“Ok,” Denzel said. “So, the gunman got his hands on it when Bristol died. How did he even know it existed?”
Kotler shrugged. “No way to know that just yet. But I’m starting to suspect that journal is at the heart of all this. Maybe Dr. Bristol took it somewhere to be authenticated, and someone got word of it.”
“That makes sense,” Denzel said. “At least something makes sense, finally. But now the bad guys have the journal.”
“I think they’ve had it for at least six months,” Kotler said. “And it’s incomplete. Which is why they needed Patel’s research.”
“And how would they know about Patel’s research?” Denzel asked.
“I think they’ve been trying to reconstruct it,” Kotler said. “The gunman knew that Patel had access to this place, here in London. He had him fly here. I think that man is working for someone else. Someone who knows all about Devil’s Interval, and wants to rebuild it. Probably to sell it to the highest bidder.”
Denzel was examining the Theremin. “It’s a good story, Kotler, but I don’t see how it helps us.”
“It gives us a bit more to look for, at least,” Kotler said, shrugging. “If Bristol kept a log or something about this site, there might be evidence for it among her things. It’s something else we can look for. Another piece.”
“So far, this entire case is nothing but pieces,” Denzel said.
Kotler laughed. “Welcome to archeology.”
Chapter 9
They had a flight back to New York booked for the next day, but the best takeoff time they could manage was nearly noon, London time. That put them getting back in the evening in New York. A long and seemingly wasted day.
Denzel arranged for Patel to be flown back after answering some pointed questions from London authorities for the next couple of days. They were very keen to learn more about what other discoveries Patel may have made, and what he’d done with them.
Kotler was certain that Patel had nothing to do with Ashton's murder, and Denzel agreed. But he still had a lot to answer for, concerning the discovery of Newton's underground lab, and the fact that Patel not only kept it a secret, but mined it for profit. Kotler didn't envy the man for everything he'd go through, both in London and back in New York. His credibility was a smoldering heap now.
As it was, Kotler and Denzel found themselves with a free night in London. It took some convincing, but Kotler finally managed to persuade Denzel that his time would be best spent in the most lively local pub they could find.
"You need a pint and some fish and chips," Kotler grinned.
"Sounds kind of touristy," Denzel replied, his body language throwing off hints that he was both reluctant and intrigued.
"Well, we get to be tourists for the night," Kotler said, and nudged his partner out into the London evening.
They found a place just a few blocks from their hotel. It was exactly the spot Kotler had in mind—dart boards and boisterous conversation occupied everyone who wasn't holding a froth-headed mug or digging into a meal that, to Kotler, seemed far heartier than any bar food he’d previously encountered.
Kotler and Denzel got a table, ordered their drinks and their food, and settled into the atmosphere.
"I always end up in places like this," Kotler said, smiling.
"No surprise. You go looking for them," Denzel said.
Kotler laughed. "I guess I do. It's just that these places, to me, represent all the nuances and truth of a culture. If you could track every major moment in history back to its origin, you'd find most of them started in a place like this. Or in the old coffee houses, or at bath houses. The theme of the place never mattered as much as the atmosphere. Gathering places. What Howard Schultz called 'the third place.'"
"Who?" Denzel asked. He was sipping a stout beer from a frosted mug, the liquid grading from frothy at the top to rich and dark at the bottom. It left a bit of foam on Denzel's lip, which Kotler, smiling, chose not to mention.
"Howard Schultz was basically the founder of the modern-day version of Starbucks. He took the concept of a small, highly knowledgeable coffee seller, and married it to the idea of the traditional espresso bars in Italy. He worked from a philosophy that people need a third place—something outside of work and home. Something that lets them be part of a community. That idea isn't new. Humanity has always sought out a third place, and they're often the birthplace of new philosophies and ideas, even revolutions. I'd be willing to bet that the idea of the Boston Tea Party started at an actual tea party."
Denzel nodded, and finally wiped his lip with a napkin, to Kotler’s slight disappointment. "Fascinating," he said.
Kotler chuckled. "History. I guess I can't get away from it."
"That's why you're here," Denzel said. He looked around, and shook his head. "Sometimes I wonder why I'm here, though."
Kotler arched his eyebrows, surprised. "What do you mean? Here in London? Or …" he let the sentence drift, because he didn't actually know what he meant to say. He was fishing. Denzel had been a bit more prickly than usual lately, and Kotler wondered what it meant.
Denzel wasn’t meeting Kotler’s eye, but instead swept the pub, catching on details here and there. He sighed. “Ok,” he said. “I’ll tell you. I’m concerned that I’m a little out of my element here.”
“Here being …”
“The job, Kotler. The Historic Crimes division. I’m worried that I’m in on something I can’t handle, and that I’ll drop the ball. Screw up.”
“What has you thinking this?” Kotler asked, sipping from his own beer.
Denzel shook his head.
“History. Archeology. Science. That’s all your gig,” Denzel said. “I’m just a guy with a gun and a badge. The kind of stuff I’ve done in my career—it’s more like what Detective Holden does. I go to a crime scene, I gather evidence, I work the case. Sometimes those cases turn out to be related to national security. Terrorism. Sometimes they’re just garden variety murders, but the person has ties to something of interest to the FBI. That’s the kind of thing I worked on before. Oh, and babysitting troublemaking archeologists.”
“Flattered I made the list,” Kotler smiled.
“But the rest? Vikings and ancient cities and hidden labs? Unless those labs are being used to make meth or dirty bombs, I was never really involved. The rest of it was just stuff I might have read about in the news, if I needed to kill time in the john.”
He took another sip from his beer, leaving another dollop of foam on his lip.
Kotler nodded. “You have …” he indicated his lip, and Denzel wiped the foam with a napkin, thanking him.
“Look,” Kotler said. “I know this wasn’t really your thing before, but the Bureau saw a need for this division, right? They promoted you. Put you in charge. That has to say something about your … well, I guess your worthiness, though I think you’re worthy regardless of what anyone else thinks.”
Denzel nodded. “Yeah, they put me in charge. Gave me resources, too. And there are plenty of cases. Seems like a new case comes in every day. It’s almost like the Bureau has been waiting for someone to come along, so they could hand these over and have any hope that they’d be solved.”
“That’s good news, then, right?” Kotler asked. “You’re the guy for the job.”
Denzel laughed. “No, Kotler, you’re the guy for the job. I’m just the guy with the badge. I’m the guy who happened to be with you when we took down Director Crispen. The higher ups in the Bureau wanted to mitigate any fallout from Crispen, so that may be half of why I got this assignment.”
Kotler was finally starting to see it. “Roland, look, this whole thing … it’s just new, right? It’s true there was a bit of luck, when it came to you being part of it. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t qualified. You’ve handled some pretty intense stuff, without breaking much of a sweat. That means something. Are you thinking you don’t have a role in this? Because you do. You know you do.”
“Kotler, most of the ti
me I feel about as useful as pickle in a candy store, when we’re working one of these cases.” He waved off Kotler’s move to protest. “No, look, it’s all good. You’re right. I have a role. I can do something useful with this. I think I’m just trying to figure out what my part actually is, aside from pointing and shooting.”
“Your connections and resources are the only thing that makes this work,” Kotler said. “You’re the actual operation here.”
“I don’t follow,” Denzel replied.
“The FBI didn’t approach me about heading this division,” Kotler said. “They might have wanted me in on it, but they knew it wouldn’t be enough to just give me some sort of charter and let me go digging into case files. I’m just a consultant. I’m only part of this because you made me part of it. I’m replaceable.”
Denzel scoffed. “Hardly. I couldn’t do any of this without you. I don’t know the first thing about even half of what you talk about, most of the time.”
“Exactly my point,” Kotler said, smiling. “We both have our roles to play. I provide the history and science. That’s my gig, like you said. But you bring your field experience, your connections, your resources. You bring your investigative abilities—I can’t hold a candle to those. You also happen to bring the power of the Bureau into the equation, which is nothing to take lightly. Even if I had the backing of the FBI, on my own I wouldn’t even know how to use it. But together we can do this. That’s the point.”
Denzel studied him, then nodded, picking up a few French fries drenched in malt vinegar. “Ok,” he said.
“Ok,” Kotler replied, raising his mug in toast before taking another sip.
“So,” Denzel said, “What do we think about this log that Dr. Bristol may or may not have kept?”
Kotler shook his head. “Until we ask the people back at AMSL about it, I have no idea. My working theory is that she found that journal in Newton’s chamber, kept it hidden from Patel, and kept records about it in her personal logs at AMSL. Someone discovered she had it, and killed her to get it.”
“You’re sounding more like an FBI agent every day,” Denzel said, grinning. “But why kill her? Why not just force her to hand over whatever she found?”
“Maybe they did,” Kotler said, thinking. “Maybe that’s what someone has right now. Some piece of the puzzle. But what they’re missing is Patel’s part. If Bristol was keeping a log, she might have shadowed all of Patel’s research. She may have made her own copies.”
“So why not just kill Patel?”
Kotler considered. “I’m not sure. But he’s more secretive than we might have thought at first. Maybe he didn’t keep complete records. In fact, I’m willing to bet on that. He kept information out of his research logs, precisely because he didn’t want anyone to find out he’s been pilfering a historic site. But Bristol …”
“Bristol may have had more of an ethical conscience about the legitimacy of their work,” Denzel said, sipping his beer and thinking. “And unfortunately, that may be what got her killed.”
Kotler thought about that for a moment. He’d already been burned after making assumptions about Patel—relating a little too closely to the man as a scientist and historian. He would be more careful about making assumptions from here out. But based on what they’d learned about Lawny Bristol so far, Kotler couldn’t help but think she was an innocent caught up in something bigger than she could handle. She had to have been complicit in covering up the lab, but there were signs that it hadn’t rested as well with her as it had with Patel. She may have been making a play to bring all of this to light. And in that, she may have trusted the wrong person.
“But then there’s the SD card that Ashton Mink took,” Denzel said, breaking Kotler’s preoccupied reflection. “The thing he was murdered for.”
Kotler nodded. “Seems like we have a Tel Dan inscription,” he said.
Denzel stared at him over a handful of fries, his mouth slightly open. He rolled his eyes. “Ok, tell me what a Tel Dan inscription is,” he grumbled.
Kotler smiled. “It has to do with King David.”
“From the Bible?” Denzel asked.
Kotler nodded. “And only from the Bible, for centuries. For a couple of millennia, in fact. For thousands of years, the only written historic record we had for the actual existence of King David was the Torah, the basis of the Old Testament. Both of which are based on oral tradition, making them somewhat unreliable from an academic standpoint.”
“Wait, we don’t have proof that King David was a real person?”
“We didn’t,” Kotler said. “Until 1993. That’s when an archeologist named Avraham Biron unearthed evidence of David’s existence from the Tel Dan site in northern Israel. In the excavation they uncovered a stone, which they could date to ninth-century BC. That stone made a reference to the ‘House of David.’ The first in recorded history, outside of biblical texts. It was an account from an Arabian king, boasting about his victory over the ‘king of Israel’ and ‘the king of the House of David.’ It was a fragmented account, missing a lot of details. But most scholars believe it’s from Hazel of Damascus, detailing his defeat of Johoram of Israel and Ahaziah of Judah.”
“Ok,” Denzel said.
Kotler knew he was losing his friend in the details, and needed to bring this around, before Denzel lost interest. “Basically, we had accounts of David from the Bible, from his childhood to his slaying of Goliath, all the way up to the seduction of Bathsheba and the passing of his kingdom to Solomon. But it was all hearsay. There was no proof, outside of biblical accounts, that David even existed. Not until that fragment was recovered. I think that the same thing may be true for the Devil’s Interval. There were stories of this research, and some historic documentation. But the idea of someone pursuing it to fruition was just hearsay. That is, until Patel came along and built technology based on that lost research. That would have piqued interest, from someone at least. And if this third party somehow figured out that Dr. Bristol had an actual document or log from the Newton chamber, that would have been just the Tel Dan inscription they’d be looking for. Getting their hands on that may not give them all the information they need to build whatever Patel designed, but it would be enough to prove it was real. Worth the effort and resources needed to obtain it.”
“The proof made it a target,” Denzel said.
Kotler nodded. “What I’m thinking is that they found their proof too late. I think they got their hands on whatever Bristol found, six months ago, but they killed her for something else.”
“Her logs,” Denzel said. “They needed to have her logs archived and locked, so that only they could get to them.” He cursed. “Which means it had to be an inside job.”
“Or at the very least, someone inside is in on it,” Kotler said. “Someone knew that once Bristol died, those logs would be archived and locked, so only key people at AMSL could access them.”
“Key people like Ashton Mink,” Denzel said.
“We need to know exactly what was and was not deleted from the servers, and what Ashton would have backed up on that SD card.”
“I’ve already set up appointments to drop back by AMSL, after we land. So, we’d better get out of here and get some sleep. It’s going to be a very long day.”
Kotler took another sip of his beer.
“Kotler,” Denzel said, waving towards Kotler’s face. “You have foam on your lip. Use a napkin, will ya?”
Part II
Chapter 10
Kotler was feeling the sort of groggy that can’t be easily combatted, even by the best of coffee. He was on his second cup as he and Denzel walked into the lobby of AMSL. The building was dim, running in night mode with lights lowered. Security was still alert, however. Kotler got the impression that one does not shirk one’s security detail, when one reports to Nick Peters.
They were shown through the scanner—something very like the airport security scanners they’d moved through between London and New York—and into one of t
he elevators. On the ride up, the security guard yawned more than once.
“Long shift?” Kotler asked.
“Early, actually,” the man said. “I just got here about fifteen minutes ago. I’m here through 6AM. I’m still adjusting to sleeping during the day.”
“You just started, then?” Kotler asked.
The guard smiled and nodded. “Came on about a week ago, as soon as there was an opening.”
They exited the elevator and the guard led them to the same conference room they’d used a few days earlier. Everything was much quieter now, of course, and darker. But the room lit up as they entered. Kotler slumped into one of the comfortable chairs, and sipped his coffee, in an attempt to perk up a bit.
“What was that, with the guard?” Denzel asked.
“Just being friendly,” Kotler shrugged.
“Except you learned he’s new, and that someone else left,” Denzel said.
“Sounds like you learned it, too, Agent Denzel.”
Denzel nodded, took out his notepad, and made a note.
Several minutes later, Ross Miller entered the conference room. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting again,” he said. “Even this late in the evening, I still end up with a lot to do.” He gave a weary smile. “You’ve found something in your investigation?”
“We found Patel,” Denzel said. “London authorities have him in custody now, and he’ll be back in New York in a couple of days.”
Miller nodded. “Did he … is he …?”
“No, he didn’t murder Ashton Mink,” Denzel said. “But he’s committed a few other crimes, which I’m not able to discuss. I thought it might be fair to warn you, some of his work here may be called into question.”
“Any danger to our patents?” Miller asked.
“I couldn’t say,” Denzel replied.
“You might want to have your attorneys on standby,” Kotler said.
Miller looked from Denzel to Kotler, and nodded. “Well, this has become an even bigger mess somehow.”
The Devil's Interval Page 10