Siege of Stone Read Online Free PDF Page B

she call back.
    Now, what the hell was this all about? Martin Leech had joined MI5 several years before Molly'd left. He had been very unlike his name, a gentle young man eager to learn, and to serve his queen and country. A bit over eager, she had thought, like a puppy rather than a leech.
    Then she thought about the possibility that his call might have something to do with the glowing cloth she had confiscated from Tom Kerr. The day before, she had driven over to the Mellangaun Stones and given the box and cloth to a Dr. Ewing, the head of the dig, but had cautioned him that it was glowing and might be radioactive. He had tentatively identified the box as fourteenth-century, and had said that he would send it directly to the university for examination. Molly had asked that she be informed of whatever was learned about the cloth, and Dr. Ewing had promised her she would be. But what, she wondered, might MI5 have to do with it? And so quickly, too?
    She dialed the number, identified herself, and was put through to Leech. "Molly," he said. "How are things in Scotland?" His voice sounded jovial enough, but she sensed an undertone of tension.
    "Fine, Martin, just fine. So tell me, is this about the cloth?"
    There was a moment of silence, then a small laugh. "I'm sure your detection skills are proving useful up there. Yes, it is about the cloth. They called us from Edinburgh University just about an hour ago. For the past twenty-four hours they've been mucking about with this blanket or cloth or whatever it is, and they've found some rather . . . amazing things. It is indeed radioactive, and it seems to have been inside the box for the past five hundred years, at least. Now, I don't pretend to understand all this scientific terminology, but the gist of it is that at first they thought it was emitting gamma rays, because the electromagnetic waves had a very short wavelength. Apparently these gamma rays are very dangerous, but when they did whatever they do to measure this sort of thing, they found that they weren't gamma rays, because they didn't seem to harm . . . oh, what's the word? . . ."
    "Ionize," Molly said.
    "Yes, ionize any atoms. And they found something else very odd indeed. Gamma rays travel at the speed of light. These rays, well, they tested again and again, and far as they could determine, these travel . . . faster than light."
    "That's impossible, isn't it?"
    "Apparently not. There are these things called tachyons that they believe might exist that go faster than light and can't be slowed down, but nobody's found them. Yet."
    "If they can't be slowed down, how could lead contain them?"
    There was silence for a moment. "I don't know. Maybe they just bounced around faster than light inside the box. I'm not really a scientist, Molly, and I don't pretend to understand everything that I've heard today, but that's about the gist of it."
    Bull shite , Molly thought. There was more to come. Leech wouldn't have spilled all these secrets otherwise. She waited, and Leech spoke again.
    "Now, all this is very top secret, of course. But the reason I'm telling you is because we need your cooperation."
    "In what way?"
    "Well, if these tachyons could be found and somehow harnessed, it would change the history of the world . . . or of communication, anyway. Imagine, instantaneous communication to anywhere in the universe. There's a feather in the cap for England, eh? Now, the cloth came from the area in which you're CI, and you'd sniff out an MI5 investigation as soon as one of us popped up his head. So the powers that be figured it would be better to have you with us from the start. And let's face it, we know that there's no security risk involved with bringing you onto the team."
    "Wait a moment, Martin. What do you mean, 'onto the team'? I resigned from MI5, you know. Not retired, resigned ."
    "We understand that. You would merely be our local police liaison, but you would assist us in maintaining our cover."
    "Which is?"
    "An