Einsteiner

by V. K. Fourstone

  If the staff in the villa didn’t know who they were really working for, then they must know him by a different name. They would probably repeat the name “Link” and tell the guys they had the wrong address, but if the person who opened the door knew, he would be startled thus giving himself away. He would ask who had come and say they were mistaken, or something of the kind only after a pause. Since there were no cameras, someone would open up in person and a person’s face could say a lot.

  In any case they would ask to pass on a note that said the following:

  “Dear Professor Link,

  We kindly request you to grant us an interview. You need have no concern that your whereabouts are known to anyone but us. We are neither enemies nor friends of yours, but we need your help. We ask you to meet us in token of friendship. If you turn us down, it will be pointless for us to keep your location secret.

  Yours sincerely, Isaac and Bikie.

  “PS. Please call the following number, we are staying in a hotel not far from you.”

  In the case that they refused to take the note, Isaac and Bikie had planned to leave. Half an hour later a pizza delivery man drove up to the house and handed over the note together with the bill while Isaac and Bikie remained at a safe distance.

  Bikie thought they had to give Link three hours to consider, assuming that he wasn’t likely to contact the police, and if he had any backup, it could only come from the Agency. But that was unlikely – plus it would take at least three or four hours.

  The guys shelled out for a second hotel room, on the ground floor with an exit into a garden. The hotel was by no means cheap, with air conditioning and a mini-bar, which, of course, were totally useless for the operation. But one big plus was the market nearby, and several tourist cafes and souvenir shops. Basically a busy spot. Bikie bought more video cameras and a local mobile phone - a prepaid one for visitors, that didn’t require registering.

  They set up the notebook and a web camera in the room. The broadcast signal went directly into the Internet, and it was impossible to determine quickly who was watching it and where from. The telephone number in the note was cunningly redirected, and the phone itself was linked to the computer.

  Bikie had done something smart: after a minute of the ringing tone, a program cut in that sent the call into the web. But the phone carried on ringing, and you could still answer it, or you could answer via the Internet.

  “In short, it’s not possible to tell exactly where we are,” said Bikie, explaining his scheme.

  Bikie hung a mirror over the door so they could see the window. He blocked off the keyhole on the inside with three layers of tape and covered the crack under the door with a rug, on which he dumped a night-table. It was impossible to get into the room without being noticed.

  Very soon Isaac and Bikie were standing in front of the fancy hammered gate of Link’s supposed villa and then they saw the first camera. Not on the wall, but hidden inside the garden which explained why they hadn’t noticed it yesterday. Isaac hesitated for a moment and rang the bell.

  “Good afternoon, who are you looking for?” a voice that obviously belonged to a woman, answered in Italian a minute later.

  There’s no denying it, you live and learn. Sometimes you lose sight of elementary, but important, details. The guys were so carried away with designing a plan of retreat and preventing a professional from finding them, that they had overlooked a simple contingency: that no one would come up to the gate; there was simply a voice. The call button was on the wicket door, but the entry phone was hidden on the other side of the metalwork.

  Bikie shrugged in confusion. Isaac feverishly tried to think of something.

  The pause started dragging out and the voice asked again, this time in broken English:

  “Pardon me, who are you looking for?”

  “We, we… is this house number five?” asked Isaac, playing for time.

  “Yes it is. Are you looking for someone? Who are you?”

  “Could you please ask the owner to come to the intercom?”

  “Who? The owner? What for, on what business? Stop playing games, young people, or I’ll call the police.”

  “We have a personal letter for him.”

  “There’s a letterbox on the left. Drop it in there.”

  “It’s a confidential letter, we’d like to be sure it won’t get lost.”

  The only reply they heard was the entry phone being switched off.

  They stood there for a while, bewildered, not knowing what to do, whether leave the letter, ring again, or just go.

  Finally Isaac pressed the call button once more.

  “Now what?” The voice was by no means as cordial as the first time.

  “Signora, I’ve dropped the letter in the box as you requested. It is a letter from the owner’s home country, we have travelled thousands of kilometers to deliver it. It’s very urgent and important. Please be sure to pass on greetings from Elvis.”

  “Very well.”

  The line went dead again.

  “What has Elvis got to do with this?” Bikie asked.

  “Nothing at all. This is just to make them curious. To make them read the note sooner.”

  Once they were sure the envelope had been collected from the box, the guys dashed to a café they had chosen earlier to watch the web camera.

  Chapter 19

  The next three hours seemed like three days. No call came. No one came to their hotel. No one drove out of the professor’s villa. Nothing.

  “What if he’s not home?”

  “Sleeping?”

  “Or they didn’t give him the letter?”

  Many questions, no answers. Both were nervous.

  “All right, let’s think. If it’s not Link, then whoever it is would clearly have called the police by now. The letter can be interpreted in various ways, even as a threat.”

  “That means Link either hasn’t read it yet, or he doesn’t know how to react.”

  “Or maybe they took us for pranksters?”

  Take a look at us, we’re obviously not street riffraff. We’re too old to be simply monkeying around.”

  “Let’s see again: if it’s not Link, anyone who got the note would call either the police or us. Or they would get one of the staff to call, just to be on the safe side.”

  “True.”

  “Then if there’s no call, it is Link after all.”

  “I hope so. Yes, it’s definitely Link! We saw Yoshi.”

  “And how long can we wait for him to react?”

  “Let’s wait until morning. We were there around lunchtime, let’s suppose he got all the morning papers and the next viewing, including our letter, and won’t be until tomorrow morning.”

  “What if he doesn't read his mail at all, just emails?”

  “Well, we said quite clearly that the letter was for the villa's owner.”

  “All right, we’ll wait until morning, but what do we do then if he doesn’t call?”

  “Look, I don't have a clue!”

  “As you wish,” Bikie shrugged.

  “All right, we’ll wait until morning, but what do we do then if he doesn’t call?”

  “Well, tomorrow is a new day, you know.”

  “If you say so.”

  Suddenly the phone rang which made Isaac and Bikie almost jump out of their skin. Isaac waited a few seconds to pull himself together and answered the call.

  “Hello?”

  “Good evening. I’ve been handed a very strange letter from you and, to be honest, I don’t understand a thing.” The voice had a slight nasal twang, as if the nose was squeezed shut by something.

  “A-ah, yes, I sent you a letter.”

  “Perhaps you’ll explain what it means?”

  “It means that we want to meet you.”

  “Me? What for? I think it must be some kind of mistake.”

  “No, Mr. Link, it isn’t a mistake.” Isaac was confident again now. “We put in a lot of work to find you, and we
did. There’s no point in playing games with us. You’re dealing with a couple of pretty smart guys here. Believe me, it would be best for us to meet and discuss everything. I recognized your voice, I’ve listened to your lecture on YouTube, so there’s no doubt. Either you meet with us or I post my conclusions about your whereabouts on popular forums, you decide. If I’m wrong, then sorry. The police will come and you can try to prove that you’re not Professor Link after all.”

  “According to my calculations, you should have done that a couple of hours ago. But you haven’t.”

  “But…”

  “Of course, if the meeting really is so important to you, I don’t think you’re ready to flush the results of your work down the pan because of an hour or two’s delay.”

  “True, but it doesn’t mean I’m not prepared to flush them down the pan at all. I quite definitely am. If the result is negative, it can be discarded.”

  “All right,” said the voice, losing its nasal twang. “Let’s not waste time on words. What do you want?”

  “I told you, I want to meet.”

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

  “Why not, I wonder?”

  “You’re probably in Sardinia now?”

  “And aren’t you?”

  “Not any longer. I’m in Capri. Or maybe in Corsica.”

  “Won’t you get tired of running? We found you, so we can find you again. But not just for ourselves any longer, for everyone. How did you sneak out of the villa, by the way?”

  “Now that, young man, is none of your business. So let’s manage this by phone somehow. By the way, it’s your fault I had to leave Sardinia.”

  “Professor, the questions I want to discuss are not for telephone.”

  “You mean you want to discuss something illegal with me?”

  “That depends how you look at it. I’d prefer to describe the situation as fighting an epidemic.”

  “You’ve probably got the wrong man. I’m not a specialist in that area.”

  “Well, I think there is one epidemic where it’s impossible to find another specialist of your level.”

  “Ah, I think I’m beginning to understand what you’re driving at, young man.”

  “Professor, think about it. There are plenty of clues to your presence left at the villa. Fingerprints, hair and all sorts of things. You’re a very visible individual. And so is your Japanese girlfriend. How far away will you sail? Where to, Japan?”

  “That’s enough,” said Professor. “We can meet. My driver will pick you up at the hotel tomorrow morning and bring you to me.”

  “Straight to Capri?”

  “Straight to me.”

  After the conversation Isaac did not feel exactly overjoyed. Finding Link should have been a cause for celebration, but the conversation did not go well.

  Bikie nervously ran through every idea that might enter the professor’s head.

  “What if he decides to get rid of us? Poison us? Or hand us over to the police?”

  He hastily threw together a program that would send a pile of information to all his friends at a certain moment. Or not send it, if it received the command to cancel. He thought that would keep Link under control.

  In the morning Isaac purchased an absorbent gel used in cases of food poisoning in a chemist’s shop. He ate half a tube of the jellyfish-like goo himself and stuffed Bikie with it too.

  “It ought to neutralize a dose of poison or a sleeping draught,” he explained. “I’m more concerned about soporifics.”

  Bikie laughed and said that in any case he wouldn’t accept any cups of tea or coffee from the professor’s hands and Isaac shouldn’t either. In addition, after inspecting the contents of his bag, he took a knife out of it and stuck in it in his belt. Now armed, he calmed down a bit.

  “He won’t try to kill us. What’s the point? He realizes we can put out information about him. He doesn’t know how many of us there are. I didn’t need to swallow that gel of yours. If we found him, it means we’re not idiots, so we would take precautions. And you pressed him hard on the phone. I liked that.”

  “You know, to be quite honest, I really feel like a drink.”

  “With that gel in your stomach?”

  “Yeah, what a bummer. Seems like we do things right, but something always gets overlooked.”

  “Drop it. The important thing is, we found him.”

  Isaac nodded and started dashing off a text for Michelle on his mobile phone. Sensing danger ahead, he wanted to write to someone really close to him. The morning was already almost over, the clock showed past eleven, and Link’s driver still wasn’t there. They decided go to the lobby and have a cup of coffee – they needed to kill time somehow.

  Chapter 20

  The car arrived at the hotel at midday. It was an ordinary taxi. The driver spoke neither English nor French. He said they were going to Porto Cervo, smiled at all their questions and answered in Italian. The language is very similar to French, so they were able to understand that he had been called in a usual way, asked to pick up two men at the hotel and take them to the sea port. It was mostly grand yachts that moored at Porto Cervo, the driver explained. But in every luxury port, you could also find ordinary fishing boats and smaller yachts too.

  Isaac and Bikie were met by a morose character who introduced himself as the professor’s assistant. His dour look sat strangely with the jolly red color of his beard and a gleaming bald patch. And his sudden appearance confused them even more: how would Link deal with them? What should they expect?

  Meanwhile, the assistant handed each of them a package containing shorts, a tank top, and flip-flops. There were also two baseball caps with the inscription “Sardinia”.

  They went to the nearby beach to get changed and were given a key to a locker where they could leave their things. They looked funny. In fact, the clothes fit Bikie, but hung baggily on Isaac. Bikie tried to conceal the knife in his shorts but he couldn’t so he left it in the locker.

  Redbeard waited for them to get changed and led them along the quayside. Isaac examined with curiosity the little boats and the large yachts and ships standing a bit further off shore. They came to a rather large sixty-foot sailing yacht, old but well-kept. The sail was furled, the engine running.

  “Board the yacht, please,” Redbeard said.

  They walked across a springy gangway to where an Italian captain was waiting for them. As soon as they were all on board, he cast off the mooring rope and the yacht put out to sea.

  There was a slight swell and Isaac started feeling sick. The captain noticed and handed him a pill.

  “For seasickness,” he explained.

  Isaac thanked him, pretended that he was feeling much worse, leaned over the side and flung the pill away.

  “Boss, I could do with a pill too!” asked Bikie. He took it and tucked the pill in his pocket inconspicuously.

  “What for?” Isaac said quietly.

  “Maybe we can check to see if it’s a poison,” Bikie whispered with his lips barely moving. “Maybe even test it on our professor. Or on Redbeard there.”

  Bikie was upset at being left without his knife, and he felt calmer knowing that at least he had a pill of “poison”.

  The yacht kept sailing away from the shore. The guys sat at the bow and gazed at the sea’s blue, rippling undulations. They weren’t sailing to Capri like this. Perhaps the professor was coming to meet them on another yacht?

  Suddenly a sharp voice behind them said:

  “Well then, congratulations! You managed to do what no one else could. You found me.”

  Isaac swung around. A short man of about sixty was emerging from a small cabin that Isaac had thought was empty. He straightened up to his full height and the guys immediately recognized that cunning glint in his narrowed eyes: the professor had gazed out at them so many times from various photographs.

  His thick, back-combed hair with very marked receding temples glinted in the sun, dividing the upper part of his
head in two, which gave him a somewhat diabolical air. Fine lines radiated out from his eyes, making his expression cunning and good-natured by turns, and several deep furrows in his forehead testified to exceptional intellectual capacity. He was attractive and scary at the same time, which was exactly what Isaac had imagined the professor to be.

  Isaac eventually replied to the professor in the same tone.

  “I think we really wanted to.”

  “I can see you did. Well done, well done.”

  “And I see you weren’t really in Capri?”

  “Of course, I wasn’t. I never left the villa. You’re still kids, you have a lot of weapons in your arsenal: passion and unflinching determination. But in mine, I also have experience and bluff.”

  “That all comes with time, but we have youth in our arsenal too.”

  “Now you’re offending me, that’s in poor taste.”

  “I’m sorry, it just slipped out. I don’t like to back down.”

  “That’s a good quality, but there is also Aikido. Why go head on, sometimes it’s better to make use of your opponent’s energy… Would you like some wine? Local, home-grown.”

  “Professor, why did you choose such a strange place for the meeting, on a yacht? Do you think you’re safer here?” Isaac parried.

  “No, not because of that. I have nothing to be afraid of, and my experience tells me that wasting nerve cells on stress causes far more harm than the actual danger that so often fails to materialize. I enjoy fishing. Sitting there, catching fish, thinking.”

  “I booked this yacht last week. And I decided not to cancel it, I thought we could talk perfectly well out here.”

  “And what if we’d been seasick?”

  “There are pills for that,” the professor said with a smile, holding out his hand, into which the captain placed exactly the same kind of pill he had given to Isaac and Bikie. The professor screwed up his eyes and tossed it into his mouth with an abrupt movement.

  Isaac and Bikie exchanged glances and the professor continued.

  “And then, even if you were seasick, we wouldn’t be far from shore, the engine would get us to port in five minutes, and we could easily talk in the evening, eating what we catch today for supper.”