The Einstein Papers

Prologue

"It can't…," Albert Einstein started to say, "it's so…" Then he lowered his arm and his fingers relaxed.

The noise of the chalk shattering as it struck the worn green linoleum was not loud. Still, the sound in the otherwise silent

laboratory had the same effect on Einstein as snapping a leather belt on a dog's rump. He jumped. Stepping forward, closer to the blackboard, his left shoe ground a piece of the chalk into dust as he stared at the final equation in shock.

All at once the shock faded away and he felt instantly euphoric. It was the same sensation felt by a gambler hitting the grand prize jackpot after a lifetime of losing. He grinned and stared up at the heavens. He felt a welcome peace he had never felt before. The feeling was electrifying, instantaneous, and completely unexpected. The hair on the back of Einstein's neck stood straight out. This was immediately followed by a tingling sensation that grew quickly until his entire scalp felt as if it were on fire. Einstein shook his head, then turned it slightly sideways and stared at his final notation once again.

The last symbol jumped from the blackboard as if lit by a huge spotlight. Several minutes passed as Einstein's mind fought to accept the reality of what had finally been accomplished.

He blinked and continued staring at the equation on the blackboard. Almost without thought, he reached in his pocket, removed a box of wooden kitchen matches, and struck one against the side of the box. It flared instantly, tingeing the air with a sulphur smell as the flame grew larger. He held the burning match poised in the air in his right hand. With his left he removed his ancient meerschaum pipe from the pocket of his trousers.

Frozen in place, the match burned slowly down as Einstein stood mesmerized, staring at the blackboard. Seconds passed until the last remnant of the flame licked the tip of his finger, breaking his concentration. Flicking the match back and forth to extinguish what little flame remained, he tossed it over his shoulder toward an ashtray already overflowing with spent pipe tobacco that sat on a long wooden table parallel to the blackboard.

Opening the box and lighting a second match, Einstein touched this to the top of the pipe, then drew deeply through the stem. Blowing the smoke through his mouth, he took a few steps, then sat down behind the long table and leaned back in an old leather chair. And then he smiled again.

The final and most difficult part of the puzzle that Einstein called the Unified Field Theory was discovered on the second day of August, during the last month of World War II. The solution he had sought for decades surrendered itself to him at just past three in the afternoon.

Just prior to the eve of the Great Depression, in 1929, Einstein had delivered his first paper on the theory. Now, sixteen long years later, the physicist was a rapidly aging man of sixty-six. The last few years, as the aches and pains of old age grew stronger, he began to fear he might leave this earth without ever solving the theory. The last four years had passed without Einstein making any noticeable progress, and he had become discouraged. But he had forged ahead — somehow confident he was on the right track. He was nothing if not patient.

And then, like an epiphany revealed to the faithful, the answer had made itself clear. His face remained in a smile of triumph as he stared at the solution again. Einstein laughed, at first to himself, a chuckle really, but this was soon followed by a loud, raucous belly laugh. He wiped a tear of joy from his eye.

It was all so uniquely obvious.

Rubbing the side of his nose with the tip of his finger, he stared again at the blackboard. Just at that instant a shaft of sunlight burst from behind the clouds outside. A single beam shot through the window of his laboratory as if it were a beacon from the heavens. The beam lit the dust hanging in the air, a visible legacy to Einstein's refusal to allow the cleaning people to violate his inner sanctuary. His pipe smoke rose toward the beam, mixing with the dust and deflecting the light.

For a moment Einstein experienced complete clarity of thought as he stared at the fruit of his years of labor etched in chalk on the blackboard. Then, placing his pipe in a briar rack on the table, he rose from the chair. He walked the few steps to the couch in his office and lay down, pulling a light blanket folded on the edge of the couch across his body. In seconds he was sound asleep.

He dreamed no dreams that afternoon.

When he awoke from his nap he walked home and ate dinner. He told no one, not even those closest to him, of the discovery he had just made.

Einstein spent the following day locked in his laboratory carefully rewriting the complete series of equations onto three fresh blackboards. Then, without pausing for even a moment of rest, he spent the next forty-eight hours testing and retesting his complex formulas and equations, attempting to find a flaw. By the third day the exact same conclusion had been reached.

Shaking his head in amazement, Einstein sat in his worn leather chair once again. The physicist felt ecstatic that the Unified Field Theory was at long last solved. His knowledge that the theory had at last been proven, that his years of work were not in vain, was a defining moment of personal triumph.

In the rarefied world in which Einstein worked, the answers he sought never revealed themselves easily. Even so, the Unified Field Theory had consumed a great deal of his life, more than any other problem he had sought to solve. Rising from his chair, he committed the solution to memory, then began erasing the secret from the blackboards.

"I shall go sailing now," he said under his breath as the last equation disappeared from the board.

Satisfied the grand puzzle to the universe was at last completed, he decided to reward himself with a rare day away from his laboratory. When he reached the door he paused and stared back at the now blank blackboards.

"Yes," he said to himself again, "a sailing trip is in order." The sixth of August, 1945, dawned warm, with bright clear skies, in Princeton, New Jersey. The sun creeping over the horizon signaled the beginning of what promised to be an idyllic summer day. Waking without the benefit of an alarm clock, Einstein rose slowly from his bed. He rubbed his hands across his wrinkled face, a face that was easily one of the most recognizable in the world. It was graced with a bushy white mustache, a bulbous nose, and eyes that looked upon the world with a curiosity that age had not diminished. His hair was long, straight, and stood away from the scalp as if electrified. A distinct lack of physical exercise had given him a thickness in the midsection, as is often the case with older men, but overall his health was still quite good. Other than smoking a pipe, his only unhealthy habit was a propensity to overwork himself. Dressed only in tattered boxer shorts, Einstein looked out the small dormer window of his upstairs bedroom. The rising sun shot across his lawn, the golden rays forming a blinding arc across the dew-dampened grass. The beams of sunlight broken by the shrubbery surrounding his yard looked to Einstein like the fingers of God himself. He smiled at the thought, then slowly stepped from the window.

Caring little about fashion, he donned the same clothing he had left on the floor at the foot of his antique wooden bed the night before. He pulled on the same pair of wrinkled tan pants, with the same worn black suspenders hanging down, then zipped up his fly and snapped the pants closed. Donning yesterday's shirt, once white but now a yellowish color from repeated washings, he absent-mindedly fastened the buttons crookedly, one hole too high, then pulled the suspenders across his shoulders. He tucked his shirt in, but carelessly left one of the tails partially out. Sitting on a worn chair, he pulled on a pair of dingy socks and laced up his worn brogans. Rising slowly from the chair, he stretched his arms to the ceiling and took several deep breaths.

Morning exercise completed, and dressed to his satisfaction, he shuffled downstairs. His housekeeper, Helen Dukas, was already awake. Bustling about the kitchen, she poured a cup of coffee from the stainless-steel percolator as Einstein sat down at the cluttered kitchen table. After the cup was placed in front of him, he sipped the steaming liquid slowly, all the while curiously examining a flower Dukas had placed in a glass on the table.

As she had every morning for the last seventeen years, Dukas prodded him to eat a good breakfast, begged him in fact, but the old man just wanted a slice of toast. Finishing the toasted bread, Einstein began arranging the crumbs into intricate patterns on the smooth Formica of the table. As he sipped his coffee, he stared at the crumbs. Slowly reaching for a scrap of paper, which happened to be one of his paychecks that lay atop a jumbled pile of mail on the table, he quickly began scribbling equations on the back.

For his celebratory day off, Einstein had requested a car and driver from the Princeton University motor pool. Though he possessed one of the greatest analytical minds of all time, he had yet to operate a motor vehicle. The driver, a student named Mike Scaramelli, arrived promptly at seven. He slid the car to a stop in Einstein's driveway. After pausing to wipe a handprint from the passenger window with his handkerchief, he walked up the steps and knocked on the front door of Einstein's home at 112 Mercer Street. Hearing the knock, Einstein rose from the table and stuffed the check, the back now covered with equations, into the pile of letters on the counter.

"I will be back before dark," he said to Dukas as he walked from the kitchen.

"Be sure to take a light jacket, Albert," Dukas said as she began to wash Einstein's breakfast dishes in the sink. "One can never tell how the weather may turn." Walking across the hardwood floors of his living room, Einstein paused at the coat rack and removed a jacket. Placing the thin cloth coat under his arm, he opened his front door, then smiled at Scaramelli. As he walked out the door, he paused to tuck the newspaper lying on his porch under his other arm. In the driveway, he climbed into the rear seat of the automobile.

"Is the fuel tank full?" Einstein asked once-he was settled.

"I topped it off this morning, Dr. Einstein," ScarameUi noted.

"Good, gasoline is scarce, what with the war and aU."

"Yes it is, Dr. Einstein," Scaramelli said. "The director of the motor pool was unsure where you wanted to be driven."

Einstein reached across the front seat and pointed out his destination on the map Scaramelli held. Tracing the best route to take with his fingertip, Scaramelli placed the map next to him on the front seat, then put the 1939 Packard into gear and began driving east, toward the ocean. Einstein settled back again in the rear compartment and began to read the comics in die newspaper.

It was 7:12 A.M. The pair would reach their destination, a marina on the New Jersey coast, in just over an hour.

Einstein was a man tied to his work. He had few hobbies, but he truly loved to sail. He would often struggle mentally with his formulas while at sea, claiming that he could think more clearly in the salt air. Today's voyage, however, was to be strictly recreational; the Unified Field Theory was left locked in a far part of his mind, the solution a secret he was not ready to share. He had yet to tell a soul that the theory was now complete. There was time enough for that.

Einstein treasured his sailboat as he did few physical possessions. The vessel allowed him the opportunity and freedom of being truly alone. Away from the closed classrooms and laboratories where he had spent most of his life. Alone with the deep thoughts that clouded his every waking moment.

Ernest Hartley, the owner of the marina where Einstein moored his boat, kept the physicists twenty-seven-foot-long mahogany sloop perfectly maintained. He understood that his genius friend was not always comfortable with simple mechanics and was easily puzzled by things others might consider commonplace.

At eleven minutes before eight, the car carrying Einstein was still fifteen miles from the marina. Although Einstein was not due for another half-hour, his sailboat's heavily varnished wood was already gleaming in the morning sun, awaiting its owners arrival. Hartley finished hosing the vessel off with fresh water and rubbed the last of the brightwork to a dull glow. Hoisting the sails, he gave them a quick visual inspection, then checked the sailboat's lines for frayed ends. He tested the rudder and found it moving smoothly. Hartley wiped his hands on a towel and walked back inside to await Einstein's imminent arrival.

Rolling down the tree-lined road leading to Hartley's Marina, Einstein folded the newspaper in half and placed it on the leather-covered seat next to him. Nowadays the newspaper only depressed him. The news was only of death and dying, of a long war he hoped would soon end. Instead, he listened to the mechanical sounds coming from the Packard as he stared out the window at the farmers' fields just inside the border of trees. Cranking down the window he listened as the flock of Bob Whites in the bushes near the trees chirped the song that gave them their name.

With World War II sapping most of the industrial production of Detroit, it was very difficult, even for prestigious Princeton University, to purchase any new automobiles. That was fine with Einstein. The dark gray Packard had long been his favorite, and the man who ran the motor pool was well aware of that fact. When Einstein requested a car, it was usually the Packard that arrived.

Elegant yet understated, the Packard-designed coachwork was finished in a lacquer color the factory called mourning dove gray. The entire length of the body sported a pair of thin red accent lines that ended on the front fenders in a rolling wave. The hood was long and hinged in the middle, with a chrome strip down the center. To each side of the hood sat fenders, the passenger side featuring a rounded hump where the sidemount spare tire was stored. Huge round headlights, mounted inside the flowing sheet metal of the fenders, pointed the way forward. The vehicle was powered by an eight-cylinder engine that operated so quietly it was nearly impossible to tell when the engine was running. Its power was channeled though a hydrostatic transmission that required no shifting of the gears. The seats were finished in red leather, the headliner was made of gray mohair, and the thick felt carpets muffled any road noise. Set inside the massive dashboard of the Packard was a radio that sent the sound to a speaker in the driver's area as well as to a single chrome-covered speaker mounted on the dividing wall to the rear compartment and facing to the rear. On the radio an orchestra performing works by Beethoven was playing lightly as Scaramelli slowed, then turned off the pavement and started down the dirt road to the marina.

Braking the Packard sedan to a stop on the gravel parking lot of the marina, Scaramelli scurried to open the rear door, then waited as Einstein climbed slowly from the leather-trimmed rear compartment. On the gravel next to the Packard, the physicist stood and breathed deeply of the salt air for a few moments.

"What a glorious day," he noted, his words still thick with his native German accent. Scaramelli nodded silently. The student was still in awe of the great man and found ordinary conversation with him difficult. He walked respectfully behind as Einstein entered the marina building.

Hartley looked up from the fishing magazine he was reading on the counter as the door swung open. He smiled, folded the magazine closed, and greeted Einstein warmly.

"Good to see you, Doctor. Your boat is all ready to sail." Einstein returned the smile and nodded slowly. "Thank you, Ernie," he said simply, his eyes squinting slightly from the dim light inside the building. With Hartley leading the way, Einstein and Scaramelli walked through the marina building. The shelves lining the marinas walls were crammed floor to ceiling with dusty chandlery. Boxes of oil were piled next to wooden crates containing bottles of soda. Spools containing the material to sew new sails sat alongside shelves stacked with freshcut hardwoods that tinted the air with their scents as they aged. A polished brass antique binnacle with round balancing weights sat off to one side.

Einstein paused to peer at the compass inside. "That is what started me in science," he said to no one in particular.

Hartley smiled at the physicist, having heard the story before.

"I wondered why the needle always pointed north," Einstein said quietly as the men exited through the door leading to the dock.

Walking along a weathered wooden ramp, the trio stopped at Einstein's boat, which rocked gently in the waves lapping at the dock. The floating dock where the sailboat was moored was nearly level with the ramp. The water was at high tide.

"You should catch the outgoing tide nicely," Hartley said, studying the water.

"Ah, an ebb tide," Einstein said as he climbed aboard the vessel whose bow was already pointing seaward. "Excellent."

Checking the boat absentmindedly, he raised one of the sails of the sloop, then settled behind the helm. His hands upon the highly polished wheel, he nodded toward Hartley, who started untying the lines but then stopped.

"I forgot something, Doctor," Hartley said. "I'll just be a second." Running inside, he quickly returned with a paper sack, its top folded over and fastened with a wooden clothespin. "My wife made you lunch, in case you get hungry." Einstein, always somewhat embarrassed by the attention he generated, thanked the man humbly. "You're too good to me, Ernie," he said slowly. "Please be sure to thank Katherine for me."

"What time should we expect you back?" Hartley asked as he handed the sack to Einstein.

"Time is but a concept, my good friend," Einstein said. "But since you asked, the latest should be an hour or two before sundown."

With a motion from Hartley, Scaramelli cast off the last of the lines holding the sloop in place. The boat was now free of the dock and Hartley carefully shoved the bow from the dock with his foot. The wind began to carry the vessel to sea. With a slight wave of his hand, Einstein steered toward the open water, a single sail raised to the wind. Hartley reached in his pocket and removed a pack of Lucky Strikes. He lit one and puffed. Then he and Scaramelli stood watching from the dock until the small boat was safely past the breakwaters and in open water. When only a small white speck of sail remained silhouetted against the horizon the two men walked back inside. Three-fourths of a mile east and three miles south of Hartley's Marina the dark green water of the Atlantic Ocean relentlessly surged toward land. On the tops of the waves a thin curl of white broke into foam as the sea-water slid from its peak and rushed toward land. The troughs between the waves were wide and even spaced. The smell of salt and seaweed hung thickly in the air, as if the winds were being misted by a natural perfume. The sun this morning was bright yellow and radiating heat. It hung above the horizon at one-third of its daily arc. Thin clouds overhead moved on the breeze, racing seaward away from land.

Einstein reveled in a silence broken only by the noise of the wind whipping against the fabric of the sails. The salt spray blown back from the bow as it dipped into the troughs between the waves quickly buffeted his flowing hair until it was a tangled white mess. Breathing deeply of the salty air, Einstein allowed himself a small chuckle of delight. He hooked a rope to the wheel, then tied it to a cleat on the gunwale to make a crude autopilot so that he could go forward to raise another sail. Back at the helm, he unhooked the rope, then steered farther south along the coast of New Jersey, keeping the sailboat just in sight of land.

It wasn't that Einstein was afraid of the deeper water, he wasn't. It was just that the seabirds stayed closer to shore. He loved to watch the birds as they swooped and dived at the sea, in a spontaneous ballet of water and air. He stared off the port bow as a hawk dived to the water, retreating with a small fish in its beak.

Standing at the wheel, he waved his hand at the bird as if to signal hello. Throughout his life, Einstein had always been a deeply religious man. In a magazine interview, he was quoted as saying that he believed all his best ideas came from God. His religious side also made him cherish the natural world surrounding him. Perhaps more than others he understood the complicated powers at work on the planet. Certainly he appreciated them more than most.

He was a simple man bound to complex thoughts.

Continuing along the coastline, he daydreamed back to a time several years ago. On a day of sailing much like this, a huge blue whale had breached off his sailboat's starboard bow. Running forward to drop the sails, he had waited patiently until the whale breached again, directly alongside his vessel. To this day he could still recall the intense feelings that had washed over him as he gazed into the huge whale's eyes. Einstein clearly remembered that he had seen in the eyes of the whale a great intelligence, wisdom, and knowledge. The experience had filled him with deep emotion.

Warmed by the sun and tickled by a pleasant breeze, the physicist studied the sea carefully as he sailed south. All around his sailboat he witnessed life. Atlantic porpoise slid to the surface like graceful dancers in an underwater tango, while schools of small fish boiled to the surface to be fed upon by dive-bombing gulls and pelicans. Continuing twenty nautical miles south along the coast, content just to be sailing, he at last grew weary and stopped in a small protected cove he had found on a previous voyage. He dropped the anchor off the bow, then glanced the short distance to land. The shoreline, carpeted by a thick forest of trees leading down to the waters edge, would provide him with a quiet spot to spend his afternoon. From the trees the chirping of birds rolled across the water and brought him peace. A pair of bullfrogs croaked out their calls while a butterfly flitted from shore and landed on the main mast.

Einstein walked back to the stern of the boat, stretched his aching back, then settled on the deck near a coiled pile of rope. Though he usually paid little attention to food, sometimes literally forgetting he needed to eat, he had a robust appetite this afternoon. He took out one of the liverwurst sandwiches Katherine Hartley had packed for him. Unfolding the waxed paper he took a huge bite. A dab of hot German mustard dotted his chin and he wiped it away with a fingertip. Deeper in the brown paper bag he found a tin foil package. Removing a deviled egg, the top dusted with orange paprika, he consumed it with childish delight. For dessert he ate from a paper container of fresh cranberries. He washed it all down with a bottle of tepid homemade beer. Carefully placing the refuse back in the paper sack, he stowed it in a side compartment, then sat on the stern of the boat contented. His stomach was full but his mind, for once, was strangely empty. Slowly he fell into a deep slumber.

Ten thousand miles and ten time zones to the west of New Jersey on an ancient rocky island, an artificial sun was about to burn with all the intensity of a hell come to earth. Sun glinted off the silver fuselage of a lone B-29 as it flew high above the water. On the wings, on either side of the fuselage, the four Wright Cyclone engines that powered huge four-bladed propellers droned in a monotonous beat as the bomber was guided north. Colonel Paul Tibbet, Jr., was the commander of the bomber Enola Gay, the plane assigned to unleash the unnatural sun. Tibbet, operating under a thick cloak of secrecy, had explained the purpose of the mission to his crew only a few hours before. The crew of the Enola Gay was a tight group, honed to perfection through the long hours they had spent training and retraining these last few months. They were as close as men could be, each trusting the other completely. Even so, no one aboard kidded around as usual on the flight north toward Japan. The crew was lost in their own thoughts. They were the chosen warriors for a new age, and they were justifying to themselves the devastation they knew they were about to inflict.

Tibbet signaled the crew they had arrived at the ten-minutes-to-target point. The crew shed their doubts and began to prepare for the bomb run. Trained almost to the point of brainwashing, they were robotic in their movements. The crew would perform their mission exactly as they were trained. They would deliver the pay-load to the target area. That was their job.

When the Enola Gay crossed above the city of Hiroshima at an altitude of 31,000 feet, the navigator reversed his cap and stared for the hundredth time at his charts. Checking, then rechecking his course settings, he shouted to the bombardier that they were approaching the targeted building.

The bombardier concentrated completely. Ignoring the sweat that dotted his forehead, he sat peering into the Norden bombsight, his breath coming in shallow waves. Positive they were above the same building he had been shown on the aerial photographs earlier that morning, he activated the release mechanism that freed the weapon they had nicknamed "Little Boy." Staring down through the open bomb bay the loadmaster watched as "little Boy" dropped from the belly of the plane. It twitched to the left and right, then steadied itself.

As if in a race with destiny, the bomb picked up speed and plunged rapidly to earth. Free of the 10,000-pound weight of "Little Boy," Tibbet wasted no time jamming the Enola Gay's yoke to the right. Steering the bomber in a radical turn away from land, Tibbet advanced the throttles, then watched the instruments that registered the engines'

condition with concern. The Enola Gay was in a deadly race against time to distance its crew from the unnatural cloud of poisons due to be unleashed by the explosion. The scientists had not released much information about "Little Boy" to Tibbet and his airmen, but one thing they had made clear.

Be as far away as possible when the weapon explodes.

When "Little Boy" detonated in the air 1,850 feet above Shima Hospital in Hiroshima, the Enola Gay was racing south at top speed. It was just after 8:15 A.M. As the mushroom cloud carrying thousands of screaming souls raced skyward, several of the crew peered from Enola Gay's windows to witness the fireball of death they had delivered. Few men have seen death — fewer still live to tell about it. Staring in mute horror, their faces lit by the blinding light of fission, the interior of the B-29 fell silent, save for the relentless droning of the engines. Ten minutes after the blast, as the shock of their actions began to abate, the copilot wrote in the pages of his personal journal, "My God, what have we done?"

It is a question as yet unanswered.

At the exact same instant in time 10,000 miles across the globe, the natural sun was turning Einstein's face a dark red as he lay napping on the stern of his sailboat, which was still anchored in the secluded cove. All at once, he awoke with a terrible feeling of dread.

Instantly, he struggled to a sitting position, wide awake. Hoisting himself to his feet, he felt strangely, indefinably, and unnaturally sad. His heart was pounding loudly in his chest. His entire body was clammy, as if swabbed with a horsehair brush dipped in a bucket of sweat. Rivers of sweat formed on his face and ran down, dotting his shirt like rain. He swallowed, a mysterious coppery taste in his mouth. And then he vomited on the deck.

Einstein searched the heavens for an answer but found none. He looked to the shore for a clue but could not locate a single animal. The turtles he'd watched earlier lounging on the rocks at the waterline were now gone. The flocks of birds that had flown overhead were nowhere to be seen. The bullfrogs were silent, the butterfly gone. As if in a bizarre natural void, the shoreline showed absolutely no sign of life. Unnerved by the unnatural scene, Einstein quickly weighed anchor. He pulled the rope starter on his tiny Sears outboard motor and waited until the motor caught, then steered the sailboat from the cove. Once free of the cove, he turned off the outboard and hoisted all sails. Steering the sloop north, he sailed toward Hartley's Marina as fast as the winds would take him. The winds, however, had changed since earlier that day and it took a great deal of work to make headway. Einstein continued to study the heavens for some clue to his feeling of dread, yet none was forthcoming. Deep in his heart he feared that he knew the answer to his feelings — he only hoped he was wrong. Spinning the wheel angrily, Einstein keeled the sailboat over on its side and ran north with the wind. As he steered into deeper water in an attempt to catch the offshore breeze and then angle his way back to land, he noticed a pod of whales in the far distance. One of the huge mammals, as if drawn to the sailboat by some invisible force, broke away from the pod and came alongside. Einstein watched as the whale paced the sailboat's speed, then breached directly amidships.

He jammed the sailboat's rudder toward land.

Ernie Hartley and Mike Scaramelli were sitting on a deck built off the back of the marina. The two men were lounging on red metal chairs shaped like clamshells. They shared the local newspaper, swapping sections across a white, freshly painted metal table as they awaited Einstein's return.

They're making quick work of rounding up the Nazis," Hartley noted, handing Scaramelli a fresh section.

"Still tough going in the Pacific, though," Scaramelli said and then sipped from a bottle of Bubble-Up.

It was slow at the marina that day. Hartley had been summoned inside only three times to tend the cash register. Twice he had sold live shrimp to fishermen for bait. Once it was to sell someone a wooden float for a crab pot.

From inside, perched on the ledge of an open window, a new Philco radio — which Hartley had recently won as first prize in a contest sponsored by an oil company-played big-band music through its large single speaker. The music suddenly stopped and an announcer's voice broke in with the news.

"News from the war front. The United States Armed Forces announced moments ago that they have dropped a new type of bomb on Imperial Japan. While details are few, the device appears to be a new fission-type weapon quite different and many times more powerful than any bomb yet detonated. Reports from the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the target of the bombing, indicate widespread damage and loss of life. The Supreme Allied Command refused to comment on the device other than to say they hoped it would bring a quick conclusion to the hostilities.

"Now back to the music with recordings from the Glenn Miller Orchestra." Hartley ran inside. He spun the tuning dial of the Philco in an attempt to find any additional news about the bomb. Unfortunately, the only stations he could reach on the tuner featured either music or sports. Scratching his head, he walked slowly back outside to await Einstein's return.

On the horizon, eight miles distant, a boat under full sail appeared first as a white speck. Hartley trained his binoculars on the speck. The vessel grew larger as it neared and he struggled to make out the image. Still moving at full speed, the sailboat hurtled past the outer breakwaters and the far end of the harbor. From the sailboat's bow curled a wake of white water that signaled its haste.

"It's Einstein," Hartley said when he could finally catch a good view of the man behind the helm.

Hartley and Scaramelli raced to the dock to help with the mooring. Slipping alongside the dock, Einstein lowered the sails at the last moment. The sailboat's forward momentum was strong and Einstein ran to the bow and tossed a line to Hartley to slow the vessel.

"He's coming in too fast," Hartley said to Scaramelli. Taking the line from Hartley's hand, Scaramelli fastened it around a bit, slowing the sailboat s movement. Just as the boat's stern began to swing around, Einstein threw the stern line. Hartley grabbed the line and quickly cleated it off. The boat lurched, then settled into place.

Einstein jumped from the boat. He looked strangely gaunt, his face lined with tension. His shoulders were sagging and his shirt was soaked with pools of perspiration. He seemed unsteady on his feet and his eyes were bloodshot. He appeared much older than the man who had sailed away only a few hours earlier.

"Did the water turn rough?" Scaramelli asked.

"No, it was smooth," Einstein said, waving his hand and staring unseeing into the distance. "Were you listening to the radio by chance?"

"Yes, we were," Hartley said.

"A bomb," Einstein blurted. "Was there any news reports about a bomb?" Hartley quickly repeated the news broadcast they had heard. Scaramelli filled in the few points Hartley left out.

Einstein, his face now creased with a frown, turned his head away from the men and gazed across the water. "It is as I feared," he said simply as he turned to leave. As Einstein made his way toward the ramp, Hartley stared at the physicist. His cheeks were stained with the dried tracks of tears, his hair was disheveled, and his eyes seemed dead. He shuffled up the ramp slowly. Einstein lowered his head and dropped his shoulders, as if weighted with a burden no mortal man should carry. Once at the top of the ramp, he walked solemnly toward the Packard. He settled into the rear compartment and buried his face in his hands.

Scaramelli waved to Hartley as he climbed quietly into the driver's seat. He started the Packard and allowed it to settle into a quiet idle. Then he backed out of his spot, set the gearshift into drive, and pulled slowly away from the marina.

Einstein said nothing on the ride back to Princeton. The sun was setting and the air outside the Packard was heavy. Once, when they were still a few miles from home, Scaramelli peered into the rearview mirror and saw Einstein looking out the window at the summer scenery, lost in thought. He continued to sit quietly until the Packard pulled into Mercer Street.

When Scaramelli drove into the driveway at 112 Mercer Street and shut off the engine, Einstein spoke his first and only words since leaving the marina. "What has happened today is wrong, Mike. Never forget that," he said quietly. "And I will never let it happen again."

Einstein appeared to be trembling as he climbed from the rear compartment of the Packard. He walked with the tottering gait of a much older man. Scaramelli quickly moved to support his elbow and helped him up the steps to the door of his house. Once Einstein was safely inside and settled on a couch in his living room, Scaramelli summoned Dukas, then quietly returned to the Packard and drove slowly back to the university motor pool.

In the years to follow, Scaramelli's life would change greatly. He would graduate from college, marry, and begin a family. Even so, as the years passed, Scaramelli often thought back to that August day at the marina. The event remained etched in his memory, as if it were only yesterday. And until the day he died, Scaramelli never forgot the look of sadness and remorse that had been so visible in Albert Einstein's eyes. The next day, at the headquarters of the FBI in Washington D.C., J. Edgar Hoover was scanning a thick file. He closed the file, then sipped from a cup of tea. Motioning for his second-in-command, Clyde Tolson, to refill his cup, he spoke.

"We need to find out why I didn't know more about this atomic bomb. The last report I received from our field agents stated the scientists were still unsure if the thing would even work. Now the military's gone and blown one off. It's going to look like the FBI was caught with our pants down if we don't quickly find some role for this agency in the atomic age. We need to have the FBI somehow involved with nuclear power. It's quite obvious now the impact will be huge."

Tolson stared at his boss and companion and quietly nodded. "A lot of the scientists that worked on the project have radical views. Perhaps that's our entree to this so-called atomic age."

Hoover reached back and scratched an itch on his ear. "Good idea, Clyde. Let's start with Einstein. We already have an extensive file on him."

Tolson rose from his chair. "I'll call and request the file from storage, then pick it up after lunch."

"Good," Hoover said, "and while you're at it, have a couple of field agents begin a covert round-the-clock surveillance of Einstein. One more thing, Clyde," Hoover said.

"Bring me the file on his housekeeper. I think her name is Dikus, or Dukas."

"Yes, Edgar," Tolson said, as he walked out of Hoover's office and set out down the hall.

Three days later, when a second atomic bomb was dropped, this time on Nagasaki, Einstein made his decision. The Unified Field Theory must be kept secret. The power that could result from the improper use of the theory was simply too great a risk for the world at this time. A world populated by men who in the last war had just displayed its cruelest side. A world that seemed bound to wage war and spurn peace. The bomb the United States had dropped on Hiroshima agonized Einstein. He was a devoted pacifist. Still, he had tried to justify it by imagining to himself the lives that might have been lost in an invasion of Japan, with fighting island-to-island. The bombing, if it caused Japan to surrender, may actually have saved lives. He almost succeeded.

It was the bomb the United States dropped on Nagasaki that sealed Einstein's decision. The Japanese were already beaten. Japan's supplies of food, fuel, and medicine were at dangerously low levels. The Japanese air force and navy were nearly decimated. The country's infrastructure was in ruins. Japan's surrender was only a matter of time. Once the bomb was ignited over Nagasaki there was no turning back. Outside 112 Mercer Street, the black Ford sedan driven by the pair of FBI agents was so nondescript it stood out. Even with the availability of automobiles severely limited, no one but a government agency would order a car equipped with blackwall tires and no chrome trim. The FBI agents sitting inside the Ford were dressed in the stark black suits and white shirts that conformed to the agency's approved dress code. It was only the sweat rings under their arms that might draw them a reprimand from Hoover. FBI agents were not supposed to sweat.

"It has to be ninety degrees in here," Agent Mark Agnews said. Agent Steve Talbot mopped his brow with a handkerchief. "Even the slightest breeze would help."

Talbot leaned back in the seat and lowered his fedora over his eyes as Agnews continued to watch Einstein's residence.

Inside Einstein's house at 112 Mercer, the ground-floor study was clouded with smoke. "For what reason would the FBI want to investigate me?" Einstein asked.

"Are you sure it's the FBI?" Dukas asked.

"Yes, I asked the chief of the campus police to look up the license plate number," Einstein said. "It was registered to the FBI."

"What are you going to do about it?" Dukas asked.

Einstein rose and walked to the window. Parting the curtains slightly, he stared at the Ford sedan parked slightly up the block.

"Well," he said finally, "I know what we should do right now."

"What is that, Doctor?" Dukas asked.

"Let's bring those men in the car some iced tea," Einstein said. "It's sweltering outside."

"We have movement outside the house," Agnews said to Talbot, who was reading a pulp magazine.

Talbot stared out the window. "It's Einstein. And it looks like he has a tray in his hands or something."

"We've been made," Agnews said. "He's coming right toward us." Einstein crossed the street and walked up to the open window of the Ford with the tray balanced in front of him. "I thought you men might be thirsty. It seems the FBI does not believe in giving their agents breaks."

He filled a glass and handed it to Agnews in the driver's seat. "Pass it over," Einstein said.

After filling a glass for Talbot, he motioned to the pitcher. "I'll leave what's left, in case you get thirsty later. When you're finished, just leave the pitcher and the glasses on my front porch."

Agnews stared at the scientist through the open window of the Ford, then smiled.

"Thanks, Dr. Einstein," he said.

"It's no trouble," Einstein said. "I just have one question."

"What is it?" Agnews asked.

"Do I notify you before I plan to go anywhere?"

"No, Dr. Einstein," Talbot said, leaning out the window. "The way it works is you're not supposed to know we're here."

"I shall attempt to hide from you then," Einstein said as he walked away.

"That would be fine," Agnews shouted after the retreating scientist. Over the last week Einstein had studied the FBI agents and their habits. The surveillance consisted of three separate teams. Each team was comprised of two agents. A total of six agents in all. The teams seemed to rotate their shifts around so that each team worked both night and day shifts.

Einstein noted that as the days passed the agents had become lax in their surveillance. They no longer observed his home through binoculars. Frequently one agent would leave the car to fetch lunch or to use the restroom in a university building a block away. It was time for Einstein to put his plan in motion.

Einstein's gardener was a cranky old Irishman named Jack O'Toole. O'Toole had cared for Einstein's grounds for too many years to remember, and the men had grown quite close. In the summer, when O'Toole finished with the yard work he would share a cold drink with Einstein and talk baseball. In the winter, when O'Toole performed snow removal duties, the men would enjoy a hot toddy and discuss weather and politics. Still, as close as the two men were, O'Toole opposed Einstein's plan.

"Al," O'Toole said slowly, "I didn't think you knew how to drive a car."

"I have never actually driven a car," Einstein pleaded, "but I am quite good on the bumper cars at the amusement park."

"Very funny," O'Toole said, "my truck has a four-speed gearbox. Do you think you could learn how to shift gears?"

"No problem, you just push the pedal on the left to the floor then select the gear you wish. Next you engage the gear by using the hand shifter that is located on the floor."

"This is rich," O'Toole said, laughing. "How far do you need to drive?"

"Not far," Einstein lied.

O'Toole stared at his friend for a moment. "I must be crazy. But, sure, you can use my truck. But I want you to know you have to have it fixed if you bang it up." Thank you, Jack," Einstein said, touching his friend's shoulder. "Now let me explain the rest of my plan."

Twenty minutes later, Einstein and O'Toole stood in the living room in their costumes. Atop O'Toole's head was Einstein's felt slouch hat. Tufts of gray hair tumbled down from the sides and rear.

"This itches," O'Toole noted, "and these pants feel like they're going to fall off."

"Helen brought the hair back from a dog-grooming parlor yesterday — I think she said it was from an Afghan hound."

"And the false mustache," O'Toole said, feeling like he was about to sneeze.

"From the same four-legged donor," Einstein said, smiling. "Now pay attention to how I shuffle when I walk."

Einstein demonstrated his walk. He was dressed in a set of work clothes similar to the ones O'Toole customarily wore. Helen Dukas had purchased the clothes from a nearby Sears Roebuck store only yesterday upon learning of the plan. O'Toole trailed along with Einstein until he had mastered the walk

"Good, good, you have it perfectly," Einstein said finally. "Now we go outside." Helen Dukas watched the men from a chair in the living room. T think you two are starting to enjoy this cloak-and-dagger stuff."

Einstein said nothing. Hooking his thumbs into his pants pockets he bowed his legs and swung his hips from side to side.

"I don't walk like that," O'Toole said, shuffling along behind him.

"But you do, my friend," Einstein said.

"This is never going to work, Dr. Einstein," Dukas said quietly.

"There's Einstein," Talbot said as the men walked onto the porch. O'Toole shielded Einstein as they walked toward the driveway. Leading Einstein to the drivers door of the truck he opened the door and waited as Einstein climbed into the seat. Once Einstein was in place, he spoke.

"Here's the key, Al," O'Toole said, "just please try not to wreck the old girl."

"How about you?" Einstein asked. "Will you be all right?"

"No problem," O'Toole said. "I'll just shuffle down to your office and take a nap on your office couch for a few hours."

With a wink at Einstein, O'Toole walked away from the truck. As he shuffled up the street toward Einstein's office, Agent Talbot turned the Ford sedan around. Keeping a respectful distance, the Ford sedan carrying the FBI agents followed O'Toole. Neither Talbot nor Agnews was watching in the rearview mirror as Einstein backed the truck from the driveway and slowly pulled away.

Grinding the gears, Einstein forced O'Toole's 1939 Chevrolet pickup into first gear and set off for Hartley's Marina. It was a hot summer day and the air hung over the land like a burning blanket.

Inside the dark-green Chevy truck Einstein clutched the wheel in a death grip. At the stop sign down the street from his house Einstein managed to stop the truck in time. Restarting the engine, which had stalled when Einstein had slammed on the brakes while forgetting to push down on the clutch, he lurched from the stop in second gear. A thin trickle of sweat ran down the side of Einstein's face as he reached for third gear. Appearing like some bizarre circus parade, the procession of the fake Einstein followed by the FBI agents in the black sedan was nearing its end. O'Toole was less than 125

yards from the outer door to Einstein's laboratory and was already savoring the pride from a job well done.

O'Toole slowed as a perky young female student approached from the opposite direction. Her head was down, staring toward the pavement, but she raised her face to smile at O'Toole as they got closer. Two steps later the toe of her left shoe hooked on a piece of uneven sidewalk and sent her tumbling to the ground.

"Are you okay?" O'Toole asked excitedly.

"Fine, fine," said the student. "I just need to be fitted for glasses and I've been too vain to follow through with it."

Agnews and Talbot had stopped the Ford sedan and were watching the scene.

"Here, let me help you up," O'Toole said.

The female student raised her arm to O'Toole, who bent at the waist to help lift the girl to her feet. At that instant, the hat O'Toole was wearing fell from his head, flipped over once, then landed, crown down, on the cement. From the passenger side of the Ford sedan Agnews stared at O'Toole in shock.

"We've been had," he said to Talbot as he stared at O'Toole.

"That looks like the gardener," Talbot said.

"Then Einstein must be driving his truck," Agnews said. Talbot swung the Ford in a half-circle and raced off after the truck. But the FBI agents were too late to catch the fleeing scientist.

Princeton Police Patrolman Duke Tanner was stopped at a filling station four blocks from Einstein's house when the pickup rolled past. Tanner listened as the driver of the truck ground the gears. He watched as the driver swerved to avoid a metal trash can on the side of the road. Tanner decided to follow the Chevrolet. After following the truck for several miles he pulled abreast of the pickup at a stoplight.

Tanner stared at the driver in amazement before shouting out his open window. "Is that you, Dr. Einstein?"

Einstein glanced at the light nervously before turning to Tanner. Einstein was still having trouble coordinating the clutch and gas pedals when pulling from a dead stop and he feared he was going to stall out the engine again when the light changed. "Hello, Officer, it's me."

"I didn't know you could drive," Tanner said.

"Just learning," Einstein said as he stared again at the light. "You're never too old to learn new skills."

"Let me follow behind you to make sure you get safely out of town," Tanner said. Einstein said nothing, he just gave Tanner a thumbs-up sign. When the light changed he lurched from the stop in the wrong gear. Tanner followed Einstein several miles, then tooted his horn and turned back toward Princeton as the truck made its way into the New Jersey countryside.

By the time Einstein had an hour of driving under his belt he became cocky. Flicking on the AM radio, he began to sing along with the songs. Even though Einstein had become more confident, the drive to Hartley's Marina would take him twice the time it took Scaramelli.

Halfway through the trip the physicist got lost on a series of back roads and had considered turning back. But he continued to press on.

Flicking on the windshield wipers to clear the glass, Einstein merely succeeded in smearing the bugs on the glass into streaks. He pulled to the side of the road and checked a map until he was convinced he was driving in the correct direction. Pulling the truck back onto the road, he drove a few miles, then stopped at a four-way stop. He sniffed the air for the smell of salt and took the fork to the east. Einstein began to feel a sense of relief when the surroundings started to look familiar. When he reached the marina, he slid O'Toole's truck to a stop in the parking lot.

Hartley was surprised to see Einstein. He always called ahead for Hartley to ready his sailboat. Even so, the marina owner prepared the vessel for sailing without comment. Once the boat was ready, Einstein left it tied to the dock and returned to the pickup, where he removed a weathered satchel, which he carried belowdecks and stashed in a compartment beneath the table.

"Will you be working today, Dr. Einstein?" Hartley asked as he untied the line holding the bow of Einstein's sailboat to the dock.

"Lately it seems I'm always working," Einstein said easily. Hartley nodded and, with nothing more forthcoming from Einstein, pushed the sailboat from the dock. Einstein steered away from the dock out toward the ocean.

"What time should I expect you back?" Hartley yelled as the sailboat neared the breakwater.

Just at the edge of his hearing, Einstein heard the question and shouted a reply.

"When I'm finished," he said. With that, he waved goodbye to Hartley, hoisted all sails, and set a course for the deserted cove he had visited on his last voyage. Just over an hour later, anchored stern to shore in the shallows, Einstein removed his shoes and socks and rolled up his pants. Wading through the water, he made his way through the brush and climbed up a small rise. He scanned the terrain, finally selecting a fine oak tree. From a flask of Holland gin he took a large swallow of the peppermint liquor. After finding a comfortable seat at the base of the oak, he removed a sharp wood chisel from a canvas bag he had carried ashore and began carving on a board. It was late in the afternoon, the sun almost at the horizon when he finished.

Einstein suffered stoically through what had become almost unbearable pain. In the last several days, the hardened aorta he steadfastly refused to have operated on had begun to slowly leak blood. This day in April 1955 brought an air of approaching parting, of a journey nearing its end.

The attendant in the passenger seat was daydreaming as the ambulance raced toward Einstein's home. As the driver braked to a stop in front of 112 Mercer, the sound of skidding tires brought the attendant back to the present. Jumping from his seat, he ran to the rear and helped the driver unload the gurney. They wheeled the gurney to the front of the house and the driver rapped on the door. Helen Dukas flung it open at the first sound of the knock. From inside the house the ambulance driver could hear that an argument was still raging.

"The end comes sometimes. Does it matter when, or where?" Einstein said to Dukas. The two attendants listened in silence as the housekeeper tried valiantly to reason with the stubborn physicist. "The nursing field is one I simply do not understand, Herr Professor," Dukas said finally. "It would make me more comfortable if you went to the hospital."

The attendants watched as Einstein considered this. "Very well, then," Einstein said, "I will go to the hospital, but I'll need to send a telegram to Niels Bohr in Denmark. Can we stop on the way to the hospital?"

"I will take care of the telegram after you are in bed in the hospital," Dukas said in a firm voice. "Now it is time to go."

With that, Einstein rose to his feet unsteadily.

After loading Einstein on the gurney and strapping him down, the ambulance attendants carried him down the steps and carefully slid the cart in the back of the Cadillac ambulance for the trip to the hospital. Once Einstein was safely in the rear, the driver ran forward and climbed behind the wheel while the attendant closed the door from inside and kneeled on the floor next to the old physicist.

"What is your name?" Einstein croaked.

"Gunther," the young attendant said, "Gunther Ackerman."

"Do you speak German?" the physicist asked.

"Yes, my father was German."

"Good," Einstein said, coughing.

As the ambulance pulled away from the curb, Einstein began speaking rapidly in German. The attendant sat quietly, listening. Einstein continued a nonstop monologue until the ambulance pulled into the hospital's emergency entrance. As the rear doors were yanked open, Einstein motioned the attendant still closer.

Gasping for breath, he whispered in German, "The force will be in the wind." The young attendant, by now quite puzzled by what he had heard, merely nodded at the gravely ill scientist.

The next day was Sunday, for most a day of rest. Einstein, though still in extreme pain, continued relentlessly with his work, drawing and making notations on a pad of paper. The telegram was sent to his fellow physicist Niels Bohr, but as yet Einstein had received no reply. Shortly after midnight, Monday morning, Einstein began muttering loudly in German. His frail body, the physical shell that merely housed his incredible mind, was fast failing him. Twelve minutes later, at last succumbing to intense pain he could no longer endure, he took two deep breaths and left this planet. He traveled upward, secure in knowing his body of work lived on. He hoped only that the clue he had left behind would fall into the right hands.

Helen Dukas, who had worked for Einstein the last twenty-seven years, was deeply saddened by his death. She returned to 112 Mercer from the hospital later that same morning, intending to straighten up Einstein's home one last time. As the cab that had brought her from the hospital pulled away, she could see several military vehicles parked outside.

She walked up the steps, then opened the front door to find the house full of strangers. Agents from both the Atomic Energy Commission and Naval Intelligence were conducting a meticulous search of the small frame house. A tall, thin man sporting a pencil mustache and wearing a brown felt fedora stared as she entered the living room.

"Who are you?" he asked Dukas quietly.

"I work," Dukas blurted, "or did work, anyway, for the doctor." The man simply nodded, then ordered her to remain in the kitchen until the search was completed. She was led away by the arm by a bulky sailor.

Lost in her grief, Dukas could only comply.

Dukas sat sobbing quietly at the Formica table in the breakfast nook, watched by a guard in a United States Navy uniform. She dabbed at the comers of her eyes with a wadded-up tissue. Sipping a cup of hot tea, she listened as the uninvited guests stomped up and down the stairs of the house. When the noise died down, she bullied her way past the sailor and entered the formerly neat and tidy living room.

Boxes containing Einstein's documents as well as his personal journals sat on the hardwood floor near the door. Watching quietly for a moment, Dukas heard the man in the fedora issue the order to load the truck that had pulled up outside. Soldiers immediately began carrying out the boxes.

Dukas looked at the man in the fedora suspiciously. "Where are you taking the professor's papers?" she asked forcefully.

The man barely looked at her as he spoke. "They are property of the United States government now," he said in a cold voice.

With a wave of his hands to the remaining soldiers to clear the room, the man in the fedora walked from Einstein's home into the early-morning fog. Dukas collapsed on the couch, sobs wracking her body, alone with her grief.

At almost the exact same time, a second group scoured Einstein's hospital room, looking for any papers that might pertain to the Unified Field Theory. These, and all subsequent searches, turned up nothing.