The Einstein Papers (18 page)

“Are you fully awake yet?” Taft asked.

“Yeah, I took a shower and I’m having a cup of coffee.”

“You prick. I’m freezing my ass off out here.”

“You claimed to be the fisherman,” Martinez said, slurping loudly from his cup.

Taft paused to blow his nose into a paper towel. “I found the stern of a sailboat down there. It looked like the ground nearby had been disturbed.”

“No forward section? No bow, masts, or cabin?”

“I believe that was just salvaged by the Deep Search. That would explain the disturbance. It kind of looked like something had been dug up then dragged a little ways.”

“Interesting.”

“I know the name of the vessel that was salvaged.”

“Let’s have it.”

“Windforce,” Taft said quietly. “Judging by the small engine I saw, it was probably a smaller sailboat, but don’t hold me to that.”

“Let me check into this at the office,” Martinez said. “I’ll get back to you shortly.”

“It would be nice if you did some of the work,” Taft said, hanging up on his partner.

Taft closed up the phone, then reached into a compartment under a seat and withdrew a frayed green towel to dry himself. Climbing out of the cabin, he pulled on a blue fleece warm-up suit he had in his bag. He then started the fishing boat’s engine and let it idle.

Walking onto the bow, he pulled the anchor line taut then tied it to a cleat. The boat rocked and the anchor came loose. Feeding the line into the rope locker, he hoisted the anchor from the water and secured it.

With a quick final check of the fishing boat to ensure all was in order, he eased the throttle partway forward to cruising speed and began the trip back.

Taft had no way of knowing the impact of the events he had just set into motion.

Less than thirty minutes later, in his office at the NIA, Martinez again looked at the name Windforce, which he had written on a pad of paper. He widened his eyes in amazement as he read the ownership records off the computer twice more. Straightening himself in his chair, he rubbed his reddened eyes and reached for the phone. On a tree-lined street in Alexandria, Virginia, a lone dog barked as a paperboy pedaled his way along the sidewalk, slinging papers from a bag hanging from his handlebars. Most of the houses on the block had at least their porch light on, and the paperboy used the lights as a target.

General Earl Benson had awakened at 5:00 A.M., as was his custom. Sitting in the nook of his kitchen, he had eaten a breakfast of buttered grits. His first wife had passed away just over a year before and Benson still felt strange when he rose from bed and glanced down at his newlywed second wife. His first wife had never risen before 7:00 A.M. She had always awakened with just enough time to pad downstairs in her slippers and kiss him goodbye before he left for work. His second wife followed suit.

After finishing breakfast and placing the dishes in the dishwasher, Benson walked to his wood-lined study and began reading the intelligence reports the night shift had posted on his computer. He had finished reading the reports and writing his comments and now sat lingering over his fourth cup of coffee. He scratched the head of Margaret, his aged cocker spaniel, and was staring into her cataract-clouded eyes when the phone rang.

“General Benson,” he answered.

“This is Larry Martinez. Sorry to wake you but it’s important,” Martinez explained.

“I was awake but it still better be important,” Benson boomed.

“Taft just came from the site where the Deep Search was anchored yesterday afternoon. The ship’s gone. There was diving gear on board his boat and Taft dove the area where the ship had been anchored. In a search of the bottom he found the stern section of a sailboat. He feels that most of the rest of what was a sailboat was salvaged.”

“You called me at home to tell me that?” Benson asked.

“It’s a little more involved than that, sir,” Martinez said. “Taft gave me the name off the stern and I checked the past owners’ registry on the Coast Guard computer.”

“Spit it out. What’s the name and who owned it?”

“The name of the vessel was Windforce. The original owner was Albert Einstein. The boat was resold then reportedly lost ten years after Einstein died.”

“How did it sink?”

“The record notes it was believed lost in a storm.”

“That’s worth calling me at home,” Benson noted. “What do you make of all this?”

Martinez paused before answering. “This is all speculation, General, but I think the Chinese found out Einstein left something of value on board his sailboat. Now they are trying to recover it. They hired the Axial Group to help locate the area where it sank and paid the company from North Carolina to actually find and salvage the vessel.”

“I tend to agree with your theory, as far-fetched as it sounds,” Benson said. “If you’re right, we need to find the Deep Search. I want to assign you and Taft to see if you can find where the salvagers are now. Keep me up to date on your efforts. I’ll be in the office within the hour. If that was Einstein’s sailboat, whatever the Deep Search recovered could prove to be quite interesting.”

“Very good, sir. I’ll keep you informed as to our progress,” Martinez replied and hung up the phone.

Benson immediately phoned his assistant. “Get me the latest file on the Axial Group and try to establish contact with our insider.”

“Should I set up a meeting with the insider?”

“If possible, yes,” Benson said. “I’ll be in the office in less than an hour.”

“I’ll get on it right away,” the assistant said.

Taft was in his motel room on Long Island washing the salt water off his body in a steamy shower when the phone rang. He shut off the water and walked from the bathroom. “Make it quick, I’m dripping wet. What did you find out?” he said to Martinez as he tightened a towel around his waist.

“That boat has quite a history.”

“The research ship or the wreck?”

“The wreck,” Martinez said. “I’m still working on the history of the Deep Search.”

“Hit me,” Taft said.

“It was formerly owned by Albert Einstein,” Martinez answered flatly.

“Wild,” Taft said, whistling. “Have you got any idea why someone is after his sailboat?”

Martinez paused. “Not yet, but I’m still looking into it, you can be sure. I’ve got a call into the satellite guys at NSA asking them to trace the overnight course of the Deep Search. Benson wants us to locate that ship posthaste.”

“Let me finish my shower and get dressed and I’ll be ready. If I go for breakfast I’ll keep the secure phone with me. Call me on that.”

“Count on it,” Martinez said.

“Einstein,” Taft said to himself as he walked back into the bathroom. “What does Einstein’s sailboat have aboard that anyone could possibly want?”

Martinez was thinking the same question as his computer signaled he had an E-mail. The message answered the question about ownership of Deep Search. Owned by a leasing company based in Wilmington, North Carolina, the vessel was currently being rented to the marine salvage firm of SeaSearch.

Later that same day General Benson sat on a park bench in Lafayette Square. Several pigeons pecked at the popcorn he tossed on the ground from a paper bag. Benson looked like an aging retiree out for a breath of fresh air. He was dressed in a pair of loose-fitting khaki slacks and a flannel shirt. Although it was warm outside he wore a light jacket. His feet were clad in cheap tennis shoes and his head was covered with a ball cap emblazoned with the letters AARP. His face was disguised with a false white beard and when walking to the bench he had dragged one leg as though old age had given him a limp.

Less than ten minutes after Benson sat on the bench a man approached from the south and slid onto the end of the bench. Removing a sandwich from a brown paper sack, he began to chew.

“I don’t know much,” the man said between bites.

“Tell me what you do know,” Benson said as he tossed another handful of popcorn onto the ground.

“They send one of the agents, a man named Klamn, to look into the disappearance of Einstein’s sailboat.”

“And?” Benson said.

“Apparently he located a life ring on Block Island and that information was used to set up a search for the vessel.”

“Is it the Chinese that hired your firm?” Benson asked.

“You wouldn’t be asking me that,” the man said as he rose from the bench and tossed the lunch sack into a trash barrel, “if you didn’t already know.”

Benson waited ten minutes after the man had walked away before he rose from the bench and made his way across the park to his car.

Pieces of the puzzle were beginning to link up.

In his office at the NIA, Martinez scanned his computer database and retrieved a biography of Einstein. Reading the biography, he began to form a more complete mental picture of the famous scientist. Einstein’s famous work on the theory of relativity, the theoretical foundation for the technology behind the atomic bomb, was published early in the physicist’s life, while Einstein was still a young man.

For the remainder of his career as a physicist, both in Europe and later in the United States, Einstein had worked tirelessly to try to prove his Unified Field Theory. It was rumored he was even working on it the day he died.

For decades prior to his death, the Unified Field Theory had consumed all of Einstein’s vast mental attention. The theory he was attempting to prove appears simple enough even to a layman. The Unified Field Theory sought to explain all the forces in the universe-how gravitation, electricity, and magnetism might be tied together. There was no way to know the impact it might have on the world if the relationship between these forces could be understood.

Martinez glanced at the clock on the wall of his office. It was now past 7:00 a.m. He walked to the break room and filled his coffee cup, then grabbed a corn muffin from a plate on the counter. Balancing the cup to keep it from spilling, he reentered his office. Placing the cup on his desk, he closed the door and sat behind his desk. He picked up the phone and dialed George Washington University. An operator at the main switchboard answered and asked for an extension.

“Professor Harris, please,” Martinez said. “One moment. May I ask who’s calling?” the operator inquired.

“Larry Martinez. I’m a friend of the professor’s.” He waited several minutes to be connected. “Larry, you old fart, what’s on your mind?” Mel Harris said when he came on the line.

“Still an early riser, I see,” Martinez said.

“I’ve been doing three miles on the running track Monday through Friday. I’m still in the locker room, in fact.”

Harris had been attached to the National Security Agency for several years prior to returning to teaching. He and Martinez had worked together often on joint operations. Still in his mid-thirties, Harris didn’t fit most people’s mental image of a physics teacher. He looked and dressed like a golf pro but his lightning-fast mind was that of a pure physicist.

“What I’m about to tell you is classified or soon will be. Are you still cleared?’ Martinez asked seriously.

“I still get occasional assignments from the Crystal Palace, so yes, I have my ticket,” Harris said.

The reference to the Crystal Palace, as the NSA was sometimes called, inferred Harris enjoyed a high degree of clearance.

“Tell me what you know about Einstein’s Unified Field Theory,” Martinez asked without further comment.

Harris ran through the theory, stopping to expound on the details only when Martinez sought clarification. ‘That’s about the basis of it. By the way, everything I told you is in textbooks. It hardly qualifies as top secret. What else do you need to know?’

“Did he ever finish the work?” asked Martinez.

“Who knows? Apparently not, though some of his papers from his final hospital stay are missing. Plus, no one has ever really deciphered his last set of equations,” Harris said.

Martinez considered the statement, “Mel, if Einstein had completed the theory, could it be used to create a weapon?’

“Yes. That and a thousand other uses I could think of.”

“Just theoretically, how much power might such a weapon contain?” Martinez asked carefully.

Theoretically, Larry? To put it into layman’s terms, it would make a hydrogen bomb look like a popgun. Depending on how exactly the theory was utilized, you might be able to produce an object roughly the size of a golf ball that could blow up a land mass the size of Australia.”

“Shit,” Martinez blurted out without thinking.

“No shit, Larry. If controlled properly, a mass the size of a small car could blow up the world,” Harris said. “But who would be dumb enough to want to blow up the world?’

“Maybe not blow it up,” Martinez said carefully. “The mere threat might be enough.”

“That would be one hell of a threat,” Harris agreed.

Later that same morning the daily briefing room for the National Security Council was crowded. The oblong mahogany conference table in the center of the room was surrounded by representatives of the United States intelligence community, officials from the Department of Justice and officers of the air force, army, navy, and Marines.

Over the years the room had been modified and upgraded. Thick, beige, sound-deadening carpet with rubber backing covered the floor. An eight-by-ten-foot video and computer monitor capable of receiving direct satellite feeds covered the north wall. Electronic frequency jammers wired into the corners of the walls foiled any attempt at recording the proceedings. The entire room was protected from anything short of a direct nuclear blast by reinforced walls, ceilings, and floors. A pair of elite Marine guards stood just inside the door, four more in the corridor outside.

Crystal ashtrays and silver water pitchers were arranged in front of each chair along with note pads and pens. A large paper shredder sat discreetly in the corner of the room. Mounted on the wall directly above the shredder was a presidential seal six feet in diameter. The lighting came from brass sconces mounted on the walls and from brass fixtures recessed into the ceiling. The temperature was computer-controlled and kept at a constant level. When the room was empty it was as silent as a tomb. The president of the United States and his various advisors, including Robert Lakeland, his national security advisor, grouped around the north end of the massive table. Aides to each participant were seated nearby in chairs along the wall. A light breeze could be felt from the overhead air ducts.