"I didn't know you could drive," Tanner said.
"Just learning," Einstein said as he stared again at the light. "You're never too old to learn new skills."
"Let me follow behind you to make sure you get safely out of town," Tanner said. Einstein said nothing, he just gave Tanner a thumbs-up sign. When the light changed he lurched from the stop in the wrong gear. Tanner followed Einstein several miles, then tooted his horn and turned back toward Princeton as the truck made its way into the New Jersey countryside.
By the time Einstein had an hour of driving under his belt he became cocky. Flicking on the AM radio, he began to sing along with the songs. Even though Einstein had become more confident, the drive to Hartley's Marina would take him twice the time it took Scaramelli.
Halfway through the trip the physicist got lost on a series of back roads and had considered turning back. But he continued to press on.
Flicking on the windshield wipers to clear the glass, Einstein merely succeeded in smearing the bugs on the glass into streaks. He pulled to the side of the road and checked a map until he was convinced he was driving in the correct direction. Pulling the truck back onto the road, he drove a few miles, then stopped at a four-way stop. He sniffed the air for the smell of salt and took the fork to the east. Einstein began to feel a sense of relief when the surroundings started to look familiar. When he reached the marina, he slid O'Toole's truck to a stop in the parking lot.
Hartley was surprised to see Einstein. He always called ahead for Hartley to ready his sailboat. Even so, the marina owner prepared the vessel for sailing without comment. Once the boat was ready, Einstein left it tied to the dock and returned to the pickup, where he removed a weathered satchel, which he carried belowdecks and stashed in a compartment beneath the table.
"Will you be working today, Dr. Einstein?" Hartley asked as he untied the line holding the bow of Einstein's sailboat to the dock.
"Lately it seems I'm always working," Einstein said easily. Hartley nodded and, with nothing more forthcoming from Einstein, pushed the sailboat from the dock. Einstein steered away from the dock out toward the ocean.
"What time should I expect you back?" Hartley yelled as the sailboat neared the breakwater.
Just at the edge of his hearing, Einstein heard the question and shouted a reply.
"When I'm finished," he said. With that, he waved goodbye to Hartley, hoisted all sails, and set a course for the deserted cove he had visited on his last voyage. Just over an hour later, anchored stern to shore in the shallows, Einstein removed his shoes and socks and rolled up his pants. Wading through the water, he made his way through the brush and climbed up a small rise. He scanned the terrain, finally selecting a fine oak tree. From a flask of Holland gin he took a large swallow of the peppermint liquor. After finding a comfortable seat at the base of the oak, he removed a sharp wood chisel from a canvas bag he had carried ashore and began carving on a board. It was late in the afternoon, the sun almost at the horizon when he finished.
Einstein suffered stoically through what had become almost unbearable pain. In the last several days, the hardened aorta he steadfastly refused to have operated on had begun to slowly leak blood. This day in April 1955 brought an air of approaching parting, of a journey nearing its end.
The attendant in the passenger seat was daydreaming as the ambulance raced toward Einstein's home. As the driver braked to a stop in front of 112 Mercer, the sound of skidding tires brought the attendant back to the present. Jumping from his seat, he ran to the rear and helped the driver unload the gurney. They wheeled the gurney to the front of the house and the driver rapped on the door. Helen Dukas flung it open at the first sound of the knock. From inside the house the ambulance driver could hear that an argument was still raging.
"The end comes sometimes. Does it matter when, or where?" Einstein said to Dukas. The two attendants listened in silence as the housekeeper tried valiantly to reason with the stubborn physicist. "The nursing field is one I simply do not understand, Herr Professor," Dukas said finally. "It would make me more comfortable if you went to the hospital."
The attendants watched as Einstein considered this. "Very well, then," Einstein said, "I will go to the hospital, but I'll need to send a telegram to Niels Bohr in Denmark. Can we stop on the way to the hospital?"
"I will take care of the telegram after you are in bed in the hospital," Dukas said in a firm voice. "Now it is time to go."
With that, Einstein rose to his feet unsteadily.
After loading Einstein on the gurney and strapping him down, the ambulance attendants carried him down the steps and carefully slid the cart in the back of the Cadillac ambulance for the trip to the hospital. Once Einstein was safely in the rear, the driver ran forward and climbed behind the wheel while the attendant closed the door from inside and kneeled on the floor next to the old physicist.
"What is your name?" Einstein croaked.
"Gunther," the young attendant said, "Gunther Ackerman."
"Do you speak German?" the physicist asked.
"Yes, my father was German."
"Good," Einstein said, coughing.
As the ambulance pulled away from the curb, Einstein began speaking rapidly in German. The attendant sat quietly, listening. Einstein continued a nonstop monologue until the ambulance pulled into the hospital's emergency entrance. As the rear doors were yanked open, Einstein motioned the attendant still closer.
Gasping for breath, he whispered in German, "The force will be in the wind." The young attendant, by now quite puzzled by what he had heard, merely nodded at the gravely ill scientist.
The next day was Sunday, for most a day of rest. Einstein, though still in extreme pain, continued relentlessly with his work, drawing and making notations on a pad of paper. The telegram was sent to his fellow physicist Niels Bohr, but as yet Einstein had received no reply. Shortly after midnight, Monday morning, Einstein began muttering loudly in German. His frail body, the physical shell that merely housed his incredible mind, was fast failing him. Twelve minutes later, at last succumbing to intense pain he could no longer endure, he took two deep breaths and left this planet. He traveled upward, secure in knowing his body of work lived on. He hoped only that the clue he had left behind would fall into the right hands.
Helen Dukas, who had worked for Einstein the last twenty-seven years, was deeply saddened by his death. She returned to 112 Mercer from the hospital later that same morning, intending to straighten up Einstein's home one last time. As the cab that had brought her from the hospital pulled away, she could see several military vehicles parked outside.
She walked up the steps, then opened the front door to find the house full of strangers. Agents from both the Atomic Energy Commission and Naval Intelligence were conducting a meticulous search of the small frame house. A tall, thin man sporting a pencil mustache and wearing a brown felt fedora stared as she entered the living room.
"Who are you?" he asked Dukas quietly.
"I work," Dukas blurted, "or did work, anyway, for the doctor." The man simply nodded, then ordered her to remain in the kitchen until the search was completed. She was led away by the arm by a bulky sailor.
Lost in her grief, Dukas could only comply.
Dukas sat sobbing quietly at the Formica table in the breakfast nook, watched by a guard in a United States Navy uniform. She dabbed at the comers of her eyes with a wadded-up tissue. Sipping a cup of hot tea, she listened as the uninvited guests stomped up and down the stairs of the house. When the noise died down, she bullied her way past the sailor and entered the formerly neat and tidy living room.