Havoc

Arlington, Virginia

Mercer swirled the last of his vodka gimlet and downed the remainder in one gulp. He was on his third, contemplating his fourth. Harry slouched next to him on his favorite stool at Mercer’s home bar. Both of them were raw-eyed and exhausted, but neither was ready to call it a night.

It had taken more than eight hours, and the direct intervention of Ira Lasko as well as a shadowy figure from Homeland Security who vouched for Cali Stowe, before the New Jersey police and FBI realized they hadn’t captured public enemies numbers one through three. Lizzie and Erasmus had spent no more than an hour making their statement before being released. Ira assured Mercer that the junk man would be fully compensated for his losses.

Cali had left before Mercer and Harry, whisked away by the Homeland Security agent in a government car, while Mercer was allowed to return to the Deco Palace to retrieve his Jaguar. It was a long drive home.

Harry had shown up at his place a couple hours after Mercer had dropped him at his own apartment, Drag in reluctant tow. They’d ordered Chinese food but neither was in the mood to eat. Each was preoccupied with his separate thoughts.

“Well at least one mystery’s been cleared up,” Harry said after a healthy slug of his Jack Daniel’s.

“What?”

“The car.”

The police who’d searched the Rolls-Royce they’d stolen from the Deco Palace found that the car had been fitted with a LoJack tracking device. The man Mercer had seen Poli leave behind at the entrance of the hotel had grabbed the driver and made him reveal his personal identity number. The tracking service led Poli and his men straight to the Fesses’ salvage yard. Fortunately the car’s owner hadn’t been killed, but three people inside the hotel were dead and another eight wounded.

While Mercer knew their murders weren’t his fault, they still lay heavy on his conscience. He especially felt Serena Ballard’s death. There was no way around the fact that had he not contacted her she’d still be alive. All of those people would.

“I do have something to cheer you up,” Harry said after a long silence. He shuffled over to his windbreaker and tossed some papers onto the bar.

“What’s this?”

“The copy of the notes from the safe Lizzie Fess gave me.”

Mercer looked at him incredulously. “Why didn’t you tell me earlier, you bastard? You’ve let me sit here thinking we’re at a dead end while you’ve had this the whole time.”

“Hey, sorry,” Harry replied. “I wanted to translate all of it first, but seeing your face hanging lower than Drag’s made me reconsider.”

Mercer read the first couple of paragraphs.

“This has got to be in code like the note Cali and I got from Einstein’s archives,” Mercer said when he finished the cryptic paragraphs. “It makes sense on one level but there has to be more. Do you remember the code? How many words to skip?”

“Every eleventh word,” Harry said at once.

Mercer grabbed a notebook and a pen from a drawer behind the bar and began counting out words. After a few moments he set the pen down and read aloud what he’d deciphered. “Leave you and I really care has recognize the thought of but like fallen ways.” He looked to Harry. “What the hell does that mean?”

Harry chuckled. “It means you’re an idiot,” the octogenarian said mildly. “You didn’t count the first word.”

Mercer turned the pages over to his friend in frustration. “You’re the one who loves puzzles and cracked the first message. You do it.”

“I already did. The first ten words are ‘Deer me Albert ewes should know I changed the key.’ When you clean it up a little you get ‘Dear me, Albert, you should know I changed the key.’”

“Shit.” Anger crept back into Mercer’s voice. “So how do we find the new key? Is there a clue?”

“Yeah.” Harry pointed to the second paragraph, a one-line non sequitur that Mercer had glossed over when he read the text. “This line here. Second tea into cup in six. I’m pretty sure it’s another doublet. Change tea into cup in six words and the second word is a clue. I scanned the rest of the letter and found five more doublet clues.”

“Can you figure them out?” Mercer asked anxiously.

“Might take me a while, but sure.”

Mercer slid Harry’s drink out of his reach. “Then get to work.”

After making a pot of coffee strong enough to melt a spoon, Mercer sat next to Harry as he began writing out words. There were literally hundreds of combinations and they wouldn’t know if they were right until all five had been figured out.

“Damn,” Harry muttered after a minute. “I’m beginning to hate Chester Bowie.”

“Why?”

“You only need four words to change tea into cup. It goes: tea, tap, cap, cup. The other two are just filler and I don’t even know where to put them. I could make it tea pea pet put pup cup or it could be tea sea sep sap cap cup.”

“Wait, what’s sep?”

“Abbreviation for separate. General rule for doublets is if it’s in the dictionary you can use it.”

“Well I’m not as good at these things as you but why don’t you give me the second hint and I’ll see what I can do.”

Harry leafed through Bowie’s note to Einstein and read out the next doublet. “‘Fourth games into balls in nine.’ Changing only one letter at a time, turn the word ‘games’ into the word ‘balls’ in nine words. The fourth word’s our clue. After that we have: ‘fourth gout into full in ten, second east into west in four,’ and finally there is ‘third dire into fine in four.’”

Mercer wrote out the first and last word of the second clue on a piece of paper, realized how much harder it would be with five-letter words versus three, and silently switched papers with Harry to give him the more difficult puzzle.

“Just for that I want my drink back,” Harry said without looking up.

Mercer slid the highball glass back to his friend and together they set to work.

At eleven o’clock they compared notes. Mercer had filled line after line on his paper but had made no progress, while Harry was pretty sure he had three of them, albeit they were the easiest. He’d deciphered the last two, coming up with west, lest, last, east and dire, dive, five, fine. Seeing that one of the clue words, “five,” was a number, he’d cracked the first doublet and came up with tea, ten, tan, tap, cap, cup.

“So we have ten, something, something, lest, five,” Mercer said, emptying Harry’s overflowing ashtray into a metal bucket he kept for that sole purpose.

“It must be a math problem. Ten plus something lest five, or ten minus something less five.”

“Ten times?” Mercer suggested.

“Genius,” Harry shouted and bent to his paper again. “Games into balls.” He spoke aloud as he wrote out. “Games, dames, dimes, times, ah, tiles, tills, fills, falls, balls. Perfect.”

“Way to go, Harry,” Mercer applauded. “Figure out the last one and we’re in business again. You know the fourth word has to be a number.”

“Give me a minute.” A few minutes passed. Harry finally looked up. “You realize that Bowie wrote this just before he tossed the safe.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Just think what kind of mind he had to create the doublets and then write out the letter to Einstein making sure he kept his word count straight. He could do this stuff in his head without really thinking about it. And from the sound of it he’d been through hell and back.”

“From what I’ve gathered, he was an eccentric, that’s for sure,” Mercer said. “And from the tone of this letter it sounds like he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”

“Oh, I’d say he’d crossed the verge and was deep into la-la land.”

Mercer asked Harry for Drag’s leash so he could take the mangy basset for his last walk of the night. From long years of experience, he knew Harry wouldn’t leave until he’d solved the code, and even then he’d sleep on the leather couch rather than return to his dingy one-bedroom apartment up the block.

Mercer dragged the old basset to the circular stairs, and once he got him going the dog made good progress, the fat of his belly rippling as it scraped over the stair treads. He even waddled across the polished marble foyer. Usually Harry had to drag him to the door but for Mercer he was a little less stubborn.

Mercer had just reached the front door when the doorbell chimed. He automatically checked the TAG Heuer strapped around his wrist. It was quarter past eleven. No one visited at this hour unless the news was bad. He thought for a moment about running upstairs for the Beretta nine-millimeter he kept in his bedside table, but he caught a glimpse of his visitor through the door’s side lights. He smiled and opened the door.

Cali Stowe wore jeans and a black tank top with a man’s white oxford shirt thrown over it. Mercer got the impression she’d dashed over in a rush. She wore no makeup and her red hair was a little disheveled, but still she looked beautiful, in that vulnerable way men love but women never understand.

Then three things struck Mercer at once. Cali hadn’t returned his smile, he’d never given her his home address, and there were two men standing behind her.

“Sorry,” she said sadly. “They didn’t give me much choice.”

One of the men showed Mercer the pistol he held to Cali’s back.

Anger came in hot black waves. “Who are you?” Mercer demanded.

“Why don’t we step inside, Dr. Mercer,” the gunman said.

Both men had dark hair and dark complexions, with thick mustaches, but they appeared more Mediterranean than Middle Eastern. The one with the gun was Mercer’s height and had a slender build and an angelic face that belied the weapon in his hand. The other was older, his mustache and hair shot with silver, and shorter, five seven or so. While both wore conservative dark suits, Mercer had the impression that the shorter man was the leader.

“Are you okay?” Mercer asked Cali as he stepped back from the door.

“I’m fine,” she said.

He couldn’t see any bruises on her and she wasn’t limping, but Mercer knew that in front of these two Cali wouldn’t tell him if she was hurt. She was too brave for that.

“What do you want?” Mercer demanded of the one he thought was the leader.

“I am here to deliver a warning, Dr. Mercer, nothing more.” The man had an accent Mercer couldn’t place and spoke gently, almost like a priest.

“Warn me about what?”

“You must stop your search for the Alembic of Skenderbeg. The more you look the more you help others who are also searching for it.”

If one of them didn’t have a gun in his right hand, Mercer would have laughed at them. “Friend, I don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know what an alembic is or who Skenderbeg is, so why don’t you leave and we’ll pretend this never happened.”

“It is much too late for that.”

“Jesus!” Mercer recognized the voice, and his reaction suddenly tripped Cali’s memory too. She blanched.

“That was you in the village,” Mercer said. “You saved Cali and me.”

“Had I known you would continue your quest,” the man agreed, “I would have delayed my attack and let Caribe Dayce kill you.”

“We’re not on any quest,” Mercer said, somehow feeling more in control. Had these two wanted them dead they wouldn’t be talking, and the gunman had lowered his weapon, which Mercer realized was the first gun he’d seen in a long time that wasn’t firing at him. “We’re trying to find out what happened to the uranium that was mined near that village almost seventy years ago. This has nothing to do with your Allergy of Skinbag, or whatever it is.”

“The Alembic of Skenderbeg.” He said it almost reverently. “You don’t even know what you’re searching for, Doctor, but I must tell you to stop. We have saved your life twice.”

“That was you last night at the casino?” Cali asked.

He nodded. “Yes. A mercenary has been hired to retrieve the alembic and we have managed to follow his movements. We tracked him first to Africa and then to Atlantic City last night. But at the casino we underestimated the size of his forces and didn’t know he had rented a helicopter.” He turned his gaze to Mercer. His eyes appeared haunted, like he knew too many secrets. “You led them to a clue they would have never found. What was it by the way?”

“A safe,” Mercer said, guilt edging into his voice as he again thought about Serena Ballard and all the others. “A classics professor brought back ore samples from Africa. He had gone there believing he’d found the source of the metal Zeus used to forge Prometheus’s chains. What he found was a vein of unusually powerful uranium, not the mythical adamantine.”

The two men exchanged a look when Mercer said the word “adamantine,” as if they knew of it. “Was there anything else?”

“The safe’s owners said there was nothing else in it but the ore samples,” Mercer lied, praying that Harry wouldn’t come out to the library overlooking the foyer. “The mercenary—”

“Poli Feines,” the man with the pistol offered.

“He stole the safe before I had a chance to verify, but I have no reason to doubt what the owners said. They knew nothing beyond the fact that the safe had been tossed from the Hindenburg.”

Again the two men glanced at each other. “Interesting,” the leader said at last. “But it changes nothing. I came here to warn you. You are caught up in an ancient battle you can’t possibly understand. I beg you to end your investigation now. You have been lucky so far that I have been in a position to save your life. The next time you might not fare so well.”

The two men backed toward the door, the one holstering his pistol. Cali and Mercer remained where they stood. “And know this, Dr. Mercer, if I could find you and Ms. Stowe so easily, Poli Feines will be able to do so as well.”

“Who are you?” Mercer asked before they disappeared into the night.

The leader paused, considering the question. He searched Mercer’s eyes and found whatever it was he was looking for. “Janissaries,” he said at last and closed the door.

It was as though the room had been dark and suddenly there was light. Mercer took a deep breath and stepped close to Cali. He rested his hands on her thin shoulders and looked her in the eye. What he saw was anger rather than fear. “Are you okay?”

“I’m pissed,” she answered and stepped back just a bit. Her freckles stood out in relief against her smooth, pale skin and her small ears were reddened. She didn’t need comforting. She needed to vent. “They came in through a supposedly alarmed window right into my bathroom. I was a soldier for God’s sake and I didn’t even hear them. They turned on the light and I just kept on sleeping. They had to shake me awake. Which I will admit was one of the scariest moments of my life. You can imagine what I was thinking. But, Jesus, then they never said a goddamn thing. That was the worst part. They held out clothes for me and motioned me to get dressed. Weird thing was they shielded their eyes so they could only see my feet when I got out of bed, so I figured they weren’t going to rape me.

“Then they led me to their car and just started to drive. I had no idea what was going on until you opened the door. What is it with you, anyway? First it was Africa and then Atlantic City and now tonight. Do you go anywhere where there aren’t armed goons gunning for you?” Her raised voice alerted Drag. He ambled over and flopped onto his back in front of Cali, instantly defusing her anger. She bent to rub his ample belly. Looking up at Mercer, she said, “For some reason I never pictured you with a dog.”

“Drag’s not mine. He’s Harry’s.”

“Harry’s here?”

“Upstairs working on Chester Bowie’s damned word games. This one’s a little more complex than the first one we got from the archive. Why don’t you head up. I’ve got to walk Drag. I’ll be back in a second.”

“Do you think those men…?”

“They’re gone. I believed him when he said he just wants to warn us off.”

“And did he?”

Mercer’s eyes tightened for an instant; then he smiled. “Not by a long shot.”

Cali straightened and kissed Mercer softly on the cheek. “Sorry about blowing up like that. I was just—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Mercer returned to the brownstone after Drag had sniffed at every car tire, lamppost, and fire hydrant in a two-block radius before finding one worthy of peeing on. When he opened the door, he heard Cali’s ringing laughter from the bar and he silently thanked Harry for dispelling the last of her misgivings.

Harry had poured her a stiff Scotch and was showing her the codes. When Mercer came into the room, Harry cast him a wicked look. “Cali told me what happened. I told her she has it all wrong. You hired those guys just so you’d finally have a woman in your house.”

“Desperate times,” Mercer shot back. He moved behind the bar to pour himself another cup of coffee, only this one he laced with a generous dram of brandy. “Has he shown you the codes?” he asked Cali. “Or has he just been besmirching my character?”

“He cracked the last one.”

“I think,” Harry said. “Gout into full; gout, pout, pour, four, which is our clue by the way, then foul, fowl, bowl, boll, bull, full.”

“So the key is?”

Harry checked his notes. “Ten times four less five.”

“Forty minus five,” Mercer said. “Thirty-five. Have you started looking for the words?”

A shadow crept across Harry’s blue eyes. “Yeah and I may be all wrong. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.”

“What do you have?”

“Counting every thirty-fifth word gives us this.”

He showed the paper to Mercer: “Deer Albert nick cola was right trains urine nick elements dew exist in nature.”

“See what I mean?” Harry said, waving away a cloud of cigarette smoke that was drifting toward Cali’s face. “Bunch of gobbledygook if you ask me.”

Mercer read the sentence again and again, speeding up, slowing down, and inserting random pauses. Two words kept thrusting themselves to the forefront of his mind. Nick cola. Nick…cola. Nickcola. Nickola. Nikola. “Holy shit!”

“What?” Cali and Harry cried in unison.

“Tesla,” Mercer said and suddenly the rest of the sentence became clear. He blanched. “We’re in trouble.”

“Damn it, what does it mean?”

“Dear Albert,” Mercer said, still grappling with what Chester Bowie had discovered. “Nikola was right, transuranic elements do exist in nature.”

“Oh my God,” Cali gasped. Mercer wasn’t surprised she understood right away. She was a nuclear scientist after all.

Harry still didn’t get it. “So what?”

“Transuranic elements are elements above uranium on the periodic table,” Mercer replied. “They can only be produced in a lab by a nuclear reactor. Most of them decay in a few seconds but there’s one that lasts years — hell, millennia. Chester Bowie’s adamantine isn’t naturally enriched uranium, it’s fucking plutonium. And raw plutonium doesn’t need expensive refining with centrifuges and a staff of scientists to be made into a weapon. Its stuff is ready to go. Instant dirty bomb. A terrorist’s wet dream come true.”