The Einstein Prophecy (13 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

When Lucas heard the gentle knock on his study door and said, “Come in,” he expected a student to pop in with a late paper. Even that brief an interruption was more than he wanted—his thoughts were entirely consumed with the imminent unveiling of the ossuary. He should have been back in the conservation wing, making a final inspection of the sealed box and compiling his last-minute notes.

But instead of a student, a plump young woman, with a cloth coat thrown over a waitress’s pink uniform, opened the door.

“I’m sorry, but are you Professor Athan?” she asked, as if he weren’t what she expected to see, either.

“Yes.”

“I’m Polly Gregg. Wally’s daughter. Would it be okay if I talked to you for a minute?”

Suppressing the urge to put her off until a more opportune time, Lucas welcomed her in and gestured to the chair opposite his cluttered desk. He swept from its seat an invitation from President Dobbs, addressed to all junior faculty, that recommended in no uncertain terms that they turn out “as a sign of their support for the college” at the opening football game. Lucas prayed that Polly wasn’t there to tell him that the poor man had succumbed to his wounds. He had more than enough blood on his hands and his conscience, already.

“My dad told me about you. Said you were a war hero.”

“Hardly,” Lucas said. “How is your dad doing?”

Polly glanced down at her lap. “Not so good,” she said. “Not so good at all, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know why he was working so late. Why
was
he? Why did this happen?” It all came out in a rush as she looked up, her brown eyes welling with tears. “When he called me to tell me not to wait up for him, he said he had the willies. My dad worked in the museum all the time—why would he have had the willies?”

Lucas felt the sharp, stabbing cold around his glass eye. He had the willies himself when he was around that box. But all he could do was shake his head.

“I stopped in at the hospital,” he said, “to see him, but they wouldn’t allow anyone but family.”

Polly looked lost and helpless. “It’s pretty bad,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “And I don’t understand a word that his doctor says to me. It’s like he purposely uses big words just to confuse me.”

“I’m sure not.”

“I’m sure he does.” She dug a wad of tissues out of her coat pocket. “I’m just a waitress, and my dad’s a janitor, so we must be stupid, right?” She leaned forward to drop her used tissues in the wastebasket beside his desk, then, perhaps considering it impolite, stuck them back in her pocket instead. “My dad drinks a lot. I’ll admit it. But he never hit me or anything, he just cried a lot after my mother left, and sometimes forgot to put any food in the icebox. He tried his best, though.” She looked up at Lucas. “And I don’t want him to die.”

“Why don’t I come with you?” Lucas said, standing. “To the hospital. Right now.” He needed to do something with this sliver of time before the opening of the ossuary, and maybe this was it. Making a quick calculation in his head, he was certain he’d still be able to make it back to the museum on time. “I might be able to help.” Grabbing his coat off the peg on the door, he took Polly by her elbow and guided her out of the building. She looked at him with unconcealed gratitude.

At the hospital, they sat on a stiff wooden bench in the waiting area until a nurse summoned them down the hall. In Wally’s room, a doctor—Crowley, according to his name tag—was making notes on a clipboard. He glanced up at Lucas over the rim of his wire specs. “And you are?”

“A friend of the family.”

The bed was shrouded by what looked like mosquito netting, and it was only when the doctor lifted it that Lucas could see why Polly had been so horrified.

Wally was almost unrecognizable. His head, propped on the pillow, looked like a jack-o’-lantern, and his breathing was stertorous. His eyes and lips were just slits in his head, and only patches of his hair remained. His skin had turned as firm and bumpy as an orange peel. For a moment, superimposed over the scene, all Lucas saw was the corpse in the iron mine, its swollen skull lying facedown in the dirt. Wally could be his twin.

“The bacterium strain is proving more resistant than expected,” Crowley said. “The drug regimen has worked miracles in some cases, but not in this one.”

Lucas cleared his throat, the vision dispersing as instantaneously as it had come. “What drug is that?” he asked, as much for Polly’s benefit as his own.

“Penicillin,” Crowley said.

Penicillin had only been mass manufactured in recent years, and Lucas knew that almost all of the supply had been reserved for the military. Reputed to be a godsend—millions of doses had been stockpiled in advance of the Normandy invasion—it had saved many lives from infection and disease already.

“We’re also dealing with the ramifications of necrotizing fasciitis,” the doctor said. Polly threw a pleading glance at Lucas.

“What exactly is that?” he asked.

“A polymicrobial infection that can be transmitted, as it undoubtedly was in this instance, from some trauma to the dermis. A bite from a carrier—a rat, bat, dog, even an insect—can introduce it.”

“But what does it do, once it’s been introduced?”

“In layman’s terms,” Crowley said with the air of certain lofty professors he’d had at Columbia, “it eats flesh.”

Lucas had never heard of such a disease. But now he had seen two examples of it—one sprawled on the ground in Alsace-Lorraine, and one lying in a bed in New Jersey. Had the dead man in the mine also been bitten by an infected animal?

“Patients who suffer from diabetes, circulatory issues, or problems with alcohol are most susceptible.” Crowley went on. “As you may or may not know, Mr. Gregg had all three of the conditions which favor erysipelas.”

“Favor what?” Polly asked, twisting her hands.

“Erysipelas. Since the Middle Ages, when it was a scourge in Western Europe, it has been more commonly known as
ignis sacer
, or holy fire.”

When even Lucas remained blank, he added, “It also went by the name of Saint Anthony’s fire. Perhaps you have heard it called by that name.”

By that name, Lucas had.

“John Stuart Mill died of it,” the doctor added.

“Here?” Polly said with terror in her voice.

“In London, in the previous century. We’ll continue to do all that we can for Mr. Gregg, but if you’ll excuse me”—Crowley flipped the chart on his clipboard—“I have to complete my rounds now.”

“Actually, Doctor,” Lucas couldn’t resist saying, as the doctor paused impatiently at the door, “Mill was born in London, but he didn’t die there. He died in France.”

Then he draped a consoling arm around Polly, and they both turned their attention to her father. As Lucas’s thoughts raced ahead, trying to put together the shards of the puzzle he found himself confronted by, Polly reached out to take her father’s hand. Bandages concealed what Lucas could only surmise were partially amputated fingertips. She was just about to make contact when the head nurse, her hat as white and crisp as cardboard, bustled in.

“No, no, no,” she admonished her, brushing Polly’s hand aside and lowering the netting around the bed again. “No touching. You’ll both have to go now. Visiting hours were over at five-thirty.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

All that day, and now into the evening, Simone had been champing at the bit, waiting for the museum to close to the public so that she could join Professors Delaney and Athan in the conservation wing for the great unveiling.

There was just going to be one problem. Telling her father, who was sure to bridle at not being included.

She found him settled, as usual, in the darkest corner of the Yankee Doodle taproom in the basement of the Nassau Inn. The room took its name from the broad Norman Rockwell mural behind the bar, depicting a colonial soldier, feather in his cap, riding a scrawny pony through the streets. She didn’t know if her father actually preferred this quiet, candle-lit corner, not far from the hearth, or if the hotel was trying to keep him as much out of the sight of their lily-white, Anglo-Saxon guests as possible. Under his elbow rested a blue folder, weighted down by a copy of the Koran and a much depleted box of mentholated cough drops.

Simone slipped into the empty seat across the table and it was several seconds before he looked up from the book and registered her presence. “I was wondering where you’ve been.”

“I was wondering the same thing about you.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about me,” he said with a sly grin. “I was in the chapel, having a delightful conversation with Professor Einstein.”

Simone did not know if he was joking.

“It’s true. He gave me these cough drops,” he said, as if offering incontrovertible proof of the encounter.

“What did you talk about?”

“The weather. Our work. The universe.”

Simone would love to know more about it, and in much greater detail, but time was short, and her father was pushing the bread basket toward her.

“Let’s get you some dinner,” he said.

“Thanks, but I’m not hungry.”

“Nonsense. You have to eat.”

“I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“There’s that cough, for one thing.”

He brushed it aside.

“Or that maybe you were feeling abandoned here?”

“Abandoned? Me? Never. As long as I have my work, and a place to do it in—the library here is particularly fine, by the way—I have everything I need.”

Since they had arrived, Simone had been occupied with nailing down her temporary sinecure at the university, and she’d felt guilty about leaving him to his own devices from morning ’til night. But how could she have forgotten who he was—a man who could lose himself in a single book, not to mention a world-class, open-stack library, for hours on end?

“And my work on the papyri is going exceedingly well,” he confided, leaning forward. “I’ve translated enough of them to believe they contain the revelations we’ve been hoping for.”

She felt herself holding her breath. “What revelations?”

“That my reasons for hunting the tomb all these years were right.” He lowered his voice further. “I have long suspected, as you know, that it contains a benevolent power, one that might be used in this present world as a force for good.”

“Now would certainly be a good time for it.”

“But there’s a danger—what if that force is coupled, inexplicably, with a malevolent one?”

Simone looked deep into his dark eyes, alight with the fervor of his theory. “What if it’s impossible to release one,” he murmured, “without freeing the other?”

A waitress in colonial garb set a plate of sautéed broccoli and cauliflower down in front of her vegetarian father, and asked Simone if she would like a menu.

“No, thanks, I’m not staying.” His words were still echoing in her skull.

Flicking open his napkin, her father said, “After what I’ve just told you, you’re going to leave? Impossible.”

“Possible.”

“We have so much to discuss.”

“We’ll have to do it later. I have an appointment.” Now it would be even harder than she’d foreseen to tell him the rest.

“At this hour?” her father said, spearing a stalk of broccoli. “Where, and with whom?”

“A certain saint.”

He stopped, fork poised above his plate, and gave her a long look. “Do not be cryptic with me.”

“Professor Athan has decided to open the ossuary tonight.”

He dropped the fork onto the plate, dabbed his napkin at his lips, and said, “And when were you planning to tell me about this? Obviously, there are things I need to prepare.”

This confrontation was precisely what she had hoped to avoid, and why she had been reluctant to notify him in the first place. “You don’t need to prepare anything. I’ll take care of it all.”

“We are going to the museum?” he said, not hearing a word of what she’d just said. “Whether or not my worst suspicions are correct, there are precautions that must be taken.”

“The project is being kept under the tightest security, and only personnel okayed by the OSS are allowed to be present,” Simone said, placing a hand on top of his. “It’s a miracle I was able to worm my way in. I’m afraid I will have to go there alone.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, “absolutely not. I won’t allow it.”

It reminded her of the time he had refused to let her go off on a motorcycle trip with a boy she’d met at school (though she had gone, anyway). “I’ll make sure no harm comes to anyone, or to the ossuary, for that matter.”

“What do you mean by anyone? Who besides Athan?”

“Professor Delaney, from geophysics, is the only other person allowed.”

“And I am not,” he said with disgust. “Do any of these people have any idea of what might be inside it?”

Simone dropped her eyes to the flickering candle flame. “Nothing other than the usual skeletal remains.”

“I thought not.” He withdrew his hand from beneath hers. “Is that because you are afraid to tell them? Afraid of what they might think of you if you did?”

The answer was yes, but she did not say it aloud. She didn’t have to.

“Don’t you think they should know?”

“Why?” she blurted out. “First of all, they’d never believe a word of it. And chances are, none of it is true, anyway.”

“Yes, there is always that possibility.” What hung in the air, however, was the rest of that thought—that it just
might
be. “If only we’d had the opportunity to open it in Cairo,” her father added, slapping the edge of the table in frustration. “We could have gone about this properly.”

But by the time the sarcophagus had been retrieved and brought back—a task that took six months of planning on its own—Rommel’s Afrika Korps had swept across the region, destroying everything in their path and stealing anything worth having. The ossuary was part of the booty, and Simone, like her father, thought it had been taken indiscriminately, and with no idea of its true provenance or value.

She had soon been disabused of that notion when she learned, as part of her duties at the Ministry of Culture, that it had been singled out for special delivery, and to the Führer himself. Somehow, and not to her surprise, the Nazis must have planted a mole in the ministry. When she found out that the United States had then gone after it, too, she realized that the ossuary had become a pawn in some game—a game whose players might not even know what they were squabbling over.

“To think that such an ancient journey should end in a country so foreign,” her father said, as if thinking along the same lines, “and so young.” He waved a hand dismissively at the faux colonial surroundings.

“Maybe it was all fate.” She could only imagine all the thoughts swirling through his mind. The years of research into the whereabouts of the tomb, his growing conviction of its power and potential. Her own commitment had remained more prosaic. She had always been more interested in its immense archaeological importance, not to mention the vindication of her father’s lifework. Together they had made the arduous trip into the White Desert, the descent into the cave, the dangerous voyage across the Atlantic, and now, at the very moment when the box might be opened, reveal its contents, and confirm or refute his theories, he would not be present, except by proxy. She knew it had to be agony for him.

He coughed, took a long sip from his glass of club soda to quell it—alcohol, to her knowledge, had never crossed his lips—and then sighed resignedly. In the old days, he’d have put up much more of a fight than this. Now, it appeared that even he knew his limitations. His ebony cane was hooked to the back of his chair, and in order to read the papers in the blue folder, he’d had to move the candle, in its little pewter base, much closer to his plate.

“Then you will have to be my eyes,” he said, “and ears.”

“I’ll give you a full report, in writing,” she promised with a smile. “Triple-spaced, the way you like it.”

His dark eyes fixing hers, he reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and took out a threadbare velvet pouch. “Even if this is of no help,” he said, withdrawing a tarnished old medallion on a frayed leather string and handing it to her, “humor me. What harm can it do?”

The medallion was plainly ancient, its symbol so worn away that it was hard for her to discern in the feeble light of the taproom.

“It’s a pentagram,” her father said, to Simone’s surprise.

“The symbol of evil?”

“Not originally. Until the Middle Ages, when it was finally supplanted by the cross, it was a symbol of Christ. The five points represented the five wounds to his body, and it was believed to
protect
the wearer from evil.”

To oblige him, she slipped it around her neck and under her blouse. What harm
could
it do? It was something like the philosopher Pascal’s wager, to her mind: Although an atheist, Pascal said he would make a deathbed confession to God. If there was no God to hear it, what difference did it make? But if there
was
. . .

As she got up to go, Dr. Rashid reached out, squeezed her hand, and said, solemnly, “God be with you.”

“I’m counting on it,” she replied, tapping the medallion now resting against her skin.

Outside, it was a cold, clear evening, and the streets of the town were still busy with people buying their dinner fixings, or getting back from their jobs. But the quaint, yellow-tinted lamplights were on, and the sidewalks were crowded. As she walked back toward the campus gates, she thought how easily she could have wound up in just such a place, devoting herself purely to writing and research, married to another professor, someone, strictly for argument’s sake, like Lucas Athan.

But she had always had bigger, and more adventurous, goals than that.

Passing under FitzRandolph Gate and into the precincts of the college, she lost the bright storefronts of Nassau Street, the noise of human voices, the rumble of motor engines. The darkness was deeper, punctuated only by the occasional lantern in a Gothic archway, or the gleam of some student’s light behind the casement window of his dormitory. On her way to meet up with Professor Delaney at Guyot Hall, she was accompanied by the rustle of leaves on the ground and the sighing of the boughs in the trees overhead. Only a couple of students scurried past her, complaining about a coach who had kept them late. By the time she reached Guyot Hall, with its cabinet of curiosities displayed in the lobby, Delaney was coming down the stairs. Spotting her, he lifted a jingling key ring in greeting.

“I was looking for these all afternoon,” he said. “Turns out they were in my coat pocket the whole time.”

“It’s a hazard of the profession,” Simone said, thinking of her own father and half a dozen professors she’d had at Oxford.

“What is?”

“Absentmindedness.”

“Let’s hope that’s all it is,” he said, locking the main doors behind them.

At his feet, she noticed a closed-up Gladstone bag. “You look like a country doctor ready to make a house call.”

Delaney laughed and lifted the bag—she heard a clank from inside it. “Never lost a patient yet.” They passed under the row of concrete gargoyles leering from the parapets above them, then across the forecourt of the university’s colossal Tudor Gothic chapel. The art museum was not far off, but they passed most of the way in silence, each no doubt running through what he or she planned to do once they got there, and wondering what they might ultimately find inside the sarcophagus.

Simone wondered, too, what kind of reception she would get from Professor Athan. So far, it hadn’t been good. She’d known plenty of men who were threatened by a woman of her background and professional standing—in the Middle East, she was regarded the way one would regard a talking camel—but even in the West, she had encountered resistance. With Lucas, however, it seemed like something else was in play. She didn’t want to flatter herself, but she could tell from the way he looked at her—when he allowed himself to—that he was fighting something a lot more elemental. That was part of it, she felt sure.

But was she fighting something elemental, too? Where, for instance, had that brief fantasy of married life come from only minutes ago?

The rest of his resistance could possibly be chalked up to something more arcane—maybe to a bit of the scholar’s possessiveness. No one liked to share, especially prematurely, the fruits of one’s labor and research. In the academy, the spoils were so thin—reputations made and tenures secured on the slimmest of discoveries—that intellectual property was guarded as jealously as gold bullion. She knew the feeling well; when the ossuary had been ripped from the main hall in Cairo, she had felt like a mother whose child had just been stolen from her. It was no surprise that Lucas had been a little standoffish, even rude.