Einstein's Secret (25 page)

But I was also the cure
.

I realized that history was playing out as it always had, though with these bizarre undercurrents that were never recorded. I could’ve never interpreted the facts and come up with the details and motivations that I’d witnessed and participated in. No interpretation of history would have led me to the truth of what I was now living.

I was helping history to play out as it had. As it
should
.

But for this version of history to remain intact, Einstein’s final wish had to be granted.

“I’m going to close that bridge tonight,” I said.

“I have to show the note to Mr. Weldon,” Clavin said. He had to take his cue from Weldon. That was his job.

But it wasn’t mine. “I understand. But please call him and tell him what it says.”

Clavin didn’t respond. He folded the note and put it back in his pocket. Maybe he didn’t want to tell his boss he’d read the note in advance, which I’m sure wasn’t proper protocol.

I didn’t wait for a response. “Good luck,” I said, and headed to my car, ready to go back to Cumberland. I wouldn’t count on Clavin or Weldon to fulfill Einstein’s wishes. I’d do it myself.

My bet was that Van Doran was headed back to Cumberland, or possibly Charlottesville, depending on which side of the bridge he needed to enter. By now he’d have decided that he’d come back to earlier tonight and try again to nab that confession.

And he was right to try again. According to Einstein, it was more than possible to change history completely, and Van Doran was so very close to doing that. He’d murdered Einstein, Alex, Eddie, Clavin—and that had given the new history its powerful momentum.

There was only one thing left that stood in Van Doran’s way. Me. The old history, the real history, was counting on that. That’s why it had delivered Einstein’s secret into my hands. The confession had always been the key.
But only if someone acted on it.
Van Doran hadn’t been able to wipe it out, and as long as it existed, I had a chance. History had a chance. Einstein, Alex, Eddie, Laura and Clavin had a chance to live out their normal lives. But I had a strong feeling that the next time Van Doran came back to this night, he’d succeed in destroying the confession—and there would be no more chances.

I had to stop him.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Fifteen minutes later, I was on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, headed back to Cumberland. There was even less traffic than before and the darkness was thicker. So thick that it looked like I was on the road to nowhere. The lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody” reverberated through my head.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality?

I was caught in a vortex and there was only one way of escape. Sealing the wormhole. I hoped that Clavin had called Weldon and told him what the note said. But even if he had, I couldn’t be sure how Weldon would react.

My thoughts then turned to detonating an explosion to seal the wormhole. Again, my skills weren’t suited to the task at hand. For example, my first thought was dynamite, as if I were Wile E. Coyote battling the Road Runner.

Eventually I hit on the idea of using the natural gas from Weldon’s kitchen stove. I could use a hose to run the gas into the basement. But if you were aiming for an uncontrolled explosion, that was it. And I’d have to get through the wormhole first before igniting the gas.

I also considered sealing the wormhole from the Charlottesville side, after I went through. That came with its own set of problems. If the Dorothy Theorem worked, and I returned to the right time—the start of the fall semester, with me as an adjunct professor—it’d be tough to gather bomb-making materials without arousing suspicion. And even if I managed to pull that off and detonated the explosion, the entire university would go on high alert for a possible terrorist attack. SWAT teams would swarm the campus, followed by the FBI and Homeland Security, and they’d ultimately get their man. Me.

One of the service plazas was fast approaching, so I turned to a more immediate problem. Getting another car. I’d hit Cumberland after dawn, and in the light of day, the Cumberland Police would have no trouble spotting the car that had killed a defenseless child.

I slowed down as I advanced on the plaza. The restaurant and the gas station were closed and the parking lot was empty. If I wanted another car, I’d have to pull off the turnpike and scour the streets of whatever small town I found myself in. And that’s what I planned to do.

Meanwhile, I focused on my own history. I had to keep it alive because I’d soon need it for the Dorothy Theorem. I concentrated on the day I’d headed to the faculty orientation in Charlottesville. The day I’d met Eddie. The day I’d met Laura. I wanted to return before Eddie had taken me down to the Caves and sucked me into the vortex. Before I’d gotten fired. I needed to feel the excitement of starting my new job again. The excitement of that fresh start.

It worked. I got lost in that world, and before I knew it, I noticed the dark of night had given way to the ghostly light before dawn. I was now close enough to Cumberland to change cars.

I pulled off at the next exit and entered the small town of Plattville. The main streets of the tiny downtown were still fairly empty at that hour. There were a few delivery trucks doing their rounds, and I considered stealing one, but rejected that idea. A truck would be too unwieldy.

The edge of town gave way to a used-car lot, a miniature golf course, and some restaurants, all shuttered for the night. Then I made it to a residential neighborhood with blocks of single-family homes. I parked my car at the end of one block, got out, and walked down the street, checking all the cars parked along the curb. No one had been kind enough to leave keys in the ignition.

I walked down three more blocks, but came up empty-handed. Maybe the delivery truck was the best option after all. I turned around and headed back toward my car, but using a different route so I could peer into another set of cars. Still no luck.

As I headed back to the turnpike, with the thought that I’d try one more town, a larger one, before entering Cumberland, I passed the used-car lot and an image suddenly popped into my head. I’m sure it came from thousands of hours of media consumption. It was an image that’d been replayed so many times on so many TV shows that it was probably part of the collective unconscious.

A block past the used-car lot, I parked, got out of my car, and walked back to the lot. If that image was going to pay off, there was no need to check all the cars. Either my sudden inspiration was the policy at this car lot or it wasn’t.

There were four cars right next to the entrance. I stepped up to the closest one and reached for the door. It opened. I bent down and flipped over the floor mat. Sure enough, there were the car keys.

I slid into the car, keyed the ignition, and drove off the lot.

By the time someone reported this crime, I’d be gone from the fifties. Hopefully. I checked the gas gauge and found I was good on that front.

Back on the turnpike, I calculated that I was less than an hour away from the Weldon estate. If I went with the plan to use natural gas for the explosion, I still had to stop for matches and materials for making a fuse so I could delay igniting the gas until I’d gone through the wormhole.

My exit came up quickly, and soon I was speeding down Route 220, then Route 68 into Cumberland. Early-morning commuters had finally joined me on the road, and seeing them repopulate the world convinced me to put the kibosh on stopping again for anything. I’d look for matches and fuse-making materials at the Weldon estate.

As I drove through Cumberland, more traffic began to fill the streets, including a police cruiser approaching from the other direction. There was no doubt that the officers inside would check me out as they passed. Not only did passing drivers in the fifties acknowledge each other, but also these officers would be on the lookout for the drive-in killer.

As the cruiser passed, the officers looked right at me. Was the fear that rippled through me obvious on my smiling face?

They didn’t return my smile.

I checked my side-view mirror and saw their brake lights blink on behind me. They were slowing down.

I was ready to floor it.

But their brake lights blinked off.

I located the cruiser in my rearview mirror, and watched to see if they were going to pull a U-turn.

They didn’t, and my fear slowly ebbed away.

I reached the outskirts of Cumberland and braced myself for passing by the drive-in. It was just up ahead. After reading Einstein’s confession, I now knew that I’d contributed to the new history by killing my own father. The new history was just as efficient as Van Doran when it came to getting rid of loose ends. And just as brutal.

I glanced back at the rearview mirror, and my heart started thumping at a thousand beats per minute.

There was a police cruiser behind me.

I suspected it was the same one I’d just passed, which meant the officers had recognized me. Probably from a description given by that mom at the drive-in. I white-knuckled the steering wheel so hard that I felt blood pulsing through my hands.

The cruiser didn’t have its lights on yet, and I wondered if that meant there was still some doubt in the officers’ minds. As I drove by the empty drive-in, I couldn’t help but feel that this was where my trip would end.

When I glanced back at the rearview mirror, the cruiser was even closer.

I was ready to floor it and get the hell out of Maryland. I’d head to Charlottesville and travel back to the present from that side.

The cruiser pulled into the drive-in. I looked back over my shoulder, and this time I caught a glimpse of a couple officers and two police cruisers parked on the other side of the concession stand.

I understood what was going on. The police were doing more investigating under the light of day, and the officers behind me were joining them.

My heart was still beating wildly, so I tried to will it to slow down. I needed to think straight. Weldon’s estate was coming up and I couldn’t just pull over onto the side of the road. Not with the police so close by. If the officers noticed, they’d investigate.

So I drove past the estate, looking for a place to pull over on that side. After a mile or so, I parked the car on the shoulder as close to the woods as I could. The car was still plenty visible, but I didn’t want to drive any further in search of better place to hide it. The longer it took to hike back to Weldon’s, the more time Van Doran had to wipe out the history I was clinging to.

Before I took off for the mansion, I searched the car for matches or anything else that could help with a makeshift explosion. The glove compartment was empty, but I found a road flare in the trunk. I grabbed it, thinking that it’d be useful as bomb-making material, though I’d have to figure out how.

Twenty minutes later, I was trudging through the woods up to the back of Weldon’s house, planning my next move. If Clavin hadn’t called Weldon and told him about the note, there was no chance of getting Weldon on my side. And if he wasn’t on my side, I couldn’t very well go about the business of piping natural gas into the basement.

So my default plan was to subdue Weldon with Van Doran’s gun, which I still had, then tie him up and get on with sealing the wormhole.

I opened the French doors, stepped inside, and stood stock-still, listening.

The house was deathly quiet. Unnaturally so.

After a minute or so of that unnerving silence, I made my way through the house, down the hallways, toward the kitchen. I stopped when I saw the light in the study was on. Was Weldon in there, anxiously waiting for Clavin to return from Princeton?

I pulled out Van Doran’s gun, ready to rush the study. But inches from the doorway, I put the gun back in my pocket, opting to see first if Clavin had called Weldon.

I stepped into the room. “Mr. Weld—”

Weldon was sprawled out on the floor, his skull bashed in. Blood had already pooled over a wide area of the hardwood floor. The elegant sculpture of the golden tiger lay in the sea of blood.

It wasn’t hard to figure out that Clavin
had
told Weldon—and that Weldon had done the right thing. He’d tried to stop Van Doran.

It was time to seal the bridge.

As I hurried to the kitchen to check on the gas stove, I thought of a glitch in my plan. I’d be sealing the bridge with Van Doran on the wrong side of it. I’d have to wait for his return. But I
couldn’t
wait. I was sure he’d get the confession this time. And we both couldn’t end up with it. Only one history could survive.

And that’s when a huge piece of the puzzle suddenly fell into place. A piece of history that I’d forgotten. A fact from the correct history.

History had recorded that Van Doran disappeared right after Einstein’s death, and that no one had ever found out what happened to him.
That’s because he gets stranded on the other side of the bridge,
if
I can seal it tonight.

But I had to get through it first.

I stepped into the kitchen and heard a door shut somewhere in the house. Was Van Doran still here? That didn’t seem possible. But if he was, I wouldn’t allow him to use the wormhole. That was paramount. I went down into the basement.

As I stood there in the dark, a horrible thought dawned on me.

Does Van Doran disappear tonight because I kill him?

The nausea and dread that I’d felt earlier in the night once more found its way into my soul. This man had gone rampaging through history, murdering others, but was I ready to stop him by committing murder myself?

His victims would be resurrected if I fixed everything. Alex would live. Eddie would live. Clavin would live a long life and so would Weldon. But Van Doran would die tonight, murdered at my hands, and he’d stay murdered—or, as history would record it,
disappeared
.

I pulled out my gun and waited in the dark, unsure if I could kill Van Doran in cold blood.