Evidently, everyone was keeping tabs on her.
Harrison gave instructions to his driver, a diminutive Asian man whose head barely reached high enough to see over the steering wheel. Then he shifted to face her, his expression grave. “I followed you, Marian.”
So she couldn’t trust Harrison after all.
As if sensing her suspicion, he held out a calming hand. “It’s not like that, love. I asked Bojing to keep an eye on the comings and goings at the hospital.” Harrison nodded toward his driver. “Two ticks after you took your leave, Bojing rang me on his mobile to inform me Lionel was indeed trailing you.”
She sensed he was telling her the truth. Nevertheless, she clutched the wad of papers and the bottle tighter.
“Now after Lionel accosted you, it’s quite apparent that whatever Arthur was working on was vitally important, and Lionel really wants to get their hands on it.”
The image of the gun in her attacker’s coat pocket seared her mind. Whatever Dad had discovered was important—so important people were willing to kill to get it.
“A few weeks ago, your dad said something.” Harrison swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple rising and falling. “At the time I brushed it aside. But now, with everything that’s transpired . . .”
“What did he say?” She glanced out the front window to see that Bojing had turned onto Whitehall Road. He was jerking the wheel back and forth and nearly taking the curves on two wheels like a driver from a crime show, even though no one seemed to be following them.
“You’ll think I’m a buffoon for repeating it. For considering there might be weight to it.”
“Probably.”
Harrison held on tightly to the leather seat with one hand and with the other tugged at his bow tie and collar as if they were strangling him. “He mentioned the ultimate cure can vibrate energy billions of times smaller than nuclei to a frequency and wavelength that can rejuvenate any illness.”
“Yes, I’ve heard his theory.” And she knew as well as Harrison the physics behind drugs, all about heat and friction and the vibration of particles that worked to kill targeted microscopic organisms.
Harrison cleared his throat. “This time he indicated the ultimate cure could possibly vibrate energy at such a frequency that it would have a strange effect on those who are healthy.”
“A strange effect? Like what?”
He grabbed on to the door handle as Bojing whipped the car around another bend. “It could vibrate in such a way that people would have realistic visions of the past or future or possibly even cross time.”
His words jolted her—along with Bojing’s crazy driving—and her thoughts jumped to the paper from the safety deposit box. “As in breaching the time-space continuum?”
Chagrin crinkled his forehead. “I know, right? The whole thing is ludicrous. Preposterous, even. But I wouldn’t bring it up except Arthur emphasized that healthy people having such wavelength vibrations would likely lose consciousness for the duration of their visions or time crossing.”
“Lose consciousness?”
“What if he meant they would fall into a coma?” Harrison’s serious eyes met hers.
Her thoughts pinged as a million neurons connected the dots. “So Dad developed his ultimate cure from remnants he finally found from the Tree of Life. He experimented with the new drug on himself and fell into a coma. And now while he’s in the coma, he’s supposedly crossing the time continuum?”
For several heartbeats, the gunning of the engine filled the space between them.
“Can you imagine? It’s sheer madness.” Harrison spoke the words first. Thankfully.
“It’s impossible.”
“Quite.”
They lapsed into silence. Her dad’s ramblings were impossible, weren’t they? But what if he had ingested something to purposefully cause a loss of consciousness? “If Dad tested a drug on himself, then why were the hospital labs negative?”
“Precisely. His urine or blood would show traces of something.”
They’d both examined the initial lab reports as well as the additional test results. Arthur Creighton wasn’t taking a single medication for anything. For a man in his early sixties, he was at his prime.
“I apologize, love.” Harrison released a long, tired sigh. “There’s no sense in fretting about it. I’m sure Arthur didn’t mean to imply he believed in crossing time. That’s a bit too deluded even for him.”
Was it?
Marian loosened her hold on the items she’d found at the bank and set them in her lap. She riffled through the papers, pulled one out, and handed it to Harrison.
He unfolded it and began to read. “Speculations of Breaching the Time-Space Continuum. Preface: Although I could find no written historical records from anyone making claims of breaching the time-space fourth dimension, I found stories from those having such realistic visions and dreams of the past, that I’ve concluded movement through the quantum energy field is possible and those who pass through it have been too ignorant or afraid to confess it.”
Marian read along silently as Harrison continued to read aloud.
“Number one: No evidence exists of people having visions/movements that overlap with their own time continuum; all visions/movements are of entirely different eras. Number two: It appears that people have visions or movement through the quantum energy field to a time period they affix in their mind; e.g. many claim to have visions of the crucifixion of Christ.”
Harrison stopped reading, his expression one of incredulity. “This was in his safety deposit box?”
She nodded. “I guess speculating about breaching time wasn’t too deluded for him.”
“Apparently not.” Harrison’s attention dropped to the rest of the items on her lap, as if they might provide answers. He startled at the sight of the flask, which had tumbled onto the seat next to her. “Is that what I think it is?”
She picked up the container and inspected it. “What is it?”
“It’s a pilgrim ampulla.” His eyes widened behind his glasses. “During the Middle Ages when people took pilgrimages to holy shrines, they carried little flasks filled with holy water or holy oil.”
“Like the pilgrims from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales?”
“Right. Like the thousands of pilgrims who came to Canterbury Cathedral to the shrine of St. Thomas. They purchased ampullae, badges, and other souvenirs.”
She knew enough Latin to understand that ampullae was the plural form of ampulla. During her visits to Canterbury over the years, she’d heard the term, and she’d inevitably learned the history that made the cathedral so famous. Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury during the twelfth century, had fallen out of favor with the king and was assassinated by four knights in Canterbury Cathedral.
For some reason, the pope canonized Becket, turning him into a saint. After that, people from all over England made pilgrimages to visit St. Thomas’s tomb in the cathedral.
“So what’s Dad doing with a pilgrim ampulla?” She turned the flask over, grazing the engravings on both sides.
“Arthur’s got up to something. Do you mind if I have a look?”
She handed it to Harrison. If he could figure out why it was among Dad’s most prized possessions, then more power to him.