The Einstein Code

by Tom West

  ‘Get up . . .’ the commander of the team said urgently.

  The air was being sucked out of the building. Lou and Kate felt the breath squeezed from their lungs, the backs of their throats so raw they couldn’t swallow.

  Kate was aware of being pulled to her feet by someone and caught a glimpse of Lou rolling on the floor, his face black with ash. The left leg of his trousers was alight. She went to cry out, but no sound came from her mouth and Lou disappeared from view.

  Lou felt something heavy and rough-edged slamming against his leg and he almost gagged when he saw his clothes were alight. He dragged himself up and stumbled forward, felt his knees give way and started to fall again. Strong arms caught him just in time, an arm around his shoulders, guiding him to the left then the right, around a stack of rusted oil drums. He glimpsed a patch of black; the night beyond the warehouse, a place where the air was clear and clean and chill and wet. He felt as though he had to get there at any cost, as quickly as he possibly could. That simple patch of sky and the cold wet seemed to him like a distant heaven waiting for him. With a final burst of energy, he shoved aside the pain and the terror and stumbled into the open air.

  17

  ‘Oh my God,’ Kate exclaimed, stumbling over into a patch of grass and weeds. She was shaking, a foul taste in her mouth, and all around – hanging thickly – the cloying stench of burning oil.

  For a moment she couldn’t make out the moving shapes around her. She caught a glimpse of Lou not far away; he was getting to his feet unsteadily. She stood up, took one pace, felt a hand on her shoulder and spun round.

  ‘Kate.’

  In the dark she couldn’t tell who it was, just an outline of a man. A beam of light from a torch carried by one of the others cut through the night and for a second she saw a large figure dressed in black. Her eyes adjusted. The man was six-three with broad shoulders. He was pulling off the SWAT balaclava to reveal a head of damp blond curls, a broad face, prominent cheekbones, large brown eyes. There were black rings of soot around his eye sockets, but Kate recognized him instantly.

  ‘I don’t believe . . . !’

  The man smiled, almost comically, white teeth against the soot and the black uniform.

  ‘The strangest things happen, Kate Wetherall.’

  Kate broke into a smile and fell into the man’s arms, clutching him around the waist. ‘Adam . . . It really is you . . . What the hell . . .?’ She pulled away and held his forearms. He made her feel tiny.

  ‘What the hell am I doing here? After what just happened, I wonder about that myself! It’s a long story.’

  Kate spun round to Lou. He was standing five yards away. She ran over. He was panting, his face filthy with soot and sweat, his hair matted and clinging to his skin. He looked stunned, like a wild animal cornered and on the verge of panic. He smelled of burned fabric.

  ‘Lou! You OK?’ Kate grabbed his shoulder. ‘Lou? Your pants were burning. Is your leg all right?’

  He looked up, nodded raggedly and winced. ‘Yeah.’ He ran a hand along the outside of his thigh down to his knee. ‘I think so. I feel like somebody’s hit me all over with a mallet . . . no, make that two mallets. But aside from that . . .’

  The man called Adam had walked up behind Kate. Lou looked up and saw him.

  ‘You won’t believe this, Lou,’ Kate began. ‘This is Adam Fleming.’

  Lou looked blank.

  ‘We go back a long way,’ Fleming said. He had a deep voice, cut-glass, Eton and Oxbridge.

  ‘We were . . . friends, at Oxford,’ Kate said.

  Fleming raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought we were a bit more than friends, Katie.’

  She produced an uncomfortable laugh. ‘I think I need to make some introductions. Lou, Adam. Adam, this is my husband, Lou Bates.’

  ‘Ah, apologies. I knew you were both here. The dossier told us doctors Kate Wetherall and Lou Bates were coming into Norfolk International, and we expected trouble, but I had no idea you were . . .’

  Lou raised a hand in a gesture of friendship. ‘No probs. We’ve only been spliced a week.’

  ‘Congratulations. You nearly had a very short marriage.’

  ‘You saved our lives,’ Kate said.

  Fleming looked away towards the flames lapping around the framework of the old warehouse. ‘I’m just sorry we were unable to save the item you are carrying.’

  Kate glanced at Lou. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ she replied.

  ‘We didn’t have it on us,’ Lou said. ‘We switched briefcases at the airport. Jerry Derham has it. Hopefully, it’s safe and sound at Norfolk Naval Base.’

  ‘A very sensible precaution.’

  Two men approached, the other members of the SWAT team. They stopped and saluted. ‘Sir,’ one of them said. ‘May I suggest we get the civilians away asap.’

  ‘Yes, of course, Alders.’ Fleming turned to Kate and Lou. ‘My orders are to get you two to Norfolk Naval Base.’ He looked back at Alders. ‘I’ll escort them. You and Rodriguez clear up the mess.’

  ‘How on earth did you know we were here?’ Kate asked.

  ‘I said it was a long story. I think it can wait.’ He checked his watch. ‘It’s almost 1 a.m. Your friend Captain Derham has just been briefed. He’ll be expecting you at the base.’ He glanced over towards Kate’s car, then considered Lou. ‘You both OK? Dr Bates?’

  ‘Please, call me Lou. I’ll live.’

  18

  The clock on Captain Derham’s office wall read 2.45 a.m. as a cadet brought in a tray of coffees and started handing out the mugs to Kate, Lou and Adam Fleming. En route, Kate and Lou had grabbed a shower and a change of clothes at their lab at the Institute of Marine Studies, just a few miles from the naval base. Lou had a plaster on his jaw. Fleming had stowed away his body armour and weapons and was now dressed in combat trousers, T-shirt and black boots.

  ‘I’ve been briefed by Admiral Schnell at the Pentagon,’ Derham said, rearranging some papers on his desk. ‘But I guess you guys need an update.’ He turned to Kate and Lou.

  ‘Might be helpful.’

  Derham put a hand out towards Fleming indicating that he should speak. As he leaned back in his chair, the Englishman looked calm and relaxed.

  ‘I’m MI6. I’m over here liaising with a CIA task force. Have you heard of a woman called Glena Buckingham?’

  ‘I’ve read about her,’ Lou replied. ‘I think it was in Time or something.’

  ‘She’s the head of Eurenergy, one of the big fuel conglomerates. Very powerful woman,’ Kate said.

  ‘She certainly is. On the surface she’s a highly regarded, respected businesswoman heading up one of the biggest companies in the world. A scientist by background, very clever, ruthless, basically everything you would expect of somebody who has reached her position, especially a woman in a man’s world. However, all is not what it seems. We know that she has been involved in a number of clandestine efforts over the last few years, which definitely are not above board. She was behind the attempt to sabotage the mission to rescue the Fortescue document on Titanic eighteen months ago.’

  ‘You are joking!’ Kate responded.

  Fleming shook his head. ‘We have a fat dossier on her and her cohorts. Trouble is she is very powerful, very clever, as I said, and she has an expert team to protect her. In spite of our best efforts, we still cannot find anything to pin on her. But we will.’ His expression had hardened.

  ‘So, OK,’ Lou said. ‘Can we backtrack a moment? I feel I’ve missed something. What has this woman got to do with us?’

  ‘I take it you’ve been following the news about the Chinese? Or did you miss it on your honeymoon?’

  ‘You mean the atoll? Dalton?’

  ‘We heard about it,’ Kate said. ‘In fact we were right near there on the boat. Even heard some explosions. Drilling, we assumed.’

  ‘I understand from your transmissions that it was a plane you found, what you think is Amelia Earhart’s plane.’

  ‘How on
earth did you know that? We’ve told no one apart from our team back there.’

  ‘That’s precisely how we knew about you and what you found,’ Fleming said. ‘We’ve been watching Dalton Island carefully, tracking all communications from the Chinese. We picked up your call to the institute.’

  ‘And this Glena Buckingham character and her friends at Eurenergy must have done the same, then?’ Kate shifted in her seat.

  ‘OK, so let’s get this straight,’ Lou said. ‘The Chinese have bought an atoll in the Pacific with spare change and everyone is up in arms about it because a) they overlooked it, and b) it’s sitting on vast resources. You guys at MI6, and presumably the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, the Kremlin etc. etc. have all been listening in to comms between Dalton Island and Beijing and you happened to pick up our transmission about the Lockheed Electra and what we found on it.’

  ‘That’s about it.’ Fleming looked from Lou to Kate and then Derham. The captain had a stern look on his face but seemed happy just to listen.

  ‘And Ms Buckingham was also spying on the Chinese, I take it?’ Kate said.

  ‘That’s what we are assuming.’

  ‘So why is she after us and what we have?’

  ‘Well, that’s the funny thing,’ Fleming said, a wry smile playing on his lips. ‘We had no idea either. Then some bright spark in my department who had been scouring through the archive of articles about Buckingham came across an interview she gave to Cosmopolitan, of all things, about five years ago in which she happened to mention her lifelong fascination with Amelia Earhart.’

  Lou couldn’t help laughing.

  ‘It gets better. We believe that there is far more to your discovery than the solution to an interesting historical conundrum. But as far as we know Buckingham was simply using her people to get something she wanted personally.’

  ‘Why is it that MI6 and our guys are so keen to get hold of what Kate and Lou found?’ Derham said.

  Fleming didn’t reply for a moment but looked down at his hands. Sighing, he looked up. ‘The fact is, we are not absolutely sure what value there is in the object that Lou and Kate brought up. But the reason I’m here in America is because MI6 and the CIA have been working together to try to build upon a theory one of our people came up with. From hints in letters and using a set of newly declassified MOD documents dating back to the 1930s, he has presented a strong argument to investigate rumours that Amelia Earhart was not only an American spy, but was also involved in one of the most audacious military projects of the era.

  ‘Two years ago, a small team was formed in London with the remit to get to the bottom of our operative’s claim. But then, back in March, we lost the scent completely. It was an amazing bit of good fortune, not to mention impeccable timing, that we overheard the comms from your boat.’

  ‘What exactly is this project you’re talking about?’ Kate asked.

  ‘And perhaps you’d better start at the beginning,’ Lou suggested.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. Have any of you heard of the Philadelphia Experiment?’

  ‘I’ve heard of it. Some crazy conspiracy theory, isn’t it?’ Derham replied.

  ‘I know a little bit about it,’ Lou volunteered. ‘I was quite interested in that sort of far-out stuff when I was at college.’

  Kate gave him an odd look.

  ‘It was a long time ago.’

  ‘Not that long!’

  ‘Five words, Kate. The Crackerjack Girls’ Own Book.’

  She laughed.

  ‘Anyway,’ Lou went on. ‘I read a few books about that sort of thing – the Bermuda Triangle, UFOs etc. The Philadelphia Experiment was something that was supposed to have taken place in the late thirties or early forties? Wasn’t Einstein involved? I remember something about some sort of weird test to try to teleport a ship. Went horribly wrong.’

  ‘Yes, well, there are many different versions of the story, most of them contradict each other and have become ridiculously exaggerated.’ Fleming paused for a moment to drink some coffee. ‘The truth is far less esoteric than the conspiracy nuts would like, but for all that, no less astonishing. Einstein was indeed involved. The experiment was conducted in 1937. Einstein was working on an extension of his general field theory, a sort of spin-off from relativity – the idea of creating a device employing a rather exotic aspect of his theoretical work. On paper, he had concluded that he could create a quantum field around a subatomic particle. With some serious military funding the idea was developed to the point where he believed he could produce a similar field around a much larger object, effectively making it invisible.’

  ‘That sounds like complete hokum,’ Kate said.

  ‘Not according to the secret files kept from the time, which have never been made public, of course. It isn’t hokum, but equally, the theory didn’t work out very well when put into practice. Einstein conducted an experiment early in 1937 that ended in disaster. He set up a test in this very shipyard and attempted to create a quantum field around a ship, USS Liberty. The idea was to create a form of defensive shield, a canopy of pure energy that would stop bullets and shells fired at the ship. Something went awry.

  ‘According to reports, Liberty dematerialized for a few seconds. When it reappeared, it was configured slightly differently in space-time. Many of the crew were killed; some of them embedded in the fabric of the ship itself. A shockwave devastated the old control tower killing an admiral and injuring a half-dozen others.’

  ‘They used a crew?’

  ‘I know,’ Fleming said. ‘Astonishing, but they did that sort of thing back then.’

  Derham looked stunned. ‘I’ve never heard of this.’

  ‘Well, the navy weren’t exactly proud of it, Captain. Apart from the fact that the work was extremely dangerous, and potentially game-changing in the hands of an enemy, the test had failed utterly, so even senior brass were kept in the dark about the whole thing.’

  ‘I imagine that wasn’t the end of the story though,’ Lou said.

  ‘No it wasn’t. Einstein had developed the original theory with a close colleague, Johannes Kessler, with whom he had worked at Oxford during the early thirties, just after Einstein had left Germany for good. After emigrating to America in 1933 Einstein shifted his attention to other work, and it wasn’t until 1936, when things were really hotting up in Europe, that he began to think about his defensive shield again and the navy became interested. Problem was, he needed his old colleague Kessler to make it work. Einstein was able to take some of the physics further, but then he hit a wall. He tried to go it alone, which resulted in the failed test here at the base. That disaster made him realize that he couldn’t do it without Kessler’s help.’

  ‘Where was Kessler then?’ Derham asked.

  ‘Still in Germany. He was working for the Nazis, but he was opposed to them. He couldn’t leave, because he had family in the country and he had missed the great exodus of intellectuals a few years earlier.’

  ‘And of course it would have been extremely difficult to correspond in secret with something so dangerous at stake.’

  ‘Precisely. But the team in London have pieced together information which suggests that Einstein, Kessler and the military cooked up a plan. Kessler had to get his latest work over here so that Einstein could incorporate it with his own theories, to mould some sort of improved version of the calculations for a defensive shield.’

  ‘How did they manage that? I assume they did manage it?’ Lou asked.

  ‘The MI6 team could find absolutely no evidence of any collaboration between Einstein and Kessler after their Oxford days. There is no paper trail, no record of any correspondence anywhere, and absolutely no clues to show that a second experiment did take place. It seemed that the matter was closed. We concluded that something must have gone wrong with the attempt to communicate with Kessler; or else Einstein did get his colleague’s work from Germany but he was still unable to produce a viable defensive shield. But then, six months ago,
we had an unexpected breakthrough, thanks, believe it or not, to eBay!’

  Fleming pulled an iPhone from his pocket, tapped the screen and passed it to Lou, who held it so that he and Kate could see the screen.

  ‘This is a film that turned up for sale online. One of our younger agents spotted it and we acquired it without fuss to take it out of public circulation, but just in time, I think. It’s a clip two minutes thirty-seven seconds long of Einstein talking shortly before his death in 1955.’

  Derham had come round from his desk to stand behind Lou and Kate so he could watch the clip on the iPhone. It was a fuzzy film of Einstein, the classic image of him wearing a scruffy sweater over a buttoned-up shirt, his lined face crowned with frizzy white hair. Pipe smoke rose from the bottom right of the picture, the pipe itself just out of shot. His English was, as always, heavily accented, and because of the poor quality of the recording, it was difficult sometimes to make out what he was saying.

  ‘We had a serious problem. I needed Kessler’s work, but we couldn’t risk any simple form of correspondence. Between us we came up with what we thought was a watertight solution. Kessler would encode his work with what he and I considered an almost unbreakable code, one we had developed as young men in Oxford before the war. The idea was that he would write his contribution in this code and the document would be taken across the Atlantic by the British. At the same time, the code cipher was to be transported via an entirely different route. In order to use the document, one needed the cipher, but this alone was of no use to anyone at all.

  To begin with, everything seemed to work well. Kessler managed to get the encoded documents to the British. He then succeeded in placing the cipher with a separate, different division of the British Intelligence network. The documents were put on a merchant vessel and separate transportation for the cipher was arranged by an extremely unconventional route. The idea was to get the great aviator Amelia Earhart to deliver it to me.

  In 1937, as all this was happening, Earhart was about to embark on a circumnavigation of the world; she was to be the first person to do this. She had planned a route in advance of course, and one of the stops was Dakar in Senegal. The British were to get the cipher to Dakar, where it would be passed on to the famous aviator. She would then take it secretly on the rest of her journey and bring it safely to the United States.’