“I’ll be around,” he said, before giving the waiter a glare and disappearing back inside. Kolhammer tried not to stare. But it was true. At the table next to them sat Bing Crosby and a party of three. The crooner, who looked impossibly young to Kolhammer, had split his lip recently. His guests, two men and a woman, gaped openly at the military man and the badly dressed oddball. They had been discussing something quite intently, but now they just stared. An uncomfortable silence began to spread to other nearby tables. The waiter started to shift from one foot to another, glancing back inside the main dining room.

Kolhammer stood up, gave Crosby the benefit of a scornful look, informed by his awareness of the actor’s violent, drunken home life, then smiled and said, “Mr. Crosby, you seem to recognize my colleague here. It’s Professor Albert Einstein, winner of the Nobel prize for physics. He’s helping us with the war effort.”

Crosby flushed a deep shade of red, and stammered a greeting.

“Professor. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Einstein grinned hugely, nodded hello, and said to the waiter, “I’ll have what he’s having. If that is the famous Corncob salad.”

The waiter coughed nervously. “It’s a Cobb salad, sir. Named after Mr. Cobb, the owner. There’s no corn in it.”

“The professor will have the salad. Just bring me a coffee,” said Kolhammer in his unmistakable command voice.

Crosby’s table went back to discussing some new record or film deal.

Kolhammer sat down and cocked an eyebrow at Einstein. He leaned across the table and rumbled in a voice loud enough to be heard by the nearest tables: “The guy earns more money than God, everyone thinks he’s a saint, but he gets loaded and beats on his wife and kids. Go figure.”

Crosby gawked at them, openmouthed, for a long, long time. Then he angrily waved over the maître d’.

“We’ll be leaving,” he said curtly. “Don’t bother to make up the check.”

His companions all stood as one, and beat a confused retreat.

Kolhammer grinned at Einstein. “I never did have time for assholes like that . . . Anyway, screw them. We’re not here to gape at the movie stars. I needed to talk over a few things, Professor. Did you get through all of the README file on your data slate?”

PRESIDENTIAL SUITE, AMBASSADOR HOTEL, LOS ANGELES, 9 JUNE 1942

The heavy brocade curtains of the suite had been drawn against the fierce California sunshine. Each lens of President Roosevelt’s glasses picked up the glow of the data slate screen, so that his eyes were lost behind the reflected oblongs. General George C. Marshall, perched on an imitation Louis XIV footstool just across from the commander in chief, fought down a childish urge to jump up and look over Roosevelt’s shoulder.