Soul Meaning (A Seventeen Series Novel: An Action Adventure Thriller Book 1) (6 page)

I dragged my gaze from the imposing sky rise and looked at the clock on the console. It had just gone eight. ‘Who do we know in town?’

The man who joined us for an early lunch was an Intelligence Analyst for the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division. A second generation Italian-American born and raised in New York, Bob Solito still sported a heavy Brooklyn accent despite having lived in DC for fifteen years. We first met him during the Louisiana incident and had since crossed paths on a number of other joint investigations.

‘This personal business?’ he said after he placed his order.

I nodded.

Solito sighed. ‘Thought so. You guys normally go through official channels for this kind of intel.’ He popped a white tablet in his mouth and winced as he chewed on it. ‘The wife said she’d leave me if I didn’t quit smoking,’ he muttered by way of explanation at our stares. He pulled an envelope from his coat and slid it across the table. ‘That’s all I’ve got at the moment. You guys didn’t exactly give me a lot of notice.’

‘Thanks.’ I flashed a grateful smile at him, opened the package, and spread the contents on the table.

‘Frederick Rudolph Burnstein is the President and CEO of GeMBiT Corp,’ said Solito. ‘He has no past records or convictions on any criminal database in the world, including NCIC and Interpol.’ The FBI analyst scratched his head. ‘This guy is as clean as a whistle. He doesn’t even have a speeding ticket to his name.’

I inspected the copy of an article from the Washington Post. It was a review of a recent production of ‘Les Misérables’ held at the National Theatre. At the bottom of the page, a black and white photograph depicted the principal actors and the director posing with famous local patrons of the Arts.

Our guy from Capitol Hill stood out from the crowd. Burnstein’s eyes gleamed with a strange, visceral intensity as he gazed into the camera, his crooked nose giving him the appearance of a hawk. His lips were parted in a cold, artificial smile.

‘GeMBiT?’ said Reid. He leafed through the fact sheets that came with the article.

‘Genetic and Molecular Bioinformatics Technology,’ Solito explained. ‘The company was first registered in DC in nineteen seventy. Most of its shareholders are in the US and mainland Europe, and it has close affiliations with universities leading research in molecular biology and genetics on both sides of the Atlantic.’ He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘At the last count, GeMBiT has pledged four hundred million dollars in research grants this year alone.’

Reid let out a low whistle while he studied the printouts. ‘What are they trying to do, exactly?’

‘Cure cancer, among other things,’ Solito replied.

Reid’s eyebrows rose.

‘Their principal areas of interests are oncology, tissue growth and repair, infectious diseases, and immunology,’ said Solito. He shrugged at our stares. ‘Hey, I’m just quoting all this stuff. I wouldn’t know anything genetic or immunological if it bit me in the ass.’

I scrutinized the blueprints on the table. ‘Are these the floor plans for the house in Capitol Hill?’

Solito nodded. ‘He had the place renovated five years ago. I’m afraid you’re gonna have to give me more time if you want the ones for the building on Pennsylvania Avenue. I couldn’t find any copies filed with Building and Land Regulation. ’

‘Thanks. These will do for now,’ I said.

‘What’s this about anyway?’ said Solito. Lines puckered his brow at our expressions. ‘Forget I asked,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll let you know if I find anything else.’

He called an hour later. ‘Seems Burnstein loves the opera as much as theatre. He’s got tickets for tonight’s opening performance of La Traviata at the JFK Center. Show starts at six fifteen.’ There was a lull at the end of the line. ‘Oh, and Soul?’

‘Yeah?’

‘There’s a temporary felony want out for you in Boston. You’ve got forty-eight hours until I call it in.’ Solito hung up.

I stared at the cell phone.

‘What?’ said Reid.

‘Meyer’s going to issue a warrant for my arrest.’

Reid lapsed into thoughtful silence. ‘Well, we knew it was coming,’ he said finally. ‘So, what’s our next move?’

I smiled at his tone. ‘We’re breaking into Burnstein’s place tonight.’

Reid narrowed his eyes. ‘Won’t the man object to us just waltzing into his place?’

‘That’s the beauty of it. He won’t be there.’

Burnstein left for the opera at 5:10. We waited until darkness fell before leaving the Cruiser and approaching the house. According to Solito’s intel, the GeMBiT Corp CEO’s home security system was state of the art and had been installed in the last three months. It took us eight minutes to disable it.

A few steps inside the house and I could tell that Burnstein was a keen art collector; I had not seen so many original paintings and sculptures outside a national museum for some time.

A search of the ground floor and the upstairs bedrooms revealed nothing of interest. An enormous study with triple aspect views occupied most of the third floor. The walls were lined with bookcases and filing cabinets. A mahogany Edwardian pedestal writing desk sat beneath the bay window facing the manicured gardens at the rear of the property.

I closed the blinds and switched on the desk lamp. Reid started poking through the contents of the bookcases and cabinets while I turned my attention to Burnstein’s home computer.

It took several minutes to hack into the operating system. Halfway through, Reid came up behind me and peered curiously over my shoulder.

‘Do I even wanna know how you learned to do that?’ he muttered, watching my fingers fly across the keyboard.

I paused and thought of the MIT guys who had taught me my skills and who were now the heads of the largest computer and security consultancy firms in the world. ‘Not really.’

A thud drew my gaze to the other side of the room a moment later.

Reid had dislodged a painting on the wall. He picked it up gingerly, stared at the small chip in the corner of the frame, and placed it back on its hooks. ‘Do you think he’ll notice?’

I shrugged. ‘Probably. That’s an original Rembrandt.’

Reid looked at me blankly. ‘It is?’

‘Yeah.’ I turned back to the desk. ‘It’s worth about half a million dollars.’

He inhaled sharply. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘No.’

‘Who the hell keeps that kind of thing in their house?’ he exclaimed.

I glanced at his disgruntled expression and resolved there and then never to tell him about the Monet in my apartment.

Burnstein’s computer defense software was better than his home security. I had just cracked the safety codes to access the files when a thoughtful ‘Ah’ made me look around.

Reid had reached the last filing cabinet. It had opened to reveal a strongbox. He glanced at the lock pick set on the floor next to him. ‘Somehow, I don’t think this is gonna do the trick.’

I rose from the desk and joined him.

‘It’s a high-security composite safe.’ I crouched and ran my fingers over the cold metal door. ‘Inner and outer steel plates. High-density fire-resistant body. Drill-resistant frames. Chrome-plated steel locking bolts and a spring operated detent system. It probably has a tempered glass relock mechanism as well.’

‘I worry about you,’ Reid said with a wooden expression.

I grinned. ‘Luckily, it has an electronic combination lock.’

Reid sighed. ‘Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better.’

‘Help me bring the computer over.’

Fifteen minutes later, I pulled the safe door open.

‘Wow. I thought that was only possible in movies.’ Reid looked slightly impressed.

‘If you have the right software and a couple of wires, anything is possible,’ I said, studying the contents of the strongbox.

In addition to several pouches of high-quality diamonds, five gold bars, and a number of passports, the safe held a dozen document wallets. Eleven of them contained information about Burnstein’s private investments and GeMBiT Corp.

The last folder was the thickest of the group and was filled with copies of research papers published in the last fifteen years by a number of universities in Europe. The recurring subject matter appeared to be cell cycle control and DNA transposition. One name in particular, a Professor H.E. Strauss, appeared as a common contributor in most of the publications and had been highlighted in red ink.

I turned to the computer and typed ‘Strauss’ in the search box. A single jpeg file and an email reference came up under the results. I directed the arrow over the jpeg file and clicked the mouse.

An image slowly filled the screen. It was a black and white photograph of a man and a woman, taken at night. They were sitting next to a large bay window inside a restaurant. The man was caught with his back slightly turned and in profile. He was leaning across the table toward the woman, whose face was fully illuminated by the chandelier above their heads.

Her hair was dark and tumbled in soft curls past her shoulders, framing a pair of almond-shaped, smoky eyes. The light glistened off her full lips and glinted on the thick, intricate sun cross pendant at the base of her throat. She was smiling at the man.

‘This the person they’re after?’ said Reid.

I stared at the woman in the picture, an unfamiliar emotion stirring deep within me. I had to force my gaze away from her face before looking up the email.

It was from Burnstein and had been addressed to an encrypted account on a remote server somewhere in Europe. Dated several weeks ago, the message was brief: “Arrange Council meeting. Strauss is the key. Must secure at any cost.”

A soft tinkle sounded somewhere downstairs. Reid and I looked at each other. I rose to my feet just as one of the windows shattered, raining glass shards inside the room. A second later, a smoke grenade sailed through the broken pane and clattered onto the floorboards.

Chapter Six

T
he Crovir Hunters came silently,
guns fitted with suppressors. We were almost at the first landing when a volley of bullets whined past us and struck the wall. Shadows shifted at the bottom of the stairs. Muzzles flashed in the gloom.

I reached for the swords at my waist.

Bodies fell before me as we were forced up the steps. The blades shuddered in my hands, blocking round after round. Reid fired the Glock repeatedly at the Hunters streaming down a first floor corridor toward us. We stepped over the men he had shot and headed for the master bedroom at the front of the property. I slammed the door shut, locked it, and helped Reid push a dresser across the threshold.

I walked to the window and stared at the empty yard below. ‘You go first,’ I said briskly. ‘I’ll hold them off.’

Reid glared at me. Unspoken words filled the silence between us. I didn’t have to state the obvious fact; in a battle with the immortals, he stood at a serious disadvantage.

There was a thud outside the room. The dresser shifted slightly.

‘You owe me for this,’ he said between gritted teeth. He lifted the sash window, climbed over the sill, and turned to catch the keys of the Cruiser. A second later, he disappeared in the night.

The door crashed open, the dresser scraping across the floorboards with a shriek of tearing wood. I turned to face the men who crowded inside the room. Some held swords. The ones who didn’t had guns.

‘Be careful,’ one of the Hunters warned. ‘This is the half-breed.’

The other immortals glanced at each other uneasily.

I had hoped Olsson would be among them; there were some burning questions I needed to ask my old friend. Still, I had no doubt our paths would cross again if I survived this night.

My breaths slowed as I silently repeated the mantra taught to me by my Edo master, my feet moving to the basic starting stance of kendo.

Eyes narrowed on the other side of the floor.

‘Gentlemen,’ I said quietly.

The next sixty seconds were a blur of light and shadows. A bullet missed my head by an inch. Another one scorched a red track across the back of my right hand. The acrid smell of gunpowder filled the room and spent rounds clattered to the ground while the katana danced and weaved through the air, spilling blood across the walls and the floorboards. Throughout it all, I breathed steadily.

The last Hunter begged for his life.

‘Please, this will be my seventeenth death,’ he whispered hoarsely at my feet, staring in wide-eyed horror at the blade poised above his heart.

Memories of a vanilla-scented room rose in my mind. I closed my eyes briefly. ‘I’m sorry.’

Sirens blared in the distance when I came out of the house. Wings fluttered above my head as crows gathered on the rooftop of Burnstein’s home.

The Cruiser screeched to a halt in the middle of the street when I reached the sidewalk. External lights came on along the road and dim figures appeared on doorsteps. Burnstein’s neighbors looked at me curiously while I climbed in the SUV.

Reid pulled away swiftly. ‘You’re bleeding.’

I looked at my hand. ‘It’s only a flesh wound.’

I clenched my fingers distractedly, feeling strangely numb. It had been some time since I last killed so many men. I took a deep, shuddering breath and tried to ignore the smell of death clinging to me.

‘How’s your leg?’ I said.

Blood had seeped through the bandage around Reid’s wound and stained his trousers.

‘I’ll live,’ he replied gruffly.

A patrol car raced past us, lights flashing in the night. Another followed close behind it. We headed away from Capitol Hill.

‘They all dead?’ he said after a while.

‘Yes.’

I cursed my own foolishness; we had probably triggered a silent alarm in Burnstein’s house. I suspected it had been inside the safe.

The blare from my cell phone broke the silence that followed. It was Solito.

‘I heard there were shots fired at that house in Capitol Hill,’ the FBI agent said stiffly. ‘Tell me it wasn’t you guys.’ A babble of conversation and music echoed in the background behind him.

‘I would be lying if I said we weren’t involved,’ I murmured.

Solito swore.

I waited a couple of seconds. ‘I need another favor.’

There was a frozen beat. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

We met the FBI agent in an alley behind a bar in Dupont Circle; he had been out celebrating the retirement of a field officer and was still dressed in his work suit. His eyes kept straying to the blood on my hand while I explained my request.

‘I’ve been listening to the scanner. The cops have reported four bodies at the property. They’re saying there was a lot of blood in the place, which makes them suspect there were even more bodies than the ones they’ve found.’ Solito ran his fingers through his hair. ‘No doubt they’ll call us in.’

A group of people walked past the mouth of the alley, drunken voices raised in song.

‘I know this probably doesn’t mean a lot to you at the moment, but they weren’t good men,’ I said.

‘And we might as well warn you now,’ Reid added with a grunt. ‘You’re probably not gonna be able to ID any of them.’

Solito chewed his lip. He let out a sharp exhale and removed a notepad from his back pocket.

‘This is the last thing I’m gonna do for you guys,’ he muttered while he scribbled on the paper.

‘Thanks, Bob,’ I said gratefully.

The address Solito gave us was for a house in Chinatown. I took the wheel, drove down Massachusetts Avenue, took a right on 5th, and parked along a side road. A narrow, nondescript, two-story building stood sandwiched between an electrical store and a restaurant a couple of doors down. Lights were still on in the store. The restaurant was dark.

We left the Cruiser and walked to the house. I climbed a short flight of concrete steps and pressed the buzzer.

‘Why are we here again?’ said Reid with a puzzled frown.

The door creaked open before I could reply. A small, wizened man peered at us through the crack.

‘Can I help you?’ he said in thick Mandarin, squinting in the glow cast by a nearby street lamp.

‘We’re here to see Yuan Qin Lee,’ I replied in the Zhongyuan dialect.

The old man brightened. ‘You speak Han Chinese?’ he exclaimed in broken English.

‘A little bit,’ I said with a faint smile.

‘Come in, come in.’ He beckoned us inside the building with a sharp wave of his liver-spotted hand and closed the door.

We were faced with a cramped corridor filled with the smell of cooking and cheap disinfectant. Curious faces appeared in an open doorway to the left. The old man gestured frantically and shouted harsh words in Mandarin. The faces disappeared.

I glanced at the toys littering the passageway. ‘Are you the patriarch?’

‘For my sins,’ grumbled the old man. ‘They all useless, the lot of them. Only one who make money is Qin Lee.’

We followed him to an alcove at the end of the hall. He pulled aside a curtain and revealed a door that opened onto a dimly lit staircase spiraling down to the lower level of the house.

The basement was large and extended well beyond the boundaries of the property. I spied a second door at the rear of the room.

Banks of computer monitors lined benches along the walls, their screens flickering oddly under the harsh light from the half-dozen fluorescent tubes crowding the low ceiling. A low hum emanated from the hard drives on the left, dark monoliths in the otherwise bright room. Wires crawled between the cable organizers dotting the concrete floor.

A young man with horn-rimmed spectacles and shiny black hair sat hunched over a drafting table in the middle of the room. The frames around his eyes glinted under the spotlight screwed into the desk.

‘Qin Lee?’ I called out. The young man’s head came up sharply. Almond-shaped eyes narrowed behind the lenses. ‘Solito sent us.’

He observed us for a couple of beats before carefully putting down the document he had been working on. He removed the latex gloves from his hands, rose from the chair, and spoke a few words to the old man. The latter glanced at us with a troubled expression, nodded once, and left.

Qin Lee waited until the door closed at the top of the stairs before turning to us with a frown. ‘What do you want?’

I indicated Reid. ‘I need some passports for him, among other things.’

‘I already have a passport,’ Reid protested.

‘You need new ones,’ I retorted.

He held my gaze for a couple of seconds before sighing; he knew not to ask for the reasons why. Yet.

I listed the additional items I required.

Qin Lee crossed his arms and pursed his lips. ‘This will cost you.’

‘Money’s not an issue. When can you have the documents ready?’

He shrugged. ‘Day after tomorrow, at the earliest.’

‘We need them tonight.’ I ignored his shocked expression. ‘Like I said, money isn’t an issue.’

Two hours later, we walked out of the house with three fake passports and a document wallet.

‘It would help if I knew what was going on behind that thick skull of yours,’ Reid muttered once we were inside the Cruiser.

I started the engine. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Well, for one thing, why the hell did you just fork out a fortune for those forgeries?’

‘Because I suspect we’re going to need them before the week’s over.’

‘Why? Where are we going?’ said Reid.

‘France.’

His brow furrowed. ‘Any particular reason?’ he said after a beat.

‘The last paper Strauss published was from UPMC, the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris,’ I explained. ‘I want to know why Burnstein and the Crovir First Council are so interested in this person.’

Reid studied the road for a while. ‘You sure about this?’ he said finally.

I hesitated. ‘It’s the only clue we’ve got.’

He sighed. ‘When do we leave?’

I took out the cell and dialed the Vauquoises’ number. ‘Hello, Pierre? It’s Lucas.’ I listened. ‘We’re fine. Look, we need to get to Paris. Can you help?...No, commercial flights are out of the question. This has to be discreet.’

There was a longer interlude while I waited for Vauquois to return to the phone. I pulled a pen and paper out of the glove compartment and wrote down the address he dictated.

‘Thanks, Pierre. Give my love to Solange.’

We headed north of DC and reached the private airstrip Vauquois had directed us to outside Baltimore around midnight. The only plane on the tarmac with its lights on was a white Cessna 750. I parked the Cruiser inside the hangar next to it and followed Reid to the aircraft.

A tall, trim, middle-aged man with silver-streaked brown hair came down the steps to meet us when we entered the shadow of the plane.

‘Are you Pierre’s friends?’ he said in an amiable voice.

‘Yes, we are,’ I replied. We shook hands.

‘I’m Jim, your pilot.’ He glanced at our bags. ‘Will this be all?’

I nodded.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Come aboard.’

Thirty minutes later, we were airborne. As the east coast fell away beneath us, I turned to the documents I had printed at Qin Lee’s place; before the Crovirs surprised us in Capitol Hill, I had forwarded the photograph from Burnstein’s computer to a fake email address on a separate server. The research articles by Strauss and generic information on the UPMC had been freely accessible on the internet.

‘Wake me up when we get there.’ Reid reclined his seat and closed his eyes.

I spent the next two hours poring over the information in Strauss’s papers. Occasionally, my gaze would stray to the black and white print of the man and the woman in the restaurant.

Why was a senior member of the Crovir Councils so concerned with a scientist involved in genetics and molecular biology? Sure, Burnstein was the head of a biotechnology corporation, but the security measures surrounding the information on Strauss suggested the President and CEO of GeMBiT Corp had a more vested interest in the professor than pure academic curiosity. More importantly, what did it have to do with the Crovir Hunters’ renewed attempts on my life? The timing of the events was too close for this fact to be a coincidence. And where did Olsson feature in all of this?

Somewhere over the Atlantic, I was lulled into a troubled sleep by the drone of the Cessna’s engines.

Eight hours after we left Baltimore, we landed on a deserted airfield thirty miles outside Paris. The local time was fifteen hundred.

‘Pierre called,’ Jim told us when he opened the cabin door. ‘He said he would arrange transportation for you.’

We unloaded our bags and bade the pilot goodbye. As we stood on the tarmac and watched the Cessna dwindle to a speck on the skyline, on its way to Le Bourget Airport to refuel, the distant backfiring of engines alerted us to approaching vehicles. We turned and gazed down the strip.

A black Jaguar XK120 roadster was making its way rapidly across the tarmac toward us. Not far behind it was a dusty, mustard-yellow Citroën 2CV; French hip-hop music blasted out of its open windows.

The roadster braked to a stop some three feet from us. An energetic young man with blond hair and blue eyes leapt out of the driver’s seat.

‘
Bonjour! Vous êtes
Lucas?’ he said with a blindingly white smile.

‘
Oui,
’ I replied distractedly, my eyes roaming over the familiar Jaguar.

He threw the car keys across to me. ‘
Compliment de Monsieur Vauquois
!’ he shouted and jogged over to the 2CV.

The bearded youth behind the wheel of the Citroën nodded a brief acknowledgement and pulled his shades down. We watched the car do a screeching U-turn and hurtle erratically down the runway. The rap lyrics faded in the distance.

Reid studied the roadster with a grimace. ‘Do all immortals have a thing for nice cars, or is it just you and the people you know?’ He dropped our bags in the boot and climbed in the passenger seat.

‘What can I say? We like the classics.’ I slipped behind the wheel and ran my fingers lovingly over the dashboard and the gearbox.

Pierre and Solange had left the vintage car with friends in Chantilly when they moved to New York; they still used it whenever they visited France. It had been a while since I had driven the antique.

Despite the heavy Saturday afternoon traffic and Reid’s occasional acerbic comment on my driving, we made Paris in just under an hour; the old back roads had not changed much in the few decades since I had last been to the capital. I crossed the
Boulevard Périphérique
near the
16ème arrondissement
, went over the
Place du Trocadéro
, and headed for the
Pont d’léna
.