The Einstein Prophecy

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“And this!” her father was saying, pulling several photos and reproductions from the blue folder he never let out of his sight anymore. “Look at this!”

“Lower your voice,” Simone said, glancing around the taproom, where several patrons had looked up from their drinks and meals. The only one who didn’t stir was the small man slouched in the wingback chair by the fire, his collar pulled so high and his cap so low there was no telling if he was dead or alive.

“Look at these and tell me they do not corroborate the injuries sustained by the bones in the ossuary!”

Simone had seen these pictures and photographs before. On a trip to Alsace, she had viewed the Isenheim Altarpiece itself; painted by Matthias Grünewald in the early sixteenth century, the masterpiece hung in the monastery of the Antonian monks, who were known for their care of those who suffered from the plague and other diseases of the skin, such as Saint Anthony’s fire.

“Look at this one in particular,” her father said, placing on top of the pile a photograph of a panel depicting the holy hermit tormented by demons. According to the legends and patristic literature on which Simone had been virtually raised, Satan and his hordes had tempted and tortured Saint Anthony his entire life. His purity and faith were considered a stubborn and vexing rebuke to their powers. But he had fought valiantly, wielding his staff with the crooked iron handle against them. In this particular panel, he was seen raising his staff to the Heavens for help, his body bloody and mutilated from the creatures’ claws and fangs.

Though she did not doubt her father’s conclusions — that the ossuary bones belonged to the ancient and persecuted saint — she did not see that these photos and etchings would help convince anyone else. “These are just paintings,” she said. “No one will lend them any credence.”

“But they are paintings that perfectly accord with the anatomical evidence your professors Athan and Delaney have uncovered.”

There was a glitter in his eye, a slightly feverish look, which Simone did not like to see, and his cough had not abated. She worried that he had caught a chill at the football stadium. She worried, too, that the shock of witnessing the knife attack on Einstein, by an assailant shouting an Arabic curse that no American would have had any way of knowing, had further disturbed him. How could it not? It had haunted her own thoughts ever since.

“And didn’t you tell me that those isotope tests, or whatever they are called, also confirmed the correct dates?”

“Yes,” she admitted, feeling guilty all over again that she had broken her vow of secrecy and shared all of the current findings with him. But it seemed impossible, and even unethical, to leave her father, without whom none of this would even be under discussion, out of the loop. No one deserved to know what was going on more than he did, and no one was owed her loyalty, and love, more than he was. “At least, most of the bones conformed.”

“Most?”

“The human bones dated from the third century or so. But the others, as I said, were indeterminate.”

“Of course they were,” he said. “They’re not human — they’re the bones of one of these,” he said, tapping an image of a creature in the Grünewald painting. “Listen,” he said, riffling through the blue folder and withdrawing a yellowed page. “This is from a biography of Saint Anthony, written by Ambrose in the fourth century.” His finger underlining the words, he read aloud, “ ‘And Anthony told the monks that followed him, “When, therefore, the demons come by night to you and wish to tell the future, or they say, ‘We are the angels,’ give no heed, for they lie…”’ ”

Similar words, Simone knew, to some that Lucas had found on the ossuary itself.

“ ‘“And if they shamelessly stand their ground, capering and changing their form or appearance, fear them not, nor shrink, nor heed them as though they were good spirits. For the presence either of the good or evil, by the help of God can easily be distinguished.”’ ” He paused, pressing his knuckles to his mouth to stifle a cough.

Behind her chair, Simone could hear the waitress asking the man slouched by the fire if he would like to order something now, but he snapped back at her to go away and leave him alone; judging from his guttural voice, he was not only someone who could barely speak English, but someone who could hardly speak at all. And to think that she and her father had been the ones nearly refused a room here.

“There is no question,” her father was saying, “that the thing is loose. But where? And how is it getting about?”

“What?” Simone said, refocusing and checking her watch. She was due — overdue now — at the art museum to see the film she had shot there.

“The demon may take any form, it says so right here, but how can we determine what host it has chosen?”

“You mean, who has been possessed?”

“Who, or what. Anything animate, anything with a corporeal form, will do. It needs a vehicle, as it were, to get around in.”

Simone’s head was spinning, though the sight of the would-be assassin, trudging like a zombie down the stadium aisle, did spring unnervingly to mind.

“Right now,” her father said, waving a hand around the taproom, “it could be anywhere.”

Simone heard a voice close behind her, and turned to see the restaurant manager looming above the man slouched in the armchair.

“Sir,” he was saying, “are you a guest of the inn? Sir?” After getting no reply, he said, “If you’re not going to order anything, you will have to leave.”

Though the man made no reply, an errant flame suddenly shot, like an arrow, out of the grate and singed the hem of the manager’s trousers. “Jesus!” he exclaimed, jumping back and batting it out.

“Come on,” Simone said to her father, “let’s get you up to the room.” She wouldn’t mind putting some distance between them and the surly stranger in the wingback chair, either. “What you need is a hot bath and a good night’s sleep.”

“A hot bath? That’s all you have to say in response?”

She was tempted to tell him that she was leaving for the art museum, but she knew that that would only lead to another argument. He would insist on going, she would refuse to take him out into another wet and blustery night, and things would go from bad to worse.

After signing the bill to their room — as usual, her father had had nothing but some noodle soup and tea — and helping replace his papers in the blue folder, she handed her father his walking stick, then held him by the elbow as they turned to leave the taproom. The unwelcome guest hadn’t budged from his chair, though Simone left him plenty of leeway as they passed by. Another burning log sputtered in the grate, and the faint smell of wet turf tinged the air. It reminded her of an autumn hike she’d taken through the Scottish Highlands.

“I’ll be back in a couple hours,” she was saying to her father, “and I want to find you fast asleep when I get here.”

“Where are you going at this hour?”

“To see Lucas,” was all she said, but it was enough to elicit a harrumph.

“He’s a good man,” Dr. Rashid grudgingly admitted, “but he’s been damaged, in more ways than one, by the war. Anyone can see that.”

“I do.”

“Tread lightly.”

Behind the bar, she spotted the manager dialing a phone while the waitress said, “I don’t care if you fire me — I’m not going back there.”

Simone didn’t blame her, especially as she had the distinct, and unsettling, impression that the man in the armchair, his head still tucked down into his coat like a turtle, had roused himself enough to turn and watch them go. She considered turning around to see if her suspicion was correct, but she didn’t want to give the nasty bastard the satisfaction.

Nor, if she was totally honest with herself, did she dare.