The Einstein Pursuit

8

McCormick’s office was on the same floor as the conference room. Payne entered first, followed by the flustered senior executive. Unsure of Payne’s intentions, McCormick closed the door for privacy then hustled to his seat behind his desk. Payne pulled a chair close. He sat down and leaned even closer, as if he were about to deliver a hushed threat, a whisper so that no one else could hear what he was about to say.

McCormick’s face turned red and he started to sweat.

‘Jonathon,’ he said defensively, ‘I thought we were of the same mind on this. Ultimately, there is nothing to gain by treading water. We must continue to push our research in new directions. Otherwise, this company will become stagnant!’

‘Relax,’ Payne said in a calming tone. ‘We’re on the same page.’

‘We are?’

‘We are.’

McCormick breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Then what did you need?’

‘You’ve been an executive here longer than anyone, myself included. How much do you know about my father’s involvement with the company?’

‘Not much. No more than what I’ve seen in the files. His name pops up every now and then when I’m running through the background on this project or that, but it’s never anything noteworthy.’ McCormick thought better of his last remark. ‘I didn’t mean that in the negative sense. I meant no disrespect. Your father was a brilliant man. He truly was. What I meant to say is that there’s nothing out of the ordinary.’

‘Ever heard of a man named Mattias Sahlberg?’

‘The name rings a bell, but I don’t know why. Who is he?’

‘He claims to be a former employee who worked with my father. But I can’t find any record of him in our system.’

‘If he’s a former employee, he might not be in the system.’

Now it was Payne’s turn to be confused. ‘I was told it covered everyone, even after they left the company. That’s not correct?’

‘It is, and it isn’t. It covers everyone who was hired after 1970. If they worked for us before that, their records haven’t been digitized yet.’

‘But do we have their records?’

‘We do. In fact, I do.’ McCormick spun his chair to face a wall of file cabinets. He patted his hand against the nearest drawer. ‘They’re all in here.’

‘Great. See if you have a file for him.’

McCormick stood, opened the drawer, and then flipped through the alphabetical files. ‘What was that name again?’

‘Mattias Sahlberg.’

‘S … SA … Here it is!’ McCormick opened the folder to make sure it contained the paperwork they were looking for before he handed it to Payne. ‘It seems kind of thin.’

Payne had seen hundreds of employee files. They typically included the applicant’s initial résumé, health records, performance reviews, and tax documents. They were usually a complete, comprehensive history of the employee’s entire time at Payne Industries.

Mattias Sahlberg’s file contained only two pages.

The first page was a copy of his work visa. It listed his full name and birth date, his Swedish personal identification number — the equivalent of the United States’ social security number — and his home address in Sweden.

The second page was his contract of employment with Payne Industries. Curiously, it listed a salary that was well above that of other researchers employed at the time. But what interested Payne even more was that his position was simply listed as ‘Research and Development’, and that it was Jon’s father’s signature on the contract, not his grandfather’s. The revelation should not have been surprising — after all, it was his father that had initially steered Payne Industries into the area of emerging technologies — but it had been years since Payne had seen his father’s handwriting.

‘That’s really not much to go on,’ McCormick said as Payne showed him the contents of the file. ‘It’s odd that his records have never been updated.’

‘It’s enough for now,’ Payne said.

So far, everything Sahlberg had told him on the phone had been true. He was a former employee of Payne Industries, and it did appear that he had worked with Payne’s father. If Sahlberg was being honest about everything else, it meant he really was in fear of his life.

Payne checked his watch. Sahlberg would be waiting for him at the Monongahela Incline in less than ten minutes.

If he hurried, he just might make it.

Nowadays, the Monongahela Incline is equal parts commuter railway and tourist attraction — like the cable cars in San Francisco or the streetcars in New Orleans.

But it wasn’t always this way.

When the steel industry took hold of western Pennsylvania, the lands near the riverbanks were the prime locations to establish the steel mills. The access to the waterway allowed supplies such as iron and coal to be shipped in on large barges. The steel produced by these mills could likewise be transported via the rivers to finishing plants that crafted the steel into girders, coils, or other needed forms, as well as cargo ships in larger ports.

The manpower that operated these factories lived high above the water’s edge on the bluffs that overlooked the rivers. In order to safely and efficiently traverse the hillside — the typical commute involved worn roads or footpaths that zigzagged to the mills below — German immigrants proposed the concept of an incline, based on the sielbahns of their homeland. But instead of traveling from peak to peak over treacherous terrain, these cable cars simply went up and down the hillside.

The Monongahela Incline was completed in 1870, and was a godsend for the weary workers. Its two enclosed passenger cars served as counterbalances on a continuous loop of cable. As one car traveled down the slope, its weight helped pull the other toward the top of the hill. Its primary purpose was to shuttle the mill workers between their hilltop neighborhoods and the factories below. It wasn’t glamorous — the soot and dirt from the workers fell from their faces, clothing and boots, creating an ever-present layer of filth — but it was spectacularly efficient. What used to take hours if the weather was poor now took only minutes in any conditions.

The incline system was such a rousing success that at one time the city of Pittsburgh had seventeen of them in operation. The Monongahela Incline was so proficient at moving people up and down the hillside that a separate system was built directly alongside it in 1883 to accommodate larger items. The Monongahela Freight Incline ran on a track that was ten feet wide instead of five. Rather than enclosed cars, it used covered platforms that could carry pallets, crates and even vehicles between the upper and lower stations.

Despite their prominence in the late 1800s and early 1900s, only two Pittsburgh area inclines remained in service today. The Monongahela Incline, the steepest and oldest in America, rose 370 feet above the river below. To cover this elevation, its tracks ran only 635 feet in length, resulting in a noticeably steep thirty-five-degree slope — and spectacular views.

Sahlberg couldn’t possibly remember how many times he had traveled up and down the hillside on the incline. Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? It wasn’t an unreasonable guess. He had lived above the city and commuted into it for over sixty years, and while he occasionally drove himself to work, he actually preferred public transportation because it gave him time to think.

During all those trips, he had never worried about what might happen to him once he stepped aboard the cable car. Not once. Not even for a second.

Today that streak would end.