The Einstein Papers (12 page)

“What time are you going to report in to the office?” Martinez asked.

Taft glanced at his watch. It was just past nine in the morning.

“Let me get a few hours sleep. How about after lunch?”

“Fair enough,” Martinez said.

“I’m glad you approve,” Taft said as he hung the phone back on the cradle.

Taft gathered his bags at the front of the house and carried them up the ornate stairway to the second floor. The house was built in 1814. Originally a stage stop, it survived the last 185 years in various incarnations. It had been a boardinghouse, a restaurant, even a store. Long boarded up and abandoned when Taft bought it, the restoration project had taken three years.

Over the years, brick had been laid against the logs that formed the original structure, so that now the exterior walls were several feet thick. The floors were constructed of heavy oak planking. When Taft ripped out old Sheetrock inside, he found ornately carved wooden trim along the walls, as well as an old stone fireplace. He cleaned and painted the woodwork. The fireplace, he found, worked just fine. The house measured around four thousand square feet and although the furnace, air conditioning, plumbing, and electricity were state-of-the-art, Taft made sure it retained the old look on the outside. Most people driving past never gave the house a second glance.

He liked it that way.

Twenty yards to the north of the house was an old stable that he had converted into a garage. Taft even went so far as to have an artist paint the garage doors to make it appear that horses were in stalls inside. With two-hundred-year-old trees on the property and the Potomac River running alongside, the house was quiet and comfortable. It was the one place where Taft could always escape the pressures of his work.

In the bathroom of the master bedroom, he dumped the dirty clothes from his bags into the hamper. He also stripped off the clothes he was wearing and stuffed them on top of the pile. Standing naked, he peered at himself in the mirror inside the bathroom.

The trip to China had cost him a few pounds, and that was not all bad. He had a propensity to gain and lose up to ten pounds in the course of a month, depending on his level of physical activity. He quickly grew bored with any one sport, and his closets and the storage area in the garage were littered with sporting equipment. Skis, tennis rackets, and a kayak shared space with golf clubs, running shoes, and a host of other toys he had purchased over the years. His latest kick was bicycling, a sport he had embraced, then grew bored with several years ago. This time, however, Taft added a twist. He had purchased a cargo cart that attached to the rear of his bicycle and loaded it with bricks to make workouts more effective.

He brushed his teeth; then he contemplated shaving, but decided it would be too much work. Instead, he walked into the bedroom and peeled back the comforter on his antique, king-size brass bed. Slipping naked between the cool cotton sheets, he flicked on a machine that made the sound of the ocean, then stared at the ceiling. In less than five minutes he was sound asleep.

Just before noon, and without the benefit of an alarm clock, Taft opened his eyes. Climbing from bed, he noticed his legs were still aching. The sprint across the border with Choi on his back had stressed his leg muscles and tendons more than he had realized. Now, on the second day, soreness was full-blown.

Reaching into his dresser drawer he removed underwear and socks. Pulling a pair of almost-new athletic shoes from his closet he placed them next to the chest at the foot of his bed. Selecting a white, cotton, button-down shirt and a pair of khaki pants from the closet, he hung them on hangars on the doorknob. Clothes laid out, he walked in the bathroom and climbed into the shower. He adjusted the water first from biting hot to wash to freezing cold to rinse.

After showering, Taft wiped the steam from the mirror and shaved, splashing Bay Rum on his cheeks when finished. Dressing in the clothes he had laid out, he tied the shoelaces of athletic shoes, then walked downstairs.

In the entryway he programmed the security system while calling Martinez on the cordless phone. “I’m leaving. Do you want me to pick you up anything for lunch?”

“Feel like going past Pepito’s?”

“That’s fine. You want the usual?”

“Oh yeah,” Martinez said in anticipation.

“Be there in half an hour,” Taft said and hung up the phone.

After a quick call to Pepito’s, the Mexican restaurant he favored, to place a takeout order, Taft locked the front door and walked across the yard to the garage. Entering through the side door, he switched on the overhead lights. Several original American muscle cars sat on the white epoxy-painted floor. Near the door sat the new V-10 Dodge Ramcharger Taft had purchased only a few months before. The rest of the garage was filled with nearly thirty motorcycles, the oldest being a 1921 BSA. Pushing the button to raise the garage door, Taft walked back outside and peered out at the sky. It looked clear. The only clouds visible were far to the south, over Prince Georges County, Maryland.

It was a day made for a motorcycle ride.

Decision made, Taft walked toward a row of classics. His eyes came to rest on a 1971 Norton Commando Roadster, and he reached for its key in a lock box on the wall, slid it into the ignition, and twisted. The Norton started immediately, settling into a purr. He walked to a bench and picked up his white Bell helmet, then rolled the motorcycle from the line. At the door he plucked a battered leather jacket off a hook on the wall and zipped it halfway up. As he passed the garage door, Taft pushed a remote control in the jacket’s pocket to lower the door behind him. Driving slowly up his blacktop driveway, he listened carefully to the engine. The Norton had recently been missing, and Taft spent most of one afternoon several weeks ago balancing the carburetors. What he had done seemed to be working, as the motorcycle accelerated smoothly.

Twenty minutes later, after stopping to pick up lunch, then tying the boxes on the rear of the seat with a bungee cord, Taft pulled into the parking lot of the National Intelligence Agency and shut off the engine. At the security checkpoint he flashed his badge at the guard.

“What’s the good word, Bobby?”

“Good to see you back, John.”

“Thanks for noticing I was gone,” he said as he made his way toward the elevators.

On the twelfth floor he signed the log, then tracked down Martinez, who was inside the copy room. Seeing Taft with his helmet, he asked, “What did you drive today?”

“The Norton Commando.”

“How’s the Motto Guzzi coming?” Martinez asked.

“I’m still waiting for parts,” Taft said.

Martinez removed his copies from the tray. “Well?”

“Time to eat,” Taft said, motioning with his head.

As the pair ate their pork and avocado enchiladas in the break room, Taft filled Martinez in on the trip to China. Following course of habit, Taft would stop speaking when anyone entered the break room. Nearly every task the agents performed was compartmentalized and kept locked inside their heads. It was not unusual to have worked in the same office with another agent for years and never know their tasks.

“The earthquake was a stroke of brilliance,” Martinez noted and sipped from a can of soda.

“I can’t believe it worked,” Taft said, smiling. “Sandra Miles came up with it.”

“What if it hadn’t gone as planned?” Martinez asked.

“I would have been screwed,” Taft said. “I barely made it under the fence on the way into the compound. And Choi was so shaky, I have to believe he probably would have touched the wire. Plus the heat from two bodies would have surely set off the heat sensors.”

“Jammer work good on the motion sensors?” Martinez asked.

“I’m here, aren’t I,” Taft said as an agent entered the room and filled a cup with coffee.

When the break room was clear, Taft finished his story. After the pair finished their meal, he leaned back in his chair and massaged his legs.

“Now let me tell you what I’ve been working on,” Martinez said. “The general assigned me to try to determine if the Chinese kidnapped and imprisoned Choi because of his knowledge of Einsteinian physics, as our side believes.”

“Einstein would seem to be old news in the world of physics,” Taft noted, “but it’s nice to know why the agency decided to risk my life.”

“At first I would have agreed with you about Einstein being old news,” Martinez said. “But I couldn’t find anything else about Choi that would interest the Chinese. I spoke with Choi’s professors and fellow students and they told me he was almost obsessed with Einstein.”

“I just don’t get it,” Taft said. “What do we care if the Chinese kidnap a student physicist?”

“That’s what’s interesting. I just dug something up. I’m not privy to all the information but it seems that for the last forty years the United States has had a small team of physicists employed by the National Institute for Standards and Technology trying to decipher Einstein’s last equations-his so-called Unified Field Theory.”

“The National Institute of Standards and Technology is under the Commerce Department, right?” Taft asked.

“I know it sounds odd,” Martinez said, “but I think they were just looking for an agency that would hide the physicists’ salaries in their budget.”

“What progress have they made?”

“The first thirty-five years must have been pure tedium for the physicists. They had little success proving anything definitively. About five years ago, however, that began to change. A student named Jeff Scaramelli wrote a paper while he was attending the University of Colorado that set out to prove that Einstein’s Unified Field Theory equations were a clever cypher. A coded message, if you please.”

“If we have paid physicists working on this theory for the last forty years, why did a student have access to the material?” Taft asked.

“He didn’t really. Einstein worked on the theory for decades, publishing snippets of his work. That’s what Scaramelli was using. The actual complete theory was never located even after exhausting searches,” Martinez said. “By the way, before you ask, Scaramelli is working for us now.”

“Good,” Taft said, “but that doesn’t answer why the Chinese kidnapped Choi.”

“The only thing that makes sense is that they have somehow come across information about the Unified Field Theory and need Choi to decipher what they found.”

“What makes this theory so important?” Taft asked.

“To be honest, John,” Martinez said, “I just don’t know. I do know that the FBI watched Einstein for the ten years prior to his death.”

“What else did you turn up?”

“I went to the hospital where Einstein died. The nurses and doctors that cared for him are long dead, but I dug around and determined that one of the ambulance drivers was still alive, a man named Gunther Ackerman. He was twenty years old in 1955, when Einstein made his last trip to the hospital. It turns out he stayed in the area, becoming a fireman and later chief. He retired less than a year ago.”

“Someone that had met Einstein in his last days-wild,” Taft said.

“It gets better,” Martinez said. “Einstein was speaking German on the trip to the hospital. Luckily, Ackerman was German and understood him.”

“I love coincidences like this,” Taft said. “Makes me believe there’s a universal plan.”

“So true,” Martinez agreed.

“So what did Einstein tell Ackerman?”

“This is bizarre. He said: “The force is in the wind,’” Martinez said.

“What the hell does that mean?” Taft said.

“No idea,” Martinez said. “But he said the same thing in a telegram he sent to a Danish physicist named Bohr that the FBI intercepted. I’m trying to figure out what he meant right now.”

“Good luck,” Taft said. “As for me, I’m going to fill out the paperwork in regards to my mission, then head back home. My legs are hurting from the footrace I did across the Chinese border,” Taft said.

“Go spend some time in your hot tub,” Martinez noted. “I’ve still got work to do.”

“I don’t feel the least bit guilty, Larry. If that was your intention. You’ll have to save the world without me, at least until after the weekend.”

“So you won’t be back until Monday?”

“That’s the plan. My part of this mission seems finished,” Taft said, rising and throwing his and Larry’s lunch containers in the trash.

“Don’t worry, old buddy, I’ll cover for you,” Martinez noted, winking at his friend.

“Just don’t call me,” Taft said. “Maybe this will all go away.”

Taft could not have been more wrong.

“Tell them this is not a good time for me,” the prime minister of China said wearily. “You might mention the American president visited not two years ago.”

The foreign minister nodded his assent. “I think his handlers want a show visit. That makes it appear that he is listening and responding to our Asian neighbors’ fearful demands.”

“The United States should remain on its side of the world,” the prime minister said. “China will worry about Asia.”

“I shall make the appropriate excuses,” the foreign minister noted as he rose to leave.

Once the foreign minister had closed the door behind himself, General Wai-Leis glanced at the prime minister and smiled. “I think one can safely surmise that by the date the American president wishes to visit, all diplomatic ties will have already been severed.”

Wai-Leis was in his late seventies. Though only five-foot-six inches tall, he carried himself like a much taller man. His erect posture came from a lifetime in the Chinese military. His hair was snow white and his hands liver-spotted, but other than that he appeared to be just reaching age sixty. The orbit of one of his eyes sat slightly lower in his face than the other, making one eyelid appear longer, and his teeth were showing the wear of seven decades of use. Still, Wai-Leis was an undeniably handsome man. He was a millionaire many times over, the result of his secret interest in a Chinese weapons firm. And he remained quite active, still managing to visit his mistress once a week.

His friendship with the prime minister spanned five decades.