Piranha

Horne’s eyes briefly flicked to a file cabinet. “As I said, it was a special case. My translator, Bob Gillman, was not allowed to record his translation into the computer. Those were Mr. Kensit’s instructions.”

“But you have a physical copy in that cabinet.”

“Of course not!” Horne exclaimed with feigned offense. “We were under strict orders to destroy even the handwritten copy.”

Juan nodded and looked toward the lobby as if he were considering other options. A deliveryman in a green jacket and cap was dropping off a package with the receptionist. Urban Jungle, the back of his uniform read. Not a well-fitting outfit, either. The sleeves were comically short.

Juan turned back to Horne as if he’d gotten a sudden idea. “May I speak to Mr. Gillman? Perhaps he can provide me with the information I need.”

“I’m sad to say that Bob was struck by a car outside of our offices just a few months ago. Hit-and-run. The driver got away. Bob was killed instantly.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yes, very tragic.”

“It sounds like you were privy to the contents of the document.”

Another eye flick to the cabinet. “I review the work of many of my employees.”

“Mr. Kensit claims the journal outlines a radical new scientific development unknown at that time. Can you confirm that?”

Horne shifted in his chair. “Mr. Cochran, perhaps you should have Mr. Kensit contact me. I can’t share confidential information without a release form.”

Juan put up his hands. “I understand. I don’t want you to divulge anything you shouldn’t.”

“Besides, although I can translate German scientific language, it doesn’t mean I can understand the science behind it.”

“That certainly makes sense. But if I could have a brief look—”

Horne suddenly stood. “Mr. Cochran, we don’t have a copy of the document, and I resent the implication that we would violate a trust like that.”

Juan got to his feet as well. Pushing further would accomplish nothing. But his assessment of the building’s security made it clear that breaking in this evening and photographing the copy of the journal that obviously was in the file cabinet would be a simple task.

“I’m sorry I can’t help more,” Horne said as he ushered Juan out to the lobby. All of the translators had gone home, leaving the receptionist as the lone employee. “Please have Mr. Kensit send me a notarized request to consult on the translation authentication and I will be glad to assist you.”

The receptionist handed him the package sitting on the counter. “This came urgent from the UN, Mr. Horne.”

“Thanks, Jill,” he said, and put the box under his arm. “Good-bye, Mr. Cochran.”

Juan shook his hand, and Horne walked back to his office. Juan called Eric to find out where he was and looked down to the street below to see if he could spot him.

He didn’t see Eric, but the deliveryman from Urban Jungle was still out there, looking up at the building. Now that Juan could see his face, he recognized the man immediately.

It was the assassin who’d been sent to kill Juan in Jamaica. For a moment, Juan thought the killer was waiting for him to exit the building.

Then he remembered the package.

Juan heard Horne shut the office door behind him. The assassin saw Juan staring down at him and waved with a wicked grin on his face. He held a small black object in his hand for Juan to see, his thumb poised over a red button. With a deliberate finality, his thumb stabbed down.

Juan dived over the lobby desk and tackled Jill before she could register what was happening, covering her body with his. The instant they hit the floor, a deafening blast blew apart Greg Horne’s office, showering the cubicles with glass shards and chunks of the thick wooden door.

Juan shook off the stars circling his head and jumped to his feet to go to Horne’s aid, but there was nothing he could do. Smoke billowed across the room as an inferno raged in Horne’s office. The explosion was so powerful that it had damaged the sprinkler system, which sprayed haphazardly around the space.

Jill was cowering in the fetal position and screaming uncontrollably. Juan picked her up in his arms and carried her to the stairs, which was now crammed with the building’s other tenants escaping the fire. She was able to walk down the stairs, so he put his arm around her shoulder and kept his head on a swivel, looking for signs of the assassin.

By the time he got outside, emergency vehicles were already arriving. He handed Jill off to a paramedic and jogged across the street.

The Urban Jungle van was gone.

Eric ran through the crowd of onlookers.

“Chairman! Are you all right?”

Juan nodded. “It was the Haitians again. They knew we were coming.”

“How? We disabled our trackers.”

“I don’t know. Their surveillance system must be even more powerful than we thought. They must have cracked our communication encryption.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

Juan looked up at the flames licking from the fifth floor above him. “I think your evidence is on fire.”

“You weren’t able to get a copy of the diary?”

“It existed, but he wouldn’t show it to me. Now it’s up in smoke, and so is the only remaining person to read it besides Kensit.”

Police were now screeching to a stop in packs.

“Come on,” Eric said, “I’ve got the car stopped on the next block.”

“I did get one piece of information,” Juan said as they walked and rubbed the smoke from his eyes.

“What’s that?”

“Lutzen’s journal never mentioned that he was a doctor.”

Eric thought for a second, then his eyes went wide. “Mr. Perlmutter’s book said his postdoctoral research was continuing the work he did at Berlin University.”

Juan nodded. “His doctoral thesis might still be in the library. We need to know what he was working on.”

“And because his doctorate wasn’t mentioned in the diary, Kensit might not know the thesis exists. I can do an online search to make sure it’s still in the library.”

“No. We don’t know how far Kensit has penetrated our network or how his system works. If he knows we’re looking for the thesis, his men might get there before we do and destroy it like he did Horne’s copy of the journal.”

“So we can’t even tell the guys on the Oregon that it exists?”

Juan shook his head. “We’ll tell them what happened here and that they might have company in Martinique, but our destination is between the two of us. I’m not even going to call Tiny. He isn’t going to know until we get to La Guardia that we’re flying to Berlin.”

Saint-Pierre, Martinique

At the turn of the twentieth century, a dozen or more cargo ships would have been anchored where the Oregon now sat motionless, the only large vessel in sight. Although Saint-Pierre’s harbor teemed with pleasure craft and sailboats, her days as a commercial and cultural jewel of the Caribbean ended the day Mt. Pelée erupted. The bustling city of thirty thousand had been rebuilt over the following decades with charming red-roofed cottages and stone churches, but its population had never topped five thousand since that fateful day.

Max Hanley couldn’t blame residents for being reluctant to return. Not only did the now dormant volcano still loom over the town but Saint-Pierre had suffered catastrophe before the eruption. During the high-speed cruise from the Dominican Republic, Max found out that Saint-Pierre had been destroyed more than a century earlier by the twenty-five-foot storm surge of the Great Hurricane of 1780, the deadliest in Atlantic history. Over nine thousand citizens died in that disaster.