The Scientist (Max Doerr Book 2)

by Jay Deb

  He stopped playing and started pacing in the living room in darkness. The lack of light helped him focus on thinking.

  Nuclear bomb. Iran.

  He paced faster and he thought of Gayle; if she were alive and Doerr told her about the new problem with the missing nuclear scientist, what would she say?

  He made a large tuna sandwich and ate it for dinner. He lay down on the bed and pulled the bed sheet over his body. Nuclear bomb. Iran. Death. Who cares? Let them all go to hell.

  Chapter 15 Zurich

  The cop said something that Janco didn’t understand.

  “Sorry,” said Janco and tried to stand up.

  The policeman pulled him up by his shoulder and guided him back to the curbside. “How are you?” the cop asked in English with a thick accent. “Are you okay?”

  “I have no money,” said Janco and immediately regretted it. It wasn’t the time to tell the cop his life story; he needed to get the hell out of the policeman’s face.

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know. Someone must’ve taken the money from my pocket.”

  “Do you have a friend here?” the cop inquired.

  Janco shook his head. Given the way the conversation was going, Janco felt relieved, and strength was returning to his legs. Realizing he could call his bank, where he had more than a million dollars deposited, he said, “I do have a friend. He works in a bank.”

  “What’s his number?”

  “I don’t know his number, but he works at ICCM bank.”

  The policeman pulled a smartphone from his pocket and typed something. “Here.” The policeman handed the phone to Janco. “I called their main number. Now you can talk.”

  Janco took the phone. A compact car stopped in the middle of the road, and the policeman started walking toward it.

  Janco spoke to the bank’s employee, who answered the phone and told him that he was the owner of an account with a large balance and he was stranded at the railway station and needed a ride to the bank.

  “We value our customers,” the employee said. “We are sending a car to pick you up, sir. Stay where you are. Tell me what you’re wearing.”

  “Black pants, white shirt and I have a red duffel bag.”

  Ten minutes later, a black Mercedes-Benz picked up Janco and took him to the bank.

  JANCO WALKED TOWARD the bank’s door and soon stepped on the spotless white marble floor inside.

  He approached the reception, where a petite woman was sitting behind the dark, shiny wooden table, with immaculate clothes and makeup; two uniformed security guards stood nearby. This was the first time Janco had come to this bank. Setting up the account and depositing money – everything had been done remotely.

  “Gruezi,” the receptionist welcomed Janco, showing all her whitened teeth. She said in English, “How can I help you?”

  “I have an account here and I need to withdraw some money.”

  Soon, Janco was sitting in front of a suited manager, inside an office. Two computer monitors lay on the table.

  “Mr. Janco,” the manager said in English, “do you remember your account number?”

  “Yes.” It was a number Janco had never written down anywhere, only committed to his memory. “5446468865.”

  “Now type your password there.” The manager pointed to the small keyboard in front of Janco. The password was his date of birth in YYYYMMDD format – the format every idiot should use, this way date comparison was so simple – plus the DOB of his son.

  He mentally added the two numbers and then entered it on the keyboard.

  The manager typed something into his keyboard, glanced at the monitor and then turned back to Janco and said with a wide smile, “Your current balance is one million, six hundred forty-seven thousand, one hundred sixty dollars and ninety-seven cents. You chose to keep your funds in dollars.”

  Janco shifted in his chair. The amount was about right. For the first time since his incarceration had begun, someone was sitting in front of him, eagerly waiting to fulfill his command. “Can I get ten thousand euros now?”

  “Sure. Do you want euros or Swiss francs?”

  Janco realized, along with Norway, Switzerland was one of the few European countries that were not part of the EU though euro bills were widely accepted in shops and restaurants in Switzerland, but the currency rate definitely would not be in favor of the paying customer, and there would be hidden fees. “Swiss francs.”

  “Sure,” the manager smiled again. “I’ll be right back. Do you need any coffee, tea, soda, anything?”

  Janco shook his head. After getting the money, he could have any beverage he wanted.

  “Okay, sign there, please.” The manager pointed to the keypad in front of Janco.

  Janco signed on the screen with the tiny, black pen.

  The manager rose and walked out of the room.

  A few minutes passed, and Janco kept gazing at the painting hanging on the right wall – a woman holding an umbrella. The manager returned with a bundle of cash and handed it to Janco, who took it and patted it with his hand.

  Finally, he thought, my path to freedom is beginning to shape up. Then he realized it might not be advisable to visit the bank frequently if he needed money again.

  “Can I get ten thousand more? This time euros, please.” Janco figured if he moved out of Switzerland, it would be better to have euros. Zurich was a fairly crime-free city, so it wouldn’t hurt to carry more cash.

  “Sure.” The young manager smiled. “Anything else?”

  “Make that twenty thousand euros.”

  “Do you need anything else?” the manager asked again.

  “No.” Janco shook his head.

  “You need twenty thousand euros,” the manager said. “Correct?”

  “Yes.” Janco nodded.

  The manager typed something on his keyboard and pointed his finger at the keypad in front of Janco. “Sign there, please.”

  Janco signed again.

  Once again, the manager left the room and returned after a few minutes with the cash and handed it to Janco.

  Janco held twenty thousand euros in his right hand and ten thousand Swiss francs in his left. He felt powerful and confident. A feeling of euphoria passed over his body – the days of waiting for someone to give him food or money were over.

  So many things in life boiled down to one thing – money, and now Janco’s hands were full of it, literally.

  With the money tucked in his pants’ pockets, Janco stepped out of the bank. He felt that nagging stomach pain that he’d developed from all those starving nights at the Turin hotel. Janco wished he could kick Gibbs’s ass, a reprisal for all those hungry nights; even jail was better than that; he’d never slept hungry there.

  Janco stood at the edge of Bahnhofstrasse road, looking for a restaurant, and watched a young couple board an electric tram. Unable to locate a place to eat, he started walking and then realized he shouldn’t be out in the open; his luck might soon run out; the FBI, the CIA and now whoever Gibbs worked for – all were searching for him.

  He saw an approaching cab. Taking two steps toward the middle of the road, Janco raised his hand, and the cab stopped near him.

  “Where?” the cabbie asked in German.

  “Take me to a cheap motel away from the city,” said Janco, knowing the cabbie understood his English to some extent. He knew folks in Europe often pretended that they didn’t understand English and were ashamed to admit they knew it.

  “Okay.” The cabbie nodded, and Janco got into the cab and sat on the rear seat.

  The cabbie drove through the city roads, where the traffic crawled and the hordes of Mercedes cars tried to pass by the humongous city buses. Forty-five minutes later, the cab stopped in front of a motel that had seen better days. Janco got out of the cab with his duffel bag, keeping a hand over his pants’ pocket that contained the euro bills.

  “How much?” Janco asked the cabbie.

  “Seventy.”

 
; Janco pulled out a hundred-franc bill and handed it to the cabbie, who said something in German.

  Janco figured that the cabbie said he didn’t have enough change to give him.

  “Of course you don’t,” Janco muttered and proceeded toward the hotel’s door.

  JANCO SHOWED HIS fake passport and paid the hotel clerk five hundred and seventy-five Swiss francs for a stay of one week. Janco now realized he should have taken the entire thirty thousand in Swiss francs. It wouldn’t be wise to leave Switzerland anytime soon.

  The clerk, an old man with a burgundy T-shirt on, took the money, typed something on the computer’s keyboard and asked, “Smoking or nonsmoking?”

  He didn’t care if the room smelled of tobacco or dog poop. “Nonsmoking.” He cared more about security.

  The clerk typed something again on the keyboard, and paper started coming out of the noisy printer lying next to the computer monitor. The clerk picked it up and handed it to Janco and offered him a pen.

  Janco signed at the bottom of the paper and pushed it toward the clerk. Suddenly he yearned for a smoke. Should have asked for a smoking room, Janco thought. In prison, he’d known inmates who would kill for a few drags from a Marlboro cigarette.

  He didn’t know how long this freedom would last. He felt surprised by how smoothly this getaway had worked so far. It was because of some luck but mostly his smartness, he surmised. He shouldn’t have chickened out at the sight of that cop, who had eventually helped him rather than accosted him and put him back in a slammer.

  “Two hundred four, your room number.” The clerk handed Janco the unpolished brass key attached to a red plastic bar.

  Janco picked up his bag and turned toward the elevator. He pressed the elevator button and could hear the elevator moving down. A few seconds later, the elevator door opened, and a young man came out, holding the hand of a woman whose large breasts swung a little under her red blouse as she walked out of the elevator. Janco took a furtive look at the woman’s bosom, and carnal desire swept through his body. As he stepped out of the elevator, he tried to remember when he’d had sex the last time, must have been three or four years back, maybe even more, with an escort in Boston during spring.

  Once he reached his room, he pulled the drapes down over the two glass windows. The room was about fifteen by twenty feet, Janco estimated, a little smaller than the room in Turin. A queen-sized bed lay at the center, a CRT TV lying on an old table opposite the bed – standard stuff, a little bit downscale compared to the hotel in Turin.

  Janco turned the TV on and hiked its volume. He picked up two food menus lying on the corner table, one from a burger joint and the other from a pizza place. Janco called the pizza place’s number and placed his order for delivery.

  He lay down on the bed and watched TV for a while; a soccer game was being shown.

  He yearned to make a phone call to his son in America, where the time right now would be around midnight, to tell his son that he was okay, that he found a place to live and food was on the way, but he knew it would tantamount to suicide to do so.

  The FBI probably had all sorts of gadgets installed at his son’s residence, and if they didn’t monitor his cell phone before, they were certainly doing it now, after that call from the Turin railway station.

  Chapter 16 New York

  Doerr thought about it for two days. His thirty-eighth birthday was coming up, and a part of him was saying it was time to quit, but the other part was protesting, commanding him to get back into action. By the third day, his desire to go back into the field was spreading. On the fourth day, he made his decision and called Stonewall to inform her.

  After a few minutes’ of talking, Stonewall said, “You need to go to Italy immediately. The scientist was last seen in Turin, Italy, boarding a train alone.”

  “What happened to his kidnappers?”

  “We don’t know about that. He either eluded his captors or maybe the captors let him go.”

  “Or maybe he’s working along with those people,” said Doerr.

  “Yes, that’s also a possibility. But we think that Janco has somehow ditched his kidnappers and now he’s on his own, seeking a safe haven.”

  “What’s the reason that makes you think he has eluded his kidnappers?”

  “We received the surveillance tape from Turin and from the way Janco was looking around–”

  “You can’t read too much into how he was looking around.”

  “Let me finish,” said Stonewall. “Let me finish. Based on how he was looking around fearfully and our past experience in such situations and the feedback from our own profiler, we believe Jon Janco has fled from his captors’ grip and is now hiding. I need you to go to Italy as soon as possible. Today, if you can.”

  “If he left his captors in Italy, then he likely has moved out of the country. We must focus on finding out which country he has fled to.”

  “I hear your point, Max. But remember our profiler strongly believes that Janco is still in Italy since he has no passport and not much money. We just have to flush him out.”

  “How long would it take for Janco to contact his old buddies and get some cash and a fake passport?” Doerr said. “Remember he’s a very intelligent guy.”

  “Good thing you point that out. The NSA has been listening in on calls made to all of Janco’s past friends and accomplices. Janco is a shrewd man, Max. He knows we’re listening. So he hasn’t called any of them, except one. He called his son once, from Turin.

  “People from Iran, North Korea, Russia and other countries will try to hire him. We’ve set up traps everywhere, monitoring activities of some key groups. We’ve also alerted Interpol and immigration offices in all European countries. But we got no leads yet.”

  “If you’ve spread your dragnet all over Italy,” said Doerr, “then why do you need me to go there? I might focus somewhere else.”

  “True, we got a lot of our people in Italy. But I want our best spy to go there and take care of business.”

  Flattered, Doerr smiled but only for a second. “I think either there’s nothing to be found in Italy, or they’ve found something already.”

  “All right.” Stonewall let out a sigh. “Then tell me how you’d like to start the investigation?”

  “I want to go to the Nevada jail where everything started.”

  “Why?”

  “First I’ve got to find out how he escaped the prison in the first place,” Doerr said. “Moreover, I can talk to his jail buddies, if he had any, and get some more clues.”

  “Can’t you talk to Janco’s family members and get something from them?”

  “I already spoke to them. I had a conversation with his ex-wife. His sons. Daughter-in-law. But I got hardly anything of value. His ex-wife was ranting about how she didn’t even get a nickel from her divorce from Janco. I checked their divorce records. She got over a hundred thousand dollars. Summary – I want to start with the Nevada jail.”

  “Out of the question. You can’t go there.”

  “Why?”

  “You know as well as I do – that’s FBI jurisdiction.”

  “But we’ve gone around the FBI in many similar cases. Didn’t we?”

  “We did. But this case is different. This is a high-profile case. Many in Washington got their sights fixed on this. The president is calling me every day about this. Three senators from Senate Intelligence Committee are watching me closely. A misstep will cost me my job.”

  “The usual Washington politics again?”

  “Yes. Now, Max,” Stonewall sounded tired, “I’ve been talking to you for a while. And now I’ve got a meeting to attend. So here it is. You have to go to Italy and start there. It’s an order. I’ll have someone call you and make all the arrangements. Usual stuff. Let’s see how everything goes for one week and then we’ll speak again. Okay?”

  “Just one last question.”

  “Make it quick.”

  “In Italy, who’s going to work with me?”

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nbsp; “Mark Moody, the station chief. I think you’ve worked with him before. He’s already expecting you and has a treasure trove of data to share with you. He will provide you with logistics. Now I gotta go. Okay?”

  “Okay, bye.” Doerr hung up.

  Last night had been a sleepless one for him, going through all the documents the agency had on Janco. He’d learned a great deal about the scientist. Janco was one of the few lucky ones who had studied and later taught at Harvard. He had been the chairman of the USNRC, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, for three years. It had been during that period that he’d shared some secrets with a representative from Iran. But at that time it had been just shenanigans; nothing could be proved in a court of law. Janco had left the NRC on his own and had been welcomed by his alma mater Harvard, where he had taught physics for the next five years. But the FBI had never stopped investigating Janco, and finally, three years back, the FBI found witnesses who had agreed to testify against the scientist.

  A charge of treason had been brought against the scientist in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, located at 333 Constitution Ave, Washington, DC.

  Janco had been convicted and the judge had sentenced him to thirty years in prison, which many legal experts had said was excessive. It was a shame that such a brilliant scientist worked against his own country, but now he could be a bigger threat, helping America’s worst enemy to build a nuclear weapon. Jon Janco had to be stopped from defecting and had to be brought back to America.

  Chapter 17 Zurich

  Janco had been living in the nondescript motel for over two weeks now, and the water was always cold and room service nonexistent. He remained inside his room till six or seven p.m. every day before venturing out for a short walk outside, his break for some fresh air. He’d gone to a nearby clothing shop one day and purchased two pairs of pants, three pair of shorts and three T-shirts. When he’d returned and tried the pants, he realized they were a bit too loose, but he didn’t even think of going back to the shop for an exchange. The more he stayed out of public view, the better it was, and that shop probably had surveillance cameras and someone could be going through the tape later.