The Medusa Stone

College Park, Maryland

The tape deck had been placed in the center of the small, faux-wood dining table, the four chairs clustered around it occupied by the station chief and the three senior members of his team. All of them had listened to the recording just forty-five minutes after Mercer’s exit from the Willard Hotel.

“Comments?” the team leader, Ibriham, invited at last.

“Sounds like a bust,” the only woman present stated. “He’s not going to jump at the bait.”

“I agree,” said another.

“I was surprised by the level of detail Hyde went into with this one,” the team’s most experienced operative noted. “The last two he approached got far less from him than this Philip Mercer.”

“True,” the leader said. “However, neither of those engineers had Mercer’s reputation. I read through his dossier from Archive. His academic and field qualifications are impeccable, and he has a substantial resume with American covert activities, first during the Gulf War and later during the Hawaii crisis and last year when the Alaska pipeline was threatened. I’m willing to bet that Hyde wanted Mercer all along, but had to try the other two first because he was unavailable.”

“What should we do?” the woman asked. “It’s obvious Dr. Mercer isn’t interested. Do we wait and see who is next on Hyde’s list?”

“I don’t think so,” Ibriham replied. “We need to take the initiative now. We’ve burned nearly a quarter of our budget already, and the operation hasn’t really started yet. We need to get more actively involved. Without results, we may soon be recalled. And this mission’s too important to let that happen.”

Already he had a plan in his mind.

“I believe Philip Mercer’s the man we want. Hyde failed to recruit him through normal means, so it’s up to us to get him with other, harsher tactics. We need to get leverage on this man, something to force him to Eritrea. Not only as Hyde’s agent, but ours as well. From the dossier, I know he has no living family, but we have to find a weakness we can exploit, some vulnerability. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that is off-limits. This takes our highest priority. Mercer must be in Eritrea within two weeks.”

“So you’re saying our operational perimeters are wide open?”

“Yes. Use any means necessary to compel him into accepting Hyde’s offer. We know that bribery won’t work — he is too wealthy — but there’s something out there that will coerce him. I need you to find it. And use it. Any more questions?” Ibriham received nothing but accepting looks. “Good. Get to work. I’ll stay on Archive, but I doubt I’ll turn up anything more.”

Ibriham dismissed the others and headed into their command room, closing the door behind him. He booted up the main computer terminal and logged on to the Internet, using the World Wide Web as a conduit to the secure Archive database. While his eyes were on the monitor, his mind was elsewhere.

Born into a family who had resided just outside the walls of Jerusalem for the past nine hundred years, he was no stranger to either tradition or sacrifice. In his youth, many of Ibriham’s friends had been Christians and Muslims, but his family was part of a small handful of Palestinian Jews who’d lived for generations in the Holy Land. For centuries that distinction made little difference. But then strife came. Since Israel’s creation, first Ibriham’s neighborhood and later his family had been shattered by divided loyalties, torn between clan and God. He, too, faced the personal dilemma. On one side was the fiery Palestinian in him, raging to see his people free from outsiders for the first time since Saladin’s conquest five hundred years earlier. On the other was the desire for a homeland for his displaced fellow Jews, a place where once and for all they would no longer fear pogroms and anti-Semitism.

Much like Americans during their Civil War, his family was ripped asunder. One of Ibriham’s uncles had been shot and killed by another during the Infitata, the Palestinian uprising that swept the West Bank and Gaza during the 1980s.

Ibriham had tried to stay out of it, but he, too, was swept into the violence. It happened after the murder of a favorite cousin, a young woman of promise who was slain by Israeli security forces for being at the wrong place at the wrong time following a PLO demonstration in 1989. Ibriham changed that day. He took up arms and began a new life of violence. Putting aside the morals that had shaped his youth, Ibriham deliberately became that which all abhorred. He became a terrorist, one driven by the perverse belief that, no matter what, the ends always justified the means.

“Ibriham?” Yosef stood at the door of the office. He was the most experienced member of their team, a veteran who had seen more action than any other team member, including Ibriham.

“Come in, Uncle,” Ibriham said. “And save me from thinking too much.”

Yosef sat so close to his nephew that their knees almost touched. “What were you thinking about?”

“Violence and its meaning.”

“It has no meaning, it’s a tool. Like the plow or the tractor or the AK-47.”

“I know, but I wonder about its nature.”

Yosef smiled indulgently. He’d trained Ibriham since the day after his niece’s death and yet the boy continued to ask questions. He was proud that Ibriham wasn’t one of the mindless drones that blindly followed orders. “It has no nature. Only people have that. And while the tenets of humanity call for peace, if we are threatened, violence becomes an option. Its nature then becomes ours. We use it for defense and it is virtuous, but if we use it to kill without thought, then our nature is reflected in its wastefulness.”

“And using violence against this Mercer?”

“Justified.” Yosef didn’t even pause to consider the question. “Especially when you hear what I have to tell you. I didn’t want to mention this in front of the others until I told you first. While Mercer was meeting with Hyde, I searched his house.” Yosef took Ibriham’s silence as acceptance of the unauthorized break-in. “I didn’t have enough time for a thorough job, but I learned enough to make me a bit leery.”

“Go on?”

“Mercer’s security system is good, not perfect, but it provides more than enough protection from all but the best trained.” Yosef smiled, thick wrinkles enveloping the corners of his dark, deep-set eyes. “I have to admit, I’m getting too old to scale staircases using the handrails alone.”

“And what did you find?”

“A cache of weapons in an office closet, a Heckler and Koch machine pistol, a Beretta 92 autoloader, ammunition, smoke and fragmentation grenades, night-vision gear, and several blocks of plastique. The stuff looks like it’s been in the bottom of a trunk for a while, but its presence is disturbing.”

“Souvenirs from some earlier mission for the U.S. government?”

“I assume, but if he kept the stuff, it means he would probably use it again.” A worried scowl crossed Yosef’s face. “These weapons, and Mercer’s doubtless familiarity with them, raises the stakes considerably when we consider what type of action is necessary to force him to Eritrea.”

“But it doesn’t stop us from doing it,” Ibriham agreed.

“I think we should proceed with a bit more caution than originally thought warranted. My instinct tells me that there is more to Philip Mercer than can be learned from a computer dossier.”

Ibriham sat silently absorbing this.

“And one more thing. Mercer’s Rolodex contains the direct office and home phone numbers of Richard Henna, the head of the FBI. I think their relationship has a personal element stemming from some past mission.”

This revelation rocked Ibriham. “There is nothing I can do about that now. We must proceed. Cautiously, yes, but this mission must go on.” His voice intensified as the image of their goal flashed in his mind. “It’s there, Uncle, waiting in the African desert, buried for thousands of years and we will get it. A symbol for our people all over the world, a link to God that will make believers out of everyone. Even if he is friends with Henna, do you really think Mercer will stand in our way?”

Yosef was pleased to see the passion in his nephew’s eyes. This would be his last mission. He’d only agreed to come in order to help Ibriham on his first command. None of the others even knew they were related. “No, he won’t.”