SATELLITE BEACH, FLORIDA
Ana Thorne rang the doorbell of 131 Montecito Drive in Satellite Beach and stepped back, awaiting a response. The house, located in an upscale golf community, was part of a tasteful, Mediterranean-style duplex with cream-colored stucco exterior walls and a brown tiled roof. The doormat on the front stoop read:
As for me and my house,
we will serve the Lord.
—Joshua 24:15.
As she waited, Ana reminded herself of her fake identity for this meeting. Today she was “Ana Griffin,” a freelance writer from Baltimore.
After a few seconds, the door swung open slowly, and an elderly man in khaki slacks and a bright yellow golf shirt appeared. He was a tall, birdlike man with sagging jowls, black-rimmed glasses, and patches of white hair on either side of an otherwise bald head. “Hello,” he said in a voice that sounded much younger than he looked. “Are you Ana?”
“Yes,” said Ana. “I’m Ana Griffin. Thanks for meeting with me on such short notice.”
“Oh, it was no trouble,” said the man, extending his hand. “I’m Tom Reynolds. Come on in.”
Ana followed the man inside to a tastefully furnished living room, where they both sat down on a chocolate-brown leather couch. “This is a lovely home,” she said.
“Thanks. We like it down here. Moved down about ten years ago from Boston after I retired from the ministry. My wife, Betty, does all the decorating, so I really can’t take credit for anything.”
“Is she here?”
“Uh, no. Today’s one of her golf days, so she’s out with her friends.” Reynolds pointed to a framed photograph on the table behind the couch, showing four smiling, gray-haired women in golf attire holding a trophy. “She never misses golf.”
“Which one’s your wife?”
“Betty’s on the left in the blue sweater. Believe it or not, she never golfed a day in her life until we moved down here. Now she can’t get enough of it. She’s darn good, too. Better than me, anyway.”
“She’s lovely.”
“Yep. I’m a lucky man.”
After several more minutes of small talk, Ana finally got to the point. “As I explained on the phone,” she said, “I’m working on a book about Franz Holzberg. I understand you were friends with him at Princeton, is that right?”
“Friends?” Reynolds pondered that word for a moment. “I’d say we were more like acquaintances. He was at the Institute of Advanced Studies. I was in the Department of Religion at Princeton, working on my doctorate. But yes, some of our interests, shall we say . . . intersected.”
“How so?” Ana removed a notepad and pen from her purse and prepared to take notes.
Reynolds cleared his throat. “Well . . . if you’re writing a book about him, I assume you’re familiar with how Franz Holzberg came to the United States in the first place?”
In fact, Ana knew all about Dr. Holzberg’s entry into the United States in 1948, but much of what she knew was highly classified. So she had to be careful not to reveal anything that would have been beyond the knowledge of a diligent scholar using publicly available sources. “You mean Project Paperclip?” she said, referring to the once-secret OSS program in which hundreds of German scientists, mathematicians, and engineers were funneled into the United States in the aftermath of World War II. The existence of Project Paperclip had been well known for decades, although many of its details remained highly secret.
“Yes, exactly,” said Reynolds. “Franz Holzberg was recruited fairly late in that program, sometime around 1948 or ’49. Since his background was in physics, they parked him at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton, where he overlapped for several years with Einstein and Oppenheimer and others of that ilk. It was quite a concentration of brainpower in those days. A lot of interesting things going on.”
“So you were explaining how the two of you had similar interests . . .”
“Yes. I met Franz in the fall of 1955. As I said, I was pursuing my doctorate in religious studies. And it turned out that Franz had an interest in the Bible, too, particularly the Gospels of the Old Testament. But his interests were not in what I would call the religious aspects of the Bible.”
“Oh?”
“No, Franz was more interested in certain aspects in the Bible that he thought related, somehow, to his own field of study—theoretical physics.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I remember he was very keen on the book of Joshua and some of the events described in that Gospel.”
“You talked to him specifically about these things?”
“Oh, yes. Over a period of about two and a half years, I would say from late 1956 to early 1959. We were in the same circle of friends at that time. He was older than I was, but I was friends with some of his younger colleagues, and we would all get together for dinner or coffee and just, you know . . . talk about things. It was a very exciting time. And by the way, Franz was not the only scientist from the institute who was interested in religion in those days.”
“Who else was?”
“Well, for instance, Albert Einstein often sat in on lectures at the Princeton Theological Seminary and sometimes provided critiques. He even gave a few lectures there himself. But that was before my time. Benjamin Fulcher, another well-known physicist who was there at that time, was quite interested in religious studies. My point is, there was a great synergism in those days between the scientists at the institute, especially the physicists, and students of religion like me.”
“Why do you think that was?”
“I don’t know, exactly. Perhaps it was a sense of optimism in those early days, when so many amazing discoveries were being made, that science would eventually reveal every mystery of the universe. At which point, science and religion would simply merge into one cohesive, universally accepted understanding of the cosmos, and we would all implicitly understand who we are and why we’re here. At least, that was one view.”
“You mentioned that Dr. Holzberg was particularly interested in the book of Joshua. Can you tell me more about that?”
Reynolds smiled. “I can tell you a lot about that. How much time do you have?”
Ana shrugged. “All day.”
Reynolds looked genuinely excited by this prospect, and Ana sensed that he probably missed this sort of intellectual discussion. “Wait right here,” he said. He disappeared through a doorway and returned a minute later carrying a large black book that Ana recognized as the Holy Bible. He sat down with the book in his lap and thumbed quickly through several pages. “Joshua, Joshua,” he mumbled. “Ah, here we go.” He paused for a few seconds before continuing. “By the way,” he asked, “do you belong to any particular religious denomination?”
Ana had to think about that one for a second. She hadn’t bothered to assign the fictional “Ana Griffin” any specific religion. So, as a fallback, she just used her own. “I was raised as a Presbyterian,” she replied. “But I don’t really attend church anymore.”
“Fair enough,” said Reynolds. “But I’m sure you’re familiar with the story of Exodus. How Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and how they wandered in the desert for forty years.”
“Generally, yes.”
“And at the end of those forty years, after all the elders except Moses had died off, the decision was made to invade Canaan to conquer the promised land for Israel, as God had commanded.”
“Uh-huh.”
“At the age of a hundred and twenty, Moses died in sight of the promised land, never having set foot there. So Joshua was appointed as the new leader of the Israelites, and he quickly went about preparing to lead his people into battle. His first challenge was how to get them across the Jordan River.”
Ana was nodding along politely. But she really wished the conversation would hurry up and steer back toward Dr. Holzberg, or at least something more . . . relevant. But she knew she had to be patient.
“Crossing the Jordan would be no easy task,” Reynolds continued. “Here, let me show you a map.” He flipped to the back of his Bible, which contained a series of annotated maps of the Holy Land. Then he placed the Bible on the coffee table, opened to a two-page map of the Middle East, circa 1400 BCE. “The first thing you need to realize,” he said, “is that the Jordan was a much more powerful river in those days than it is now. Nowadays, it is heavily diverted for irrigation and drinking water, and there are various flood-control levees in place. But back then, it was just a raw and natural river. Very powerful. As you can see, it runs from the Sea of Galilee in the north, up here”—he tapped the appropriate spot on the map—“to the Dead Sea in the south, down here.” He pointed to the Dead Sea on the map. “Along the way, it picks up runoff from the mountains and hillsides that extend all along the Jordan Valley on both sides.” He indicated these features on the map, tracing both sides of the Jordan River with his bony finger.
“Mmm-hmm.” Ana craned her neck to see the map.
“Now, Joshua was leading an army of forty thousand men, plus horses and cattle and supply carts and so forth. So getting that entire fighting force across the river was not going to be an easy task. To make matters worse, it was springtime, which meant the Jordan was flooding. In other words, it would have been flowing even faster and wider than normal.”
“So how did he get across?” After all this buildup, Ana genuinely wanted to know.
“Well, let me read you the actual account from the book of Joshua.” He leaned over the coffee table and flipped through the Bible until he found the right spot. “Okay, I’m reading now from Joshua chapter three, verses fourteen to seventeen:
‘And it came to pass, when the people removed from their tents, to pass over Jordan, and the priests bearing the ark of the covenant before the people; and as they that bore the ark were come unto Jordan, and the feet of the priests that bore the ark were dipped in the brim of the water, (for Jordan overfloweth all his banks all the time of harvest,) that the waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, that is beside Zaretan: and those that came down toward the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, failed, and were cut off: and the people passed over right against Jericho. And the priests that bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord stood firm on dry ground in the midst of Jordan, and all the Israelites passed over on dry ground, until all the people were passed clean over Jordan.’ ”
“Sorry,” said Ana, shaking her head. “I sort of lost you there. What exactly happened?”
Reynolds flashed a smile. “It’s okay. The King James lingo is sometimes hard to follow if you’re not used to it. In a nutshell, Joshua instructed the priests to carry the Ark of the Covenant to the edge of the Jordan River. And as soon as the priests’ feet touched the water, a miracle occurred. The river began swelling up to the north of their location—rising up in a ‘heap,’ as the Bible says—and it ran dry to the south, all the way to the ‘salt sea,’ which is the Dead Sea. This allowed the Israelite army to cross over the dry riverbed to the south and make their way to the city of Jericho, which was their first military target.”
“I see,” said Ana, bobbing her head up and down. “Very interesting.” In fact, though, she didn’t find any of this biblical stuff interesting. What she really wanted to know was how it related, if at all, to Dr. Holzberg and the strange events that were taking place in and around Thurmond. Time to steer this conversation. “And was this something that Dr. Holzberg was particularly interested in?” she asked.
“Oh, yes. He was very interested in the river-crossing story.”
“How so?”
“Well, he . . . he had a theory about how this miracle occurred. From a physics perspective, that is.”
Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. “And what was that?”
Reynolds laughed and shook his head. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“No, I won’t. I promise.”
“Okay, but I’m only telling you what Franz conveyed to me back then. In fact, at times, he was quite emphatic about it.”
“I understand,” said Ana, nodding for him to continue.
Reynolds sat back on the couch and appeared to be collecting his thoughts for a few seconds. “Okay,” he began. “Franz believed this event—the stopping of the Jordan River—was the result of what he called ‘time dilation.’ ”
Ana immediately stopped writing in her notepad. Time dilation. “Did he elaborate?”
Reynolds cleared his throat. “He did, although I’m not sure I remember all the details. He and his students had all sorts of complex calculations. They would fill entire blackboards with this stuff. And I certainly don’t remember any of those details. But, in general, I remember what he said.”
“Go on.”
“As Franz explained it to me, time is relative. So it can appear to slow down in one area relative to another. He would often give the example of a three-dimensional sphere centered on a particular point or object. That point or object would have to have enormous gravity or some other unusual physical property. I was never really clear on that principle. Anyway, time inside this sphere would run more slowly relative to time outside the sphere. So if you had such a sphere extending across a river that, say, flows from north to south like the Jordan, then, as the water enters the sphere from the north, it travels more slowly than the water immediately behind it. So the river begins to back up. Eventually, it floods to the north. On the other side, the water that has just left the sphere flowing south will travel faster than the water immediately behind it, which is still within the sphere. As a result, the river will eventually run dry to the south, or nearly dry. And that’s as good as I can explain it.”
Ana’s brain was suddenly spinning. “And what . . . what is it about this material that it would cause such a time dilation?”
Reynolds shrugged and gave a sheepish smile. “Beats me. Like I said, Franz and his students had all sorts of calculations and theories, but all of that stuff went over my head.”
“Who were these students you keep mentioning?”
“Well, they weren’t technically ‘students.’ The institute doesn’t really work that way. In fact, it’s not officially part of the Princeton academic structure at all. But there was a group of younger people who sort of idolized Franz and did his bidding, if you will. I guess you could call them acolytes, to borrow a word from my field. And I would say there were basically three of them in those days. One of them was Gary Freer, who was also a friend of mine from church. Then there was, uh . . . let me see . . . Irwin Michelson, another theoretical physicist. And then there was Opal.”
“Opal? Who was that?”
Reynolds looked a bit surprised by the question. “Opal? She was a, uh . . . a very pretty young woman. Part of Franz’s circle of friends.” He shrugged, indicating that there was nothing left to say about her.
“Remember her last name?”
Reynolds thought for a moment and shook his head. “I don’t.”
Ana was writing all of this down as fast as she could. When she had finished, she decided to change the subject. “What can you tell me about the book of Jasher?”
Reynolds’s eyebrows suddenly arched up. “The book of Jasher?” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a moment, then stood up from the couch and gestured for Ana to follow him. “Come, let me show you something.”