Charon's Landing

Arlington, Virginia

Mercer swung open his front door, reveling in the feeling of being home. He stood motionless for a few minutes, watching the sunlight that played through the three-story atrium. The air was crisp; a sudden and unexpected chill had Washington in its grip, and his furnace was still off. Thinking of such a minute domestic chore as relighting the furnace pleased him more than he thought it would. Everything was finally getting back to normal.

On a table in the little-used living room was a large manila envelope addressed to him. Curious, he opened it and withdrew a single piece of paper and probably the most coveted perk in Washington — a pair of diplomatic license plates. The note read, “A gift from the people of the United Arab Emirates. Park wherever you want to and speed as much as you dare,” and was signed by Khalid Khuddari.

Mercer laughed delightedly as he twisted up the spiral staircase. When the telephone rang, he raced up the last few steps, rushed through the bar, and snatched up the handset.

“Thank God you’re there.” Harry White sounded desperate. “I forgot to buy this morning’s paper, so I couldn’t check yesterday’s crossword answers. Nine down, ‘Seduced by Zeus’?”

“Harry, I just got back,” Mercer complained, walking behind the bar and noting the four empty liquor bottles in the trash can that hadn’t been there when he’d left.

“I know, I know, but you’ve gotta help me. It’s been driving me nuts. Seduced by Zeus? Come on, you know who I’m talking about,” Harry wheedled.

“Leda?”

“No, not her, the other one. Zeus came on to Leda disguised as a swan; the one I want was seduced by a golden shower.”

Mercer laughed until his chest ached. “Shower of gold, Harry, not a golden shower. There’s a big difference, trust me.” He pulled a beer from the bar fridge, spying the half-filled wine bottle standing next to the stacks of Heinekens. Harry must have had female company. Further proof was the cigarette butts in the ashtrays. They weren’t Harry’s brand.

“So, do you know the answer?”

“Try Danaë. I think she was Perseus’ mother,” Mercer said absently. He thought he’d just heard something from upstairs in his bedroom, a floorboard creak or maybe a piece of furniture being bumped slightly.

“That’s it, finally, thank Christ. Hey, Tiny and I and a couple other guys are getting together for some poker tonight. You interested?”

Mercer went tense. There was someone coming down the spiral stairs, soft treads whispering against the antique wood as though stealth was the intention. Mercer whispered directly into the phone. “Harry, someone is in my house. Call the police.”

“Of course someone’s in your house. Christ, I let her in myself, even gave her my key to use,” Harry boomed back.

Aggie Johnston came into the bar from the library wearing black garter stockings and a matching lace bra and panty set. Over that, she had slipped into one of Mercer’s dress shirts, its tails brushing against the smooth skin of her thighs. Her hair was done up beautifully, shimmering like precious metal, and she had artfully applied makeup to accent her best features, which to Mercer were all of them. If seduction had a look, this was it.

“I’ve got to go now, Harry,” he stammered and cut the connection.

“You’re early. Dick Henna said you were coming into town later this afternoon. I wanted to be at the airport to meet you.” There was a catch in her voice, part desire, part apology.

“I managed an earlier flight,” Mercer said, just to say something. He was overwhelmed by her presence. Standing there, she captured his entire vision, as if his brain refused to see anything else. “I didn’t think I would ever see you again.”

“I didn’t think you would either.” Aggie moved across the room until Mercer could feel her breath on his skin. Her perfume was intoxicating. “I couldn’t stay away. I wanted to. I know that you and I will never last, but I had to be with you. Despite myself, you’ve charmed me.”

“How have you been?” Mercer breathed.

A shadow of annoyance flashed behind Aggie’s impossibly green eyes at Mercer for asking when she was trying to seduce him, but she knew he asked out of concern. “I’m all right. It’s been a few days so I’ve had time to adjust.”

“So what happens now?”

“Since my father’s death, I’ve been hounded by an army of lawyers. Yesterday I signed my name about a thousand times just to transfer the Johnston Trust into my name. We haven’t even begun to go over the Petromax corporate files.”

“You’re going to take over the company?”

“Ironic that an environmentalist is going to head one of the largest oil companies in the world, isn’t it?”

“I can’t think of anyone better suited. You’ll have an easier time working from within than fighting from the outside.”

Aggie smiled, the expression radiating from her mouth to encompass her eyes and her entire character. “That was my thinking as well.”

“But what I meant was, what happens between us now?”

She swayed toward him until her body was pressed against his, her small breasts flattened against his chest, one thigh snuggling between his legs. “You take me to bed and make love to me until neither of us can walk,” Aggie replied. “The lawyers will eventually track me here, so we’ve got only a couple of days. After that, Philip? I don’t know. You’ve got your world and I’ve got mine. Maybe they’re the same — only time will tell.”

Later that night, much later, in fact, Mercer and Aggie lay on top of the sheets of Mercer’s bed in a damp tangle of limbs, their breathing just now returning to a normal rhythm. Seeing the repair work around the skylight over the bed, Aggie asked him who had been responsible for the attack on his home.

“It wasn’t your father, if that was what you were thinking,” Mercer said. “The FBI found a bunch of receipts from a private investigator in your father’s home office. He’d had you followed for a couple of months. Since you moved back to Washington, actually. Henna believes it was nothing more than overzealous parental concern.”

“That’s how he knew what time I came here that night?”

“Right. And it was the private investigator I heard the night of your father’s party leaving the area after the first attempt on my life. He must have followed me home after I dropped you off at your condo in Georgetown.”

“He was a sick, greedy man,” Aggie said about her father and snuggled deeper into Mercer’s arms. “But it’s a relief to know he had nothing to do with that.”

He explained his theory about Max’s suicide, and that seemed to make Aggie feel a little better about her father. There was one detail he would not relate to her, something he didn’t even want to believe himself. It was something Dick Henna had told Mercer while he was recuperating in Abu Dhabi with Wayne Bigelow.

The detonating device used to release the liquid nitrogen on the Alaska Pipeline, the one that Jan Voerhoven had triggered, was not the same one used to activate the computer virus in Alyeska’s system. That trigger had been activated while Mercer and Aggie were in the Marine Terminal’s Op-center, fifteen minutes after the Hope explosion. Henna and Mercer had come to the same conclusion.

Ivan Kerikov is still alive.