The Einstein Papers (15 page)

“This is Agent Taft.”

“Is Martinez with you?” Benson asked.

“He’s right here,” Taft said as Martinez slipped into the passenger seat.

“Find out if he remembers a man named Hu Jimn from the report he wrote on the China project,” Benson ordered.

Taft repeated the information and Martinez nodded yes.

“He says he does, General,” Taft said.

“Good. I want you two to drive to Quantico and board a Marine helicopter to Newark, New Jersey. Keep this phone with you and I’ll call you when you land.”

“What’s this about?” Taft asked.

“Just tell Martinez that the Newark police have Hu Jimn. He’s been shot,” Benson said and the phone went dead.

“We’re going to Quantico to catch a flight to Newark,” Taft said as he started the sedan and slammed it into gear. Punching the throttle, Taft squirted out into traffic and began driving to Quantico. “Who’s Hu Jimn?”

“That’s the guy that chased you through China. He’s with the SPD, China’s secret police.”

“Well, then, I guess we just received some good news.”

“What was it?” Martinez asked.

“He’s been shot.”

Flying over Piscataway, New Jersey, the Sikorsky VH-60A from Quantico was just over an hour into the seventy-five-minute flight. The myriad highways on the ground below looked like strands of licorice being overrun with ants. To the west, several stratocumulus clouds floated past, their fluffy bulk casting a shadow on the towns below. Martinez glanced out the window and tugged at the seat harness. Taft sat comfortably in his passenger seat, scanning a map of New Jersey in the atlas he had removed from the trunk of the NIA sedan.

“No use looking at the map,” Martinez said. “We don’t know where they’ve taken the body.”

“Just getting a feel for the terrain,” Taft said as he closed the atlas.

Glancing out the window, he could see the water of Newark Bay as the helicopter slowed and turned for approach at the Newark Police Aviation Facility. The flashing lights on the landing pad drew near as the helicopter descended. Taft barely felt the helicopter touch down.

“Smooth landing, Captain,” Taft yelled to the front as he rose to a crouch and waited for the door to lower.

“You ever fly one of these, Special Agent Taft?” the pilot asked.

“I wish we had these. The helicopters I was assigned to were an older vintage.”

“These Sikorskys practically land themselves,” the pilot said modestly.

“I’ve never flown any type of helicopter that didn’t require constant attention,” Taft said as the electric motor started the door moving.

When the side door reached the ground, Martinez and Taft climbed out and walked under the main rotor. The Sikorsky immediately lifted off to return to Quantico. To the side of the landing pad a thin, hatchet-faced man stood calmly smoking a cigarette. He waved to Taft and Martinez. They walked across the landing pad to where the man stood.

“I’ve been ordered to be your liaison,” the man said, placing the cigarette in his mouth. Squinting from the smoke, he extended his hand. “Del Wyme.”

“I’m John Taft,” said Taft, shaking Wyme’s hand.

“Larry Martinez,” his partner noted, and he also shook with Wyme.

Wyme led the pair through a back door into the police station. Skirting the main reception area, which was already filled with people awaiting the morning release of prisoners from the jail, he paused at a side door and slid a plastic card through a reader. When the door buzzed, Wyme opened it and led Taft and Martinez inside. Walking through the halls crowded with police and civilian technicians, he kept up a nonstop discourse. “We found him floating in the bay,” Wyme said as he rounded the corner. “Hey, Jerry,” he said to a passing detective. “Anyway, after we lifted him from the water we found his passport stuck in his shoe,” Wyme said, slowing down. “This is my office,” he said, pointing to a small office with a glass front. “The coffee is next door in the break room. Go ahead and make any phone calls you need to, have a cup of Joe. Whatever. I’m going to be in the bathroom a few minutes-my stomachs been killing me,” Wyme said as he walked off.

“Coffee?” Martinez asked.

“Okay. You fetch the coffee. I’ll call the office.” Taft walked into Wynne’s office and opened his briefcase. When the secure phone had locked on to a satellite and the green light came on, Taft dialed Benson’s office.

“This is Agent Taft.”

“Hold, please.”

Taft waited for a few seconds.

“This is General Benson.”

“Martinez and I are now at the Newark Police Department.”

“I’ve received a description and picture of Jimn from the Central Intelligence Agency. Stand by and I’ll fax it to you,” Benson said.

Taft waited as the picture hurtled through the air down to the briefcase. Martinez walked into the office and handed Taft a Styrofoam cup of black coffee as the page began to print. Taft smiled at his partner and nodded. Tearing off the page, Taft glanced at it, then handed it to Martinez to read.

“It’s a clear copy, sir,” Taft said.

“Good. What I want you to do first is ascertain that the person in custody is Hu Jimn.”

“We’ll do the identification, sir,” Taft said easily. “What then?”

“Then question him and find out what the hell he was doing in our country,” Benson said.

“You mean he’s not dead?” Taft asked incredulously.

“No, just wounded. Detective Wyme will take you to the hospital.”

“We’ll call you back when we know something,” Taft said.

“Very good,” Benson said as the phone went dead.

Taft replaced the phone and closed the briefcase. Sipping the burning-hot coffee, he stared at Martinez. “For some reason I assumed Jimn was dead.”

“Me, too,” Martinez said as he sipped his coffee.

“Just our luck,” Taft said. “He’s at the hospital, merely wounded.”

Taft looked up through the glass wall as Del Wyme approached. He was carrying a folded-up newspaper and wearing a smile. “Much better. Let me just get another cup of coffee and I’ll take you to Jimn,” Wyme said as he picked up a coffee-stained twenty-ounce mug from his desk, walked into the break room, and filled the cup.

Taft and Martinez stood next to the door to Wynne’s office. He returned from the break room, set the cup down on his desk, then removed a light jacket from the hook on the back of his door and put it on. Clutching the cup once again, he led them down the corridor to the parking lot. At the front door, he signed the log, then motioned with his head for the pair to follow. Wyme led them to an unmarked Ford sedan that was instantly recognizable as a detective’s car.

Taft sat up front with Wyme, Martinez in the back. Driving from the parking lot, the Newark detective made an obscene gesture at the No Smoking sign on the car’s dash as he lit a Winston and inhaled deeply. “George Washington grew tobacco,” he noted laconically. “This antismoking shit is getting out of hand. Now can you tell me why you feds are interested in Jimn?” he asked.

“Guess what I’m going to tell you,” Taft said.

“It’s classified,” Wyme said, speaking like the cartoon character Deputy Dog.

“Bingo,” Martinez said from the rear.

“I can accept that. But just so you know, if this goes past five o’clock, the feds are buying me dinner,” Wyme said.

Ten minutes later Wyme pulled into the emergency room driveway and parked at the far end. Flashing his badge at the only person nearby, a laundry attendant who had immigrated from El Salvador, he led the trio inside. Once in the lobby, Wyme motioned with his head toward the elevator and, after a short wait, the men rode up to the fifth floor in silence.

“This way,” Wyme said as they exited the elevator.

Leading the way down the hall, Wyme stopped at the door and spoke to a police officer sitting in a chair outside. “These guys are feds. They need to question the prisoner.”

The officer grunted and leaned back in his chair. Wyme opened the door and the trio walked inside. A monotonously beeping heart monitor sounded out an endless staccato. Jimn was hooked to several machines, as well as two separate intravenous bags. An oxygen mask covered his mouth and nose. His eyes fluttered as Taft approached.

“Hi,” Taft said easily, “we met last week along the Kazakhstan border. I was riding a motorcycle. You were trying to kill me. Remember?”

Jimn’s eyes bulged and his face turned beet red.

“I just wanted to formally welcome you to my country and ask you a few questions,” Taft said slowly.

Martinez stepped closer and examined Jimn for several distinguishing scars. Finding them, he checked Jimn against the rest of the description-including a picture-that Benson had faxed them, then folded it up and put it in his jacket pocket.

“It’s him,” he said without hesitation.

Taft looked down at Jimn. “What are you doing in my country?”

“I’m on vacation,” Jimn whispered in English.

“Gee,” Taft said, “I think you’re lying.”

“Yeah, well, screw you,” Jimn muttered quietly.

“I think you got that backwards, Jimn.” Taft smiled down at Jimn, then turned to Martinez. “Larry, could you take Del for a cup of coffee? I’ll be fine here alone,” Taft said, turning his gaze back to Jimn.

Wyme looked confused as Martinez led him away by the arm. “Five minutes, Del, that’s all,” Taft said.

Taft grabbed the oxygen hose leading to the mask and kinked it in half. “Screw me, huh?”

It only took a few minutes to convince Jimn to talk.

“So you grabbed the diaries, shot the guard, faxed them to China, then delivered the originals to the Chinese Embassy in New York?” Taft said as he watched Jimn gasping to catch his breath.

“Yes,” Jimn said weakly.

“Did you happen to find anything interesting in the diaries?”

“I didn’t read them. I just delivered them.”

“Who tried to loll you?”

“There were Chinese agents, employed by my government,” Jimn said.

Taft sat back and thought for a moment. “Guess what, Mr. Jimn?” he said at last.

“What?” Jimn croaked.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to die,” Taft said slowly.

The heart monitor began beeping loudly as Jimn passed out.

Taft walked out of the room.

“Don’t let anyone but hospital staff enter this room,” he said to the guard. “I’ll have a couple people from my agency take over within the hour.”

The policeman nodded and returned to reading a dog-eared magazine he had taken from a waiting room.

Taft located Martinez and Wyme at the end of the hall. Three minutes later they were back on the road.

The guard from Princeton is still alive,” Martinez said as he replaced the phone in the hotel room they had rented near the Newark Airport two hours later.

“Jimn was sure he killed him,” Taft said easily.

The bullet grazed the side of his head and knocked him unconscious. It also took off the top of his ear, but they sewed it back on. The lucky bastard is going home tomorrow.”

“Wild,” Taft noted. “I wonder how Wyme’s coming along?”

“Let’s call him and find out,” Martinez said.

Del Wyme was standing outside the coroner’s office smoking a cigarette when his cellular phone rang. “Yeah, this is Wyme.”

“What have you found for us?” Martinez asked.

“I’ve found the right man for the job. I’m just waiting for the proper forms,” Wyme said.

“Come by the hotel and pick us up.”

“Hell, yes,” Wyme said, “I’m not doing this alone.”

At 5:46 the following morning, Captain Nigel Crofts of the garbage scow Gartec One was squinting through the haze as he piloted his ship past Mariner’s Harbor.

“Aldean!” he shouted to his deckhand, who was below brewing coffee. “Come up here!”

The deckhand climbed up die stairs from below and stood next to Crofts.

“Look over there in the water,” Crofts said.

In the distance, both could see what appeared to be a body floating facedown in the water off die starboard bow.

“Looks like a floater,” Aldean noted. “You want me to try and hook it?”

“Nah,” Crofts said, “we’ll let the police handle it.” Crofts slowed the garbage scow to peer out die side window. It was definitely a body. With his VHF radio he reported the discovery to the police. A boat from the harbor patrol was sent to investigate and retrieve the corpse.

The newspaper machine had not yet been replaced in front of the diner across from the Newark Motor Lodge but the excitement didn’t seem to have hurt business.

“Is this stuff normal for you feds?” Wyme asked, sipping coffee.

“All in a day’s work,” Taft replied.

“With Jimn’s passport in the corpse’s pocket and the body so badly decomposed, our little caper should fool who we need it to,” Martinez noted.

“You tipped off someone at the television station?” Taft asked Wyme as he forked scrambled eggs into his mouth.

They’ll send a film crew to die dock when die boat comes in,” Wyme said, stirring more sugar into his coffee.

“Another team from our agency is flying up to take custody of Hu Jimn around ten this morning,” Martinez said. That should end your involvement in all this. You’ve been a great help, Del,” Martinez continued. “Here’s a number in Washington you can call if you ever need a favor,” he said, handing over a card.

“Does this mean you’re leaving?” Wyme asked.

“Yeah,” Taft said.

“Boy, am I glad to hear that,” Wyme said as he sipped the coffee.

“Now you’re making us feel like you don’t like us,” Taft said.

“Let’s just finish breakfast and I’ll take you back to the station.”

“Golly,” Martinez said, “we haven’t even had time to see the sights of Newark.”

Six days after Jimn was moved from the hospital to a safe house, the Chinese put their plan to recover Einstein’s sailboat into motion. First they hired an international private detective agency based in New York City named the Axial Group to look for clues to the location of Windforce. The Axial Group was staffed largely by retired-or fired-law-enforcement officials. It hired out to the highest bidders, regardless of affiliation. The agency was well known for their lack of cooperation with legitimate authority.