The Einstein Pursuit

15

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.