The Einstein Prophecy (4 page)

The ship was putting on speed and taking a zigzag course designed to elude the torpedoes. This far below deck the air was hot and heavy, and the roar of the engines, operating at maximum power, was deafening. Overhead lights, bare bulbs behind mesh screens, flickered on and off as she made her way into the hold. Pallets of medical supplies and boxes of canned goods were lashed down with thickly braided coils of rope and stacked to the low ceiling.

Simone knew that there was other game aboard, too. There were captured Nazi armaments for study and analysis, reams of official German correspondence that had been salvaged from one overrun outpost or another, and, of course, the ossuary that she and her father had retrieved from one of the most remote and inaccessible regions of the Sahara Desert. When the German tank divisions swept through northern Africa, they had pillaged Egypt’s artifacts and selected the choicest to be sent back to the Fatherland. The US Army had somehow intercepted the ossuary—for which she would be eternally grateful—but instead of keeping it safe for eventual restoration to its rightful place in the Cairo Museum, they had put it on this ship bound for New York Harbor.

That was what Simone did not understand. Could the Allies know its secret?

For fear of that, she had tracked the progress of the sarcophagus every step of the way. As an officer in the Egyptian Department of Cultural Affairs, she had access to all sorts of internal communiqués, transfer documents, and, most important of all, underpaid, midlevel functionaries at all of the artifact’s stops along the route—functionaries who could be persuaded to part with vital information for nominal sums, or for the promise (never fulfilled) of a romantic liaison with the fetching young woman so inexplicably obsessed with one ancient casket.

If they had understood what it was, if they had been able to guess its significance and its power, they might not have been so puzzled, but Simone was not about to tell them. It had been her father’s lifework to discover the ossuary. For all that these bureaucrats knew, it was just another old stone box destined to gather dust in some museum gallery.

There was just one thing she had not yet been able to ascertain: Where was the box supposed to go after its arrival in the United States? Rather than risk losing track of it altogether, she had contrived to book passage, for herself and her father, on board this ship. Now, if the ship didn’t sink in the next few minutes, she had her best chance yet of finding out.

The ship rolled to one side, buffeted by the turbulent seas. Or was the rocking caused, she wondered, by the repercussions of depth charges exploding underwater? Discarding the clipboard, she put out a hand to steady herself and moved down the narrow aisles of supplies and matériel, scouring the work orders and delivery instructions secured in waterproof, plastic pouches affixed to their sides. She had made it to one end of the hold and was on her way back again when she noticed a khaki tarp thrown over a recessed area next to the wall. She could see a box marked “Antiseptics: USN” poking out from under one end of the tarp and had almost passed it by when something told her to take a closer look. The ship started to change direction again, throwing her off-balance, but she managed to grasp hold of the tarp’s flap and fold it back. Why did it crackle with a thin film of ice?

Below the tarp, a rectangular wooden box, bigger than a steamer trunk, was chained atop a flat steel dolly, whose own wheels were anchored to the floor. The box was well secured, but unfortunately, displayed no shipping pouch. Was that deliberate? she wondered. Throwing the tarp back even farther, she scooted around the box and saw that there was a pouch, but that it was fastened to the side closest to the wall.

In the distance, she heard muffled concussions as the depth charges went off, and then, to her horror, a much louder blast that had to have been from a torpedo meeting its mark not far away. One of their escort destroyers had surely been hit.

But would the U-boats respect the Red Cross insignia the Seward was sailing under? For that matter, had they even seen it?

There was no time to lose. As soon as the ship had completed yet another juddering turn, Simone squeezed between the wall and the wooden box. Though she had seen plenty of cargo pouches in her career, even in the feeble light of the hold, she recognized that this one was different. This one bore the stamp of the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, DC, along with a warning—in big red block letters—that the crate was of “Priority A-1” importance, and should be handled with “all caution, care, and deliberation.”

More problematic was the fact that the packet had been sealed, tacked, then duct-taped to the crate. If she planned to open it without anyone finding out, she would have to peel the tape back with her fingernails, then pray she could seal it up again perfectly. She was working at one end of the tape, and had already broken two nails in the process, when the ship suddenly bucked, as if a mighty fist had punched its hull, then listed to one side. Boxes that hadn’t been properly secured toppled over, the tinkle of glass beakers breaking inside.

Simone’s back was pressed between the wall and the heavy crate, which threatened to slip its moorings and crush her. The wall was cold, but the box, strangely enough, seemed even colder; she could see her breath fogging the air as it loomed above her, and she could hear the ominous sound of water—rushing water—entering the boat.

So much for the protection of the Red Cross markers.

Where, she wondered, had the torpedo hit? And could a ship like this survive it? Pinned between the wall and the crate, she could smell a salty tang in the air. As she tried to extricate herself, it felt almost as if the damn box were trying to seize her, and she tore her slicker on the corner of the crate, breaking free. Lurching to the steel gate of the hold, she heard the shouts of sailors clambering down to the engine rooms, and the rumble of giant pumps engaging. She locked the hold behind her, hooked the key ring to its handle, and as she ran toward the stairs to rescue her father, she noticed that she was splashing through a thin rivulet of water.

A rivulet that grew deeper with each step, until it was up to her ankles by the time she hit the stairs.

She struggled to make it back to the cabin, out of breath and soaked to the knees, only to find the door swinging open on its hinges.

And her father not inside.

He could only have gone up; otherwise, she’d have passed him on her way back from the hold.

She raced for the stairs, going up and around until she reached the hatchway, slid the door back, and took one small step out onto the deck.

The afternoon sun was hidden behind a bank of scudding dark clouds, and a pall of black smoke was drifting toward the Seward. Shielding her eyes, she could see that the smoke was emanating from the Van Buren, one of the escort destroyers, maybe half a mile off. An orange fire licked at one of its gun batteries. A slick of something glistened on the churning gray waves. The wind stank of burning oil.

But there was no sign of her father.

The Seward was plowing ahead, heaving through the turbulent seas, and she had to put out both arms to brace herself. Her eyes smarted from the smoke and the salt spray. The ensign who had crossed her earlier ran past, but not before spotting her again and cursing, “Get the hell off the deck!”

She shouted, “Have you seen my father?”

The ensign was already past her, dashing toward the bridge, when the ship suddenly teetered, bow down, on the crest of a massive wave. Simone saw the ensign, flat on his back, sliding headlong down the deck. Letting go of the handrail with one hand, she reached out and grasped one of his flailing arms, arresting his fall—until the ship dropped like a stone into a great gray trough, groaning and creaking and tilting to starboard. A freezing wave swept over the bulwarks. Her arm felt like it was about to pop out of its shoulder socket, but she held on tight, praying all the while that her father was all right, and that the ship would be able to stay afloat long enough to limp into some port.

A second later, the Seward shuddered from the force of something erupting beneath its hull. The entire ship rose up, as if lifted by Neptune himself, into a spume of seawater and a cloud of choking black smoke.

CHAPTER FOUR

Because of the Labor Day holiday, Lucas wasn’t required to report to the university until Tuesday. Leaving the house, he passed Professor Einstein’s place, where the front door was open, letting the breeze in through the screen door, and he could hear the clacking of typewriter keys and a woman’s voice, speaking to someone in German again. Would he ever be able to hear that language without feeling, as he did now, a prickling of his skin?

It was a beautiful day, the end of summer and the start of fall, and as he walked, he had to shield his one good eye from the sun. The route was familiar, and so were most of the storefronts along Nassau Street. Many of them had been built in the faux Tudor style, brown timbers crisscrossing the white walls, and provided the usual array of college-town establishments—newsstands, diners, haberdasheries, a radio repair, an ice cream parlor. The owners who remembered him came rushing out to shake his hand and offer him a free newspaper or breakfast anytime, and Lucas thanked them, but, holding up his briefcase as if to prove it, said he had to get to class.

“The offer’s good any time,” Gus, who owned the luncheonette, assured him. “Now you go teach those kids what we’re fighting for.”

Even in a class on Greek and Roman art, Lucas thought, the point could be made—what the Allies were fighting for was civilization itself. “Sure thing,” he replied.

Quaint and lovely as the town was, it was nothing compared to the splendor of the university campus. Lucas entered under the ornate black iron FitzRandolph Gate, and stopped for a moment at the foot of the gravel path leading to Nassau Hall, where the college had first been housed in 1756. Its walls, fashioned from pale yellow sandstone, bore proud pockmarks where they had been struck by cannonballs during the Revolutionary War, and two bronze tigers, the official mascot, guarded the double doors. The white cupola housed a bell whose clapper the freshmen, in keeping with tradition, were required to steal at the commencement of classes each year. The administration always looked the other way, and the clapper was always dutifully returned.

A student in a seersucker jacket stepped up and handed him a flyer for a bond rally. “If you’ll excuse my saying so, sir, it looks like you’ve already done your part.”

Lucas glanced at the flyer, then slipped it into the breast pocket of his suit jacket. His wasn’t as lightweight, or as nicely tailored, as the student’s, and even Mrs. Caputo hadn’t been able to get all the wrinkles out. As for his shoes, no matter how carefully he’d polished the brown brogues, the scuff marks were still evident, and the heels were worn.

The gravel crunched under his feet as he followed the path around one side of the hall and into the even quieter and more serene precincts of the campus. The lawns were wide and well manicured, the trees were ancient and old, the buildings constructed in the Gothic style, with mullioned casements, cloisters, and archways. Lucas had been told that the model had been Cambridge University in England, and it was easy to imagine oneself there. From a window in Witherspoon Hall, a hulking dormitory named after the Scottish theologian who had presided over the college in the late 1700s, Lucas heard the incongruous sound of a radio blaring the recent Woody Herman hit, “It Must Be Jelly.” The music drifted on the September breeze, over the heads of the young men—and only men were allowed to enroll in the college—hurrying to find their first classes, with their sleeves rolled to the elbow and notebooks under their arms.

Although he was not more than ten or twelve years older than most of them, how impossibly young they looked to Lucas now.

He stopped in first at the departmental office, where he introduced himself to Mrs. Clarke, the middle-aged woman now running things there. She was so harried, she barely had time to look up and say hello before shoving a sheaf of papers into his hand and wishing him luck.

It was only when he got to the main lecture hall in the McCormick Art Museum—a tiered amphitheater, open and airy, where he could easily see all of the students, and they could see him, that he realized how much things had changed. Before the war, the hall would have been full; now only forty or fifty of the two hundred seats were occupied. Most of the students looked like underclassmen, and the upperclassmen, if they were here at all, had probably been awarded 4-F status, for anything from asthma to flat feet. That, or they were in a field of study, such as civil engineering, in which the armed forces needed to cultivate a new crop. Nearly all of them wore glasses, some with lenses as thick as Coke bottles, and most were either scrawny or overweight and out of shape. Lucas could only imagine what his master sergeant, back in boot camp at Fort Dix, would have made of them.

After he had dropped off his box of slides with the projectionist—an elderly man who had been sitting in that tiny booth since the dawn of cinema—he stepped to the podium, introduced himself, and announced, “This is the first session of Art History 101: Classical Art and Architecture. If anyone is in the wrong room, you still have time to make your getaway.”

“Nuts,” he heard a student mutter, then gather up his books and flee up the aisle. There was always at least one on the opening day of the semester.

Besides the makeup of the student body, the other thing that had changed was his attitude. It wasn’t so many years ago that he’d had butterflies in his stomach every time he had to stand in front of the podium for the first time and command the attention of a new class. But no more. Once you had faced aerial bombardments, oncoming tanks, and the ever-present threat of getting shot, any fears of public speaking evaporated pretty quickly.

He passed out the syllabi, still warm from the mimeograph machine, took attendance, and tried to put a face to each name he called out. A fair number of the names were from prominent American families, the East Coast elite that hailed from Park Avenue in New York and the Main Line of Philadelphia, and the Southern aristocracy. Many of the names were emblazoned on the halls and dormitories, stadiums and playing fields of the university. When he was done, one of the students raised a hand, and asked, “If I may ask, sir, where did you serve?”

It wasn’t what Lucas had been expecting, but he answered anyway, just to move on. “Western Europe.”

“Army, or marines?”

“Army.” But that was as far as he was willing to go with it; he was not about to delve into his work for the CRC. He knew that the students, if left to their own devices, would happily lead him down the garden path for the rest of the period. “Now, if those of you sitting closest to the windows could please lower the blinds, we can get started.”

Once the room was suitably darkened, Lucas signaled the projectionist to dim the remaining lights, lower the screen at the front of the room, and cue up the first slide. A slightly dim and scratched image of one of classical antiquity’s most renowned sculptures, the
Discobolos
, appeared to the right of the podium.

“When we talk about classical art,” Lucas said, “we are talking about a golden age, dating from 480 BC, when Athens rose to prominence and the Greek empire expanded, to 323 BC. That was when Alexander the Great perished in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. It was a turning point, a time when artists had mastered the art of carving in marble and produced a host of exquisitely rendered sculptures. One of the most famous is this, the Discus Thrower; for the first time, sculptors had learned to capture the human body in motion. Their figures weren’t stiff and unyielding and fixed in a formal posture anymore. Instead, they came alive as three-dimensional entities, free and unrestrained and even, at times, joyous.”

He could hear the pens scrawling notes in the shadowy hall, and he went on with his lecture, calling up slide after slide—briefly sketching in the seven great periods of Greek sculpture, from the Mycenaean of 1550 BC to the Hellenistic, which flourished on the mainland hundreds of years later. Fortunately, he had almost no need of his written notes; he knew this material cold. But he had not reckoned on the difficulties he would have reading with only one eye in such a dimly illuminated space. He found that he had to bend his head to the podium to see what the next topic was, and in order to see the images projected on the screen, he had to repeatedly turn sideways. It might be wise, he thought, to bring a flashlight with him to the next lecture.

When the bell in the university chapel, just across the quad, rang the hour, the projectionist raised the lights and screen, the students near the windows lifted the blinds, and Lucas looked up, blinking. Already, someone in a navy blue Windbreaker and baggy trousers was hastily exiting the last row and ducking out into the hall. Had the lecture been that boring?

“I assume you all have the syllabus,” he called out, “and will have read the first two chapters of
Greco-Roman Antiquity
before the next class. My study is downstairs, here in the museum, and my hours will be posted on my door this afternoon.” At Princeton, offices were called studies, just as seminars were called precepts.

Half the class was already streaming up the aisle.

“And be sure to sign up for at least one private conference before the end of the semester.”

And then they were gone, the light in the projection booth was out (did the old man ever come out for air, Lucas wondered?) and he gathered up his notes in the empty hall. It all seemed surreal somehow. Now that he was actually standing at a podium again, it was hard to imagine that only weeks before, he had been dodging bullets, digging through rubble in war-torn towns, and searching for iron mines and hidden loot.

If he ever forgot, he had the dull ache in his head from the shrapnel wound, not to mention the glass orb concealed beneath the black patch, to remind him.

Crossing the museum lobby, he waved to Wally, the janitor, running a mop around the floor.

“Welcome back, Prof,” Wally called out. “Glad you made it back in one piece.”

Or nearly, Lucas thought; he was not about to debate the point.

It wasn’t just that the memories were often hard ones—Lucas would never forget the German boy, Hansel, accepting the Hershey’s bar a split second before his foot triggered the land mine. It was also the fact that words did not seem capable of doing justice to horrors like that, and a thousand others he had witnessed. If you had never seen war up close, it was an easy thing to be brave and bellicose about it. But if you had, it was hard not to despair. What men could wantonly do to each other, in the name of nation or faith or ideology, was unthinkable.

In a courtyard outside, students were hanging around, smoking and talking, and killing time before their next class began. A few undergraduates were gathered under a tree, gawking up at a window in Fine Hall, the venerable building that housed the Mathematics Department. Lucas, wondering what was so interesting, followed their gaze and saw, perched in a window seat behind a lead-paned window adorned with a mathematical symbol in stained glass, the indistinct form of a man. He appeared to be writing with great concentration on a pad in his lap.

Around his head there was a wild corona of white hair, and one hand came up to absentmindedly brush a thick moustache.

“I saw him getting an ice cream cone in Palmer Square,” one said.

“I said hello to him, on Washington Road.”

“Did he say hello back?” a third asked.

“I don’t think he heard me. I’m not even sure he saw me. He was off in a cloud.”

Although it wasn’t Lucas’s first sight of Albert Einstein—on one occasion he had seen him strolling through a snowstorm toward the separate office he maintained at the Institute for Advanced Study—it was still thrilling to see the man who had revolutionized physics with equations that challenged, and overturned, the long-accepted ideas of space and time. He had become a celebrity, on a par with Joe Louis, Judy Garland, and Gene Kelly. Who would ever have thought that such a thing could happen to a scientist, much less one whose discoveries were incomprehensible to all but a select few?

At the faculty lounge in Chancellor Greene, Lucas picked up his mail from the pigeonhole with his name on it in the front foyer—it looked like even more university paperwork to fill out—and then, inside, was greeted with a booming “Hail the conquering hero!” from Patrick Delaney, who bounded up from his leather chair like a man half his considerable size, and wrapped Lucas in a bear hug. Delaney was the one-man Department of Mineralogy and Geophysics, whose research into radio isotopes was about as understandable to a lay audience as Einstein’s work, though his fame extended no farther than the wainscoted walls of the lounge. Lucas had always had the sense that some of Delaney’s research was secretly supported with government funds. Taking in the eye patch, he gave Lucas’s shoulder a consoling squeeze, then said, “You do know, right, that the ladies are going to love that patch? Very dashing.”

“I’ll let you know how it works.”

“You won’t need to.”

“How come?”

“Have you forgotten that you’re back in Princeton, the only place on earth where news travels faster than the speed of light?”