The Einstein Pursuit

9

Omar Masseri was furious.

After retiring from the Egyptian army, he had made quite a name for himself as a mercenary/assassin/bounty-hunter. If it involved money and guns, he was willing to listen. Over the past decade, he had tracked and killed guerrillas for kidnap and ransom companies in South America, he had found deadbeat gamblers for the crime lords in Hong Kong, and he had shot two Mafia informers in the witness protection program.

He could find anyone … for the right price.

And yet, an eighty-year-old man had managed to elude him.

How could that possibly happen?

On the surface, his assignment could not have been simpler. He had been given a complement of additional soldiers — presumably mercenaries like him, though he had never met them before that day — an SUV full of weapons, and a state-of-the-art tracking system. Their goal was to capture an elderly scientist named Mattias Sahlberg and to seize any work materials at his house, preferably without being noticed.

The delivery truck had been Masseri’s idea. It was a gambit he had used before, one that had been highly effective in the past. People got packages all the time. The United States Postal Service, United Parcel Service, Federal Express and several other companies used box trucks to route their packages. Their appearance was so commonplace that people rarely gave them — or their employees — a second glance.

Cops had been known to stop suspicious vehicles out of curiosity.

He had never known them to arbitrarily stop deliveries.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t counted on Sahlberg’s departure. Masseri had been warned that the video surveillance of the neighborhood had a ‘slight’ data lag while being streamed to his phone. In actuality, that delay was fourteen minutes long. He had expected to find Sahlberg inside the house because that was where he had appeared on the satellite image, but by the time Masseri and his team had arrived, Sahlberg had left for his walk and hadn’t returned.

Facing a tight deadline, Masseri was forced to alter their plans. The delivery truck was parked on a side street. The deliverymen changed from overalls into business suits before they jumped into two SUVs. The uniforms had helped them blend into the background at Sahlberg’s house, but they would do the opposite if they had to chase him on foot. A man in a suit was just another white-collar worker on his way to a meeting. If necessary, they could even pose as detectives if anyone witnessed Sahlberg’s capture. It would be much harder to convince a bystander that the old man was being detained for insufficient postage.

Masseri had scouted the area in advance of his mission. For him, it was a habit as common as brushing his teeth at night. After calculating the length of the satellite delay by tracking his own movements, he returned his focus to his target. From the looks of things, Sahlberg was headed toward the Monongahela Incline, which would give him access to the city below.

If that happened, Masseri’s job would be much harder.

He rushed to prevent that from happening.

Sahlberg had been waiting inside the doors of the incline’s upper station for several minutes. The small area to the left of the ticket booth was hardly a lobby, but it did provide shelter from the elements for the passengers awaiting the next cable car — though he only used it when it was raining or cold enough to see his breath. In the summer, he preferred to stand outside in the warmth until the arriving passengers had exited, then he would duck inside and find a seat.

Today, he was grateful that he could see people on the street before they could see him. It gave him a minute’s warning before he would have to face the men from his house or explain himself to Payne.

Unfortunately, it was his pursuers who arrived first.

Sahlberg saw the black SUV as it crept along Grandview Avenue. Its slow, deliberate speed was the first indication that something was wrong. The driver was looking for something … or someone. When the SUV inched past the station and rounded the sharp bend near the incline, he felt a glimmer of hope that he was mistaken. His feeling was crushed when the SUV pulled to the curb and two men exited.

Sahlberg recognized them both.

They were the men who had entered his home.

Thinking fast, he turned toward the ticket counter to see who was working that day. He was pleased to see a familiar face smiling back at him.

‘Darla, my sweetheart, I didn’t notice it was you.’

‘Well, you would have if you weren’t so preoccupied with that window.’ She eyed him curiously, her smile still beaming. ‘What’choo lookin’ at anyhow?’

‘I’m supposed to meet a lady friend of mine,’ he lied, not wanting to reveal the true nature of the threat, ‘and I—’

‘Is she younger than you?’ Darla pried.

‘She’d have to be, wouldn’t she? Any older and she’d be dead.’

Darla burst out laughing, so hard she almost fell off her stool.

‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘I’m supposed to meet her here, but I think I just spotted her husband’s car outside. Needless to say, I’m slightly concerned.’

‘You horny old dog,’ she said with affection. ‘I should be disgusted by your cheating, but I’m glad to hear that a man your age still has some lead in his pencil.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Some blood in your bone. Some pop in your tart.’ She stood and unlocked the door to the ticket booth. ‘There’s an office in back. I’ll let you know when the coast is clear.’

Sahlberg thanked her profusely as he made his way through the booth. Darla closed the door and turned back toward the ticket counter just as Masseri and his partner entered the station.

Masseri scanned left, then right. The space was small, with nowhere to hide. He approached the ticket booth and pressed a picture against the glass. ‘Have you seen this man?’

Darla pretended to study the picture for a moment, even going so far as to adjust her glasses for a better look. All the while, it was clear the man in the photo was Sahlberg. ‘Yeah, he looks familiar. He walked by about ten minutes ago. Headed down toward the city.’

‘Two tickets,’ Masseri demanded. He slid his money under the Plexiglas that separated him from Darla. In return, she handed him two passes and his change.

‘Enjoy the ride,’ she said as Masseri and his partner made their way toward the waiting cable car. A minute later, they were on their way to the lower station.

Sahlberg watched it all unfold on the small video monitors in the office. From there, he could see the outside of the upper station, the ticket booth, the cable car entryway, and the exit at the lower station. All were covered by closed-circuit video cameras. After the cable car left the upper station, Darla knocked on the door. He opened it sheepishly, not completely sure how to explain his actions, but nevertheless thankful for what she had done.

‘Honey,’ she said, ‘you need to get yourself a new girlfriend, because her husband looked as angry as Ike Turner.’

Payne sprinted the two blocks from his building to the Monongahela Incline, but he was still behind schedule for his meeting with Sahlberg. The last thing he wanted was to miss this opportunity. If Sahlberg had already left, he would have to wait for him to make contact again … if he made contact again. Who knew when that would happen?

Payne slowed to a jog as he approached the station, hoping to spot the older man. In many ways, the physical exertion helped to control the adrenalin he had been fighting since he had left McCormick’s office. It wasn’t just the excitement of meeting someone who had known his father — although that certainly had piqued his interest — it was the possibility of danger.

The rush was something he missed.

It made him feel alive.