The Unknown Read online

  For half a second, Kincaid considered trying to overpower the guy. He was confident he could, but there was always a chance the man would pull the trigger. And if the bullet didn’t hit Kincaid, it might hit the man or fly through the train’s paper-thin walls and into an innocent passenger.

  With a sigh, Kincaid lowered himself onto a chair.

  “I know you think you’re the hero here, but you’re not,” Kincaid said. “At least not yet.”

  “Let me guess. I would be a hero if I let you go, right?” The man laughed.

  “No, I know you’re not going to do that. But you will come off looking pretty damn good if you don’t allow anyone to leave the train until after the police have conducted a full search.”

  “Because the real shooter is still onboard,” the man said, obviously not believing it.

  “Yes, but I’m more concerned about the man he kidnapped.”

  A hint of uncertainty on the man’s brow.

  “I was guarding one of your passengers,” Kincaid said. “I was shot and he was taken.” Not exactly the factual order, but close enough. “Check my gun if you don’t believe me. If it’s been shot recently, you’ll smell the gunpowder. If you do, then you don’t have to believe anything I’m saying. But if you don’t, then there’s at least a chance the killer isn’t me. And of course, there’s this.” Kincaid glanced down at his unbuttoned shirt. The vest was damaged from where the bullet had hit it, and on Kincaid’s skin, just above the top of the vest, were the first signs of the large bruise that was spreading across his chest. “Do you think I just shot myself?”

  When security officer Maddox had seen the prisoner standing on top of the train, he’d been sure the man was the one who had killed Buchman, the sleeper-car conductor. But the prisoner had not acted like a killer. It would have been simple for him to escape over the other side of the train car, but instead he had given himself up.

  Maddox was also troubled by the man’s story that someone had been kidnapped, and his insistence that the train be searched. Yes, it could have been what the movies called a diversion, but the prisoner appeared genuinely agitated that nothing was being done.

  When Koehl, one of Maddox’s fellow security officers, relieved him a few minutes later, Maddox checked the prisoner’s weapon. Though he wasn’t a certified expert, he’d shot enough weapons on the practice range to know what a fired gun should smell like, even hours later. The prisoner’s weapon had no such smell. And there was no way the prisoner could have cleaned it well enough to eliminate the odor, in the time between when Buchman’s body had been found and when Maddox and the others discovered the man on the roof. Which meant this was not the weapon that had killed the conductor.

  And if this wasn’t the gun, then the prisoner was possibly telling the truth about not being the killer. And if that was true, what about the rest of his story?

  Maddox did not have a large security team, or he would have conducted a cabin-to-cabin search then and there. As it was, it would have to wait until the police took over.

  Until then, he could at least make sure no one would be getting off the train unless he said so.

  Chapter Three

  Though the helicopter’s door had been closed for nearly thirty minutes, a bitter chill from the night air still filled the cabin.

  Brunner stared at his feet, fighting the urge to look at the door through which Clarke had been pushed. The thing that disturbed the scientist most was not the act itself, or the bullet Clarke had been hit with moments before. No, the thing that had rattled Brunner to his core was that Clarke, though clearly still conscious, did not utter a sound as he flew out of the helicopter. If Brunner had been in the man’s place, he would have been screaming all the way down.

  This can’t be happening, he thought. None of this. It’s got to be a nightmare.

  It was. Though the real kind, not the dream.

  One moment he’d been sound asleep, and the next, Clarke—the man who was supposed to be one of his bodyguards—had shaken him awake.

  “We’ve got to go,” Clarke had said.

  “Huh?” Brunner hadn’t quite understood what the man meant. They were on a moving train. Where would they go?

  “There’s trouble. I need to get you to an alternate cabin. You’ll be safe there.”

  “I…I thought I was safe here.”

  “You do as we say, remember? Let’s go.”

  Clarke had given Brunner only enough time to put on his clothes before he hustled Brunner out the door and down the main corridor toward the next car. Just before they reached the car, Brunner sucked in a breath and stopped in his tracks. “My bag.”

  “What about your bag?”

  “I left it in my cabin. I-I need it.”

  Clarke grimaced. “I’ll retrieve it after I get you situated. Keep moving.”

  The alternate cabin was located at the front end of the next car. Clarke knocked three times on the door and someone inside opened it. Clarke pushed Brunner into the room.

  There were two others present, a man and a woman, both younger than Brunner.

  “He left his bag in the cabin,” Clarke said.

  The woman looked at Brunner. “Is it important?”

  “Yes, very.”

  “Fine, I’ll get it,” Clarke said.

  “You have four minutes,” the woman said. “If you’re not back by then, we go without you.”

  “Wait,” Brunner said to Clarke. “Go? What is she talking about? Who are these people?”

  “They’re with me,” Clarke told him. “Don’t worry. They’ll keep you safe.”

  If Brunner had been in his right mind at that moment, he might have picked up on the fact that Clarke had said with me and not with us, but that hadn’t struck him as strange until after he was on the helicopter.

  Once Clarke had left, the woman said, “We are a little tight for space here so I need you to get on the bottom bunk.”

  Brunner could tell that like Clarke and Kincaid, she was not a native German speaker, but her accent was different from that of his bodyguards. She sounded Eastern European.

  “Uh…all right,” he said, and climbed onto the bed.

  Across the room, the man, who had yet to say anything, stuck a couple of suction cups onto the cabin’s window. He used a cutting tool to score a line on the glass, as close to the frame as possible. When he finished, he grabbed the suction cups’ handles and held on to them as the woman tapped the glass with a rubber mallet.

  “What are you doing?” Brunner asked.

  Neither of them responded but they didn’t really need to. It was pretty clear what was up. He was just having a hard time believing it.

  Two more strikes of the mallet and the glass popped free from the frame, allowing freezing air to rush inside, dropping the temperature to near zero degrees Celsius within seconds.

  The man maneuvered the now detached piece of glass into the cabin and laid it on the top bunk. As soon as he was out of the way, the woman began duct-taping over the lip of glass still sticking out from the window frame.

  Brunner had had enough. Despite how scared he felt, he pushed himself to the edge of the bunk and started to stand.

  The woman spun around, extracted a gun from her bag, and pointed it at his head. “Lie back down, Dr. Brunner.”

  This was the moment he’d realized these two were probably not part of his official escort. And later, after Clarke had been shot and sent flying, Brunner was sure of it.

  The other thing he was now sure of was that somewhere in the countryside ahead, death awaited him. It wouldn’t be fast. Rather, his end would come only after his kidnappers had wrung from him every detail of what he’d created. He would try to resist, but knew he wouldn’t last long. He wasn’t built that way.

  The woman looked out the side window of the helicopter and said something into the headset she was wearing. A moment later, the man looked, too. Without a headset of his own, Brunner had no idea what was happening. But when the helicopter desc
ended, the subject of their discussion became clear.

  This was it. Below them was the spot where he would take his last breath.

  As soon as the helicopter touched down, the woman said, “Do not move until I tell you to.”

  His throat dry, Brunner could only answer with a nod.

  The door slid to the side and two men climbed out, half of the group that had been in the passenger cabin when Brunner was hauled in. Straight out from the door was a windowless concrete building, the wall broken only by a set of closed double doors. The two men outside scanned the area with their rifles ready. A few seconds later, one of them looked back inside and said something in a language Brunner didn’t understand.

  “Stand up,” the woman said.

  Brunner released the harness and rose.

  “Do not try to fight,” she said. “Do not try to run. You will not succeed.”

  It was a needless warning.

  The remaining two men from the original group of four exited.

  “Now you, Dr. Brunner,” the woman said.

  Brunner could feel his hands shaking as he walked to the doorway.

  Two men stood on the ground by the door. As Brunner leaned down to jump off, they grabbed his arms and helped him down. Apparently they were there for more than assisting with his exit, as they didn’t let go of him once his feet touched the ground.

  A wide strip of grass ran off to either side of the cement area in front of the building, with more grass extending behind the structure. Past the building, where the grass ended, a forest grew. Brunner looked over his shoulders, first left then right. A road on the other side of the helicopter ran parallel to the front of the building.

  No, not a road. A runway. And on the other side of this, more grass and then trees again.

  There was not another building or even a light in sight.

  Someone pushed him in the back.

  “Walk,” the woman said.

  They moved as a group to the building, where one of the men unlocked the door.

  Brunner was led to a small, windowless room that contained a cot and a bucket and nothing else. After pushing him inside, one of his captors slammed the door shut and engaged the lock.

  Brunner turned back and pounded against the door. “What’s going on? You can’t just leave me here like this! Please, let me go!”

  Not a sound from the other side.

  “Please,” he shouted. “Please!”

  No one answered.

  Chapter Four

  3:18 AM

  The NightJet had been instructed to bypass its scheduled stop at Schwarzach-St. Veit Bahnhof and proceed directly to the larger town of Bischofshofen.

  Nearing the station, Maddox saw the flashing lights of at least a dozen police cars parked along the road, the officers waiting on the platform.

  Even before the train came to a stop, the officers began boarding. Maddox met them in the middle of the front sleeping car, where he was introduced to the lead officer, Chief Inspector Staheli.

  “Where is the crime scene?” the chief inspector asked.

  “Two cars down. I’ll show you.”

  They walked side by side down the corridor.

  “Has anything been disturbed?” Staheli asked.

  “Not since the body was discovered.”

  “What about the passengers in that car?”

  “We’ve moved them out. The only person who has been in the car since then is me.”

  “Good. I understand you have the suspect.”

  “Well, yes, but…”

  Staheli cocked his head. “But what?”

  “I’m not sure he actually did it.”

  The chief inspector raised a brow. “I was given the impression you caught him with the gun.”

  “A gun. But it appears not to have been fired.” Maddox explained his examination of the weapon.

  The chief inspector frowned. “You should not have touched it.”

  “I didn’t. I used one of our cloth napkins. But gun aside, there’s the fact that the man in custody has also been shot.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He’s wearing a bulletproof vest. The bullet hit him in the chest.”

  “And why would he be wearing a bulletproof vest?”

  “He claims to be a bodyguard, sir.”

  “A bodyguard? What else has this bodyguard told you?”

  Maddox relayed the suspect’s story about the kidnapping and the request for a cabin-to-cabin search.

  “Have you done it?”

  “I don’t have that kind of manpower, sir.”

  The inspector divided his men into four groups. The first to check the sleeper cars, the second to check the seated cabins, the third to make sure no one left the train, and the last and smallest group to accompany him to the suspect.

  Maddox ended up with the sleeper car group, as he had a master key in case any of the cabins were locked.

  They started at the front of the first car and worked their way back, waking up passengers who hadn’t even realized anything had happened. When the officers found nothing unusual in the front car, they moved to the next one.

  The first cabin there was number 2. When one of the officers knocked, no one answered.

  “You’re sure this one’s occupied?” the officer asked Maddox.

  “It’s supposed to be.”

  The officer rapped again. “Police inspection. Please open the door.”

  Not a sound from inside.

  The officer gave it a few more seconds before nodding at Maddox, who unlocked the door and moved out of the way.

  The instant the officer opened the door, Maddox knew something was wrong. The room was freezing. Peeking over the officer’s shoulder, he saw the glass had been removed from the window.

  “No one’s here,” the officer said. He looked back at Maddox and motioned for him to come inside, then pointed at the window. “Was it like that before?”

  “Absolutely not.” Though Maddox had not been responsible for the room checks prior to leaving Zurich, there was no way a problem like this wouldn’t have been reported to him.

  “Here’s the glass,” another officer said.

  He was standing next to the bunks, looking at the top bed. On it lay a piece of glass with two suction-cup handles connected to it.

  “Could someone have jumped out?” the first officer asked.

  “Only if they wanted to kill themselves.”

  “You haven’t stopped since the incident?”

  “Once. For several minutes right after the body was discovered.”

  “Couldn’t they have left then?”

  “Technically, yes. But I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, the, um, suspect would have seen them.”

  “The suspect?”

  “He was…on top of the train, watching for anyone trying to leave.”

  The officer stared at him for a moment. “On top of the train?”

  10:23 AM

  Chief Inspector Martin Staheli spotted the Interpol official the moment the man stepped out of the terminal and began walking toward the tracks.

  The last train had passed through the station twenty minutes earlier, and the next wasn’t due for another hour, so there were few other people about. But that wasn’t the reason Staheli knew the man was the person he’d been told to expect.

  It was the way the official walked, with a hint of arrogance as his gaze swept back and forth, taking in everything.

  “I think our guest has arrived,” the chief inspector said.

  Inspector Hahn, who’d been standing next to Staheli, looked out the window.

  As expected, the new arrival continued across the tracks toward the two Nightjet sleeper cars. The cars had been left behind so the police could conduct their investigation while the rest of the train continued on its way to Graz.

  Though Staheli lost sight of the man as the official neared the cars, he could hear the muffled tones of a conversation o
utside the doors, where the Interpol man was stopped by the officer guarding the entrance. A few moments later, the official entered from the front end of the car.

  “I’m looking for Chief Inspector Staheli.”

  “I’m Staheli.”

  The official strode down the hall and extended his hand. “Senior Inspector Schwartz, Interpol.”

  Staheli shook the man’s hand. “You’re early.”

  “Not as much traffic as I’d anticipated.”

  Staheli motioned to his assistant. “This is Inspector Hahn.”

  “Good to meet you,” Schwartz said as he shook with Hahn. He then nodded at a damp, dark stain in the middle of the corridor behind Staheli. “Is that where it happened?”

  “It is,” Staheli said.

  “May I?”

  “Of course.”

  Schwartz approached the bloodstain and kneeled beside it. After staring at the spot for a moment, he looked left and right. When he finally stood, he said, “And the man you captured—where was he?”

  “They found him on top of the train,” Hahn said.

  “I mean when the shooting occurred.”

  Hahn glanced at Staheli, who nodded for him to continue.

  “Witnesses indicate he was down there.” Hahn pointed at the alcove.

  Schwartz looked into the passageway toward cabins 14 and 16. “At the top or bottom?”

  “The bottom. He was on the floor when the witnesses first arrived.”

  Schwartz stepped over to the alcove and looked down. “The report I saw said he was wearing a bulletproof vest.”

  “That’s correct.”

  He studied the alcove again before saying, “Do you know if he was shot at the top and fell? Or was he at the bottom when he was hit?”

  “At the bottom.”

  “Why?”

  Hahn’s brow furrowed. “Why?”

  “Yes. Why would he have been down there when he was shot?”

  “Ah. One of the conductors confirmed he was booked in cabin 14. That would be the one on the left. The cabin on the right is the one the missing man was staying in.”