Part 12 (2/2)
”It's great to see you again!” Julius said. ”Hey, this sounds like a secret mission.”
”Isit a secret mission?” Lachlan asked.
Julius: ”If it is, don't you think Lachy and I should have code names, you know, like Maverick or Goose?”
”I'd like to be called Blade,” Lachlan said.
”And I'd like Bullfighter,” Julius said.
”Blade? Bullfighter?”
Julius said, ”Pretty rugged and heroic, huh? We've been thinking about this while we've been waiting for you.”
”Clearly,” Zoe said. ”How about Tweedledum and Tweedledee? Romulus and Remus?”
”Aw, no! Not twin code names,” Lachlan said. ”Anything but twin names.”
”Sorry, boys, but there's only one rule when it comes to call signs.”
”And that is?”
”You never get to pick your own.” Zoe smiled. ”And sometimes your nickname can change. Look at me, I used to be known as b.l.o.o.d.y Mary, until I met this little one.” A nod at Lily. ”And now everyone calls me Princess. Be patient, you'll get call signs when the occasion calls for it. Because, yes, this mission is about as secret as it gets.”
Now, speeding west along the A303, they were heading for a place that of all people Alby had led them to.
The military air base outside Dubai. Two days previously. Just after Earl McShane's cargo plane had smashed into the Burj al Arab.
Jack West had stood on the tarmac, crouched low over Alby and Lily, while armed men and CIA agents calling themselves attaches spoke into cell phones, a black pillar of smoke rising into the sky above the Burj al Arab in the distance.
”Talk to me, Alby,” Jack had said.
During the meeting, Alby had deciphered one of Wizard's more obscure notes: the reference to the ”t.i.tanic Sinking and Rising.” But he had hinted to Jack that there was more to it.
Alby said, ”I also know what one of the symbols on Wizard's summary sheet means.”
Jack had pulled out the summary sheet.
”The symbol at the bottom right,” Alby said. ”Next to the 't.i.tanic Sinking' reference.”
”Yes...” West had said.
”It's not a symbol. It's a diagram.”
”Of what?”
Alby had looked up at West seriously. ”It's a diagram of the layout of Stonehenge.”
STONEHENGE.
THE HONDA crested a rise, and without warning the cl.u.s.ter of great stones came into view.
Zoe inhaled sharply.
Of course she had been here before, several times. Everyone in the UK had. But the scale of the site, the sheerbravura of it, always took her by surprise.
Stonehenge.
Quite simply, Stonehenge was stunning.
A source of fascination to her for a long time, Zoe knew all the myths: that this ring of towering stones was an ancient calendar or an ancient observatory that the bluestones- the smaller sixfoothigh dolerite stones that formed a horseshoeshaped arcwithin the far more famous trilithons-had been brought to the Salisbury Plain around the year 2700B.C. by some unknown tribe from the Preseli Hillsover 150 miles away in distant Wales. To this day, many believe that the bluestones, even on bitterly cold winter days, remain warm to the touch.
It would be another 150 years, around 2,570B.C., before the spectacular trilithons were raised around this minihenge of bluestones. But the date is important: in 2,570B.C. the Egyptian pharaoh Khufu was completing his famous work on the Giza plateau in Egypt, the Great Pyramid.
Over the years, Zoe knew, cosmologists and astrologers had tried to link Stonehenge with the Great Pyramid, but without success. The only confirmed link was the closely matching dates of their construction.
Other peculiarities of Stonehenge intrigued her.
Like the rare green cyan.o.bacterium that grew on the great trilithons themselves. A variety of lichen, it was a true oddity, an uncommon hybrid of algae and fungus that grew only on exposed coastlines-yet Stonehenge was fifty miles from the nearest sea, the Bristol Channel. The mosslike substance gave the stones a mottled, uneven aspect.
And then, of course, there were the unexplained theories about the site's location: the unique way the Sun and Moon rise over the fiftyfirst parallel and the unusually high number of neolithic sites running the length of the British Isles on the same degree of longitude as Stonehenge.
In the final a.n.a.lysis, only one thing about Stonehenge could be said with any degree of certainty: for over 4,500 years it had withstood the ravages of wind, rain, and time itself, offering a mult.i.tude of questions and very few answers.
”OK,” Zoe said as she drove. ”How are we going to tackle this? Thoughts anyone?”
”Thoughts?” Lachlan said. ”How about this: that there'sno precedent for what we're about to do. Over the years, scholars and wackos have linked Stonehenge with the Sun and the Moon, with virgins and druids, with solstices and eclipses, but never with Jupiter.
If Wizard's hypothesis is correct and this Firestone is the real deal, then we're going to see something that hasn't been seen for over 4,500 years.”
Julius said, ”Can I add that the good folk at English Heritage don't look kindly on people who step over the rope at Stonehenge and walk among the stones, let alone lunatics like us wanting to perform ancient occult rituals. There'll be security guards.”
”Leave the guards to me,” Zoe said. ”You just handle the occult ritual.”
The twins pulled out Wizard's notes again, gazed at the diagram of Stonehenge: ”In his notes, Wizard says that the Ramesean Stone at Stonehenge is the Altar Stone,”
Julius said. ”But what about the Grand Trilithon? It's the signature element of Stonehenge.”
”No, I'd go with the Altar Stone, too,” Lachlan said. ”It's the focal point of the structure.
It's also made of bluestone, laid at the same time as the original ring of bluestones, so it's older than the trilithons. And fortunately for us, it's still there.”
Over four and a half millennia, Stonehenge had been pilfered by locals searching for stones to use as walls or as millstones. Nearly all the bluestones of the henge were gone.
The bigger trilithons had survived-at over eighteen feet tall (twentyone in the case of the Grand Trilithon) they had just been too big for the local peasants to move.
Lachlan turned to Alby: ”What doyou reckon, kid?”
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