They padded along the thickly carpeted corridor to a room six doors down. The whole place put Kolhammer in mind of an expensive bordello. The thin squeal of a violin behind the door told him that Einstein was up and about.

“I’m sorry, Agent,” Kolhammer said quietly. “I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Agent Flint, sir,” the Secret Service officer replied as he rapped on the door, twice, firmly, to be heard over the violin.

The sound of the instrument ceased with an abrupt, atonal note.

The door opened and the sight of that famous shock of hair greeted them. Standing there in his boxer shorts, Einstein looked a little ticked off, until he saw Kolhammer.

“Ah! Come in, come in. Good morning to you, Admiral.”

“Actually, I was wondering if you’d like to come out for a short stroll, Professor. Maybe we could grab a coffee.”

Einstein laughed, a short sharp bark.

“Not much caffe to be had in Los Angeles, I’m afraid, Admiral. Not that you’d want to drink what they do have, anyway. But, yes, a stroll would be nice. And I’m a little hungry, too. Just let me get my pants on. With pants comes dignity, yes?”

The old man shuffled back into the room, which Kolhammer could see was fogged up with smoke from his pipe. He and Agent Flint stared at the walls while Einstein wrestled himself into a pair of brown corduroy trousers and pulled on a pair of slippers before joining them in the hallway. “I have been using your superb electric book, Admiral. Amazing. Simply amazing.”

“We thought you’d like it. Did you see yourself in the movie we saved on there, Insignificance?”

Einstein roared with laughter. “I did! I did! Who would have imagined, me with Joe DiMaggio’s wife? An actress, yes, this Marilyn?”

“She will be, I suppose.”

Einstein’s mood sobered as they reached the elevators.

“But with such a long face, that’s not what you wanted to talk about, was it?”

“No, sir. It’s not. You saw the other movies?”

“From the concentration camps,” said Einstein as all happiness washed out of him.

“We call them death camps,” said Kolhammer.

The scientist sighed heavily. A chime sounded, and the elevator door opened. Agent Flint’s eyes, which never stopped moving, swept over the man seated at the controls. Otherwise the lift was empty. He ushered in his two charges.

“Yes, I saw them,” said Einstein, as they stepped in. “That’s why I was playing when you knocked. I play to relax, to forget about the world.”

Flint told the operator to take them to the ground floor.

“Sometimes,” said Kolhammer, “it’s best not to forget.”