The Einstein Prophecy Read Online Free PDF Page A

activity? There was no reason to alarm her father with it either way. As she clambered down the corrugated metal stairs, the odor from the sick bays—virtually the whole ship had been converted to a floating hospital—grew worse and worse. Medics, their arms cradling plasma bags and surgical supplies, hustled past her, brushing her out of the way. Sailors made no bones about giving her the once-over. Even the shapeless slicker and life jacket were no deterrent.
    The cabin Simone and her father had been assigned was, by navy standards, not bad, and as it was sufficiently high above the water line, it actually had a porthole that they could occasionally open to air the place out. When she slipped inside, she found her father exactly as she’d left him: unshaven, still in his faded silk dressing gown, perched on the edge of the bunk, and poring over tattered manuscript pages. Without even glancing up, he said, “Is it being kept safe?”
    “I presume so,” she said, slipping the life jacket off and letting it drop to the floor.
    “But did you see it?”
    “Of course not. The cargo hold is off-limits. I was up on deck.” She stepped over a stack of books and papers, and pried open the porthole. A blast of cold, damp air blew into the cabin, swirling the papers into a tiny maelstrom.
    “What are you doing?” her father exclaimed, slamming a palm down to secure the documents in his lap. “Shut that window!”
    “You’re going to suffocate if you don’t let some air in here once in a while.”
    “And you are going to ruin my work!”
    His work. For her entire life, Simone had been hearing about her father’s work. It was what he lived for. And it was what had made his reputation. He was not only the chairman of the National Affairs Department at the University of Cairo, but the world’s leading expert on the treasures of Egyptian antiquity. In his time, he had written more books, papers, and monographs on the subject than anyone alive. But unlike most professors, he had never been content to dwell in the library archives or the museum galleries. Dr. Abdul Rashid—like his daughter, an Oxford PhD—had unearthed much of the nation’s patrimony, buried in the sands of the Sahara. The cane with the thick rubber tip resting against the edge of the bunk was a testament to the last expedition he had mounted, the one on which he and Simone had discovered the ossuary they were now secretly tracking to whatever destination its current owners—some branch of the United States Armed Forces—were transporting it.
    “Do you want to go up to the canteen and have some lunch?” she asked.
    “No,” he said, returning his gaze to a document written in hieroglyphics. “Just bring me back something.”
    “Come with me,” she urged. “You can’t hole up in this cabin for the whole trip.”
    But he had tuned her out already and was making some notation in the margin of the page with the stub of a pencil.
    Simone took no offense. His manner was gruff and distant, but she knew that the bond between them was unbreakable. He had prayed for a son—what Egyptian man did not?—but then he had fallen in love with his daughter, and molded her just as he would have done a boy. Her late mother might not have approved, but then, she had not been there to influence her daughter. She had died of cancer when Simone was only ten, so instead of the parties and frivolity that her mother had once lived for, Simone had gravitated to the history and art that her father favored. Together, they would have been happy to travel back to the time of the Pharaohs.
    “I’ll bring you some fruit, whatever they have,” Simone said, touching him lightly on the shoulder of his robe, “and a cup of hot coffee.”
    “Tea.”
    “If I can find some.” Her father still hadn’t grasped that he was on an American ship, where coffee, not tea, was the drink of choice. “Just do me one favor—shave. You look like a ruffian when you don’t.”
    He grunted