A harried staff member, who had answered the same question for countless people, told them that all of Einstein’s papers had been bequeathed to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In conjunction with Caltech, they were making much of the material available online.
Back in Mercer’s room at the Deco Palace, he handed her a beer from the minibar and opened one for himself. The sun was setting and the hotel cast a long shadow over the boardwalk. Cali checked that she had a connection with the hotel’s Wi-Fi and quickly located the archive. They found that there was a document of some sort in the collection from a Ch. Bowie; however, that particular piece of writing couldn’t be accessed through the Internet.
“What time is it in Israel?” Cali asked, reaching for the phone. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter.” She dialed a long number from memory, and when it was answered she asked for Ari Gradstein.
“Who is Ari Gradstein?” Mercer asked.
“The deputy director for Israel’s Demona nuclear research facility. We’ve worked together a few times on responses to nuclear terrorism,” Cali replied, then picked up the conversation with the Israeli when he came on the line. “Ari, it’s Cali Stowe from NEST.” She paused, listening. “Good, how are you?…Excellent. And Shoshana?…Great. Listen, Ari, I need an official favor. I’d like you to cut through the bureaucracy for me at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I can’t tell you what it’s about yet other than to say I highly doubt the state of Israel is at risk. I’m researching an American who wrote to Einstein, and all his papers are archived at the university…. Yeah, I know. It surprised me too. I wasted a couple of hours at Princeton thinking they were there.
“Could you call over there for me and clear the way? I’m going under the assumption that as soon as I identified myself as someone from the DOE, all sorts of red flags would go up and it would be weeks before I got an answer.” Cali rattled off her e-mail address and then the university’s reference number for the document authored by Ch. Bowie. “Thanks, Ari, I owe you one. Bye.”
Mercer was impressed. “Even if I had a contact in Israel, I never would have thought of that. You were brilliant.”
Cali smiled at the compliment. “And sometimes knowing your way around a bureaucracy isn’t a bad thing.”
Harry returned to the room while they waited for an e-mail from Israel. He was bleary-eyed and his cheeks were prickled with silver stubble. It was the first Mercer had seen of him in nearly twenty hours.
“Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. Have you been gambling this whole time?”
Harry lowered himself to the bed with an exaggerated groan. “God, no. I stopped for breakfast this morning.”
“And how’d you do?” Mercer asked, knowing the answer by Harry’s dejected look.
Harry propped himself against the pillows, his eyes closed. “Never ask a gambler that until he’s done.”
“That bad, eh?”
The old man suddenly leaned forward and pulled thick bundles of cash from both pockets of his windbreaker. He spoke mildly, as though it were no big deal. “Actually I think I did all right for myself.”
“Holy shit!” Mercer and Cali exclaimed at the same time. “How much?” Mercer asked.
Harry roared in triumph. “Thirty grand, my boy! I crushed ’em. I was unstoppable. I even told them I was staying at Trump’s so they’d comp me a suite last night to keep me here.”
“You wily son of a bitch,” Mercer muttered in astonishment.
“Congratulations,” Cali added. “What are you going to do with all that money?”
Harry eyed her as though she were an idiot. “Gamble it away tonight, of course.”
Cali looked like she was going to try to dissuade Harry from blowing his winnings. Mercer knew better. Her laptop pinged and all thoughts of Harry’s windfall vanished. It was an e-mail from the Hebrew University. The archivist who sent it wasn’t happy about answering a request past midnight but said they’d found what Cali had asked for. “This is it,” Cali said and opened the attachment. It was a telegram sent to Einstein in April of 1937 from Athens, Greece. Mercer read over her shoulder:
May I inquire as to your health, sir? It has been seven weeks since I left. I have spent my vacation near Lake Como. My hotel reminds me a little of that monstrosity Hearst built. At least there is plenty of sunshine and fresh air. I’ve found some trinkets you’d enjoy and plan to ship soonest. I could not find the Gibson print of Drake’s Golden Hind you so wanted. I did locate that recording by Stephan Enburg you asked for. In my opinion that is a small success, but I can’t imagine why you liked it. Too much oboe, not enough flute.
Ch. Bowie
PS fail fall ball bill fill pill poll pall pail pain gain
Cali was the first to voice her assessment. “What the hell is this? It’s meaningless. Lake Como? He was in Africa, and that bit about seven weeks. Bowie’d been gone for months. How did he end up in Athens? And what’s with the postscript?”
“It’s got to be code,” Mercer said. “Maybe he and Einstein had some prearranged signal concerning the expedition. He says he had a small success. The name Stephan Enburg could mean something specific, like that Bowie found the mine. Had he not found it, maybe it would have been a different name.”
“Maybe, maybe, maybe. Damn it.” She blew a frustrated breath.
“Let me see that,” Harry called. Mercer swiveled the laptop so Harry could read the telegram.
“Gibson’s print of Drake’s Golden Hind?” Cali questioned aloud. “What is that?”
“Drake is Sir Francis Drake,” Mercer replied, “an English admiral and privateer around the time of Queen Elizabeth the first. The Golden Hind was his flagship. My knowledge of art ends with dogs playing poker, so I’m guessing that Gibson was an artist who created a famous portrait of him. When Harry’s done, we can search it on the Internet along with a composer named Stephan Enburg. It might give us a clue what Bowie meant.”
“Don’t bother,” Harry said, looking up from the computer. His blue eyes were alight with a devilish spark. “The real question you need to answer is if Chester Bowie made it aboard the Hindenburg like he planned.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Give me a pen and a piece of paper and I’ll show you.” Cali handed him some hotel stationery and her Montblanc. “The clue’s in the postscript. That line Bowie wrote is called a doublet, a word game invented by Lewis Carroll, the guy who wrote Alice in Wonderland. The object of the game is to transform one word into another, usually with the opposite meaning, by changing one letter at a time and using as few words as possible. Bowie turned fail into gain using eleven words including the original.”
“Oh I see,” Cali exclaimed. “Change an I into an L and fail becomes fall, then change the F to a B and you get ball.”
“And so on. Except Bowie messed it up and it was deliberate.”
“How so?” asked Mercer.
“It’s obvious that he knew the rules of a doublet since he wrote one out, but he used eleven words when you can change fail into gain with only four.” And he wrote: fail pail pain gain.
Mercer nodded at what Harry had done. “This is all well and good and I’m sure provides hours of entertainment to the gaming set, but how does this get us to Bowie being on the Hindenburg?”