Final Theory

by Mark Alpert

  Monique forced a smile. “Well, that’s that. Back to the drawing board.”

  David hurled the rock down the slope, then grasped her hand. All at once he was overcome with a strange mix of emotions, a blend of sadness and sympathy and gratitude and relief. He wanted to thank Monique for everything she’d done, for journeying more than a thousand miles by his side, for saving his ass a hundred times over. But instead of saying the words out loud, he impulsively raised her hand to his lips and kissed the brown skin between her knuckles. She gave him a curious look, surprised but not displeased. Then she spotted something over David’s shoulder and her face tensed again. He turned around and saw a convoy of black SUVs snaking down the highway from the southeast.

  He stepped back from the cliff and pulled Monique behind the outcrop. “Get over here!” he yelled at Graddick, who immediately dragged Michael into the shadow of the rock shelf. Kneeling in the dirt, Graddick peered over the shelf and scowled. “The scarlet beast!” he hissed. “Full of abominations!”

  The cars slowed as they approached the trailhead. The agents had obviously studied the topographic maps and figured out the fastest way to the top of the mountain. David’s plan was to stay hidden as the assault team climbed the trail so the FBI men wouldn’t be tempted to take any potshots at them; once the agents came within earshot, he would give a yell to reveal where they were hiding. Then, presumably, the leader of the team would order them to come out slowly, with their hands up. It seemed the safest way to surrender. Of course the agents wouldn’t be too happy once they discovered the fate of the unified theory. But that couldn’t be helped.

  As the SUVs parked on the shoulder of the road, David turned to Graddick. He belatedly realized that he’d never learned the man’s first name. “Uh, brother? It’s time for you to go.”

  With his fists clenched, Graddick stared at the SUVs. One by one the car doors opened and the men in gray suits came pouring out. “Yea, they are as numerous as the sand of the sea,” he recited. “But the fire shall come down from heaven and devour them!”

  David grew worried. There was no good reason for Graddick to stick around. The FBI didn’t know his name. If he left now, he could get away scot-free. “Listen, brother. We must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. But your place is in the wilderness, understand? You have to go.”

  The man grimaced. He probably wished he had a few more rattlesnakes to throw at the agents. But after a moment he clapped his hand on David’s shoulder. “I’ll go, but not far. If there’s any trouble, I’ll come back.”

  Before leaving, he raised his hand to David’s forehead and offered another unintelligible blessing. Then he spun around and scuttled down Haw Knob’s western slope, disappearing into the dense shadows under the pine boughs.

  The federal agents were now marching single file up the trail. The path was steep and rocky, forcing some of the men to scramble on all fours. David guessed they were about ten minutes away. He ducked behind the outcrop and checked on Michael, who was calmly studying the parallel fractures in the rock shelf, oblivious to the approaching danger. To be honest, though, David was more concerned about Monique. Because she was the expert on theoretical physics, the agents would interrogate her the hardest. He took her hand again and squeezed it. “They’re going to split us up for the interrogations. I may not see you for a while.”

  She smiled, giving him a sly look. “Oh, I don’t know about that. Maybe we’ll run into each other at Guantánamo. I hear the beaches down there are nice.”

  “Don’t be afraid of them, Monique. They’re just following orders. They don’t—”

  She leaned against him and pressed her index finger to his lips. “Shhh, stop worrying, all right? They can’t hurt me, because I have nothing to say. I’ve already forgotten the equations.”

  He didn’t believe it. “Come on.”

  “It’s the truth. I’ve always been good at forgetting things.” Her face turned serious. “I grew up in one of the shittiest places in America, a place that usually scars you for life. But I forgot all that and now I’m a professor at Princeton. Forgetting can be a very useful skill.”

  “But last night you—”

  “I don’t even remember the title of the paper. Untersoochick-something? I remember it was German but that’s it.”

  Michael stopped examining the rock shelf and turned to Monique. “‘Neue Untersuchung über die Einheitliche Feldtheorie,’” he said in flawless German.

  David stared at the boy. How did he know the title of Einstein’s paper? “What did you say?”

  “‘Neue Untersuchung über die Einheitliche Feldtheorie,’” he repeated. Then he turned back to the rock shelf and resumed his inspection of the fracture patterns.

  Monique raised her hand to her mouth and looked at David. They were both thinking the same thing. Michael hadn’t looked at the laptop the night before, so he must’ve seen the title somewhere else.

  David grasped the boy’s shoulders. He tried to be gentle but his hands were shaking. “Michael, where did you see those words?”

  The boy heard the fear in David’s voice. His eyes strained to the left, avoiding contact. David recalled the teenager’s mental feats, how he’d committed entire telephone directories to memory. Jesus, he thought, how much did the kid know? “Please, Michael, this is important. Did you read the file while you were playing Warfighter?”

  Michael’s cheeks turned pink but he didn’t answer. David tightened his grip on the boy’s shoulders. “Listen to me! Did you ever download the file from the server? Maybe a long time ago, when you still lived with your mother?”

  He shook his head in quick jerks, as if he were shivering. “It was a safe place! Hans told me it was a safe place!”

  “How much of it did you read? How much, Michael?”

  “I didn’t read it!” he screamed. “I wrote it! I wrote it all down and put it on the server! Hans told me it was a safe place!”

  “What? I thought Kleinman put the theory there.”

  “No, he made me memorize it! Now let go of me!”

  The boy tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but David held on tight. “What do you mean? You memorized the whole theory?”

  “Leave me alone! I don’t have to tell you anything unless you have the key!” Then, with a terrific wrench, he freed his arm from David’s grasp and punched him in the stomach.

  It was a good, solid punch, strong enough to knock the wind out of him. David lost his balance and landed on his back. The broad blue sky seemed to spin around him. And as he lay there in the dirt, struggling for breath, a string of numbers slowly passed before his eyes. They were the sixteen digits Dr. Kleinman had whispered on his deathbed, the sequence he’d called “the key.” The first twelve were the coordinates of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon; the last four were the phone extension of Professor Gupta’s office. But David recalled now that the extension wasn’t Gupta’s direct phone line—it was the number for the reception area, the desk where Michael had sat. The truth hit David at the same moment that the air rushed back into his lungs.

  Kleinman’s sequence didn’t point to Amil Gupta.

  It pointed to Michael.

  David lay there motionless for several seconds. Monique bent over him and shook his arm. “Hey? Are you all right?”

  He nodded. Fighting off dizziness, he crawled back to the rock shelf and peeked over the top. The agents were only a few hundred yards away, charging up the final stretch of the trail. They’d probably heard Michael’s scream and were now rushing to investigate.

  The teenager was hunched against the outcrop, staring at the ground. David didn’t touch him. Instead, he employed the same technique Elizabeth had used to retrieve phone numbers from the boy: he snapped his fingers under Michael’s nose. Then David recited the numbers Dr. Kleinman had given him: “Four, zero…two, six…three, six…seven, nine…five, six…four, four…seven, eight, zero, zero.”

  Michael looked up. His cheeks were still pink but his eyes
were calm. “‘Neue Untersuchung über die Einheitliche Feldtheorie,’” he started. “Die allgemeine Relativitatstheorie war bisher in erster Linie eine rationelle Theorie der Gravitation und der metrischen Eigenschaften des Raumes…”

  It was the text of Einstein’s paper, spoken with a German accent that was exactly like Dr. Kleinman’s. The old physicist had found a marvelously clever hiding place. Michael could easily memorize the entire theory, but unlike a scientist, he’d never be tempted to work on the formulas or share them with his colleagues, because he didn’t understand a single word or symbol. And under normal circumstances, no one would dream of looking for the equations inside the mind of an autistic teenager. But the circumstances now were anything but normal.

  David grabbed Monique’s arm. “Do you hear this? He knows the whole fucking theory! If the FBI gets us, they’re gonna interrogate the kid, and sure as fuck they’re gonna find out he’s hiding something!”

  While Michael continued to reel off the theory, David heard a familiar noise. He peeked over the rock shelf again and saw a pair of Blackhawk helicopters hovering over the highway. Panicking, he removed his cell phone from his pocket and tossed it to the ground. Then he pulled Monique and Michael to their feet.

  “Come on!” he shouted. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

  GOD DAMN THAT COLONEL TARKINGTON, Lucille thought as she raced up the trail. The Delta Force commander had promised to keep his soldiers in reserve, but now two of his helicopters had popped over the horizon, in plain sight of anyone within a five-mile radius, and her team had to dash to the summit of Haw Knob before the suspects got spooked. The last stretch of the trail was a steep, slippery chute, but Lucille bounded up the path without breaking her ankles and came to a big, gray outcrop standing in the middle of a grassy clearing. A dozen of her agents fanned out to the left and right, pointing their Glocks in all directions. Holding her own semiautomatic with both hands, Lucille sidled to the edge of the rock shelf. No one was hiding behind it. Then she scanned the western slope of the mountain and caught a glimpse of three figures running under the pine trees.

  “Stop right there!” she bellowed, but of course they didn’t stop. She turned to her agents and pointed toward the woods. “Go, go, go! They’re straight ahead!”

  The young men hurtled down the slope, moving twice as fast as Lucille could. She felt a sense of impending relief: one way or another, this assignment would soon be over. But as the assault team reached the edge of the forest, Agent Jaworsky suddenly let out a cry and tumbled to the ground. The other men stopped in their tracks, bewildered. A moment later, Lucille saw a fist-size rock fly out of the branches and strike Agent Keller in the forehead.

  “Look out!” she yelled. “Someone’s in the trees!”

  The agents crouched in the grass and started firing wildly. There was no order, no targeting. The gunshots echoed against the mountainside and clusters of pine needles fell from the boughs, but Lucille saw nothing else moving in the woods. Shit, she thought, this is ridiculous! The whole team was pinned down because someone had thrown a couple of rocks! She yelled, “Hold your fire!” but nobody could hear her over the din, so she ran across the clearing. Before she could reach her men, though, the Delta Force’s helicopters came over the hill.

  The Blackhawks flew low, only twenty feet over the clearing. Both choppers moved into position above the crouching agents and turned parallel to the line of trees. Then the door gunners opened up with their M-240 machine guns.

  The barrage went on for almost a minute, slicing branches from the pines and chipping bark off their trunks. The agents in the clearing threw themselves on their stomachs and covered their ears. Lucille groped for her radio but she knew it was hopeless: the dumb beasts couldn’t be stopped. Finally she saw a large object fall from one of the trees. It bounced against a lower limb and landed with a thud on the forest floor. The machine guns fell silent and the agents rushed toward a heavy, bearded man whose chest had been ripped apart by the eight-millimeter rounds.

  Lucille shook her head. She had no idea who the dead man was.

  MONIQUE LOST SIGHT OF DAVID and Michael soon after the gunfire started. As the Glocks boomed behind her and the bullets whizzed overhead, she ran blindly down the tree-covered slope, leaping over roots and rock piles and hummocks, forgetting everything except the need to put as much distance as possible between herself and the squadron of FBI agents. She ducked under the pine branches and skidded through heaps of dead needles. When she came to a shallow stream at the bottom of the slope she splashed right across and charged up the opposite bank. She kept on running as long as she could hear the guns, propelled by an instinct she thought she’d forgotten, a lesson her mother had taught her when she was a girl in Anacostia: If you hear shots, honey, you better haul ass.

  After what seemed like an eternity the gunfire stopped. That was when Monique noticed she was alone. The forest was empty on all sides. She jogged up the next ridge, moving in the direction where she thought she’d find David and Michael, but when she finally reached the crest all she saw was a dirt road up ahead and the two helicopters hovering over the woods behind her. They were almost a mile away but the rapid beat of their rotor blades was still quite loud. She quickly headed for thicker cover, and as she stumbled downhill again she heard another noise off to her right, a distant but familiar shrieking. It was Michael.

  Monique sprinted toward his echoing screams, hoping to hell that he wasn’t hurt. It was impossible to tell how far away he was, but given the amount of time that had passed, she calculated that it had to be less than half a mile. She jumped over another streambed and tore through a thicket shrouded with kudzu.

  Then, without any warning, she felt a sharp blow to the back of her head. Her vision blurred and she dropped to the ground.

  Just before she blacked out she saw two men looming over her. One was a big bald man wearing camouflage pants and carrying an Uzi.

  The other was Professor Gupta.

  SIMON HAD ALWAYS BELIEVED IN making his own luck. When Gupta had gotten the phone call from his daughter the night before, Simon and the professor immediately drove to the Great Smokies and picked up Elizabeth. In return for a small vial of methamphetamine, she showed them where Swift and Reynolds had stopped for the night. Unfortunately, the fugitives had already abandoned their camp, correctly anticipating that Elizabeth would sell them out. But Simon suspected they were still nearby. In the morning he rendezvoused with Agent Brock and ordered him to monitor the emergency frequency on his FBI radio. When they heard the transmissions about the planned assault on Haw Knob, they headed straight for the mountain. They parked their vehicles on a dirt road and were racing toward the summit when Gupta heard his grandson screaming. The professor declared that fate was on their side, but Simon knew better. He’d made his own luck every step of the way, and his reward was coming.

  After he knocked out Reynolds, he dragged her inert body toward the dirt road. Gupta limped alongside, still blathering about fate. Brock was several hundred yards to the north, pursuing Swift and the shrieking teenager. When Simon got to the pickup truck he swiftly bound Reynolds’s wrists and ankles with electrical cord. Elizabeth already lay on the backseat, bound and gagged and stuporous. She started to struggle when Simon dumped Reynolds beside her, and her thrashing woke up the dazed physicist. Reynolds opened her eyes and then she began thrashing, too.

  “Fuck!” she yelled. “Get me out of here!”

  Simon frowned. There was no time to tie a gag on her; he had to drive north as quickly as possible so he could help Brock intercept the others. He climbed into the driver’s seat and put the keys in the ignition.

  Gupta was in the passenger seat. As Simon started the engine, the professor looked over his shoulder at the two squirming women. “I’m sorry about the cramped quarters, Dr. Reynolds, but until we can transfer you to the van, you’ll have to share the backseat with my daughter.”

  Reynolds stopped struggling and gaped at him. “Jesus,
what are you doing here? I thought the agents got you!”

  “No, they were too slow. My associate reached me first.” He pointed at Simon.

  “But he’s one of the terrorists! He’s the bald motherfucker who drove the yellow Ferrari!”

  Gupta shook his head. “That was a misunderstanding. Simon isn’t a terrorist, he’s my employee. He’s assigned to do the same thing you were doing, Dr. Reynolds—helping me find the Einheitliche Feldtheorie.”

  Reynolds didn’t respond at first. The truck was silent as Simon drove down the dirt road, which was so twisting and rutted he could barely go ten miles an hour. When she spoke again her voice quavered. “Why are you doing this, Professor? Do you know what can happen if—”

  “Yes, yes, I’ve known for years. What I didn’t know were the exact terms of the equations, which are crucial to the process. But now that we have the theory, we can take the next step. We can finally unwrap Herr Doktor’s gift and let it transform the world.”

  “But we don’t have the theory anymore! We destroyed the flash drive and that was the only copy.”

  “No, we have it. We’ve had it all along, but I was too foolish to see. Michael memorized the equations, didn’t he?”

  Reynolds kept her mouth shut but her face gave her away. Gupta smiled. “Several years ago I asked Hans what he would do with the theory when he died. He didn’t want to tell me, of course, but after I badgered him a bit, he said, ‘Don’t worry, Amil, it’ll stay in the family.’ I assumed at the time that he meant the family of physicists, the scientific community. I didn’t realize the truth until yesterday, when I saw that a copy of the theory was in Warfighter.” He leaned back in his seat and propped his injured leg on the dashboard. “I knew Hans couldn’t have put it there. He was a pacifist. Putting Herr Doktor’s theory in a war game would’ve been anathema to him. But Michael loves Warfighter, and he loves to make copies of everything he memorizes. That’s why he transcribed all those telephone directories on the computer, remember? And what’s more, he’s a member of the family. Both my family and Herr Doktor’s.”