The Einstein Prophecy (22 page)

When the cat rubbed up against his pant leg, he understood why. “Ah, so you’re the one who’s been drinking my milk.”

He bent down and rubbed his knuckles under the cat’s chin, and said, “Where are you going to sleep tonight?” His former wife, Mileva, had had a cat that looked like this. But by now it was surely gone. And even Mileva, judging from her last letters from Zurich, was in declining health. Time was no illusion; it was a relentless force, and he felt its sharp fingers digging into the small of his back as he tried to straighten up.

The cat trotted to the back door and waited there.

“It’s a cold night,” Einstein said, but the cat stayed put, turning its head and meowing loudly.

“All right then,” he said, opening the door, “if that’s what you want.”

The cat bolted out into the yard, and Einstein stood in the doorway looking out at the tree branches bending in the wind. Dead leaves scuttled across the back steps, and the wooden doors to the garage banged and rattled. He was just about to go back inside when they banged again, and he realized that the latch must have slipped. If he didn’t resecure it, the noise would keep him up half the night.

Descending the stairs with one hand on the rail—his back complaining with every step—he shuffled across the yard. The harvest moon hung low and yellow in the sky. At the garage, he found that the latch had indeed been thrown. Before closing it again, he pried the door open and had a glance inside.

Boxes were stacked to the rafters, along with rusty rakes and shovels. But the darkness was nearly impenetrable.

“Anyone there?” he asked. “Last chance.”

Then he pushed the door closed, dropped the latch into place, and picked his way through the dead leaves and up again to the back door. It was only as he took one last survey of the yard, checking to see if the cat had changed her mind, that he thought he saw, at the tiny smudged window of the garage, a flicker of life. Of movement. As if something had been watching him, and ducked out of sight a fraction too late.

Was this, then, the cat’s lair? Well, if she could find a way in, he thought, then she could find a way out again. And it was too dark and cold to make another trip across the yard. He would check in the morning. For now, he would drink what milk was left in the bottle, and go to bed. Dinner with the Gödels was always stimulating, but seldom ended early.

It was only hours later, long after he’d retired, that he was awakened by a strong wind battering the windows, and thought he heard a screech in the yard. He stumbled out of bed and closed the window tight before peering out into the darkness. Apart from the fact that the garage door had blown open again—the latch must need to be replaced; he would have to tell Helen in the morning—there was no sign of anything amiss, and he put it down to a bad dream.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“I was hoping I’d never see you again,” Police Chief Farrell said from the top of the stairs.

“Nice to see you, too,” Lucas said as a uniformed cop standing sentinel stepped aside to let him pass. The last time he’d climbed these stairs, it had been dark out, but even at this time of day, they were dim.

Farrell was holding a cardboard cup of coffee in one hand, and with the other pushed the door to Andy Brandt’s apartment open wide. “You must have friends in high places,” he said as Lucas edged past him and into the room.

Someone whose back was turned was seated at the makeshift desk, his fingers rapidly combing through a blizzard of papers, including, as Lucas could see, a corner of the blue folder that had belonged to Simone’s father.

Lucas wasn’t surprised at all by the quick action. A call to Colonel Macmillan, with the suggestion that the still missing Andy Brandt had been engaging in espionage, was bound to kick-start the local authorities. Lucas had found a summons to the Harrison Street apartments waiting in his university mailbox.

“So, you worked with this guy Brandt?” Chief Farrell asked him now.

“Not much. He was in another department—but, yes, I knew him.”

“He sure as hell knew you,” Farrell said, and when Lucas asked him what he meant by that, the man at the desk turned around in his chair and said, “A picture’s worth a thousand words.”

To his astonishment, Lucas recognized his fellow boarder, Taylor. The factory worker, or so he’d said.

“Take a gander at these,” Taylor said, holding out a batch of photos.

In the pile were at least a dozen shots, all snapped surreptitiously: Lucas, walking on Nassau Street with Delaney or standing in a museum gallery surrounded by students or smoking on the front steps of Mrs. Caputo’s house. In one, he was in the lobby of Guyot Hall, where Andy’s lab had been, contemplating the Caithness Man.

“Oh, and he’s got a few of your girlfriend, too,” Taylor said as Lucas looked up from the photos, dumbstruck. “Go ahead. Ask me anything.”

“Okay,” Lucas said. “First of all, what are you doing here?”

Taylor reached into the breast pocket of his Windbreaker, removed his wallet, and held it open. Under the plastic sleeve was an FBI identification card.

“Now you can answer a question for me,” Taylor said. “Why was Brandt taking pictures of you? Did he have a crush on you or what?”

Lucas wondered if this was some kind of trap. Was it possible that the FBI didn’t know what the OSS was up to? He didn’t dare say anything that might foul him up any further with Macmillan. “You’ll have to ask him.”

“I would if I could. Everybody wants him, but nobody can find him.”

Taking the photos back and tossing them on the desk, Taylor leaned back in the chair, reappraising him. “Well then, maybe this will be more up your alley, Professor—if it isn’t too much trouble, maybe you could tell me what all of this stuff is about?”

He opened the blue folder and spread some of the papers out on the table. Lucas saw Arabic writing, and illustrations of hieroglyphs and Christian iconography. “For starters, who’s this guy?” Taylor said, picking out a dog-eared antique print. “He shows up in a bunch of these.”

Lucas studied the print. It depicted a bearded man in a long robe, swinging a crooked-handled staff at a cringing devil with stubby horns. “That’s Saint Anthony.”

“The patron saint of travelers?”

“No, that’s the Saint Anthony of Padua. This is an earlier one—Saint Anthony of Egypt.” Recalling everything Simone had since filled him in on, he added, “He was a hermit who lived in the desert and, according to Scripture, wrestled with demons who tried to get him to succumb to worldly temptation and renounce God.”

“Did he win the wrestling match?”

“Legend has it that he did.”

“Just in case I ever need to know,” Taylor said, bemused, “how the hell do you beat a demon?”

“See that staff, with the odd handle?” Lucas said, trying to recall what Simone had once told him. “He raised it to the sky and the Lord sent His power through it.”

“Huh. I’ll have to remember to put in a requisition slip for one of those.” He took the print back and tossed it on top of the others. “Why would a spy, if that’s what we’re talking about here, take any interest in crap like this?”

Why indeed, Lucas thought, unless he had received explicit orders to do so. Those orders could only have come all the way from Berlin, from the highest levels of the Third Reich. How much did the Germans really know about the ossuary? The ossuary had never made it to the capital, much less to Hitler’s private retreat.

“First, you can answer a question for me,” Lucas said, in an attempt to redirect the conversation. “Why have you been keeping me under surveillance?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Are you going to tell me that it’s just a coincidence that you live in the same boardinghouse that I do? That you’ve lied to me about who you are, and what you’re doing in Princeton? And how about turning up a few rows away from me at the football game—another coincidence?”

Taylor paused, then said, “Chief, could you leave us alone for a few minutes?”

Farrell stepped outside reluctantly, and closed the door.

“For starters,” Taylor said, “in case you forgot, I was boarding in that house before you were.”

“But you must have known I was moving back there.”

“And second, you’ve got an inflated opinion of yourself.”

Lucas waited.

“You’re not the reason I’m living there, you’re not the reason I’m in Jersey, and you’re not the reason I was sitting in the stands.”

“Then why?”

Taylor shook his head and said, “For an Ivy League professor, you can be awfully slow.”

Lucas still hadn’t grasped what he was getting at.

“Ask yourself. Who else lives on Mercer?”

And then Lucas thought of the view from Taylor’s front window . . . and how his light went on or off in keeping with what was happening directly across the street . . . and of his proximity to someone else at the stadium that day.

“You’re keeping watch over Einstein?”

The agent didn’t answer.

“You’re his secret bodyguard?”

“Something like that.”

So many things were falling into place.

“Do I need to tell you that that’s highly classified information?” Taylor said.

“No.” But then why had he divulged it?

“And that you’re in a position to do your country a great service?”

Ah, here it comes, Lucas thought. “What service is that?”

“Ever since that incident at the stadium, you and Dr. Einstein have become acquainted.”

“Barely.”

“It would really help us out if you could tell us what you talk about.”

“What we talk about? I’ve met with him once. You really think we discussed the theory of relativity?”

“No. I don’t. But does he ever say anything about, say, the war?”

“He says he hopes we win very soon.”

“What’s he say about our allies?”

“Our allies?”

“Yeah, you may have heard of them. England. France. Russia.”

The penny dropped. For years, Einstein had been accused by some newspapers and radio commentators of being soft on the Soviets and Communism. Now Lucas knew what Taylor was fishing for, and what he was being asked to do. “You really want to know what we talked about? We talked about the Battle of Monte Cassino.”

“Why that one in particular?”

“Because I’m an art history professor, and the destruction of the monastery was a tragic loss to the art world.”

“Anything else happen?”

“Yes.”

Taylor looked hopeful.

“He bummed a cigarette. It’s against his doctor’s orders.” The letter he’d seen from President Roosevelt, hinting at Nazi progress on some dangerous scheme, he decided to keep to himself. There
was
one thing, however, that Lucas wanted before he left.

“But I’ll tell you what I can do. I might be able to help you out with those papers,” he said, casually gesturing at the contents of the blue folder. “If there’s anything important in them, I can let you know.”

Taylor seemed to mull the offer over from every angle before saying, “Okay,” and handing them over. “They’re sure as hell unintelligible to me.”

On his way out, Taylor warned him not to leave town without notice, and the police chief chimed in. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

“Good, I could use a spare.”

The cop at the bottom of the stairs laughed, then stopped when Farrell glared at him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Because there were no spare offices on campus—some of the buildings had been closed to conserve fuel for the war effort—Simone had been assigned a carrel in the sub-basement of the main library. It was not much bigger than a clothes closet, with a gray metal desk bolted to a gray metal wall, surmounted by gray metal bookshelves. Even the wooden chair was dreary, with a worn-out padded green seat. To make it all a tiny bit more congenial, she’d taped some family photos, faded and curling up at the edges, to the walls. The sliding door, with a narrow window the size of a shoebox, opened onto a long, poorly lit corridor, lined with racks of books from floor to ceiling.

Slumping back in her seat and stretching her arms, she surveyed the dusty volumes and monographs and scholarly publications cluttering her desktop. Every one of them had been something her father was consulting, and while it was comforting to know that his eyes had coursed across these same texts and his fingers had turned these same pages, it was also maddening. Somewhere in all of this, there were answers—answers to what the ossuary had held, to what powers it might still retain, and even to what might have caused her father’s death. So long as the critical blue folder was unaccounted for, however, Simone had her doubts about the “accidental death” ruling, and she was determined to follow every lead to its logical, or even illogical, conclusion.

No matter how weary she became—and there were times she found herself staring blankly into space—she would not give up.

Several times already she had found little scraps of paper that contained notes written in his distinctive hand, slipped into one of the old leather-bound volumes, revealing that he had intended to begin work at that spot again the next day. Each one of these notes she kept in a separate binder, though the most striking of all was a transcription of a prophecy from an ancient account of Christianity’s earliest saints; the book itself had come from the personal library of one of the university’s eighteenth-century presidents, the Scottish clergyman and theologian, John Witherspoon. Though the sentiments sounded like something from the book of Revelations, the words were attributed to none other than “the Holy Desert Anchorite,” a reference, quite plainly, to Saint Anthony of Egypt.

“And there, in the barren soil of sand, home to snakes and scorpions, the seeds of destruction shall be planted and grow.”

The next few lines were smudged beyond deciphering, as a blue mold had infected the book, and it appeared her father had given up trying to parse them.

But then the transcription had resumed with “. . . rising from the desert, like a pillar of fire, burning the eyes of those who behold it and laying waste to all that lives upon the earth and to all that ever will, unto the tenth generation.” Again, there was a missing phrase or two, followed by, “And even the clouds shall burn.”

Despite its poetry, the passages were similar to what could be found in much of the patristic literature, the dire warnings and apocalyptic visions of the early prophets and martyred saints. Her father had scrawled “St. A’s Fire?” at the bottom of his transcript, and though Simone knew that this term normally referred to the skin disease associated with the swineherd, she wondered if her father had not uncovered a second, and possibly even more powerful, meaning.

One other thing grew plain, too. Her father had evidently become fixated on the idea of demonic transmigration. There were the expected Catholic texts from the
Rituale Romanum
, containing the rites and guidelines for major exorcisms, but also a host of more arcane materials whose origins ranged from India to Egypt. She found passages copied from the Zohar, the Jewish mystical text of Kabbalistic teachings, describing the ways in which a demon could secretly slip into a victim’s soul, and how it could only be dislodged by a minyan reciting Psalm 91 three times; if the rabbi then blew a certain melody on the shofar, or ram’s horn, the sound would in effect “shatter the body” and shake the evil spirit loose.

Even the Muslims had their methods for disposing of wandering demons. The prophet Muhammad instructed his followers to read the last three suras from the Koran—the Surat al-Ikhlas (the Fidelity), the Surat al-Falaq (the Dawn), and the Surat an-Nas (Mankind)—and drink water from the holy well of Zamzam.

What none of these faiths—even the Hindu—did was doubt for one moment the existence of dark spirits, or their ability to jump from one living presence to another.

Demons were considered parasites, infinitely malleable and indefatigable, hitchhikers of the soul, and as she read, Simone could see that her father had been trying to unify all this material in some way, with many arrows and notes and cross-references. Just seeing his handwriting on various scraps of paper, stuck inside some of the books, stiffened her resolve to complete the work that he had begun. Inadvertently, she found herself clutching the medallion she now wore around her neck.

She was just about to start in again—what had he meant by writing “sigil/Saturn/containment” and underlining it three times?—when she thought she heard a noise in the corridor.

The creaking of a library cart’s wheels.

She had put in a request for a twelfth-century map of Mesopotamia, kept in the Special Collections Department, and she hoped that this was a library assistant finally delivering it to her carrel. But the creaking seemed to pass her by, and it was already receding into the stacks when she unlocked her door and popped her head out into the corridor. She could just see the back of someone in a long overcoat—small and dark, with his head down—pushing the cart into an aisle down the way.

“Hold on there!” she called out. “Did you have something for me?”

The man and his cart disappeared altogether, and she called out, “Do you have the map I requested?”

Again, there was no answer. Annoyed, she slipped on the shoes she had kicked off under the desk, and muttering under her breath, closed the door of her carrel without bothering to twirl the combination lock, and went off to find him. Only one other carrel, at the far end of the row, showed any light through its little window.

But by the time she got to the end of the stack where the cart had disappeared, there was no sight of it.

She stopped to listen, and she could hear the rattle of wheels a couple of aisles across, and deeper into the gloomy stacks. Lighted by only forty-watt bulbs, the bookshelves seemed to go on forever; in fact, Princeton had one of the largest open-access libraries in the country, with over two million books on display, and though she was normally grateful for that, right now she might have wished for a less expansive space. Every time she thought she’d spotted the corner of the cart, it vanished into the maze again, and she had to follow it down another aisle.

“Excuse me,” she called out. “Could you hold still for a moment? I think you have something I want.”

The assistant was either deaf, obtuse, or both. Whatever the reason, she got no reply. She began to wonder if she was on a wild goose chase. Maybe she should just go back to her carrel and put in a fresh request with the head librarian on the main floor on her way out.

A solitary student, his nose buried in a book, passed her by without even looking up.

Then, just as she was about to give up, the creaking of the cart came again, almost as if it were trying to tease her, and she couldn’t resist going a little farther. More and more, it was like swimming through some murky underground sea, moving from one pool of light to the next, around blind corners and down towering rows of books. Simone’s eyes scanned the titles as she went, many of which were in foreign languages. Some of the books were so old that the words imprinted on their spines had become illegible. They looked as if they’d been there since the college was founded in 1746, and it was a miracle that they were still in circulation. Lucas had once joked to her that he’d found George Washington’s name on a check-out card.

Ever since the night he had come to her hotel room, she had struggled to keep herself focused on her work. Sometimes, she was able to carry it off, for half an hour, maybe a bit more. But try as she might, she’d find her thoughts turning to that night at the inn. Minutes would pass and in her mind’s eye all she could see were his arms lifting her up and laying her on the bed, all she could feel were his hands, tearing at her clothes, caressing her body. It had been years since she had felt anything like it. No, she thought, that wasn’t true, either; she had never felt anything like it at all.

As she turned into the next empty aisle—no surprise there—she picked up a faint loamy scent. Like wet soil that had been recently turned.

“Hello?” she said, swiveling in all directions. “Can you hear me?”

At the distant end of the stacks, she now saw something sticking out, and she promptly marched toward it. “Ah, so there you are.” It wasn’t until she got closer that she realized it wasn’t the cart, but only one of the footstools that the library left here and there for the benefit of its shorter browsers.

Finally, she had reached a dead end. The basement went no farther than this, nor did her patience. Turning to thread her way back, she thought she saw a shadow move on the floor.

“Hello?” she said. The shadow shifted, but no one answered.

She peered over the top of the books and into the next aisle. “Hello?”

This time, when there was no answer again, something told her to stop asking.

To stop advertising her position.

As stealthily as she could, she slipped into the next aisle. And then, when that one proved clear, into the one beside that.

But she could sense the presence of another living thing. Close by.

The smell of sod grew stronger.

She placed each foot on the floor with the greatest deliberation, though her heels still made a noise.

She thought she could hear breathing. A snurfling sound, like something whose mouth was crowded with too many teeth. She flashed on the old etchings of the beasts assailing Saint Anthony.

Leaning against the end of a bookshelf, she slipped off one shoe, and then the other, and holding them in her hands, crept in the direction of the stairwell that led to the main floor.

The labored breath came again, closer than before. Lowering her head, she peeked through the stacks into the neighboring aisle. Something moved there, dark and indistinct, its back to her.

Ducking down, and swallowing hard—her mouth was suddenly as dry as the Sahara—she inched away, down the narrow passage between two rows of books, and when she thought she’d put enough distance between them, stopped to take another glance back.

Over the top of a collection of atlases, she saw a pair of eyes staring back at her. Sunken, black, buried deep in a face the color of mud.

She bolted. Throwing the shoes behind her, she raced down the aisle, turning left at the end, then racing down another and turning right. She could hear the sound of padding feet—or was it paws?—keeping pace with her.

She ran harder, desperately trying to orient herself. Was she heading toward the stairs or another dead end? She had the vague notion that she was being deliberately stampeded, that her pursuer had no intention of overtaking her yet—that it was only playing with her, like a cat with a mouse. Trying to scare her to death.

Her elbow caught on a volume, knocking her off balance, and the sleeve of her blouse ripped on the sharp end of a metal shelf. Several books toppled to the floor. She slipped on one, then took off again, the sweaty soles of her feet sticking to the linoleum. A red Exit sign glowed ahead, its arrow pointing to the stairwell and elevators.

Somehow the hunter seemed to have gotten ahead of her. Even before she saw its looming shadow again, she could sense that it stood between her and the stairwell. It was as if the damn thing could be in two places at once. She changed course, racing instead toward the carrel, where at least she could throw the sliding door closed, and lock it from the inside.

She burst into the wider corridor that ran along one wall of the basement and followed it down, past the ends of one stack after another, all of them nearly identical, until she finally rounded a corner and saw the lit island of her carrel straight ahead.

But that was when she skidded to a sudden halt, the breath ragged in her throat.

There was something in the carrel already.

How could it always be everywhere? Through the narrow window in the sliding door, she could see something moving, and she could hear the sounds of papers being ripped to shreds, books torn to pieces. The light from inside wavered as the intruder crossed in front of the desk lamp, back and forth, tending to his destructive work.

Reversing course, she headed back toward the stairwell, expecting at any minute to see the shadow blocking her way, but this time there was none. Her hands shaking, she threw open the steel fire door and scrambled through; the door clanged shut behind her, and she was halfway up the first flight of stairs, her head down like one of those football players she had seen, when she crashed into someone or something on the landing. She looked up, wild-eyed, as it snatched her by the arms and held her there.