The creature, its hands seemingly welded to the top of the staff, juddered from head to foot, jaws clamped shut, head snapped back, its entire body wrapped in a frizzling electric light.
Fire from the Heavens.
For several seconds, it managed to remain upright, limbs convulsing and flesh frying, its eyes bulging with a lurid golden gleam, before the surge ended. Smoldering, the staff still clenched in its hands, its legs buckled, and the demon toppled lifelessly over the side of the boat.
Lucas, tingling and twitching from head to foot, peered overboard and saw the charred body — black and sizzling as a hot coal — drift off. It no longer looked like Delaney — it no longer looked like anything but the remains of some incinerated beast.
Then the weight of its soaking clothes dragged it down beneath the water.
Wiping the rain from his one good eye, Lucas turned and scanned the lake behind the boat. To his dismay, he saw that the life preserver, still trailing astern by a long rope, was empty.
“Professor!” he shouted, praying for a miracle. Another one. Hands quivering, he groped for the tiller and the lines, trying to turn the boat around. Never having sailed before, it was all hit or miss, and by the time he had changed direction, he had all but given up hope of rescuing Einstein.
The blade of the broken paddle floated by, and then he saw, off to one side, the upside-down canoe, rising and falling like a cork on the choppy waters.
Sailing closer, searching for any sign of the professor, Lucas felt an all too familiar aching in his heart… the ache he had felt after the land mine, or after visiting the gravely wounded Private Toussaint in the hospital ward, or discovering the lifeless body of Dr. Rashid.
Then he spotted an arm, tenaciously thrown over the bottom of the capsized canoe.
And heard a feeble cry for help.
Shoving the tiller to one side so abruptly that he nearly overturned the sailboat, too, he shouted, “Hold on! Hold on!”
The sailboat came around, and now he could make out the professor’s head, the white hair plastered to his skull like wet goose feathers, as he clung to the canoe. Dropping the lines and tiller, Lucas stretched out a hand as the boat skimmed past, snagging the collar of Einstein’s leather jacket and dragging him along in the wake. It was another minute or two before he could finally wrestle him up and into the boat, where he landed like a hooked flounder, sputtering and spitting out water.
“Again,” Einstein gasped. “You have saved me again.”
“Not yet I haven’t. I’ve still got to get us to dry land.”
But the driving wind seemed to be pushing them toward the boathouse, and before long, the little sailboat had ground to a wobbly halt on the shore, a few hundred yards shy of the dock. Lucas jumped out, the water still up to his thighs, and extended a hand to Einstein.
“We are safe?”
“We will be once you get out of the boat.”
Overhead, he heard the roar of a low-flying aircraft, and looked up to see the military helicopter — no doubt with the ossuary safely stowed in its cargo bay — plowing its way south through the pouring rain and gusting winds.
As he helped Einstein plod onto the muddy bank, Lucas could see the police running toward them. Even Kurt Gödel, throwing all caution to the wind, was picking his way along the shoreline with his arms extended like a tightrope artist.
Ahead of them all, though, and leading the pack by a mile, was Simone.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
“You look so pretty!” Amy exclaimed.
Simone stood before the floor-length mirror in the master bedroom while Mrs. Caputo checked one more time to make sure that the hem of her dress fully concealed the silk slip.
“How does it feel?” Mrs. Caputo said, standing back and studying Simone in the mirror. Instead of the traditional long white dress, she wore a summer dress, in cream chiffon, adorned with tiny pink and white lilacs, and a pair of matching satin shoes — leather was still hard to come by — in the latest peep-toe style.
“It feels wonderful,” Simone said, and Mrs. Caputo, who’d done some last-minute tailoring, beamed.
“We’re not done yet,” she said, and from the top of her bureau she retrieved a white cap with a lacy veil. After pinning it carefully atop Simone’s black hair, she ran a hand one last time over the scalloped sleeves of the dress, smoothing out any wrinkles. “I’ve never seen a more beautiful bride.”
Simone blushed — compliments had always unnerved her — but even she had to admit that she had never felt quite so cosseted. Her tawny complexion was perfectly offset by the creamy colors of the clothes, and she knew her dark eyes shone with the happiness and anticipation of the day. “What do I do now?” she said, glancing at the clock on the wall. “It’s still an hour before the ceremony.”
“Finish packing for your honeymoon.”
“It’s already done,” Simone said, gesturing at the battered tan suitcase behind the door. She and Lucas were going to spend over a week in Manhattan, a place she had always longed to explore.
“Well, then, just stand right there,” Mrs. Caputo said with a laugh. “No sitting, no stretching, no nothing. Pretend you’re a statue.”
“Is it okay if I pretend I’m a statue on the front porch?”
“Just stay in the shade,” Mrs. Caputo warned. “You don’t want to perspire.”
It was a hot and sunny day outside, but, as was usual for New Jersey at this time of year, muggy, too, and punctuated by the chirping of cicadas in the trees. Across Mercer Street, where the ceremony was to be held, she could see that the fence in front of Einstein’s house had been festooned with red roses — no doubt the flowers had been Helen’s idea — and she could hear the strains of a violin, tuning up, on the summer breeze.
It was all like a dream.
If someone had told her, a year ago, that she would be marrying an ex-GI professor, and in the backyard of Albert Einstein’s house in America, she would never have believed it. She could hardly believe it now, and yet, here she was, watching a yellow cab pull up across the street and drop off Lucas’s parents and sister. She had only met them two or three times — on trips to their apartment in Queens — but they had embraced her wholeheartedly. His mother, in particular, had warmed to the English and Egyptian girl who had now lost both of her own parents and found herself marooned in a foreign country.
Lucas got out last, and dutifully averting his eyes from the boardinghouse, ushered them all down the walkway and up the porch steps. He’d spent the night at the Nassau Inn with his family, so that he wouldn’t see the bride before the wedding. As the front door opened, Simone could hear Helen’s voice welcoming them. The word “lemonade” was carried on the wind. A fly buzzed around and around her head, and she felt her heart flutter as she brushed it away.
Ever since that terrible night at the inn, she had nursed an inordinate fear of flying insects.
The only one who could understand everything that had happened to her the previous fall was Lucas. He was her rock. He was the only one who would ever understand — who could ever understand — what had occurred. Who else would ever believe a word of it?
As for the ossuary… she had never laid eyes on it again after it had been flown off campus in the cargo hold of the helicopter.
The greatest discovery of her life — a discovery that would have made any archaeologist world-renowned — was now a secret that could just as well have remained in its tomb beneath the sands of the Sahara el Beyda. Given the toll it had already taken, however, she wasn’t sorry to see it go.
“Hello!” she heard from across the street, and she saw Adele Gödel, in a bright purple dress and gold hoop earrings, waving happily at her as she and Kurt strolled toward the professor’s house. Even on a day like this, Kurt had a muffler around his neck. “Du bist schoen!”Adele called out. “You look beautiful!”