The Einstein Pursuit (10 page)

The instant he heard the thump, Jones tramped on the brakes. The sudden stop launched the assassin – well, most of the assassin – through the air as if he had been shot from a catapult. He landed several feet in front of the vehicle, just as Jones stole a peek over the dashboard.

The bastard was definitely dead.

Jones tried to smile in victory.

When he did, drool leaked from his mouth.

Masseri watched events unfold before he calmly walked toward the nearby shopping complex. Once inside, he would disappear into the crowd.

But he would return soon.

Payne had watched the incident from his position on the second floor. He had glanced out the window just as the gleaming white SUV had slammed into the gunman.

He hoped his best friend had survived unscathed.

Less than a minute later, he and Sahlberg emerged from the haze and hurried over to Jones, who was crouched next to the victim, searching for an ID.

Payne saw the blood on Jones’s shirt. ‘Are you okay?’

Jones nodded.

‘What happened? Were you hit?’

Jones shook his head, still silent.

‘DJ, look at me. Is that your blood?’

Jones nodded a second time.

‘Where’d it come from?’

Embarrassed by the injury from the dentist’s office, Jones decided to lie. ‘I bitt mmyy lipp whenn I hitt thaa bastarrd!’

It was just after 11 p.m. when Henri Toulon returned to the parking garage at Interpol headquarters in Lyon. Technically, his shift didn’t begin until midnight, but Toulon was typically on his second pot of coffee by then. It wasn’t a lack of things to do that brought him in so early; it was the fact that he actually enjoyed his job. Or at least he did most nights.

Tonight would be one of the exceptions.

Toulon could deal with death. It was a prerequisite for the homicide division. Any new employee who couldn’t stomach the incessant barrage of victims would file for a transfer before the end of his first week. Sometimes the end of his first day. Toulon had seen it happen to several promising detectives. Some people simply weren’t built for this kind of work. But he was.

Of course, Toulon was used to seeing
people
in the homicide case files. Over the years, he had become desensitized to human-on-human crime, but tonight he would be forced to study something different: the charred remains of several species.

The thought sickened him.

He opened the Stockholm file on his computer to review the latest, scrolling past the preliminary report and scanning the details that had been added while he was asleep. Several phrases caught his attention.
Unknown explosive compound. Barrels of acetone. Probable remote detonation.
And yet the item that intrigued him most was merely a footnote in the file: the Swedish police had been unable to produce the name of the property’s owner.

How was that possible?

They should have been able to find a name from a simple search of the tax records or the registry of local land deeds, but so far they had come up empty. Toulon knew that if he found the name of the owner before the Swedish police did, it would be a huge help to Dial in the field – which, in turn, might be enough to make up for the indiscretion that had landed him on the graveyard shift to begin with, plus a few more that Dial hadn’t found out about.

At least not yet.

Toulon poured himself another cup of coffee and cracked his knuckles. There was work to be done. But first he needed to make a phone call. He smiled as the phone on the other end of the connection rang once … twice … a third time. He checked his watch: 11.47 p.m.

Finally, someone answered. He did not sound happy.

‘Good evening, Sebastian!’ Toulon announced spryly. ‘Time for your hourly update!’

Eklund rolled his neck as he rode the elevator, trying to stave off the tension in his shoulders before it developed into a headache. It had been another long day in a career filled with long days. He thought back to the time before he was a cop and wondered if he had made the right decision all those years ago.

He had grown up in one of the poorest sections of Gothenburg, on the western coast of Sweden. His upbringing had been ‘uneventful’ in his words, though it was often described as ‘deprived’ by others. Both his mother and his father worked hard just to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. Holidays meant working only single shifts. They had little, but they wanted for less. Extravagances such as a family car were so far removed from possibility that they were never considered. They had each other, and that was enough to make them happy.

His teachers thought Eklund was destined for great things in college because of his high marks at school, but he never enrolled. The simple truth was that he had yet to find any course of study that interested him. Instead, he had taken the only job that appealed to him after graduation. He became a longshoreman in Gothenburg Harbor.

More than forty million metric tons of freight passed through the harbor each year, making it the largest seaport in Scandinavia. As such, there was always a need for laborers. It was backbreaking work for minimal pay, and Eklund had no sooner started the job before he was reconsidering his decision. It took him more than three years, but he finally found a reason to quit.

During his third year as a longshoreman, he was working alongside a young Swede by the name of Gustav Vaso. It was quite early, well before dawn, and Vaso had been working straight through since Wednesday night, trying to earn a few extra dollars to buy a gift for his mother’s birthday. Fighting through the yawns and heavy eyelids, he had failed to secure a dock line properly to its mooring. When the wind shifted and the ship was pushed away from the dock, the heavy line had broken free and snapped back toward the ship, the tension causing it to crack like a bullwhip. Vaso had been caught in its path. The impact of the speeding rope had split his side like a sword. Blood and entrails had gushed from the gaping wound and flooded the dock with gore. Eklund and others had rushed to his aid, but there was nothing they could do. Vaso had bled out within minutes.

Later, Eklund loaded the body into the coroner’s van. Then he rode with the body on its way to the morgue. He even made the call to notify Vaso’s family.

He performed these tasks because Gustav was his best friend.

It was his first glimpse of death, and the experience had changed him. He realized that fate could take a life at any time, and he wanted his efforts to mean more than they did now. If his death was unavoidable, the least he could do was to help people before his time was up. He had walked from his friend’s funeral to the nearest police station. Two weeks later, he enrolled in the Swedish National Police Academy.

Eklund had been an exemplary cadet who had made quite an impression on the academy’s top brass. For his first assignment, he had been selected for service in the National Task Force, a tactical unit known to accept only the best of the best. An elite SWAT team, the National Task Force dealt exclusively with high-risk situations such as kidnappings, hostage negotiation and acts of terrorism. It was during this time that Eklund first started to make a name for himself among his colleagues. He was seen as tenacious, a guy who didn’t understand the concept of failure. He also had no qualms about putting his life on the line when the time came. Some even went as far as to say that he had a death wish.

Those closest to him understood the truth.

He respected death; he simply didn’t fear it.

Unfortunately for Eklund, rappeling from helicopters and storming drug dens was a younger man’s game, and his years quickly got the better of him. Looking to use his tenacity to its best advantage, his superiors placed him in the International Police Cooperation Division of the National Bureau of Investigation. His duty was to coordinate border issues such as witness protection and criminal intelligence between the Swedish National Police Board and Sweden’s neighboring countries. He was also charged with assisting local authorities in their cooperative efforts, which included operational control when necessary.

He excelled at his job, and when Interpol requested names to consider for the post of National Central Bureau agent, Eklund was at the top of the list.

Technically speaking, Dial had been his boss for several years.

But they had never met before this case.

Because of the gunfire and the smoke that was oozing from the lower station, 911 operators notified the police department, the fire department and the city ambulance division. All three groups of emergency responders converged on the scene to find a scarred historic landmark, a bloodstained SUV, a sedan carrying enough firepower to outfit a small army, several gunshot victims, and a mutilated body lying dead in the street. The three primary witnesses were a muscular man who was missing a sleeve, an elderly Swede who was struggling to catch his breath, and a ‘drunk’ guy who kept slurring his words.

Needless to say, traffic was backed up for miles.

While Jones and Sahlberg were treated in the back of an ambulance, Payne took charge of things, as he often did. He identified himself as the CEO of Payne Industries and explained that Sahlberg, a former colleague of his father’s, had called him earlier. They were heading to Station Square for a drink or two – taking the incline into the city in case they overindulged – when the gunmen in the cable car sidetracked their plans.

Payne had noticed them – and their weapons – outside of the upper station, and the way they had sized him up had raised his suspicions. As the CEO of one of the most profitable corporations in the nation, he knew he was a potential target for kidnappers, and as a former commando, he also knew there were foreign entities that had placed a bounty on his head. When the men jumped aboard the cable car at the last possible second, ensuring that he had no time to escape, he knew he had to act fast. He admitted to being the aggressor, but he made it clear that he had only used his fists until he found himself trapped in the lower station.

For his part, Jones could offer even less. After convincing the police that a sobriety test wasn’t necessary, he told them that he had received an urgent text from Payne asking for his assistance. He had known Payne for most of his adult life, ever since they were both assigned to the MANIACs. There was little, if anything, that took precedent over his friendship with Payne, and he had left the dentist’s chair in the middle of a procedure and hurried to the incline. He had arrived just as the man crossing the street opened fire. Seeing no other alternative, he had made the split-second decision to counter the attack with the only weapon he had at his disposal: his Escalade. The man’s death had been an unfortunate result, but it had been unavoidable.

Even though Sahlberg had actually instigated the entire mess (albeit unintentionally), he was the one who got off the easiest. The police simply asked him to confirm Payne’s story that he had made contact earlier that day, and that they had agreed to meet at the Monongahela Incline. After assuring them that he had never seen any of the attackers before that day, Sahlberg was free to go. In the eyes of the police, his participation was little more than bad timing. Had his call not been placed on the same day as the assault on Payne, he would never have been involved in the ordeal. Apart from making sure he had survived the tear gas and the firefight unscathed, the police had no further need for him. He was only a footnote in their investigation.

Sahlberg had played the role of the innocent victim to perfection.

In any other city, Payne and Jones would have been brought to the local police station for questioning, but there was little chance of that happening in Pittsburgh. Because of his respect for the profession, Payne made sure that his company provided continuous contributions to Pittsburgh’s law enforcement community, and he put pressure on other titans of industry to do the same. Jones’s contributions were on a smaller scale and often under the table, but they were appreciated nonetheless. He regularly hired off-duty police officers and recent retirees for odd jobs at his private investigation firm, and he always paid well for their experience.

Over the years, the duo’s combined efforts had not only saved countless lives by outfitting the men and women of the police force and the fire department with the latest life-saving equipment; they had also helped those who couldn’t make their mortgage payments or afford holidays or presents.

Gotham might have Batman and Robin.

Pittsburgh had Payne and Jones.

The irony of the situation – at least with regard to how the duo was perceived – was that their roles should have been reversed. Payne was the more reserved of the two. If anyone would prefer to stand in the shadows and do his good deeds anonymously, it was Payne. Jones, on the other hand, was much more flamboyant. He gladly embraced the public spotlight, so much so that Payne was often forced to reel him in.

Yet somehow their friendship thrived.

Jones watched from his seat on the curb as Payne shook hands and said some final goodbyes, then headed to the ambulance where Sahlberg was resting. Three hours had passed, and the Novocain had fully worn off. In one way that was a bad thing, because his bottom lip was throbbing despite the ice pack he had used to control the swelling. To make matters worse, he was starving. He had asked several cops if they had any donuts, but all he got were dirty looks. Probably because he couldn’t pronounce ‘donuts’.

A minute later, Payne and Sahlberg made their way to where he was sitting. Until that moment, he hadn’t actually met the Swede. He stood as Payne introduced them.

‘DJ, this is Dr Mattias Sahlberg. He used to work with my father.’

‘Pleased to meet you, sir. I’m David Jones. I used to work with Jon, back when he was young.’

Sahlberg shook his hand and said hello.

Jones quickly turned his attention to Payne. ‘Listen, I can’t wait to hear about your dad and the good doctor, and I
really
can’t wait to hear why I just killed someone with my Cadillac, but right now, let’s focus on what’s most important. Can we get something to eat? I’m starving, and if I know you, you’re starving too.’