The Einstein Pursuit

38

Henri Toulon was the highest-ranking official in his division at Interpol headquarters, and yet Sebastian James still believed he was calling the shots.

Toulon had lost track of how many times James had ordered him to do this or that, and his tolerance for the secretary general’s assistant was waning. What had started as a pleasant game of annoying his greatest annoyance had quickly grown tiresome. At this point, Toulon cringed at the very sound of James’s voice. His updates, once entertaining, were now loathsome.

The quicker the Stockholm case was solved, the quicker Dial could return.

The sooner Dial made it back, the sooner he would deal with James.

For Toulon, solving the case meant something greater than simply bringing a villain to justice. It meant his life — and his cigarette breaks — could go back to normal.

Toulon’s greatest asset as an investigator was his ability to view cases from a unique perspective, which was how he had tracked down Berglund’s name from insurance records long before the local police. Taking that one step further, he was willing to bypass certain security measures in order to access the online postal database for Sweden. This action fell somewhere in the grey area between illegal and expected. Any information gleaned couldn’t be used for a conviction, but his search wasn’t going to get him fired either.

He scanned through the location’s mailing history for a full decade, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. There were no outgoing shipments from the laboratory’s address, and the incoming deliveries could all be traced back to reputable supply companies. Toulon was even able to examine digital copies of receipts and confirm that the only items delivered to the lab through official channels were commonplace equipment: microscopes and slides, beakers and burners, Petri dishes and growth medium, things of that nature.

Next he examined the records that had been handed over by the local Internet service provider in Stockholm. Working on his own, it would have taken Toulon years to read through the tens of thousands of web addresses that the ISP had logged. Fortunately, he was able to outsource this duty to members of the cyber crime division. In less than an hour, they had determined that the bulk of the addresses were for email and online backup servers. These were good leads, but the necessary warrants and painstaking analysis involved in sorting through the data could take weeks, if not months. The remaining web addresses led to seemingly innocuous science blogs and research paper repositories. These were also worthy of further consideration, but they weren’t the smoking gun Toulon was hoping to discover.

The real breakthrough in his efforts came with a delivery from the Swedish police. He had requested that all available video footage from within a mile of the blast radius be collected and shipped to his office. In years past, this would have resulted in boxes and boxes of VHS recordings arriving a week later. But with modern technology, the Swedish police were able to assemble a compilation of all the known footage — security video, pictures from ATM cameras, even bystander cell phone footage that had been uploaded to YouTube — and send it in a digital folder. With Interpol’s high-speed servers, Toulon had access to the files within minutes of their being sent.

Toulon opened the folder and clicked on the first file, its name written in Swedish. He had no idea where it was taken from or what he would be viewing, but he ultimately didn’t care. He would cycle through these clips all day and night if he had to, scouring the images for something he hadn’t noticed, some clue that would help him put the pieces together.

Occasionally, he was a slacker.

But not on tasks like this.

Two hours before the explosion, a nondescript black van entered the parking lot adjacent to the laboratory. Toulon knew from the initial report that the lot required a four-digit code to open the gate. Whoever this visitor was knew the code. Unfortunately, the darkness and the tinted windows prevented a clear look at the driver or any passengers.

Five minutes after the van’s arrival, it was still idling in the parking lot. When a security guard stepped outside to investigate, the occupants of the van finally surfaced. It was clear they had planned on the cameras. To combat the possibility of being identified, they wore flesh-colored masks that obscured their features. The fabric was enough to conceal their identities, while the color made them hard to notice without a lingering view.

They led the guard back inside the building, their guns held tight to their bodies so that any passers-by would not notice. They followed him through the front door with the military precision of a SWAT team entering a shootout.

Even without any footage from inside the building — it had all been erased or destroyed by the fire — Toulon knew what had happened next. The team of assassins had killed the guard and dumped his body in the elevator. Then they had disabled the elevator so that those who followed would not stumble upon his body.

Toulon glanced at the timestamp, knowing that it was during this time that the men inside were rigging the charges. For now, it was still a laboratory. In less than an hour, it would be a coffin. And Toulon was forced to watch the transformation.

Just after 2 a.m., a single man re-emerged from the building. He was still wearing his disguise as he made his way to the van and started the engine. Moments after exiting the parking lot, as it rounded the corner at the end of the block, the van passed the first car to arrive. Toulon watched in horrified fascination as the white hatchback turned into the lot and parked in the exact same spot the van had occupied only a minute before.

They drove right past him.

They drove past his van on the way to their death.

Toulon watched as more and more vehicles arrived. He could see many of their faces; most of them were smiling like it was Christmas morning. But why? It was the middle of the night. Why was everyone so happy? Regardless, it was clear that none of them sensed danger.

He scribbled a few notes before switching to the next video file. A progression of clips followed the van until it crossed the nearest bridge. After that, there was no more footage of the van. A text file inside the folder explained that the area beyond the bridge was not a commercial district. As such, there were no surveillance cameras from which to pull any additional footage.

Toulon made a note to follow up on the unmarked van. He knew it would be hard to identify without a plate number, but he held out hope that someone would remember seeing it. If he was very, very lucky, they might even recall a description of the driver.

He loaded the next video, knowing the worst was yet to come. He pushed back in his chair and braced himself for the inevitable. In a flash of brilliant light, the windows of the laboratory shattered as the heat of the explosion tried to escape. Despite the destruction it wrought, the sudden flare was captivating. A belch of flame and ash, followed by an eerie calm. A few moments later, the fire grew again, and Toulon realized that was the moment the acetone had begun to fuel the growing inferno.

His office was still. The video had no audio, and the sound of his own breathing had faded as his heart rate slowed. Toulon was transfixed in the quiet. Yet in his head he heard the screaming of those trapped inside. The desperate cries of both human and animal, pleading for mercy that would not come. He closed his eyes, but the shrieking didn’t stop.

God, he needed a cigarette.

But it seemed disrespectful to smoke after watching the building burn.

Instead, he pulled out a flask from his desk and took a gulp.

Then he went back to work. He watched as the building exploded again, this time from a different angle. The view had changed, but Toulon knew the result would still be the same. He was more determined than ever to see the men responsible answer for their actions.

In his brewing rage, Toulon almost didn’t see the flickering image that would turn the investigation. It was only when the footage repeated the image that he lunged for his mouse. He rewound a few seconds, then began to scroll forward frame by frame. As the initial blast commenced, the flames of the explosion lit up the waters of Riddarfjärden Bay on the far side of the laboratory. As the intensity increased, a small boat came into view. Toulon froze the image at the height of the blast.

‘Sacré bleu!’ he cursed in French.

On the bow of the boat stood a man, illuminated by the flames.

Toulon shuffled through the video files until he found a reverse angle of the ship. Taken from a camera mounted by the Stockholm Visitors Board, it was intended to capture the scenic beauty of Riddarfjärden Bay. Although it didn’t show the laboratory, it prominently displayed the boat in the water nearby.

Toulon adjusted the image frame by frame until he matched the brightly lit shot he had found earlier. Then he zoomed in on the figure until his head filled the computer screen. After running a filter on the image, he watched in horror as the man’s expression came into focus.

His eyes were bright, revealing his sheer excitement.

A cruel, haunting smile spread across his face.

The assassin was enjoying this.

In an instant, Toulon set about identifying the suspect on the boat. He mapped his face and entered the encoded image into Interpol’s facial recognition software. If he had a criminal record of any kind, in any country, the system would find him. He could run, but he could not hide.

A few seconds later, the computer pinged and a new image flashed onscreen.

The face had been matched.

The man on the boat had been identified.