The Lightning Stones

29

Mercer and Booker spent close to three hours on that Jet Ski before being rescued in the middle of the night by a Sea King helicopter flown off the USS America. The explosion had been detected on monitors all over the planet, and it was at first believed to be nuclear in origin. In response, the navy had tasked their closest ship, one that was actually closer than some top brass had expected her to be, to investigate. Captain Tuttle and his crew searched the area for any sign of what had happened. Nuclear detectors aboard ship found no traces of fallout. As far as the world was concerned, the explosion had been a large meteor strike.

It would be several months before another navy ship would be dispatched to the region. They would use ROVs to scour the seafloor for any wreckage. Of special interest was the containment chamber for the Zhukovsky’s reactor core, which was eventually found intact and clandestinely salvaged from eleven thousand feet of water.

Mercer and Book were taken aboard the USS America that night — where Mercer returned Tuttle’s beloved .45—and eventually flown to Tarawa, for their commercial flights. Sykes was heading home to North Carolina. Mercer had one stop to make before allowing himself the luxury of going home. He flew first to Hong Kong on a connecting flight to his final destination — Charles de Gaulle International, just north of Paris.

In the world of backroom deals that was Washington politics, the real story of what had happened in the Pacific began circulating as soon as the magnetic storm had destroyed itself. Ira Lasko was widely credited with helping to prevent what could have been the greatest catastrophe to strike humanity since our ancestors climbed out of the trees. No one yet knew where to point the finger, but investigations were under way about the ownership of the Zhukovsky and the identity and most recent employer of a South African mercenary, first name Niklaas, last name still unknown.

Mercer let Ira take the lion’s share of the credit and couldn’t have cared less about the legitimate investigations being ramped up in the Hoover Building and at Langley. The only thing that interested him was the name the mercenary had coughed up as he lay dying on the floor of the ship’s control room.

Mercer had called Ira by satellite phone while he was still aboard the America and given him the name. Within hours, Lasko had called back, and they had pieced together the full picture.

“Roland d’Avejan and Eurodyne…I know of him,” Ira responded. “But the guy’s loaded — why would he do something like this?”

“His chief scientist aboard the Zhukovsky alluded to the basics, and it makes perfect sense — in a warped way,” Mercer said. “Until recently, Europe was enamored with green energy schemes. Windmills and solar panels were going up from the coast of Spain to Germany’s eastern borders, and governments were subsidizing it all with taxpayer money — billions of dollars per month.”

“This was all about global warming and saving the planet.”

“To some, sure. But to business, it was a cash cow. People were so passionate about it they were willing to fork over huge sums of money. Companies like Eurodyne were more than happy to supply the windmills and solar panels and gobble up the subsidy money like pigs at a trough.

“Fast-forward a few years, the world economy is in the crapper and suddenly Juan and Johan Q Public can no longer afford expensive green energy, so the public spigot closes. This also corresponds with a time when global surface temperatures were shown not to be rising as fast as everyone had feared. This put climate change hysteria on the back burner for everyone except those with vested interests: environmental NGOs who need funding, the media, which needs good scare stories, and a handful of companies heavily invested in green tech. Some of those simply cratered, like Solyndra and A123 Solar…but d’Avejan didn’t want Eurodyne to end up on the same scrap heap. So he came up with a plan to save it.”

“By causing more global warming?”

“Yes. D’Avejan intended to use the crystals to deflect a little more of the cosmic radiation that strikes Earth, which would cause fewer clouds to form in the atmosphere. And once a planet loses a portion of its shading, it warms ever so slightly.”

“I get it,” Ira said. “He makes global warming come back, people start to panic again, and suddenly the governments lavish billions on solar and wind.”

“And on Eurodyne,” Mercer concluded.

“I assume you’re not laying all this in my lap out of the kindness of your heart.”

“Not at all,” Mercer assured him. “You can take the accolades for all this, Ira…we both know I certainly don’t want them. But I do need one thing from you. There’s an errand I have to do before I head home.”

At nine in the morning on the day after his arrival in Paris, Mercer received a visitor in his hotel room. The man had a package, and the address of a plumber not far from Eurodyne’s headquarters building. The man and Mercer headed out, and fifteen minutes later they were at the modest shop of the local plumber. The French plumber, a dour mustached man who smoked like the surgeon general had never existed, graciously accepted his fee of five hundred euros and handed over uniforms and two boxes of tools.

At exactly ten o’clock, Mercer and the CIA contact, now both dressed in authentic uniforms, were in Roland d’Avejan’s secretary’s office. The agent was explaining to her that he’d received an emergency call from the tenant below her boss’s office, and there was water leaking through his ceiling. She replied that Monsieur d’Avejan was not to be disturbed, to which the agent replied that he would call the building manager and have the terms of the lease read to her because he had emergency access to all parts of the building, day or night, and Monsieur could go screw himself.

She finally relented, buzzed d’Avejan, and explained the problem.

“Fine,” he’d huffed over the intercom.

The lovely executive assistant opened the inner office door and stood back so the plumbers could lug their toolboxes inside.

Roland d’Avejan didn’t even look up from his desk, and Mercer dared not look at him in case the man could sense his hatred. He followed the CIA agent into the bathroom and closed the door. The agent cocked an eyebrow as an invitation for Mercer to do whatever it was he wanted. Mercer opened the heavy toolbox. He donned a pair of rubber surgical gloves he’d been given earlier, followed by a pair of thick rubber gauntlets. Only then did he remove the wrapped block that had been formulated for him by a retired chemist who did occasional work for the CIA, as well as France’s own DSGE. Mercer removed the bar of soap from the tiled shower stall and replaced it with the new cake. The colors matched, but Mercer’s was a little too large, so he pared it down with a knife.

He put the heavy gloves in the box and snapped off the latex.

“C’est tout? Fini?” the agent asked.

“Oui.”

“D’accord.”

They exited the bathroom, and the agent said to the uninterested executive, “Pardon us, monsieur, but the water does not appear to be coming from your bathroom. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

They paused for a second, but d’Avejan didn’t bother looking up, so the plumbers walked out. They smiled at the pretty secretary and left the building together.

It wouldn’t break on Bloomberg News until nine hours later, while Mercer was reclined comfortably aboard a Boeing 777 somewhere over the Atlantic. Roland d’Avejan, the wealthy president of one of Europe’s most well-respected and environmentally conscious companies, had hurled himself naked through his office window and plummeted to his death. His body showed signs of second- and third-degree chemical burns. A rumor out of the medical examiner’s office was that d’Avejan’s body continued to melt even on the autopsy table. The subsequent investigation would reveal a pattern of self-abuse using stronger and stronger soaps in a masochistic spiral that obviously got out of control. His latest attempt to expunge whatever sins he thought these soaps could clean had gone terribly wrong. A sliver of the fateful bar had been recovered by investigators in his shower, and tests had revealed its active chemicals became more caustic when exposed to water. An experiment on a piece of pork revealed that when d’Avejan tried to rinse away the painful soap, his skin would have started smoking, then disintegrating. It was universally agreed that the only way d’Avejan could have ended his excruciating agony was to jump. Death by misadventure. Case closed.

Mercer arrived home early evening, Eastern Standard Time, to find Harry and Special Agent Kelly Hepburn sitting in his bar. Kelly’s leg was up on a coffee table, her crutches leaning on the sofa next to her. Drag was on her other side, his tail going like a slow-tempo metronome while she scratched his ears.

“Well, hello,” Mercer said, taking in the scene.

“Hello yourself,” Kelly said with a warm smile. “If you don’t mind me saying so, Mercer, you look like crap. Where have you been…chasing terrorists around the globe?”

“I’m taking Drag out for a smoke,” Harry announced, passing Mercer and giving him an affectionate slap on the back.

“I’ve spent quite a lot of time here in the last week, recovering and chatting with Harry. You’ve got a real friend there.”

“Well, he’s certainly not shy…or sober,” Mercer replied. “How’s the leg — did Harry take good care of you?”

Kelly laughed. “Regaled me with stories of your heroics, Mercer. I was a captive audience.”

“Never believe everything you hear. And in Harry’s case, never believe anything you hear.”

“Okay, here’s the deal,” Kelly said quickly as she levered herself off the sofa. “You’re probably dead on your feet right now, so I’m going to get out of your hair and let you get some sleep. But I do plan on coming back when you’re rested.”

“Absolutely not,” Mercer replied. “I have to atone for past mistakes and ask a lady for a proper date. Just give me fifteen minutes to shower and dress, and I’ll whisk you away to wherever you want.” Mercer started walking toward his bedroom, but he turned back when he reached the doorway. “You mentioned French and Thai. I happen to be off all things French for a while, so Thai it is.”

After dinner, Special Agent Kelly Hepburn came home with Mercer. Despite her earlier warning, they did not need the Jaws of Life, only a carefully placed pillow and a burning desire to find comfort in the arms of another.