Just before the game got underway, the announcer’s voice came over the loudspeaker, first to lead a prayer for “the safety of our troops fighting for freedom around the globe,” and then to acknowledge the special guests in attendance at this game. When his name was called, Russell stood up and took a bow with his arm folded across his abdomen.
“Would Professor Einstein care to come onto the field,” the announcer asked, “and perform the traditional coin toss?”
The professor appeared baffled, but his friends urged him on as an usher guided him down onto the field, where he was loudly cheered. He waved bashfully at the crowd, brushing his thick gray moustache with the other hand, as the referee proffered the quarter and explained that all he had to do was let the Columbia quarterback call heads or tails, then toss the coin.
“And then maybe you can explain the probabilities to us,” the referee announced over the microphone.
“I expect that they will be precisely the same,” Einstein said, in his heavily accented voice. “Precisely the same.”
The crowd roared with laughter, as they no doubt would have done at anything Einstein uttered. His voice was more natural and congenial than some might have expected, and he displayed the odd habit — repeating the final phrase of what he’d just said — that Lucas had heard other faculty members comment on.
The Lions’ quarterback called tails, Einstein tossed the coin, then glanced down at the result on the back of his hand. “It is… tails, ja?” and before he could even think to repeat it, the referee declared, “Tails it is.” Turning to the Columbia player, he said, “Do you elect to kick, or receive?”
“Receive.”
Einstein was escorted back to his seat, and the Tigers kicked off. Lucas explained what was happening as the game went on—“each team has four downs to advance the ball ten yards,” and “there’s a penalty for what’s called holding,” or “you can’t cross the line of scrimmage until the ball is hiked”—while Simone and her father did their best to follow along. Lucas had the impression that Dr. Rashid, despite his reluctance to come, was beginning to become engaged by the rules and strategies of the game, which was exactly what had appealed to Lucas back when he was in high school and had quarterbacked his team to a state championship. He had enjoyed trying to outthink his opponents, and figure out his players’ deployment: Where did you send your receivers, how did you make the most use of your blockers? In those days, Lucas had seldom been sacked. Today, with a patch over one eye, he’d be a sitting duck.
At halftime, with Columbia ahead by one touchdown, the Princeton band marched onto the field in orange blazers and straw hats, playing the usual Sousa medley, and Lucas treated Simone and her dad to hot dogs with generous helpings of relish and mustard—“you’ve got to have the full football experience,” he joked — before discovering that her dad was vegetarian.
“Oh, my apologies,” he said, going back for a hot salted pretzel, which Dr. Rashid accepted with gratitude. There was a nip in the air, and the warmth of the food was a welcome antidote. Lucas thought that even Simone had managed to lose herself in the game, and forget, for this short while, the momentous discoveries and events of the past few days. When a Princeton player caught a kickoff and then miraculously ran the ball all the way back downfield and across the goal line, she jumped to her feet with the rest of the crowd, clapping her hands together in glee.
“Now they get three more points if they can kick it between the goal posts?” she asked, and Lucas found himself utterly charmed by her growing enthusiasm.
“One,” he said, and after the football had soared cleanly between the uprights, the Lions called for a time-out to regroup.
As the crowd stamped their feet and stretched their arms to get the blood flowing, Lucas noticed a man in a long houndstooth coat, with the collar turned up and a battered hat pulled low, moving down the aisle to his left. Why the man caught his eye at all wasn’t clear at first; it might have been the fact that his face seemed so purposefully concealed, or the deliberation with which he was traveling toward the reserved seats, but Lucas’s time on the front had taught him not to ignore his instincts.
The game was already nearly over, the sun settling lower in the sky and a chill descending; the ushers were no longer paying much attention to the activity in the aisles, or to people switching from the bleachers to better seats closer to the field.
The houndstooth man slipped around them all like a shadow, fixed on something straight ahead. Judging from the path he had so far taken, Lucas figured that his goal — or target? — might be the four luminaries, whose heads were bent low in conversation, oblivious to everything going on around them.
“Excuse me,” Lucas said, abruptly getting to his feet and inching past Dr. Rashid and Simone.
“If you’re going back to the concession stand,” Simone said, “the treats are on me this time.”
Lucas didn’t answer; his entire focus was on the man, whose hands, he now saw, were wedged deep into the pockets of the overcoat. Lucas stepped as nimbly as he could over the other people in the row — one of whom protested, nonetheless, that he had kicked over a thermos — but he was still a dozen yards away when he felt sure that the man was gripping something tightly, and then saw one hand emerge holding a long, sharp blade.
“Watch out!” Lucas shouted as he scrambled over the spectators still in his way.
The man had already reached the front row, and just as Russell rose to adjust the blanket he’d been sitting on, he leapt forward, with the knife raised. Einstein, oblivious to the threat, was tamping tobacco into his pipe.
But the leap had been clumsy, and whether he’d slipped on the concrete or tripped over someone’s shoe, he wound up falling between two rows, the knife scraping against the edge of the wooden seats, right between a startled Russell and Einstein’s back. Someone screamed, and the man was up and on his feet again, the hat shoved low on his brow, the knife flashing in the late afternoon sun. As Russell stumbled backward, out of reach, and Einstein turned his head — though he still didn’t seem to understand what all the commotion was about — Lucas launched himself over a woman still sitting, and rammed his shoulder, like a fullback, into the side of the assailant. They both toppled over, crashing into a couple of other terrified spectators, then tumbling down between two rows of seats.
Lucas groped for the hand still clutching the knife, as the man struggled to get up again and complete his mission. It was almost as if he wasn’t aware of Lucas’s intervention — his mutilated, but suddenly familiar, face was as blank as a slate, and his coat fell open to reveal a ruddy neck, bumpy as a gourd.
Lucas grabbed at the cuff of his overcoat, but the man swung the knife wildly, slicing through the sleeve of his leather bomber jacket. Slamming the hand holding the knife against the edge of the seats — once, twice, three times — Lucas tried to shake the blade loose. But the man would not let go. His eyes, dull and glassy, looked empty of intention, though his swollen lips opened wide to shout out something that sounded like gibberish. Lucas shoved his open palm under the man’s chin, snapping his jaws shut and smacking the back of his head against the concrete.
The hat rolled away under the seats. The knife clattered to the cement. The head came up again, shouting the same thing once more, and Lucas slammed it down even harder. This time he felt a sudden ebbing of strength beneath him, as if the air were suddenly escaping from a punctured balloon. The body went slack beneath him, the mouth dropping open like a trapdoor, emitting an odor so foul Lucas could barely breathe. The man’s eyes, perhaps catching some errant ray of the autumnal sun, flashed with a golden gleam.