The Einstein Prophecy (24 page)

The fly from the cart circled lazily around the rim of a teacup before landing beside another insect that had just crept out from under the saucer.

“The pigs were driven mad by them,” Simone continued.

“And then the whole herd ran off a cliff and drowned in the sea,” Lucas said, the rest of the story coming back to him now.

“Saint Anthony was a swineherd,” she observed, as if simply stating the next irrefutable corollary. “It’s his ossuary we opened.”

Lucas was finding it hard to keep up, or guess where this was all going. Idly, he waved a hand at the flies, which flew off, then quickly returned. Three of them now. Where the hell were they coming from?

“We’ve let this evil—whatever it is—loose,” she said, finally looking straight at him. “Only instead of running off a cliff and drowning in the sea, it’s managed to stick around long enough to cover its tracks.”

“Okay,” Lucas said, in carefully measured tones, “but how would it do that?”

She frowned like a teacher whose student is proving slow to grasp a simple lesson. “By stealing its own bones back, for a start,” she said, raising one finger. “By incinerating the film,” she said, raising another. “By murdering people like my father”—a third—“and by killing even its own servants, once they’ve outlived their usefulness.”

Andy Brandt.

“And, finally, by luring me out of my carrel, chasing me through the library and trying to scare me to death, before destroying all the proof I’d gathered in there.”

Lucas was torn. On the one hand, there was his lifelong allegiance to everything rational, to everything he believed true about nature and the universe, everything empirically provable. He had never been one to engage in the paranormal, in clairvoyance and telekinesis and astrology, or anything having to do with the so-called science of the occult.

On the other hand, there was the increasingly substantial, and persuasive, body of evidence Simone was amassing. Evidence that he himself could supplement, if he chose. There was Brandt’s corpse, for instance—sucked dry like a piece of discarded fruit. (That was one detail he had spared Simone.) In addition, there was everything he had seen for himself in the conservation wing . . . and watched on the film that had mysteriously self-destructed.

“Accepting, for the time being, your premise,” he said, “what would keep this demon, this unclean spirit, here? In a little college town, in the middle of nowhere?” He had his own suspicion, but he didn’t want to voice it yet. He didn’t want to plant any idea in Simone’s head. “What’s here?”

“Instead of asking yourself
what’s
here, ask yourself
who’s
here
.
That one is easy.”

It was.

“Who did Wally Gregg attack?” she said. “Where did Brandt go on the night he died?”

Now he knew that she had indeed been thinking along the same lines that he had. “But why Einstein?”

“That’s what I have been asking myself.” Riffling her fingertips through some of the pages on the desk, as if the answer were in there somewhere and she’d simply overlooked it, she asked, “Why send your minion to attack an elderly professor who spends his time fussing over equations almost no one can understand?”

Lucas remembered the day he’d first visited Einstein in his study, and the letter he had seen on White House stationery—the letter from the president, warning, “I fear they are close to success.” It was no great leap to surmise that Einstein, whose momentous discoveries were considered long behind him, who was regarded more as an icon than a working scientist, might not be retired after all. Could he be more engaged in the war effort than anyone knew? Was it possible that his genius was being employed, in some unknown way, to tip the balance in America’s favor?

Only those in the highest government circles—such as the Oval Office—would know for sure. But if it was true, could that be why the Germans had wanted the ossuary in the first place? Did they know that it contained a spirit so powerful that it could serve as the ultimate weapon—a weapon that they had cleverly deployed against the one man on earth who could foil their plans for world domination? Had they planned this all along? Had they deliberately sent the incriminating telegrams, setting the ossuary aside for Hitler himself, knowing that the missives would be intercepted, knowing that the OSS would rescue the ossuary at all costs, and that it would then find its way to the one spot in America where the nascent isotope research would be used to verify its authenticity? Hadn’t Brandt already been put in place to relay the findings? Wasn’t this where it would most probably be opened, and its evil thus released on an enemy shore?

Lucas found his head spinning with all the possible schemes and scenarios, questions and conundrums. It was as disorienting as the hall of mirrors at the Coney Island amusement park he’d gone to as a child.

“I want to find this thing that killed my father,” Simone said in a calm but implacable voice. “I want to find it, wherever it’s hiding, and I want to kill it.”

A look of cold resolve gleamed in her dark, lustrous eyes, a look that Lucas might well have imagined on the face of some storybook heroine, an Arabian princess, sitting astride a noble stallion.

“I need your help, Lucas.”

What help he could offer, he did not know. How did you capture, much less kill, a spirit as old as time? But he was not about to abandon her—not now, not ever. Without a word, he enfolded her in his arms. “Anything,” he said. “I’ll do anything you need me to.”

At first, she remained as stiff as a sentry, unyielding, still caught up in her anger and determination.

“I’m with you, Simone,” he reassured her.

He felt the tension in her shoulders relax.

“I will always be.”

She virtually melted in his arms, her head resting against his chest, all the energy draining away so swiftly it was as if he were catching her in free fall.

“I need you, Lucas. I need you so much.”

She was speaking of more than the ossuary, he knew. He knew it because it was precisely how he felt, too. He needed her. He turned off the bedside lamp.

This time, their lovemaking was more tender than torrid. This time, he tore no buttons from blouses, ripped no stockings, scratched no cheeks with his stubble. This time he allowed himself to undress her slowly, to kiss and savor each inch of skin revealed. My God, he thought, she was such a wonder. Never had he wished more fervently to be rid of the black patch, to have two eyes rather than one to take her all in. When he leaned above her to kiss her breasts, she gripped his arm so tightly the bandage threatened to unravel.

“Oh, Lucas. Did I hurt you just now?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

He reassured her with a kiss, and then another, losing himself in the realm of pure sensation. Here there were no demons to catch, no boxes of bones, no nightmares of land mines and battles and blood. All of that—the horrors he had witnessed, the things that haunted him still—all of that was banished. Now there was only this, her tawny limbs entwined with his, her head thrown back with eyes closed and mouth open, her hair spread across the white pillows, her breath growing as hot and ragged as his own. There was only this moment—and in this moment there was everything he could want.

When it was finished, Simone pressed her lips to his throat and murmured something in Arabic.

“What’s it mean?”

“Ask me in the morning,” she said, then rolled over, falling instantly into a deep and silent and motionless sleep. Lucas lay back beside her, his own body cooling off like an engine that had been running too hard. Apart from the low hiss of the radiator and the muffled thump of doors being closed down the hall, the room was silent. He let his fingers graze up and down the gentle swell of her back, let his mind drift. The sweat evaporated on his skin. He must have fallen asleep because it was only later—how long, he couldn’t tell—before he became vaguely aware of a tickling sensation on his face. Brushing it away, he heard the buzzing of a fly.

Minutes later, he felt the tickling again, and again brushed it away.

When it happened once more, he knew that if he didn’t get up and swat the damn fly, he would never be able to get any rest.

He opened his eye, but his vision was blurred by sleep, and the only light was provided by the streetlamps outside. Trying not to disturb Simone, he groped for the switch on the bedside lamp. His hand flailed about, unable to find it, but when he did, he drew his fingers back instantly. The knob was soft as velvet . . . and animate.

Snapping awake, he sat up, swinging his legs off the bed.

There was a constant humming in the room, a sound that in his sleep he might have mistaken for some ambient hotel noise.

Going to the window, he yanked the curtains back, enough that he could now discern the shape of the lampshade, and reaching under it again, he found the switch—unaltered this time—and turned the lamp on.

The light only made the scene more confusing. His brain could not process what he was seeing: The whole room was seething, like a pot boiling over. The walls and ceiling were so black with movement, punctuated by glints of iridescent green and indigo, that they merged into one vast undulating surface. The desk was as thick and black as an anvil, buried under an army of flies so dense its legs and drawers couldn’t even be seen.

The swarm didn’t seem to like the light, growing more agitated, churning and surging and buzzing.

Stealthily, Lucas nudged Simone’s bare shoulder.

She was so fast asleep, she didn’t budge.

He shook her harder, and whispered, “Simone, wake up.”

“What?” she mumbled.

“Wake up. Go into the bathroom.” He prayed that the flies were not already in there, too. “Lock the door.”

“Why?” she said, raising her head a few inches from the mattress.

“Do it.”

Then, looking around, she must have taken in the horror surrounding them. He heard a fast intake of breath, saw her back stiffen with fear.

“Don’t make any noise. Just go.”

She slid off the far side of the bed, but must have stumbled over the clothes strewn on the floor. As if it were all one organism, the tide of flies shifted from the walls and ceiling, and Simone screamed as they descended upon her naked body.

Lucas leapt over the bed. She was down on all fours, trying to swat them away, but there were too many, and they were too intent. Grabbing her under one arm, he dragged her toward the bathroom and shoved her inside. Her hands covering her head, she scuttled under the pedestal sink, but before he could follow her in, the door banged shut in his face, so hard it nearly broke his nose.

“Lucas!”

Answering her was impossible—the flies had descended upon him now, coating his cheeks and lips and forcing him to close his one good eye. He staggered backward, blind, around the foot of the bed, and groped for the door to the hall. But the wall was so carpeted by the horde that he couldn’t even find the handle. Opening his mouth to catch a breath, he was instantly choked by a clutch of flies. He spat them out, and wiping his eye and holding his head down, lurched across the room, bumping into the room-service cart and sending it careening into the bedside table. Though the light stayed on, the lamp toppled to the floor, emitting a sinister glow as it rolled back and forth on the rim of its dented shade.

The wooden desk chair was covered, too, but Lucas picked it up and slung it at the window, shattering the glass. The chair clattered out onto the fire escape, as the curtains billowed out in the night wind.

The index card under the sash fluttered in a circle, then flew away as if it were a bat taking wing.

Instead of entering the room, the wind drew the air out in a kind of vortex, sucking out the flies in a swirling black funnel that enveloped Lucas, churning around his shoulders, over his head, under his arms, and between his legs. It was all he could do to remain upright. Once above the moonlit street, the flies, like an army deserting en masse, dispersed in every direction.

Lucas planted his hands on his knees, and took deep, labored breaths. He heard the bathroom door creak open, and a moment later felt Simone’s arms around him.

“Are you all right?” she asked, but all he could do was nod.

With the curtains rustling and the overturned lamp casting its eerie glow, they stayed just as they were, holding each other tight, naked and cold and alone. Adam and Eve, expelled.

A tattered remnant of the blue folder blew across the floor, stopping at Simone’s ankle.

Though not a word passed between them, Lucas knew what Simone was thinking. Just as she had predicted, their ancient adversary had assumed one of its countless disguises, and paid them a visit. He, too, knew that it wouldn’t be the last.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Back when he was in training in Fort Meade, Maryland, Ray Taylor had earned the nickname Hawkeye. His eyesight was exceptional—his scores on the rifle range were among the highest ever recorded—and his hearing was equally acute. Even when sleeping, as he was now, he remained more aware of his surroundings than some people were when they were wide-awake.

At the sound of a car pulling up outside now, he abruptly lifted his head from the pillow. In his T-shirt and boxer shorts, he went to the window; crouching down, he pulled the curtain to one side and saw the back door of a cab swing open and Lucas get out. A second later, a girl got out, too—that Egyptian girl who’d shown up in several of Brandt’s photos, the one who worked at the university. Simone Rashid. He’d been sent a thorough report on her from headquarters, and he’d read it twice. An impressive résumé, especially for such a knockout.

Right now, however, she didn’t look so hot. Right now, she looked like she was barely holding herself together.

After unloading a couple of suitcases from the trunk of the cab and leaving them at the curb, Lucas put an arm around her shoulder and escorted her unsteadily up the front steps. The front door closed behind them as softly as possible, and as they mounted the staircase to Lucas’s apartment at the top of the house, he could hear their footsteps passing his own room. By the time Lucas had crept back down to retrieve the suitcases, Taylor had thrown on some clothes and followed him outside. From force of habit, he’d also slung his shoulder holster and gun under his Windbreaker. The cab was long gone.

It was cold and dark, with a wet wind blowing, and Taylor had to come up right behind him and put a hand on his shoulder before Lucas even knew he was there. The man whipped around, fists clenched, head down, ready for a fight.

Taylor lifted his hands and took a step back. “Whoa there, pardner. I came to help with the bags.”

Lucas raised a dubious eyebrow.

Taylor picked up one of the bags by its handle—judging from the weight, it had to be filled with more books than clothing—and carted it to the front steps. When Lucas arrived with the rest, Taylor stopped him before going inside, and said in a low tone, “So, you want to tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Simone had a problem at the hotel. She’s staying here tonight.”

“What kind of problem?”

“They overbooked.”

“Yeah, right.” He’d pursue this tomorrow, with a stop at the hotel desk. There was something else more important. “What about the bones? Did you find a safe place to store them?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Delaney’s lab. Half the time, he sleeps there.”

From what he’d seen of the guy shambling around the campus, Taylor could believe it. “Anything else you want to tell me? Before I find out later?”

Lucas shrugged and mounted the steps, then turned.

“Yes,” he said. “Keep a close eye on Einstein’s place.”

“I already do.”

“Keep it closer.”

“Why?”

“You asked for my advice,” Lucas said, opening the door and holding it with his foot while he wrestled the suitcases inside. “Now you have it.”

The door swung closed behind him.

Taylor was in no mood to go back to bed now, and he sure as shootin’ didn’t believe the warning had been issued for no reason. Lucas was still laboring under the mistaken impression that Taylor was there to
guard
Einstein. Guard duty had most certainly not been J. Edgar Hoover’s intention in dispatching his agent to Princeton. Hoover wanted Taylor to shadow the man and dig up any dirt he could find.

“The man’s a Red,” Hoover had blustered from behind his immense desk. “Anything he knows, and anything he learns about our top-secret projects, he’s going to share with Moscow.”

“But the Russians are our allies,” Taylor had managed to get out, before Hoover blew his top.

“If you believe that, you believe in the Easter bunny, and you have no business serving in the bureau.”

Taylor had fallen silent; he’d worked too long and hard for this job.

“Once we’re done with the Nazis—and trust me, we will be—we’ll deal with the Soviets.” He’d stopped to growl an order into his intercom, then resumed where he’d left off. “And we’ll also deal with their sympathizers here in the United Sates. I’ve got a list ten yards long.”

Taylor didn’t doubt it, and lest he wind up on Hoover’s shit list himself, he had hunkered down in the boardinghouse right across from Einstein’s home on Mercer Street. In all the time he’d been there, the only thing he’d seen of a remotely suspicious nature was a car carrying what looked like J. Robert Oppenheimer. Hoover didn’t trust Oppenheimer, either; everyone in the bureau knew that. Taylor sometimes wondered if it wasn’t because both men were Jews. Anyway, he’d dutifully relayed the license plate number to headquarters, but they had never even bothered to let him know if his guess had been correct.

Zipping up his Windbreaker, Taylor crossed the street, keeping out of the feeble pools of light cast by the streetlamps. It was colder than he’d thought; he should have grabbed a scarf, or gloves. But he didn’t plan to be outside long; he’d make a quick circuit of Einstein’s place, check to see that the garage was still locked up, and then head back to bed.

Vaulting the low wooden fence and rounding the side of the house, what he didn’t expect to see was the yellow glow of a desk lamp in the upstairs study. He instinctively stepped back into the shadow of the trees, while moving closer to get a better look.

He saw a silhouette pass in front of the window, and then pass back again the other way. It was Einstein, pacing with a pipe in his mouth.

Taylor crept a little closer. From this angle he could see, through the half-open window, a blackboard covered with equations that he could never have made sense of in a hundred years. Thank God the FBI had placed a greater emphasis on marksmanship than math.

As stealthily as he could, he made his way across the yard and when he reached the garage, tested the new padlock to make sure it was still secure. He was about to head back home when he heard the back door creak open, and saw Einstein in a ratty bathrobe and moccasins step outside. In one hand, he held the pipe, upside down and unlit. In the other, he held a bowl of milk, which he put down on the stoop and then, pressing a palm to the small of his back, straightened up as Taylor ducked behind a bush.

“Dinner is served,” Einstein announced to the darkness. “Come and get it.”

Then, after waiting a few seconds, he went back inside, and Taylor breathed a sigh of relief. If Einstein had spotted him, and he’d had to concoct some excuse for hiding out in his yard, he’d have been pulled from this job, and he’d have had his head handed to him, personally, by Hoover.

Rather than risk it, he decided to return by way of the alley.

He hadn’t gone far before he began to reconsider. The alleyway was so damn dark he tripped over every rut and puddle, and three or four times dogs penned up in backyards rushed the fence, barking ferociously. Once a man called out, “Shut up, ya lousy mutt!”

Then he noticed something odd. The dogs would stop barking as abruptly as they’d started. The moment he’d passed by, they’d stop, and once or twice he could hear them whimper before retreating back toward their kennels. In his experience, once dogs got riled up enough to start barking at night, nothing short of a miracle could get them to quit.

It was as if they were scared of him . . . or of something else.

He stopped in his tracks, a row of garbage cans on one side, a dilapidated garage on the other.

Something told him to turn around, at the same time that something else told him not to, told him to run like hell to the end of the alley, where a streetlamp shone, and never look back.

He turned around.

And breathed a sigh of relief. There was no one trailing him, and nothing but an empty alleyway.

Oh, and a tabby cat, sitting quite still in the middle of a pothole, its head erect, tail twitching.

“Get going,” he said. “You’ve got a bowl of milk waiting for you.”

The cat, however, didn’t budge.

“If one of these dogs gets loose, you’re a goner.”

He moved on, but the same thing happened at the next backyard he passed—a yapping Doberman rushed the fence, then ran away just as swiftly—and when he turned his head, he saw that the cat was padding along right behind him.

A Doberman afraid of an alley cat?

You had to hand it to this one, though—every time Taylor turned, the cat was still on his heels. But it didn’t feel as if it were keeping him company.

It felt more like it was stalking him.

“Is there something I can do for you?” Taylor joked. Even the sound of his own voice in the moonlit alleyway faintly unnerved him.

That, and the way the cat was looking at him. More intently than any cat or animal ever had. Its green eyes flashed, and it seemed absolutely unafraid of him. If he could imagine feeling a direct challenge from a feral cat, then this was it.

How crazy was this? He was an armed FBI agent, confronted by a cat in an alleyway, and he was going to do what? Back down? Run away?

Instead, he reached into his Windbreaker, unsnapped his shoulder holster, and pulled out his gun. Just pointing it at the creature would probably do the trick; the animal kingdom had long ago figured out what firearms betokened. How they’d done that, Taylor had never been able to quite figure out. How did one animal pass along, or instill in another, a fear of something so inexplicable as a gun? Was it some kind of telepathy, or a group mind, like bees in a hive seemed to possess? Or were they just gifted, like humans, with an innate understanding that the world is a dangerous place, and that whenever you were confronted by something you couldn’t quite grasp, it was best to turn tail and run for your life?

Whatever the answer, this particular cat had not gotten the message.

Taylor waved the gun in the air, then pointed the muzzle directly at its head.

The cat stared down the barrel unmoved.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Taylor said. “If I shoot you, the whole damn town wakes up, and I get demoted tomorrow.” Reaching into his jacket again, he said, “However . . . there are ways around that.”

He withdrew a short cylinder—a silencer—and screwed it onto the barrel of the gun.

The cat watched the maneuver with interest, but no fear.

Taylor wondered why he was bothering with this at all. Was he trying to scare a cat with the sight of a silencer? Why didn’t he let the damn thing alone and go back to his nice warm bed? He’d fired his revolver in the line of duty only once before, and that was in an armed chase of an enemy agent in Philadelphia; he’d brought his target down with a single shot.

But this? This was stupid; it made no sense.

For some reason, he was angry, however. There was something about this animal that pissed him off, something about it that seemed both preternaturally intelligent and downright insulting. It felt no different than if some guy had prodded him into a bar brawl. Taylor was mad, and weirdly enough, he was frightened, too. Of what, he couldn’t say. The air seemed to crackle with menace.

Yeah, this time he was gonna use the gun, one more time, and who would ever question a dead cat in an alley, anyway? If he tossed the carcass in a trashcan, who would even notice it?

He clicked off the safety, and the cat’s ears pricked up at the sound.

“What,” Taylor said, “now you get it?”

The cat didn’t move.

“Last chance. Take off.”

He pointed the gun at the cat, but instead of racing away, the cat sauntered toward him, back arched, hissing.

Taylor was so surprised, he retreated.

“Are you really this dumb?” he said.

The cat kept coming, and Taylor suddenly tripped over a fruit crate crumpled in the alley. He stumbled, shook his foot free from the crate, and by the time he had looked back again, the cat had somehow grown . . . bigger.

That wasn’t possible.

When it opened its jaws now, he saw bright white teeth, sharp as daggers, and it hissed so forcefully he could feel its hot breath riffling his pant leg.

He squeezed the trigger and a shot went so wild it pinged off a trash can.

Whether it was a trick of the shadows and the moonlight, or simply his imagination running wild, the cat seemed to be taking on the proportions of a panther, and moving with the same deliberation and lethal intent.

Taylor walked backward faster than before, and when he saw that emerald flash reappear in the animal’s eyes, he knew, in the coldest depths of his soul, that he was confronting something unimaginable. Something bullets weren’t going to deter. He turned around. The end of the alleyway, lit by a lamppost, was only fifty yards or so off. He started running, the pounding of the blood in his ears so loud he couldn’t even hear his own feet. He didn’t look back to see if he was being pursued—he didn’t need to. He could sense the creature’s presence. When he felt something snag the cuff of his trousers, he whipped the gun around and shot blindly. Once, twice. He couldn’t hear the
pfft
of the shots either, but he felt the gun jerk in his hand, and his trousers rip.