“Accepting, for the time being, your premise,” he said, “what would keep this demon, this unclean spirit, here? In a little college town, in the middle of nowhere?” He had his own suspicion, but he didn’t want to voice it yet. He didn’t want to plant any idea in Simone’s head. “What’s here?”
“Instead of asking yourself what’s here, ask yourself who’s here. That one is easy.”
It was.
“Who did Wally Gregg attack?” she said. “Where did Brandt go on the night he died?”
Now he knew that she had indeed been thinking along the same lines that he had. “But why Einstein?”
“That’s what I have been asking myself.” Riffling her fingertips through some of the pages on the desk, as if the answer were in there somewhere and she’d simply overlooked it, she asked, “Why send your minion to attack an elderly professor who spends his time fussing over equations almost no one can understand?”
Lucas remembered the day he’d first visited Einstein in his study, and the letter he had seen on White House stationery — the letter from the president, warning, “I fear they are close to success.” It was no great leap to surmise that Einstein, whose momentous discoveries were considered long behind him, who was regarded more as an icon than a working scientist, might not be retired after all. Could he be more engaged in the war effort than anyone knew? Was it possible that his genius was being employed, in some unknown way, to tip the balance in America’s favor?
Only those in the highest government circles — such as the Oval Office — would know for sure. But if it was true, could that be why the Germans had wanted the ossuary in the first place? Did they know that it contained a spirit so powerful that it could serve as the ultimate weapon — a weapon that they had cleverly deployed against the one man on earth who could foil their plans for world domination? Had they planned this all along? Had they deliberately sent the incriminating telegrams, setting the ossuary aside for Hitler himself, knowing that the missives would be intercepted, knowing that the OSS would rescue the ossuary at all costs, and that it would then find its way to the one spot in America where the nascent isotope research would be used to verify its authenticity? Hadn’t Brandt already been put in place to relay the findings? Wasn’t this where it would most probably be opened, and its evil thus released on an enemy shore?
Lucas found his head spinning with all the possible schemes and scenarios, questions and conundrums. It was as disorienting as the hall of mirrors at the Coney Island amusement park he’d gone to as a child.
“I want to find this thing that killed my father,” Simone said in a calm but implacable voice. “I want to find it, wherever it’s hiding, and I want to kill it.”
A look of cold resolve gleamed in her dark, lustrous eyes, a look that Lucas might well have imagined on the face of some storybook heroine, an Arabian princess, sitting astride a noble stallion.
“I need your help, Lucas.”
What help he could offer, he did not know. How did you capture, much less kill, a spirit as old as time? But he was not about to abandon her — not now, not ever. Without a word, he enfolded her in his arms. “Anything,” he said. “I’ll do anything you need me to.”
At first, she remained as stiff as a sentry, unyielding, still caught up in her anger and determination.
“I’m with you, Simone,” he reassured her.
He felt the tension in her shoulders relax.
“I will always be.”
She virtually melted in his arms, her head resting against his chest, all the energy draining away so swiftly it was as if he were catching her in free fall.
“I need you, Lucas. I need you so much.”
She was speaking of more than the ossuary, he knew. He knew it because it was precisely how he felt, too. He needed her. He turned off the bedside lamp.
This time, their lovemaking was more tender than torrid. This time, he tore no buttons from blouses, ripped no stockings, scratched no cheeks with his stubble. This time he allowed himself to undress her slowly, to kiss and savor each inch of skin revealed. My God, he thought, she was such a wonder. Never had he wished more fervently to be rid of the black patch, to have two eyes rather than one to take her all in. When he leaned above her to kiss her breasts, she gripped his arm so tightly the bandage threatened to unravel.
“Oh, Lucas. Did I hurt you just now?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
He reassured her with a kiss, and then another, losing himself in the realm of pure sensation. Here there were no demons to catch, no boxes of bones, no nightmares of land mines and battles and blood. All of that — the horrors he had witnessed, the things that haunted him still — all of that was banished. Now there was only this, her tawny limbs entwined with his, her head thrown back with eyes closed and mouth open, her hair spread across the white pillows, her breath growing as hot and ragged as his own. There was only this moment — and in this moment there was everything he could want.
When it was finished, Simone pressed her lips to his throat and murmured something in Arabic.
“What’s it mean?”
“Ask me in the morning,” she said, then rolled over, falling instantly into a deep and silent and motionless sleep. Lucas lay back beside her, his own body cooling off like an engine that had been running too hard. Apart from the low hiss of the radiator and the muffled thump of doors being closed down the hall, the room was silent. He let his fingers graze up and down the gentle swell of her back, let his mind drift. The sweat evaporated on his skin. He must have fallen asleep because it was only later — how long, he couldn’t tell — before he became vaguely aware of a tickling sensation on his face. Brushing it away, he heard the buzzing of a fly.
Minutes later, he felt the tickling again, and again brushed it away.
When it happened once more, he knew that if he didn’t get up and swat the damn fly, he would never be able to get any rest.
He opened his eye, but his vision was blurred by sleep, and the only light was provided by the streetlamps outside. Trying not to disturb Simone, he groped for the switch on the bedside lamp. His hand flailed about, unable to find it, but when he did, he drew his fingers back instantly. The knob was soft as velvet… and animate.
Snapping awake, he sat up, swinging his legs off the bed.
There was a constant humming in the room, a sound that in his sleep he might have mistaken for some ambient hotel noise.
Going to the window, he yanked the curtains back, enough that he could now discern the shape of the lampshade, and reaching under it again, he found the switch — unaltered this time — and turned the lamp on.
The light only made the scene more confusing. His brain could not process what he was seeing: The whole room was seething, like a pot boiling over. The walls and ceiling were so black with movement, punctuated by glints of iridescent green and indigo, that they merged into one vast undulating surface. The desk was as thick and black as an anvil, buried under an army of flies so dense its legs and drawers couldn’t even be seen.
The swarm didn’t seem to like the light, growing more agitated, churning and surging and buzzing.
Stealthily, Lucas nudged Simone’s bare shoulder.
She was so fast asleep, she didn’t budge.
He shook her harder, and whispered, “Simone, wake up.”