"He's coming in too fast," Hartley said to Scaramelli. Taking the line from Hartley's hand, Scaramelli fastened it around a bit, slowing the sailboat s movement. Just as the boat's stern began to swing around, Einstein threw the stern line. Hartley grabbed the line and quickly cleated it off. The boat lurched, then settled into place.
Einstein jumped from the boat. He looked strangely gaunt, his face lined with tension. His shoulders were sagging and his shirt was soaked with pools of perspiration. He seemed unsteady on his feet and his eyes were bloodshot. He appeared much older than the man who had sailed away only a few hours earlier.
"Did the water turn rough?" Scaramelli asked.
"No, it was smooth," Einstein said, waving his hand and staring unseeing into the distance. "Were you listening to the radio by chance?"
"Yes, we were," Hartley said.
"A bomb," Einstein blurted. "Was there any news reports about a bomb?" Hartley quickly repeated the news broadcast they had heard. Scaramelli filled in the few points Hartley left out.
Einstein, his face now creased with a frown, turned his head away from the men and gazed across the water. "It is as I feared," he said simply as he turned to leave. As Einstein made his way toward the ramp, Hartley stared at the physicist. His cheeks were stained with the dried tracks of tears, his hair was disheveled, and his eyes seemed dead. He shuffled up the ramp slowly. Einstein lowered his head and dropped his shoulders, as if weighted with a burden no mortal man should carry. Once at the top of the ramp, he walked solemnly toward the Packard. He settled into the rear compartment and buried his face in his hands.
Scaramelli waved to Hartley as he climbed quietly into the driver's seat. He started the Packard and allowed it to settle into a quiet idle. Then he backed out of his spot, set the gearshift into drive, and pulled slowly away from the marina.
Einstein said nothing on the ride back to Princeton. The sun was setting and the air outside the Packard was heavy. Once, when they were still a few miles from home, Scaramelli peered into the rearview mirror and saw Einstein looking out the window at the summer scenery, lost in thought. He continued to sit quietly until the Packard pulled into Mercer Street.
When Scaramelli drove into the driveway at 112 Mercer Street and shut off the engine, Einstein spoke his first and only words since leaving the marina. "What has happened today is wrong, Mike. Never forget that," he said quietly. "And I will never let it happen again."
Einstein appeared to be trembling as he climbed from the rear compartment of the Packard. He walked with the tottering gait of a much older man. Scaramelli quickly moved to support his elbow and helped him up the steps to the door of his house. Once Einstein was safely inside and settled on a couch in his living room, Scaramelli summoned Dukas, then quietly returned to the Packard and drove slowly back to the university motor pool.
In the years to follow, Scaramelli's life would change greatly. He would graduate from college, marry, and begin a family. Even so, as the years passed, Scaramelli often thought back to that August day at the marina. The event remained etched in his memory, as if it were only yesterday. And until the day he died, Scaramelli never forgot the look of sadness and remorse that had been so visible in Albert Einstein's eyes. The next day, at the headquarters of the FBI in Washington D.C., J. Edgar Hoover was scanning a thick file. He closed the file, then sipped from a cup of tea. Motioning for his second-in-command, Clyde Tolson, to refill his cup, he spoke.
"We need to find out why I didn't know more about this atomic bomb. The last report I received from our field agents stated the scientists were still unsure if the thing would even work. Now the military's gone and blown one off. It's going to look like the FBI was caught with our pants down if we don't quickly find some role for this agency in the atomic age. We need to have the FBI somehow involved with nuclear power. It's quite obvious now the impact will be huge."
Tolson stared at his boss and companion and quietly nodded. "A lot of the scientists that worked on the project have radical views. Perhaps that's our entree to this so-called atomic age."
Hoover reached back and scratched an itch on his ear. "Good idea, Clyde. Let's start with Einstein. We already have an extensive file on him."
Tolson rose from his chair. "I'll call and request the file from storage, then pick it up after lunch."
"Good," Hoover said, "and while you're at it, have a couple of field agents begin a covert round-the-clock surveillance of Einstein. One more thing, Clyde," Hoover said.
"Bring me the file on his housekeeper. I think her name is Dikus, or Dukas."
"Yes, Edgar," Tolson said, as he walked out of Hoover's office and set out down the hall.
Three days later, when a second atomic bomb was dropped, this time on Nagasaki, Einstein made his decision. The Unified Field Theory must be kept secret. The power that could result from the improper use of the theory was simply too great a risk for the world at this time. A world populated by men who in the last war had just displayed its cruelest side. A world that seemed bound to wage war and spurn peace. The bomb the United States had dropped on Hiroshima agonized Einstein. He was a devoted pacifist. Still, he had tried to justify it by imagining to himself the lives that might have been lost in an invasion of Japan, with fighting island-to-island. The bombing, if it caused Japan to surrender, may actually have saved lives. He almost succeeded.
It was the bomb the United States dropped on Nagasaki that sealed Einstein's decision. The Japanese were already beaten. Japan's supplies of food, fuel, and medicine were at dangerously low levels. The Japanese air force and navy were nearly decimated. The country's infrastructure was in ruins. Japan's surrender was only a matter of time. Once the bomb was ignited over Nagasaki there was no turning back. Outside 112 Mercer Street, the black Ford sedan driven by the pair of FBI agents was so nondescript it stood out. Even with the availability of automobiles severely limited, no one but a government agency would order a car equipped with blackwall tires and no chrome trim. The FBI agents sitting inside the Ford were dressed in the stark black suits and white shirts that conformed to the agency's approved dress code. It was only the sweat rings under their arms that might draw them a reprimand from Hoover. FBI agents were not supposed to sweat.
"It has to be ninety degrees in here," Agent Mark Agnews said. Agent Steve Talbot mopped his brow with a handkerchief. "Even the slightest breeze would help."
Talbot leaned back in the seat and lowered his fedora over his eyes as Agnews continued to watch Einstein's residence.
Inside Einstein's house at 112 Mercer, the ground-floor study was clouded with smoke. "For what reason would the FBI want to investigate me?" Einstein asked.
"Are you sure it's the FBI?" Dukas asked.
"Yes, I asked the chief of the campus police to look up the license plate number," Einstein said. "It was registered to the FBI."
"What are you going to do about it?" Dukas asked.
Einstein rose and walked to the window. Parting the curtains slightly, he stared at the Ford sedan parked slightly up the block.
"Well," he said finally, "I know what we should do right now."
"What is that, Doctor?" Dukas asked.
"Let's bring those men in the car some iced tea," Einstein said. "It's sweltering outside."
"We have movement outside the house," Agnews said to Talbot, who was reading a pulp magazine.
Talbot stared out the window. "It's Einstein. And it looks like he has a tray in his hands or something."
"We've been made," Agnews said. "He's coming right toward us." Einstein crossed the street and walked up to the open window of the Ford with the tray balanced in front of him. "I thought you men might be thirsty. It seems the FBI does not believe in giving their agents breaks."