The Einstein Code

by Tom West

  ‘Name?’ Max began again in Russian, standing over the young man.

  He ignored the question.

  ‘Name?’

  Max counted a beat then smashed his fist into the kidnapper’s face. His head snapped back against the chair, blood jetting from his shattered nose.

  Derham spoke little Russian, but he could guess approximately what was being said.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Vasily . . . Vasily Komonech.’

  ‘Who are you working for?’

  The kid shook his head, snot and blood dripped from his nose.

  ‘It’s a simple question, Vasily.’

  ‘I don’t know!’ the youth hollered.

  Max leaned in and grabbed the man’s injured arm, twisted it roughly and found the entry point of the bullet. In the dim light the boy started to scream. Max pushed his thumb hard into the gaping wound. With his free hand, he clamped the boy’s mouth as he struggled.

  ‘Max! Stop!’ Jerry was out of his chair. One of the armed men spun round with his rifle and Max jerked up as Vasily Komonech’s piercing screams reverberated around the room.

  ‘No more chances, Vasily. Tell me who you are working for.’

  Komonech was struggling to draw breath. Derham could see he was about to pass out. His face was bloodless, albumen-like. He tried to speak, but his voice cracked. ‘A woman. Rich woman. Don’t know her name,’ he gasped in Russian. Max translated for Jerry.

  Max gave Derham a questioning look and Derham got it. ‘Buckingham? Glena Buckingham?’

  ‘Da, da. Buckingham.’

  ‘Fuck!’ Derham exclaimed.

  ‘Who is your boss here?’ Max asked the kid. ‘You know you have to tell me one way or the other.’

  ‘Vladich.’

  Max smiled. ‘Good.’ He turned to Jerry. ‘He’s working for Vladich.’

  ‘Vladich?’

  ‘An arsehole. Heads up one of the smaller gangs we hadn’t yet looked into.’ He straightened up from the chair. ‘Get rid of him,’ he snapped.

  The guards yanked the youth to his feet. His legs gave way and they half-dragged, half-carried him out into the narrow hall.

  ‘What are you going to do with him?’ Derham flicked a glance towards the outside.

  ‘That is our business, Captain. Please don’t try to interfere.’

  Derham made to reply, but Max had a hand up. ‘Please. I have something very important to discuss with you.’ He looked furtively towards the hall. They both heard the front door smack against the wall and Komonech pleading pathetically.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We have received some significant information that I believe you should be told about . . .’

  46

  Lae, Papua New Guinea. Early hours of 2 July 1937.

  Lae, steamy hot and wet, as it always was. Thirty degrees centigrade both night and day.

  The scruffy hangar lay on the outskirts of the tiny town, part of a privately owned airfield belonging to a wealthy Asian importer. This late at night the whole complex was almost deserted with just the swish of palm fronds in the sticky breeze stroking the west-side windows of the hangar like the fingers of an amorous lover.

  Amelia was there, tinkering with the port-side engine of the Electra 10E. She had the metal object in her right hand and with the left she pulled aside a bundle of wires to expose the perfect spot to locate the container.

  They would be setting out on the final long haul of the circumnavigation at day break tomorrow. The plane was fuelled and ready, checked and double-checked.

  She tugged the wires under the manifold and heard a sound from behind. She turned, saw nothing.

  The wires were catching on the base of the object. She leaned in closer, twisted the offenders out of the way and repositioned everything.

  The noise came again. This time she whirled round.

  Two men were walking towards her. They were both tall and dressed in dark suits and ties. One of the men had cropped blond hair, the other wore a black Fedora. The former held a Beretta at waist height, the stumpy muzzle pointed at Amelia. She raised her grease-smeared hands slowly.

  ‘Where is it?’ the man in the hat asked. He had a strong German accent.

  ‘Where is what?’ Earhart screwed up her face.

  ‘All right, this is what we are going to do, Miss Earhart,’ the gunman said. His English was clearer, crisp with an Oxbridge affectation. ‘Our time is limited. We are . . .’ and he nodded towards his colleague ‘. . . entirely lacking any form of empathy. Neither of us cares a bit whether you cooperate or not. If you do cooperate and hand over the item you were given in Dakar, we can all be on our way. If you do not, we will torture you, horribly, and we will not stop even after you have told us where we can find the thing we seek. Do you understand me?’

  She saw a movement behind the men as the palm fronds made another pass against the window; then a dash of fabric, a flash of white.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she lied, feeling a rivulet of sweat slither down her spine, a tight fear in her abdomen.

  ‘Okay,’ the man in the Fedora said, the shadow of the brim across his face.

  Amelia saw another judder of movement, and in a fraction of a second she knew what it was. The blond man made to take a small step forward, his hand tight on the Beretta. Amelia caught a brief glimpse of something metallic and slender swing down to the right of the gunman’s head. The spanner crashed into the man’s skull, sending him sprawling across the floor.

  Amelia saw Fred. He had frozen like a store front manikin. She dived towards the prone figure on the floor, yanked the pistol from his limp fingers and spun round.

  The man in the Fedora reacted with stunning speed. He stepped away from Fred, never taking his eyes from Amelia as she pulled herself up, the gun levelled at him. Fred seemed to snap out of his daze and took a step to his right. The German made a desperate dive towards Amelia’s legs. She hopped back, lowered the gun and fired, missed by several inches and started to stumble backwards, catching her balance just in time.

  The man looked almost comical, two feet short of reaching his target, one knee on the floor, his hat glancing his shoulder before hitting the floor and tumbling away. Fred Noonan charged him, the German rolled to one side, crushing his own hat. The spanner slammed into the concrete floor, sparks cascading from the point of contact.

  Amelia caught sight of the blond man, a spreading pool of crimson around his smashed head, and she stood up straight just in time to see the other German regain his balance and charge her again. This time, he reached her and grabbed her hand. She yanked back with a surge of strength that startled him, lost her balance and pulled the man down on top of her.

  The boom of the Beretta was muffled this time. Fred rushed towards them, dropping to the floor between their tangled legs. He pulled at the German and the man rolled onto his side, a startled look on his face, arterial blood spurting between the buttons of his jacket.

  47

  ‘You are calling with good news?’ Secker hissed down the line from London.

  ‘Depends on your perspective,’ Toit replied. He was calling from a public call box. The view through the broken glass was of a uniform drabness, grey upon grey. ‘The operation was not a success. The people I hired were less than useless. They did not retrieve the information and got themselves killed in the process.’

  ‘Well that’s something! I assume you have other fingers in other pies.’

  Toit exhaled through his nose. ‘I will get the information to you via the usual route.’

  48

  Moscow. Present day.

  ‘You had no authority to do that.’ Fleming was bearing down on Lou seated in the MI6 agent’s room. Kate was asleep upstairs, an armed plain-clothes officer from the British embassy guarding the door.

  ‘So, I should have left Kate with those men, Adam? Is that how you see it?’

  ‘No, but you should have told me. This is a delicate operation. On the one hand we have to keep t
he Russian authorities off our backs, and on the other I have to assure my superiors in London that we are not wasting time and money . . . a lot of money.’

  ‘Loose change,’ Jerry Derham said from the edge of the bed where he was sitting facing the other two.

  ‘That’s irrelevant, Captain.’

  ‘Maybe, but it’s also irrelevant talking about this now, isn’t it?’

  Fleming whirled on him. ‘Why exactly are you here?’

  ‘Because I asked him to be,’ Lou snapped.

  ‘And, in case you have forgotten, we are on a joint-forces operation,’ Jerry added, matching Fleming’s angry stare. He stood up as the MI6 agent straightened. They were the same height and about equal build.

  Fleming turned away, scowling. ‘Very well. What’s done is done. The only thing that really matters is that Kate is safe and well.’ He pulled up a spare chair. ‘So run through it all again.’

  ‘Max took us to an apartment in some rag-tag area.’

  ‘Kapotnya,’ Jerry said. ‘Three men were holding her. Two were shot. One of Sergei’s men was killed.’

  ‘And there were no witnesses?’

  ‘Max assured us Sergei would take care of everything,’ Lou said.

  ‘And why did he get involved?’

  ‘According to Max, Sergei likes Kate and me, and he felt responsible.’

  ‘Responsible?’

  Lou shrugged. ‘Does it matter, Adam?’

  Fleming said nothing for a moment, just stared at the gleaming leather of his shoes. ‘And, so Sergei has lost one of his best men, simply to save someone he hardly knows?’

  ‘That’s his problem, isn’t it?’ Jerry said.

  ‘Maybe. Maybe Sergei will expect favours in return.’

  ‘Nature of the business.’

  Fleming went to reply, but Lou cut over him. ‘So what now? I assume your people are doing their best to pinpoint Phoenix? After all, they have spent a lot of money on getting the coordinates.’

  Fleming deliberately ignored the sarcasm. ‘I received a message half an hour ago. They’ve located the sub at . . .’ – he checked his iPhone – ‘59° 58' 03"N, 4° 05' 26"W. They expect us in London as soon as Kate is well enough to travel.’

  49

  London. Present Day.

  The Secret Intelligence Service building, home of MI6, all green glass and cream stone on the south bank of the Thames close to Vauxhall Bridge, glinted in the unseasonable winter sunshine.

  The cab pulled up outside. Lou and Kate looked up at the impressive building, with its huge stacked platforms and a fascia like a medieval castle designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Lou whistled. ‘Impressive.’

  ‘They call it Legoland around here,’ Kate said.

  ‘I can see why!’

  They were met by a barrage of security, body-scanned, IDs checked, their bags passed through sensors and detectors. Only then were they escorted through to the main atrium, where they were met by two men in sober grey suits, given ID badges and led through a maze of corridors that resembled a hotel rather than a government building.

  Descending in a lift, the two minders said nothing, just gazed into the middle distance. Down a wide, carpeted corridor, Lou and Kate followed the two suits to a pair of heavy oak doors. One of the men opened the left door and indicated that the two scientists should enter as he and his colleague retreated to the corridor and left without a word.

  There were four men and two women in the room. As Kate and Lou entered they all rose from their seats around a smooth maple conference table. They knew Fleming and Jerry would be there and shook hands with them before being introduced to the others.

  At the head of the table chairing the meeting was Sir Donald Ashmore, Deputy Chief of the SIS, a tall, wiry man with swept-back silver hair and dressed in a double-breasted Savile Row suit. Next to him, a muscular younger man, handsome, with burnt umber eyes: Ashmore’s senior assistant, Seth Wilberforce. The two women were Commander Ester Lamb, the Royal Navy’s most experienced submariner and pilot of the experimental submarine Jules Verne 3 and across the table from her Jeanette Schmidt of the CIA.

  ‘Thank you all for coming today,’ Ashmore began and got up from his chair to stand beside a smart-board. ‘Now, as you all know, satellite images have located the precise position of the American submarine Phoenix, which sank off Norway in February 1954.’

  He clicked a remote and an amazingly clear image of the sub appeared on the smart-board. From this distance and perspective the vessel looked to be remarkably well preserved apart from its rear end, where there was damage.

  ‘Phoenix was a Balao-type submarine commissioned in 1942 and had a crew of seventy-six,’ Ashmore went on. ‘The captain on the ill-fated voyage to rescue assets from Finland was Captain Vince Jacobs; by all accounts a very capable officer with twelve years’ experience as a commander.’ The screen changed to show a man in his mid-forties in US naval uniform.

  ‘USS Phoenix was sunk by a British vessel, HMS Swordfish, after it was fired upon by the American submarine.

  ‘As each of you know, we are interested in this vessel because the asset was carried onto the sub by the defector Dimitri Grenyov.’ A photograph of the Russian scientist appeared on the screen. He was wearing an ill-fitting suit, his thin wisps of grey hair slicked back. He looked unwell, with dark rings under his eyes.

  ‘The asset is a document which the Russian was trying to get to Einstein in Princeton so that together they could work on producing what has been described as . . .’ he checked his iPad on the desk in front of him ‘. . . a defence shield created using an obscure aspect of quantum theory.

  ‘The object of this meeting is to establish the feasibility of a mission to reach Phoenix, board her and retrieve the materials Grenyov had with him.’

  He clicked the remote again. It showed a schematic of the wreck. ‘This has been constructed from thousands of images taken by satellite and using deep ocean probes along with the original diagrams of the ship from US Navy archives.

  ‘As you can see, although the rear is partly destroyed, the main body of the ship remains intact. We are therefore hopeful that the asset will indeed be retrievable. To explain how that may be facilitated, I’ll hand you over to Commander Lamb.’

  Ester Lamb was a compact woman wearing naval uniform. She moved with confidence and immediately held the attention of everyone in the room.

  ‘Good morning,’ she began and clicked the remote. The image changed to show a more detailed schematic of the interior layout of the submarine. ‘We have no definite idea what we will find inside Phoenix, but what I can describe to you is the method through which we can approach the vessel, board it, and hopefully retrieve the document.’

  She clicked the remote again. ‘I know that some of you are familiar with Jules Verne submarines.’ She glanced around the table. ‘They were created by DARPA – that’s the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – and the US Navy have started to use them. The Royal Navy have four vessels currently on trial. We will be travelling to the site of the wreck aboard HMS Gladstone, a specially adapted vessel that carries two JVs. The submarine is capable of descending to fifteen thousand feet, so the maximum operational depth of approximately two thousand five hundred feet for this mission lies well within its capabilities.

  ‘Doctors Wetherall and Bates will constitute the scientific team.’ She turned to them and the others swivelled in their seats. ‘You are both of course familiar with the JVs,’ Lamb continued. ‘The tricky part of the operation is not descending to the sub, but what we do once we reach it.’

  Lou raised a hand. ‘As Sir Donald indicated, the vessel looks well preserved but how stable is the hull? Looks can be deceptive.’

  ‘Fair point. We have conducted infrared and X-ray scans of the wreck and they look promising.’ She tapped the remote and a multicoloured image of Phoenix appeared. ‘The red regions are frail, the green strong, yellow and orange in between those two extremes.’

  The black outli
ne of the sub was filled mostly with bands and patches of green and yellow. A few areas of orange lay close to the rear of the vessel. The structures butting up to the engines glowed red. A second patch near the bow where Phoenix had come to rest on the seabed showed up scarlet.

  ‘As you can see, the green and yellow regions predominate. We have no need to approach the red section as there is a large fuel and supplies storage area, here, between the living/operational sections and the engines.’ She indicated the region immediately aft of the engines smeared in orange and flecks of red.

  ‘The sections of most interest are the command centre, here, and the crew quarters, here and here. From archive material we believe the document is held in a steel attaché case which Grenyov carried aboard Phoenix in Finland.’ She clicked the remote and an image appeared of the Russian holding the rectangular metal case shortly before boarding the doomed sub.

  ‘Of course, he may have transferred the document and his papers, or had them out of the case when the encounter with Swordfish began; but, naturally, we are unable to ascertain these details without boarding the vessel.’

  The image on the smart-board changed to display a schematic of a cylindrical object. ‘This,’ Lamb said, ‘is the means by which we will be able to enter Phoenix. The airlock on the vessel will be corroded beyond use, but this device circumvents any need to take that route.

  ‘It is a portable access tube or PAT, a nanocarbon tube which connects the lock of the JV to any form of submersed structure such as Phoenix.’

  On the screen the tube rotated and the image opened up. ‘One end of the tube is built up on the hull of Phoenix. Nanobots connect it to our JV and then an opening can be cut in the skin of the old submarine. It is then possible for you’ – she turned to Lou and Kate – ‘to crawl through into Phoenix.’

  ‘Wow!’ Kate exclaimed.

  ‘Wow indeed.’ Commander Lamb smiled. ‘We have DERA, Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, the British equivalent of DARPA, to thank for this. It’s really a development of 3D-printing technology. We’ve shared with the US Navy, just as they have shared the JVs we are trialling.’