Einstein's Secret Read online

  “Collect and sell. That’s how the lucrative part works, thanks to Eddie’s Emporium.”

  “Eddie’s Emporium?”

  “My eBay store: your destination for fifties memorabilia. Magazines, records, toys, sports programs, photos, movie posters, et cetera.”

  “Why do I have the feeling that I’d be most interested in the et cetera?”

  “Because that’s the best part of Eddie’s Emporium. It’s a collection of rare historical documents from the fifties. Letters and notes written by the famous and infamous. Public records that fell through the cracks of history. Any kind of documents that might have some historical value.”

  “So your history degree came in handy after all.”

  “Not as handy as the MS I’m working on in Computer Science. That’s how I learned to mine the Internet for documents.”

  That was impressive and piqued my curiosity even more. What had he uncovered about Einstein’s secret that I’d missed?

  We talked a little more, mostly about the history department and how it was a political minefield, then he gave me his number and said to call him if I decided to take him up on his offer.

  Chapter Two

  I wanted to call Alex immediately, but restrained myself. This was a fresh start. A start where Einstein wasn’t supposed to be a priority. So instead of punching Alex’s number into my iPhone, I walked over to the Iliad Bookstore to pick up copies of my class handouts. Alex had recommended the Iliad, so I’d forwarded them PDFs of all my material before moving to Charlottesville.

  Behind the counter, a woman in her late twenties was immersed in a book. Her short red hair swung down over one of her cheeks and even though she didn’t glance up as I approached, I could still see that she was beautiful.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She looked up and her hazel eyes completed the picture. “What can I help you with?”

  “I’d like to pick up copies of my class handouts.”

  “Which class?”

  “HIUS 5055.”

  Her jaw tightened, as if I’d made her angry. “So you’re the lucky winner.”

  “Winner?”

  “You got the job. You’re Alex’s college buddy.”

  She radiated hostility, and it took me a second to understand why. “You were up for the job?”

  “Are you questioning my qualifications?”

  “No—That’s not what I meant. I—meant that Alex should have said something to me when he recommended the Iliad.”

  “Why? It’s not his fault I didn’t get the job.”

  She said it like it was my fault, and I was at a loss for words.

  She got up and started toward the back of the store. “Now that the cat’s out of the bag, I’ll get your class materials.”

  I wanted to smooth this over, and tried to come up with something to say. I hadn’t thought of anything by the time she returned.

  She plopped a box loaded with my handouts down on the counter.

  “Did you go to grad school here?” I said. It was the best I could do.

  “Is that so hard for you to believe?” She rang up my tab. “Seventy-four fifty.”

  I handed her my credit card. “Do you want me to resign?”

  She almost cracked a smile. “Won’t do much good. I’m sure I’m not next in line.”

  “But classes start in two days and you’re available.”

  She handed me back my credit card. “If Alex recommended you, you must have something going for you.”

  “Or I know a secret about his sordid past.”

  “Are we talking about the same Alex?”

  “So you know him that well, huh?”

  “Mr. Squeaky Clean,” she said. “No wonder he wrote a bestseller, huh? He never left his study carrel during grad school, and he kept it as a professor.”

  “He was the same in college. He spent every waking minute either studying, researching, or reading.”

  “Were you the same way? Is that how you got the appointment?”

  “Nope. I got lucky.”

  It looked like she was about to break into that smile, but the phone rang, interrupting what might have been.

  She answered the phone. “The Iliad. This is Laura.” She listened for a few seconds, then said, “I’ll check,” and turned to her computer terminal.

  I grabbed the box, weighed whether to say more, then headed out. At least I’d ended the conversation on a good note, and picked up her name—Laura—as a bonus prize.

  “Hey! You forgot your receipt,” she said. “The department is a stickler.”

  I walked back to the counter and she handed me the receipt.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t get the job,” I said.

  “Yeah, me too. You know how it is out there for PhDs. I’d kill for that job.”

  “I’ll watch my back.”

  The full smile finally appeared. “Good plan,” she said, then picked up the phone and began to list the various editions of The Stranger to the caller on the other end.

  As I headed out, I couldn’t help but look back over my shoulder. She glanced up at me, and before she looked back down at her computer terminal, I thought I glimpsed approval in her hazel eyes.

  *

  During the drive back to my apartment, she was on my mind. And I tried to keep her on my mind when I walked into my apartment. Otherwise, I’d go back to thinking about Eddie and Einstein.

  I couldn’t do it. Einstein beckoned.

  I called Alex, who was in New York, conducting interviews for his next biography.

  “Why are you asking me about Eddie Bellington?” he asked.

  “He said he knows something about Einstein’s secret.”

  “Jesus Christ! You said you were giving that a rest.”

  “I am. Just fill me in on Eddie.”

  “My advice is to focus on UVA this year. Eddie will always be there. He isn’t going anywhere.”

  “You don’t actually think he found something, do you?”

  “Listen, McKenzie hates him, and you don’t want McKenzie thinking that you’re somehow mixed up with him.”

  “Then you’re not going to like this—I bungled that already.”

  “What? How’s that even possible? You’ve only been there a couple of days.”

  “Just bad luck. McKenzie saw me at a coffee shop with him.”

  “Doesn’t sound like bad luck. The guy roped you into talking to him.”

  “Will you at least tell me his story?”

  I heard an exasperated sigh.

  “Here’s the synopsis. He was in the program for years, a brilliant researcher, but not so hot on coherent synthesis. McKenzie gave him one extension, but wouldn’t approve another one. Eddie’s side business didn’t help his cause either.”

  “The fifties memorabilia.”

  “That part was kosher. It was the documents and records. The things with historical value.”

  “He thinks Eddie’s a commercial archeologist.”

  “And he’s right.”

  So McKenzie spotting me with Eddie was worse than I’d thought. Commercial archeologists were disdained by academia. They were considered crass treasure hunters who sold their finds to the highest bidder rather than donating them to research institutions or museums.

  “But what McKenzie didn’t like the most about that,” Alex said, “was that Eddie was good at it. He helped me out with my research a couple of times when I first got to Charlottesville, so I learned the hard way.”

  “McKenzie put you in the doghouse?”

  “I got away from Eddie in the nick of time. Barely. You need to avoid the guy.”

  “Alex, was it worth it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “His research. Did it help you?”

  Alex hesitated before answering, and that was all I needed to know. Eddie’s research had been worth it, and that meant he might’ve found a clue about Einstein’s secret.

  “He’s a nut,” Alex said, but it was too late.
His hesitation had been the true answer. “You’re not there for Einstein. You’re there to make up for lost time. Secure your position with the department and try to turn it into a longer gig. We talked about that. That’s the whole point. Don’t get involved with this guy.”

  “You’re right,” I said, but thought, one conversation with the guy isn’t going to derail my year.

  We exchanged goodbyes, and just as I was about to call Eddie, my phone rang. It was the history department’s administrative assistant. “Professor McKenzie would like to set up a meeting with you in the morning,” she said. “Are you available at ten?”

  My first thought was paranoid and reactionary. Alex’s warning had been right. Eddie was trouble, and the trouble had already started. McKenzie was meting out punishment.

  I told the assistant I’d be there, then tried to come up with a less paranoid scenario. McKenzie just wanted to ask me to serve on a faculty committee where he was shorthanded. Still, the pending meeting put me on notice, and my call to Eddie was put on hold. Hopefully permanently, but I couldn’t promise myself that.

  I didn’t have much planned for the rest of the day. Grocery shopping and my daily Internet search for new information about Einstein’s last year. I considered adding a trip to the Iliad to ask Laura out, but that’d be coming on too strong, too soon.

  The prep for my classes was done. One class was an American history survey course, similar to another class I’d taught when I’d been lucky enough to land an adjunct position right out of graduate school. The other was a history of science course, the type of course I would’ve loved to have taught year in and year out.

  I did my Internet search first. For the last six years this was a daily routine, and every once in a great while, some new fact would turn up or another fact would get confirmed. But usually months would go by with nothing.

  And “new fact” was a relative term. It usually meant a new secondary or tertiary source rehashing an old fact. Rarely did I find a real new fact. The reality was that not every historical document and record was on the Internet. Plenty of material hadn’t been digitized, uploaded, or indexed. And that meant new facts were hard to come by.

  I spent an hour online, then went to the grocery store. I loaded my cart with enough food for two weeks’ worth of dinners. In the checkout line, my iPhone buzzed. It was a text from Eddie.

  I need to see you tonight, before the clue is gone forever.

  As I stared at the text and contemplated my next move, the grocery story clerk finished scanning my items. “Go ahead and swipe your card,” he said.

  As I did, I thought about Alex’s warning. He’d called Eddie a nut, which was why I feared getting involved with him. Not because I, too, thought he was a nut. But because I saw that Eddie was a version of me. An academician whose love of research and theorizing had led him down the path to ruin.

  And, of the two of us, I was worse. I was the bigger nut. A crackpot. My energy was channeled into an obscure pursuit that no one validated, while Eddie’s was channeled into the far more lucrative fields of fifties memorabilia and commercial archeology.

  I wheeled my grocery cart to my car and let this sink in. Did I view Eddie as some kind of buffoon or freak? Or failure?

  I didn’t.

  And actually, I felt just the opposite. From what Alex had said about him and from talking to him, I could tell he was a smart guy, accomplished in his own right.

  I texted him back. Where do you want to meet?

  Chapter Three

  Two hours later, I met Eddie at the Corner and we headed to the Caves.

  “The Caves are a series of secret carrels under the Lawn,” he said, as we walked across campus. “The Lawn is the original part of UVA. All its buildings were built in the eighteen twenties and designed by Mr. UVA himself, Thomas Jefferson.”

  We walked past the Rotunda.

  “A hundred years later, in the nineteen twenties, the University built new underground tunnels, the ones that carried steam, water, and power. And they also closed down some of the old ones, including the ones under the Lawn.

  “A decade later, a graduate student broke into those tunnels and he and his buddies spent the next year building study carrels down there. Then he turned the privilege of using the carrels into one of UVA’s secret societies. The Cabal. And like most of the school’s secret societies, it’s not so secret.”

  “Are you in the Cabal?”

  “Yep.”

  “You don’t seem like the ‘joiner’ type.”

  “I’m not. But this was too cool to pass up. Plus I didn’t have to do anything. There’s no rush or crap like that. You’re invited in by existing members. You’ve got to be a graduate student and you get judged by your academic research. That’s it.”

  “So it’s a kind of nerd secret society.”

  “Of the highest order.”

  “Congrats, then.”

  “I got in before my dustup with McKenzie. For a research paper I did on fifties genre films and the American dream.”

  That slowed my pace. Films were my dad’s big thing, but I didn’t want to think about my dad. So I didn’t. “How did you keep your carrel after leaving the history department?”

  “I’m doing pretty well with research in comp. sci., too.”

  I wasn’t surprised, and that made me even more curious about the clue he had.

  We entered Grace Hall. The entrance to the Caves was in the basement. “I met Alex because of the Caves,” Eddie said. “He was invited to join in his third year and he lobbied to keep his carrel after he graduated.”

  “And the Cabal said ‘yes’ because they liked having a famous professor in their ranks.”

  “Yep. But what I don’t get is why Alex needs a carrel anymore. The cash from being a full professor and from his biography is enough to buy him some privacy above ground.”

  We took the stairs down to the basement and walked through a corridor lined with storage cages. At the end of the corridor was another staircase leading down to a small sub-basement. The sub-basement looked straight out of the 1800s, when the University was founded. Its stone walls and floor must’ve been part of the original Grace Hall.

  The tiny space was empty except for a trap door built into the floor. The door was made of dark oak like something out of a gothic horror movie, but embedded in the oak was a modern electronic keypad.

  Eddie punched numbers into the keypad, and I heard a loud click. He then grabbed an iron ring that folded up from the door, pulled the door open, and we climbed down into the Caves using slots carved into the wall.

  I was now standing in a narrow tunnel. It was lit, very dimly, by battery-powered lights that ran into the shadowy distance.

  Eddie took the lead, navigating down the tunnel, then another, and another. Old, dead pipes ran above us, and stone walls ran alongside. We passed very few doors and, of those, only a few were open, revealing students hunched over computers or books.

  “There aren’t that many carrels,” I said.

  “They’re spread out for maximum privacy, and there’s over a dozen tunnels down here.”

  “Is there Internet down here?”

  “Nope. That’s one of the Caves’ best features. You come down here to work, not to surf. There’s no cell phone reception down here either.”

  “No wonder Alex likes it.”

  We hiked deeper into the labyrinth of old tunnels, so deep that I would never have been able to find my way out on my own. “The University can’t be on board with students coming down here.”

  “It’s considered trespassing and a Class One Misdemeanor.” Eddie looked over his shoulder and saw the unease on my face. He grinned. “I mean technically, but they turn a blind eye to members of the Cabal coming down here. The Caves is a longstanding tradition, and UVA is all about tradition.”

  We finally arrived at Eddie’s study carrel. He unlocked the door, and I stepped into an eight-by-eight room, furnished with a desk and three bookshelves, sur
rounded by the Caves’ now-familiar stone walls. Plastic storage boxes, stacked three high, took up the rest of the space.

  “Have a seat,” he said, and I sat down in the only chair available. The one behind his desk. Eddie opened one of the plastic storage boxes. “Henry Clavin—How much do you know about him?”

  “More than anyone does. Not that there’s much to know.” After I’d read Clavin’s quote about Einstein in Fame, I’d dedicated a couple of years to tracking down everything I could about the man.

  Eddie pulled a file out of the box. “Tell me what you do know.”

  No harm in that. “Einstein met him in Princeton in the fifties. I don’t know how he met him. My best guess is that it was on one of those long walks he was famous for taking. That’s when he’d talk to the locals not affiliated with the University. And Clavin wasn’t part of the University. At least, I was never able to find a link. He was born in Maryland. I found a public record of that. But I don’t know when he moved to Princeton or where he lived when he was there.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I’m sure he wasn’t one of Einstein’s highfalutin friends because he didn’t leave much of a trail in the annals of history.”

  “That’s it?”

  That wasn’t it. I didn’t tell him the most intriguing thing I knew. But I did give him one more thing. “The last trace Clavin left was in 1970. He died in a car accident.”

  “He’s not dead.”

  What? That was crazy talk. I leaned back in my chair, with one thought going through my head. Alex’s warning. He’s a nut. My research skills weren’t the best, but when it came to Henry Clavin, they were good enough to confirm that the man was, indeed, dead.

  “I’m sure you double-, triple-, and quadruple-checked your sources,” Eddie said. “So I don’t expect you to just take my word for it.”

  “I don’t.” Henry Clavin had died in a car accident in 1970. It was documented not only in a newspaper account of the accident, but also in an obituary, a death certificate, and a funeral announcement.

  “Two days ago, I found out he was still alive,” Eddie said. He handed me a printout. “This is a newsletter from a place called ‘Inn on the Boulevard.’ It’s an assisted living facility in Rockville, Maryland.”