Derham helped Kate carry the machine over to Lou’s workstation and sixty seconds later they had the enhancer hooked up to the laptop and the hard drive. Kate checked the cables. ‘Ready.’
Lou opened the file, sped forward to the point where they began to copy Fortescue’s papers two mornings ago. On the screen, they could see Kate poised with the robot arms. The first page lay under the copier.
Lou lined up the enhancer on the laptop and set it to ‘Resolution 200 %’. The image grew and kept its resolution, but the writing was still little more than a series of undecipherable squiggles.
Lou paused the film and tapped the arrow keys on the laptop. The enhancement level increased… ‘250 %’… ‘300 %’.
‘Come on!’ Lou exclaimed. ‘Trouble is, this has its limits too. Tip over the edge and we’ll lose resolution again.’ He keyed in some parameters. A counter at the bottom of the screen read: ‘320 %’. And as they watched, the image cleared.
Kate gasped.
‘Yes!’ Derham said.
On the monitor they could see the words written by Egbert Fortescue over a century ago — as clear as the day they were penned.
31
‘A cup of tea, Arthur?’
The man sitting across the desk from Christian Halley — the head of MI6, Arthur Bevington — had either not heard him or had chosen to ignore the question.
‘Ar thur?’
‘Yes?’ The man looked up from his papers a little startled.
‘Tea? Would you like tea?’
‘Er… yes, that would be splendid, thank you.’
Halley tapped a button on his phone. Both men could hear the secretary’s call tone from the adjoining room. ‘A pot of tea please, Estelle.’
Christian Halley got up from his chair and turned towards the vast window behind his desk. He had his hands clenched behind his back as he studied the view in silence. To his right lay Lambeth Bridge and a glimpse of Lambeth Palace. Turning to his left, he could see how the river took a gentle turn north-west. No more than a few dozen yards from the base of the Secret Intelligence Service building stretched Vauxhall Bridge packed with rush-hour traffic. In the west the last wisps of daylight slipped behind the buildings, lighting up the Thames like a river of fire.
He swung back to the room as the tea arrived. Estelle poured, retreated and closed the door softly behind her.
‘You sounded pretty excited on the phone, Arthur,’ Christian Halley said, taking a sip of his tea. ‘So let’s have it.’
Bevington was a tall spindly man with thinning white hair and bushy eyebrows. He had been in the service for thirty-five years and was now number three. He would go no higher; indeed, he planned to retire within two years. He was seen as the reliable Old Man of the service, a bit of an anachronism for sure, but almost universally liked.
‘Well, to be honest, it is exciting. We’ve intercepted an encoded message sent from the east coast of the United States that was en route to Beijing.’
‘Not that unusual, Arthur.’
‘No. But it is unusual to stumble upon it when we’re not actively looking for it. This message was only picked up by chance by one of the juniors at GCHQ.’
‘How?’
‘It leaked from a Chinese satellite and one of ours, RANOS-132 to be precise, was within range and detected it.’
‘I see. And what was the message about?’
‘One of my teams has been working on it for the past sixteen hours. They finally cracked it — it’s a set of mathematical expressions. A lot of it doesn’t seem to make sense… at least that’s what the chaps on the third floor tell me.’
Halley took another sip of his tea and eyed Bevington over the rim of his bone-china cup.
‘The really startling thing is the non-mathematical parts of the message. Whoever sent it is somehow involved with REZ375.’
‘The Exclusion Zone in the Atlantic?’
‘They seem to be selling something to the Chinese, something linked to the wreck of the Titanic.’
Halley caught his breath, lowered his cup and interlinked his fingers in an arch in front of his face. ‘We learned only this morning that something has been brought up from the wreck. We have an aircraft carrier in the Exclusion Zone, HMS Ipswich, but the Yanks insisted that they use their own gear to get down there. Turned down our help. It’s sent alarm bells ringing at the MOD.’
‘Not ruddy surprised!’ Bevington said.
‘So, what’s this all about?’ Halley was almost talking to himself, then turned to the older man.
‘The transmission to the Chinese satellite originated about ten miles from Norfolk Naval Base,’ Bevington explained. ‘It seems pretty clear that the Americans have a spy in their midst who has somehow gained access to whatever it was the United States Navy brought up from the wreck of the Titanic.’
‘But mathematical expressions?’
Bevington shrugged. ‘The radiation levels in the Exclusion Zone have been dropping fast since they went down there. Clearly they brought to the surface whatever was causing it, as well as this maths stuff.’
‘And you think these equations are some sort of analysis of the retrieved source passed on to the Chinese by someone from the US Navy?’
‘That is one possibility.’
‘Have your boys made any headway working out what the maths describes?’
‘No,’ Bevington said. Then he seemed to notice his tea for the first time and drank the whole lot in one go. Replacing the cup on the saucer, he held Halley’s intense stare. ‘But I do think we ought to get a Special Forces unit into the Exclusion Zone right away. We’ve been far too relaxed about all this. The Americans have retrieved something important and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they make several more trips down to the wreck. They’re not willing to share intel on this, and they have refused any joint missions to the ocean floor.’
Halley looked at Bevington in silence, his mind running through the ramifications. Then he leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘We don’t want to upset anyone,’ he said cautiously.
‘There is actually a further complication.’
‘Oh?’
‘Glena Buckingham.’
Halley blanched. ‘Don’t tell me that cow is involved already?’
Bevington simply nodded. ‘It would make sense, Christian. Energy is her game — her bread and butter, if you will.’
‘Yes,’ Halley responded. ‘Anything concrete on her?’
‘Well, you know as much as I do — she is under constant surveillance. There’s a file a mile thick on the woman. Her home, her office, her cars — they’re all bugged using the latest microdot microphones. Her people have never succeeded in deactivating them even if they know the equipment is there.’
‘But have you recorded her saying anything that is specifically linked to REZ375?’
‘Yes… we think she has a copy of the mathematical material that was sent to the Chinese.’
‘Good God! Now you tell me! It seems everyone has something from the bloody Titanic except us.’ Halley jumped up, his large face pink. ‘First the bloody Yanks, then the Chinese and now you tell me that arch-bitch Glena Fucking Buckingham has a lead on Her Majesty’s Government. How long has this—?’
‘Christian, take a deep breath, old boy.’ Bevington stayed remarkably calm. ‘It’s all very new. We are on top of things, you know…’
Halley walked back to his desk, lowered himself slowly into the plush leather upholstery of his chair. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, of course. Apologies, it’s been a long day.’