The Einstein Code

by Tom West

  The door opened. Lou tensed up. He was standing behind the chair, hands on its cold, metal back. The man they had seen earlier, the senior officer, Mr Manor, stood at the opening. The door was pinned to the wall with his leg. He had a closed Manila file in one hand, and gave Lou a frigid look.

  ‘You may go.’

  Lou stared at him.

  ‘You look as surprised as I feel,’ Manor said blankly. ‘Appears you have friends in high places.’

  Lou walked to the door and turned into the hall. From the main room he could hear Kate’s voice. An armed guard stood at the end of the corridor, his machine gun lying diagonally across his chest. He was staring straight ahead and ignored Lou completely.

  Captain Jerry Derham turned, a grim expression on his face.

  ‘You look pleased to see me,’ Lou quipped.

  ‘I think you’ve made enough wisecracks for one night, buddy.’

  Lou saw Kate. She took a step towards him, looking relieved and ran her hand along his upper arm.

  The two junior customs officers stood behind the counter. Derham led the two scientists towards a table close to the exit. Their cases and other luggage lay on top. The bubble-wrapped cylinder taken from Amelia Earhart’s plane seemed to be untouched. Lou glanced at Kate.

  ‘You checked it?’

  She nodded towards Jerry. ‘We both have. It’s OK.’

  ‘Come on,’ Derham said. ‘Let’s find a trolley and get out of here.’

  *

  Outside the main doors to Arrivals, Lou, Kate and Jerry stood close to the pick-up and drop-off point, cabs pulling up and exchanging passengers before drifting off into the night.

  ‘So what the hell happened back there, Lou?’

  ‘Actually, Jerry, can we save the post-mortem?’ Kate interrupted.

  Derham let out a heavy sigh. ‘I had to pull out all the stops.’

  ‘And we both really appreciate it.’ Kate gave Lou a hard look.

  ‘Jerry, I’m sorry. I lost my cool.’

  Derham shrugged.

  ‘It stinks to me though,’ Lou added, catching Kate’s eye.

  ‘They seemed to know exactly what to look for,’ she said. ‘That was no random search. We were targeted. They were put up to this.’

  ‘You’re probably right. They were very hard work . . . wouldn’t play ball, even when I told them it was a military matter. I had to put a call through to Admiral Sharp. Only then did they sit up and take notice.’ Jerry ran a palm over his forehead.

  ‘You look all in,’ Kate commented.

  ‘I’ve felt better . . . But, I think it’s time you two explained exactly what is in that bubblewrap package, and why someone should tip off customs.’

  Kate smiled for the first time in hours and nodded towards Lou. ‘He’s been wanting to tell you all about it since we were on the boat!’

  *

  They found Kate’s car in long-term parking where they had dropped it before leaving for the Pacific.

  Jerry helped them load the luggage. He checked his watch. ‘It’s 11.45. You have your passes into the base, yeah? Meet there in an hour, my office. I have to drop off some files to one of my superiors in town.’

  ‘At this time of the night?’

  ‘The United States Navy never sleeps, Lou,’ Jerry said with a grin. ‘Catch you later.’ He walked off across the car park, skirting a giant puddle in the middle of the road.

  Although they had only been away for just over a week, to Kate and Lou it felt a lot longer. It started to rain, smearing the view through the car windows, the water splashing against the sides of the vehicle as it accelerated away through a set of lights, around the airport perimeter, out onto Norview Avenue and then north-west on the freeway.

  The traffic was very light on the I64, the six lanes of the highway were swept by gusts of cold rain. Neither of them spoke very much for the first few minutes of the journey, each lost in their own thoughts about the discovery they had made and the recent experiences at the airport.

  Eventually Kate said: ‘Our radio transmissions from the boat must’ve been intercepted. How else could anybody have possibly known we had found anything?’

  ‘I guess. But why would anybody be monitoring our signal? Sounds a bit far-fetched.’

  ‘Well, I suppose intelligence traffic is heavier than it would normally be in that part of the world because of the Chinese business.’ She turned to look out at the windswept landscape, the grassy banks each side of the road, a few bedraggled trees in the distance. ‘I can’t believe that one of the team would have said anything to anyone. Connor or Gustav?’

  ‘No way.’

  A couple of hundred yards from intersection 278 they saw, coming up directly behind them, blue and red flashing lights.

  Lou slowed the car and pulled over to the hard shoulder. ‘Jesus Christ! It really isn’t our damn night, is it?’

  He switched off the engine and they sat quietly listening to the crunch of the cop’s boots as he walked towards their car. There came a tap at his window and Lou lowered it. The policeman was a beefy young Latino with a bleached blond crew-cut who looked a few years younger than them.

  ‘Your nearside brake light,’ he said, his voice completely expressionless. ‘It’s blinking, about to go.’

  ‘Thanks, officer. I hadn’t realized. I’ll get it fixed as soon as I can.’ Lou forced a brief smile.

  The policeman took in Kate sitting in the passenger seat. ‘Can I see your licence please, sir?’

  Lou patted his breast pocket, then realized he had put his wallet in the glove compartment. He reached over.

  ‘Sir,’ the policeman said.

  ‘I’m getting my licence.’

  ‘Slowly please.’

  Lou found the licence, handed it to the policeman and sat waiting with his arms folded across his chest. The officer studied the licence, then handed it back.

  ‘Could you step out please?’

  ‘What? I thought you said I just had a faulty bulb?’

  Lou noticed the policeman’s right hand move down a few inches to hover close to his gun holster and felt Kate jab her elbow into his side. He glanced back at the officer, sighed again and slowly eased open the door.

  The man moved very quickly. The second Lou was out of the car the barrel of a standard-issue .40 Smith and Wesson was digging into his ribs.

  ‘Hey!’ Lou shouted and the barrel was pressed in harder. He heard more crunching gravel behind him and saw the policeman give a brief nod to someone the other side of the car. Lou half-turned to see a second officer, tall and bald, opening the passenger door. Kate appeared in half-shadow, the officer gripping her arm as she protested.

  Lou glanced back at the police car behind Kate’s vehicle and saw a third figure at the wheel.

  ‘Get in the back,’ the first policeman snapped and jabbed with the gun again, sending a ripple of pain down Lou’s side. The policeman opened the rear door to Kate’s car and pushed down on Lou’s head with his free hand. Lou saw Kate being shoved into the back seat across from him in a similar way. The doors slammed behind them. The young blond officer pulled into the driver’s seat, the bald one sat, half-turned, in the passenger side, his revolver pointed straight at them.

  ‘We’re going on a short ride,’ he said. ‘I don’t wanna hear a word from you, understood?’

  Lou and Kate sat, mute.

  ‘Understood?’

  They both nodded. The driver put the car in gear and pulled back onto the highway followed closely by the cop car, its flashers off.

  16

  Kate felt for Lou’s hand across the seat, found it and squeezed tight. He gave her a quick reassuring glance; the bald cop appeared not to notice, just kept the gun trained on them.

  They drove Kate’s car extremely fast down the Interstate, the cop car close behind. They skirted Inglenook Park on the left, then, a little further on to the right, they shot past a sign to Southern Shopping Center. Kate and Lou knew it well, they had only been there
a couple of days before leaving on their trip. A few miles on, they took a left off the highway and joined a two-lane road heading west. The rain was heavier now, slamming against the windscreen, gushing under the car as they sped along.

  They took another left then a hard right onto a country lane, the car bumping along over the uneven surface, slamming through the puddles, muddy water pluming its flanks, tyres struggling to find purchase. It was dark out here, no street lights, the only illumination coming from the headlights of the two cars and the moon full against the inky black. All they could see were the shapes of trees and occasionally scuffed and rain-drenched metal barriers either side of the road.

  Finally, the car began to slow and drew to a halt. The police car pulled up immediately behind them. Tessellated shadows fell across the face of the bald cop with the gun. He hadn’t uttered a word since warning them to stay quiet back on the highway.

  The lights of the cop car behind flicked. A few moments later Kate’s door was wrenched open and the third man, plain-clothed in jeans and a scruffy leather jacket, cigarette dangling from his lips, stood on the dark road. He had a gun in his left hand and flicked it to indicate that Kate and Lou should get out.

  They had stopped on a driveway, the shape of a large dilapidated building just visible to their right. The rain stung like ice on their faces and soaked through their clothes in a few moments. Lou felt a hand shove him from behind, and he and Kate were frogmarched towards the old building.

  It was a disused warehouse. One of the walls had collapsed completely, a pile of soaked, crumbling bricks was all that remained of it. The other three walls held shattered windows, part of the roof yawned open to the leaden cloud-heavy sky. The place stank of diesel. There were oily puddles on the cracked concrete floor. One wall of the warehouse was lined with rusting oil drums.

  A small section of the building remained relatively intact, with a boxy office at the top of a flight of metal stairs. One of the men stayed back with the cars, the other two guided them to the foot of the stairs. The blond one took the lead, the other to one side. The door to the office ahead of them swung open and a raw white light spilled out. Kate and Lou were ushered up the stairs.

  ‘Welcome,’ said a dark-haired man in a black tracksuit. He ushered them into the office. Lou and Kate stood bedraggled, water pooling on the floor. The bald cop covered them with his revolver.

  ‘What exactly is this all about?’ Lou said, surprising himself with how remarkably calm his voice sounded.

  The man looked from Lou to Kate and back, then indicated to the cop that he should lower the gun. A little surprised for a second, the man complied.

  ‘Who are you?’ Kate hissed.

  ‘Well, to answer the pretty lady’s question first. My name isn’t important. Call me . . . oh, I dunno . . . Pete. Yeah, that’ll do.’ He turned to Lou. ‘This is all about a certain something you have, and we want, bud. Blank looks . . . oh very good. Your best poker faces! Let me fill you in. The two of you – newlyweds, I hear, how lovely, I’m a great believer in the institution of marriage – the two of you have just returned from a charter boat anchored close to Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean, yeah? There, you happened to find Amelia Earhart’s long-lost aircraft. And you discovered something else.’

  There was a sound behind them at the door to the office. The man in plain clothes who had driven the cop car kept the door open with his foot and struggled through the opening with Kate and Lou’s suitcases, one in each hand. The blond guy helped him and they laid them on the floor close to a metal desk.

  ‘There are two more boxes,’ the plain-clothes guy said. ‘The small one’s a sample box or something. Left them at the foot of the stairs.’ The blond cop headed through the door. A moment later he was back with Kate’s shoulder bag and camera bag, Lou’s briefcase and the two metal boxes.

  The man calling himself Pete leant on the desk, keeping his eyes on Lou and Kate. The bald man levelled his gun.

  ‘Open them.’

  Kate found the keys in her pocket and crouched down to unlatch first one case then the other. Lifting back the lids, she stepped away. The guy in the leather jacket and jeans began disgorging the contents of the cases, tossing clothes aside, searching roughly along the bottom of the cases before yanking open the pockets inside the lids. Finding nothing, he picked up one case, flipped it over, and shook it before turning his attention to the other.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Pete kicked the large metal box with the toe of his shoe and nodded to the two bags beside it. ‘Get these open.’ He turned to the blond cop. ‘Go check the car. Take it apart, I want that fucking artefact.’ He glared at Kate and Lou. ‘It would be much easier if you just told me where the fuck it is.’

  Lou shrugged. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Pete nodded almost imperceptibly to the bald cop with the gun. He stepped forward, swung his arm and smashed the butt into Lou’s jaw. Lou groaned and collapsed to the floor. Kate screamed and grasped his hand as Pete grabbed her arm.

  ‘No!’ He spun Kate round, her face inches from his. ‘Now, where is it?’

  They all heard the noise from the floor of the warehouse. It sounded like a muffled yelp followed by the clang of metal.

  Lou was getting up, the side of his face reddening, a line of blood running down to the collar of his shirt. ‘Leave her . . .’

  The bald cop went to hit Lou again, but Pete stopped him with a wave of the hand. ‘Sssh . . . What’s that?’

  They all gave him blank looks.

  ‘All right, tie them.’

  The plain-clothes guy pulled a couple of lengths of cord from the pocket of his leather jacket. Pete crouched down beside the bags and the boxes. Undoing the small bags, he tipped out the contents, rummaged through the side pockets, found nothing. He tried to unlatch the larger box, but like the cases, it was locked. Reaching into his tracksuit jacket, he pulled out a pistol, brought it down heavily on the lock. It didn’t give way. He stepped back, fired a single round at the box and the lock gave, the boom of gunfire reverberating around the office.

  He eased back the lid. The box was quite empty. He stood, breathing heavily, hands on his hips. Shaking his head, he turned to Kate and Lou, who had been forced to sit with their backs to a wall furthest from the door of the office, their hands tied behind them. Stepping across the office, Pete stretched his neck; the muscles around his jaw twitched.

  The blast shook the office.

  Three of the windows shattered, the glass spraying the floor. The light, swinging on its cable, flickered off, then on again.

  Pete stumbled and managed to grab the edge of the desk. The plain-clothes guy was not so lucky; flying across the room, his head hit the wall near the door.

  Pete glared at the bald guy. ‘What the fuck was—?’

  A second explosion ripped through the warehouse and a jet of flame shot past the entrance to the office at the top of the stairs. Pete didn’t wait a moment, darted for the door, surveyed the warehouse floor and was dashing down the metal stairs. The bald cop spun round and followed him, grabbing the stair railing.

  Three heavily armed men in black body armour, faces obscured by balaclavas and night goggles ran across the floor of the warehouse towards the bottom of the stairs.

  The area was engulfed by flames. Towards the far end of the warehouse, oil drums were ablaze. The bald cop only made it to the third step.

  ‘Stop. Drop the gun,’ one of the assault team shouted.

  The cop ignored him and peeled off a couple of rounds before he was ripped apart by a shower of machine-gun bullets.

  Kate and Lou struggled to pull themselves up, but with their hands tied behind their backs it was almost impossible.

  ‘Help!’ Kate yelled and struggled to stand. They could see sparks and orange dust in the air beyond the windows and caught a glimpse of the flames. The air hung heavy with the stench of burning oil. They heard shouts, gunfire, a heavy object tumbling down the metal s
tairs. Then came the thump of boots on the rungs.

  Two men dressed in SWAT gear crashed into the room. The lead figure held a Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine gun at waist level, his partner swung a Remington ACR assault rifle one-eighty.

  Kate pulled herself in close to Lou. The unconscious plain-clothes guy begun to stir and get up off the floor. A third member of the assault team stormed through the door into the office, saw the man staring at him and swung round his gun, the barrel pointed at the middle of the man’s forehead.

  ‘Down!’ yelled the leading SWAT officer, his voice muffled. The man put up his hands, sprawling on his front like an insect. Lowering his machine gun, the team leader stepped over.

  ‘I’m here to help you.’ He gripped Lou by the upper arm and pulled him to his feet before turning his attention to Kate. The man’s partner nonchalantly pushed the Remington across his back, glanced quickly at the third man now covering the door and pulled a black folding knife from a pouch on his belt. Crouching beside Kate, he sliced the cord around her wrists before turning to Lou.

  ‘Who are . . .?’ Kate started to ask.

  ‘Let’s get you out.’ The man turned as his colleague dragged the plain-clothes guy to his feet and pushed him hard through the door.

  Down on the warehouse floor, flames flickered along the walls, a sheet of burning oil spread from the stairs to the rear doors. As they reached the bottom of the staircase, a third explosion thundered through the shattered building, propelling Kate and Lou to the floor. Kate cried as a searing pain shot up her arms.