Payne & Jones 08 - The Einstein Pursuit, page 19
37
Masseri was running out of men … and patience.
He knew more foot soldiers were only a phone call away – his employer had given him no financial constraints and an unlimited supply of men – but superior numbers had meant very little thus far. The man protecting Sahlberg, the so-called bodyguard, had been outnumbered at the Monongahela Incline, yet he had won the battle with ease. Not only had he killed several armed men, he had forced Masseri to eliminate two more at the police station. Yes, they were all expendable assets, but Masseri wasn’t comfortable with the way things were going. He was falling behind schedule. He wondered how many more delays his employer would tolerate.
He looked out over the city of Pittsburgh from the rooftop deck of his hotel. He knew that somewhere out there was the man responsible for his mission having gone awry. He was determined to understand exactly what he was up against.
Masseri pulled a tablet computer from his shoulder bag and loaded the satellite imagery of the city. It was the same feed he had accessed earlier on his cell phone, only this time the pictures weren’t streaming to the device with a noticeable delay. He was looking at a recording of what the satellite had captured over the last twenty-four hours.
The video of Sahlberg from the day before was just a small part of the broad view that the satellite was able to record. It was a focused close-up of one section of what was actually available. By adjusting the zoom, Masseri could pull back to reveal the entire city. From there, he could refocus on an object by simply pushing in on a different set of coordinates.
He couldn’t change the camera angle or tap into an audio feed, but he could examine any object that was visible while the satellite was recording. Using that ability, he started with the incident at the Monongahela Incline and worked backwards from there. He knew Sahlberg had made his way to the incline from his house. He also knew he had done so alone.
He wanted to know where the hero had come from.
Masseri watched himself walk stealthily, albeit backwards, towards the lower station. He watched the Escalade reverse away from the station, but not before the now-deceased driver of the sedan threw himself from the ground up on to the SUV’s hood. He watched the flanking henchmen rise up from the prone position and retreat toward the front entrance as the building itself sucked in the surrounding tear gas.
Scrolling farther back and adjusting the focus to the upper station, Masseri spotted Paulsen and his partner as they emerged and took a position on the street outside. A few second later, he watched the bodyguard leave the upper station and backpedal past Paulsen.
‘There you are,’ Masseri said aloud. ‘Now, where did you come from?’
He watched his enemy round a corner and disappear from Paulsen’s line of sight. The bodyguard continued jogging backward for a few blocks before he reversed into the street-level entrance of one of Mount Washington’s biggest buildings.
Masseri watched as the timestamp wound in reverse. One hour. Two. Three. The bodyguard still had not reappeared. After scanning back six hours, Masseri was satisfied.
He entered the building’s address into his search engine and scanned the results. He immediately recognized the company at that location: Payne Industries.
The background check he had done on Sahlberg had listed Payne Industries as his primary employer. In fact, it appeared they had recruited him right out of college. If he had worked anywhere else after his retirement, it was not public knowledge. Whatever contributions he had made to his discipline – the likely reason for his employer’s interest in the old man – had been made during his time with Payne Industries.
Though he found it odd that Sahlberg would turn to his former employer for help, Masseri couldn’t deny the evidence. The bodyguard had clearly come from the Payne Industries building. Still, it seemed like an abnormal responsibility for corporate security.
He closed the program and packed away the tablet.
It was time for a field trip.
Masseri knew it would have been easier to follow Sahlberg and his bodyguard from the incline to wherever they went after that. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option. He hadn’t dared to tail them in person with so many officers lurking around. He also couldn’t use the satellite feed to track their ultimate destination. By the time they had left the scene, the satellite had completed its pass over the city and was out of range. It would be another day before it would orbit this part of the country again, which was way too late for Masseri’s deadline.
With few choices left, he opted to pursue the bodyguard.
When Masseri entered the Payne Industries building, the first thing he noticed was the warmth of the lobby. It felt more like a luxury hotel than an office building. Designed by I. M. Pei, the Chinese-born American architect who was later selected to build the Louvre Pyramid, the spectacular glass atrium was accented by cherrywood paneling and a polished marble floor. Even the hardened Masseri was struck by the beauty of the sunlight as it danced through the glass ceiling like a prism and illuminated the space below.
But those feelings were fleeting.
In contrast to the warmth of the lobby, Masseri couldn’t help noticing the security measures. To access the elevators, visitors had to pass through a state-of-the-art body scanner. It was the type of thing that airport administrators dreamed about. It could detect firearms and explosives through a density scan, providing a virtual X-ray that clearly outlined weapons and other forbidden items. It could pick up traces of biological toxins such as anthrax and bubonic plague. It could even use thermal filters to distinguish elevations in body temperature – signifying a nervous or excited state, a typical precursor to violent acts.
Masseri was grateful for his decision to leave his sidearm in his car.
In addition, there were a multitude of armed guards on duty. There were two security desks at opposite corners of the lobby, each with three men stationed by it. The first was there to answer the phone and direct walk-ins. The second was fixated on a bank of video surveillance monitors that covered every inch of the property. The third did nothing more than scan the room for anything suspicious.
These were not rent-a-cops. They were well-schooled, disciplined guards, who had military training in their background. Masseri knew soldiers when he saw them.
Besides, rent-a-cops wore costumes and carried mace.
These men wore Kevlar and carried .44 Magnums.
Masseri had intended to sit quietly in the lobby as if he were waiting to meet someone. Shielded by a newspaper or magazine, he hoped to take in the action without drawing attention. Once inside, however, past the mirrored glass of the outside wall that had prevented him from getting a good look at the lobby’s setup, he realized his plan wouldn’t work. There were no couches on this level. There was no waiting area of any kind. There was only the pair of security desks and the six alert guards, two of whom were already sizing him up.
So far, he didn’t recognize any of them as the bodyguard.
In an instant, he changed his approach: instead of a businessman, he would be a confused traveler in search of directions. Committing to the ruse, he walked casually toward the nearest security officer.
‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ he said as he stepped to the desk, ‘but it looks like I’m in the wrong place. I’m looking for an old friend. I was told he lives at this address, but this obviously doesn’t look right.’ He nodded toward the company name on the wall. ‘Payne Industries? There’s no way that this building is also the Mountvue Apartments, is there?’
‘Afraid not,’ the officer said. ‘You’re a few blocks off.’
‘I didn’t think this was right. I mean, I’ve heard of secure lobbies and doormen, but this place is like the Vatican. Does the Pope live here or something?’
The guard ignored the question. ‘Have you visited the incline?’
The question burned in Masseri’s gut as he considered his response.
Was the guard trying to place him from the shooting?
If so, what should he do?
Run toward the exit? Make a play for the guard’s gun?
A split second before Masseri lunged forward, the officer continued his explanation. ‘It’s upriver a bit. You’ll see signs. Head that way, and Mountvue will be on your right.’
Masseri relaxed. The officer was only mentioning the landmark as a guide.
‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘I think I passed that a while ago. I’ll head back that way. Hey, thanks for your help. I owe you.’
‘No problem,’ the officer replied.
Masseri turned and headed back toward the revolving door. He needed to learn more before he could plan his next step. There were too many questions that remained unanswered.
Was Sahlberg still a part of Payne Industries?
What did Payne Industries do that required so much security?
All he knew for sure was that he needed to speak with his employer. The game had drastically changed. It was time to renegotiate his price.
38
Henri Toulon was the highest-ranking official in his division at Interpol headquarters, and yet Sebastian James still believed he was calling the shots.
Toulon had lost track of how many times James had ordered him to do this or that, and his tolerance for the secretary general’s assistant was waning. What had started as a pleasant game of annoying his greatest annoyance had quickly grown tiresome. At this point, Toulon cringed at the very sound of James’s voice. His updates, once entertaining, were now loathsome.
The quicker the Stockholm case was solved, the quicker Dial could return.
The sooner Dial made it back, the sooner he would deal with James.
For Toulon, solving the case meant something greater than simply bringing a villain to justice. It meant his life – and his cigarette breaks – could go back to normal.
Toulon’s greatest asset as an investigator was his ability to view cases from a unique perspective, which was how he had tracked down Berglund’s name from insurance records long before the local police. Taking that one step further, he was willing to bypass certain security measures in order to access the online postal database for Sweden. This action fell somewhere in the grey area between illegal and expected. Any information gleaned couldn’t be used for a conviction, but his search wasn’t going to get him fired either.
He scanned through the location’s mailing history for a full decade, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. There were no outgoing shipments from the laboratory’s address, and the incoming deliveries could all be traced back to reputable supply companies. Toulon was even able to examine digital copies of receipts and confirm that the only items delivered to the lab through official channels were commonplace equipment: microscopes and slides, beakers and burners, Petri dishes and growth medium, things of that nature.
Next he examined the records that had been handed over by the local Internet service provider in Stockholm. Working on his own, it would have taken Toulon years to read through the tens of thousands of web addresses that the ISP had logged. Fortunately, he was able to outsource this duty to members of the cyber crime division. In less than an hour, they had determined that the bulk of the addresses were for email and online backup servers. These were good leads, but the necessary warrants and painstaking analysis involved in sorting through the data could take weeks, if not months. The remaining web addresses led to seemingly innocuous science blogs and research paper repositories. These were also worthy of further consideration, but they weren’t the smoking gun Toulon was hoping to discover.
The real breakthrough in his efforts came with a delivery from the Swedish police. He had requested that all available video footage from within a mile of the blast radius be collected and shipped to his office. In years past, this would have resulted in boxes and boxes of VHS recordings arriving a week later. But with modern technology, the Swedish police were able to assemble a compilation of all the known footage – security video, pictures from ATM cameras, even bystander cell phone footage that had been uploaded to YouTube – and send it in a digital folder. With Interpol’s high-speed servers, Toulon had access to the files within minutes of their being sent.
Toulon opened the folder and clicked on the first file, its name written in Swedish. He had no idea where it was taken from or what he would be viewing, but he ultimately didn’t care. He would cycle through these clips all day and night if he had to, scouring the images for something he hadn’t noticed, some clue that would help him put the pieces together.
Occasionally, he was a slacker.
But not on tasks like this.
Two hours before the explosion, a nondescript black van entered the parking lot adjacent to the laboratory. Toulon knew from the initial report that the lot required a four-digit code to open the gate. Whoever this visitor was knew the code. Unfortunately, the darkness and the tinted windows prevented a clear look at the driver or any passengers.
Five minutes after the van’s arrival, it was still idling in the parking lot. When a security guard stepped outside to investigate, the occupants of the van finally surfaced. It was clear they had planned on the cameras. To combat the possibility of being identified, they wore flesh-colored masks that obscured their features. The fabric was enough to conceal their identities, while the color made them hard to notice without a lingering view.
They led the guard back inside the building, their guns held tight to their bodies so that any passers-by would not notice. They followed him through the front door with the military precision of a SWAT team entering a shootout.
Even without any footage from inside the building – it had all been erased or destroyed by the fire – Toulon knew what had happened next. The team of assassins had killed the guard and dumped his body in the elevator. Then they had disabled the elevator so that those who followed would not stumble upon his body.
Toulon glanced at the timestamp, knowing that it was during this time that the men inside were rigging the charges. For now, it was still a laboratory. In less than an hour, it would be a coffin. And Toulon was forced to watch the transformation.
Just after 2 a.m., a single man re-emerged from the building. He was still wearing his disguise as he made his way to the van and started the engine. Moments after exiting the parking lot, as it rounded the corner at the end of the block, the van passed the first car to arrive. Toulon watched in horrified fascination as the white hatchback turned into the lot and parked in the exact same spot the van had occupied only a minute before.
They drove right past him.
They drove past his van on the way to their death.
Toulon watched as more and more vehicles arrived. He could see many of their faces; most of them were smiling like it was Christmas morning. But why? It was the middle of the night. Why was everyone so happy? Regardless, it was clear that none of them sensed danger.
He scribbled a few notes before switching to the next video file. A progression of clips followed the van until it crossed the nearest bridge. After that, there was no more footage of the van. A text file inside the folder explained that the area beyond the bridge was not a commercial district. As such, there were no surveillance cameras from which to pull any additional footage.
Toulon made a note to follow up on the unmarked van. He knew it would be hard to identify without a plate number, but he held out hope that someone would remember seeing it. If he was very, very lucky, they might even recall a description of the driver.
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.
