The Einstein Prophecy

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Even though it was the dead of night, a light was on across the street, on the first floor of Einstein’s house. Lucas lit another cigarette and wondered if someone else simply had insomnia, or if some great breakthrough in humanity’s fundamental understanding of the universe was unfolding in there instead.

Here, on the porch steps of Mrs. Caputo’s house, he had his own, if less earthshaking, problems to wrestle with.

He had gone to bed earlier, but given up on sleep after a couple of hours of restless tossing and turning. His room under the eaves was stuffy, and he’d come outside to enjoy what might be the last breeze of an Indian summer. In the faint glow of the lone streetlamp at the corner, he could see the leaves falling from the boughs and rustling along the otherwise silent street. He took a drag on his Camel, leaned back on his elbows, and for the hundredth time, replayed his encounter at the bar with the woman named Simone.

What had she meant by her parting shot, the one about how he’d regret opening the box without her help? Who was she, really? And what did she know?

Even more to the point, why had he been so quick to dismiss her? Was it from an abundance of natural caution, an all-important consideration these days? Loose lips sink ships, and all that. Or was it for some less noble reason? Was it because something he’d been trying to deny or stifle for years now, ever since he had been inducted and sent overseas, had been inadvertently stirred? Was it really as elementary as that?

A black De Soto drove by slowly, its headlights illuminating a tabby cat skittering across the road.

The cat reminded him of a figure etched into the stone of the sarcophagus. A typical depiction of the feline Egyptian deity, Bast. Did that confirm his own suspicion that the box had originated in Egypt, as Simone claimed? He might have agreed, were it not for the other inscriptions chiseled into the alabaster. They were a total hodgepodge of hieroglyphics, Greek and Latin letters, and arcane symbols, including the faint shape of a diamond tilted on its axis. He had never seen, or heard of, such a composite.

Nor had he ever encountered a collection of such curious figurative representations. There was a shepherd with his staff, but his flock, if that’s what it was, looked less like sheep than a bunch of frolicking apes. What were they doing there? There were even a couple of dozen scratches — long grooves — that looked as if they must have been left by some careless artisan, or else by some wild animal that had been trying to claw its way into the box. But as ossuaries never contained fresh meat, only barren bones, why would any animal have tried such a thing?

Across the street, Lucas saw a pair of muslin draperies billow out of the open window and the silhouette of a man drawing them back inside, then lowering the sash. The breeze carried the screech from the old wooden frame.

The light went out, and another one went on over the porch.

The De Soto he had seen before — judging from its distinctive waterfall grille, a ’41, the last year American cars were manufactured before all the assembly lines had gone over to the war effort — doubled back, and then parked, motor still running, outside Einstein’s house.

Before he could wonder what was going on at this hour of the night, he heard the sound of footsteps approaching, and saw a man in work clothes and a Windbreaker turning up the short cement walkway to the boardinghouse. His head was down, and his feet dragged.

“You must be Mr. Taylor,” Lucas said, keeping his voice down.

The man, startled, stopped in his tracks and looked up. “Who’re you?” he asked, though Lucas had the feeling he was feigning ignorance.

“Lucas Athan,” he said, leaning forward and extending his hand. “I live up in the attic.”

“Oh, right,” Taylor said, though he still didn’t shake, and Lucas let his hand drop.

“Working the night shift?”

For a second, Taylor — a guy about forty, with bad teeth — looked like he wasn’t sure how to answer that one. “Yeah, exactly. No rest for the weary.”

“You work in Trenton?”

“Yeah.”

“At the airplane plant?”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Sorry,” Lucas said. “Our landlady must have mentioned it.”

“She shouldn’t have.”

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

“What do you do?”

“I teach at the university.” But Lucas had the feeling that the guy already knew that, too; surely, Mrs. Caputo had filled him in.

“What do you teach?”

“Art history.”

From Taylor’s expression, this made little sense. “You lose that in the war?” he asked, tilting his chin at the black patch.

“Yes.”

Taylor snorted and sucked his teeth, but didn’t follow up with any of the customary blather, for which Lucas was grateful. “What are you doing out here?” he asked instead.

For a guy who was so chary with his own answers, he sure had no trouble asking questions. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Well, I’m not gonna have any trouble.” Taylor stepped around him and reached for the doorknob.

“ ’Night.”

“Yeah. Right.”

He shut the door behind him.

Some guy, Lucas thought. No wonder even Amy hadn’t been able to befriend him. Not wanting to bump into him again on the way upstairs, Lucas waited on the porch for a few more minutes, thinking about the work he’d have to do on the sarcophagus — and once or twice, about less practical matters. In the morning, for the hell of it, he’d call the Nassau Inn to check up on that woman’s story.

Standing up, he brushed off the back of his trousers, ready to stub out his cigarette and go inside, when the front door opened across the street, and two men — one of them the professor — came down the steps. The other one — younger, in a dark brown hat and suit — was carrying a suitcase in one hand, a briefcase in the other. The driver popped out of the car, quickly took the suitcase from him and stashed it in the trunk.

The two men spoke together softly for another minute or two, then clasped hands. The driver opened the back door of the car, and once his passenger had ducked inside, slipped the car into gear and pulled away. Einstein stood, watching it go, before raising his eyes to the night sky. Stars twinkled overhead, and when the professor returned his gaze to earth, he must have noticed the orange glow from the tip of Lucas’s cigarette, and raised a hand, palm up, by way of greeting. Lucas returned the salute with a silent wave of his Camel, and then Einstein shuffled back up his stairs and into the house. The porch light went off, and as it did, the light in Taylor’s room, just overhead, went on.

Strange night, Lucas thought, watching the tabby cat scoot under the fence of the professor’s house. Something was in the air tonight, and whatever it might be, it was keeping sleep at bay.