Destiny

THIRTY

Jacob Kogen and Paul Marcus sat at a table in the corner of the small restaurant, candles flickering from multi-colored glass vases in the centers of tables. No more than eight diners remained in the restaurant at 9:00 p.m. Many of the guests had finished eating and were lingering to enjoy after-dinner drinks.

The men ordered and waited for their food. The waiter poured each man a glass of wine from a bottle of chardonnay he brought to the table.

“Thank you,” Jacob said, as the waiter draped a white napkin around the neck of the bottle, nodded and left. A candle, in the only mauve vase in the room, burned in the center of their table, its soft light drifting over Jacob’s face in lavender brush strokes. “I am still trying to grasp how you uncovered the threat on the prime minister’s life. I’ve prayed that the authorities will heed the warning and cancel the ceremony. All we have is a reference to the tenth, an assassin, and the plot of the weeping angel. The prime minister receives many threats on his life, no doubt. I wish we had something more definitive.”

“This isn’t a threat. This is a revelation or some bizarre prophecy, and it doesn’t get too damn refined. No more than a riddle is clarified. I don’t know if it’s your prime minister or the prime ministers of Britain, Croatia, Canada or Bulgaria for that matter. But your guy is the only one meeting with the President of the United States on the tenth. If the Lincoln statue is the weeping angel, a betting person might say the odds are weighted in the direction of your man.”

Jacob watched the candle flicker in the vase, his fingers interlocked, and his mind sifting through the information. “Assuming the ceremony is cancelled, we may prevent an assassination. However, if it’s cancelled, we’ll never know whether this forewarning, this horrible act, was imminent or bogus. But the issue isn’t proving or disproving, it’s preventing a death.”

“It’s about stopping a murder. Maybe this is part of the reason, hell, it could be the whole damn reason you brought me over here. If this information can save his life, anyone’s life, it’s worth it.”

“You did this decryption off-site because you are still concerned about hackers, correct?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll purchase a brand new, never out-of-the-box computer for you and keep it off the intranet and Internet. There’s no reason for someone to penetrate the library’s computer firewalls. Most of our information is free, and much of it is accessible online. Why would someone want to hack into our system?”

“Professor, who have you told that I was going to be here?”

“What do you mean?”

“From what I could gather, it looks as if the system was hacked specifically to follow the computer that I was given to work with, which is yours, correct?

“I am the primary user.”

“Who knows I’m here?”

“Our staff, of course. The research on the Newton papers is nothing covert. Until the recent donation of the lost papers, it’s been on-going since 1969. Technology is all that has changed. Now, of course, your vast skills add to the mix.”

“To most people, my skills are confined to the reason I was selected for the Nobel Prize in medicine.”

Jacob leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. The headlights from a passing car shot a harsh light momentarily in the restaurant. “Reading the news about the Nobel Prize, I became aware of who you were, and when I read the name Paul Marcus in the last batch of Newton’s papers, I assumed it was no coincidence. All that Newton got wrong was the way he spelled Nobel, referring to it as the ‘noble prize.’”

“Someone in your intelligence agencies has been looking into my background.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because it was brought to my attention before I even left the states.”

“By whom?”

“Someone I worked with at one time.”

“You have a high profile. Our nations are best allies. I’m sure any inquiries are in our mutual best interests.”

“Jacob, if you expect me to pry secrets out of Newton’s work, I expect there will be no secrets between us.”

Jacob raised a glass of wine. “To no secrets among friends.”

Marcus lifted his glass in a toast and sipped the wine.

“How long can you stay, Paul?”

“I’ll soon have to get back to my farm in Virginia. Neighbors are watching our dog and horses.”

“Our? Do you jointly own them with someone?”

Marcus stared at the candle a moment. “I used to own them with my wife and daughter. Since their deaths, their murders, it’s just me.”

“Was the person who committed these atrocious crimes ever found?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry for what happened to your family. Are you going to decline the Nobel Prize because of the tragedies in your life?”

“That’s part of it.”

“Which part?”

“It’s the most important part. I wasn’t raised to accept gratuities for something I really didn’t earn.”

“You are a brilliant man, Paul. You cracked the code to heal sick hearts. Yet your own heart is not so well. It grieves. Time is not the healer. Love, both given and received, is the medicine.”

“You sound more like a rabbi than a scientist.”

“The scientist in Newton calculated codes, and, as you said, events in the Bible are not unlike a jigsaw puzzle. But the theologian in Newton believed it could really be done. He believed he was actually picked by God to interpret his writings.”

“God’s writings were penned by man.”

“And, in many cases, uttered by God.”

“I have no illusions. I’m not a biblical scholar. I don’t know what this information about the prime minister or even John Kennedy Junior means. I don’t know what else is hidden in there. I feel that the more I find, the greater grip the information has on me.”

“How do you mean?”

“I might slip and fall into a concealed hole, but it doesn’t make me an archeologist. I’m not an anthropologist, a forensic investigator, or even a data analyst. But if I find this information, what does it signify? Is it truthful, accurate? Or is it coincidental? I feel if it’s laid in my lap, it’s up to me to do something with it.”

Jacob grunted. “Of course, and I see you have your laptop. You mentioned sharing something else with me.”

Marcus set his laptop on the corner of the table. “It’ll take a minute.”

Jacob smiled and stood, setting his napkin on his chair. “I’ll use that minute to find the men’s room. The last time I went to the bathroom, you solved a problem no mathematician in Israel could solve for months. I can only imagine what awaits me upon my return.”