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.
CHAPTER 11
"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."