The Dolomite Solution

by Trevor Scott

  “Do you work for the government?” he finally asked.

  He left that one open. “Yes. You could say that.” She changed the subject. “Do you need to pick up anything before going to Innsbruck?”

  “Is it wise to take my flight?”

  “You’re not flying. We’ll take the car. Besides, I was right, wasn’t I. About you not liking to fly.”

  “Yes. But even my students know that. I complain for a week prior to every flight.”

  There was a long silence.

  “You really think those men would have killed me?” the professor asked. “Why?”

  “I told you. The briefcase. I hope you have the results of your study with you there, otherwise we’ll have to go back.” She knew he did from the way he was digging his nails into the leather.

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  Now it was time to find out something she wasn’t sure about. “What you have there is probably the most significant DNA breakthrough ever. But then why am I telling you that? I mean you’re the brains behind the entire experiment at Passo di Villa.”

  He turned quickly toward her. “You know of my research there?”

  “I’ve read a preliminary report. The one sent to the Nobel committee, and the one that will be published soon in that prestigious journal.” The article was one of the only things she had been able to get her hands on during her time watching the two scientists in the Dolomites.

  “How did you see the journal article? We only sent it to one place with strict instructions not to show it to anyone until publication. What did you say your name was? You aren’t a scientist are you?”

  She hadn’t given him her name. “I’m Toni Contardo.” She reached over to shake his hand, and he reluctantly complied, releasing his grip on the briefcase for an instant. “No. I’m not a scientist. But I am interested in DNA research. And I understand you have found a solution to the mystery of Passo di Villa where everyone else had failed.”

  He seemed to sink further into the seat with her last words. She had broken through. Now she had about four hours to soak as much information out of him as she could. Eventually, she knew, she’d have to tell him about Leonhard Aldo’s murder that morning. But the time wasn’t right for that yet.

  9

  Jake had gotten back to his second floor apartment, took a long, hot shower and ate a late breakfast before dozing off to sleep on the sofa.

  When he woke up hours later it was late afternoon. His headache was pretty much gone but the bump was still there. He found a bottle of beer in the refrigerator, popped it open, and took a long swig. Then he thought to check his messages. He punched in his number and waited. There was one message from Toni Contardo, his old friend currently working for the Agency, and on assignment somewhere away from her normal area. She had simply laughed saying they’d have to get together and quit playing phone tag. It was nice just to hear a friend’s voice, he thought. Yet something wasn’t quite right. She was on a cell phone, driving somewhere fast, according to the sound of her engine in the background. Even that wasn’t overly concerning, since she drove fast everywhere she went. It was more her voice. The way it hesitated. He thought of calling her again, but was getting tired of talking to a message service. He needed her direct cell phone number.

  That would have to wait, though. Instead, he got onto the computer, checking out the company that Allen Murdock worked for in Germany. Once on the World Wide Web, he located a profile of Richten Pharmaceuticals. He downloaded the information to his hard drive, got off the Web, and then started looking it over. Pretty impressive company. It was a wholly owned subsidiary of a Providence conglomerate. Richten and the Providence company had a favorable marketing arrangement. Richten itself was a huge company with thousands of employees working out of facilities in the Czech Republic, Hungary, a small plant outside of Berlin, and of course the headquarters and main production facility in Mainz. They produced everything from acetaminophen to zinc ointment. Their greatest claims to fame were an anti-rejection drug for organ transplants, and a cancer drug with minimal side effects and questionable results.

  “This is interesting,” Jake said to himself.

  He clicked onto a profile of the top leadership at Richten, provided, undoubtedly, by some overzealous public relations weenie. There was photographs and short bios for the top five employees, from the president and CEO, to vice president of operations, research and development, personnel, and marketing. There was nothing about Allen Murdock. Which wasn’t surprising.

  Jake logged off and finished his beer. He thought about last night. The call that had sent him to the alley was disturbing. Whoever had set him up, had to know where he lived. He felt a little vulnerable now, and that wasn’t something he enjoyed.

  He packed a bag quickly, shoving as much as he could into a suit bag. He also put his computer in its own case and then started for the door.

  The phone rang. He turned and thought about simply letting it ring, but he was curious who might be calling him since nobody really had his number. He picked up and said hello.

  There was a slight pause on the other end.

  “Hello?” Jake repeated.

  “Is this Jake Adams?” came a deep voice with a German accent.

  “Yeah, who’s this?”

  The man hesitated. “This is Otto Bergen,” he said. “I’m a local businessman and I understand you are a security consultant who has just moved to Innsbruck. I was hoping we could meet tonight over dinner. I might have some work for you.”

  Jake ran what the man had said through his mind. How had he found out about him? It’s not like he had even put the word out in town that he was available. In fact, he had planned on taking some time off. Enjoy himself for a change.

  “I’m not sure I’m available,” Jake said. This wasn’t totally false since he had planned on finding out who killed Allen Murdock and tried setting him up for it.

  The man on the other end was thinking it over. “Why not just meet me for dinner, hear me out, and then decide. We all have to eat, Mr. Adams.”

  That was true. And it was even better when someone else was paying. “Sure. Where and when?”

  “How’s seven-thirty at the Ambras?”

  That was more than fine. The Ambras Restaurant was the hottest place in Innsbruck. It was trendy enough for a thousand dollar suit, or blue jeans. “Fine. How will I know you?”

  “I’ll wait at the bar for you. My hair is gray across the top and dark on the sides.”

  Strange enough, Jake thought. “I’ll see you there.” He hung up and then stared at the phone. Incredibly strange.

  He started for the door again and stopped. What the hell. He picked up the phone again and left a message with Toni’s service. Eventually, they’d get together.

  He locked up and went down to his car.

  The snow that had fallen the night before was almost gone, except for a few spots in the shadows between buildings or trees.

  He threw his bag and computer into the back seat, got behind the wheel and stared out at the river flowing by. There was something soothing about rivers that he didn’t understand, but was perhaps the reason he had taken the apartment in the first place.

  He put the key in and started to turn it, and then stopped. He wasn’t sure what had made him hesitate as he began to start the car, but he had. His eyes darted around the interior. Something wasn’t right. The visor. It was propped back a little. Slowly he lowered the visor and a heavy object dropped down, which he caught in his right hand. It was a piece of paper wrapped around a rock and held in place with a rubber band.

  His heart pounded.

  He undid the package and in English block letters it read: “Humint is an oxymoron. So don’t be one.”

  Someone had gotten into his locked car while he slept in the apartment, locked the door behind him, and simply wandered off. It was a puzzling message.

  Trying not to be too obvious, he glanced up and down the street, using the rear view m
irrors. There was an older woman walking toward his car with a bag of groceries. A man sat on a bench across the street watching the river flow by. And that was it. There was nobody in the other cars on the street, as far as he could see.

  He was afraid to move. If someone had taken the time to put the note there, perhaps they had taken it one step further.

  And what about the note? Humint was short for human intelligence, a military term for intelligence gathering by actual humans on a case, instead of by satellite or computer surveillance. He had worked in both areas, first with computers and then in Humint. The joke in the Air Force had been a standard for decades; military intelligence was an oxymoron. But what about the second line? “So don’t be one.” That was obviously a reference to the moron part of oxymoron. Think. How could he not be one?

  He thought about turning the key, but instead removed it from the ignition. Slowly he reached under the seat, to feel for anything unusual. Nothing. Next he started to open the door and stopped short, his hand still on the lever. What about the door? Someone could have set a dual switch, one clicks on when he gets in, and another detonates as he opens the door. He checked around outside again. There was nothing unusual.

  With one quick motion, Jake swung the door open and hurried out to the street. He half expected to be blown across the street into the river. When nothing happened, he looked up and down the street once more. A car drove by slowly. Its driver looked at him like he was some lunatic, and he felt like one too. Maybe he was over-reacting. Someone was definitely screwing with him, but had they actually tried to kill him?

  Slowly he returned to his Beemer. He was going to check under the hood, but decided it would have been far too obvious for someone to open another man’s hood in broad daylight and wire a bomb to the ignition. There were far quicker ways to do it.

  Instead, he crouched down to his knees and craned his head under the chassis. Shit. Directly under the driver’s seat was a bomb. C-4 from the looks of it.

  After the Austrian Army bomb squad had departed, along with the fire trucks and ambulance, Jake sat on the bench along the river, gazing at the soft aqua hues and the sparkling ripples.

  Captain Franz Martini, the Tirol Criminal Commissioner, took a seat next to Jake. “There’s good news and bad news,” he said, smiling for the first time since Jake had met the man.

  “Let me guess. The good news is I’m still alive.”

  “Even if it had blown, you would be,” Martini said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was a small explosive charge wrapped inside of modeling clay. It was made to look like C-4, but would have made only a small noise.”

  “How was it wired?”

  “The seat belt.”

  “Really?”

  “The bomber drilled a small hole through the floor, ran a wire from the receptacle through the floor. Then he probably planted the bomb and plugged in the wire to it. It’s a beautiful device. The seat belt. That’s brilliant. It’s the first thing people do when they get in a car, without even thinking about it. You didn’t put on your seat belt, Mr. Adams.”

  What was this? Safety advice? “I was going to. I was thinking about the guy who shot at me last night.” Not to mention the phone call he just received.

  “Someone doesn’t like you, Mr. Adams.”

  “That’s obvious. But who? I don’t remember pissing anyone off recently.”

  The Austrian police captain looked out at the turquoise water of the Inn River. The late afternoon sky had darkened in the past hour, with swirling clouds overhead giving the city a gloomy look.

  “What about the note?” Martini asked.

  Jake had thought about that a lot while the bomb squad had swarmed over the car. The note was significant, he was sure. “As you know I was with Air Force intelligence. It’s simply a reference to that.” Maybe it was just that simple. First Allen Murdock had been killed, with someone wanting him and the Austrian police thinking he had done it. Now the bomb with a note. Captain Allen Murdock had worked with him in Air Force intelligence.

  “Maybe you need to go back to America,” Martini suggested.

  “I don’t think so. As you know, I’ve been granted a work visa from your government. I plan to stay. I like this town.”

  “Even with your recent problems?”

  Jake thought about that. Was someone trying to make him leave? If so, they didn’t know him very well. “Because of the problems. Someone is fucking with me, and I don’t like it one bit.” He got up from the bench and looked down at the Austrian police captain. “It looks like I’ll have to hire myself for my first job in Austria.”

  The captain laughed and rose with Jake. “That should look interesting on your taxes.” He started to walk off toward his silver Mercedes, and then stopped. “Be careful, Mr. Adams.”

  Jake watched the criminal commissioner get into his car and drive off. Be careful. He was too pissed off now, and that’s when he knew he made the most mistakes. Somehow, he’d have to calm down and look at everything objectively. If that was possible.

  10

  The yacht rocked gently on light waves across a calm Narragansett Bay. There were a few smaller boats fishing closer to shore, and a large Liberian-flagged freighter slowly made its way into port, sitting high in the water.

  It was closing in on noon, and Andrew Talbot watched as the small launch approached from the north.

  Talbot was the president and CEO of Providence Industries, a huge conglomerate producing everything from frozen seafood entrees to over-the-counter drugs. He was wearing casual khakis, leather deck shoes, and a dark green sweater with leather patches at the elbows. In his early fifties, he could pass for a man ten years younger. Only his tanned face at the edges of his eyes gave away his true age. He took a sip of wine and then set the glass onto a table and moved aft.

  The launch was at the aft platform now where two men secured it while a man in a business suit gingerly made his way up the ladder.

  The two of them met and shook hands, and Talbot excused his men.

  “What’s this all about, Andrew?” the man asked.

  “How was your trip from Washington?”

  The man in the suit shifted his gaze, unsure what to say. “I think I feel sick. I never could stand the ocean, which is why I left the Navy after a few years. They put me on a tin can and I couldn’t stop puking. D.C. is the same old place. I wouldn’t live there if I could get a real job.”

  Talbot laughed. “The FDA can’t be that bad.”

  The man poured himself a glass of wine and refilled Talbot’s glass. “A bunch of fucking bureaucrats,” he spit out. “Can’t make a decision to save their asses.”

  Talbot accepted the glass, took a sip, and then said, “Maybe that’s a good reason for our meeting.”

  “You got something good for me?” the man asked eagerly. “Anything. I’m so fucking bored I feel like slitting my wrists.”

  Talbot searched his mind for the right words. “I need help like the last time. Only this could be a little more difficult because of the controversy involved.”

  The man looked interested, sipping down a good portion of wine. “Sounds good. Let’s hear it.”

  “My company in Germany will be producing a new solution soon that might just cure heart disease.” Talbot raised his brows, smiling, and keeping a close eye on the FDA man.

  “No shit. And you want quick U.S. approval?” He laughed out loud. “You’re fucking crazy. My boss would never approve that without a major U.S. study.”

  Talbot anticipated this. In fact he had hoped the man would say it. “Things change. I understand you’re up for his job?”

  “Shit. Yeah, that’s gonna happen soon.”

  His hand on the man’s shoulder, Talbot said, “With any luck at all.”

  11

  A few hours after Jake’s strange adventure, where someone had tried to scare him with a fake bomb, he sat quietly in a corner booth at a gasthaus across the street from th
e Alpenzoo. It was past the lunch hour, which Jake suspected wasn’t much of a rush for this place. He had finished off a salad and a bratwurst and was on his second beer now.

  After Martini and his men had left him in the street looking at the old BMW, which might have actually benefited from being blown up, he had taken a cab to the airport and rented a little green Golf, piled his clothes and computer into the trunk and driven to this place at random. He was back to the very basic instincts of his training. Stay mobile. Stay clear of predictability. Don’t let anyone get the upper hand. Which is why he had rented the car with a Eurocard under a different name.

  He slid his plate to the side and pulled out the phone list he had gotten from the cooperative desk clerk at Allen Murdock’s hotel. Scanning the list, Jake noticed a pattern. Murdock had called his own home number eight times in the three days he had stayed at the hotel. Each call was charged for a minute, which means he probably had not gotten through to his wife.

  That got Jake thinking. He pulled out his cell phone and punched in Murdock’s number in Frankfurt. In a few seconds a message machine picked up with a woman’s voice explaining in German that neither she nor her husband could come to the phone. She was followed by a brief response by Murdock in English, essentially saying the same thing. Jake hung up before leaving a message, which he only did under rare circumstances. Then he began wondering if Murdock’s wife, Ute, had been told of his death. He imagined the local polizei had already been to their place. Perhaps she was sitting in a corner, crying, and watching the phone ring.