The Einstein Pursuit

29

With two armed guards posted inside his penthouse and Sahlberg sound asleep in the guest bedroom, Payne hustled down a few flights of stairs to the other business in the Payne Industries building. At one point, the entire operation had consisted of a single employee working from a small, rent-free office, and yet over the years it had steadily grown into one of the premier detective agencies in America. With forty-two full-time employees and hundreds of subcontractors around the globe, the David Jones Agency now occupied an entire floor.

Jones paced back and forth in his office because he was too uneasy to sit still. There were simply too many things running through his mind. Too many questions that needed to be answered.

His first order of business had been to initiate contact with Kaiser. In the past, it had been as simple as firing off an email or even tracking him down on the phone. But that was before Kaiser had lost an eye in a battle with an adversary. That episode with a competing ‘businessman’ had cost him half his vision. It had also driven him even further underground than he was before.

His location had always been hard to pin down, but now it was virtually impossible. He never checked his email, for fear someone might use the embedded server information to track him, and no one knew his cell phone number. The only way to reach out to him was to post a message on a specific online message board, the name of which was a closely guarded secret.

The World Wide Web was an endlessly vast place to hide these coded exchanges, and only a handful of Kaiser’s most trusted associates — including Jones — knew where to look.

Paranoid? Yes.

Effective? Definitely.

It was also frustrating. Jones had posted his message an hour earlier and was still waiting for a reply from Kaiser, even though it was late morning in Germany.

‘Wow,’ Payne said as he entered the room. He glanced around and noted all the souvenirs. ‘This isn’t an office, it’s more like a shrine. All hail the conquering hero.’

On one wall a Mayan dagger.

On another a Spartan shield.

There was even a letter from Nostradamus.

It had been a while since he had visited Jones’s office, and he had forgotten just how many artifacts his friend had collected over the years. Even though their lives had been in danger more often than he would have liked, Payne still smiled at the memories. He pulled a small model of Neuschwanstein Castle from one of the shelves. ‘Look at this shit.’

‘It’s not shit,’ Jones countered. ‘It’s stuff. And don’t touch it. It’s exactly as I want it. A place for everything, and everything in its place.’

While it contrasted with the clean lines of Payne’s office, Jones was not lying. He did in fact have a highly complex organizational system, one that allowed him to locate anything he needed in a matter of seconds. And ultimately, that was what mattered the most.

The same could be said about their friendship.

On the surface, they were nothing alike.

And yet they fit together like a well-oiled machine.

Payne was white; Jones was black. Payne had been an All-American athlete at the Naval Academy; Jones, a former nerd, had been a ‘math-lete’ in high school. Payne had chiseled features and a ripped physique; Jones had the wiry build of a runner and was prettier than most girls. Not feminine, just pretty — like a young Chris Kuzneski.

Some viewed them as the Odd Couple, but they didn’t care.

Their friendship would endure until the end of time.

‘So,’ Payne said, ‘have you been working or pacing?’

‘A little of both,’ Jones admitted as he stepped over a stack of folders that was taller than a hobbit and headed toward his desk. ‘Come take a look.’

Two large computer monitors, a wireless keyboard, and a host of other electronic gadgets littered his desktop. On the wall behind him, looming over everything like a shiny monolith, was a massive flat-screen television that had been mounted at a downward angle, so that clients could view surveillance videos, work proposals, or anything else he wanted them to see.

Payne stood across the desk from Jones and watched as he clicked away on his keyboard. A few seconds later, the television lit up with a panoramic image of Bavaria.

‘Is that Linderhof Palace?’ Payne asked.

Jones tapped his mouse and the photo disappeared. ‘Not anymore.’

A moment later, a virtual police report opened in its place. Jones used his cursor to click on the thumbnail image in the corner of the file, and a mug shot of a man named Kenneth Dalton suddenly appeared in the middle of the screen.

‘Who’s that?’ Payne asked.

‘The guy I hit with my SUV.’

‘He looks better with a face.’

‘I can’t argue with that.’

‘Wait. Where’d you get this?’

‘From a friend at the department. He sent it to me as soon as the body was processed.’

Payne focused on the name. ‘And what do we know about Mr Dalton?’

‘We know he’s dead.’

‘We knew that before.’

‘Good point,’ Jones said as he sat in his leather chair. ‘It seems Mr Dalton has been a troublemaker for years. First as a teen — he bounced around the juvenile system for years — then in the military — he received a disorderly discharge from the Marines back in ’93.’

‘What’d he do?’

‘He hit his commanding officer in the face with a shovel.’

‘Ouch. I bet that hurt.’

‘Not as much as getting hit by an Escalade.’

Payne laughed. ‘Touché.’

‘After a short stint in military prison, Dalton brought his skills — and shovel — to Pittsburgh, where he made a reputation as a collector for some of the guys running numbers on the Southside. If you forgot to pay, he’d beat a reminder into you. He was locked up for eighteen months when one of the guys he smacked around turned his name over to the police. Three days after he got out, the guy who put him away was found dead in his apartment. The cops could never link Dalton to the crime, but they don’t have any other suspects.’

‘In other words, a real sweetheart.’

‘Exactly,’ Jones said as he changed the image on the screen. ‘Next up is Mr Derek Paulsen.’

Payne recognized him at once. He was the smaller gunman from the incline. ‘Him I know. The two of us go waayy back. I’m talking, like, several hours.’

‘Well you can cross him off your Christmas list, because he didn’t survive the night.’

‘Come on! That can’t be right. I hardly even hit the guy.’

‘You mean compared to how hard I hit Dalton?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Don’t worry. He didn’t die from your fists of fury. He died at the police station. Someone killed him before he could talk.’

‘Do they know who did it?’

‘That would be this gem,’ Jones said as he changed the image to a third police report. ‘Mr Marcus Lindo. They found him inside a parked car two blocks from the station. Someone popped him with a small-caliber to the temple. No witnesses. No suspects.’

‘Do Lindo and Paulsen have anything in common?’

‘Not before yesterday.’ Jones clicked his mouse again. This time the screen split into several smaller windows, each displaying a separate police file, including some they hadn’t discussed. ‘In fact, I can’t find a connection between any of these guys.’

Payne stepped closer for a better look. He recognized the larger gunman from the incline and the man he’d shot inside the lower station. The two remaining men were the goons he had shot from the second-floor window. Along with the first three, it brought the total to seven.

Noticeably absent was the Arab who had been running the show at the lower station. Payne had only seen him briefly, but he wasn’t one of the dead men on the screen.

‘So,’ Payne said, ‘where do we go from here?’

As if on cue, the phone started to ring.