The Dolomite Solution

by Trevor Scott

  Shifting into fourth gear, Aldo wondered again why these men were after him. He glanced at the briefcase on the seat next to him. Could they want that? Impossible. Nobody knew his research’s significance yet. Nobody but his Italian associate. And even the two of them were not entirely certain of their assertions. The solution would be a phenomenal achievement of DNA research. They would share the Nobel. Their names would go down in history. They would be heroes of the modern era.

  He downshifted for another corner, cranking the wheel with both hands. The car slipped again, almost going over the edge. Aldo straightened the Fiat and jammed the gear shift into third.

  Looking back once more, he noticed the car was only a length behind him. His little engine whined at the red line, until he pulled the stick back to fourth again. He forced his mind to forget about why these men were behind him, and put it to the subject at hand—keeping the car on the road. Maybe he should just pull over. Give them what they wanted. No. They looked too desperate. He knew his life was in danger. Then he tried to think of the road ahead. He had never traveled the road so fast. All the curves seemed to jumble in his mind like a can of worms. Now he wasn’t sure what was ahead.

  By the time Leonhard Aldo saw the sign that the switchback was ahead, it was too late. He was going too fast. He hit the brakes and the clutch and slammed the stick around to second, but the car reeled forward across the other lane, through a small patch of low bushes, and over the edge.

  The car seemed to float in the air forever. When it finally hit the rocks below, it smashed with tremendous force, crumpling to half its original size. Then it flipped over into the rapid river. Aldo was dead instantly.

  Back up the side of the mountain, the BMW pulled to a stop, backed up, and two men gazed down toward the wreckage. They argued for a moment and then hurried back into the BMW when they saw another car coming up the road. In a moment they were speeding off toward Bolzano.

  ●

  The Alfa Romeo pulled over to the side of the road and Toni Contardo stepped out and walked to the edge of the road, gazing down the canyon.

  She saw the car immediately below and then heard the BMW rounding a corner, its tires squealing, further down the mountain. Damn it. She had been so close. Now this. She would have to go down, she knew, but it wouldn’t be easy. The drop-off was almost a sheer line straight to the river.

  Back at the car, she got rid of the leather coat and the pumps and changed into hiking boots and a sweat shirt from the trunk.

  It took her nearly fifteen minutes to reach the Fiat below. The car was wedged between two rocks, with water rushing through the broken back windows. The car had flipped over onto its hatchback and looked like a rocket at a launch pad about to shoot off into space.

  Peering inside, she noticed the mangled body nearly imbedded into the steering column. The man’s left arm was missing—probably clipped off when the hood collapsed. His face was nearly gone, with glass shards sticking out like grotesque acne. There wasn’t much room left inside the compartment, so it was easy to see that the briefcase she had watched him carry everywhere was not there.

  She slammed her hand against the car. “Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.”

  Then she peered off downstream. It must have floated off, she thought. There’s no way she’d find it now. The river flowed down through fierce rapids before connecting up with a larger river. By the time someone found the case, if they ever did, it would have surely broken apart, spilling its contents, which she could only speculate on, into a thousand different directions.

  She backtracked up the side of the mountain to her car, changed her clothes and sat behind the wheel for a moment thinking. She knew that Aldo was never without his briefcase. Two nights ago she had broken into the man’s home while he was eating dinner at a local restaurant. His computer’s hard drive was clean. The house had nothing but technical journals strewn about. No, Aldo’s work had gone over the cliff with him. Only his partner Giovanni Scala had a copy of their important work. She thought about the BMW streaking down the mountain toward Bolzano, and a sudden rush came over her. They had to be going after Scala in Milan.

  “My God,” she said aloud, cranking over her car. “Scala.”

  She raced off down the road.

  4

  Waking up in a strange bed is something that happens to everyone at some point in their life. There’s that confused feeling of helplessness while your brain tries to sort out how you had gotten there. Then the clicking back through time in your memory, trying desperately to determine if you are dreaming or if you had actually meant to be in that bed. Jake’s mind blurred with these thoughts, conceding, at least, that he wasn’t in bed with a strange woman who had looked good in the dark. Not that that had ever happened to him before. He did wonder what had happened to the blonde he had left at his apartment. Unfortunately, he had not even gotten her number.

  She was the least of his worries as he tried to focus on things in the room that might explain where he was. His vision was a blurry mess of uncoordinated synapses.

  He tried to sit up, but something kept him from moving forward on the bed more than an inch. The room was dark, with dim lights lining the top of one wall, shining up toward a featureless ceiling. He tried to turn his head, but the pain streaked through his skull from back to front, as if a knife were about to poke his eyeballs out from his brain. He tried to move his arms. It was useless. He was strapped down with leather restraints. He wasn’t sure if the pain was completely a result of the crushing ache in the back of his head, or if the alcohol had finally started to wane, and he was experiencing a tremendous hangover.

  The door opened and a man walked in. Jake kept a wary eye on him. The man was in his late forties. Thin, dark hair. A moustache that extended down under a strong chin. He was wearing a long coat unbuttoned in the front. Under that was a gray wool suit with a blood red tie. Under that, Jake guessed, was a sinewy physique. His face had a grave expression. A normal feature, Jake was certain, since he had no lines at the sides of his dark eyes or on his forehead. Perhaps he had found little to laugh at so far in life.

  Considering what Jake could remember about the alley behind the restaurant, he decided to keep his mouth shut. Besides, much of what he could remember seemed like a bad dream anyway.

  Finally, the man came up to the bed and said, “I see you’re back with us, Mr. Adams.” His English was perfect, though with a British accent.

  Jake tried to feel his wallet against his right butt cheek, but it wasn’t there. “I’d shake your hand, and all that shit, but as you can see...” Jake tried to nod his head toward the leather straps.

  The man gave him a serious glare. “You killed a man a few hours ago, and now you make jokes?” He clenched his jaw like he had something caught in his molars.

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” Jake said, trying hard not to raise his voice and lose control, but failing miserably.

  “Tests will prove you did.” The man paused for a moment, looking at a little flip notebook he had pulled from his inside coat pocket. “You are a security consultant, Mr. Adams.”

  They stared at each other uncomfortably.

  “Is that a question?” Jake asked.

  “It’s a fact. I ran your passport and other credentials through American authorities and Interpol.” He tried a slight smile, as if any more would shatter his face. When Jake didn’t say anything, the man continued. “You were with Air Force intelligence in Germany for three years, and after that with the old Agency working various locations in Europe. Mostly computer expertise, I understand. Although you have handled some interesting cases since going private. The computer technology case in Bonn a few years back, and most recently the incident in Kurdistan. Very impressive. It makes me wonder if your company isn’t another elaborate front for the Central Intelligence Agency. I guess the new CIA is no better than the old CIA.”

  Jake wondered where this was heading. Everything the man said was true, yet he wasn’t sure who would have
told him all that. He was nearly certain that most of his records had been destroyed in the fires at CIA headquarters in Langley years ago, and the new Agency had mothballed the files that had survived upon congressional orders when the CIA, FBI, DEA, ATF, and nearly every other acronym in Washington had become the new CIA with the new overlord. The new CIA was supposed to streamline operations and reduce redundancy. Jake hoped they were not that loose-lipped with information on former Agency officers. At this point he wished he was with the old Agency with full diplomatic immunity. Even if he had killed someone, which he was sure he had not, he could simply walk out and jump a plane to wherever.

  Jake tried to shift to a more comfortable position. “If you’d like an autograph or something you’ll have to loosen these things,” he said.

  “You were not authorized to carry a weapon in Austria, Mr. Adams,” the man continued sternly.

  “Sorry, but my job can get kind of intense.”

  The man didn’t budge.

  “Let’s see some sort of identification,” Jake said, returning the man’s emphatic stare.

  The man thought for a second, and then finally slid his hand inside his jacket and retrieved a leather case, which he flipped toward Jake’s face. There was no badge. Only a photo I.D. that read, “Franz Martini, Kriminal Hauptkommisar, Tirol.”

  That made him a captain and a criminal commissioner for the state of Tirolia. “Interesting. From Southern Tirol, I guess. Italian ancestry?”

  The man returned his I.D. to his pocket. “I heard you were smart, Mr. Adams. In that case, you can tell me why you shot the man in the alley.”

  This guy was starting to get on his nerves. “I was set up. If you know anything about me, then you know I just got to Innsbruck a few days ago. I’m not even working a case. I’m on vacation. Seeing how many brain cells I can destroy with your fine Austrian beer.”

  The man didn’t move.

  “Lighten up,” Jake said. “Jesus Christ. I didn’t kill the guy. I wasn’t even aiming at him.” He thought for a moment, wondering how much he should tell this guy, not wanting to bring up the blonde he had been with. “I got a call around three this morning. A guy said to meet him in the alley behind the Kublatz Restaurant at four. Jesus, do you have any aspirin? My head is killing me.”

  The guy just stared at him.

  “Guess not. Anyway, I get to the alley and some Bozo starts shooting at me. I duck behind a dumpster. Did you talk to the guy who clubbed me over the head? The big fat bastard with no brains and enough metal pipe to plumb the Goddamn Taj Mahal.”

  No answer.

  “So I got off a couple rounds. Hell, I almost shot the damn things into space. There’s no way I hit the guy.”

  Jake thought about the man laying behind the dumpster, with the snow swiftly covering his body. He had recognized him from somewhere. And he had checked his pulse. Not only was there no pulse, the man’s hand was cold and stiff. He had been dead for some time.

  “You know I didn’t shoot the guy,” Jake said, finally understanding the man’s tactics. “You just want me to think I did so I’ll spill my guts.” Asshole. Sounds like something he’d do.

  “Why would you go to a dark alley in the middle of the night?” the Tirol captain asked. “The man on the phone. What did he want from you?”

  Those were questions Jake had been asking himself. He wasn’t generally inclined to leave a nice warm bed with a naked woman for nearly any reason. Yet the man on the phone had brought up another woman, someone who had meant more to him than any other woman in his life. Jake found himself without words, not wanting the Tirol cop to know his true reason for going to the alley.

  “I need to know why you were in the alley.”

  That was reasonable. If only he knew. “The man said he had a job for me. I told him I wasn’t interested. He said it had to do with someone from my past. I was intrigued.”

  Herr Martini gazed down at his notepad again and said, “You know the dead man?”

  “I don’t know. He might have looked familiar, but I only saw him for a second before someone bashed my head in.” His head started to swirl, as if his brain were sloshing back and forth in heavy seas within his skull.

  The man loosened the leather straps on his wrists and the large one across his waist, that Jake didn’t even know was there.

  “I had a doctor check you over. He doesn’t think you fractured your skull. It’s only a concussion. A mild one at that. Apparently someone knew how to hit you without leaving much surface damage to your scalp. Or perhaps your long hair softened some of the blow.”

  Mild concussion? That’s not how Jake would describe how his head felt. But he knew already from his days in high school football that it was probably a concussion. As a linebacker he had hit one too many running backs using his head as a battering ram. He had even ended up in the hospital once. Yet, he had never been knocked out so completely. It was as if he had been drugged after the blow. Either that or he really had too much to drink.

  “How long have I been here?” Jake mumbled, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.

  “A few hours. The doctor gave you a sedative. He thought you should rest. Can you walk, Mr. Adams?”

  “Why?” Jake tried to put pressure on his feet and his head swept sideways until he finally controlled it by squeezing his ears between his palms. He stood, wobbled momentarily, and then found his equilibrium.

  “I’d like you to take a look at the man who was killed. He’s down the corridor in the morgue.”

  “Sure.” That would give him a chance for a better look at the man’s wounds also.

  Outside the room, two men in green polizei uniforms were posted on either side of the door. They were carrying Styer automatic rifles, with Glock 19s on their sides. That was a lot of firepower for an unarmed man in a hospital bed, Jake thought.

  The corridor was dark with battered gray tile. Something wasn’t right about the place. It didn’t look like any hospital Jake have ever been in.

  Down the hall they went through a swinging door marked ‘Leichenschauhaus,’ the two armed guards right on their heels, resuming positions outside these doors.

  The Tirol police captain stopped next to a metal table, where bright overhead lights shone down on a body covered with a white plastic sheet. He pulled the sheet back, exposing the man’s head and chest.

  “Do you know him now?” the captain asked.

  Jake moved in closer. Even with the throbbing head and swirling eyes, Jake recognized the man. They had served together in the Air Force. Had even made captain together while stationed in Germany. “Yeah. I know him.”

  “Well?”

  “It’s Allen Murdock.”

  The captain scribbled the name into a small notebook. “How do you know him?”

  “We worked intel together in Germany years ago. Murdock was a computer expert. I heard he married a Fraulein, got out of the Air Force, and stayed in Germany. I haven’t seen him in years.” Jake looked at the man more closely. He had bruises on his neck. There was a single bullet hole in his chest.

  “Is there anything else?”

  “Like what?” Jake tried to read the Austrian cop, but was having a hard time under the circumstances.

  “I don’t know. Why would this man from your past show up dead in an Innsbruck alley with you standing over him with a recently fired handgun?”

  “So you knew all along that Murdock was already dead,” Jake said, rather irritated. “You’re just fucking with me.”

  The man hesitated, selecting his words. “By the time we got to the alley, the snow had covered the both of you. You were laying over the top of a dead man, a gun just centimeters from your hand, and your skull smashed in. There had been other tracks, but my men...” He trailed off.

  “You’re men screwed the scene.”

  The captain shrugged. “We don’t get many murders in Innsbruck. Once in a while a domestic. Maybe a bad drug deal. It’s rare though.”

  Which is one rea
son Jake had decided to move there for a while. He was sick of crime and murder. He thought he’d take the money from the reward he received from his last case, maybe do a little computer consulting. Not this.

  “What about the guy who knocked me out? The fat guy from upstairs?”

  “There was nobody else in the alley.”

  Figures. Nobody but the bozo who bashed his head in. “Those bruises on Murdock’s neck. Someone snapped it like a twig.”

  “We know that.” The Tirol cop handed Jake his card and a plastic bag with Jake’s wallet. “Go home, Mr. Adams.”

  “What about my passport?”

  Finally smiling, the captain said, “You live here now. You won’t need that for a while.”

  That was true, but Jake didn’t like someone with that kind of control over him. What the Tirolean Criminal Commissioner, Herr Martini, didn’t know, was that he had two other passports under different names hidden around town. That was one consolation, even though he wasn’t going anywhere before he found out who was screwing with him.

  Suddenly, outside the door there was a burst of gunfire, followed by two thumps as bodies hit the tile. Instinctively, Jake reached for his gun. It wasn’t there.

  Herr Martini pulled his Glock 19 from inside his coat, started for the door, and stopped. He grabbed Jake by the arm and nodded his head for him to follow.

  They rounded the exam table and hurried toward a dark corner of the room. They went through a door into another room which was dark, except for a dim red light ahead. There were coffins lined up in two rows.

  Jake had been right. This wasn’t a hospital.

  When they reached the end of the room, Jake yanked on Martini’s jacket, pulling him to stop next to an exit door with the red light above it. “Give me my gun.”

  The Polizei man’s face seemed uncertain. Finally he reached inside his coat and retrieved Jake’s CZ-75 9mm, handing it to him. “Officially you don’t have this.”