The Red Pearl Effect (Sam Quick Adventure Book 1)

by Scott Corlett

  “Listen, listen! My family has money and connections to the U.S. government. Let me go, and I’ll get you anything you want.”

  She looked around wildly. She was leaning against a wooden crate, alongside two identical packing containers. The cargo space was otherwise empty.

  “They can get you anything, any amount of money. They can make your rich.”

  She watched the men move toward the door as if they were preparing to jump down. But instead, they pulled it shut, killing the sunlight.

  “My family will come looking for me. They will never stop until they find me,” she cried out into the darkness. But as she spoke the words, she sickeningly realized her statement would soon be the furthest thing from the truth.

  She heard their boots clumping against the metal floor, as they returned toward her.

  “Please just let me go.” Tears flowed from her eyes, her bound hands useless to wipe them away.

  She felt and smelled the men sit down, sandwiching her between their sweaty bodies. The truck’s engine started with a diesel roar. Gusts of hot, fetid breath bathed her neck. Then the truck jerked and started to move.

  – 32 –

  Friday, 13 July

  Key Biscayne, Florida

  The yellow ball whizzed within a half inch of the racket’s edge. Its trajectory unaltered, the ball smashed just inside the baseline. The young man spun and watched it bounce up, over the line, en route to the high fence enclosing the court.

  He turned back to the net, his teeth sparkling against a deep tan and a frame of longish, black hair. “Nice shot, Dr. Matson.”

  Molly Matson tipped her racket. “Thank you, Jake.” Despite her prowess on the court, the sexagenarian knew that her opponent, a ranked college player, should have returned that shot. All morning, the boy had been as slow as a man admitting a mistake. Matson wondered if he had been up late the previous night. And if so, with whom?

  “Excuse me, Miss Molly?”

  Matson looked toward the gate, where Dolores, her housekeeper, stood holding a cordless handset in one hand and a sweating pitcher of lemonade in the other.

  “Dr. Quick is on the line. She says it’s urgent.”

  Matson jogged to a courtside table beside a large umbrella. She grabbed the phone and slid into a chair. “Sam?” Then she sat listening, watching her opponent, as he plopped into the adjacent chair, pulled a chilled towel from the cooler, and began wiping the sweat from his face and neck. She vigorously nodded at the yellow cascade falling from the pitcher into a glass and mouthed a “thank you” to Dolores. Then she said, “Sam, hold on a sec, sweetie.”

  Matson turned to the young man. “Jake, why don’t you run up to the house and have a swim while Dolores pulls lunch together? I think you’ll find some old trunks in the cabana.” She shrugged. “And if not, don’t worry—we’re real casual around here.” Matson watched him simultaneously trot away and pull off his shirt, as she gulped down some lemonade. Well, whoever had kept him up late was certainly one lucky gal—her brow wrinkled—or fella. She sighed and punched a button on the handset.

  Matson laid the phone on the table. “Sam, I figured our foreign friends would have called for the decryption codes to your laptop in exchange for your intern by now.”

  “Me, too, Molly,” was the only reply from the speakerphone, but it told her plenty about how worried Quick was.

  “Did the Spanish police apprehend those twin twits and their boyfriend?” She snorted as Quick described the police work. “And what about the computer files that you swiped? Do they point to this Sokolóv and his girls allying with our foreign friends?”

  “That’s why we’ve called, Molly,” Quick said. “The files’ locking algorithms are military grade, untouchable by Eric, our resident computer hound, or even by the embassy spooks. But I’m hoping that if we put the NRLI mainframe to work—”

  “That they’ll open like clams in a paella pan over a hot fire? Fine, get ’em over here.”

  “Our people will send the files right away, Dr. Matson,” said Davies, and the geologist again tried picturing what he might look like.

  “I’ll put my emeritus status to good use and get the boys at the Institute working on them straight away. Let’s just make sure old Harley doesn’t catch wind of this arrangement. Knowing him as I do, I rather doubt he would take kindly to hacking a foreign entity’s encrypted files.” Matson added, “And as a bonus, this errand gives me a chance to say ‘hello’ to PO Lewis at the gate, the one with the long cornstalks.”

  In Davies’s office, Quick shook her head as Hunt started opening his mouth.

  “OK, kiddos,” Matson continued, “I’ve gotta run: I’ve a guest to whom I must explain that he’ll be lunching alone.” His glistening lats flashed in her mind. “Which is a real shame, as I do hate being a bad host. Bye, Sam. Ciao, fellas.”

  Molly Matson tossed the phone onto a chair cushion, stood, and started a fast trot toward the pool. The white-haired scientist knew perfectly well that no swimsuit would ever be found in her poolside cabana.

  – 33 –

  Friday, 13 July

  Madrid

  Utley frowned. His fork clinked against his plate. He hated interruptions during a meal, especially during a repast as sublime as the late-afternoon snack lying before him: a wedge of tortilla with its creamy center of egg and potato; a hunk of hard bread; and a glass of cold Spanish beer.

  Utley watched the visitor finish the exchange with the cashier and then walk toward his table. A small soda bottle landed beside his plate.

  Utley raised a brow. “Well?”

  “We tracked the BMW and the two men to an apartment block in Madrid. They apparently left the dreadlocked woman at the warehouse—we aren’t sure why, perhaps as collateral.”

  “And?”

  “The car is parked in the apartment-building garage. Our men have visual contact with the vehicle at all times—and the package remains stowed in its trunk.”

  “The American men?” Utley asked.

  “Both the blond and the heavyset man have stayed in the apartment building since they returned from the warehouse. Though the blond periodically comes down to the garage and stares into the car trunk. Inbound, however, they have received several deliveries of food and two visits from a Spanish youth—a low-level drug dealer.”

  “And the other suitcases?”

  “A truck left the warehouse several hours after the American men and the BMW. We followed it to a small airstrip outside of Zaragoza. We observed the three crates and the woman being transferred to a Legacy 600. Fifteen minutes later, it taxied and took off.”

  “I assume we are tracking the plane?”

  “We were.”

  Utley frowned and raised a brow.

  “Our resources tracked it as it flew due south over the Mediterranean and into African airspace. Ten minutes over Algeria, the plane disappeared from the screen.” The man shrugged. “A disabled positioning transponder and bribes to Algerian flight controllers to ensure that the signal loss went unnoticed.”

  Utley inhaled sharply. “Fully fueled, a plane like that has an operating range of several thousand miles. If they continue south, they could fly as far as equatorial Africa.” He sighed. “Is that all?”

  The visitor nodded.

  “Keep me informed.”

  The man tipped his head and walked away wordlessly. Before he passed through the restaurant’s doorway, Utley’s fork sank into the tortilla. Savoring a large bite, Utley thought of the other bombs, now lost to the silent undertow of the global arms trade. What untold destruction would they someday bring? But he reminded himself of the lesson learned at the Academy so long ago: his goal was successfully completing the mission, not saving the world. He swallowed the mixture of egg and potato with an extra large chaser of beer.

  Then Utley smiled at the little Spanish boy who, at a nearby table, was imitating the tremor of his hand.

  – 34 –

  Saturday, 14 July

 
; Island of La Palma

  The metal band encircling Inspector Reyes’s head could be no larger than a wedding ring. His eyes felt as if they would explode from their sockets at any second. And this, he knew, would only be a prelude to the brain matter soon to erupt from his head’s every orifice, like grayish lava simultaneously spewing from all the volcanoes dotting La Palma.

  Reyes pulled at the bottle with all his might. The cap abruptly conceded, and dusty tablets scattered across his desktop. Shaking fingers pinched up two pills. Then he shrugged, and two more tablets made an even foursome. His molars ground the buttons to a fine powder. Cold espresso was added, creating a caustic mud, which oozed down his esophagus like drain opener down a clogged pipe.

  The inspector looked around his office, at the piles of reports and authorizations that summarized his thirty years on the Tazacorte municipal police force. He felt the wet fingers of the early morning air stirred by the overhead fan. From the open window, he smelled the Atlantic’s pregnant musk and heard the sounds of Tazacorte’s morning: the shouts and laughter of delivery men; the sleepy conversations of tourists debating between a day at the beach or up the mountain; and the gentle clink of flatware from the open-air cafes lining the narrow village streets.

  Through the doorway to the station main, he watched the cocky men who served beneath him and who now sat in silence at their desks.

  He sighed and lifted his telephone’s clunky handset.

  “Hello, Dr. Quick? … No, the speakerphone is unnecessary—I think it’s best that we talk alone.”

  ∞

  After Madrid, Prague was a jungle. The travelers stepped from the humid afternoon air into a cab. For the first time since the wheels of the narrow-body jet had left the blistering tarmac of Madrid’s Barajas Airport, Sam Quick spoke, and her voice was clear, and her directions, precise. The driver’s brow rose, and the taxi sprinted from the curb.

  During the drive, neither Quick nor Eric Hunt nor Zach Davies noticed grand Prague Castle, across the Vltava River from the motorway, regally situated above the central city. Nor did they see, after the cab had left the expressway and began maneuvering the surface streets, the history of Western art unfurl outside the sedan’s windows, the city’s rich mosaic of buildings from every artistic epoch: medieval fortifications, baroque spires, renaissance churches, art nouveau facades, and modernist glass towers.

  The cab finally stopped before a drab cement edifice that stood out amid the city’s architecture like a poor child in a school class otherwise populated by brightly dressed students. Pallid bricks clad the façade, while vertical columns of narrow windows rose to the roofline.

  Entering the building was like stepping back into the communist era. Every stark line, hard surface, and low-watt bulb droned in bureaucratic monotone of enforced scarcity and repressed expression. The smell was the building’s liveliest element: a sickly-sweet presence that immediately assailed the nose.

  The Americans stopped at the lobby desk, and Quick handed the receptionist a slip. The women studied it and then lifted a rotary telephone handset. She spoke in Czech for several moments. Then the receiver returned to its cradle, and she jotted a diagram on the back of Quick’s paper. The slip just barely returned to the scientist’s fingers in time to make the journey deeper into the building. Over their shoulders, Hunt and Davies said a hurried thanks, as they ran after Quick.

  The receptionist stared after the threesome, slowly shaking her head. Who were these people? she wondered. Hollywood stars researching roles for a new television forensic drama? Perhaps the handsome man with the salt-and-pepper hair would play a coroner; the blond boy, a police rookie; and the beautiful but too thin woman, the smart cop. Before she could flesh out the plot, all remaining of the Americans in the gray hall were the echoes of their footsteps.

  ∞

  The placard matched the neat script written on the slip of paper. Sam Quick looked at Eric Hunt and Zach Davies. Then the three Americans stepped into an office where only the ceiling was free of books. Bursting shelves lined the walls floor to ceiling. Teetering stacks sprouted from the floor like wind-bent saplings.

  “Ah, you must be Dr. Quick,” said a man in perfect English, as he rose and rounded his desk. He wore a spotless lab coat. A horseshoe of light brown hair circled his otherwise bald head, and a matching bushy mustache overlay his upper lip. A hand reached out.

  “Hello, I’m Dr. Linzer, chief of pathology.” His head dipped toward a second man, who had the flattened face of a grouper fish, and who was rising from a chair. “And this is Captain Svoboda of the Czech State Security Police.”

  Linzer continued, “I am honored to meet you, Dr. Quick—I just wish the circumstances were different. I have encountered your papers in numerous scientific journals. And I find your work with extremophilic bacteria most exciting. In my spare time, I fancy myself a bit of a microbiologist—”

  Quick held up a hand. “Please, Dr. Linzer, what can you tell us about what the police found?”

  “Of course.” Linzer pointed at the chairs fronting his desk. “Please.”

  After everyone was seated, Linzer started, “At 4:15 this morning, Municipal police officers on foot patrol responded to screams coming from a path along the Vltava in central Prague. The officers arrived to find a couple—a Danish tourist and a local man—who had taken advantage of last night’s hot weather and had strolled along the Vltava in search of a secluded spot for an outdoor rendezvous. However, while undressing beneath a bridge, the couple realized they were not alone but rather were in the company of the body of a young adult female.”

  Linzer paused and looked to Quick. “I’m not sure how much detail about the body you wish to hear—”

  “All of it.”

  The pathologist glanced at Svoboda and then nodded. “Very well. The corpse was nude and lying in a fetal position alongside the river. The hands and feet were missing.” Linzer cleared his throat. “As was the head.”

  He reached into a pile on his desk. “The police found this beside the corpse: Ms. Slater’s passport.” He handed the booklet to Quick, who, without a glance, passed it to Davies.

  Davies thumbed through it. “Looks real.”

  Linzer continued, “We know the decapitation was performed at another location based on the absence of collateral blood splatter. The body’s core temperature and the degree of rigor mortis set the time of death at between seven and eight hours before discovery. Further, rodents had not yet molested the corpse, suggesting the killer or killers had deposited the body on the footpath less than one hour before the amorous couple stumbled on it.

  “The corpse’s height and weight, extrapolating for the tissue loss, match those of Ms. Slater as listed in the Interpol alert regarding her disappearance. Of course, until we receive DNA samples from Ms. Slater’s family, we cannot definitively identify the victim.”

  He looked at Quick. “If you know of any identifying features or marks that Ms. Slater bore, this information would be most helpful.”

  “I need to see the body,” Quick replied.

  “Dr. Quick,” Linzer said, “I must object to that course of action. We have photographs, which, in themselves, are upsetting enough—”

  Svoboda shook his head and interrupted in a halting English, “This body is no sight for a woman!”

  Quick shot him the look that she usually reserved for the handful of dinosaurs at NRLI who treated women as if they were fit for little more than filling coffee cups. “I’ll do my best to neither faint nor launch into a fit of hysterics, Captain. But if this body really is that of Kalia Slater, then I need to see firsthand what they did to her.”

  Quick stood. “Now.”

  Linzer sighed and slowly rose from his chair. “All right, Dr. Quick. But I must caution that if you’ve never seen—”

  “You two wait here,” Quick said, cutting him off, looking at Hunt and Davies. Both men nodded at Quick’s back, which was already halfway to the door.

  – 35 –
>
  Saturday, 14 July

  Madrid

  Before the Spaniard could take a single step, President James surged across the stage, clasped his host’s hand, and vigorously shook it, all the while looking straight into the Spanish leader’s eyes. During his ascent to ever-increasing heights of political office, Jasper James had long ago honed this technique for projecting power and decisiveness. At public debates or shared speaking forums, from the instant that he emerged onstage, James always swiftly moved to greet his opponent before the challenger could take even one step forward. He was not an overly aggressive man by nature; but this tactic often cemented his dominance in the viewers’ minds before one word was spoken, and it always unsettled his opponents.

  The Spanish leader nodded at the president. The two men continued to pump each other’s hand. Their shoulders touched. They smiled widely. And then they slowly rotated in perfect sync, so that each of the cameras scattered throughout the room could snap full-faced shots.

  Then the hands parted, and the two leaders turned and walked to their respective podia. The Spanish leader spoke first, giving his welcome and a string of sound-bite-worthy introductory remarks. While President James stood, turned in the direction of his host, appearing to closely watch and listen, as he always did during these events.

  But James barely heard a word. His mind was elsewhere, on the tough discussions that would take place during the coming days of the International Capital Forum, particularly with the Russian president about energy supplies for Western Europe. And that rotten business with the theft of plutonium from the British research lab. If what his CIA director said was true, then enough plutonium had been stolen to create a dirty bomb capable of rendering London—or New York City—uninhabitable for the next forty thousand years.