The Einstein Prophecy

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.

The Lions’ quarterback called tails, Einstein tossed the coin, then glanced down at the result on the back of his hand. “It is… tails, ja?” and before he could even think to repeat it, the referee declared, “Tails it is.” Turning to the Columbia player, he said, “Do you elect to kick, or receive?”

“Receive.”

Einstein was escorted back to his seat, and the Tigers kicked off. Lucas explained what was happening as the game went on—“each team has four downs to advance the ball ten yards,” and “there’s a penalty for what’s called holding,” or “you can’t cross the line of scrimmage until the ball is hiked”—while Simone and her father did their best to follow along. Lucas had the impression that Dr. Rashid, despite his reluctance to come, was beginning to become engaged by the rules and strategies of the game, which was exactly what had appealed to Lucas back when he was in high school and had quarterbacked his team to a state championship. He had enjoyed trying to outthink his opponents, and figure out his players’ deployment: Where did you send your receivers, how did you make the most use of your blockers? In those days, Lucas had seldom been sacked. Today, with a patch over one eye, he’d be a sitting duck.

At halftime, with Columbia ahead by one touchdown, the Princeton band marched onto the field in orange blazers and straw hats, playing the usual Sousa medley, and Lucas treated Simone and her dad to hot dogs with generous helpings of relish and mustard—“you’ve got to have the full football experience,” he joked — before discovering that her dad was vegetarian.

“Oh, my apologies,” he said, going back for a hot salted pretzel, which Dr. Rashid accepted with gratitude. There was a nip in the air, and the warmth of the food was a welcome antidote. Lucas thought that even Simone had managed to lose herself in the game, and forget, for this short while, the momentous discoveries and events of the past few days. When a Princeton player caught a kickoff and then miraculously ran the ball all the way back downfield and across the goal line, she jumped to her feet with the rest of the crowd, clapping her hands together in glee.

“Now they get three more points if they can kick it between the goal posts?” she asked, and Lucas found himself utterly charmed by her growing enthusiasm.

“One,” he said, and after the football had soared cleanly between the uprights, the Lions called for a time-out to regroup.

As the crowd stamped their feet and stretched their arms to get the blood flowing, Lucas noticed a man in a long houndstooth coat, with the collar turned up and a battered hat pulled low, moving down the aisle to his left. Why the man caught his eye at all wasn’t clear at first; it might have been the fact that his face seemed so purposefully concealed, or the deliberation with which he was traveling toward the reserved seats, but Lucas’s time on the front had taught him not to ignore his instincts.

The game was already nearly over, the sun settling lower in the sky and a chill descending; the ushers were no longer paying much attention to the activity in the aisles, or to people switching from the bleachers to better seats closer to the field.

The houndstooth man slipped around them all like a shadow, fixed on something straight ahead. Judging from the path he had so far taken, Lucas figured that his goal — or target? — might be the four luminaries, whose heads were bent low in conversation, oblivious to everything going on around them.

“Excuse me,” Lucas said, abruptly getting to his feet and inching past Dr. Rashid and Simone.

“If you’re going back to the concession stand,” Simone said, “the treats are on me this time.”

Lucas didn’t answer; his entire focus was on the man, whose hands, he now saw, were wedged deep into the pockets of the overcoat. Lucas stepped as nimbly as he could over the other people in the row — one of whom protested, nonetheless, that he had kicked over a thermos — but he was still a dozen yards away when he felt sure that the man was gripping something tightly, and then saw one hand emerge holding a long, sharp blade.

“Watch out!” Lucas shouted as he scrambled over the spectators still in his way.

The man had already reached the front row, and just as Russell rose to adjust the blanket he’d been sitting on, he leapt forward, with the knife raised. Einstein, oblivious to the threat, was tamping tobacco into his pipe.

But the leap had been clumsy, and whether he’d slipped on the concrete or tripped over someone’s shoe, he wound up falling between two rows, the knife scraping against the edge of the wooden seats, right between a startled Russell and Einstein’s back. Someone screamed, and the man was up and on his feet again, the hat shoved low on his brow, the knife flashing in the late afternoon sun. As Russell stumbled backward, out of reach, and Einstein turned his head — though he still didn’t seem to understand what all the commotion was about — Lucas launched himself over a woman still sitting, and rammed his shoulder, like a fullback, into the side of the assailant. They both toppled over, crashing into a couple of other terrified spectators, then tumbling down between two rows of seats.

Lucas groped for the hand still clutching the knife, as the man struggled to get up again and complete his mission. It was almost as if he wasn’t aware of Lucas’s intervention — his mutilated, but suddenly familiar, face was as blank as a slate, and his coat fell open to reveal a ruddy neck, bumpy as a gourd.

Lucas grabbed at the cuff of his overcoat, but the man swung the knife wildly, slicing through the sleeve of his leather bomber jacket. Slamming the hand holding the knife against the edge of the seats — once, twice, three times — Lucas tried to shake the blade loose. But the man would not let go. His eyes, dull and glassy, looked empty of intention, though his swollen lips opened wide to shout out something that sounded like gibberish. Lucas shoved his open palm under the man’s chin, snapping his jaws shut and smacking the back of his head against the concrete.

The hat rolled away under the seats. The knife clattered to the cement. The head came up again, shouting the same thing once more, and Lucas slammed it down even harder. This time he felt a sudden ebbing of strength beneath him, as if the air were suddenly escaping from a punctured balloon. The body went slack beneath him, the mouth dropping open like a trapdoor, emitting an odor so foul Lucas could barely breathe. The man’s eyes, perhaps catching some errant ray of the autumnal sun, flashed with a golden gleam.

Lucas felt a hand gripping his shoulder, and registered Taylor saying, “You can let go now. You can let go.”

The gleam in the man’s eye winked out.

Lucas was dimly aware of ushers shepherding Einstein and the others in his party up the aisle. Gödel, hardly able to walk from the fear, was being supported on either side by Russell and Szilárd.

“It’s okay to let go,” Taylor said, trying to calm him.

Lucas leaned back on his haunches, trying to catch his breath again, his heart still pounding. Taylor had his hand under his arm now, and was helping to raise him up and then deposit him on one of the vacated seats.

Lucas was still trying to make some sense out of what he was seeing.

Lying at his feet, his coat torn open in the struggle, wearing a soiled hospital gown tucked into a pair of suit trousers, was the janitor from the art museum. Wally Gregg.

Simone was suddenly beside him, her hand on the lapel of his jacket. “Are you all right?” she said, her father leaning anxiously on his cane behind her. She plucked at his punctured sleeve and said, “You’ve been cut.”

But Lucas still didn’t feel it; the adrenaline coursing through his veins was keeping any pain at bay. All he could focus on was the body sprawled in the aisle. The body of a man who had already been through hell, a man everyone had expected to die in the hospital bed where Lucas had left him.

Only he hadn’t. He had died here, and at Lucas’s hand.

Ushers, and then a pair of cops, cleared the other onlookers away. The announcer declared over the PA system that, although there was no reason for panic, everyone should leave the stadium immediately, in an orderly fashion.

“We have to get you to a hospital,” Simone said.

Taylor agreed—“and get him a tetanus shot, he got cut with that knife”—as several more cops showed up to cordon off the area. Lucas felt Simone’s arm wrap around him as he moved up the aisle toward the exit.

“He said something,” Lucas said. The crowd, agitated, jostled them on all sides. He was starting to feel some sensation in his upper arm, and something warm — blood — trickling down below his torn sleeve.

“I didn’t hear it,” Simone said.

“I wonder what it was.”

“I heard it,” Dr. Rashid confessed as they passed into the gloomy shadow of the archway.

“You did?” Lucas said, lifting his injured arm to his chest in an attempt to shield it from the throng surging around them. “What was it?”

“It was Arabic.”

That sounded about right, though he still had no idea what the words meant, or how Wally Gregg of all people would have come to shout them.

“Ancient Arabic, in fact.”

The pain in his arm came alive, as abruptly as if a switch had just been thrown. Wincing, Lucas said, “Meaning?”

With an ashen expression on his face, Dr. Rashid carefully planted his cane on the next step, then answered, “It was an oath. A common one in that region of the world.”

The PA system blared some unintelligible instruction.

“It means, ‘Death to the swine.’ ”