They walked in silence for a while, each man lost in his own thoughts, until the dead neon signs out on Wilshire Boulevard gave Kolhammer a split second of dizzying dislocation. In his day, the city had funded the restoration of nearly 150 neon signs along this strip in mid-Wilshire. The very same hoardings, unplugged now because of the wartime blackout, greeted him under a hot blue sky as they stepped out through the Ambassador’s grand, gated entrance. Jarring the moment of déjà vu, however, a yellow streetcar went rattling by, full of Angelenos on their way downtown. Gone were the Koreans and Taiwanese. Replacing them was a homogenous population of middle-class whites. Gone, too, he noticed, was the brown sky and the close, sticky feel of heavily polluted air on his face.

“Are you okay, sir?” asked Agent Flint, taking Kolhammer lightly by the elbow.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “It’s just a shock, that’s all.”

The three men came to a halt on the side of the road. Einstein managed to appear simultaneously amused and moved by Kolhammer’s obvious plight.

“You know, Admiral, your world is still here,” said the scientist. He rubbed the tips of his fingers together. “It is this close, right here and now. You came here. You can get back. You have family, yes?”

Another streetcar clattered past. Old car horns blared. Wilshire looked like the venue for a vintage auto festival.

“My wife lives over in Santa Monica. Or she . . . well, you know.”

“Are you going to be okay, sir?” asked Flint. “Would you like to go back to the lobby and sit down?”

Kolhammer drew in a long, deep breath. He could smell gasoline and exhaust fumes, but they stood out against a clear background. To his twenty-first-century sinuses, the air was mountain fresh. He gathered himself together and nodded across the street to the bizarre dome of the Brown Derby Restaurant.

“Is that the original Brown Derby?” he asked.

Neither Flint nor Einstein knew.

“Is it supposed to be a hat?” asked Einstein.

“Well, the sign says EAT IN THE HAT. If you’re hungry, Professor, we could get a light lunch over there. They might’ve invented the Cobb salad by now. They’re the guys who came up with it in the first place.”

As they crossed the street, Kolhammer could have sworn he caught sight of a young Ronald Reagan taking a seat in the restaurant’s tree-shaded courtyard fronting on the street. He suddenly worried that this was going to be a Hollywood place, where they stood no chance of gaining entry. Einstein might even suffer from some egregious episode of discrimination—being Jewish, and wearing slippers as he was.