The Einstein Prophecy

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Back when he was in training in Fort Meade, Maryland, Ray Taylor had earned the nickname Hawkeye. His eyesight was exceptional — his scores on the rifle range were among the highest ever recorded — and his hearing was equally acute. Even when sleeping, as he was now, he remained more aware of his surroundings than some people were when they were wide-awake.

At the sound of a car pulling up outside now, he abruptly lifted his head from the pillow. In his T-shirt and boxer shorts, he went to the window; crouching down, he pulled the curtain to one side and saw the back door of a cab swing open and Lucas get out. A second later, a girl got out, too — that Egyptian girl who’d shown up in several of Brandt’s photos, the one who worked at the university. Simone Rashid. He’d been sent a thorough report on her from headquarters, and he’d read it twice. An impressive résumé, especially for such a knockout.

Right now, however, she didn’t look so hot. Right now, she looked like she was barely holding herself together.

After unloading a couple of suitcases from the trunk of the cab and leaving them at the curb, Lucas put an arm around her shoulder and escorted her unsteadily up the front steps. The front door closed behind them as softly as possible, and as they mounted the staircase to Lucas’s apartment at the top of the house, he could hear their footsteps passing his own room. By the time Lucas had crept back down to retrieve the suitcases, Taylor had thrown on some clothes and followed him outside. From force of habit, he’d also slung his shoulder holster and gun under his Windbreaker. The cab was long gone.

It was cold and dark, with a wet wind blowing, and Taylor had to come up right behind him and put a hand on his shoulder before Lucas even knew he was there. The man whipped around, fists clenched, head down, ready for a fight.

Taylor lifted his hands and took a step back. “Whoa there, pardner. I came to help with the bags.”

Lucas raised a dubious eyebrow.

Taylor picked up one of the bags by its handle — judging from the weight, it had to be filled with more books than clothing — and carted it to the front steps. When Lucas arrived with the rest, Taylor stopped him before going inside, and said in a low tone, “So, you want to tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Simone had a problem at the hotel. She’s staying here tonight.”

“What kind of problem?”

“They overbooked.”

“Yeah, right.” He’d pursue this tomorrow, with a stop at the hotel desk. There was something else more important. “What about the bones? Did you find a safe place to store them?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Delaney’s lab. Half the time, he sleeps there.”

From what he’d seen of the guy shambling around the campus, Taylor could believe it. “Anything else you want to tell me? Before I find out later?”

Lucas shrugged and mounted the steps, then turned.

“Yes,” he said. “Keep a close eye on Einstein’s place.”

“I already do.”

“Keep it closer.”

“Why?”

“You asked for my advice,” Lucas said, opening the door and holding it with his foot while he wrestled the suitcases inside. “Now you have it.”

The door swung closed behind him.

Taylor was in no mood to go back to bed now, and he sure as shootin’ didn’t believe the warning had been issued for no reason. Lucas was still laboring under the mistaken impression that Taylor was there to guard Einstein. Guard duty had most certainly not been J. Edgar Hoover’s intention in dispatching his agent to Princeton. Hoover wanted Taylor to shadow the man and dig up any dirt he could find.

“The man’s a Red,” Hoover had blustered from behind his immense desk. “Anything he knows, and anything he learns about our top-secret projects, he’s going to share with Moscow.”

“But the Russians are our allies,” Taylor had managed to get out, before Hoover blew his top.

“If you believe that, you believe in the Easter bunny, and you have no business serving in the bureau.”

Taylor had fallen silent; he’d worked too long and hard for this job.

“Once we’re done with the Nazis — and trust me, we will be — we’ll deal with the Soviets.” He’d stopped to growl an order into his intercom, then resumed where he’d left off. “And we’ll also deal with their sympathizers here in the United Sates. I’ve got a list ten yards long.”

Taylor didn’t doubt it, and lest he wind up on Hoover’s shit list himself, he had hunkered down in the boardinghouse right across from Einstein’s home on Mercer Street. In all the time he’d been there, the only thing he’d seen of a remotely suspicious nature was a car carrying what looked like J. Robert Oppenheimer. Hoover didn’t trust Oppenheimer, either; everyone in the bureau knew that. Taylor sometimes wondered if it wasn’t because both men were Jews. Anyway, he’d dutifully relayed the license plate number to headquarters, but they had never even bothered to let him know if his guess had been correct.

Zipping up his Windbreaker, Taylor crossed the street, keeping out of the feeble pools of light cast by the streetlamps. It was colder than he’d thought; he should have grabbed a scarf, or gloves. But he didn’t plan to be outside long; he’d make a quick circuit of Einstein’s place, check to see that the garage was still locked up, and then head back to bed.

Vaulting the low wooden fence and rounding the side of the house, what he didn’t expect to see was the yellow glow of a desk lamp in the upstairs study. He instinctively stepped back into the shadow of the trees, while moving closer to get a better look.

He saw a silhouette pass in front of the window, and then pass back again the other way. It was Einstein, pacing with a pipe in his mouth.

Taylor crept a little closer. From this angle he could see, through the half-open window, a blackboard covered with equations that he could never have made sense of in a hundred years. Thank God the FBI had placed a greater emphasis on marksmanship than math.

As stealthily as he could, he made his way across the yard and when he reached the garage, tested the new padlock to make sure it was still secure. He was about to head back home when he heard the back door creak open, and saw Einstein in a ratty bathrobe and moccasins step outside. In one hand, he held the pipe, upside down and unlit. In the other, he held a bowl of milk, which he put down on the stoop and then, pressing a palm to the small of his back, straightened up as Taylor ducked behind a bush.

“Dinner is served,” Einstein announced to the darkness. “Come and get it.”

Then, after waiting a few seconds, he went back inside, and Taylor breathed a sigh of relief. If Einstein had spotted him, and he’d had to concoct some excuse for hiding out in his yard, he’d have been pulled from this job, and he’d have had his head handed to him, personally, by Hoover.

Rather than risk it, he decided to return by way of the alley.

He hadn’t gone far before he began to reconsider. The alleyway was so damn dark he tripped over every rut and puddle, and three or four times dogs penned up in backyards rushed the fence, barking ferociously. Once a man called out, “Shut up, ya lousy mutt!”

Then he noticed something odd. The dogs would stop barking as abruptly as they’d started. The moment he’d passed by, they’d stop, and once or twice he could hear them whimper before retreating back toward their kennels. In his experience, once dogs got riled up enough to start barking at night, nothing short of a miracle could get them to quit.

It was as if they were scared of him… or of something else.

He stopped in his tracks, a row of garbage cans on one side, a dilapidated garage on the other.

Something told him to turn around, at the same time that something else told him not to, told him to run like hell to the end of the alley, where a streetlamp shone, and never look back.

He turned around.

And breathed a sigh of relief. There was no one trailing him, and nothing but an empty alleyway.

Oh, and a tabby cat, sitting quite still in the middle of a pothole, its head erect, tail twitching.

“Get going,” he said. “You’ve got a bowl of milk waiting for you.”

The cat, however, didn’t budge.

“If one of these dogs gets loose, you’re a goner.”

He moved on, but the same thing happened at the next backyard he passed — a yapping Doberman rushed the fence, then ran away just as swiftly — and when he turned his head, he saw that the cat was padding along right behind him.

A Doberman afraid of an alley cat?

You had to hand it to this one, though — every time Taylor turned, the cat was still on his heels. But it didn’t feel as if it were keeping him company.

It felt more like it was stalking him.

“Is there something I can do for you?” Taylor joked. Even the sound of his own voice in the moonlit alleyway faintly unnerved him.

That, and the way the cat was looking at him. More intently than any cat or animal ever had. Its green eyes flashed, and it seemed absolutely unafraid of him. If he could imagine feeling a direct challenge from a feral cat, then this was it.

How crazy was this? He was an armed FBI agent, confronted by a cat in an alleyway, and he was going to do what? Back down? Run away?

Instead, he reached into his Windbreaker, unsnapped his shoulder holster, and pulled out his gun. Just pointing it at the creature would probably do the trick; the animal kingdom had long ago figured out what firearms betokened. How they’d done that, Taylor had never been able to quite figure out. How did one animal pass along, or instill in another, a fear of something so inexplicable as a gun? Was it some kind of telepathy, or a group mind, like bees in a hive seemed to possess? Or were they just gifted, like humans, with an innate understanding that the world is a dangerous place, and that whenever you were confronted by something you couldn’t quite grasp, it was best to turn tail and run for your life?

Whatever the answer, this particular cat had not gotten the message.

Taylor waved the gun in the air, then pointed the muzzle directly at its head.

The cat stared down the barrel unmoved.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Taylor said. “If I shoot you, the whole damn town wakes up, and I get demoted tomorrow.” Reaching into his jacket again, he said, “However… there are ways around that.”

He withdrew a short cylinder — a silencer — and screwed it onto the barrel of the gun.

The cat watched the maneuver with interest, but no fear.

Taylor wondered why he was bothering with this at all. Was he trying to scare a cat with the sight of a silencer? Why didn’t he let the damn thing alone and go back to his nice warm bed? He’d fired his revolver in the line of duty only once before, and that was in an armed chase of an enemy agent in Philadelphia; he’d brought his target down with a single shot.

But this? This was stupid; it made no sense.

For some reason, he was angry, however. There was something about this animal that pissed him off, something about it that seemed both preternaturally intelligent and downright insulting. It felt no different than if some guy had prodded him into a bar brawl. Taylor was mad, and weirdly enough, he was frightened, too. Of what, he couldn’t say. The air seemed to crackle with menace.

Yeah, this time he was gonna use the gun, one more time, and who would ever question a dead cat in an alley, anyway? If he tossed the carcass in a trashcan, who would even notice it?

He clicked off the safety, and the cat’s ears pricked up at the sound.

“What,” Taylor said, “now you get it?”

The cat didn’t move.

“Last chance. Take off.”

He pointed the gun at the cat, but instead of racing away, the cat sauntered toward him, back arched, hissing.

Taylor was so surprised, he retreated.

“Are you really this dumb?” he said.

The cat kept coming, and Taylor suddenly tripped over a fruit crate crumpled in the alley. He stumbled, shook his foot free from the crate, and by the time he had looked back again, the cat had somehow grown… bigger.

That wasn’t possible.

When it opened its jaws now, he saw bright white teeth, sharp as daggers, and it hissed so forcefully he could feel its hot breath riffling his pant leg.

He squeezed the trigger and a shot went so wild it pinged off a trash can.

Whether it was a trick of the shadows and the moonlight, or simply his imagination running wild, the cat seemed to be taking on the proportions of a panther, and moving with the same deliberation and lethal intent.

Taylor walked backward faster than before, and when he saw that emerald flash reappear in the animal’s eyes, he knew, in the coldest depths of his soul, that he was confronting something unimaginable. Something bullets weren’t going to deter. He turned around. The end of the alleyway, lit by a lamppost, was only fifty yards or so off. He started running, the pounding of the blood in his ears so loud he couldn’t even hear his own feet. He didn’t look back to see if he was being pursued — he didn’t need to. He could sense the creature’s presence. When he felt something snag the cuff of his trousers, he whipped the gun around and shot blindly. Once, twice. He couldn’t hear the pfft of the shots either, but he felt the gun jerk in his hand, and his trousers rip.

There was only another ten or twenty yards to go — he could see a laundry truck rumbling by on the street — and he prayed that once he got out in the open — into the light, onto the sidewalk — the chase would end. Already, he was getting winded, not from the distance, but from the sheer overload of panic and fear.

He staggered over some old refuse littering the ground, and as he straightened up for the final sprint, something landed on his back so hard it was as though a sack of cement had dropped from a roof. The gun flew from his grip as he sprawled headfirst on the hard dirt and loose gravel. The air was jarred from his lungs, his front teeth cracked in half, and the weight, instead of letting up, bore down even harder, grinding him into the earth. Hot breath scorched the back of his neck — it felt like the blast from a blowtorch — and claws digging deep into his skin pinned his shoulders flat. He was no more able to breathe than he was to flip over and see, with his own eyes, what was even then squeezing the last bits of life out of him.