“No, because in that case, the bones would be fossilized. And these aren’t.”
“Now you’ve got me confused.”
“Good. You should be. Because although the radiocarbon testing I’ve done suggests that this second creature was very old indeed — and by that I mean tens of thousands of years older — all the other physical evidence, both mine and Andy’s, suggests that it died at the same time as the old man it was buried with.”
“That can’t be.”
“But it is, my friend, it is,” Delaney said, sounding relieved just to have admitted it. “There’s a junction up ahead,” he said, peering through the sheets of water cascading down the windshield. “Is that where I turn?”
“Yes,” Lucas said, remembering it well from his own induction and basic training at the fort. “Turn left on Monmouth Road.”
“You getting nostalgic?” Delaney said.
“No danger of that. It wasn’t what you’d call a good time. And God knows I never thought I’d be coming back again.”
“Much less for a roll of film, right?” Delaney maneuvered the car around a fallen branch before turning left at the junction, where a sign read “US Army Base, Fort Dix. Only Authorized Personnel Beyond This Point.”
“I guess we’re what you’d call authorized,” Delaney said, squinting through the rain. “I don’t want a tank to unload on us.”
“Macmillan said they’d have the canister waiting for us at the main gate.”
“How far’s that?”
“About a mile, straight ahead.”
Although it was only late afternoon, the day was still so dark that the lamps along the roadway were on, revealing high cyclone fences surmounted by coils of razor-wire lining both sides. Another sign appeared, warning, “No Civilian Access Beyond This Point. No Contraband. All Unauthorized Vehicles Are Subject to Search and Seizure.”
“We’re not carrying any contraband, are we?” Delaney asked.
“Not unless a pack of cigarettes counts.”
Armed sentries, wearing ponchos and helmets, monitored their progress from tall, steel towers. Spotlights were abruptly illuminated and angled to take in their car, bathing the interior in a blinding white glare. Speed bumps, spaced every hundred feet or so, slowed the car to a crawl; Lucas was worried that if they hit one of them too hard, the whole car would literally disintegrate.
The red brick walls of the old fort, erected in 1917, appeared ahead. At the main gate, the security post was brightly lit, and a heavy metal arm, painted with white and yellow stripes, extended across the roadway. A young soldier in rain gear stepped out as the car came to a stop. Delaney waited until the last possible second to roll down his window.
“This is a restricted zone,” the soldier said, bending close and combing over the interior with his flashlight. “Please state your business.”
“The name’s Patrick Delaney. My passenger is Lucas Athan.”
Leaning over toward the open window, Lucas added, “Colonel Macmillan, at the OSS in DC, has authorized us to pick up a package.”
“ID, please.”
Delaney had to lift one heavy haunch in order to fish his wallet out of his back pocket and offer his driver’s license. Lucas handed his across, too — the stitches in his arm stinging from the motion — and the soldier returned to the guard post. Delaney hastily rolled up the window, but the driving rain had already soaked his pant leg.
“I’m putting in for combat pay,” he said.
“You were never in the armed services.”
“Can I help it if my work here was judged more crucial to the war effort than risking my life in a foxhole?”
When the soldier returned, Delaney grudgingly cranked the window down again. Handing them back their licenses, the soldier said. “He’s coming.”
“Who’s coming?” Delaney asked.
“The guy from the film office.”
The window went back up, but through the windshield, Lucas could see another soldier jogging out of the fort with his head held down against the pelting wind and rain. He was holding something under his arm like a football while he struggled with his free hand to keep the hood of his poncho up.
When he got close enough, Delaney rolled the window down again, and put out his hand.
The soldier stopped, however, and instead of simply giving it to him, he doubled over to get a good long look at both of the passengers in the car.
“Are you the guys who shot this film?”
“No, but we were there,” Delaney replied.
“Then who shot it?”
“What difference does it make?” Delaney said, getting soaked all over again.
“Was it his first time with a Bell and Howell Eyemo camera?”
“Yes, it was,” Lucas said, “but the ‘he’ was a ‘she.’ ”
“Maybe that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
The soldier didn’t say, only glanced at the tightly sealed plastic bag as if he was reluctant to pass it on without first issuing some kind of caveat. “The original went to Washington. You know that, right?”
“We do,” Lucas replied.
“But it’s no better than this copy. I told them so.”
Maybe that was why Macmillan was so eager to have them view it separately. “Why? What’s wrong with it?”
A sudden gust of wind blew the soldier’s hood back — he looked like he couldn’t be more than nineteen — but he let it be. The rain plastered his hair down and streamed down his face. “See for yourself,” he said, finally delivering the bag to Delaney, who promptly dropped it into Lucas’s lap. “But it wasn’t my fault. The lab here is first-rate.”
Delaney exchanged a glance with Lucas, and at the soldier’s salute, closed the window one last time, backed up, and turned the car around again. “Sounds like our friend Simone will never direct another picture,” he said, shifting gears.
What could be so wrong with the film? Lucas wondered as the car bounced slowly over the first speed bump. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he saw the young soldier still standing in place, hood down, poncho rippling in the wind and rain, staring after their car.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
With the film canister tucked into a battered briefcase, which was in turn tucked tightly under his uninjured arm, Lucas was almost out the door of the boardinghouse when Mrs. Caputo came fluttering down the stairs with an envelope in hand. “Wait,” she cried. “This came for you while you were gone!”
“I’m going over to the museum now,” Lucas said. “I’ll have to open it later.”
“I think you’d better open it now.”
“Why? Who’s it from?”
“You’ll see,” Mrs. Caputo said, barely able to conceal her excitement. “She brought it over herself.”
She?
Putting the briefcase down on the side table, Lucas obliged his landlady by ripping it open.
It was a handwritten note from Helen Dukas, Einstein’s secretary, urging him to stop and visit the professor at his earliest opportunity.
“They’re inviting you over, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“I bet he wants to thank you for saving his life at the stadium.”
Lucas needed no thanks for doing what anyone else in his shoes would have done, and he was eager to get to the art museum where he could get at the film projector.
“I want you to bring him something for me,” Mrs. Caputo said, ducking into the kitchen, then reemerging with a plate of brownies still warm from the oven and covered with a crumpled sheet of tinfoil.
Lucas was torn. He didn’t want to incur any delay right now, but an invitation — or was it a summons? — from one of the most famous men in the world wasn’t something you could easily dismiss. As if intuiting his thoughts, Mrs. Caputo shoved the plate of brownies into his hands and said, “Lucas, you absolutely have to go.”