The Einstein Prophecy (15 page)

Tucking in his scarf on the way to the front doors, he noticed that something was lying on the floor at the base of the Caithness Man’s display case, and went over to pick it up.

It was an open pack of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum, which had no doubt fallen out of the pocket of one of those brats he’d chased out of the building earlier. Oh well, it was his own good fortune now, as the pack was nearly full. He took out a stick, and was about to put the rest in his pocket, when, in jest, he offered one to the Caithness Man.

“Gum?” he said, but the word froze in his throat as he stared at his own reflection in the glass—or what should have been his own reflection. What he saw there instead, pressed up against the glass, was the face of a leering gargoyle with beady golden eyes and a slash of mouth that stretched from ear to pointed ear. He reared back, and as he did, the image—the hallucination—evaporated as quickly as it had appeared. Now it was only the Caithness Man again, lashed to his stake.

Bumping into a rack of primitive tools behind him, and still keeping his eye on the display case, he stumbled to the doors, and then outside onto the sunlit steps.

Somebody blasted a trumpet, and some others laughed, on their way to the game.

Andy clung to the railing with both hands, the blood thrumming in his veins, and his thoughts in turmoil. This work was getting to him in a way nothing else had ever done, enough to make him wonder, just what
had
he been studying in his lab?

And what, perhaps, had been studying him?

CHAPTER TWENTY

If you had to attend a football game, this was the kind of day to do it, Lucas thought. The sun was shining in a bright blue sky, the air was crisp and cold, and the crowd passing through the high arches into the Princeton stadium was in a festive mood, waving pennants and calling out to each other in boisterous voices.

Still, if President Dodds hadn’t made faculty attendance so imperative—his earlier admonition had been succeeded by an envelope containing tickets to the reserved seating area and inscribed with “See you there!”—Lucas would have continued to do nothing but focus on the ossuary and the aftermath of its opening.

Christ, it had been a hard couple of days. Once the wind had died down in the conservation wing and there seemed nothing else to do that night, Delaney, looking pale and perturbed, had packed up his tools and wandered off toward his lab again, while Lucas had removed the film canister from the camera, locked up the room, and escorted Simone through the murky corridors of the museum and out into the dismal night. He hadn’t had to say he was walking her back to the Nassau Inn; it was understood. And truth be told, he was doing it as much for himself as for her. Neither one of them would have wanted to be alone with the knowledge of what they had just witnessed. Lucas felt like something at his very core—call it a coldly empirical cast of mind—had been turned upside down, like a cocktail shaker, and rattled hard.

Simone was quiet as they walked along the puddled pathways across the campus, and she made no objection when Lucas looped a protective arm around her shoulders. Indeed, she seemed to melt into his body, so that the two of them were walking less like participants in an academic endeavor than lovers. Not since leaving Europe had Lucas experienced such an onslaught of feelings—everything from shock to confusion, tenderness to guilt at having exposed Simone, and Delaney, too, to such a troubling and possibly dangerous event. He could barely sort through the unfamiliar rush of emotions. Emotions were what he had been trying to keep at bay ever since the iron mine.

Like moths drawn to flame, he and Simone made their way through the darkness and toward the lights of town. Most of the storefronts were closed down for the night, but the lights were on in the windows of the Nassau Inn, and even the lobby was bustling with people. A placard on a stand welcomed the members of the Northeast Bottling Association to their annual convention, still in progress in the Gold Ballroom upstairs.

“It will be much quieter downstairs,” Simone said, leading Lucas to the taproom, where only a few of the revelers had found their way to the bar. Two wingback chairs, flanking the roaring fireplace, were unoccupied, and Simone and Lucas took them. Lucas ordered her a Campari and soda, the drink he’d seen her imbibe the day they met, and a double Scotch on the rocks for himself.

Despite the glow from the hearth, Simone still looked pale. Her eyes stayed riveted on the orange flames and crackling wood in the fireplace. “I should have told you sooner,” she finally said.

“Told me what?”

“The ossuary. My father and I believe it contains the bones of Saint Anthony. We found it in the White Desert, the empty quarter of the Sahara.”

“Saint Anthony,” he repeated. It was the second time in a matter of hours he had heard the name. Wasn’t Wally Gregg dying from something called Saint Anthony’s fire? Could this really be just a coincidence?

“He was a saint who wrestled with demons.”

“Okay,” Lucas replied, evenly. Why not? In his experience, most saints had colorful and extraordinary tales told about them; it was how they’d become saints in the first place.

“My father . . .” Simone hesitated. “He thinks that the box might hold not only the saint’s relics, but some residue of his powers, too.”

Lucas took a strong slug of his Scotch, absorbing all that she was finally telling him. “So, are you suggesting that we might have released some holy spirit into the world?” he said skeptically.

She didn’t reply.

“Well, if we did, the world could certainly use it about now.”

“He also believes,” she said, “that the box might have contained the spirit of something evil. Something the saint had captured.”

That
revelation comported eerily with what Lucas had experienced in the past hour. Putting his glass down on the tiny table between the two chairs, he thought of the dreadful and annihilating sadness that had coursed through him once he’d lifted that strange skull from inside its alabaster prison. No believer in ancient spirits or trapped demons, he nonetheless remained at a loss to account for such a sensation. Even in the worst of the war—the night he’d discovered the bodies of the parishioners all locked in a church that had been burned down around them, or the day he’d watched the blond boy blown to bits by the land mine—he’d felt nothing like it. Those ordeals had been traumatic, but at least he could grasp why they had been so disturbing—he had seen the carnage, he had smelled the death. Anyone in his right mind would have been rocked back on his heels. But this time, he had observed nothing concrete, nor had he sustained any physical damage.

So why did his insides feel like that bleak and empty desert Simone had adverted to?

“What else can you tell me?” Lucas asked, and in a low, almost perfunctory tone, Simone told him all about her father’s research, their expedition into the cave hidden below the spitting cobra, the scorpion attack on young Mustafa, the theft of the box from the Cairo Museum. Everything. As she did so, he began to put together a picture—a picture that might explain why the Reich had been so intent on retrieving the ossuary, and why the OSS was equally determined to hold onto it and exploit it. The Axis powers and the Allies were fighting over what amounted, in his view, to a magical talisman. He might have utterly discounted such an idea days before, but not anymore.

Not with the echo of that wind in his ears and the icicle in his heart.

Without even being aware of it, his hand had bridged the table between them and taken hold of hers. Despite her proximity to the fireplace, her skin was still cold, and he clutched her fingers to warm them. Her fingers squeezed his back, though she never averted her gaze from the leaping, crackling flames. It was as if she were looking back in time, back at the events she had been describing. When the waitress returned to see if they wanted another round, Lucas said no, paid the bill, and led Simone back up to the elevator bank in the lobby.

“I would ask you to come up and meet my father, but he might have gone to bed already.”

“Another time.”

“Yes.”

Still, he was reluctant to let her go. “What about tomorrow?” he said suddenly. “I’m pretty much required to attend the Columbia football game, and I have extra tickets.”

“A football game?”

As he said it, he’d warmed to the idea. Maybe a day in the sunshine and fresh air was precisely what they all needed. What better way to dispel the pall that had descended upon them that night, even if it was only for a few hours? And if he was completely honest with himself, the idea of spending an afternoon with this lovely young woman carried its own appeal. “You owe it to your father, too,” he said, “to show him something other than the inside of a library or an art museum.” Gradually he could see her come around. A small smile creased her lips, and for a moment, he thought she was going to stand on her toes and kiss him.

And she might have, had it not been for the heavy paw slapping him on the shoulder, and the tipsy conventioneer saying, “Aren’t you the new sales rep from Hartford?”

He might have returned such a kiss, eagerly, if she had.

Instead, the moment passed, the elevator arrived, and she stepped inside. As the doors closed, it was all he could do not to duck inside with her.

“You shouldn’t have let that one get away,” the conventioneer had said before stumbling off. “She’s a keeper.”

The phrase had stuck with him, and he thought of it even now, as he watched her tenderly guide her father, one hand at his elbow, into the football stadium. From what she’d whispered to him when Dr. Rashid was out of earshot, getting him here had not been an easy sell.

“He thinks we’re all insane to be wasting time on this when we could be working on the ossuary.”

“But you got him to come.”

“It’s all because he wanted to size you up.”

Lucas had laughed. “What’s the verdict?”

“Still out.”

A student usher, in an orange blazer and straw boater hat, studied their ticket stubs, then led them down to their seats in the section reserved for faculty and special guests. Dr. Rashid made sure to place himself between them on the bench.

The stadium was only half full, but everyone had congregated down front and in the center. The Princeton side of the field was a sea of orange and black, while the Columbia fans were decked out in the school’s blue and white. The two mascots—a Princeton tiger and a Columbia lion—were gamboling about their respective sidelines in tatty costumes, stirring up the crowd. On the far side of the aisle, and several rows back toward the bleachers, he spotted Taylor from the boardinghouse wolfing down a hot dog and a beer.

Taylor glanced his way, too, but didn’t so much as alter his chewing to acknowledge him.

“You know that man?” Simone asked.

“He lives in the same boardinghouse I do, but I can’t say I know him. I’m not sure anybody does.”

“And how long do these games generally last?” Dr. Rashid interjected, resting his hands atop his ebony cane.

“A couple of hours,” Lucas said, “with a break at halftime.”

Rashid snorted, and Simone leaned forward just enough to exchange a glance with Lucas.

“That’s when the band plays and puts on a show.”

Rashid looked even unhappier, until Simone plucked at his sleeve and said, “Look who else is here.”

She directed their gaze a few rows down, where, to Lucas’s surprise, he saw a cloud of white hair, billowing like a dandelion, above a brown overcoat and loose orange scarf. It was Professor Einstein himself, merrily chatting with President Dodds and three other men sitting with them. One was Professor Gödel, recognizable to everyone in town, but the other two Lucas recognized from the papers. The first was the famous Hungarian physicist, Leó Szilárd, who was now conducting his research at Columbia University— nobody knew exactly what he was up to, but it could be surmised to have something to do with the war effort. The other was the world-renowned English philosopher and mathematician, Bertrand Russell. Lucas had seen a poster on campus, advertising a speech he was to give that morning to the Whig-Clio debate society.

“I saw Russell give a series of lectures at Cambridge one summer,” Simone said. “On pacifism.”

“Pacifism is all well and good when the world is at peace,” Dr. Rashid scoffed, “but it is of very little use when it’s not. He should stick to his mathematics. When a butcher is threatening to slaughter half the world, Mr. Russell and his high-minded philosophy are the last thing we need.”

“I do believe that he has tempered his views in light of recent events,” Simone said.

“Tempering them isn’t enough. He needs to keep silent altogether.”

Lucas was in full agreement. Russell’s ideals were lofty and desirable, but in practical terms, impossible. He watched now as the Englishman, thin and elongated as a stork, bent forward, smiling and sharing some story with his compatriots. It looked like they were all having a very congenial reunion.

As Lucas watched, a couple of fans timidly approached the group and apparently asked for Einstein’s autograph. The professor obligingly scrawled his name on their programs, as Russell, plainly pretending offense at being overlooked, protested. The fans extended their programs, and Russell, too, signed them with a honking laugh and a grand flourish. Gödel simply immersed himself in deep conversation with Szilárd. Dodds had departed to glad-hand others in the crowd, though not before noting, with a nod of approval, Lucas’s presence in the stands.

Just before the game got underway, the announcer’s voice came over the loudspeaker, first to lead a prayer for “the safety of our troops fighting for freedom around the globe,” and then to acknowledge the special guests in attendance at this game. When his name was called, Russell stood up and took a bow with his arm folded across his abdomen.

“Would Professor Einstein care to come onto the field,” the announcer asked, “and perform the traditional coin toss?”

The professor appeared baffled, but his friends urged him on as an usher guided him down onto the field, where he was loudly cheered. He waved bashfully at the crowd, brushing his thick gray moustache with the other hand, as the referee proffered the quarter and explained that all he had to do was let the Columbia quarterback call heads or tails, then toss the coin.

“And then maybe you can explain the probabilities to us,” the referee announced over the microphone.

“I expect that they will be precisely the same,” Einstein said, in his heavily accented voice. “Precisely the same.”

The crowd roared with laughter, as they no doubt would have done at anything Einstein uttered. His voice was more natural and congenial than some might have expected, and he displayed the odd habit—repeating the final phrase of what he’d just said—that Lucas had heard other faculty members comment on.