The Einstein Prophecy

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Professor Einstein and his friends were whisked out of the stadium by policemen, loaded into a cruiser, and driven straight back to Mercer Street, sirens blaring and lights flashing. Helen was already waiting on the front porch by the time they got there, and quickly brought them all inside, closing and locking both the screen door, which was usually left open, and the inner door, too. A cop, arms folded, was stationed on the front steps.

Russell, Szilárd, and Gödel were all as agitated as could be expected, though Einstein himself felt an odd sense of calm. The incident, after all, was over, with no serious repercussions — unless that young man, the one with the black patch, had been seriously hurt. He would have to make inquiries about his welfare.

While Helen fussed over the others, offering tea and brandy and wrapping a blanket around the shivering Gödel’s shoulders, Einstein himself went up to his office to gather his thoughts. He shrugged off his coat and was just about to toss it on the sofa when he noticed what looked like blood spattered on the collar. He knew it wasn’t his own, and now he was even more concerned about the fate of that young man with the eye patch. Something told him that he had even seen the fellow before, and then he remembered — he had observed him once or twice on the porch of that house across the street. Ah then, that would make it easier to find out if he was all right.

Brushing some papers from the seat of his desk chair — Helen sometimes piled his mail there so he wouldn’t miss it — he plopped down and let out a great sigh. In a way, he was surprised that this sort of thing hadn’t happened to him more often. Every day, he received a flood of fan mail from people in all walks of life — budding scientists, schoolchildren, even the occasional female admirer — but mixed in with all the pleasant stuff were angry letters from cranks, maniacs, conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites, and proud and patriotic Americans who believed he was a Communist sympathizer or worse. J. Edgar Hoover, Einstein knew perfectly well, suspected him of harboring pro-Soviet sentiments and, as a result, had undoubtedly been keeping a file on him at the FBI for many years. It was Hoover, without question, who had been instrumental in revoking the top security clearance that Einstein had once enjoyed.

And which Oppenheimer had secretly circumvented by coming to his house for help.

When the phone rang only minutes later, he wasn’t surprised. He waited for Helen to answer it downstairs, as she always did, then listened for her knock on his door. When it came, he said, “Yes?”

“It is from New Mexico, Professor.”

He didn’t have to know any more than that. He swiveled his creaking chair toward the desk, cleared away some paper debris, and picked up the receiver. He had barely said hello before Oppenheimer blurted out, “Are you all right?”

“Yes, Robert, I am fine.”

“I’m told the assassin is dead.”

He was? Einstein had not known that for sure. “But he cannot have been an assassin, can he, if I am still here and on the telephone?” At the worst and most trying moments, it was his habit always to try to find a joke. “That is only logical, ja?”

“You’re spending too much time with Gödel.”

Einstein managed a dry chuckle. “Leó and Bertrand are keeping him company right now, in the parlor.”

“Is that Bertrand as in Russell?”

“Yes.” Einstein could virtually hear Oppenheimer taking in this one small detail he might not have known.

“Huh. I was told there was someone else in your party. They didn’t tell me it was Mr. Pacifism and Appeasement himself.”

“He has come around in his opinions, you know. In light of what is happening in the world today, his views, like mine, have had to change.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

“Have you considered that the attacker might have been after him, and not me? The knife fell right between us.” Even with the static on the long-distance line, Einstein could hear Oppenheimer snort.

“Nobody wants to kill a philosopher, Albert. Nobody cares.”

“And they care about physicists? To most people, I am just an old man long ago put away in mothballs.”

“Not to that guy with the knife you weren’t. Whoever he turns out to be, he knew better than that. That’s what worries me. Will you listen to me now, when I say that you need a bodyguard? I still have friends in Army Intelligence who will okay it if I say so. Hoover will never even know.”

“I will think about it.”

“Don’t bother. You’ve got more important things to think about, like those problems we reviewed the last time I was there with you.”

“That is what I have been doing.”

“And? Have you figured out what we’re doing wrong?”

“The mathematics were precise, even elegant, but I do think that I have found the underlying flaw.”

“In the math?” Oppenheimer asked, surprised.

“No, you cannot beat John von Neumann at that game. The flaw is in the application. The mechanics.”

“Don’t tell me anything more over this phone. Write it all down, and I’ll send a courier. When do you want him?”

“Allow me the night to compose my conclusions. Send him tomorrow morning, late.”

“Okay then. Say good-bye to your cronies, Albert. I’ve already sent cars to round them up — I’ll make sure Russell gets wherever he wants to go, too.”

“But he is my houseguest.”

“Not anymore, he isn’t. What if your crazy theory is right and somebody wants to kill the apostle of peace and harmony, after all? There’s a war on — get back to work.”

Oppenheimer hung up, as usual, without saying good-bye, and Einstein sat back in his chair. Through the window, he could see a tabby cat lurking near the garage, stalking something in the backyard. He’d seen this cat out there before, and though he knew that cats, too, had to eat, he hoped that its quarry would escape unharmed. If only there were a way, he thought, that every living creature could survive without doing injury to any other. The world had been constructed along bloody lines, of that there was no doubt, and it remained a puzzle at least as baffling as the unified field theory he had been seeking so long.

Outside, he could hear the slamming of car doors, followed by the tromping of feet on the wooden steps of the front porch. Then voices, several of them — young, male, and peremptory. The security detail sent by Oppenheimer to safely escort everyone away. The man was a strict taskmaster, but then he had to be. A war, indeed, was on — the worst that the world had ever known. Einstein turned his attention to the blackboard on which he had been scrawling his latest calculations, and wondered again if he was serving mankind as an angel, or a devil. Would his work here bring an end to the war, or simply sow the whirlwind? It was something he could have discussed with Russell, a man as tormented by such questions as he was, for hours on end.

But not, it would seem, tonight. Tonight there would be no vigorous debate, no company at all, in fact.

Turning his attention to the blackboard, in only a few moments he had done what he had always been able to do, whether it was in a quiet study in Bern or on a crowded trolley car in Berlin — he had lost himself in his true home: the beautiful, and infinitely consoling, realm of thought alone.