Sacred Stone

31

“DAMN RIGHT IT’S a problem,” the president said to Langston Overholt.

An hour earlier the British prime minister had informed the president that they had discovered a Greek ship captain with radiation burns at a location less than fifty miles from downtown London. As the president and Overholt spoke, the secure lines between the two countries were still burning with a flurry of transmissions.

“We’ve been working with the Russians as well as the Corporation to recover the weapon,” Overholt said, “but it got into England anyway.”

“Is that what you’d like me to tell our closest ally?” the president asked. “That we tried, but no cigar?”

“No, sir,” Overholt said.

“Well, if whoever is behind this mates the nuke with the meteorite, London and the surrounding area is going to be turned into a wasteland. And whatever you think you might be able to argue about the nuke, the meteorite is our screwup.”

“I understand, sir,” Overholt said.

The president rose from his chair in the Oval Office. “Listen to me carefully,” he said in a voice tinged with anger, “I want results, and I want them now.”

Overholt stood. “Yes, sir,” he said.

Then he made his way to the door.

“CABRILLO’S STILL TRACKING the meteorite,” Hanley told Overholt over the secure line, “at least according to our helicopter pilot who phoned in a few minutes ago.”

“The president is up in arms,” Overholt said.

“Hey,” Hanley said, “don’t blame us—the British jets were late to the party. If they’d arrived on time, the meteorite would be secure right now.”

“The last communication the British sent mentioned that they had forced the Cessna down at Inverness and were preparing to search the plane.”

“They won’t find anything,” Hanley said. “Our pilot said he and Cabrillo saw the pilot of the Cessna drop the package out the side.”

“Why hasn’t Cabrillo telephoned in,” Overholt said, “so we can coordinate help?”

“That, Mr. Overholt, is a question I cannot answer.”

“You’ll let me know as soon as you speak to him?”

“Yes, sir,” Hanley said as the telephone went dead.

THE MG TC rode like a buckboard wagon filled with grain. The thin tires, lever-action shocks and ancient suspension were no match for a modern sports car. Cabrillo was in fourth gear with the engine wound to her highest RPM and the old car was only doing a little over seventy miles an hour. Holding the wood-rimmed wheel with one hand, he slapped the side of his satellite telephone again.

Nothing. It might have been the landing—despite his best efforts to protect the device, it had hit the dashboard when they finally touched down. It might be the power supply—satellite telephones burned through power like a fat man’s air-conditioning during a Phoenix summer. Whatever the case, Cabrillo could not get the green light to come on.

Just then he caught sight of the van a few miles ahead as it crested a hill.

EDDIE SENG GLANCED over at Bob Meadows as the car Meadows was driving neared the Isle of Sheppey. Plucked from the Oregon by the Corporation’s amphibious plane, the two men had been flown to an airport on the outskirts of London, where the armored Range Rover had been left by the British intelligence agency MI5.

“It looks like we received the weapons we asked for,” Seng said as he picked through the nylon bag that had been left on the rear seat.

“Now if we can just find where the Hammadi cell is hiding in London,” Meadows said confidently, “and locate the bomb and disable it while our chairman secures the meteorite, we can call it a day.”

“Sounds reasonably difficult.”

“I give it a seven on the ten scale,” Meadows said as he slowed to turn into the port.

SENG STEPPED FROM the passenger seat as Meadows was still shutting off the engine. He walked over to a lanky man with strawberry-blond hair and extended his hand.

“Eddie Seng,” he said.

“Malcolm Rodgers, MI5,” the man said.

Meadows was out of the Range Rover and approaching.

“This is my partner, Bob Meadows. Bob, this is Malcolm Rodgers from MI5.”

“Pleasure,” Meadows said, shaking his hand.

Rodgers began to walk toward the pier. “The captain was found at a local pub just up the hill. According to the customs slip, he had docked that evening.”

“Did the radiation kill him?” Meadows asked.

“No,” Rodgers said, “the preliminary autopsy showed traces of a poison.”

“What kind?” Seng asked.

“Nothing we’ve been able to verify yet,” Rodgers said, “some paralytic agent.”

“Do you have a phone?” Meadows asked.

Rodgers slowed and removed a cell phone from his pocket then looked at Meadows.

“Call your coroner and have him get in touch with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Ask them to send the toxicology profiles for Arabian Peninsula scorpion and snake venoms and see if they get a match.”

Rodgers nodded then made the call. While he was on the telephone, Seng studied the port area below. There were several old cargo ships, three or four pleasure crafts, and a single catamaran whose upper decks bristled with antennae and two davits. The rear deck of the catamaran was crowded with crates and electronic gear. A man was hunched over a table on the rear deck with his arms inside a torpedo-shaped device.

“Okay,” Rodgers said, “they’ll check.”

The men continued walking down the hill and reached the dock. They walked out on the planks then turned and headed down another dock that abutted the first at a right angle. Three men were visible on the Larissa’s deck. You could be sure more were below.

“We’ve searched every inch,” Rodgers said. “Nothing. The logs are falsified, but by interviewing the crew we learned that the cargo was picked up near Odesa in the Ukraine, and they steamed here without stopping.”

“Was the crew aware of what they were transporting?” Seng asked.

“No,” Rodgers said. “The rumor was that it was stolen artwork.”

“They were just the delivery men,” Seng said.

Meadows was staring back down the dock at the catamaran.

“Do you men want to go aboard?” Rodgers asked.

“Did anyone see the man leave the pub after he met with the captain?” Meadows asked.

“No,” Rodgers answered, “and that’s the problem. We don’t know who he was or where he went.”

“But the captain didn’t take the bomb with him to the pub,” Meadows wondered aloud, “so either someone on the crew made the switch, or it was stolen off this ship.”

“No one saw the bomb at the pub,” Rodgers said, “and the captain died there.”

“And you’ve grilled his crew?” Seng said.

“What I’m about to tell you is classified,” Rodgers said.

Seng and Meadows nodded.

“What we did to the crew is illegal by world convention—they told us everything they know,” Rodgers said quietly.

The British were not playing around—the Greeks had been tortured or doped or both.

“And no one in the crew made the switch?” Meadows said.

“No,” Rodgers said. “Whoever that man was at the pub, he had accomplices.”

“Eddie,” Meadows said, “why don’t you board the Larissa and check it out? I’m going to wander over there and talk to the guy on the catamaran.”

“We’ve already questioned him,” Rodgers said. “He’s a little odd, but harmless.”

“I’ll be right back,” Meadows said, walking down the dock.

Seng motioned to Rodgers and followed him on board the Larissa.

“SIR, WE NEED to call it,” Stone said, “Atlantic or North Sea?”

Hanley stared at the moving map on the monitor. He had no idea which way Cabrillo was headed, but the time to decide was upon them.

“Where’s the amphibious plane?”

“There,” Stone said, pointing to a blip on the map that showed the plane over Manchester and flying north.

“North Sea, then,” Hanley ordered. “London is the target. Order the amphibious plane to Glasgow to support Cabrillo.”

“Got it,” Stone said, reaching for the microphone.

“Hali,” Hanley said over his shoulder to Kasim, who was sitting at a table behind the control chair, “what’s the situation on the fuel for Adams?”

“I couldn’t get the airport in Inverness to make a delivery,” Kasim said, “so I contacted a gas station in Loch Ness to bring fuel out to the site in five-gallon cans. He should be arriving there shortly. As soon as he does, I’m sure Adams will report.”

“Damn,” Hanley said, “we need George up there to support our chairman.”

Linda Ross, the Oregon’s security and surveillance expert, was sitting at the table with Kasim. “I linked up with the British authorities and told them what we know—that we have a white van heading south on the road from Loch Ness that we think is carrying the meteorite, and that Mr. Cabrillo is chasing in an old black MG. They’re sending helicopters, but it will be an hour or so until they reach the area.”

“Can the Challenger fly high cover and report?” Hanley asked the room.

For a second no one spoke. Stone punched commands into his keyboard then pointed at the monitor. “That’s real time from the area,” he said.

The blanket of fog looked like a gray wool sheet. On the ground in northern Scotland, visibility was being measured in feet, not yards. Help from the air would not be coming anytime soon.

HALIFAX HICKMAN WAS fuming. After berating his security team, he turned to the head of the detail. “You’re fired,” he said loudly.

The man walked to the door and exited the penthouse.

“You,” he said to the fired man’s second in command, “where’s the thief that broke in here?”

“Our men saw him land on the ground up the street from Dreamworld,” the man said. “He was picked up by two people in an open-topped Jeep. Two of my men were giving chase when their vehicle suffered a massive electrical failure. They lost them at that point.”

“I want every person we have scouring this city to find that Jeep,” Hickman said. “I want to know who has the balls to break into my apartment on top of my hotel.”

“We’ll get on it right away, sir,” the newly appointed head of security said quickly.

“You damn well better,” Hickman said, as he walked up the hallway to his office.

The security men filed out of the penthouse. And this time they remembered to lock the door. Hickman dialed a number on the phone and spoke.

IN HIS OFFICE on board the Oregon, Michael Halpert was cataloging the contents from Truitt’s transmission. The files were a jumbled mess of corporate documents, bank and brokerage records, and property holdings. Either there were no personal files or they had not been transmitted before the link was disabled.

Halpert set the computer to search for keywords then stared at the photographs Truitt had faxed from the Gulfstream. Rolling his chair over to another computer, he fed the pictures into a scanner, then linked onto the U.S. State Department computer and began searching passport photos. The database was huge and the search might take days. Leaving the computers to work, he left the office and walked up the hall to the dining room. Today’s special was beef Stroganoff—Halpert’s favorite.

“SIR,” THE VOICE said loudly over the phone, “we are being hailed by a United States Navy guided-missile destroyer.”

“What do you mean?” Hickman said.

“We’ve been ordered to heave to or be sunk,” the captain of the Free Enterprise said.

Hickman’s plan was unraveling faster and faster.

“Can’t you outrun them?” he asked.

“No way.”

“Then engage them,” Hickman ordered.

“Sir,” the captain said loudly, “that would be suicide.”

Hickman thought for a second before answering.

“Then delay the surrender for as long as possible,” he said at last.

“Yes, sir,” the captain said.

Hickman disconnected and sat back. The team on the Free Enterprise had been given a false story from the start. To get the team to cooperate, he’d told them that his plan was to use the meteorite, combined with a nuclear device, for an attack on Syria. Then he told them he was going to blame the attack on Israel and create a full-scale war in the Middle East. By the time it was all over, he’d said, the United States would control the region and terrorism would be snuffed out.

His true plan was much more personal. He was going to avenge the death of the only person he had ever really loved. And God help those that stood in his way.

Reaching for the phone again, he dialed his hangar.

“Get my plane ready for a trip to London.”

“AHOY,” MEADOWS SAID to the man on the deck of the catamaran.

“Ahoy,” the man answered.

The man was tall, a shade over six foot four inches in height, and slim. His face was framed by a trimmed goatee and a tangled mess of graying eyebrows, and his eyes were clear and twinkled as if possessing a secret no one else knew. The man, who appeared the wrong side of sixty years of age, still had his hands inside the torpedo-shaped object.

“Permission to come aboard?”

“Are you the sonar guy?” the man said, grinning.

“No,” Meadows said.

“Come on aboard anyway,” the man said with a trace of disappointment.

Meadows climbed onto the deck and approached the man. He looked vaguely familiar. Then Meadows placed the face. “Hey,” Meadows said, “you’re that author, that—”

“Retired author,” the man said, smiling, “and yes, I’m him. Forget about that for a moment—how are you with electronics?”

“My oven is still on daylight savings time,” Meadows admitted.

“Damn,” the author said, “I blew the motherboard in this sonar and I need to get it fixed before the weather clears and we can go out again. The repairman was supposed to be here an hour ago. He must be lost or something.”

“How long have you guys been docked here?” Meadows asked.

“Four days now,” the author said. “Another couple more and I’ll need to spring for new livers for my team—they’ve been sampling the local flavor. That is, except for one guy—he swore it off years ago and now he’s hooked on coffee and pastries. The question is, where do I find these guys? These expeditions are like a floating insane asylum.”

“Oh, yeah,” Meadows said, “you like to do underwater archaeology.”

“Don’t say ‘archaeology’ on this vessel,” the author joked. “Archaeologists are on the same plane as necrophilia on this boat. We’re adventurers.”

“Sorry,” Meadows said, smiling. “Hey, we’re looking into a theft on these docks a couple of nights ago. Did you guys lose anything?”

“You’re an American,” the author said. “Why would you be investigating a robbery in England?”

“Would you believe national security?”

“Oh, sure,” the author said. “Where were you when I was still writing? I had to make everything up.”

“Seriously,” Meadows said.

The author considered this for a moment. Finally he answered. “No, we didn’t lose anything. This boat has more cameras on it than a Cindy Crawford swimsuit shoot. Underwater, above water, down in the cabins on the instruments, hell, probably in the head for all I know. I rented it from a film crew.”

Meadows looked astonished. “Did you tell the Brits that?”

“They didn’t ask,” the author said. “They seemed a lot more interested in explaining to me that I hadn’t seen anything—which I hadn’t.”

“So you didn’t see anything?”

“Not if it was late at night,” the author said. “I’m over seventy years old—if it’s past ten at night, there had better be a fire or a naked girl if you want to wake me.”

“But the cameras?” Meadows asked.

“They run all the time,” the author said. “We’re making a television show about the search—tapes are cheap, good footage is precious.”

“Would you mind showing them to me?” Meadows asked.

“Only,” the author said, walking toward the door leading into the cabin, “if you say ‘pretty please.’”

Twenty minutes later, Meadows had what he had come for.