The Einstein Pursuit (3 page)

James grinned, relishing his sense of superiority. He might have been younger than Dial, but right now he knew something that Dial didn’t. ‘It’s almost
nothing
like that. These men and women weren’t the fresh-faced new generation of scientific prodigies. They were the old guard. Relics of a bygone era whose research, while once cutting edge, had seemingly reached its inevitable conclusions.’

‘Relics, and yet the secretary’s phone has been ringing off the hook?’

James nodded. ‘They’ve all had their moment in the sun. They’ve all furthered the understanding of their respective disciplines. It’s simply that nature has run its course, thrusting their once proud achievements into the realm of obscurity, if not complete obsolescence.’ He paused, if only to set up his final remark on the subject. ‘An ancient vase may be cracked and serve no useful purpose, but it still has some value in a museum.’

Although the last comment bothered him, Dial ignored it. His goal was to get to the heart of the investigation as quickly as possible, if for no other reason than to get James out of his office. ‘You said respective discipline
s
, plural. Which scientific fields are in play?’

‘A mix of studies – botany, zoology, anthropology, genetics, and so on. You can educate yourself on the plane. You now have …’ he checked his watch, ‘ninety minutes.’

‘Tell the secretary I’ll be ready in three hours,’ Dial countered. He guessed the difference wouldn’t upset the secretary general in the slightest, but he knew that delivering the news of a scheduling change would more than ruffle James’s finely groomed feathers.

James glared at him. ‘I suggest you take that imbecile Toulon with you. You’re the only one who tolerates his nonsense. Heaven only knows what havoc he would wreak in your absence.’

Whatever disregard James felt for Dial paled in comparison to the utter contempt he felt for Toulon. He simply could not stand to be near the Frenchman – and interacting with him was entirely out of the question. Ultimately, if Dial took Toulon on the trip, it would be nothing less than a personal favor to James.

‘I’ll inform the secretary about your adjustment to his schedule,’ James said as he stood.

‘You do that,’ Dial said. ‘But before you do, close my door behind you.’

Dial waited for privacy before he stared at the inbox again. At the back of the row was the file Toulon had left for him.

Botanists, zoologists, and many other fields.

What the hell was going on in this lab?

He picked up the phone and dialed a familiar extension. After one ring, he was connected to Toulon’s office voicemail.

‘Henri, it’s Nick. Things just got a lot more interesting. The director wants me in Stockholm to handle the case. While I’m gone, I’m putting you in charge.’ He stared at the empty chair across from him and smiled. ‘I need you to update Sebastian James on a daily basis.’

Then he grinned wickedly. ‘No, scratch that. I’ll need you to meet with him
hourly
.’

The main focus of Interpol had little to do with the day-to-day investigation of criminal activities. Instead, that responsibility was left to local law enforcement officers (LEOs) in Interpol’s member countries. Local LEOs collected the evidence. They arrested the suspects. They also held the trials and carried out any punishment according to local laws.

All in all, a pretty straightforward procedure.

Unless, of course, a case involved multiple countries.

That was when things got messy.

Interpol’s primary role was to coordinate the flow of information gathered by the local LEOs and to make it available to member nations. That way, if someone was arrested for assault in Vienna, the Austrian police could quickly check Interpol’s database to see if the suspect was wanted for crimes in other parts of the world. If, for instance, he was wanted for murder in Toronto, arrangements could be made to transport him to Canada, where he would stand trial for a more serious charge. At the very least, it might help the Austrian police track down known associates or other details that might help them solve their case.

But sometimes that wasn’t enough.

Sometimes the head of a division (Drugs, Counterfeiting, Terrorism, etc.) was brought in when a case involved multiple countries. Possibly to cut through red tape. Or to handle a border dispute. Or to deal with the international media. Dial realized all of these situations were in play, or else the secretary general wouldn’t have sent him to Stockholm on such short notice.

Dial reviewed the case file during his flight and confirmed what he had been told earlier. Everyone trapped inside the burning warehouse had been burned beyond recognition. It would take days, possibly weeks, for all the victims to be positively identified by their dental records.

In the meantime, the police were forced to make assumptions about the victims based on the cars found in the warehouse parking lot. The Swedish authorities ran the license plates of the cars and came up with a list of names that read like a United Nations roll call:

Gerwick van Hooseldorf

Kenoshi Yakamura

Viktor Eisen

Stephanie Albright

Juan Carjego

Mustafa Yussaf

Abioye Owusu

And many more …

Several phone calls were made to verify the names, but the language barrier between the police and the victims’ families had hindered the flow of information. Translators were brought in to help the investigators, but that only seemed to produce more drama than answers. Dial knew from experience that it was something the LEOs should have anticipated. Most people reacted poorly to the death of a loved one, but throw in some uncertainty – we
think
your husband is dead but we’re not really sure – and emotions tended to rage out of control.

Within hours of the inferno, the wife of a German scientist had contacted her embassy. Minutes later, an Interpol delegate from Berlin had been notified of the situation. That sparked a flurry of activity in which other delegates were informed of the tragedy, and the secretary general was roused from his peaceful slumber. To quell the growing uproar and to make sure all the delegates received updates as quickly as possible, the director selected the one man he knew who could keep his cool and handle a tragedy of this magnitude.

Not that it sat well with Dial.

To him, this part of his job was like being a traffic cop. He was told to stand out in the open, a target for everyone, and direct the flow of information in order to prevent collisions. It wasn’t exactly what he had envisioned when he accepted the post. In his line of work, the only thing that mattered was
justice
– righting a wrong in the fairest way possible. That was the creed he had lived by as an investigator and the creed he followed as director.

But justice was rare in cases like this.

There were too many moving parts.

Dial stepped out of a taxi at the scene of the crime and was surprised by the setting. He knew the building had been described as a warehouse with a vast laboratory inside, but he had pictured a modernized industrial park on the edge of town, not a picturesque building on the water’s edge. The charred walls and broken windows didn’t help its curb appeal, but nothing about the exterior gave any indication that scientific research had been conducted inside.

‘Chief Dial,’ a voice yelled. ‘You’ll want to see this.’

Dial turned and saw a gray-haired man in thick-soled rubber boots and a dirty poncho waving him over. The weather was warm and dry, so Dial rightly assumed the rain gear was to protect the man’s clothes from the ash-filled water that often leaked from ceilings after a major blaze. The fact that this guy knew enough about fires to dress accordingly gave Dial hope. He nodded at him and headed his way.

‘Johann Eklund,’ the man announced. ‘Stockholm police.’

‘Nick Dial,’ he said as he shook the man’s hand. ‘Interpol.’

Eklund laughed. ‘I know who you are. I’ve been waiting for your arrival.’

With that, he turned and led Dial to the far side of the building.

Based on Eklund’s hair, his walk, and his slightly withered features, Dial concluded that he was well into his fifties, maybe even his sixties. Dial liked to think he was seldom surprised, but this caught him off guard. Not because detective work was a young man’s game – he realized that most cops were better in their golden years than they ever were as rookies – he simply had never seen an Interpol NCB agent with this much experience. The hours were long, the paperwork was tedious, and the money wasn’t great. Typically, Interpol got five, maybe ten good years from an NCB agent before he or she moved on to something else, but it seemed Eklund had made a career of it.

Dial pointed at the smoldering warehouse as they walked. ‘I know everyone’s treating this like a homicide, but how can we know for sure?’

‘Because the secretary general sent you,’ Eklund replied. ‘If it wasn’t a homicide, I really doubt he would have sent someone of your stature.’

Normally Dial would have ripped into a subordinate agent for such a sarcastic remark, but it was different with Eklund. Dial sensed the Swede was a kindred spirit, someone who fully understood the concept of bureaucratic bullshit, so he let the comment slide.

‘That being said,’ Eklund continued, ‘I suppose I should show you the evidence that led your boss to such an obvious conclusion.’

To avoid the police tape and any members of the media that might be lurking, Eklund led Dial around the far corner of the building to an emergency exit that had been hidden from view. Two local cops flanked the door, their hands tensely gripping assault rifles as if they were expecting an ambush.

Eklund nodded to the men and half introduced Dial. ‘Chief Dial, Interpol Homicide.’

The men relaxed, but only slightly.

Eklund led Dial through the door, past emergency stairs that led up into the lobby. He stopped in front of the two elevators along the far wall. ‘When the first response team arrived, they conducted a thorough sweep of the area. This elevator was disabled when they got here. They pried the door open looking for survivors. They found this instead.’

Dial noticed three bodies inside, each covered by a police-issue plastic sheet.

‘The body on the far left is a security guard. The other two are suspects –
and
victims. We think they might have killed the guard right away and stashed him inside for safe keeping. Like I said, they knocked the elevator out of service so no one would stumble across his body.’

Dial looked at the floor. He didn’t see a blood trail from the security desk to the elevator. If the guard was killed outside and then dragged inside, it was done by someone smart enough to make sure that evidence had not been spilled to the ground.

‘Depending on how technically savvy they were,’ Eklund continued, ‘they could have even used this elevator to rig the explosives on the upper floors while it appeared to be out of service. Anyone else that arrived would have simply used the second elevator to get to the lab. We really can’t be certain. All we know is that when they were done, someone killed them and left them here to burn.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘See for yourself.’

Eklund pulled back the plastic sheets to reveal the bodies underneath. They weren’t charred; they were
cooked
. Their skin was swollen and blistered, a result of the fire that had raged a few floors above them. The steel walls of the elevator had served as an oven, baking the bodies in the extreme heat.

It took Dial a moment to look past the gore, but then he saw it: bullet holes in their heads and chests. ‘You’re right. These men were dead before the fire.’

Eklund nodded. ‘The elevator became a chimney, allowing the fire to go up and down the shaft. The outer doors kept the flames from reaching the lobby, but the elevator would have been subjected to unbelievable heat.’ He knelt beside the second body. It barely looked human. Using his knife, he peeled back the man’s jacket to reveal a diagonal line of polymer draped across his body like a melted sash from a beauty pageant. ‘That’s nylon.’

Dial glanced toward the floor and spotted a metal fastener with a burned end connected to the same type of melted nylon. He recognized the assembly. ‘Was this a sling?’

Eklund nodded. ‘Judging from its width, I’d say it was heavy firepower – probably an assault rifle of some kind. If I had to guess, I’d say their original plan went to shit. That’s when someone shot them dead and took their guns.’

Dial disagreed. ‘Unless their deaths were a part of the original plan. Maybe they were hired thugs who knew too much and were left to burn with all the others. Why risk a second crime scene when you can kill two birds with one stone?’

‘Trust me, it’s a lot more than two birds.’

‘Really?’

Eklund nodded. ‘We found an entire zoo.’

Normally this section of the laboratory would have been bathed in the soft glow of fluorescent light. Today it was filled with the blinding glare of several halogen lamps. They had been hastily erected by the Swedish police because the overhead lights had burst from the explosion and the extreme rise in temperature. The fire had burned so hot that the fixtures themselves had actually started to melt.

Despite their brightness, the halogen lamps weren’t enough to illuminate the entire space. Those who had prepped the scene had little sense of exactly what they should be focused on, so the lamps were randomly scattered throughout the floor and pointed haphazardly in different directions. The dimly lit sections that fell between the lamps only added to the sense of dread, as if every shadow might be concealing the monster responsible for this heinous act.

Eklund reached under his poncho and pulled out two flashlights, one for himself and one for Dial, who wondered what else the Swede might be hiding under there.

‘Sir, may I ask you a personal question?’

‘That depends,’ Dial said. ‘Does it involve the case?’

‘It does.’

‘Then fire away.’