Einstein's Secret (24 page)

“He’s finished with his letter, Mr. Clavin,” she said, but she didn’t hand me the letter, and I knew better than to reach for it. This old-world woman, Einstein’s protector, would hand me the letter when she was ready to. “How do I know this is for you?”

I hoped Einstein had said something. After all, he’d told Weldon he might leave something in writing. I needed an answer, and got one. It came from the original history. From Clavin himself on his own deathbed in Rockville, more than sixty years from now.

“I’m to deliver it to Mr. Gregory Van Doran,” I said.

“That’s right,” she said, and I saw the relief on her face. She was doing the right thing.

She turned back to Einstein, and while clutching the letter close to her body, gazed down at him as if she still wanted his blessing to hand me the confession.

As I waited for that blessing, I thought about the biggest mystery of the night.
Why wasn’t Clavin here to pick up the confession?
And why hadn’t I asked Alex about that?

Meyer turned back and offered me the letter. “Good luck, Mr. Clavin.”

As I reached out and took the letter, my heart started to race. Triumph, disbelief, and fear all coursed through my veins at hyper-speed. After twelve years, I held the Holy Grail in my hands.

“Thank you,” I said, after way too long a pause. I was ready to race out of the room, but forced myself to act properly. “I’m sorry about the professor’s health.”

“Thank you.”

“Goodnight, Miss Meyer.”

She forced a sad smile, and turned back to Einstein.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I stepped out of the room and hurried down the hallway, past the empty nurses’ station, and toward the stairwell. Taking the elevators was too risky without knowing where Alex and Van Doran
and
Clavin were.

In the stairwell, I was tempted to stop and read the confession, but I plowed ahead, down the stairs. Getting as far away as possible from Van Doran was the first order of business.

The stairs ended on the first floor at a large metal door marked
Exit To Parking Lot
. Perfect. I pushed down the door handle, ready to complete the first lap of my escape, but it didn’t budge.

I pushed again. The door was locked for the night. It’d be decades before fire codes would force such doors to remain unlocked.

I swung around in the other direction, moved out of the stairwell, and into a hallway of administrative offices.

The hallway ended in a set of double doors, and based on where I was in the building, I was pretty sure that the lobby was on the other side of those doors. Every step in that direction came with a stronger urge to read the confession.

I resisted the temptation by folding the two pages and stuffing them into my pants pocket, next to my father’s nametag.

I pushed through the double doors and found myself in the lobby. The security guard was gone and I wondered if he’d been drawn into the battle between Van Doran and Alex. I wouldn’t be wondering long.

Outside, I ran toward the parking lot, turned the corner of the building and was body-blocked hard by a big man. The blow left me sprawled on the asphalt.

I looked up to see Van Doran standing over me, his gun trained on my face. “Give me the confession.”

“Why? You’re going to kill me anyway.”

“You’re right. But if you give it to me, you get to know what it says before you die.”

And I buy myself some time
, I thought. “Where’s Alex?”

“He didn’t survive.”

“But he said he always stops you.”

“Looks like ‘always’ was too strong a word. Now give me the confession and we both get to learn how to control the chaos of time travel.”

I was out of options, out of time. I breathed in deeply, hesitated, then finally reached into my pocket and slowly pulled out the folded papers.

Van Doran, now wearing a smug grin, leaned down eagerly to grab it—

And I jammed the pin from my dad’s nametag into the palm of his hand.

He jerked back, and in that instant I rolled into his legs, and he went down. I pounced on him and landed three quick blows to his head, and two more to his midsection. Then I scooped up his gun and the confession and ran to my car.

Without looking back, I jumped inside, keyed the ignition, and pulled out of the lot.

Ten blocks later, I pulled into an alleyway between two shops, ready to give in to my curiosity and read the confession before I lost it again.

I unfolded it, and my mouth went dry. I was stunned.

The sheets were blank.

Meyer hadn’t given me the confession.

Clavin ends up with the confession
.
Like he always does.

Without hesitation, I pulled out of the alleyway, drove right back to the hospital, parked, and hurried to the hospital. I didn’t see any sign of Van Doran, but I didn’t look too hard. My goal was to intercept Clavin.

Inside, the security guard was back at the counter. I passed right by him, not wanting to be slowed by small talk, glanced at the line of phone booths, and
that
slowed me down—

Clavin was inside the middle booth, on the phone.

Was he on his way up to get the confession or on his way out
with
the confession? It was impossible to know, and before I could even debate my next move, the elevator doors and Meyer stepped out.

As soon as she saw me, her eyes widened with fear.

“Please, Miss Meyer,” I said. “Tell me who has the letter.”

She hurried past me.

I went after her. “Miss Meyer! Did you give it to someone else?”

She stopped in front of the security guard and announced, “This man should not be allowed upstairs.” The security guard eyed me.

“Please tell me who has it?” I pleaded.

“That letter was not meant for you,” she said. The fear in her eyes had been replaced by anger in her voice. “Professor Einstein saw you in his room, and you are not Henry Clavin.”

“Does Mr. Clavin have it?”

“That is none of your business.”

With that, she turned away and marched toward the exit.

The security guard stood up from his desk and put his hand on his holstered gun, daring me to go after her. “Let’s give the lady a few minutes to leave the lot,” he said.

I weighed whether to ignore his warning, and glanced at the clock above the elevators—Einstein would die in three minutes. That information suddenly gave me another critical insight.

The night is playing out exactly as it should
. As it had in the original history. Meyer wouldn’t be by Einstein’s side when he died and that meant Clavin already had the confession. She’d given it to him. It had to play out that way because Einstein fell back asleep after writing his secret down and he’d awaken just one more time, any minute now, to say his final words in German to Nurse Ander.

I looked back at Clavin. He was still on the phone.

“You can leave now,” the guard said.

“Okay,” I replied, but didn’t move. It was critical I stay with Clavin.

“Visiting hours are over, sir.”

“I understand.”

Clavin finally stepped out of the phone booth, so I started toward the exit, hoping he was headed in that direction, too. Glancing back, I saw the guard sit back down, and also saw that my wish had been granted: Clavin was headed out.

I stepped outside, headed to the parking lot, and waited for Clavin to arrive.

When he turned the corner, I approached him. “Mr. Clavin.”

“Yes,” he said, but didn’t stop.

“Can I speak to you for a second?”

“How do you know who I am?”

“I’ll explain, but first, I want to talk to you about the note Professor Einstein asked you to deliver.”

“You must be mistaken.” He was calm and collected.

“I understand the need for privacy, but please hear me out before you leave.”

This time he didn’t respond. He stepped up to his car.

“I know that the professor has asked you to give the note to Gregory Van Doran.”

He glanced back at me with narrowed eyes, either curious or suspicious, then unlocked his car door.

“Mr. Clavin,” I said, “I know about the time-travel bridge.”

He wheeled back around. The color had drained from his face, and so had the calm veneer. He was afraid. Either of me, or of the fact that someone outside of Weldon’s inner circle had discovered their secret.

I was about to blurt out that everything was going to hell and that Einstein’s confession was the only thing that could fix that, when Clavin suddenly opened his car door and jumped inside. I grabbed the door handle before he could lock himself in.

As we had a tug-of-war over the door, I quickly weighed my two options. Pull out Van Doran’s gun and take the confession by force, or try reason. I went with reason first, using what I’d gleaned earlier in the night—Clavin’s hint of distrust toward Van Doran.

“You’ve seen Van Doran many times at the Weldon estate,” I said. “You know what kind of man he is. Professor Einstein doesn’t. If he did, he wouldn’t be entrusting him with that note.”

The tug-of-war over the door lessened.

“I don’t know what that note says,” I continued, “but I’m only asking you do to one thing. Read it and decide.
You
decide if it should be delivered to Van Doran.”

Clavin was no longer pulling on the door.

I stopped, too. “If that note explains the rules of time travel, or if that notes explains more about how the bridge works—do you want Van Doran to have it?”

Clavin looked past me, toward the hospital. He was weighing whether to talk to Einstein, but I knew that he’d dismiss that. He worked for Harold Weldon. It was his employer who’d be the final arbiter.

“I’ll show it to Mr. Weldon first. Before I show it to Mr. Van Doran.”

“You should. But please read it now, yourself, before you leave.”

“Why?”

“Because you may never get to show it to Mr. Weldon. Van Doran will try and stop you.”

Clavin shifted uneasily in his seat. His eyes widened a bit, as if he were imagining that exact scenario and it made him uncomfortable.

But he didn’t pull out the confession.

He needed one more nudge to put him over.

“You’re part of this, Mr. Clavin, whether you want to be or not. Mr. Weldon trusted you to be part of it. Read that note now, and if there’s nothing to fear, I’ll be on my way, and you’ll be on yours.”

Clavin pulled the confession from his pocket. It consisted of one piece of paper. He unfolded it and read it as I stood there. I didn’t as much as breathe. I didn’t want to stop the momentum.

I looked up to the third floor of the hospital. Right about now, Nurse Ander was listening to Einstein speak those few words in German. In another minute or two, he’d die.

When I looked back at Clavin, his forehead was creased with worry and his shoulders were sagging. There was no doubt that the confession contained something critical.

Clavin finished reading, looked up at me, then back down at the note.

Finally, he handed it to me. “Read it,” he said, in a somber voice.

I did.

It was addressed to Van Doran, and Einstein started right in with his concern about
the bridge,
his term for the wormhole. The confession was built around a brilliant analogy and there was no introduction, preamble, or ramp-up.

Dear Professor Van Doran,

I have concluded
that time travel is like a virus on the face of human history
.
And
history can only survive if that virus is eradicated. So far, the virus has done little damage. You’ve not traveled enough through the bridge to impact the powerful momentum of current history.

But if you or anyone continues to travel, it is as if you are spreading the virus. And if the virus multiplies, the history of humanity will change.

Please do not misunderstand what I am saying. When we consider all the horrors that our history has produced, a new history may be an improvement. But as long as we don’t know how to control the effects of time travel, we are doing nothing more than spreading the virus.

God may not roll dice with the universe, but we are rolling dice with the history of humanity. The outcome may be even more tragic than the history we have inherited. I’ve run through countless mathematical proofs and I’ve concluded that we could bring an end to humanity itself.

Therefore, these travels should not continue. There is too much that is unknown. We don’t have the theoretical tools to understand how the bridge works, or the practical tools to use it wisely.

You must eradicate the bridge, and you must do it now, for if our secret ever made it out into the wider world, it would surely be exploited. The bridge is too much of a temptation to those who wouldn’t be troubled by the serious consequences of using it.

Harold may not want to destroy that which he has discovered, but you must, for certainly you understand the danger. To close the bridge, you must make it collapse on itself. To do this requires a sudden burst of energy, a controlled explosion, at the mouth of one of the entrances. I ask you to carry this out as my time on this earth is over and I cannot.

Yours very truly,

Albert Einstein

This wasn’t what I’d expected, but it validated everything I’d learned up to this point.
Time travel is messy.
But Einstein’s confession went way beyond that. Time travel was too complicated to comprehend; and, therefore, too risky to use.

Time travel is dangerous.
That was his conclusion. It was so dangerous that we shouldn’t be using it.
At all.

I handed the note back to Clavin. “Van Doran has traveled many more times than Einstein could’ve ever imagined.”

“The professor would be shocked if he knew how many times. But how do
you
know?”

“Because I’m one of the results of the virus.”