way these energies collide,” said Dr Nesta, his voice husky, as if whispering state secrets. “For centuries the maxim has been accepted that energy can neither be destroyed nor created, that it can only change form. But as I will illustrate, if positive and negative energy exist side by side, this maxim should read that energy can only be destroyed or created in equal amounts.”
Jenny stared into the sun. An aircraft buzzed across its surface, no more than a floater on the fiery retina. Humble star, minor outpost of the Milky Way, still blazing out light and heat as it had for billions of years before her birth. She frowned. Energy from nothing? Could it be?