Havoc

Arlington, Virginia

“I have to call my boss at NEST,” Cali said at once. “We have a national emergency on our hands.”

“In due time,” Mercer cautioned. “I want us to get everything together first. Figure out what we know and determine what we need to find out. Once we’re ready, you can present it to your nuclear response team while I’ll go to Ira Lasko at the White House.”

Cali looked uncertain.

“Besides,” he went on, “it’s almost midnight. We should be able to put a report together by morning if we work through the night.”

She relented. “Okay.”

“Harry?”

“What the hell,” the old man said. “I’ll get plenty of rest when the big sleep comes.”

“Thanks, I owe you a favor.”

“Actually you owe me twenty thousand favors, but who’s counting?” He set to work on Chester Bowie’s thirty-page letter to Albert Einstein.

Mercer made a less sadistic pot of coffee for Cali while she slipped into the guest bedroom to clean herself up a bit. When she came back her eyes were clear and bright and her hair was tucked into a ponytail. She’d applied lip gloss which accentuated her generous mouth.

“Mind my asking why you have women’s toiletries in your guest bathroom?” she said teasingly.

“They’re Harry’s,” Mercer deadpanned. “Old letch is a cross-dresser.”

“Something’s bothering me,” Cali said, taking a seat at the bar. “Actually everything’s bothering me but what I don’t understand is how can there be naturally occurring plutonium. That’s physically impossible.”

“Not at all. Traces of it are found all over the planet. What’s more difficult to explain is a large concentration of it and I think I know the answer. Ever heard of Oklo, Gabon, in West Africa?” Cali shook her head. “In the early seventies a French team discovered unusual ratios of isotopes in a bunch of uranium deposits. The discrepancy was tiny but important. Something had happened to the uranium.

“At first they thought the sample had been contaminated in the lab or at the site, but they ruled it out. The only logical conclusion was that at some time — and they later figured out it was about two and a half billion years ago — the natural uranium deposit had gone critical.”

“And started a chain reaction,” Cali finished. “I have read about it. A natural nuclear reactor that operated just like one in a power plant. It had all the elements, fuel in the form of concentrated uranium-235. There was plenty of water to act as a moderator so the chain reaction didn’t turn into a runaway explosion, and there weren’t any neutron absorbers in the rock to prevent the mass going critical in the first place.”

“That’s exactly right. The water that seeped down to the uranium deposits was high in calcium, which acted just like the control rods of a nuclear power plant. The water also kept the reactor cool enough to allow for a sustained chain reaction.”

“How long did it burn, do you know?”

“Estimates range between five hundred thousand and a million years.”

“Wow.”

“And just think — no one around to protest it,” Mercer joked.

“Do you think the ore Chester Bowie discovered came from another natural reactor like Oklo?”

“With one critical difference. Bowie’s didn’t go critical until much more recently; otherwise the plutonium would have decayed. It has a half-life around twenty-four thousand years, so the size of the reactor and the ratio of remaining plutonium-239 would determine its age. But if I were to hazard a guess, I’d say it couldn’t be more than a couple million years old, which in geological terms is yesterday.”

Cali was impressed. “I hadn’t thought about that. Is it possible there are other natural reactors, young ones I mean?”

Mercer shook his head. “I doubt it. And even if there were, chances are they’re buried deep in the crust.”

Cali became thoughtful. “It’s weird to think my original hunch about elevated cancer rates in Africa led us to a natural source of plutonium.”

“And something else tipped off someone else.”

Cali cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

“Poli. When we saw him in Africa I assumed he was a mercenary hired by Caribe Dayce to help in his revolution. Now it’s more likely that Dayce was the muscle hired to protect Poli and help him find the deposit.”

“That’s right! Damn, I hadn’t seen the connection. Poli’s been on the trail of the plutonium all along. Which leaves us with tonight’s visitors. What did they call themselves?”

“Janissaries,” Mercer answered. “You just knew this would end up involving Middle Eastern terrorists.”

“Who or what are Janissaries?”

“During the Ottoman Empire they were elite soldiers bound personally to the sultan. They were some of the fiercest fighters in history. Totally ruthless. If I remember correctly they grew so powerful that some sultan in the 1800s organized another army and massacred the Janissaries to a man.”

“And now they’re back.”

“I doubt these guys have any legitimate claim. They’re just using the name.”

“You know, though, they didn’t act like any terrorist I’ve dealt with over the course of my career. They aren’t wild-eyed jihadists ready to blow themselves up at the drop of the Koran. Think about it. They saved our lives in Africa and again in Atlantic City. And tonight, other than scaring me to death, they didn’t hurt me. They were actually kind of respectful. I sleep in the nude and when I got out of bed they averted their eyes.”

“Cali, devout Muslims wouldn’t want to look at your naked body.” Mercer couldn’t stop such an image of her flooding his mind. He was sure she knew exactly what he was picturing and turned away. He added hastily, “Besides, they had guns.”

“First of all, a year in Iraq taught me that men are men all over the world. They’ll cop a feel or sneak a peek any chance they get. Muslim, Jew, Christian — it’s all the same. But these guys didn’t and why try to warn us off? Why not just kill us and be done with it? If I was a terrorist that’s what I would do.”

Mercer considered her point and admitted it had merit. Poli Feines and company obviously didn’t care about human life. From what he’d seen they looked like they enjoyed taking it, but the two Janissaries hadn’t hurt Cali tonight and hadn’t even threatened them. The leader just warned them that if they kept investigating they might get caught in the cross fire. What was it they thought he and Cali were looking for? The Alembic of Skenderbeg. Mercer still didn’t know what that meant.

“Any idea what they thought we were after?” he asked her. “The Alembic of Skenderbeg?”

“No clue,” Cali admitted. “Do you have a dictionary?”

From down the bar Harry said, “An alembic is a device once used in distilleries to purify booze.”

“Figures you’d know that,” Mercer remarked sarcastically. “What about Skenderbeg?”

Harry returned to his notes. “Couldn’t tell you.”

Cali followed Mercer down to his home office. He brushed his hand against a bluish rock on a credenza near the office door. It was a personal talisman, a piece of kimberlite, the lodestone of every diamond mine in the world. This particular piece had an exquisite diamond embedded on its underside and had been the gift of a grateful mine owner from South Africa.

“I haven’t had the chance to tell you,” Cali said as Mercer fired up his computer. “Your home is beautiful.”

“Thank you,” Mercer replied. “I travel so much that I needed to make my home more of a retreat.” He accessed the Internet, found a search engine, and typed in “Skenderbeg.” He read silently for a few moments, then said, “Looks like Skenderbeg was an Albanian general who revolted against the Ottoman Empire.”

Cali interrupted. “Ottoman connection again.” She’d retreated to the leather sofa against the wall, throwing the steamer robe that was folded on the arm over her lower body.

“U’huh. He died in 1468. Seems he held off a Turkish army five times the size of his and managed to keep Albania independent for twenty-five years. He’s considered one of their national heroes. Sort of a medieval George Washington.”

“What about an alembic?” Her eyes were closed and Mercer could tell she was moments from falling asleep.

Mercer’s fingers blurred across the keyboard as he tried several variations on his search but came up empty. “Nada.”

When Cali didn’t respond, he looked up. Her breathing was shallow and even, her lips slightly parted. She was out. He came around from behind his desk to stand over her. Despite her considerable height she’d managed to turn herself into a tight ball with one hand under her cheek.

He couldn’t help but think of Tisa again, although there was no similarity between her and Cali. Tisa had dark sloe eyes and delicate Asian features and the small body of a gymnast. Cali was all-American with her red hair and freckles, which Mercer could see covered her upper chest, and he suspected the rest of her as well. She was tall and lanky, more angles than curves, but she moved with an athletic grace that softened her hard edges. And, Mercer admitted, she was the first woman he had been attracted to since Tisa’s death.

In truth they had spent very little time together, but under the intensity of the circumstances he had come to understand her — the way she thought, the way she reacted, and most importantly, what she thought of herself. She was confident and self-assured, characteristics that Mercer found appealing above everything else.

But now wasn’t the time for any of these thoughts.

He had to resist the urge to brush a wisp of hair from across her forehead. He straightened the blanket instead, pulling it up so it was just under her chin, and removed her shoes. Her feet were long and narrow, with delicate bones and skin so pale he could see where veins came close to the surface. She made a little sound, then sighed as she drifted deeper to sleep. He gave her one last look, smiled, then left the office, turning down the lights to a faint glow so if she woke during the night she’d be able to see a bit.

Mercer made sure all the doors were locked before heading up to the master suite on the third floor. The Beretta 92 in his nightstand was probably the fifth or sixth one he’d owned. Some he’d lost in fights, while others were in evidence lockers. It was a reliable weapon and he knew its capabilities as well as he knew his own. He knew the nine-millimeter was loaded but checked it anyway. There was a round in the chamber and the safety was off. He safed the pistol and stuck it behind his back. He doubted Poli would come tonight, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. He’d make sure that starting tomorrow Harry stayed at his own place, while he would ensure that Ira Lasko got him and Cali into a safe house.

Back in the bar Harry was snoring on the couch, a deep rumbling that sounded like the dying gasps of a bear. Drag was curled around Harry’s prosthetic leg, his nose near where the leg was strapped to the stump so he could spend the night smelling his beloved master.

Mercer didn’t adjust Harry’s blanket.

He took a seat at the bar and saw that Harry hadn’t finished his work yet, so he set aside Harry’s notes and instead read the lengthy letter to Einstein to keep himself awake through the long night.

At noon the next day Ira Lasko’s secretary led Cali and Mercer through to Lasko’s office in the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House. Ira came around his big desk to shake Cali’s hand as Mercer made the introduction.

“So you’re the lady Mercer met in Africa à la Stanley and Livingstone?” The top of his bald head barely reached her chin. “When he called me from New Jersey night before last he mentioned you’re with DOE.”

“I’m a field investigator with NEST.”

“Nuclear response team. Your boss is Cliff Roberts, then?”

“That’s right.”

“He’s an ass.”

Cali grinned, warming to Lasko’s directness immediately. “That he is.”

“He’s ex-navy like me. I spent a year with him at the Pentagon. He has the imagination of a kumquat and half the brains. He only got his gig at NEST when Homeland Security was created after 9/11.” He indicated they should take the chairs in front of his desk, while he slid around to his seat.

The office was large and comfortable, with wainscoting and a plush green carpet. There were only a few framed pictures and papers on the walls, as well as an American flag. Ira also wore a flag lapel pin. There was a model of a submarine on a credenza, an old Sturgeon class that Lasko had served on as executive officer before moving over to naval intelligence.

He turned to Mercer. “So what’s so hellfire important that I have to give up a golf game with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs?”

“A couple hundred pounds of plutonium that’s been missing for seventy plus years.” Mercer explained about the naturally occurring nuclear reactor at Oklo and his theory of how what they thought was an unusually concentrated uranium deposit was in fact the remnants of a much younger reactor that hadn’t fully decayed.

“What are the chances there are other such reactors?” Ira asked when Mercer finished.

“Cali asked the same thing last night. Remote. I think this is probably the only one like it in the world.”

“So how did that guy find it? You told me at dinner the other night that he was either the best geologist in the world or the luckiest.”

“Chester Bowie was his name,” Mercer said, “and he wasn’t a geologist at all. He taught classics at a small college in New Jersey. He wasn’t looking for uranium or plutonium. He was searching for a mine out of Greek mythology.”

“Lost me.”

“According to mythology Zeus chained Prometheus for defying him and giving fire to humanity. The chains were made from an unbreakable metal called adamantine. Bowie thought he knew where the adamantine had come from. He ran into a little problem of funding his expedition and talked it over with a colleague from Princeton, hoping the Ivy League school might see merit in his research.”

“Not likely,” Ira growled.

“On the contrary. Someone at Princeton was very interested. None other than Albert Einstein himself. From what I gather, Nikola Tesla, the Croatian-born genius who invented the alternating current electrical system we use today, had contacted Einstein in the mid-1930s with the theory that there were elements higher than uranium on the periodic table. Remember this was six or seven years before Enrico Fermi created the first sustained chain reaction at the University of Chicago and four or five before Einstein wrote his famous letter to Roosevelt indicating the theoretical possibility of an atomic bomb.

“Bowie didn’t know how Einstein became aware of his grant request, but he did, and agreed to have Princeton fund his trip. Einstein warned Bowie that what he might find wasn’t adamantine from his mythology but a new and potentially dangerous element. Bowie was certain Einstein and Tesla had it wrong and was eager to prove himself to two of the greatest minds of his generation.”

“Was Bowie well regarded in his field?” Ira asked.

Mercer chuckled. “The guy was a total flake. A real zealot when it came to his theories. He refused to believe anyone but himself.”

“He sounds deranged.”

“He was. Obsessive-compulsive, arrogant, you name it.” Mercer picked up the story again. “So he went to Africa and using his research into Greek mythology, he found the mine. He mentions in his journal that there was an ancient stele there to mark the site.”

“Wait. What’s a stele?”

“A carved stone obelisk used by the Egyptians usually to mark a military victory or some important event.”

“So this goes back to the Egyptians?”

Mercer held up a hand. “That’s getting ahead of the story, but Cali and I both remember seeing it in the village square. It was about seven feet tall and very weathered. Anyway Bowie hired some locals to help him dig out samples of the ore. And as you know, ever since then the natives have been suffering from long-term radiation exposure. He crated up about a thousand pounds’ worth of dirt and made his way to the port city of Brazzaville. That’s where he realized that he wasn’t the only person looking for the ore. In fact it seemed there were a couple of groups interested in what he was doing in the interior. He was pretty sure his guide had betrayed him to some German agents.

“I’m sure you’re aware that the Nazis had a thing for the occult and had sent out teams of agents to find certain ancient relics. Hitler needed them to legitimize his claim about pure Aryan stock and all that crap. That’s how they came into possession of the Spear of Longinus, the weapon purportedly used to pierce Christ’s side.”

“I’ve seen the movie,” Ira said. “Lost ark and all that. Besides that fits with what you told me about others showing up at that village a few years after Bowie to mine the rest of the ore.”

“And gunning down most of the villagers,” Mercer added. “Anyway Bowie managed to get the crates of ore samples onto a tramp steamer called the Wetherby, with orders that it go to Chicago, where Einstein believed Fermi should study it to see if they really were transuranic elements.”

“Why didn’t Bowie stay with the ship?”

“Paranoia, plus he had just spent several weeks around plutonium without any kind of protection. He realized he was suffering from radiation poisoning and was also wracked with malaria and a few other fun tropical bugs. There’s a line in his diary that goes something like ‘For three days my bowels ran like the River Styx.’”

“Lovely.”

“The day after the ship sailed he was almost killed by a pair of men he believed were Germans. They tried to muscle him into a car but two other men dressed in dark suits came out of nowhere, shot the Germans, and vanished.”

“Who were they? Did he know?”

“He didn’t but we do.” Mercer’s statement invited an explanation.

Cali said, “Last night two men in dark suits showed up at my condo and forced me to go with them. They took me to Mercer’s, where they warned us to stop searching for something called the Alembic of Skenderbeg.”

“They were the same guys who wiped out Caribe Dayce and his army in Africa and took on Poli Feines at the Deco Palace,” Mercer added. “They called themselves Janissaries and said we were caught up in an ancient conflict we couldn’t possibly understand.”

Ira held up a hand. “Hold on. Are you saying that the men who saved Bowie in Brazzaville are the same two who took out Dayce?”

“No, but I think they belong to the same organization, a secret group that’s been around for at least seventy years and may have roots going back to the 1400s. Skenderbeg, whose real name was Gjergi Kastrioti, was an Albanian-born general in the Ottoman Army, a Janissary who eventually revolted against Sultan Murad II. He captured a key town in Albania and, with a force never exceeding twenty thousand, managed to keep the Ottomans’ quarter million men at bay for twenty-five years. He had close diplomatic ties and financial support from the Vatican because he was defending Christendom from Islamic invaders.

“What’s interesting, and why I mention all this, is that the name Skenderbeg is a local translation of the Ottoman, Iskender Bey or Iskender the Great. We know him as Alexander the Great. This morning I got in touch with an Ottoman history teacher at George Washington University to get some more background on Skenderbeg. It’s accepted conjecture that Skenderbeg was given this title because his military skill matched that of Alexander’s, but there’s another story, one that can’t be verified. It was rumored that he possessed a talisman of some sort that Alexander carried into battle against his greatest foe, Darius, at the Battle of Arbela in 331 B. C., and it was this talisman that allowed both men to defeat armies ten times the size of their own.”

“What sort of talisman?”

“The professor didn’t know, but I assume it’s this alembic the Janissaries mentioned. The professor said the real expert on Skenderbeg is a Turkish historian named Ibriham Ahmad. I tried calling him in Istanbul but just left a message.”

“We have a theory,” Cali said. “Before his final battle against Darius, Alexander invaded Egypt and overthrew the Persian governor. According to history the people welcomed him openly and paved the way for the construction of the city of Alexandria, home to the famous library. During his stay in Egypt he went to the temple of Zeus-Ammon someplace in the Libyan desert. It was there that the oracle revealed to him that he was the son of Ammon, Egypt’s chief deity, and was thus a god himself. A year later he defeated Darius.”

“With you so far,” Ira said.

“What if Alexander received something else when he visited the oracle, like how to procure a great weapon fit for a god? Trade along the North African coast was well established by this time. It’s possible the priests had learned about magic rocks that could incapacitate an army and told Alexander where to find them.”

“What we think,” Mercer said, “is he sent a column to Central Africa, to the site near the Scilla River. There they mined some of the plutonium ore and erected a stele to commemorate their visit.”

“We think Alexander went into battle against Darius using an improvised radiological bomb,” Cali concluded. “We checked and the Battle of Arbela was carefully staged. Both Alexander and Darius knew when and where they were going to meet. It’s possible that in the days leading up to the battle Alexander had radiological dust spread around Darius’s encampment. His people would need little more protection than rags tied around their mouths so they didn’t inhale the plutonium, which is the only way plutonium is fatal by the way, while Darius’s men would suffer radiation poisoning. Nothing lethal but enough to incapacitate them and allow Alexander’s smaller army to wipe them out.”

“Now jump forward seventeen hundred years to Albania,” Mercer added, “and you have a general who holds off a huge army for decades using a talisman that once belonged to Alexander the Great. We think Skenderbeg used his alembic to dose the Ottoman Army with enough radiation to make them too sick to fight.”

“What happened to Skenderbeg?”

“He died in 1468 of natural causes,” Mercer said. “His men held out for another decade but eventually they were overrun.”

“And his alembic?” Ira had a dubious look on his pug face.

Mercer shrugged. “I’m hoping Professor Ahmad in Istanbul can answer that.”

“Admiral Lasko,” Cali said, “I know this all sounds like a bit of a stretch but there’s a line in Chester Bowie’s journal that ties it together somewhat. He left Brazzaville right after the abduction attempt and made his way across Africa to Alexandria. In his journal he wrote that given a couple of days he could have found Alexander’s hidden tomb. He knew there was a connection between Alexander the Great and his work.”

“From there,” Mercer went on, “he caught a steamer to Europe, where he did the one thing the Nazis would never suspect. He knew he was dying and wanted to reach America as fast as possible to tell Einstein what he’d discovered. He sent Einstein a telegram from Athens and Einstein wrote him back telling him to contact Otto Hahn, a nuclear physicist who would eventually win the Nobel Prize for being the first person to split a uranium atom.”

Cali interrupted. “Hahn wasn’t a Nazi, and he refused to work on Germany’s nuclear bomb program, so when Einstein contacted him about Chester Bowie he made arrangements for Bowie’s return to the United States the fastest way possible — the airship Hindenburg.”

“Are you telling me he was on the Hindenburg when it exploded?”

Mercer nodded. “Which makes me think that maybe the conspiracy theorists are right and the zeppelin was sabotaged. Only it wasn’t about discrediting the Nazis, but about preventing Bowie from giving the sample of plutonium to Einstein.”

“Jesus,” Ira exclaimed. “Who? How?”

“My money’s on the Germans themselves and here’s why. In the last few pages of his diary Bowie said an officer came to his cabin. He killed the officer, believing that the Germans had found out who he was and weren’t going to let him off the airship. That’s when he wrote down his story and tucked it in the safe. He tied Einstein’s name to a tag on the outside and heaved it out the window. But what makes me think it was the Germans and Bowie wasn’t being paranoid is that the airship was delayed coming into Lakehurst because of a storm. But what if the captain was ordered to wait because the Nazi higher-ups were trying to think of a way to destroy it? I don’t know if you’re aware, but after the Hindenburg blew up the Germans refused to let anyone help clean up the debris. They sent over teams themselves to haul the zeppelin’s skeleton back to Germany. That could have been cover to find Bowie’s safe in the wreckage, only he was a step ahead of them and heaved it over the side above Waretown, New Jersey.”

“I think it was the Janissaries,” Cali offered. “I think they realized they’d made a mistake letting Bowie go in Brazzaville, somehow learned he was going to be on the Hindenburg, and had someone in the United States in place to take it out.”

Ira scratched his bald head. “I might have a third candidate, one that might squirrel all your theories.” He reached into the middle drawer of his desk and placed an item on the blotter.

Mercer recognized it at once. “That’s the bullet the old woman gave me in Africa.”

“I sent it to the FBI lab at Quantico,” Ira said. “This, my friend, isn’t a German round but a 7.65-by-25 shell casing from either a pistol or a PP Sh submachine gun, which if you aren’t aware, was the standard automatic weapon for the Soviet Army during World War Two.”

“The Soviets?” Mercer and Cali said as one and then fell silent.

Mercer hadn’t expected this at all. He was certain that it was the Germans who were after Bowie. As far as he knew the Soviet Union didn’t even have a nuclear program until spies infiltrated the Manhattan Project in the 1940s, so why would they want plutonium five years earlier? He was about to mention this when Cali spoke up.

“It makes perfect sense,” she said. “We know the Soviet Union had spies at Los Alamos, which is how they got the plans for the bomb. Stalin knew more about it than Truman when they met at Potsdam and the President mentioned we had a weapon that would end the war. What has never made sense to me and a lot of people who studied the history was how the Soviets were able to create their own bomb so soon after the Japanese surrender. Rather than the decades we expected to have nuclear dominance, we lost it in just four years.

“The entire western third of Russia had been devastated by the war,” Cali went on. “Whole cities were destroyed and millions of people were left homeless. The Soviets didn’t receive any of the aid we gave to Europe to rebuild. In fact they had to spend money to shore up their holdings in Eastern Europe. I know Stalin was a ruthless tyrant, but the economics don’t pan out. They didn’t have the resources to keep their people from starving while trying to rebuild their own country, occupy Eastern Europe all the way to Germany, and spend a hundred billion dollars building their own bomb. Even with the plans provided by Stalin’s spies, it takes a tremendous amount of sophistication and resources to refine fissionable materials.” She caught Mercer’s eye. “But what if he already had those materials? If the Russians had some of the ore, it would dramatically reduce the amount of time and the cost it would take to build an atomic bomb. They could easily do it in four years and still do everything else I mentioned.”

“Makes sense,” Ira said thoughtfully. “I’ve got a lot of contacts in Russia, and since the collapse they’ve been pretty forthcoming with information from the bad old days. I’ll ask around to see if what you surmise is true.” He looked at Mercer. “What about you? Where do you want to take this?”

“Cali spoke with her supervisor at NEST. We’ve got them tracing the disappearance of the Wetherby.”

“How do you know she disappeared?”

“Simple. Nowhere in the history books does it say Enrico Fermi experimented with plutonium ore in the 1930s, so he must have never received the samples, ergo the Wetherby vanished. Also I think someone should take a look at that stele Cali and I saw in Africa. There could be clues on it about how much ore Alexander’s people mined.”

“Is that important?” Ira asked. “I mean come on, we’re talking ancient history.”

“If we’re only right about Alexander possessing a radiological bomb or dispersal device, then I’d agree, but the Janissaries who nabbed Cali last night act as though the alembic is lying around for someone to find.”

“You told me over dinner that you think that part of the Central African Republic is still pretty hot. I don’t want to send a team in there unless you’re sure it’s important.”

Mercer silently cursed Ira, though he didn’t believe his old friend was deliberately putting the responsibility for a potentially dangerous operation on his shoulders. He was just being cautious. But Mercer knew the ultimate responsibility would fall on him if something went wrong. Like Serena’s death and the others at the casino. Like Tisa’s and dozens more — he felt the weight of it all pressing down on him. It would be so easy to just tell Ira to forget it, that he didn’t need to send a Special Forces team into the middle of a war zone. He could crawl out from under a little of his guilt. But Mercer also knew it would be wrong.

It didn’t matter if the stele turned out to be nothing more than a marker saying the equivalent of “Kilroy was here.” He had to know, no matter the cost.

“Yeah,” Mercer finally said. “It’s important.”

“Consider it done,” Ira replied with finality.