Even the Wind: A Jonas Brant Thriller

by Phillip Wilson

  ``Brant, don’t bullshit me.’’

  ``Why come to me, sir?’’

  Brant shifted his handset from one ear to the other.

  ``Did you hear me?’’

  ``Bad connection, sir. I missed the last part.’’

  ``I said I want to see you in my office ASAP. That means as soon as possible.’’

  ``I know what it means.’’

  ``So why are we still talking?’’

  ``I’m following a lead, sir. You wanted the Carswell case resolved as quickly as possible.’’

  ``You’ve had days and you don’t seem to have anything on Carswell. Now get back here or you’re facing a disciplinary hearing.’’

  ``I’m just finishing up.’’

  ``You’re done. Did you hear what I said?’’

  Jolly spluttered, casting the words out between gasps of breath. Brant imagined the man sitting at his desk, his hands balled into fists, his face crimson.

  ``I’ve got to go. I’m getting close on Carswell, sir.’’

  ``Brant, you….’’

  Brant stared at his handset’s blank screen after he’d hung up.

  His fingers danced over Carswell’s keyboard as his mind raced. Would she have hidden her passwords at home? Her boyfriend, the sailor, had said she’d worked on a laptop. On his laptop to be more precise. She’d used the cloud. Maybe she’d uploaded whatever she’d been working on to a storage program on the Internet. She’d had to have done something like that, hadn’t she? The CDs they’d taken from her room had turned up mostly blank, the exception of course being the snippet of phone conversation she’d recorded. Her work computer was an impenetrable brick. She’d left no notebooks.

  Was that it? Had Allison Carswell simply ceased to exist with her murder? How had she gotten mixed up with Volodin and his crew to begin with? Who was this woman, this phantom, he’d been chasing for the past few days? Who was she really? Was he any closer to finding out? By appearances, she’d been devout. Enough so that she’d worn a crucifix in the lab. She’d had a child. Given it up for adoption. She’d had boyfriends, became disenfranchised from her parents. She’d been making progress at work, fooling around with the genetic code. Was that acceptable, consistent with her beliefs? How had she reconciled her belief in God with her job of manipulating the very underpinnings of life? And what of the gun? So uncharacteristic. Had she been scared for her life?

  Brant cast his eyes over the room. He stood, paced from desk to window to bed. He became a pantomime, mimicking Carswell’s movements, training his attention on the detail of his surroundings.

  Then it hit him. The Bible. The passage. There was meaning there, he was sure of it.

  Brant went to the bedside table and opened the drawer. The Bible was as they’d left it, untouched and unremarkable. He took it from the drawer and placed it on the bedspread. It was a King James and old, black leather with a pebbled surface, the edges cracked and worn.

  He flipped the Bible open, running his fingers over the yellowed pages. She’d underlined the quote from Matthew. It had to have meaning, hadn’t it?

  Brant licked his finger as he turned the pages. He found the quote eventually and read it aloud, willing himself to understand why she’d placed significance in the words.

  ``The men were amazed, and said ``What kind of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?’’

  ``What the Hell is that supposed to mean?’’

  He went to Carswell’s computer and typed in a combination of words derived from the quote. Nothing. He tried again. The computer protested.

  ``I’d want to make it easy,’’ he said aloud. ``Something I could remember.’’

  In thought, he pinched the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. Could he will the answer into existence? He could try.

  Again, he typed, this time replacing the quotes with variations of the source of the words.

  ``KingJamesBible.’’

  Nothing.

  ``BibleKing.’’

  Nope.

  ``WindandBible.’’

  Nada.

  Then it struck him. Any good password was a combination of words and letters. Maybe even symbols. It was staring him in the face. How could he be so stupid?

  ``Matthew8:27’’

  He pressed return, his efforts immediately rewarded as the hard drive spun into action. An electric charge ran through his body.

  The first screen to come up was pay dirt. A spreadsheet with two columns and twenty three rows. No headers on the spreadsheet but he didn’t need that. He opened another window on the computer and typed in the first word in the first column. To his untrained eye, it was an exotic jumble of indecipherable and unpronounceable letters.

  ``Gammaretoviral and lentiviral vectors’’ Brant said, reading from the screen.

  ``What exactly is a gammaretoviral?’’ he said to no one.

  He plugged the term into a new tab on the web browser. The results quickly filled the screen.

  ``A genus of the retroviridae family. Example species are the murine leukemia virus and the feline leukemia virus.’’

  ``What the….’’ Brant shook his head in frustration. He retyped the search request, this time forming a question.

  ``What is a gammaretoviral and where is it used?’’

  The first result to appear on the screen was from Wikipedia. Not the most authoritative, but good enough for his purposes at the moment.

  ``Murine Leukemia Virus, a simple gammaretrovirus, can be converted and used as an efficient vector for the delivery of genetic therapeutics,’’ he read aloud from a paper published by the National Institutes of Health.

  A delivery vector. Well, that was certainly a start. She’d been researching different ways to move genetic material into a cell. He was sure of it now.

  Brant tapped the keyboard as he clicked through a set of screens, formatting the spreadsheet for printing. When he was satisfied, he hit print. The printer sprung to life, spewing out a flurry of paper.

  ``What secrets are in here, Allison?’’ he asked the screen.

  The screen stared back, mute and uncooperative.

  More thought. What else would she have left on the computer? What trail of digital detritus was there?

  He clicked into a folder icon that had been saved to the desktop. The folder opened, displaying its content as a list of file names. None of the identifiers were particularly illuminating. He could spend hours going through the files and find nothing. Or maybe he’d hit pay dirt. Its was a crapshoot.

  Randomly, he opened one of the most recent files. A document appeared on the screen containing nothing but two blue links. One took him to a document posted to the website of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The second linked to an article on The Scientist website about a dispute over a patent for a type of genome-editing technology.

  Brant scrutinized the article closely. The story described the awarding of a patent for a system called CRISPR-Cas9 to edit eukaryotic genomes and a competing patent application from a different scientist in Germany.

  Next, he selected the email icon from the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. The first of the messages had been sent little more than two weeks before. Most of the emails were inconsequential, but one caught his attention. Franz Eichel had messaged on August 14.

  Brant frowned. The message wasn’t what he’d expected. No subject line at the top. No text. Instead, he found a string of letters — symbols really — arranged in a column. The word ``positions’’ had been highlighted in bold.

  The letters were indecipherable. On a whim, he typed the lead symbol into a search engine. The effort returned a result in an instant.

  ``Procter & Gamble Co. NYSE:PG - Aug 25 5:51 PM EDT’’

  The first of the search queries included a chart, a blue line denoting what Brant guessed to be the stock performance of Procter & Gamble.

  It was the same for the other symbols. Each belonged to a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange
. Brant scanned the list after he’d deciphered most of the symbols. Vitamin makers. Drug makers. Medical supply companies. Pharmaceuticals makers.

  A second email from Eichel included a website link cut and pasted into the body of the message. And again more symbols, this time under the heading ``shorted.’’

  He repeated what he’d done for the first batch, quickly translating the second email’s contents into another list of companies. This one was more perplexing. Tour companies. Airlines. Hotel operators.

  The link took him to a month-old story posted on the New York Times’s website.

  ``MERS Virus Kills 2 in South Korea as Infections Rise to 25.’’

  Brant read the headline for a second time, then the text. The story described the first reported deaths from a virus called ``Middle East respiratory syndrome’’ and how it had spread. The story was datelined Seoul and quoted officials from the South Korean health ministry.

  ``South Korea?’’

  Brant made a mental note before printing out Eichel’s emails and the New York Times story.

  What did it all mean? He’d have to think on it.

  He opened the web browser again, clicking through to the History menu. A single click brought up Carswell’s last web searches conveniently displayed by date.

  He hovered the computer’s pointer over the last date. Saturday, August 16. He remembered it. Hot. Humid. He’d taken Benji to a water park. They’d played in the splash pools as Ben was still too young for the slides.

  The date was about right. Plug it into the timeline of what they knew about her whereabouts in the days before her body was discovered, and it fit. If the medical examiner’s calculations had been right, she would have been dead two days before they’d found her. Tuesday, August 19. So she’d been at home on the Saturday, working on the computer. Doing what?

  A click redirected the computer’s browser to the last website Carswell had visited. Google Maps. The screen displayed a topographical map of the New England area. A second click expanded the map, zooming in on Boston. Nothing there to see. Mouse over the menu box on the maps page. The screen dropped down and he was in luck. Carswell had dropped a location pin to the map. Maine. Masardis. Where had he heard that name before?

  He took out his cell and called Clatterback.

  ``Masardis,’’ he said once Clatterback had answered.

  ``Huh? Where are you by the way?’’

  ``Masardis. Remember, you mentioned a few days back.’’

  ``Yeah, what about it?’’

  ``Remind me what it is, Junior.’’

  Silence as Clatterback considered the point.

  ``Carswell’s phone records, the calls she made right before her death.’’

  ``Yeah, what about them?’’ Brant asked.

  He’d clicked into Street View and was looking at a photograph of Masardis and the Aroostook Scenic Highway. There was little to see. A rural road. Trees. A bridge over a river. The highway was a long stretch of road running into the distance. A picture-perfect red barn. White Colonial-style clapboard houses.

  ``The texts and the calls were made to a guy named Franz Eichel. They bounced off a cell tower near Masardis. Why the interest all of a sudden?’’

  ``I’m working on something. I’ll call you back.’’

  ``Wait….’’

  Now he remembered. Eichel’s Twitter feed had shown him to be some kind of outdoorsman. Brant typed in another search request, this time calling up a screen of links to camping outfitters and guiding companies in Maine. None had a store or headquarters in Masardis, but there was an exception, a kayaking outfitter operated out of a camp and lodge on a lake some distance away from town. The lodge was run by a man named John King. The contact information was at the bottom of the web page.

  He called the number. A woman answered on the third ring.

  ``Franz Eichel, please,’’ Brant said, hopeful but cautious.

  ``Who’s calling?’’

  ``An old acquaintance.’’

  ``He’s out on the lake with a group. Can I take a message?’’

  ``I’ll call back.’’

  He hung up, stared at the computer screen as he willed it to yield more secrets. John King’s kayaking webpage showed no Franz Eichel among its staff. Not that that meant anything. He dialed Clatterback a second time.

  ``Are you going to hang up again?’’

  ``Sorry, Junior.’’

  ``Jolly’s been looking for you. He’s going apes.’’

  ``What did you tell him?’’

  ``The truth. I have no idea where you are.’’

  ``Listen, you and Katy. Keep working on the interviews and the transcripts. Search Carswell’s texts. Anything you get on Franz Eichel, give me a call. Understood?’’

  ``Yeah, but….’’

  Brant cut him off.

  ``Cover for me with Jolly.’’

  ``Where are you going? What am I supposed to say?’’

  Clatterback’s voice cracked, betraying his discomfit at subterfuge.

  ``Sir? Are you still there?’’

  Brant smiled, his hand automatically going to the Beretta in its holster. Funny the warmth, comfort and power he sometimes felt as he ran his hand along the cold metal.

  ``It’s better if you don’t know where I am,’’ Brant said. ``It means deniability if he asks.’’

  ``Jolly’s not going to like it,’’ Clatterback said.

  ``No, he’s not.’’

  With that, he hung up.

  Eichel had been in Boston but was no longer in the city. Allison Carswell had planned on meeting him in Maine. Sometime between making arrangements and before she could leave, she’d been murdered.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The road was a canyon, a narrow passage cut through dense foliage with trees towering on either side of a gravel-edged boundary between the wild and the civilized. From his bicycle, Jonas watched as trees whipped past in a blur of green. Winded, he’d reached the crest of a hill, paused briefly to admire his surroundings, then plunged forward with abandon, throwing his weight forward and sending the bicycle’s carbon fiber body hurling toward the bottom of the hill.

  Wind eddied and swirled around him, licking at the errant locks of hair peaking out from under his helmet. Brant gulped in a fresh breath of air, inhaling deeply as an infusion of clean, life-affirming oxygen hit his brain, sending a cascade of neuronal firings into play.

  He stopped pedalling and coasted. Had it not been for the clips, he would have taken his feet off the pedals completely. As it was, he crouched low against the handlebars, tucked into an aero position and let gravity propel him deeper through the walls of vegetation and the thickening afternoon gloom.

  His face broke into a broad grin as the bicycle coasted to a stop and he pulled off onto the gravel shoulder. Forest sounds punctuated the air. A wild bird called plaintively. Crickets clicked. The low-pitched croaking of a single frog beckoned from somewhere among the thick tufts of grass.

  Brant dismounted and laid the bicycle gently on its side. In the lengthening shadows of the afternoon and the gray light of an overcast sky, he had to squint to see. Better that he use the flashlight he’d brought, he thought as he unzipped the small canvas bag fixed snuggly around his waist.

  He crouched low, prodded the spongy soil with the tip of his finger. The trail, if one could call it that, began by the road’s edge, snaked down a small incline, then disappeared amongst a thicket of trees. He fixed the flashlight on the ground, probing for signs of disturbance or the imprint of a boot. Nothing. The trail had gone cold.

  He stood and clenched the flashlight between his teeth, freeing his hands to remove the helmet, which he placed beside the bike. He went at a measured pace, circling the patch of boggy ground, cursing the previous day’s rain and the way it had wiped the slate clean.

  It was the fourth afternoon, the second time he’d followed Eichel’s trail, the second time he’d lost him in the wall of green and the unfamiliar surroundings of the for
est setting. The trick was to maintain a discrete distance while keeping him within his sights. Easy to do in a city with its myriad obstacles, distractions and barriers; more difficult in the countryside. Weeks could pass before anyone trod on the ground out here. Cars were a rarity.

  Pain shot through his hip, a reminder of the previous day. He’d been run off the road while in pursuit of Eichel. A car had shot out from behind and had passed by so close he could have easily touched the paintwork. The near-collision had sent Brant and the bike careening into a ditch where he’d ended up falling onto a thicket of spongy grass. Had the driver been aiming for him? He’d been so startled and rattled by the accident that he’d failed to take note of the vehicle’s make or license plate. All he’d seen in his fog of confusion were the taillights, two flickering orbs of red suspended in midair, fading into the distance.

  Out of frustration, Brant kicked uselessly at a mound of dirt.

  ``Shit,’’ he said aloud.

  He was already calculating the time and effort it would take to ride back to the cabin. Leave now and he’d return before dark. Every minute more on Eichel’s trail threw him deeper into darkness.

  Eichel was a cipher, a code, an encryption.

  Most days, he took a group out on the lake. A two-hour paddle on flat, unchallenging water. The groups would gather at the edge of the water, on a pebbled, sloping beach. They’d stand in their dry suits and life preservers, watching as Eichel waded into the water to demonstrate proper paddling techniques. The kayaks would be lined up on the beach, laid against each other like multicolored sardines in a can.

  Brant knew this because he’d made it his business to track Eichel’s every move, to watch and document everything the man did or said. Binoculars proved helpful in conducting the surveillance from a distance.

  Eichel was a big man, at ease with himself and the people around him. He had a ready smile and seemed eager to help. He paid particular attention to the women in his groups, showing a particular fondness for red heads. Apart from that, Eichel was an unknown.

  The first day was typical. Eichel woke early, had breakfast, spent the morning near the racks of kayaks and lifejackets. The afternoon was a paddle, a guided trip with a group of school children. The second day was much like the first. Then an abrupt change in behavior. Morning paddles this time, followed by a hurried lunch, then he’d set off on his own into the woods and beyond to the scrubland and mud flats that seemed everywhere in this beautiful but uncompromising landscape.