The Einstein surprise...

Following the trail of their estranged former teammate Doctor Jackal, the EIS team of enhanced individuals find themselves across the Atlantic in New York. The EIS team consists of Alfie Baldrick, the one man rifle section; Mimi Dubois, maîtresse of skills; Madeline Forsyth, the living shadow; and Sven Hyse, the Norwegian shapeshifter.

New York, United States of America, October 1949

I ask at the hotel's front desk if there is a facility to hire a car in the locality, the lady behind the counter says yes and happily takes a deposit and 5 days payment before telling me that she will get it all arranged within the hour. An hour later, and after Alfie or to give him his cover name Arty has polished off a large breakfast, an Oldsmobile 48 is delivered to the front doors of the Bentley Hotel. We climb in and, after reminding Arty to drive on the right hand side of the road, we set off towards New Jersey and Princeton University.

After a two hour drive we stop at the North Gate post and ask the guard the directions to the library, he asks why we are there and I tell him that we are visiting academics and we wish to make use of the university library and so he points us in the right direction. We enter the library and I tell the librarian that we are visiting to research Einsteinian theoretical physics papers and the librarian, an officious lady by the name of Adaline Cole, tells us that we are better speaking to Einstein's secretary at the Institute for Advanced Studies. Alfie drives us the couple of miles to the institute and, leaving the others in the car, I walk up towards the main doors. Hearing the voice of Madeline, like a guardian angel, say in my mind;

Don't forget to check for enhanced.

I push out with my senses while I look about myself like a tourist. I am stunned when I get a positive response and I stop dead in my tracks on the threshold of the entrance. I push out once again and get a direction for the enhanced, they seem to be on one of the upper floors of the building to the left of the main building. I rush back to the car and inform the others, a little shaken by my surprise. Sven transforms himself into an American crow and flaps high into the sky. He spirals around to the rear of the building that I had identified and perches himself in a tall tree overlooking the windows at the back of the building.

Through one of the windows he can see a man with a halo of frizzy white hair sat in a formal study reading. Occasionally, the man gets up and seems to make notes with a piece of chalk on a blackboard and then resumes his seat in the comfortable chair reading once again. Having watched for thirty minutes, Sven flies back to the car and tells us what he has seen, I push out with my senses and confirm that the location that Sven was watching coincides with the enhanced individual. I push again and sneak past the enhanced's mental defences and discover that their strongest power is regeneration. I push deeper and find that they are also able to mimic other enhanced abilities in the same way that I can. I try again but overreach myself and my connection to the mysterious enhanced is broken.

I tell the others what I have discovered and we agree to keep the enhanced under close surveillance to see if we can find out more or see if Doctor Jackal makes an appearance. Alfie duplicates and while Charlie parks the car discreetly off campus, the rest of us wander around the outside of the main building and find a cafeteria. By this time it is two in the afternoon and so I order us four coffees and we sit down to observe the comings and goings. After about an hour we are approached by a security guard, I tell him that we are there to see Einstein’s secretary and he directs us to the front desk to make our appointment. I give the lady behind the desk a false telephone number and watch as she writes down the detail and pops it into one of the lower left pigeon holes behind her.

Charlie picks us up and and drives us back to his discreet parking spot in Mercer Street. Alfie and Charlie rejoin and Sven transforms back into his crow form and flaps back to observe the target. Madeline transforms herself into her shadow form and hides in the back of the car, meaning that we will attract less attention with myself and Alfie sat in the front seats by the side of the road. From his perch in the tree, Sven sees the target leave the room about five in the afternoon, but as he has left his jacket behind, Sven remains in place. The target returns a short time later and then about 6pm he has a visitor, but as the visitor does not enter the room Sven cannot see who it is. Just before seven in the evening another visitor knocks on the door and the target grabs his jacket and leaves the room. Sven flies up to the roofline and gets his first good look at the target coming out of the front of the building. Albert Einstein walks slowly down the front steps and climbs into the back of a waiting car, which then drives off with an avian Sven in pursuit.

Sat in the car I had been pushing out with my senses and checking every car that had driven from the direction of the Institute of Advanced studies. Just after 7pm I get a positive return, in fact I get two positive returns with one of them being fifty foot in the air following behind the car that contains the first. Realising that Sven is in pursuit I warn Alfie to be ready and as the car passes I say;

Follow that car!

Alfie pulls us out a short distance behind, and the shadowy form of Madeline in the back seat comments that he is doing very well. The car transporting Einstein stops outside 112 Mercer Street and the eminent physicist disembarks and walks up the steps into the house. Alfie drives beyond and pulls over, Madeline slides out of the car and up to the house while Sven lands in a nearby tree and keeps a beady eye on the front of the house.

Madeline slides through the shadows and up the side of the house, she discovers a gap in one of the upper windows and slides into the dark interior of the second floor. She finds herself in a large bedroom which is obviously devoid of any female accoutrements or touches. On the dressing table there is a picture of Einstein with a women that Madeline doesn't recognise. Moving through the rest of the rooms on the second floor she finds a bathroom and a couple of other rooms filled with books and blackboards covered in chalk scribblings and formulae. Madeline slides down the ceiling of the stairway and can hear the recognisable notes of a Mozart violin sonata emanating from the sitting room.

Using the underside of rugs and the shadows of furniture Madeline slides into the room and can see Einstein sat at a writing desk reading a book and smoking a pipe. Beside him sits a steaming cup of drink, and Einstein shifts from muttering to himself to loud exclamations before grabbing another book from his shelves and flipping through it looking for something specific. Madeline slides along the ceiling and can see that he is reading a new looking book containing studies on physics, but then something else catches her eye. Sitting upon Einstein's desk, glinting in the lamp light, is a brass sphere.

Just after ten thirty in the evening Einstein turns off the downstairs lights and heads up the stairs towards his bedroom. Madeline remains in the sitting room and investigates the books and papers on Einstein's desk. She believes that he has been working out equations based on his reading of a text about atomic structures. Next the EIS agent flicks through his address book but finds nothing of any interest. When she checks through his diary however, she discovers the details of his talk on the day that we believed that Doctor Jackal was due to arrive in New York. But flicking further back Madeline is surprised to see an entry for the day before the talk, it would appear that Albert Einstein met with Doctor Jackal the day before we thought he had arrived.