Lowenstein had met fellow researcher, Hal Markowicz, while still finishing his PhD at Cambridge, and the pair had instantly forged a close professional relationship and personal friendship that would see them both working together for the better part of the next three decades.
“Have the guards been treating you well, Samuel?” Müller ventured softly.
“Well enough, Joachim, aside from the whole ‘not allowed to leave’ part of the deal,” Lowenstein gave a wry smile. “They’ve been kind enough to allow me the small luxury of my reading collection,” he added, extending a hand to the nearby bookcase. “I believe I also have your good self to thank for the books, and they’re mightily appreciated.” The thanks were genuine on that matter: about the only thing that had managed to keep him even halfway sane through almost an entire decade of solitary imprisonment was the reading material Müller had ensured he was given access to.
“It’s the least we could do,” Joachim replied with a humble shrug, unconscious to the fact that the statement was true on a number of levels, some less pleasant than others. “Your work was the foundation stone of everything we’ve accomplished, and I know that you were subjected to terrible conditions prior to my coming on board at the end of ‘Oh-Nine.” Müller was a gentle man by nature and his disgust was genuine as he shook his head in recollection of finding Lowenstein that first day in his cell, the man a battered wreck both physically and psychologically. “I would never have allowed that kind of treatment, Samuel.”
“I know that, Joachim,” the other man assured, an involuntary shudder coursing through his body as he also remembered the torture committed against him far more vividly. He also couldn’t resist adding silently in his own mind:…and without ‘that kind of treatment’, none of you would’ve gotten a fucking thing out of me in the first place! “How’s the family?” He asked aloud instead, hiding the darkness of his thoughts with all the expertise of one well-practised.
“Very well, thank you,” Müller smiled genuinely. Lena is five now and will be starting school next year…and we’re expecting our second now…Hanna’s twelve weeks along now and doing nicely.”
“My congratulations, Joachim… wonderful news…” Lowenstein made a great show of stifling a yawn and covering his mouth with one hand. “Please excuse me… it’s late and I’m well past my bed time. Forgive me if I come to the point now, but what’s the real reason you’ve come to see me at such a late hour?” There was no malice in the man’s tone, but there was also a suggestion he was done making pleasant small talk.
“We’ve been presented with an interesting theoretical question by the Nazi Party hierarchy,” Müller lied with conviction, having prepared his story in detail before the visit. “Hitler, Hess and the others are paranoid that if we could come back through time to assist them to victory, then there remains the possibility, no matter how remote, that our enemies may manage to do the same to counter us.” He took a short breath. “As a hypothetical question, I was hoping you’d perhaps be able to run through any scenarios you could possibly come up with in which such an unlikely event might threaten our position…” he shrugged “…apart from the obvious answer of bringing with them a plane load of nuclear weapons, of course…”
“Of course,” Lowenstein agreed dubiously, his eyes narrowing as he considered the premise. “It’s an interesting but not altogether unreasonable question.” He shrugged noncommittally. “Any force would have their job ahead of them unless they did come loaded with nukes, and the temporal distortion wave would leave them only twenty-four hours in which to cobble something together…”
“And the distortion wave is a constant?” Müller queried eagerly.
“As far as we were able to ascertain, it was: there was only limited time for testing available to us before New Eagles…‘acquired’ the research…” Lowenstein intentionally chose a less inflammatory phrase to describe his kidnapping and subsequent torture for his own reasons rather than any interest in protecting the other man’s feelings. The physicist thought silently for a few moments before wincing visibly and rubbing a hand roughly across his face as if in an attempt to refresh himself.
“Excuse me again, Joachim,” he offered in a softly apologetic tone, “I’ve been having difficulty sleeping the last few weeks, and it’s starting to take its tolclass="underline" I’m not my best after midnight these days.”
“Of course, Samuel,” Müller nodded with understanding. “I’ll let you get some rest, of course.” He rose and moved to the doorway, halting for a moment and turning back as the other man spoke again.
“Come and see me tomorrow afternoon and we’ll talk some more on it, Old Man,” Lowenstein suggested. “Bring me a pen and some paper and we’ll make some notes for you to take back to your superiors.”
“Thank you again, Samuel,” Müller smiled, switching off the light once more. “Get yourself some rest.”
Lowenstein waited a full twenty minutes in the darkness after Müller left before daring to rise from the cot and move across to the loaded shelves of books. Lighting a small candle sitting in a brass holder atop the bookcase with a match taken from a pack beside it, he crouched down in the dim, flickering light and searched through the bottom shelf for one of the oldest books he possessed.
“Joachim, my old ‘friend’, if you were half the liar I’ve learned to be, you’d still be completely transparent!” He muttered softly to himself as he found the volume he was looking for and drew it from its niche, the plain, bound cover carrying little more than the title: Über die Spezielle und die Allgemeine Relativitätstheorie, Gemeinverständlich. Lowenstein, already possessed of a rudimentary ability in German prior to his kidnapping, had been forced into a steep learning curve with the language since, and he could both read and speak it quite fluently if he chose to, which was seldom.
The book he’d chosen was by Albert Einstein, and was a 1918 publication that in English translated as On the Special and General Theory of Relativity (A Popular Account) — 3rd Edition. He’d read the work several times, however in this case it was something else inside the book that he was seeking: something hidden ‘in plain sight’ between the pages within.
“‘Hypothetical question’…!” He declared with uncanny certainty as he found the item he was seeking and pulled it gently free. “What sort of fool do you take me for?” Standing once more, he placed to book on top of the shelves, close to the flickering candle, and opened the single, folded piece of flimsy paper he now held in his hand. He studied it with a dark intensity for a few moments before moving back to the bed and sitting down, his eyes never looking away.
“They’ve come! They’ve come!” He whispered with soft intensity. “I knew you’d never abandon me, Hal,” he muttered as he lay down in the cot once more, head turned toward the candle’s faint illumination and his features contorting into an almost maniacal smile. “All these years, and I knew you’d come for me one day: I’ve kept it all this time, knowing one day you’d need it.”
The ragged sheet of paper he’d unfolded was most of the front page of an issue of the Berliner Tageblatt newspaper, most of the text printed on it fading now after seven years clamped between the pages of Einstein’s work. The headlines and articles were of little consequence in any case; the only real significance lay in the fact that the newspaper it had been torn from had been given to Lowenstein by Joachim Müller on the afternoon of the day they’d returned from the 21st Century. It’d been handed over as an afterthought… a small kindness to their prisoner in providing something for him to read as the New Eagles’ ‘arrival’ carried on around them.