December 21st, 2004. Hildersham. Mulberry Cottage
Mina peeped through Jack’s door. ‘Morning Jack.’
Jack had had a rough night, but he felt better this morning.
‘Morning beautiful.’ She came and sat on the edge of his bed.
‘We’re making progress,’ she said. ‘Come down for breakfast and we’ll tell you all about it.’
‘You know, if you’d rather I stayed up here, just tell me. I’ll leave the two of you alone,’ said Jack.
‘Jack, you aren’t really jealous of Daniel, are you?’ Mina asked, grinning.
‘Me. Never. Why? Should I be?’
‘No, you shouldn’t,’ she said, and she slowly bent down to kiss him.
Just as they were about to share their first kiss, they heard Joshua at the door and sprung up out like guilty teenagers. Joshua came in to check on his patient. After examining him, he announced that he was quite satisfied with his condition.
‘Jack, I’m amazed by your recovery. You must be made of steel,’ he said appreciatively.
‘I know, doc, it’s my curse,’ said Jack with a smile.
‘You’re almost as good as new,’ said Joshua.
‘It’s all thanks to you. I owe you one.’
‘Bring this whole matter to a close and you won’t owe me anything.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ said Jack.
When Jack eventually came downstairs, he found Mina and Daniel sitting at the breakfast table, arguing about the notes, which put Jack in an excellent mood.
‘We’re not getting anywhere,’ said Mina.
‘I don’t agree,’ said Daniel.
‘What’s going on?’ Jack said, pulling up a chair.
But Mina went on regardless. ‘Alright Daniel, maybe you’re right, but how do you explain the term ocean of water?’
‘It must be an image to describe the huge scale of the flood.’
‘And the mouth of the earth?’
‘That I don’t know. I’ve thought about it the entire night and I still don’t have a clue.’
‘But what sort of river flood are they talking about?’ asked Jack, ‘what sort of flood could be that awful that they’d think of warning us thousands of years ago? Are we talking about a major city?’
‘That’s why we may be wrong in our interpretation of the text,’ said Daniel.
‘What if my first guess was wrong, and what I took for flood management measurements were actually successive dates, maybe encrypted?’ said Jack.
‘Come on Jack, Daniel has been at this for days,’ said Mina.
‘I don’t know,’ said Jack, ‘even if we had a perfect description of a star position, we’d still need another event to compare it with.’
‘Mina, he may be right. Let me try out his theory.’
Daniel stayed at the kitchen table, covering sheets with calculations. Suddenly he looked up, dazed and rushed to his laptop. He typed ‘1755 flood’ into Google. As he read through the results, his face drained of colour. Jack and Mina looked at him, as he frantically scribbled more calculations. After a while, he turned to Mina and Jack, horror-struck, and motioned for them to approach the screen.
‘Jack was right. It is a date. I thought to myself, we have a date, 1755, the year the letter was sent to Safed from Hildersham. It’s a weird letter. There’s no other correspondence between the two places. What if Alejandro Cardozo and his family fled Portugal for some imperative reason and needed to write to say the tablet was safe? What if something dramatic happened in 1755? Well something did happen that year: the Lisbon earthquake. It’s one of the worst earthquakes ever recorded in history and it was followed by a horrifying tidal wave on November 1st, 1755, at about 10.25 am. It killed over sixty thousand people.’
Mina did not respond. Her smile had vanished. She was thinking back to the letter Yeshua had written to his brother. It was dated December 1755. So Yeshua had left Lisbon with his family after the earthquake. Had he known how to use the tablet, surely he’d have left the city weeks beforehand. So why had he taken the tablet with him? She could only conclude that it was his duty to preserve the family’s treasure out of respect for his ancestors. And, as it said in his letter, he’d keep on taking care of the tablet until the day it could be returned to the Jerusalem temple and used appropriately. ‘Simply stupefying,’ thought Mina.
‘When and where will the next natural disaster hit?’ asked Jack, whose brain, as ever, was trying to ignore the horrifying details and move to practical considerations.
‘Oh I think I know,’ said Daniel.
‘So, tell us!’ said Jack and Mina in unison.
‘I calculated backwards from 1755 to find out what the date would have been in Babylonian terms… I used an online calculator. It seems that some astronomers spend a lot of time writing such software. To cut a long story short, the next gigantic natural disaster, whatever form it takes — earthquake, flood, eruption or other — will happen on 26th December, 2014. But we have no idea where it will hit. I wish we still possessed the stone tablet I found in Mosul. Maybe the clue was there? What are we supposed to do? I mean, we can’t exactly make a list of all the great rivers, volcanoes, seismic faults in the world and warn everyone living nearby, can we?’
Daniel came running into the room where Jack was re-checking his calculations.
‘Jack! Mina has found out where it will hit.’
They both went to the kitchen.
‘Boys,’ said Mina, ‘I’m pretty sure it will hit in the middle of the Indian Ocean. I’ve calculated the planetary and star alignment described in the text, and it corresponds roughly to the sky map on the 26th above the middle of the Indian Ocean.’
Jack looked at her calculations dubiously, but Daniel seemed uplifted. ‘Jack, let’s assume Mina is right. How bad do you think this could be? I mean, really, an earthquake in an ocean isn’t going to do much is it?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe you’re wrong about the location.’
‘Maybe. In any case, we have ten years to prepare, to do more research, and warn the appropriate authorities.’ Mina smiled and felt more hopeful than she had in weeks.
Mulberry Cottage. Later that afternoon
Mina, Jack and the Bamarts were relaxing in the living room. They could at last enjoy a peaceful afternoon together, without fear. Jack kept stealing glances at Mina. He still could not believe they had survived their ordeal and were having tea and scones in this delightful cottage. They had a decade to prepare for the worst.
‘Mina?’ asked Jack, idly stroking her hand.
‘Yes?’
‘Would you like to spend the Christmas holiday with me?’
‘I’d love that. With everything we’ve been through, I’d completely forgotten about Christmas. I’ll need to call my parents first, they expected me to be back home over the holidays.’
‘I don’t know how you managed that in England!’ said Daniel.
‘Managed what?’
‘Well, not noticing it was Christmas! People go nuts over Christmas in this country. You must have noticed the decorations, the Father Christmases and decorated crackers all over Cambridge?’
‘Nope. I’ve been immersed in the ancient tablet world the entire time,’ she replied. ‘Where are we going?’ She asked Jack, ‘West Virginia?’
‘No. I was thinking of somewhere more exotic,’ he broke off, smiling.
‘Won’t your family be disappointed not to see you?’
‘Not at all. They’re expecting me.’
‘But where?’ asked a tantalised Mina.
‘In Thailand. My mother and sister are already out there, on their first vacation outside the US.’
‘I’ll call my parents right away,’ answered Mina, she jumped up and turned to Daniel, ‘May I use the landline, Daniel?’
‘Of course,’ he replied, almost managing to conceal his jealousy.
She walked into the small study where Joshua kept his phone. It suddenly struck her that she hadn’t spoken to her parents since she had arrived in Iraq earlier in the month. She felt awful. ‘They must be terribly worried,’ she thought. That said, they had no reason to suspect anything was wrong. She couldn’t possibly tell them what she had gone through. Could she even let them know she was in Britain? She’d try not to lie, but she wouldn’t volunteer any information they didn’t ask her for directly.
‘Hi Mum!’ she said when the line finally connected.
‘Mina! Are you alright?’ asked her mother.
‘I’m fine, Mum.’
She heard her mother excitedly call her father to the phone.
‘Hi darling,’ said her father.
‘Hi Dad.’
‘Professor Almeini called us two weeks ago,’ he said, ‘he was worried about you. He thought you’d left the country? Things look terrible in Mosul, at least from what we can gather from the news.’
‘The media always exaggerate everything. You know that, Dad. I’m safe. I’ve met a very nice man. That’s why I’ve been out of reach for a few weeks. His name is Major Jack Hillcliff.’
Mina’s mother grabbed the phone.
‘A Major?’ she asked, excitedly.
‘Yes Mum. He’s a Major in the US army and he’s invited me to join his family for Christmas. Do you mind?’
‘Mina?’ her dad was back on the phone.
‘Yes?’
‘Is this Major next to you? I want to talk to him.’
‘I’ll get him. He’s in the next room.’
Mina took a deep breath and rushed into the living room. She quickly explained to Jack what had been said, and more importantly, what had been omitted from the conversation. They walked back to the study together.
‘Dr Osman?’ said Jack.
‘That’s me,’ said Mina’s father.
‘Hi. I’m Jack Hillcliff.’
‘I hear you’ve invited my daughter for the coming holidays.’
‘Yes I have. I hope that is alright with you?’
‘Well, young man, I need to know a little more about you, before agreeing to this out of the blue!’
‘Well Sir, I’m thirty-five years old. I’m a retired Major from the US army, and I’m a trained water engineer. I’m currently working under contract with a few NGOs to bring proper water supplies to villages in the Mosuli countryside.’
‘Good, good,’ said Mina’s father.
His wife picked up the phone again.
‘Hi. I’m Mina’s mother.’
‘Hi Mrs Osman.’
‘We are very happy to hear from you. Just make sure she returns safely to us, will you?’
‘Of course, Ma’am,’ said Jack.
‘We would also be happy to welcome you after the holidays in New York when Mina comes to see us’ she said, and before he could say anything, she added ‘could you pass me Mina.’
‘Yes of course, goodbye Mrs Osman.’
‘Goodbye,’ she said.
‘Mum?’ asked Mina, picking up the phone.
‘He sounds like a decent young man. Please bring him home after you’ve met his parents. Where do they live?’
‘In West Virginia,’ answered Mina.
‘Oh. That’s quite far away. When will you be back?’
‘Probably mid-January,’ Mina answered, cringing inwardly at the deception.
‘We’ll see you then. Do you need any money for the fare?’ asked her mother.
‘No mum, I’m fine. I’ve got a research grant.’
‘Wonderful! Such good news. Your father and I are very proud of you. Take good care of yourself.’
‘Yes mum. See you soon.’ She hung up, and looked guiltily at Jack.
‘Well, that went well. I feel awful!’
‘I’m not quite sure why you didn’t tell them we were going to Thailand.’
‘My parents are cool, but not that cool.’
‘They seemed easygoing to me,’ said Jack, grinning.
‘Time to look for a flight then,’ said Mina, refusing to pursue the conversation about her parents any further.
‘That’s all been taken care of my dear,’ he said smiling at her.
‘It’s the 21st today, when are we leaving?’ she asked.
‘Tomorrow. I had to change my original flight. There’s a flight tomorrow afternoon from Heathrow.’
‘I’ll get packing,’ she said, climbing up the stairs.
Daniel had observed the entire conversation, ‘You don’t waste time, do you?’ he said to Jack.
‘She’s worth it, a million times over, Dan.’ said Jack.
‘I agree. I’ve never met anyone like her… or you. I wish you both all the best.’
‘Thanks,’ said Jack.
‘Do you think Shobai’s men will return?’ Daniel asked with a slight tremor in his voice.
‘No. I don’t think so. They accomplished what they had planned. We’ll have a lot to do when we get back from Thailand. I’ll be in touch then. We need to decide which authorities to contact and how to strike a deal at the highest level to keep us all out of harm’s way, you and your father included, when Oberon Wheatley reappears.’
‘What? I thought he was also out of the picture?’ asked Daniel.
‘No. That’s what I told Mina to reassure her. She’s gone through hell because of that bastard. We’ve been out of his picture. But it won’t last.’
‘You mean, from the moment we make our findings public?’
‘Yes. He’ll come back with a vengeance. He has no idea we found the Jerusalem clay tablet.’
‘Of course. Well, don’t worry, we have oodles of time to prepare,’ said Daniel cheerfully.
‘Yes. Listen Daniel, I can’t thank you and your father enough for all your help.’
‘What are friends for?’ said Daniel, shaking Jack’s hand.
‘You’ve got yourself a friend too. Now, before we start weeping like girls, I’m going to pack up my stuff.’