The Einstein Pursuit (18 page)

He grunted when he saw the name. It wasn’t Toulon, or anyone else from his department. Instead, it was a friend of his who rarely called to chat. In fact, their conversations almost always led to something interesting. Or life-threatening. Or both.

Dial looked at his phone again, just to make sure.

But the name hadn’t changed.

JONATHON PAYNE.

Dial glanced at his watch and realized it was the middle of the night in Pittsburgh. Given Payne’s background and resources, there was no guarantee that he was stateside, but if he was, Dial knew the odds were pretty damn good he wasn’t calling to talk about baseball.

‘Just a second,’ Dial said into the phone as he excused himself from the lecture hall. ‘You haven’t even said a word yet, and I’m already dreading this call.’

‘Screw you, too.’

‘Sorry, it’s just—’

‘No,’ Payne teased, ‘I don’t want to hear an apology; it’s too late for that. I take time out of my busy schedule to see how your chin is doing, and you give me nothing but attitude.’

Dial couldn’t help but smile. Payne was referring to Dial’s most prominent feature; the finely chiseled lines of his chin gave him the look of a movie star rather than a detective, and Payne was always quick to give him shit about it.

‘The chin is fine – even after that sucker punch.’

‘Sorry, man, I couldn’t resist.’

‘It helps if you try.’

‘Good point. I’ll remember that the next time.’

‘Sadly, you said that the last time.’

Both men laughed at the exchange.

‘Well,’ Dial said, ‘if you’re at home, you’re either up awfully early or awfully late. That means you’re either in trouble or something is troubling you. Spill it.’

‘At home. Couldn’t sleep. Too much on my mind.’

‘Go on.’

‘Yesterday I got a call from a man who used to work for my father back in the sixties. This guy was a total stranger to me, but he called me out of the blue because he needed my help.’

‘Money problems?’

‘People problems.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Some people were after him.’

‘What kind of people?’

Payne cleared his throat. ‘Dead people.’

Dial raised his voice. ‘Jesus, Jon! I hope you mean he’s being haunted, because if you’re telling me that you killed some people and want my help, I’m going to hang up the damn phone.’

‘Not really your help, but …’

‘Let me guess,’ Dial said rhetorically, ‘they were all foreign nationals, and now you’ve got the makings of an international incident on your hands.’

‘Wait a second. Did DJ call you already?’

Dial growled into the phone. ‘Seriously, is there ever going to be a time you call just to say hello? Every time I hear from you, it’s to tell me about someone you killed.’

‘Not
every
time. Just
most
of the time.’

Dial didn’t find the statement funny.

Payne continued. ‘If it makes you feel any better, I have no idea where the gunmen came from. There’s a decent chance they were Americans.’

‘Then what does this have to do with me?’ Dial asked.

‘Maybe they weren’t foreigners, but the scientist who worked for my father is.’

Dial bristled at the word
scientist
. He sensed their two worlds were about to collide. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Dr Mattias Sahlberg. He was born and raised in Stockholm, but he’s been living in the States longer than I’ve been alive. I think there might be a connection between the gunmen who showed up yesterday and a bombing in his hometown the night before. Any chance you’ve got someone in Sweden who can fill me in on the case?’

‘Yeah … me.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m currently in Stockholm. I’ve been here since yesterday.’

‘You went personally? I didn’t think you were allowed to do that anymore.’

‘I’m not supposed to investigate, but I was assigned to this case.’

‘By whom? The director?’

‘Jon,’ Dial stressed, ‘this is bigger than we thought. Even before you told me about Sahlberg, I didn’t think this was random. Someone targeted these people.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s what we’re working on. The men you killed, what can you tell me about them?’

‘They were pros. These guys weren’t messing around.’

‘The attack in Stockholm was brutal but efficient. Very little wasted effort, with no loose ends. Sound familiar?’

‘Tough to say, since we took them out before they could finish their job. But they brought an arsenal when they went after Sahlberg. Weapon tech like I’ve never seen on the street.’

‘How so?’

‘Their pistols had biometric safeties – palm-print scanners to be precise. DJ thinks one of our sources might be able to give us some leads on the guns. If so, you’ll be the next to know.’

Dial wasn’t sure if Payne was referring to one of their military contacts or one of their criminal sources. He didn’t know, and frankly he didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was whether Payne trusted them. If he did, that was good enough for Dial.

‘Speaking of contacts, do you know anyone who can rig explosives?’

Payne laughed. ‘I know a thousand people who can rig explosives, including myself. What exactly are you looking for?’

‘The design of the laboratory explosion was beautiful. It brought down the whole inner structure without collapsing the building. What’s more, they used the lab’s own chemical supply to ensure that no one survived. This wasn’t an amateur job. Whoever planned this has experience.’

‘You’re thinking military?’

‘Military. Government. Can’t be sure. But he certainly knew what he was doing.’

‘Any leads?’ Payne asked.

‘On the bomber?’

‘On anything.’

‘Not as many as I would like. I’m currently interviewing a bunch of scientists here in Stockholm. No one knows what was going on at the lab, but according to them, the people who were killed were at the top of their fields.’

‘If you can, send me their names. I’ll run them by Sahlberg and see what he says.’

‘You’ll have a list within the hour. In the meantime, see what he can tell you about a Dr Tomas Berglund.’

Payne jotted down the name. ‘Who’s he?’

‘He is the missing link in our investigation. Right now, we don’t know if he’s a suspect, a target, or merely the guy who owned the lab. Knowing my luck, he’s probably all three.’

‘Actually, I hope he
is
all three.’

‘Why do you say that?’

Payne grinned. ‘That’ll make it more fun to find the bastard.’

With two armed guards posted inside his penthouse and Sahlberg sound asleep in the guest bedroom, Payne hustled down a few flights of stairs to the other business in the Payne Industries building. At one point, the entire operation had consisted of a single employee working from a small, rent-free office, and yet over the years it had steadily grown into one of the premier detective agencies in America. With forty-two full-time employees and hundreds of subcontractors around the globe, the David Jones Agency now occupied an entire floor.

Jones paced back and forth in his office because he was too uneasy to sit still. There were simply too many things running through his mind. Too many questions that needed to be answered.

His first order of business had been to initiate contact with Kaiser. In the past, it had been as simple as firing off an email or even tracking him down on the phone. But that was before Kaiser had lost an eye in a battle with an adversary. That episode with a competing ‘businessman’ had cost him half his vision. It had also driven him even further underground than he was before.

His location had always been hard to pin down, but now it was virtually impossible. He never checked his email, for fear someone might use the embedded server information to track him, and no one knew his cell phone number. The only way to reach out to him was to post a message on a specific online message board, the name of which was a closely guarded secret.

The World Wide Web was an endlessly vast place to hide these coded exchanges, and only a handful of Kaiser’s most trusted associates – including Jones – knew where to look.

Paranoid? Yes.

Effective? Definitely.

It was also frustrating. Jones had posted his message an hour earlier and was still waiting for a reply from Kaiser, even though it was late morning in Germany.

‘Wow,’ Payne said as he entered the room. He glanced around and noted all the souvenirs. ‘This isn’t an office, it’s more like a shrine. All hail the conquering hero.’

On one wall a Mayan dagger.

On another a Spartan shield.

There was even a letter from Nostradamus.

It had been a while since he had visited Jones’s office, and he had forgotten just how many artifacts his friend had collected over the years. Even though their lives had been in danger more often than he would have liked, Payne still smiled at the memories. He pulled a small model of Neuschwanstein Castle from one of the shelves. ‘Look at this shit.’

‘It’s not shit,’ Jones countered. ‘It’s stuff. And don’t touch it. It’s exactly as I want it. A place for everything, and everything in its place.’

While it contrasted with the clean lines of Payne’s office, Jones was not lying. He did in fact have a highly complex organizational system, one that allowed him to locate anything he needed in a matter of seconds. And ultimately, that was what mattered the most.

The same could be said about their friendship.

On the surface, they were nothing alike.

And yet they fit together like a well-oiled machine.

Payne was white; Jones was black. Payne had been an All-American athlete at the Naval Academy; Jones, a former nerd, had been a ‘math-lete’ in high school. Payne had chiseled features and a ripped physique; Jones had the wiry build of a runner and was prettier than most girls. Not feminine, just pretty – like a young Chris Kuzneski.

Some viewed them as the Odd Couple, but they didn’t care.

Their friendship would endure until the end of time.

‘So,’ Payne said, ‘have you been working or pacing?’

‘A little of both,’ Jones admitted as he stepped over a stack of folders that was taller than a hobbit and headed toward his desk. ‘Come take a look.’

Two large computer monitors, a wireless keyboard, and a host of other electronic gadgets littered his desktop. On the wall behind him, looming over everything like a shiny monolith, was a massive flat-screen television that had been mounted at a downward angle, so that clients could view surveillance videos, work proposals, or anything else he wanted them to see.

Payne stood across the desk from Jones and watched as he clicked away on his keyboard. A few seconds later, the television lit up with a panoramic image of Bavaria.

‘Is that Linderhof Palace?’ Payne asked.

Jones tapped his mouse and the photo disappeared. ‘Not anymore.’

A moment later, a virtual police report opened in its place. Jones used his cursor to click on the thumbnail image in the corner of the file, and a mug shot of a man named Kenneth Dalton suddenly appeared in the middle of the screen.

‘Who’s that?’ Payne asked.

‘The guy I hit with my SUV.’

‘He looks better with a face.’

‘I can’t argue with that.’

‘Wait. Where’d you get this?’

‘From a friend at the department. He sent it to me as soon as the body was processed.’

Payne focused on the name. ‘And what do we know about Mr Dalton?’

‘We know he’s dead.’

‘We knew that before.’

‘Good point,’ Jones said as he sat in his leather chair. ‘It seems Mr Dalton has been a troublemaker for years. First as a teen – he bounced around the juvenile system for years – then in the military – he received a disorderly discharge from the Marines back in ’93.’

‘What’d he do?’

‘He hit his commanding officer in the face with a shovel.’

‘Ouch. I bet that hurt.’

‘Not as much as getting hit by an Escalade.’

Payne laughed. ‘Touché.’

‘After a short stint in military prison, Dalton brought his skills – and shovel – to Pittsburgh, where he made a reputation as a collector for some of the guys running numbers on the Southside. If you forgot to pay, he’d beat a reminder into you. He was locked up for eighteen months when one of the guys he smacked around turned his name over to the police. Three days after he got out, the guy who put him away was found dead in his apartment. The cops could never link Dalton to the crime, but they don’t have any other suspects.’

‘In other words, a real sweetheart.’

‘Exactly,’ Jones said as he changed the image on the screen. ‘Next up is Mr Derek Paulsen.’

Payne recognized him at once. He was the smaller gunman from the incline. ‘Him I know. The two of us go waayy back. I’m talking, like, several hours.’

‘Well you can cross him off your Christmas list, because he didn’t survive the night.’

‘Come on! That can’t be right. I hardly even hit the guy.’

‘You mean compared to how hard I hit Dalton?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Don’t worry. He didn’t die from your fists of fury. He died at the police station. Someone killed him before he could talk.’

‘Do they know who did it?’

‘That would be this gem,’ Jones said as he changed the image to a third police report. ‘Mr Marcus Lindo. They found him inside a parked car two blocks from the station. Someone popped him with a small-caliber to the temple. No witnesses. No suspects.’

‘Do Lindo and Paulsen have anything in common?’

‘Not before yesterday.’ Jones clicked his mouse again. This time the screen split into several smaller windows, each displaying a separate police file, including some they hadn’t discussed. ‘In fact, I can’t find a connection between any of these guys.’

Payne stepped closer for a better look. He recognized the larger gunman from the incline and the man he’d shot inside the lower station. The two remaining men were the goons he had shot from the second-floor window. Along with the first three, it brought the total to seven.

Noticeably absent was the Arab who had been running the show at the lower station. Payne had only seen him briefly, but he wasn’t one of the dead men on the screen.