River of Ruin

Paris, France

The auctioneer’s gavel came down with a stinging crack that carried across the ornate salon. “Sold for forty-seven thousand francs to bidder number 127.”

A digital board on one side of the elevated stage showed the exchange rates for each bid as they were acknowledged. The book held aloft by a white-gloved assistant standing behind the auctioneer had just been purchased for nearly seven thousand dollars.

The bid had actually been placed by an auction-house employee who fielded business from buyers either unable or unwilling to attend Paris’s premier rare book and manuscript sale. There were several such bid takers grouped together in an area like a jury box, each person equipped with telephones and an Internet-connected computer. The rest of the high-ceilinged room was given over to ranks of comfortable chairs for buyers in attendance. Derosier’s Librairie Antique was offering today’s books from a collection entitled “Patriarchs of the Industrial Age.” Tomorrow’s auction, the main event for the three-day affair, included dozens of Renaissance Bibles and a partial da Vinci manuscript expected to fetch millions of dollars.

There was a period of murmuring and catalogue rustling before the next book was brought out and its picture flashed on the projection screen at the back of the stage.

Philip Mercer had waited for the diversion before crossing the marble floor to a seat near the rear. A few elegant patrons frowned at the noise made by his wet, squelching shoes. He was more amused than embarrassed by their haughty reaction. Outside the tall, hemisphered windows, a fierce autumn rain pounded the streets. The leaden sky would not let the city shine. Still, the room managed to glitter with gold leaf on the ceiling and burnished woods covering the walls.

Mercer caught the eye of the auctioneer as he sat. Jean-Paul Derosier inclined his head slightly, careful not to show deference to any one client. Mercer knew his old friend was glad to see him. It was Jean-Paul himself who had enticed him to Paris with a list of what was coming to the block for this particular auction.

They knew each other from many years ago when Jean-Paul was simply Gene and pronounced his last name with an American hard r. They had been high school friends in Barre, Vermont, both outcasts in a sense because both wanted a life far beyond the confines of the small New England town. Derosier had somehow developed a taste for life’s finer things and was determined to have the means as well, while Mercer possessed an incurable wanderlust inherited from his parents, who had died in Africa when he was twelve. He had lived in Barre with his paternal grand-parents. Years later, Mercer and Derosier crossed paths again when business success allowed Mercer to indulge his interest in rare books. By then, Jean-Paul was well established in the trade.

Thumbing open the glossy catalogue, Mercer noted what lot number was due up next, and cursed. Today’s auction was just about half over. A business delay had ruined his plan to arrive in Paris a few days earlier. Had he not scheduled a meeting the following day, he would have canceled the trip altogether and bid through a proxy. He’d only just gotten into town and had taxied directly from Charles de Gaulle Airport.

The next book being offered was a personal journal written by Ferdinand de Lesseps during his sole trip to Panama in 1879. By the time the famed builder of the Suez Canal ventured to Central America, he had already convinced a syndicate of investors that he could repeat his triumph by carving a sea-level trench across the jungle-choked isthmus. Of course, his attempt ended in failure and the deaths of twenty-three thousand workers, as well as a financial crisis that rocked France to its core.

This was one of the most important items for sale today, expected to fetch around twenty thousand dollars.

Mercer scanned the rest of the catalogue and let out a relieved sigh. The manuscript he’d come to bid on hadn’t yet come up. Relaxing for the first time since his plane touched down, he used his palms to press rainwater from his dark hair.

“And our next item before a short recess is number sixty-two.” Jean-Paul Derosier knew to allow his voice to rise an octave, feeding the palpable wave of anticipation sweeping the room. Mercer also detected a vague sense of anger from the bidders that he couldn’t understand. “This one-hundred-and-seventy-page handwritten journal by Ferdinand de Lesseps was penned during his voyage to Panama. As you can see, the manuscript is bound in maroon leather with de Lesseps’s name on the cover and is in extraordinary condition.”

Derosier continued to expound on the virtues of the journal as pictures of individual pages were flashed on the screen behind him. He spoke in French, and while Mercer had once been fluent in the language, he couldn’t concentrate. Instead of paying attention to a book he had no interest in, he gazed out one of the windows, wishing he’d had time to at least change his shirt from the flight. His suit felt clammy and his tie dug into the stubble on his neck.

Jean-Paul ended his pitch by saying, “We will start the bidding at fifty thousand francs.” The phone operator holding a sign for bidder number 127 nodded her head and the audience let out a tired groan.

Mercer immediately recognized that this mysterious bidder had been bullying the auction by overbidding on the books he or she was interested in. In a minute-long frenzy, the price was driven up to thirty thousand dollars. Those bidders who nodded at the incremental increases did so with a resigned fatalism, knowing they were going to lose. However, it seemed they derived a perverse enjoyment from making bidder number 127 pay far more than the journal was worth. The telephone operator’s impassiveness began to crack as the bids passed the fifty-thousand-dollar mark, two and a half times the journal’s estimated value. Mercer could imagine the anger she was hearing in the voice of whoever she represented.

Then it was down to just two bidders, the mystery person on the phone and an American Mercer had seen at a Christie’s auction in New York about a year earlier. Like Mercer, this man was here for the love of the books, not their resale value. Mercer recalled the man was some kind of oil executive and had pockets deeper than the wells he drilled, but at seventy-five thousand dollars even he had to bow out with an angry shake of his head.

Following Jean-Paul’s cry of “Sold!” there wasn’t the normal round of applause for such a high sale. The room vibrated with an ugly tension. The operator who represented bidder number 127 would not look up from her desk, as if ashamed of the domineering tactics she’d been forced to use.

“There will now be a twenty-minute break,” Derosier said. “Champagne is available in the foyer outside the salon.”

Mercer accepted a fluted glass from a waitress and waited while Jean-Paul chatted up old clients and worked to make new ones. A cut across the knuckles on Mercer’s left hand had reopened and he dabbed at the blood with napkins. Patrons might have wondered about the man in the Armani suit with his injured hands, but none approached. It wasn’t that he seemed out of place, rather he appeared so self-contained, more comfortable in the opulent surroundings than they themselves felt despite the wet shoes and bloody wound.

He threw away the stained napkins when he’d stanched the cut and offered a disarming shrug to a staring matron as if to say, Don’t you hate when this happens? It was a curious, bonding gesture, like she’d been the one being judged and that she’d passed his inspection. Her dour façade cracked and she returned a smile.

Derosier finally disentangled himself from an elderly woman in a ridiculous blue hat and came over to where Mercer leaned against a damask wall. They were the same height, around six feet, but Mercer appeared to be the larger of the two men. Jean-Paul’s lustrous skin, boyishly long eyelashes, and animated mouth made him pretty rather than handsome. In contrast, Mercer’s good looks came from more masculine, squared features and bold gray eyes that could be as alluring as silk or rage like an arctic storm.

Mercer couldn’t bring himself to use Derosier’s full French name, so he compromised by calling him Jean. “Do I want to know what’s been happening in there, Jean?”

The true contrast between the old friends was apparent when they shook hands. Jean-Paul’s were slim and pampered, while Mercer’s were crisscrossed with scars and calluses like a relief map detailing years of physical labor. Derosier had spent so much of his life in Paris that his English was tinted with an accent. “Mercer, mon Dieu, I didn’t think you were going to make it.”

“I got stuck at a job in Utah and missed my connecting flight through Dulles. I didn’t even have time to go home.” Mercer lived in a town house in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Arlington. “My luggage is full of dirty clothes and mineral samples for my collection.”

“Gold, I hope.”

“Nothing so fancy. A copper-mining company was looking to get a sizable loan from an investment bank. The bankers hired me to check the company’s geology reports and oversee a series of bore-hole tests to verify the claim that there was a mother lode of extractable ore at the site.”

As an independent mining consultant, such jobs were Mercer’s stock-in-trade, and earned him considerable fees as well as a reputation as one of the foremost mine engineers in the world. His word was enough for companies to commit billions of dollars and thousands of lives into the subterranean world.

Jean-Paul gave a little Gallic shrug. “Filthy way to make a living, but I suppose it pays the bills.” He slapped at Mercer’s flat stomach. “And apparently keeps you in shape. I’m fighting a losing battle at a gym four hours a week and you look like you’re in better shape now than when we graduated high school.”

“You were the one who married a professional chef, not me.” Mercer chuckled. “The fact that I’m single and can’t cook worth a damn is what keeps me thin.”

“I understand congratulations are in order. Do you remember Cathy Rich, our high school yearbook editor? After all these years, she still e-mails me updates about old class-mates. She told me you might be working in the White House.”

“Well, not in the White House,” Mercer dodged. “It’s an advisory position to the president. Once I get through some indoctrination I’ll only be going there when called. Kind of a part-time thing.”

The job was actually Special Science Advisor to the President, a position specifically created for Mercer that would be outside the chief executive’s regular staff of advisors. The offer had come following an unusual job in Greenland that had turned into a violent confrontation with a terrorist cell trying to steal a lethal radioactive isotope called Pandora.

“I don’t think you are telling me the whole thing,” Jean-Paul said, “but I congratulate you anyway.”

“Thanks. So, what’s up with the auction? Who’s doing all the buying?”

“Goddamned Chinks,” Derosier spat. “I hate them.”

“Not very politically correct.”

“I’m a Parisian now.” The auctioneer grinned. “We hate everyone equally.” Jean-Paul grew serious. “All I know is he’s Chinese and that a few days after the contents of this auction became public, he sent an intermediary to the family who was selling all the Panama Canal documents in an attempt to buy them outright. As you’ve already guessed, he’s taking everything even remotely connected to the canal while ignoring all the rest. A lot of my regulars are leaving here empty-handed.”

A look of concern crossed Mercer’s face.

“Don’t worry,” the expatriate soothed. “When I invited you to this auction, I promised that you’d be able to buy the Godin de Lepinay journal and I’m keeping my word.”

Mercer understood what Derosier was intimating. “Jean, thanks for the offer, but don’t do anything you wouldn’t for any other client.”

“Too late. At the beginning of the auction, I announced that Lepinay’s journal was no longer for sale. You pay me the estimate, I think four thousand dollars, and it’s yours. Listen, you’re one of my only clients who actually reads what he buys. I’m sure you’ve already read a translation of Diderot’s twenty-eight-volume Encyclopedie Methodique after I helped you complete the set. I hate that the Panama books I’m selling today are going to end up on some businessman’s shelf because he thinks they’re decorative.”

A chime rang in the main auction hall. “I’ve got to get back,” Derosier said. “Meet me after the auction and I’ll give you Lepinay’s diary.”

Mercer waited for the tide of people to return to the salon before reaching inside his jacket for the cell phone his friend Harry White had gotten him for his birthday. The number had already been programmed into the device so he held it to his ear as it beeped through an international exchange. The connection took a full minute.

“Hola?” a woman’s voice answered.

“Maria, it’s Philip Mercer.”

“Mercer”—her English was good, but heavily accented—“are you already in Panama City? You sound so clear.”

Maria Barber was the Panamanian-born wife of Gary Barber, a native Alaskan whom Mercer had met while attending the Colorado School of Mines. Mercer was there having just completed his bachelor’s degree in geology on his way to an eventual doctorate. Gary was two decades older, and had already laid claim to a sizable gold strike when he’d gone to the famed mining school. Gary had dropped out after a single semester, and returned to his four-man operation in Alaska. Mercer had gone on to graduate near the top of his class. They retained a loose friendship of a couple of calls a year and dinner whenever they were in the same city.

About five years ago, Gary had unexpectedly sold his claim to a business partner and moved to Central America to take up a new venture—treasure hunting. He’d tried to explain to Mercer that tramping through jungles in search of lost artifacts was no different from panning hundreds of miles of streams looking for placer gold.

Mercer had always disdained treasure hunters. He felt they rarely considered the long odds of their endeavors, and sustained themselves with the false hope of a quick strike. All but a well-publicized few ended up broke and embittered after decades of fruitless work. He likened them to people who thought state lotteries were an investment plan. Mercer couldn’t change Gary’s mind and the tough Alaskan had gone off with an enthusiasm that had damned so many like-minded people.

Mercer had to give Barber credit, though. Five years of turning up nothing had yet to dampen his spirits. In fact, he was more excited now than ever. He had recently convinced himself that he was on the trail of a lost Spanish treasure larger than any ever found. Gary had called Mercer a month ago after tracking the Lepinay journal to this auction, offering to pay half just so he could read it. He was certain the last piece of the puzzle he was trying to solve lay somewhere in its pages. Mercer thought Gary was self-deluded, and wasn’t close to a breakthrough, yet did agree to the deal.

He was going to buy the book anyway for the simple reason that he was interested in the man who, in 1879, first proposed the lake-and-lock-type canal that the United States had eventually built a quarter century later. Derosier was right. He would read this journal. Devour it, most likely.

“No, Maria, I’m still in Paris. Is Gary there? I’ve got some good news for him.”

“He’s in the middle of the Darien Province, south of El Real,” Maria Barber said with a trace of hostility. She did not share her husband’s interest. “Fooling around in that damned river again. I haven’t seen him in weeks.”

“Can you contact him?” Gary had shown Mercer a picture of his much younger wife the last time they’d gotten together. She was a pretty, raven-haired woman, not yet thirty, but her eyes were sullen. She cast a sober look in the photo, as if she’d fit more life into her years than she should have. Gary explained her melancholy by telling him that she’d been raised in the slums of Panama City’s Casco Viego district.

“Sí, we speak on the radio yesterday. I am calling him in an hour.”

“When you do, tell him I’ve got the Lepinay journal and I’ll be in Panama the day after tomorrow.”

“He will be pleased,” she said with little enthusiasm. “Am I to still pick you up at the airport?”

“Yes, my flight connects through from Martinique.” The clothes in his luggage, once laundered, would serve him well enough in the tropical sauna of Panama. “I arrive at about ten in the morning on the seventeenth.”

“The last time Gary and I talked, he said that he had something very important to show you. He wanted me to make sure you will be here for a week at least.”

“Tell him that we’ll see,” Mercer hedged. He hadn’t been home in nearly a month and wasn’t planning on more than a few days in Panama. He was looking forward to a quiet couple of weeks before reporting to the White House for long rounds of tedious briefings and staff meetings.

“I will tell him,” Maria Barber replied. “And I will see you at Tocumen Airport in the morning of the seventeenth. Then I will take you to where Gary is working. And, ah ...”

“What is it?”

“It is just that increased antidrug efforts in Colombia have forced many rebel soldiers into the southern Darien Province. I thought you should know.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Mercer answered, but she had already clicked off.

He returned to the main auction gallery. Jean-Paul was just about to announce the next item. Back in his seat, Mercer listened idly as the sale continued around him, only showing interest when something pertaining to the Panama Canal came up. Like before, bidder 127 bought everything, often paying double what the material was worth. He knew that such buyers sometimes sent silent proxies to an auction to report on who they were bidding against. From his vantage at the back of the room, Mercer surveyed the well-dressed crowd but saw no Asians; not that one of the Europeans couldn’t be in the enigmatic Chinese’s employ.

It was nearing 6:00 P.M. when the auction wound down for the day. Mercer’s internal clock said it was 10:00 in the morning, but he was tired enough to only think about getting to his hotel. He’d been awake for twenty hours and had a morning meeting at the Ecole des Mines on boulevard St. Michel near the Luxembourg Gardens.

He found Jean-Paul again at the center of a group of people in the reception room outside the salon. Because of bidder 127 and an excessive price paid for a Gustave Eiffel drawing, Derosier had made a small fortune today and was beaming.

“Mercer, what a day. I think this is a record for me and the big stuff isn’t being sold until tomorrow.” He turned to introduce the man next to him. “Oh, this is my chief of security, Rene Bruneseau.”

Bruneseau had a compact build and the bearing of an army drill instructor. His receding hair was cropped short and made the heavy brows over his dark eyes more prominent. His head was blocky, more Slovak than French, with chiseled features blurred by excessive stubble. He wore an ill-fitted suit dusted with cigarette ash and his teeth were stained a coffee brown.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Mercer said, then addressed Jean-Paul. “Looks like bidder 127 is going to keep you in frog legs, snails, and other garden pests you French insist on eating.”

“Speaking of which, we must go out for dinner, or at least a drink.”

“Sorry, not this time. I’m going to my hotel and crashing.”

“Staying at the Crillon, as usual?”

“No. My travel agent had a client cancel a reservation at a hotel on the Left Bank near the Montparnasse Tower.” The 690-foot-tall office building was considered a blight on the city that photographers deftly avoided when shooting Paris. “She conned me into taking it over so her client wouldn’t lose his deposit.”

“Slumming?” Jean-Paul teased.

“She guaranteed it was four stars, or was it four cockroaches?”

“Mr. Derosier,” Bruneseau interrupted, his voice rumbling from deep within his barrel chest, “I will get the Lepinay journal for Dr. Mercer and then I must see to that problem we talked about before.”

Jean-Paul’s urbane veneer cracked for a second before a smooth recovery. “Oh, yes, right. The Lepinay journal.”

There were forty or fifty auction-goers still milling around the reception room. It was odd that Jean-Paul would mention the book after telling them it wasn’t for sale. “Sure you guys want to be blurting out that you were selling it after all?” Mercer asked.

“Oh, merde. I forgot.” Derosier looked around to make sure no one overheard. “My mind’s elsewhere.”

“Thinking about those frog legs already?” Mercer joked. Jean-Paul didn’t respond for a moment. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m sorry. Ah, here comes Rene.” The security chief had the journal wrapped in brown paper.

Mercer caught the eye of one of the tuxedoed attendants and asked him to get his steel sample case from the cloakroom. He’d left all his luggage at the reception desk when he’d arrived. While he waited, he pulled out one of the blank checks he kept in his wallet and filled in the information, including the four-thousand-dollar price. He handed it over with an exaggerated flourish. “With my thanks from the Bouncing Check National Bank.”

Once he had his case, Mercer slit the book’s paper wrapper with a pocketknife. He studied the scuffed leather cover for a moment, feeling a tingle of excitement. He didn’t consider Gary’s “final puzzle piece.” What filled him with anticipation was the opportunity to gain some insight on a brilliant engineer who was decades ahead of his time. Slowly, he opened the diary. The journal was handwritten in faded black ink on heavy rag bond that felt as thick as a wallpaper sample. Godin de Lepinay had written in a confident, looping script. Mercer read just a couple of lines, translating in his head as best he could, and knew that he needed to pick up a French-English dictionary before his flight. He slid the journal into the case and snapped the lid closed.

“Can’t wait to start reading it, eh?” Jean-Paul said, correctly reading Mercer’s rapt expression.

“I think you two should go get a drink together,” Rene Bruneseau suggested.

“Come on, Mercer, what do you say?”

Mercer shook his head. “I’ve got a suite at the Victoria Palace Hotel with a bed they promise me is big enough to play soccer on. I’m meeting another old friend in the morning and then I leave for Panama in the afternoon. You’ll be coming to the States when Sotheby’s has that big auction in December. We’ll have time then, I promise.”

“I understand.” Jean-Paul stuck out his hand just as a customer approached. Before he was engaged in this next conversation he called out Mercer’s name once again. “Just watch yourself.”

It was such an odd thing for him to say that Mercer asked him for what.

“Oh, with the rain we’ve had for the past few days, the sanitation department’s been dropping the ball all over the city. Traffic is a nightmare and your cab driver’s going to try to rip you off on the ride to your hotel.”

Mercer laughed. “I can play ugly American with the best of them.”

He retrieved his luggage from the cloakroom, slinging the garment bag’s strap over his shoulder and clutching the matching suitcase in one hand and his metal attaché in the other. Outside, the rain hissed under the tires of the cars moving in starts and jerks along rue Drouot. He didn’t have an overcoat and the cold rain trickled down the back of his neck. Across the street, he thought he saw Rene Bruneseau, but the figure ducked into a sedan without looking back.

It took ten minutes to find a cab because rush hour was in full effect, and like all other city dwellers, Parisians hated being rained on more than anything. He told the Algerian driver to head toward Place Denfort-Rochereau across the Seine, and settled into the battle-scarred Peugeot. Paris had never held him enthralled so he closed his eyes while the car fought its way across the city. He barely glanced up at the floodlit Notre Dame Cathedral as they motored across the Ile de la Cité. The cab driver mercifully didn’t try to engage him in small talk. The storms had snarled traffic so badly that he needed all his concentration to avoid the fender benders that erupted around them.

The streets on the Left Bank were a leftover of the city’s medieval past, a warren of obtuse intersections that made Mercer think of a demented maze. The driver seemed sure enough, yet had to take several detours to avoid street department trucks parked near overflowing storm drains.

Through the arcs cleared by the windshield wipers, Mercer could see the yellowed stonework of the seventeenth-century observatory. He remembered that the sprawling Luxembourg Palace, the home of France’s senate, would be right behind him.

He twisted around to see if he was right and just had time to brace himself as a pair of stabbing headlights surged toward the rear of the cab, blinding him to the sight of a large truck barreling toward them. The impact came an instant later, a rending crash that pancaked the taxi into the car in front. The chain reaction shot through several other stalled cars. Caught unaware, the Algerian driver had his face slammed into the steering wheel. He slumped unconscious into the footwell, taking his beaded seat cover with him.

Mercer had cushioned the impact by clutching the driver’s seat and allowing his arms to flex like shock absorbers. Unhurt but rattled, he leaned far over the seat to check on the driver when his door was suddenly wrenched open. What the hell?

Thinking it was a Good Samaritan lending a hand, Mercer had a second to acknowledge that the person reaching into the vehicle was young, dressed in an army surplus jacket, and that his hair had been shorn off in a skinhead style. Then the punk yanked Mercer’s briefcase from the seat. He held an automatic pistol in his free hand.

The thief paused for an indecisive moment before hissing in French, “Give me your wallet or you’re dead.”

The kid was counting on the gun paralyzing his victim, but Mercer had faced armed men before. His reactions were instantaneous and focused. He had one leg in a cocked position that the mugger neither saw nor expected. Mercer kicked out, pinning the thief’s arm against the open door frame. The blow lacked the power to break bone and the punk managed to keep his grip on the black pistol as he pulled free. A crowd of pedestrians who had witnessed the accident began to gather. The heroin-thinned thief took off with the sample case under the forest of umbrellas they held aloft.

Mercer launched himself out of the taxi even as the rational side of his mind questioned his actions. His feet moved as if of their own volition, finding grip on the wet sidewalk even though his loafers should have slid out from under him. The kid didn’t look back as they raced down rue Denfort under a canopy of trees that lined the road and reflected the glow from the streetlamps. He had no reason to expect his victim would pursue him.

The gap between the two shrunk with each pace, Mercer driven by an enraged desire to retrieve his case and the Lepinay journal. Fifty feet short of the next crosswalk, Mercer was just five yards back and gaining. A four-door Mercedes screeched to a halt at the intersection, and the rear door was thrown open. The kid’s getaway car? A Mercedes?

Horns sounded.

The thief put on a burst of speed, adrenaline giving him that last bit of energy to reach his target. Mercer was certain that if he could trip the kid, the idling car would take off. The race would end long before they reached the corner. Mercer was just a few yards back, his attention focused first on his case and then on a spot between the punk’s shoulder blades.

The thief broke stride suddenly, his body torquing before he fell flat onto the sidewalk without trying to check his fall. He skidded for a yard or two, Mercer’s attaché slipping from his limp hand, the pistol sliding next to it. Mercer pulled himself to a stop, hunching over the still form. His breath exploded in the moist air and his heart thumped hard enough to pound in his ears. He could see one side of the teenager’s face had been scraped raw by the rough cement sidewalk. Rain sluiced stringy trails of blood toward the gutter from under the body.

Then Mercer saw a slick black exit wound from a bullet that had punched a hole through the side of the kid’s chest. Although he hadn’t heard it, he realized the shot had come from their right.

Mercer looked up from the body, all his senses now keyed to his surroundings. Hard-won experience gave his eyes that extra bit of acuity, his body that extra bit of strength, his mind that extra bit of clarity. The front door of the waiting Mercedes sedan swung open. From the dim interior came flashes from silenced weapons. Bullets split the air over Mercer’s head. Screams rose over the din of congested traffic and the distant honking of an approaching siren. He scrambled to grab his case and the pistol and ran for the entrance to the nearest building.

Out of the corner of his eye Mercer spotted three armed men jump from the Mercedes. Unlike the kid who’d swiped the case, these gunmen moved with a well-trained grace and all were Asian. A worker stood at the building’s steel-and-glass door, locking up for the night. Without looking at where he was, Mercer shoved the man aside and dodged into the dim interior.

Even as he sought defensive cover, the connection came clear. Far from a random mugging, this was an elaborate robbery attempt to get the Lepinay journal and hide evidence of who really wanted it. But who had killed the thief? It made no sense that the Asians in the sedan had gunned down their own man. The bullet had come from a yet-unseen assassin.

There was no time to consider the implications that Jean-Paul Derosier or Gary Barber might have set him up. With only seconds before the attackers burst through the door behind him, the memories of previous combat served to push Mercer on.

A set of circular stairs were sunk into the floor on one side of the room, backed by a stone wall that looked like it had stood there for centuries. Light spilling in from the street made the round opening look like the entrance to Hell itself. That sudden image sent a chill along Mercer’s spine. He’d just figured out where he was.

In the late eighteenth century, Paris was being overwhelmed by the stench of its overflowing cemeteries, and outbreaks of disease from decomposition were rampant. In an effort to clean up the city, officials decided to dig up and then re-inter millions of the dead in the old limestone quarries that had been excavated during Roman times. They ended up filling a hundred miles of tunnels with the skeletal remains of six million people in what became the largest repository of bones in the world. Part of this extensive catacomb was open to the public as a mile-long walking tour, and Mercer found himself trapped at its entrance. His only way out led through the twisting maze of what Parisians called l’empire de la mort. The empire of the dead.

He had no time to find light switches, so he rummaged behind a counter and grabbed two large flashlights. He stuffed one into his coat pocket and held the other in the same hand as his briefcase to keep the gun free. He dodged to the circular stairs and descended into the abyss. At the bottom of the corkscrew stairs, the flashlight revealed a long tunnel lined with rough stone. He turned off the light again when he heard a door open above him. He ran with his knees bent, his shoes making no more than a whisper against the gravel floor. With his fingers brushing the wall, he came to a left bend in the passageway and checked his surroundings again with a quick burst from the flashlight. Another straight tunnel led farther into the subterranean realm, and again he ran on.

Three more times he came to sharp corners before breaking out into an underground chamber. For as far as the flashlight cut the gloom he saw neat stacks of skeletal remains piled like cordwood. Age had yellowed the bones and some were cemented together by minerals in the water that dripped from the limestone ceiling. Countless thousands of empty skulls watched him as he crossed the gallery. He hoped the painted markings in the roof led to this horror show’s exit.

Halfway to the next section of the catacomb the lights suddenly snapped on. They were artfully placed spots that highlighted the chamber’s more grisly aspects—walls of femurs, crosses made of tibias, abstract sculptures of skulls and pelvises. Mercer noted all this in a frantic glance. His pursuers would be coming and his lead was maybe a minute.

He was certain that the gunmen had seen him pick up the gun, so he doubted he’d shoot more than one in an ambush. And once contact was made, they’d be able to outflank him. But he decided that two against one was still better than facing three. From behind a wall of bones he was able to see the tunnel leading back to the surface. A constant patter of water seepage dripped from the low roof.

The countless firefights he’d been in gave him if not confidence, at least self-control. He managed to slow his breathing and cut short the raging questions. He concentrated solely on survival. He took a moment to check the automatic pistol he’d recovered, a small Beretta 9mm. The action was stiff, as if it hadn’t been oiled in years, and the brass shells were pitted and tarnished.

Just my luck to be mugged by a discount goon, Mercer thought bitterly. The click of a misfire would betray his position as surely as an accurately placed shot.

A crunch of gravel sounded over the drips and a shadow passed just beyond the entrance tunnel. Mercer raised his pistol in a two-handed grip, waiting, his eyes staring into the murky light. In a burst, the three assassins rushed into the chamber, their silenced weapons shooting tongues of flame as they laid down covering fire. The wild shots turned bone to powder with each impact. Mercer couldn’t face the onslaught and stayed behind his barrier, waiting for them to pause. A row of skulls above him looked down as if laughing.

The muted echoes of that first barrage died away and Mercer heard voices. He had no way to be sure, but it sounded like Chinese to him. It wasn’t much of a stretch to realize they were employees of bidder 127. They were trying to steal the one item that he hadn’t been able to buy at the auction. How they knew Mercer had it laid the blame firmly at Derosier’s feet.

Mercer ducked his head around the jagged stack of femurs. The gunmen were hidden. An explosion of bone dust erupted next to his shoulder and he could feel the passage of a ricochet. He’d been spotted. More rounds poured in, high-velocity bullets that tore into the wall of human remains. Mercer shuffled back around the far side of the island of bones. Chips of yellowed skeleton were blown from the stack. A figure stepped out of the shadows, creeping steadily forward on soft-soled shoes. Mercer took aim before he was spotted and eased the trigger.

The gun bucked and the unsilenced blast sounded like a cannon in the nightmarish confines. The bullet took the assassin center-mass and dropped him instantly. Keeping low, Mercer moved down another alley where the neatly stacked bony fragments were separated by body part, not individual. Tibias in one section, scapulas in another, a ten-foot stretch of nothing but ribs.

He found an arched doorway and dashed through. No shots chased in his wake as he passed some sort of altar and into another ossuary chamber decorated with obelisks from Napoleonic times. A square stack of bones that reached to the ceiling was dated 1804 and looked like a mausoleum.

There weren’t as many lights on in here, but Mercer kept his flashlight off, moving more with touch than sight. He looked at the gravel floor and cursed. His footprints were visibly the freshest in the room. No matter where he searched for cover, the two remaining gunmen would know where he was hidden. The floor was too rough to discard his shoes, so he had to come up with an alternative. He walked the perimeter of the chamber, keeping his ears attuned to the sound of pursuit. Three-quarters of the way around, he realized that there was only one entrance. He’d staggered into a dead end. And then he spotted what could be his salvation, a wooden door embedded in the limestone wall that kept tourists from exploring deeper into the catacombs. He had no idea what lay on the other side. It could very well be a storage closet, but it was his only alternative.

No amount of pushing would move the locked door, and once Mercer shot the handle off the gunmen would be on him. He held the Beretta at an angle so the bullet would ricochet away, turned his head, and fired. The old iron lock crumbled and the unbalanced door creaked open. Mercer wrenched the door closed after him. There were no lights in this area, so he kept his flashlight on as he raced past more stacks of bodies, running first right then left as the tunnel bored deeper into the earth. His mind began drawing a mental map of his progress, an automatic skill developed through years of mine work. He was confident that if he survived he’d be able to retrace his steps.

The sound of pursuit reached him every time he paused for breath, neither gaining nor losing ground. He came across a narrow passage barely wide enough for him to pass sideways. The tunnel seemed to slope upward at a shallow angle. With the light off, he moved in, sweeping his feet against the dusty floor to obscure his prints. The darkness was absolute. He could taste it in his mouth and feel it clogging his ears.

After fifty yards, his gun hand smashed into a solid wall. Not daring to turn on the light, he felt around, probing the darkness until he found where the tunnel continued to the left. Behind him he thought he saw a ghost’s glow of light from one of the gunmen, but it didn’t appear that they had found where he’d gone yet. They would, he knew. They would.

His knees hit every irregularity in the ancient stonework as he shuffled sideways. Beginning to fear that the tunnel would pinch out, Mercer found that the claustrophobic rock suddenly began to widen. He could walk normally. He felt like he’d moved into another room and chanced flicking on his light. What he saw made him gag.

The room was fifty or sixty feet square and the floor was a sea of carelessly strewn skeletons, like a scene from a Nazi death camp or Cambodia’s killing fields. A hole halfway up the brick wall opposite him was his only way out. To cross, Mercer had to step up onto the remains. Each lurching pace crunched into the pile, snapping the brittle bones. To keep the threads of panic from binding him, he told himself that the obscene sound was just the rustle of autumn leaves in a forest.

His pants were torn by sharp protrusions and soon blood began to seep from shredded skin. Something snagged on his leg and he had to look down to dislodge it. His foot was ensnared in a rib cage. He kicked frantically and the bones flew apart.

The light from his torch suddenly seemed brighter and Mercer whirled to look behind him. He saw two bright spots waving in the tunnel he’d just escaped. The gunmen had made up ground. He began running across the countless dead, desperate not to join them. A yard short of the hole, Mercer dove headlong as the beam from a flashlight swept the charnel room. The rough stone tore across his chest as he tumbled through the opening. He began rolling down a packed dirt slope with his case clutched to his chest. He heard a startled exclamation from one of the gunmen and the spit of a hastily fired shot.

Mercer came to a stop in a shallow pool of foul-smelling water. His flashlight lay a few feet away, its glow focused on a half-submerged skull. This one was connected to the body that once carried it, a body still dressed in the remnants of jeans and a sweatshirt. It was a catophile, as illegal explorers of this underground crypt called themselves, who’d become lost and died. Judging by the decomposition, he or she had been down here for years. The empire of the dead continued to claim new members.

He thought briefly of abandoning his sample case here. The gunmen weren’t likely to continue the chase once they had the Lepinay journal. But the idea died as soon as it formed. His anger remained stronger than any instinct of self-preservation.

He jumped to his feet and started running. This passage wasn’t part of the Roman mines. It was a more modern, brick-lined tunnel. It took Mercer a minute to realize that he’d broken through into Paris’s extensive sewer system. Built by Napoleon III’s municipal engineer, Baron Georges Haussmann when he redesigned Paris beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, the sewers were a thousand-mile labyrinth of tunnels that exactly duplicated the streets above. Fortunately the storm runoff from the heavy rains had swept away much of the human waste generated by the millions above. Still, the stench rising from the channel in the center of the tunnel was overwhelming. Mercer’s lungs began to burn after only a few paces.

The bottom of the tunnel had silted up with a clinging morass that sucked at his shoes. He vaulted up to the ledge that ran along the side of the passage. Overhead, he could hear raw sewage coursing through the two-foot-wide pipes that were bolted into the vaulted ceiling. Strings of offal drizzled from poorly fitted seams. At least here there was an occasional lightbulb along the roof of the tunnel.

Had his lead been greater, Mercer would have climbed one of the ladders he came across that presumably led to manhole covers on the street, but he guessed the gunmen were only a minute behind. He continued to run as hard as the fouled air would let him. He paid no attention to the dozens of rats or the jaunty porcelain street signs placed at each intersection. He simply chose a direction and continued on, realizing that the flow of water in the tunnel increased the farther downstream he ran. He rounded a sharp corner and suddenly was knee-deep in water. A snarl of tree limbs had created a dam across the tunnel, and back pressure was quickly filling the gallery.

Mercer clambered over the pile and fell into the water that drained from between the limbs. Clearing sewage from his face, he flicked aside a dead rat that had become entangled. Through a small opening in the mound he saw the gunmen as dim shadows behind their probing lights. He was certain he could take one and hoped that he would get both. If he didn’t, the downstream side of the dam was much shallower and he would be able to gain a few minutes on the survivor. The Beretta came up and he was surprised to see that his aim held steady.

Either alert for an ambush or extremely well trained, the gunmen split up as they approached the dam. One held far back, covering as his partner took up a position behind a huge valve. Realizing he’d never get both, Mercer concentrated on the closer assassin. The range was about twenty feet, an easy shot for him, but the gun was unfamiliar and he suddenly began to shake from the cold water.

No sooner had the gunman started to edge from around the valve than Mercer pulled the trigger. The gun jammed and the unnatural sound carried over the liquid whir of water sieving through the dam. Mercer didn’t have time to clear the pistol’s fouled breach before return fire raked the makeshift obstruction. He wiggled out of his burrow and ran through the ankle-deep water behind the dam, his loafers kicking up small clots of unidentifiable filth.

He reached a four-way intersection and turned the corner as a bullet destroyed a chunk of brick near his head. Dust scoured his already tearing eyes. The water grew deeper. Rather than leap onto the catwalk, Mercer pushed aside his revulsion and dove in. By feel, he cleared his jammed gun and dug his heels into the silt on the bottom of the channel. His case was wedged under his legs. Polluted water surged around him and unspeakable things brushed past him in the current. His lungs began to protest the foul air he’d drawn and he could taste the water on his lips as it tried to invade his body.

What was that old joke Harry had mentioned once? If Moscow is full of Muscovites, wouldn’t Paris be full of Parasites? This part was, he was sure. Through force of will, Mercer remained on the bottom, waiting in an ambush the Chinese couldn’t possibly anticipate.

His chest began to heave involuntarily as it used up the last of the oxygen, and behind his tightly closed eyes, sparks shot across his lids. Still he waited, knowing that he could draw this out for another few seconds. A gnarled branch hit his shoulder and bubbles dribbled from his lips, becoming a rush as his lungs emptied. He came to the surface, shielded partly by the few leaves remaining on the limb. His hair was plastered to his skull and the water burned his eyes before he could wipe them. One of the gunmen was ten paces ahead, cautiously stalking along the platform adjacent to the river of sewage. Mercer allowed the current to spin his body as he searched for the other.

The second assassin was far down the tunnel, exploring a section of the sewer on the far side of the last intersection. Mercer could only see him by the play of his flashlight against the dank ceiling.

Turning his attention to the closer man, Mercer felt no distaste at shooting him in the back. Being forced to kneel in a stream of waste precluded any thought to honor or fair play. Mercer double-checked his weapon and raised it, but realized he couldn’t fire. Son of a bitch.

“Hey, buddy, can you spare some toilet paper?” The assassin turned faster than Mercer could have imagined. His gun was ready, twisting in an arc tighter than his body, and he got a shot off just before his aim centered on Mercer.

Mercer gave the Beretta a double tap. His first shot hit the gunman in the shoulder, continuing his spin, and the next blew out a chunk of bone at the top of his spine. The Chinese killer dropped even before the expended brass from Mercer’s gun pinged against the wall of the tunnel. He jumped up onto the platform, certain the unsilenced shots would draw the second assassin. So far his briefcase didn’t feel any heavier, meaning its seal was still keeping out water and protecting the old diary.

Farther under the city he moved, jinking around corners, leaping across the torrents that rushed through the center of the larger tunnels and getting himself so thoroughly lost that if he managed to elude the last gunman, he’d never be able to retrace his steps. Every time he thought he’d finally lost the assassin, he’d see the flickering light of his dogged pursuer.

Ahead, Mercer saw another of the ladders that led to the surface and judged his lead large enough to chance the unprotected climb. The steel rungs were slick with filth. He stuck his pistol into his waistband as he started up. Once he reached the top, he found that the airtight plug that kept the smells from overpowering the streets was frozen solid. He hammered at it then shimmied back down. He couldn’t waste the time. Back in the sewer, the gunman’s light was a hundred yards back. Too far for a pistol shot to be effective without a heavy dose of luck or a Hollywood scriptwriter.

Mercer came across more and more tunnels that were relatively dry and wondered how that could be, considering the amount of rain that Jean-Paul had said had been falling. As he staggered down one, a sudden gust of foul air pressed against his back. He turned. The Chinese had yet to turn this corner, but beyond the intersection he’d just passed, a wall of water raced down the sewer carrying debris of every imaginable shape and size. The sewermen working up the line must have temporarily dammed the flow to build enough pressure to clear obstructions. It was a practice used in the city for more than a century. Mercer had also heard they used special boats equipped with sluice gates for the same purpose.

He jumped out of the channel just as the tide swept past, its force making the entire tunnel vibrate. He lay on the slimy floor for a moment, almost at the end of his strength. His breathing was too labored to properly fill his lungs. Slowly he pushed himself to his feet and felt that his pursuer had gained a few yards on him.

Mercer came to a junction that contained a number of valves and gates, a central area where several of the larger sewers came together. Nearly tapped out, he took cover behind an iron valve casing the size of a locomotive boiler. This was the best place he’d found to make a stand. He checked to see how many rounds remained in the Beretta and discovered that he had only one. Considering its corrosion, there was a fifty-fifty chance of the bullet firing or exploding in the pistol. He hastily searched for an exit. Just as he spotted an open hole in the floor that was usually covered by a hatch, the assassin burst into the chamber. He didn’t appear winded at all. His motions were crisp, precise, quartering the room with his eyes as his gun arm followed. Mercer couldn’t wait for the gunman’s gaze to swing toward him.

As silently as his sodden shoes would allow, he crept forward on the man’s blind side. When they were ten feet apart, Mercer launched himself at his attacker. The gunman was quick, but not quick enough. The impact sent both men against the railing that protected three sides of the hole. The assassin’s breath exploded as his ribs were hammered by the metal railing. Mercer used this momentary advantage to smash the gun out of his grip.

The killer had one arm free and whipped his elbow into Mercer’s chest, twisting out of reach and settling into a martial-arts pose. Mercer had learned a few basic karate moves, but considered his superior size his only weapon in this fight. When the assassin came in with a lightning kick, Mercer pushed him aside, wrapped both arms around the man, and began to squeeze. The Chinese used the back of his head as a battering ram against Mercer’s face, but Mercer lowered his own head so the two came together with a stunning crack.

Dazed by the contact, Mercer lost his hold and the assassin moved inside his defenses, putting two punishing blows into Mercer’s chest before using the heel of his hand against Mercer’s chin.

Mercer dropped.

The gunman was on him like a terrier, kicking him so that he was pushed toward the open manhole in the floor. Mercer couldn’t defend himself. Instead of resisting, he clutched his briefcase with one hand, wrapped his arms around the gunman’s leg and allowed himself to fall through the hole.

Mercer and the gunman dropped six feet into the trickle of water running along the floor of a perfectly round tunnel. It was more like an enormous pipeline than the previous tunnels, but seemed to date from the same time. A steady wind blew across the men as they lay in the water, too stunned to move for a moment.

Gaining his feet just before the gunman, Mercer faced into the peculiar wind while the Chinese killer had his back to it. He never saw what was coming for them out of the darkness. Mercer could see it and it was like something out of a nightmare.

This tunnel was one of the main feeds of the entire system and had been designed so that cleaning it didn’t require men to go into the channel with boats and their special shovels, called rabots. Here, whenever silt and debris clogged the conduit, they introduced a huge wooden ball exactly nine-tenths the diameter of the tunnel. The pressure of water behind it forced it down the pipe like a rolling plug.

Mercer now understood what Jean-Paul had meant when he said the street department was dropping the ball all over the city. He wasn’t using the American expression for a screwup. They were literally dropping a one-thousand-pound wooden ball into the storm drains to clear them of the trash washed in by the constant rains.

The ball rolled at them with unimaginable force, pressed forward by tons of water on its upstream side. Water jetted from the gaps between it and the tunnel’s lining. Mercer turned and ran, snapping on the spare flashlight he’d taken at the entrance to the catacombs. He looked back once to see the assassin limping after him. The man had injured his leg during the fall into the drain. His pace nowhere near matched that of the huge sphere.

The gunman must have known it too because a moment before he was overwhelmed, he stopped to face the ball. He screamed once, a high keen that carried over the thunder of so much pressure, and then he fell under the revolving weight. Without pause, the ball’s remorseless motion crushed him flat as though he’d never existed. Mercer dredged up the last of his reserves, running harder than he’d ever moved, his light licking at the smooth tunnel walls searching for an escape.

Ahead, he saw a pile of sand that blocked half the tunnel and dove over its crest in a flying leap. He rolled down its far slope, regained his feet and continued on. He glanced over his shoulder to see the ball hit the sand, hoping it would give him a moment’s reprieve. The ball was stopped for just a second before hydraulic forces dissolved the shoal. It continued its inexorable journey, mindlessly chasing Mercer down the tunnel.

The drain swept through a couple of gentle turns, Mercer maximizing his angle at each so as not to lose one inch to the wooden globe. He could feel its presence no more than a dozen paces back. An occasional drop of water hit his head and neck. He knew if he looked at it, it would fill his vision. He pushed himself even harder.

And just as he began to lose strength once again, his light flashed across a niche in the wall, a portal of some sort that protected a metal door. The surge of adrenaline carried him out of the spray that geysered from around the ball. He reached the niche just yards ahead of the ball and pressed the door’s lever handle. The metal shrieked as it opened and Mercer stepped into a smaller tunnel that ran parallel to the main trunk line. The ball passed the open door before Mercer could reseal it. A solid wall of water hit him full in the chest, knocking him back against the far wall, pinning him until the pressure dropped. He fell back to the floor, gagging on the sewer water that had filled his mouth.

After several minutes of coughing and vomiting, Mercer staggered to his feet and returned to the main drain line. The tunnel had been scoured clean, and a smooth stream of water coursed down its center. Mercer continued to follow it, knowing that eventually he’d come to an outlet where sanitation workers would be waiting to recover the ball. Fifteen minutes later he heard voices echoing in the humid tunnel.

The tension of the past two hours washed out of him. He had to brace himself to keep from collapsing. He touched the side of his sample case, wondering again what exactly he’d been lured into. Later, he knew, his desire to find the truth would build, but for now all he wanted was out of this reeking labyrinth.

Mercer staggered into the light cast by the sanitation workers’ mining helmets as they maneuvered one of their special boats into the stream from a side tunnel. They all wore tall rubber waders and thick gloves. They were as startled to see a filthy man blunder out of the gloom as Mercer was relieved to see them.

The crew leader finally found his voice, and called out in French, “How did you get down here?”

Mercer gave him an exhausted smile. “Let’s just say that Parisian toilets have one hell of a flush.”

After improvising a story about being mugged earlier in the day and dumped down a manhole, Mercer convinced the work crew to take him back to the surface, allow him to use their locker room for a long, long shower and even lend him some clothes. Mercer had no intention of fulfilling his promise to go to the police with his tale. The last thing he needed was an official investigation into what had happened outside the catacombs. He recalled that he hadn’t given the taxi driver the name of his hotel and there was nothing in his abandoned luggage that gave away his identity. If the police did manage to connect him to what had happened, he’d be halfway to Panama.

Instinct told Mercer to lay low until his flight the next day, but he needed fast medical attention, and knew how to get it without raising too many questions. After buying more appropriate clothes from a trendy store that catered to a late-night crowd, he checked into the Hotel de Crillon at Place de la Concorde. He asked the concierge to get him a doctor with a bag full of antibiotics and an undeveloped sense of curiosity.

An hour later, with massive doses of drugs coursing through his veins and a second shower, Mercer called Jean-Paul Derosier and wasn’t surprised to find he wasn’t home. He spoke to Derosier’s wife, Camille.

“He called, Mercer,” she said, “and said that he wouldn’t be home until tomorrow.”

“You’re not surprised?”

“No,” Camille admitted. “He said that this might happen.”

“You do know that he set me up, right?”

“I swear he didn’t tell me a thing.”

Mercer wanted to vent his anger, but knew that targeting Camille wasn’t fair. This was something her husband had done. “When he finally shows up, give him a message for me. Tell him that when I’m done in Panama I’m coming back and I’m going to kick his pampered ass across every arrondissement in Paris.”

“Mercer, if it helps, he said that it wasn’t his fault. And he said that he was sorry.”

“Just tell him.” Mercer cut the connection.

A bellman knocked at his door and waited while Mercer slipped the Lepinay journal in an envelope the young man had brought and wrote out an address on the outside. Getting the journal to the States in twenty-four hours cost well over a hundred dollars, but Mercer could think of no better way to keep it secure. He tipped the bellman as he left and dialed an international operator. He heard four rings and was about to try Tiny’s Bar when the phone was answered.

“Mercer’s house. What do you want?” Harry White’s voice hit like a wrecking ball against an old building and resonated like the debris falling away.

“For you to not drink all my booze when you house sit and to answer the goddamned phone like a human being.”

Whether intentional or not, Mercer had built a life with very few anchors. His home was one, a comfortable base that allowed him to recharge between trips. But more important was his friendship with the eighty-year-old Harry White. In the years since they’d met at Tiny’s, they’d forged a bond that was stronger than that of most natural families. Despite what others who knew them thought, it wasn’t one of father and son, or even grandson, since Harry was more than twice Mercer’s age. They were more like brothers born four decades apart, each willing to do anything for the other without thought to cost or consequence. Because the emotional bond between them was understood and needed no further nourishment, their rapport tended to sound downright nasty to the uninitiated.

“Hold on a second,” Harry said, “I forgot to mail your bills a few weeks ago and the bank’s appraisers are here to sell your furniture. They said I could have your big-screen TV for a hundred bucks.”

“Sometimes I think that when you lost your leg, you also lost whatever sense of humor you might have had.” Harry’s left leg was gone below the knee. He told people that it was the result of an accident during his years in the merchant marine. Only Mercer and a handful of others knew the truth.

“Everyone knows the funny bone’s in your elbow,” Harry snorted. “Hey, I thought you were coming home for a few days. I had this whole thing set up for when you got here. I hired this knockout stripper to dress like a cop. We were going to be waiting for you with me in handcuffs on a charge of cat burglary.”

“I got stuck in Utah and flew straight on to Paris. Sorry to frustrate your plans.”

Harry gave a lecherous chuckle. “I wouldn’t exactly use the word frustrate. Before she left, the stripper gave me the handcuffs in appreciation.”

Mercer didn’t doubt Harry’s story, or at least part of it. It was something the octogenarian would pull. The idea of the stringy old man and his sagging pectorals and small potbelly with some hot stripper was an ugly picture that he quickly purged from his mind. “That was pity, my friend. She gave you the handcuffs out of pity.”

“Don’t get snippy with me just because you haven’t been laid for a few months.”

“And you haven’t since they put fins on cars.”

Harry allowed him that final shot. “So are you coming home?”

“No. In fact, I want you out of my place for a few days.” Mercer explained what he’d been through in the past hours. “I mailed the journal to Tiny at the bar, but just in case these Chinese, or whoever the hell they are, figure out who I am and send people to the house, I don’t think you should be there.”

“Screw that. You think I want to give up your three-story town house for my one-bedroom apartment so you can read some old book? Give them the damned journal.”

“I knew you’d understand. You going to Tiny’s tonight?”

“No, Doobie Lapointe is covering the bar. Tiny, me, John Pigeon and Rick Halak are going to a Georgetown basketball game.”

“Tell Paul”—Tiny’s real name was Paul Gordon, and the nickname certainly fit the former jockey—“about the book that’s coming. Have him put it someplace safe. I may need him to send it to me when I get to Panama.”

“You got it.” Harry’s tone matched the gravity he heard in Mercer’s voice. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, don’t steal my booze when you go home.”

“Sorry, Mercer.” Harry raised his voice as if the clear connection had suddenly become static-filled. “You’re breaking up. Did you say you wanted me to take your booze? Okay. I’ll guard it with my liver, I mean life.”

“I’ll call you in a couple of days.”

“Hello? Hello? Come in, Tokyo. I can’t hear you. Hello?”

Mercer never doubted that Harry could lift his spirits following his sewer swim. He was still chuckling when he dialed his third call, the one he feared making. His smile faded when he began to comprehend what Maria was saying, even if she didn’t understand the significance.

“Gary hasn’t answered his radio for hours,” she said over the sound of Latin pop music blaring from a stereo. “You know he never buys new equipment. It’s probably broken again.”

“Are you sure?” Mercer managed to keep concern from his voice. He didn’t believe that Gary was coincidentally out of reach at the same time three trained gunmen tried to steal the journal he needed to conclude his treasure hunt.

“Sí. Tomorrow he will fix it again and call. He always does.”

“Can you keep trying for me? I will call again just before my flight.”

“Well, sometimes it takes a day or two to fix. But I will try.”

Mercer finished off the second of three vodka gimlets that room service had brought up and started on the last. A couple more might dull the thoughts churning in his mind, but he wasn’t looking for release. He wanted answers. He assumed the mystery bidder at Jean-Paul’s auction had sent the assassins. They in turn had hired a street thief to steal the case in order to insulate themselves from the crime. But who had shot the kid just a few paces from his escape car? He doubted Jean-Paul knew. Camille had said he’d been forced to give the journal to Mercer. By whom?

Whatever was at stake, Mercer was sure the answers weren’t what he was expecting. He still didn’t believe that Gary Barber had found buried treasure. There was something else hidden in the jungle that people seemed more than willing to kill for, something on the banks of a tributary of the Rio Tuira that Gary had named the River of Ruin.