The Scientist (Max Doerr Book 2)

by Jay Deb

  Janco thought of getting a new passport, which meant he had to first contact someone, and that meant he had to talk to an agent or someone, and the risk was too great. An alternative could have been to logon to the Internet and try to find someone involved in the passport business. Janco knew there were scores of criminals who did that for a living, like Drake, the man he’d met in prison. Drake had sold hundreds of fake driver’s licenses, green cards, and passports; his luck had run out when he’d sold five forged passports to a man of Middle Eastern descent who was being shadowed by the FBI for possible terrorist links.

  The motel didn’t have a computer, and going to a Net café was risky. Using the old passport again to go to another country would definitely fail.

  Again, he felt he was in a jail, just like in Turin, unable to go anywhere, staying in his room the entire day. Now, the only difference was he could order whatever food he craved and as much as he wanted.

  He’d been ordering pizza and burgers alternately during the evenings and eating the leftovers for breakfast and lunch the next day. His room had a mini-freeze but no microwave oven, so he’d been eating cold food during daytime.

  He’d been studying those advertisements in the phone directory for escort services. Looking at those barely clothed girls with shapely legs and perky breasts brought libidinous desires. He’d had the urge to pick up the motel phone and dial an escort number, but fear had suppressed his longings, till today.

  It was a bright day, and the sunlight had brought enough courage in him to do what he’d wanted to do for some time. The Feds might take him back to jail soon, so he sought to utilize the time he had. It was four p.m. and Janco picked up the handset and dialed an escort service number from the phone directory.

  “Hello, what kind of girl do you need?” the female voice at the other end asked in Swiss German.

  Wondering how to answer, Janco said in English, “A blonde one between thirty and forty years old.”

  “We have Asian lady. Six hundred franc, one hour,” the voice said in broken English. “Caucasian lady after nine. Eight hundred francs.”

  “Send the Asian one,” said Janco.

  A half hour later, a petite Asian woman showed up at Janco’s door. She was wearing a dark purple skirt and a shiny bright red top. As she entered the room, Janco smelled the cheap fragrance. She used the bathroom, and upon returning, she started undressing, and Janco simply watched her.

  Stark naked, she lay down on the bed and made a hand gesture for Janco to join her, and Janco promptly climbed on the bed. She undressed him, and he put his hand on her breasts. Soon, he was on top of her and began the back and forth motion. Minutes later, Janco slid off her, exhausted.

  After the lady had left, Janco felt content; an aura of manliness swept his body, and he felt he had everything that a man needed.

  FOR JANCO THE euphoria of having sex after such a long gap lasted a few days, and then it was back to the normal life of hiding during the day and a short walk in the evening followed by a huge dinner. As days passed by, he started wondering whether he should call another girl. Money was no problem; most of it was still left in his safe. If showing his face to an outside escort girl wasn’t risky enough, then drawing the attention of the hotel clerk, who would certainly be trying to figure out which room the call girl went to, surely was.

  After three more days of envisaging, he called the escort service again, and this time a Caucasian lady came to entertain him. She was fat, and although she’d put on a half-ton of lipstick, powder, and mascara, Janco was sure the woman was older than forty.

  Once the woman left after taking care of business, Janco felt his desires were only half filled, and he felt deceived.

  The next day Janco called the escort service again and gave them an earful. “The woman you sent yesterday was over forty. I requested someone below thirty.”

  The woman at the other end of the line said something rudely, and Janco ignored it. He remembered the first Asian woman he’d enjoyed. She’d done most of the work, and the experience had been delightful. “Send me Kara.”

  “Okay. Will send her.”

  The arrangement was made, the price agreed upon, and an hour later, Kara came to his room.

  Soon, Janco’s lust was fulfilled, and he was so sated he gave her an extra hundred-franc bill. Even after the sex was over, he continued to hold her in the bed, talk to her and ask questions, and she replied in broken English.

  “What’s that?” Janco pointed to the scar on the woman’s lower belly.

  “That C-section.” The woman further explained she had two babies in Thailand and came to Switzerland in search of some quick money.

  “Where you from, Gustavo?” Kara asked.

  The question jolted Janco. Trying to figure out what to say, he ended up staring at her face for a few seconds. “America,” he finally said.

  “What you do?”

  “I am a scientist. Used to be.” Janco felt relaxed; he was having a normal conversation with a person he liked though he wasn’t sure if she understood everything he was saying. “I was a professor too. Gave lectures.”

  “Sounds fun,” she said, and then she got off the bed and started dressing.

  “Can you come by tomorrow?” Janco asked. “Same time.”

  “Call agency. We not supposed to come directly,” she said, and then she left after closing the door quietly.

  Janco felt this wasn’t a bad life; it was like being in a prison with unlimited conjugal visits.

  The next day, he called the agency, and an hour later, Kara came in. Her face was like a flower to him, and they made love.

  But once she left, he felt less happy than the day before, worries creeping into his mind. Any day the FBI or the local police could come, and things could change within minutes. Maybe he shouldn’t have said so many things to Kara, that he was a lecturer from America. Janco wondered whether Gibbs and whatever organization he worked for were still looking for him.

  Chapter 18 Italy

  In the Leonardo da Vinci airport, Doerr stepped off the Alitalia plane on a cloudy day and looked down the staircase other passengers were using to get down to the ground. Then he looked up and saw the clouds gathering overhead, making the sky darker. It was about two p.m.

  After the immigration and customs process, as he walked through the concourse, nearing the waiting area, memories of his deceased wife hit his brain like shrapnel, tearing him inside. This was where he’d met her that day, and she’d died within an hour. His life had changed forever, the flame in his life gone permanently. He marched fast and tried to get out of the terminal as quickly as possible.

  On the way, he saw a suited man holding a sign for him. He instantly recognized Mark Moody, the station chief in Italy, a six-foot-tall man known for his pleasing demeanor. Doerr noticed the baldness on his head had grown bigger, and now it occupied about half of his melon-shaped head.

  After pleasantries, Doerr asked Moody, “Are you still living at the embassy?”

  “No, I’ve moved out. Got a nest downtown. You should come by sometime.”

  “Sure.”

  A few minutes later, they came out of the terminal, and as soon as they stood on the curbside, a white four-seater Renault stopped in front of them. Doerr and the station chief climbed into the rear seats and the small car tilted slightly from side to side.

  “Where are we goin’?” Doerr asked Moody as the car started moving.

  “I’ll take you to a hotel. A nice one. You take some rest today, tomorrow. Day after that we’ll get cracking.”

  “I don’t need any rest.” Doerr smiled. “It was a direct flight.”

  “We got a lot of files and reports for you to read.”

  “I think I’ll read them tonight and then I’ll be ready to start tomorrow. Besides, I’ve read a lot already about Janco, his conviction, history and all that.”

  “All right.” The car was now moving into the thick Rome traffic. “In that case, tomorrow someone will p
ick you up from the hotel. Then I’ll introduce you to the Interpol guy.”

  “Interpol? What’s that?” Doerr said jokingly to lighten the mood. “Is that the name of a fancy restaurant near your nest?”

  “Good one,” said Moody. They both laughed.

  “In the afternoon you’ll meet the Italian police commissioner and a few of our own people.”

  “Okay.” Doerr was feeling the station chief wasn’t being very enthusiastic about finding Janco. He was being treated like a Washington politician taking a fun tour. “Let’s find the scientist,” Doerr said cheerfully.

  “We will,” said the station chief and looked out the window. “We will.”

  THE NEXT DAY, Doerr spoke to all the people, talked to the Italian police chief, and interviewed some of the agency’s own employees who had been working on the case. The following day, he took a train to Turin. The CIA didn’t have anyone in that city; most agency men were stationed in Rome and some in Milan. Doerr had always believed in visiting the site where something important had happened, even though the place might appear to be unimportant.

  In the Turin railway station, Doerr stood right in front of the camera that had recorded Janco walking by. He felt the rumble in the ground as an express train passed by without stopping. He wondered if that was how a nuclear bomb felt during the initial moments, probably not. If a big bomb were to go off in Turin, it would cause relatively less damage, as it was surrounded by hills. He knew that the biggest damage after a nuclear explosion was caused by the air moving at supersonic speed, not by the radiation, as most people believed. If a nuclear bomb went off in New York, it would decimate everything; all the skyscrapers would turn into rubble within minutes; water from the Atlantic Ocean would run in like a super tsunami, millions dead in an instant; people would be electrocuted by the salty water.

  Doerr sauntered along the platform that Janco had walked on not too long ago.

  HE TOOK A train to Milan. It was very likely that Janco had taken the same train. Doerr had been told that no surveillance camera had picked up Janco at Milan Railway Station. Doerr wondered if Janco had simply put on some clever disguise or skillfully avoided the cameras. After all, Janco was a highly intelligent man.

  HIS CONVERSATION WITH the agency employees in Milan didn’t bring any new information. The fact that Janco had not been picked up by a camera there pretty much ruled him out of Milan – he was told.

  “He most likely got off somewhere before Milan,” one man told Doerr.

  Two days later, Doerr rented a car and drove to Rome. On the way, he stopped at Parma, Bologna, Florence and Siena to discuss the situation with the Polizia di Stato.

  He stopped by to meet and talk to many in the Italian police and intelligence.

  A WEEK LATER, Doerr was sure Janco wasn’t in Italy, and for some reason he thought Moody and his people were hiding something. They were not telling him the whole story, and their search efforts had been perfunctory at best. It was as though Moody was collecting information just because he’d have to show it to his boss.

  Doerr went down to Moody’s office and confronted him. “After everything I’ve seen, I’m sure Janco isn’t in Italy anymore.”

  “What makes you think so?” Moody turned in his chair, picked up a water bottle, and turned its cap.

  “All the evidence suggests that. Some of our guys are doing the search like they flip burgers at McDonald’s, no passion, no energy. Why’s that?”

  “I’ve no clue what you’re talking about. We’re doing the best we can.”

  “But I feel we’re doing the best we can to pretend to be working. Anyway, I’m going back to America tomorrow. I’ll report to Langley what I saw here. Maybe we need a new station chief here.” Doerr saw a flicker in Moody’s eyes, so he waited.

  Moody let out a deep sigh and put the water bottle back on the table. “We all know Janco isn’t here in Italy. So many are looking for him here. He’d have been found within twenty-four hours of the Turin sighting. Forty-eight tops.”

  “Then why are we still spending resources on him here?”

  “Because that’s what Langley has told us to do.”

  “What do you mean?” Doerr couldn’t believe his ears. “Why don’t you tell them he isn’t here? Tell ’em the truth!”

  “See, Mr. Doerr. Langley doesn’t want to hear that. If I say to them Janco isn’t here, then the next question will be where is he, then? Sometimes the truth is inconvenient. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea –many of them are looking for Janco since that Washington reporter told everyone that Janco fled America.”

  “Why would Russia be happy to get him? They’ve already got more nuclear toys than we got.”

  “Okay. Maybe not Russia. But you get the point. Janco could be sitting right now in North Korea or Iran, helping them make that bomb. And that’s the last thing Washington wishes to hear. So Langley informs them he is still in Italy. And we all keep our jobs. Later if something bad happens, we say we had faulty intelligence. We’ve played this game before. You know it. Truth sometimes is very inconvenient.”

  “But tell me. Was there any sighting of him in Italy other than the one in Turin?”

  “No.”

  “But he entered Italy six weeks back if The Washington Post reporter is to be believed.”

  “That’s a big if, isn’t it? Maybe the journalist made it all up. Maybe he just wanted to be on TV. Happens all the time, Doerr.”

  “I think he was telling the truth.”

  “I’m not sure.” Moody shifted in his chair. “When there is no video of Janco walking in the Milan airport, nothing is for sure.”

  Doerr thought for a few seconds. “I think the right way to find Janco is to first figure out who took him out of prison.”

  “Not my call, Doerr. We do what Langley directs us to do. We follow orders. We follow protocol. We aren’t Steve Jobs, inventing things. Now, are we done here? I’ve got a meeting to attend.”

  “I think so.” Doerr stood up from his chair. “Just one last question. I think I’ve asked this before. Was there any information on Janco’s whereabouts before or after the Turin sighting?”

  “No.”

  Chapter 19 Nevada

  He returned to New York, and the following day, he took an early morning flight to Las Vegas. Upon reaching there, he didn’t head for the casinos. Instead, he rented a cheap compact car with the money from his own pocket and headed for the prison where Janco had been kept. It was November, yet the air was hot and dry, the sun blazing. He drove down Interstate 15 at eighty miles an hour, passing many cars; he knew some of the riders in those cars had drunk plenty and had wasted loads of money in the casinos the night before.

  An hour later, he was nearing the prison’s parking lot protected by a fence made of barbed wire, about twenty-five vehicles already parked inside.

  Doerr parked his car, got out and approached the security post located on the right of the wide shut gate made of iron bars. Two security men were at the prison’s security post, a black elderly bald man and a skinny young white fellow.

  As Doerr approached them, the young man stood up.

  “I’m here to meet with the warden,” Doerr said.

  “Do you have an appointment?” the young man asked.

  Doerr shook his head. “I’m here to discuss something very important.”

  The young man looked at the elderly man, who was rummaging through some papers.

  “Hey, Darren,” the young man said to the elderly chap. “He doesn’t have an appointment but wants to see the big boss.”

  The elderly man took his eyeglasses off and passed his hand over his bald head. “This is about what?”

  Flashing his CIA ID card, Doerr said, “I’m from the CIA, and I’m here to talk to your warden. About the incident that occurred a month back.” It implied that the CIA had sent him there, which was a lie, but lying was part of his work.

  The elderly man said, “Our warden doesn’t meet anyone without an app
ointment. Did you make an appointment, sir?”

  “I didn’t, but this is regarding a high-level security issue. I have to meet him today.”

  The man stood up. “Wait a couple of minutes.” He went behind the glass back door of the security post.

  Doerr could see that the man picked up the phone and called someone, hopefully the warden, though Doerr could hear nothing.

  A few minutes later, the man came back and said, “Come with me, sir.”

  The man went inside and must have pressed a switch somewhere as the big iron gate started opening with a humming noise; the gate was like a heartless barrier between the criminals and the rest of society.

  While passing the gate, he wondered how an inmate felt knowing that he’d not cross the door again in years, maybe decades or never.

  The man put a security band on Doerr’s wrist. “Come with me,” the guard said and started walking toward a hallway. Doerr followed.

  Although this wasn’t Doerr’s first visit to a big house, still he found the place very depressing. It was hot outside and hotter inside. The floors hadn’t been cleaned in a while, walls not painted for years. There was a stench. But he couldn’t figure out its source.

  Following the guard, Doerr crossed two hallways, and soon he was standing in front of an office room on whose door there was a metal plate with the word warden inscribed on it.

  “Here is the gentleman I told you about over the phone a few minutes back,” the guard said to the man sitting on a cushiony leather chair behind a wooden table. The room was windowless. There was a small US flag on the table. Two large cabinets stood against the wall. The man was definitely above fifty and overweight.