Vulcan's Forge

Potomac, Maryland

Richard Henna was just getting back into bed after a late-night foray into the kitchen when the bedside phone rang. He grabbed the handset before the second ring. His wife, a twenty-five-year veteran of middle-of-the-night calls, didn’t even stir.

“Henna.”

“Dick, it’s Marge.” Margaret Doyle was a deputy director of the bureau and Dick Henna’s oldest and best friend. She didn’t bother apologizing for waking him. “Philip Mercer has left the Washington area.”

“How?” Henna snapped.

“By train. The agents we had watching Union Station never saw him because he boarded the Metroliner at New Carolton. We just found out through his credit card. He purchased two one-way tickets for New York from the conductor on the train.”

“Christ.”

“What is it, dear?” Fay mumbled in her sleep.

He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “Nothing, hon,” then spoke softly but clearly into the phone. “All right, Marge, call the New York office, have them put a few men at Penn Station in case he tries to return by train. Fax them the picture of Mercer we got from the U.S. Geological Survey.”

“I’ve already made the calls.”

“If they pick him up, I want to be notified right away. Then I want him and Tish Talbot flown immediately to Andrews Air Force Base.”

“Should we cancel the surveillance on his house?”

“No, I’m willing to bet he’ll get by us again. Call me back if there are any new developments.”

“Sorry about this, Dick.”

“Not your fault. I think we’ve all underestimated Mercer.”

Henna hung up the phone and slipped into a bathrobe. He knew he would get no more sleep this night. He went downstairs, made a cup of coffee, and sipped it in the darkened kitchen for a few minutes before crossing through the large federal-style house to his study. He turned on his desk lamp, groaning as the light flashed into his eyes.

He dialed the combination of the Chubb safe behind his desk and removed a single file. The file, headed “Antebellum,” recorded Henna’s personal observations about events since the letter from Ohnishi came to his attention.

He read his own handwriting slowly, mostly because it was too sloppy to scan. The first page was a bare chronology. Henna now added Mercer and Talbot’s trip to New York at the bottom of the list.

On a clean sheet of paper, he began drawing flow charts, tying events into each other. In minutes, he had created an indecipherable series of lines, circles, and swirls. The only thing he knew for certain was that Mercer had gone to New York in response to the information he had received from the law offices of David Saulman.

He reread the information that Mercer had requested from Saulman, obtained by the FBI through a Dade County judge’s court order. Saulman’s office had grudgingly turned over a few lists of ships’ names and some basic information on Ocean Freight and Cargo.

This time he saw it — the ship that rescued Tish Talbot was owned by OF&C, whose offices were in Manhattan. Henna spilled his coffee as he grabbed for the phone. Ignoring the mess, he dialed the New York FBI office.

“Federal Bureau of Investigations,” a tired voice answered the phone.

Without preamble, Henna gave his personal recognition code to the night duty officer, establishing his identity without question. In situations like this, the code numbers saved valuable minutes needed when a person high up in the organization wanted to speak with someone out in the field. Henna had heard a similar system was used by many of the crime syndicates the FBI fought. Henna asked to speak with Special Agent Frank Little.

“I’m sorry, Agent Little is on the day shift, may I be of assistance? This is Agent Scofield.”

“Who else is there now?” Henna needed to speak with someone he knew personally, someone who wouldn’t want to use this phone call for some favor in the future.

“I’m sure, sir, that I can be of some. .”

Henna cut the man off. “Just tell me who else is there.”

“Agent Morton is here and so is—” Pete Morton had been a rookie agent when Henna was station chief in New York six years earlier.

“Great, let me talk to him.”

A moment later, “Morton.”

“Pete, this is Dick Henna in Washington.”

“Jesus.” Henna could almost hear the man spring to his feet.

“Relax. I need a favor.”

“Yes, sure, anything, Mr. Henna.”

“Get on the horn to one of your contacts in the NYPD. I want to know if there was any trouble near Eleventh Street tonight.”

“I don’t see how—”

“Pete, just do it, all right.” Henna remembered that Morton used to ask a million questions about everything. “Call me at this number when you’re done,” Henna gave him his home number, “and then lose the number.” He hung up.

He skipped through the file in front of him until he came to Philip Mercer’s dossier, compiled by the CIA in 1990. Mercer had been born in the Belgian Congo. His father was an American mining engineer employed by Mines Belgique, a firm mining diamonds from the rich Katanga province. His mother was a Belgian fashion model. They had met during a photo shoot in Leopoldville, the capital of the Congo. Philip was their only child. Both parents had been killed during an insurrection in Rwanda in 1964; the details of their deaths were sketchy.

Mercer was raised by his paternal grandparents in Barre, Vermont. His grandfather worked in a granite quarry and his grandmother was a homemaker. He graduated top of his class in high school and cum laude from Penn State with a degree in geology. He then went to the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, again graduating near the top of his class. After four additional years of schooling at Penn State while doing contract work for various coal mines around western Pennsylvania, he received his Ph.D. in geology. His thesis on metamorphic rock dynamics as it pertains to quarry mining was still supplemental reading for graduate students at Penn State.

After completing his doctorate he went to work for the U.S. Geological Survey, but lasted there only two years. Interviews with coworkers from that time showed that Mercer was simply unchallenged by the work the USGS had given him.

Henna noted that Mercer’s case was another example of the government’s inability to retain top minds in whatever field. He couldn’t count the number of agents he had known who left to work for private security firms. It wasn’t just the pay or the benefits that caused people to leave, government work simply drained people of their spirit.

After the USGS, Mercer went into business for himself assaying mining properties for investment firms eager to know potential returns before committing huge amounts of money. He built a reputation quickly within the industry. After just a few years, two weeks of his time cost up to fifty thousand dollars plus, in some cases, bonuses in the form of stock if he believed the property to be extremely valuable. The year that the CIA did the background check, Mercer’s income, as reported to the IRS, was slightly over three quarters of a million dollars. The CIA had also contacted the U.S. Customs Service, who listed thirty overseas trips since his latest passport was issued.

The next section of the report detailed his involvement with the CIA and the mission to Iraq. When the plan to infiltrate Iraq was first conceived, forty-eight candidates were considered for the position of on-site expert on mining practices and geology. Mercer was the eighth candidate to be interviewed, and after his first series of tests, all the other interviews were canceled. He scored just above genius level on the IQ test and did perfectly on all the memory tests. One of the testers noted that Mercer was able to recall a forty-digit number twenty-four hours after seeing it. After agreeing to join the team, he was sent to a training facility in rural Virginia, where he had excelled in marksmanship and the grueling obstacle course, but fared just average in communications and what was termed “basic trade craft.”

The attached psychological report documented an acute fixation on self-reliance and a deeply rooted fear of abandonment, probably due to his being orphaned. He was a natural leader but had chosen not to develop those skills. The staff psychiatrist summed up his report by stating that Mercer’s motivation for joining the infiltration team was simply his need for continual challenge.

The doctor feared that this would lead to reckless behavior, but recommended Mercer’s approval.

In mid-January 1991, Mercer and eight Delta Force commandos parachuted into northern Iraq near the city of Mosul. The site was chosen by Mercer and a team of satellite analysts as the most likely spot for uranium mining.

Mercer had quickly confirmed that the mining facility there was not even close to production and the uranium ore was too poor a quality to make nuclear weapons. They were attacked by the mine’s security detachment as they were sneaking out through the perimeter fence. Two commando officers were killed during the opening gun battle and another fell shortly afterward as they retreated through the mountainous desert.

The extraction helicopter they had depended on couldn’t pick them up because of the heavy weapons fire from Iraqi scout cars. Mercer led the remaining troops through a scree field that the pursuing scout cars couldn’t pass and managed to lead them to Mosul. There, they stole a produce truck and made a mad dash to the Turkish border. The Delta commandos all agreed that Mercer was the person most responsible for their success, and that without him, none of them would have survived.

Two days after their debriefing, President Bush ordered the beginning of Operation Desert Storm.

Henna stood and began pacing, his chin buried against his chest. He knew from the dossier that Mercer was acquainted with Tish Talbot’s late father, which would explain why he had gone to the hospital. But his actions since then defied explanation. How had he known the other man in her room was not part of the hospital staff or another FBI agent? Why hadn’t he contacted the FBI as soon as he had gotten Talbot safely away? Why had he pursued the matter on his own? And if he had gone to New York to investigate the shipping company, what had he found?

“Christ, there are too damn many questions and not enough answers,” Henna said aloud.

The phone rang shrilly and Henna snatched at it.

“Henna.”

“Mr. Henna, Pete Morton in New York, sir.”

“Yeah, Pete, what’ve you got?”

“How did you know there was something up on Eleventh Street?”

“Skip the questions and tell me what happened.” Henna’s heart was racing and his palms were sweaty.

“At 12:53 this morning a gunman drove down Eleventh Street and fired a shotgun five times, blowing out several windows and doors. He then raced away. There are no suspects or clues.”

“Was one of the buildings hit owned by a company called Ocean Freight and Cargo?”

“Yes, how did you—”

“Never mind that. Get some men down there right away, take into custody anyone they see. Call me back as soon as you’re done.”

“I’ll take care of it myself, sir.”

Henna set the phone down and slumped back into his chair.

“What the hell is Mercer playing at now?”