Free Newton’s Fire by Will Adams Page A

yeah? Great. Then take care, now.’ He ended the call and handed Luke his phone so that he could try the various numbers. Without success. ‘Do you want to go sit outside her place?’ asked Pelham. ‘You can’t consider yourself a proper stalker until you’ve done that.’
    ‘How far is it?’
    Pelham turned on his GPS, typed in her address. ‘Other side of town,’ he said. ‘Twenty minutes or so.’ He gave Luke a pointed look. ‘Just about long enough for you to tell me what the fuck’s going on.’
    ‘Fair enough,’ said Luke. He took a moment to order his thoughts. ‘Remember that business with the Uni?’
    Pelham nodded soberly. ‘Of course.’
    ‘I tried to get myself another job, but I was way too toxic. It was clearly going to be a year or two before the whole thing died down, so I decided to make a virtue of necessity, write my book. I’d been talking about it long enough.’
    ‘Telling me.’
    ‘I had some savings, but it was still going to be pretty tight, you know; so I put the word out that if there was any work—’
    ‘I asked around,’ said Pelham. ‘I swear I did. But you know how things are.’
    ‘I wasn’t having a go. I’m just explaining the background. Because around last Christmas this guy rings out of the blue. He tells me his name is Steven, though I doubt now that it really was. He says that he’s a lawyer and that he’s got a possible job for me. One of his clients is apparently a Newton obsessive.’
    ‘You should get on famously, then.’
    ‘This client had commissioned him to track down all of Newton’s papers still missing from the Sotheby’s auction. You know about that, right?’
    ‘Do I?’ asked Pelham. He pulled up at a set of lights, indicated to turn left. ‘Tell you what: why don’t you give me the refresher?’
     
III
     
    Richard Morgenstern sounded young, enthusiastic, and distinctly Texan. ‘Great to hear from you, sir,’ he boomed, when Croke called him. ‘ I’m on my way to City Airport now. You’re not there already, are you?’
    ‘No. But I need something done and I hoped you’d be able to help.’
    ‘If I can, I will. Anything for a man like you.’
    ‘A man like me?’
    ‘A friend of
hers
. She called me herself, you know? I mean, hell, I saw her a few times during the campaign, and once at the Academy. But I never
spoke
to her before. And she wasn’t my Commander-in-Chief then. It’s not the same, is it?’
    ‘No. I guess not.’
    ‘You know what she told me? She told me this is her number one priority right now. She said this trumps
everything
.’ He laughed a little giddily, as though he still couldn’t quite believe it. ‘So tell me what you need. If it’s in my power—’
    ‘There’s an email that could be problematic,’ said Croke. ‘I need it deleted.’
    ‘Civilian or government.’
    ‘Civilian.’
    ‘Hell,’ said Morgenstern. ‘It would be.
Reading
an email’s easy. We get copies of everything sent anywhere. But
deleting
one is hard. The service providers can be real assholes. They like evidence of threat or wrongdoing. They like
warrants
. Can we take this to the courts?’
    ‘No,’ said Croke.
    ‘Then I don’t know what to suggest.’
    ‘How about the police?’ asked Croke. ‘Will they do what you ask without going to a judge?’ He outlined his idea.
    Morgenstern laughed. ‘That shouldn’t be a problem,’ he said. ‘I’ll get on to it now. I’ll call back if I have any trouble; otherwise you can assume it’s taken care of, and I’ll see you on the ground in thirty.’
    ‘Thanks,’ said Croke. ‘I’ll let my people know to expect company.’

NINE
     
I
     
    It wasn’t easy, giving an abbreviated history of the Newton papers. Luke had to start way back. ‘Okay,’ he told Pelham. ‘Newton never married or had children, so he left all his papers to his niece Catherine. Her daughter married into the Portsmouth family, who offered them to Cambridge University back in the 1870s.