‘That’s really not much to go on,’ McCormick said as Payne showed him the contents of the file. ‘It’s odd that his records have never been updated.’
‘It’s enough for now,’ Payne said.
So far, everything Sahlberg had told him on the phone had been true. He was a former employee of Payne Industries, and it did appear that he had worked with Payne’s father. If Sahlberg was being honest about everything else, it meant he really was in fear of his life.
Payne checked his watch. Sahlberg would be waiting for him at the Monongahela Incline in less than ten minutes.
If he hurried, he just might make it.
Nowadays, the Monongahela Incline is equal parts commuter railway and tourist attraction — like the cable cars in San Francisco or the streetcars in New Orleans.
But it wasn’t always this way.
When the steel industry took hold of western Pennsylvania, the lands near the riverbanks were the prime locations to establish the steel mills. The access to the waterway allowed supplies such as iron and coal to be shipped in on large barges. The steel produced by these mills could likewise be transported via the rivers to finishing plants that crafted the steel into girders, coils, or other needed forms, as well as cargo ships in larger ports.
The manpower that operated these factories lived high above the water’s edge on the bluffs that overlooked the rivers. In order to safely and efficiently traverse the hillside — the typical commute involved worn roads or footpaths that zigzagged to the mills below — German immigrants proposed the concept of an incline, based on the sielbahns of their homeland. But instead of traveling from peak to peak over treacherous terrain, these cable cars simply went up and down the hillside.
The Monongahela Incline was completed in 1870, and was a godsend for the weary workers. Its two enclosed passenger cars served as counterbalances on a continuous loop of cable. As one car traveled down the slope, its weight helped pull the other toward the top of the hill. Its primary purpose was to shuttle the mill workers between their hilltop neighborhoods and the factories below. It wasn’t glamorous — the soot and dirt from the workers fell from their faces, clothing and boots, creating an ever-present layer of filth — but it was spectacularly efficient. What used to take hours if the weather was poor now took only minutes in any conditions.
The incline system was such a rousing success that at one time the city of Pittsburgh had seventeen of them in operation. The Monongahela Incline was so proficient at moving people up and down the hillside that a separate system was built directly alongside it in 1883 to accommodate larger items. The Monongahela Freight Incline ran on a track that was ten feet wide instead of five. Rather than enclosed cars, it used covered platforms that could carry pallets, crates and even vehicles between the upper and lower stations.
Despite their prominence in the late 1800s and early 1900s, only two Pittsburgh area inclines remained in service today. The Monongahela Incline, the steepest and oldest in America, rose 370 feet above the river below. To cover this elevation, its tracks ran only 635 feet in length, resulting in a noticeably steep thirty-five-degree slope — and spectacular views.
Sahlberg couldn’t possibly remember how many times he had traveled up and down the hillside on the incline. Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? It wasn’t an unreasonable guess. He had lived above the city and commuted into it for over sixty years, and while he occasionally drove himself to work, he actually preferred public transportation because it gave him time to think.
During all those trips, he had never worried about what might happen to him once he stepped aboard the cable car. Not once. Not even for a second.
Today that streak would end.
9
Omar Masseri was furious.
After retiring from the Egyptian army, he had made quite a name for himself as a mercenary/assassin/bounty-hunter. If it involved money and guns, he was willing to listen. Over the past decade, he had tracked and killed guerrillas for kidnap and ransom companies in South America, he had found deadbeat gamblers for the crime lords in Hong Kong, and he had shot two Mafia informers in the witness protection program.
He could find anyone … for the right price.
And yet, an eighty-year-old man had managed to elude him.
How could that possibly happen?
On the surface, his assignment could not have been simpler. He had been given a complement of additional soldiers — presumably mercenaries like him, though he had never met them before that day — an SUV full of weapons, and a state-of-the-art tracking system. Their goal was to capture an elderly scientist named Mattias Sahlberg and to seize any work materials at his house, preferably without being noticed.
The delivery truck had been Masseri’s idea. It was a gambit he had used before, one that had been highly effective in the past. People got packages all the time. The United States Postal Service, United Parcel Service, Federal Express and several other companies used box trucks to route their packages. Their appearance was so commonplace that people rarely gave them — or their employees — a second glance.
Cops had been known to stop suspicious vehicles out of curiosity.
He had never known them to arbitrarily stop deliveries.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t counted on Sahlberg’s departure. Masseri had been warned that the video surveillance of the neighborhood had a ‘slight’ data lag while being streamed to his phone. In actuality, that delay was fourteen minutes long. He had expected to find Sahlberg inside the house because that was where he had appeared on the satellite image, but by the time Masseri and his team had arrived, Sahlberg had left for his walk and hadn’t returned.
Facing a tight deadline, Masseri was forced to alter their plans. The delivery truck was parked on a side street. The deliverymen changed from overalls into business suits before they jumped into two SUVs. The uniforms had helped them blend into the background at Sahlberg’s house, but they would do the opposite if they had to chase him on foot. A man in a suit was just another white-collar worker on his way to a meeting. If necessary, they could even pose as detectives if anyone witnessed Sahlberg’s capture. It would be much harder to convince a bystander that the old man was being detained for insufficient postage.
Masseri had scouted the area in advance of his mission. For him, it was a habit as common as brushing his teeth at night. After calculating the length of the satellite delay by tracking his own movements, he returned his focus to his target. From the looks of things, Sahlberg was headed toward the Monongahela Incline, which would give him access to the city below.
If that happened, Masseri’s job would be much harder.
He rushed to prevent that from happening.
Sahlberg had been waiting inside the doors of the incline’s upper station for several minutes. The small area to the left of the ticket booth was hardly a lobby, but it did provide shelter from the elements for the passengers awaiting the next cable car — though he only used it when it was raining or cold enough to see his breath. In the summer, he preferred to stand outside in the warmth until the arriving passengers had exited, then he would duck inside and find a seat.
Today, he was grateful that he could see people on the street before they could see him. It gave him a minute’s warning before he would have to face the men from his house or explain himself to Payne.
Unfortunately, it was his pursuers who arrived first.
Sahlberg saw the black SUV as it crept along Grandview Avenue. Its slow, deliberate speed was the first indication that something was wrong. The driver was looking for something … or someone. When the SUV inched past the station and rounded the sharp bend near the incline, he felt a glimmer of hope that he was mistaken. His feeling was crushed when the SUV pulled to the curb and two men exited.