The Einstein Pursuit (25 page)

He loaded the next video, knowing the worst was yet to come. He pushed back in his chair and braced himself for the inevitable. In a flash of brilliant light, the windows of the laboratory shattered as the heat of the explosion tried to escape. Despite the destruction it wrought, the sudden flare was captivating. A belch of flame and ash, followed by an eerie calm. A few moments later, the fire grew again, and Toulon realized that was the moment the acetone had begun to fuel the growing inferno.

His office was still. The video had no audio, and the sound of his own breathing had faded as his heart rate slowed. Toulon was transfixed in the quiet. Yet in his head he heard the screaming of those trapped inside. The desperate cries of both human and animal, pleading for mercy that would not come. He closed his eyes, but the shrieking didn’t stop.

God, he needed a cigarette.

But it seemed disrespectful to smoke after watching the building burn.

Instead, he pulled out a flask from his desk and took a gulp.

Then he went back to work. He watched as the building exploded again, this time from a different angle. The view had changed, but Toulon knew the result would still be the same. He was more determined than ever to see the men responsible answer for their actions.

In his brewing rage, Toulon almost didn’t see the flickering image that would turn the investigation. It was only when the footage repeated the image that he lunged for his mouse. He rewound a few seconds, then began to scroll forward frame by frame. As the initial blast commenced, the flames of the explosion lit up the waters of Riddarfjärden Bay on the far side of the laboratory. As the intensity increased, a small boat came into view. Toulon froze the image at the height of the blast.

‘
Sacré bleu!
’ he cursed in French.

On the bow of the boat stood a man, illuminated by the flames.

Toulon shuffled through the video files until he found a reverse angle of the ship. Taken from a camera mounted by the Stockholm Visitors Board, it was intended to capture the scenic beauty of Riddarfjärden Bay. Although it didn’t show the laboratory, it prominently displayed the boat in the water nearby.

Toulon adjusted the image frame by frame until he matched the brightly lit shot he had found earlier. Then he zoomed in on the figure until his head filled the computer screen. After running a filter on the image, he watched in horror as the man’s expression came into focus.

His eyes were bright, revealing his sheer excitement.

A cruel, haunting smile spread across his face.

The assassin was enjoying this.

In an instant, Toulon set about identifying the suspect on the boat. He mapped his face and entered the encoded image into Interpol’s facial recognition software. If he had a criminal record of any kind, in any country, the system would find him. He could run, but he could not hide.

A few seconds later, the computer pinged and a new image flashed onscreen.

The face had been matched.

The man on the boat had been identified.

Masseri stretched out on the hotel bed and closed his eyes.

He longed for the silken feel of the 1,500-thread-count sheets at his own home. What passed for linen in the finest luxury hotels in America simply paled in comparison to his native Egyptian cotton.

He opened his eyes. He would be home soon enough.

Until then, there was still work to be done.

He grabbed the tablet computer from his bag and propped himself up. Before he did anything else, he needed to learn more about Payne Industries. He opened his browser and entered the name of the company. The search returned more than five thousand results. Masseri refined the terms, narrowing the scope to the company headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. That limited the results to just over five hundred.

He clicked the first link and began to read.

Founded by a Polish immigrant, Payne Industries has experienced unparalleled growth in the years since its inception. What was once a single man operating from the back room of his neighbor’s garage is now a global enterprise with operations in more than twenty countries. Thanks to its blue-collar roots and strong sense of community, Payne Industries is consistently ranked as one of the world’s most diverse companies …

‘Well good for you,’ Masseri said as he finished the passage.

He glanced down the page and skimmed through the descriptions of Payne Industries’ current areas of concentration. It seemed their technology had been employed everywhere from oil fields to avionics, but there was no mention of anything that would justify the precautions he had encountered earlier that day.

He scrolled down the sidebar and tapped on the link to personnel. He was hoping it might include descriptions of the company’s security force.

What he saw instead was much more interesting.

At the top of the webpage detailing the hierarchy of Payne Industries was a picture of the company’s chief executive officer. It was an old photo, but Masseri recognized the man.

Sahlberg’s bodyguard was none other than Jonathon Payne himself.

Toulon knew there were bad men in the world. Men who weren’t burdened by a conscience. Men without any moral compass to speak of. Men without shame, without mercy. He had read the reports, and he had seen the file footage. He had studied the atrocities that these men had committed in the name of control, religion, or cold hard cash. He had watched them murder for sport, acts that served no greater purpose than to bring smiles to their bloodthirsty lips.

Toulon knew there were bad men.

But the man on the boat was something different.

Hendrik Cole was pure evil.

Having made a name for himself in the most unforgiving neighborhoods in Johannesburg, Cole was one of South Africa’s most feared men by the time he was twenty. In ghettos that required ruthlessness just to survive, his brutality allowed him to flourish. It wasn’t long before he had made the leap from local enforcer to sought-after mercenary.

Despite his reputation among his peers, it had taken a massacre in the small African nation of Benin to draw Cole’s name to the attention of the world’s intelligence community. Over the course of three days, Cole and his forces slaughtered thousands of men, women and children as they pushed northward through the country. Like Sherman’s march to the sea during the American Civil War, they trudged toward the Niger river, carving a swath of devastation as they went. Nothing survived. The Beninese were shot, stabbed, beaten or hanged. Their livestock was consumed; their crops were torched.

Upon reaching the Niger, many of those who were trying to escape became trapped. Unable to cross, they had nowhere left to flee. There, on the banks of the river, they were mercilessly decimated by Cole and his men. The carnage was so fierce that reporters to the south noted that the Niger was tinted red in the hours following the massacre.

Perhaps the most perplexing issue surrounding the event was that no one ever claimed responsibility for Cole’s actions. In an area that had traditionally known peace between its more than forty ethnic groups, it was as if Cole was simply trying to start a war on his own.

For no reason other than his personal amusement.

Masseri was rarely surprised, but this left him speechless.

Why was the CEO personally protecting Sahlberg?

That didn’t make any sense!

A review of Payne’s biography on the company website provided little help. Payne had held his title as CEO for less than a decade. Before that, he didn’t even work for the company. That left several years unaccounted for between his schooling and his employment. Masseri wanted to know what he had done during that gap.

He opened a second tab in his browser and ran a search for Jonathon Payne.

The top hits mentioned Payne’s philanthropic efforts. It seemed Payne Industries spent more time giving away money than they did trying to earn it. There were stories about sizeable donations to hospitals, universities, and half a dozen or so charities – everything from the preservation of local parks to the worldwide effort to cure cancer.

Buried at the bottom of the page was a link to a much more personal episode in Payne’s life. The article recounted in great detail the adventure that Payne and his friend David Jones had survived a few years earlier. They had somehow managed to track down and uncover one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. What was more, they appeared to have done so with little help, and with no previous experience in the area of archeology or antiquities. In fact, the only thing these guys had going for them was their military training.

Payne was a former captain in the United States Navy.

Jones was once an Air Force lieutenant.

When asked why they had risked their lives to pursue the treasure, it was Jones who had provided an accidental clue: ‘I guess we’re just a couple of maniacs.’

Masseri read the line several times, focusing on the last word.

In a flash, everything made sense.

Payne and Jones weren’t just soldiers.

They were MANIACs.

After the slaughter in Benin, Cole was on everyone’s list. The authorities wanted to apprehend him – though some preferred to put a bullet through his brain and call it a day – while militias around the world lauded him for his cold-hearted commitment to the task at hand.

For his own part, Cole kept an uneasy balance of brilliance and insanity. He could design the perfect plan for accomplishing his goal, and then blow that plan to hell with a momentary lapse of judgment that put everything at risk. But in the end, he was almost always effective.

Toulon knew that if Cole was still in Stockholm, he would find a way to cause even more destruction. Something had to be done before he could set his sights on the rest of Europe. Still, despite Cole’s unexplained campaign against the people of Benin, this didn’t have the feel of a personal crusade. Toulon was confident that someone else was pulling the strings.

He brought up everything he could find on Cole. Somewhere in the police reports, bank statements and news articles was a clue as to who was responsible for his actions.

And Toulon was determined to find it.

Three hours later, he had his lead. The Directorate of Special Operations – South Africa’s equivalent of the FBI – recorded communications at all of the country’s major ports. They knew that criminal activity occurred at the water’s edge, and they sifted through all of these recordings in the hope of overhearing something important. They had linked one particular audio file to Cole.

The conversation was in Afrikaans, a language of Dutch origin that was spoken natively in South Africa, and the voices were mumbling beneath the obfuscating noise of what sounded like a ship’s turbine. Toulon did not speak the language, and he could hardly hear the words, but it didn’t matter. He had access to computer programs that could remove the background noise, and resources that could translate any language or dialect in the world.

In the meantime, he focused on the two words he could understand. He ran the recording back through his system over and over, until he was satisfied with what he heard.

Two distinct words, both proper nouns.

The first was
Stockholm
.

The second was
Zidane
.

Harrison Zidane was born in Algeria, but he hadn’t lived there in decades. He had spent the majority of his adult life traveling the world in search of his next investment. Venture capitalism had been very kind to him over the years, and he had amassed a considerable fortune. He wasn’t in the same league as the sheiks of Dubai, but he was close enough.

There was little on earth he couldn’t afford.

The bulk of his wealth had come by means of pharmaceutical speculation. In the past he had financed numerous small companies on the verge of medical breakthroughs. When these companies had eventually made their discoveries, they drew interest from the biggest players in the industry. Over the years, Zidane had watched as his laboratories were bought by pharmaceutical giants such as Pfizer, Novartis and Bayer.

With more money than he could spend in ten lifetimes, Zidane took great pride in sharing his wealth. His contributions had funded the creation of cutting-edge scientific equipment, the development of numerous medications, and a long list of clinical trials. His most recent philanthropic effort was the building of a new hospital in Como.

To commemorate the event, the mayor held a small ground-breaking ceremony in Zidane’s honor. Nothing too fancy, just a strip of dirt and some refreshments.

The mayor spoke. ‘It is with great pleasure that I offer this shovel to Mr Harrison Zidane. Without his generosity, this endeavor would not be possible.’ He turned and handed the shovel to Zidane, who smiled as if he had just won a gold medal. ‘Today, as we break ground on what is sure to be a world-class facility, we, the grateful citizens of Como, thank you!’

The smattering of onlookers – most of whom were from the mayor’s office, the impending hospital’s administration, or the media – broke into a courteous round of applause.

‘It is I who am thankful,’ Zidane said in impeccable Italian. ‘Thankful for a community that has welcomed me with open arms and loving hearts. To the people of Como, I offer my gratitude for all that you have done.’

Having completed his rehearsed speech – he wanted to find the perfect compromise between magnanimous and sentimental – Zidane dug the shovel into the ground and smiled for the audience. Cameras clicked as he flipped the first scoop of dirt to the side and offered the handle to the mayor. Together, they lifted another shovelful of dirt from the ground. After a few more pictures, Zidane’s commitment to the ceremony was over.

As the rest of the spectators mingled, Zidane made a quiet, graceful exit. He had spent the morning giving interviews and answering questions from the gathered crowd, and now that the site had been officially opened, there was no need for him to stick around any longer. As much as he enjoyed the notoriety, he simply had better things to do than spend the day sipping punch and nibbling cookies.