Vulcan's Forge

Arlington, Virginia

Mercer tapped the cabdriver on his shoulder and handed the young African immigrant a twenty. “Keep the change and I’m sorry about the seat.”

The cloth-backed seat of the yellow Ford Taurus was soaking wet, just like Mercer’s suit. He walked toward his house in stocking feet, his socks making an obscene sound against the concrete with every step.

The front door of the house was unlocked. Mercer breathed a heavy sigh once the door was closed behind him. It had taken him nearly an hour and a half to get home after he’d pulled himself from the river near the Pentagon. His first act, after wringing the water from his clothes behind a derelict bus, was to phone a friend with the metro police.

The friend promised that Mercer’s shot-up Jaguar would be towed to an auxiliary lot in Anacostia, not to the city’s main impound. He also assured Mercer that the paperwork on the car would be “lost” for at least a couple of days. It would take some time to trace him through his destroyed car.

He now had a little breathing space to figure out what in the hell had just happened and why.

Mercer heard the sound of the television and knew that Tish Talbot had made it here safely. He walked through the house, not caring about the water he was getting on the tile or the antique stairs. Tish was asleep in the bar, stretched out on the couch under a steamer rug that Mercer had bought in an auction of ocean liner memorabilia. The name SS Normandie was embroidered in gold silk on the thick dark wool.

Tish woke slowly, extending her hands over her head in a decidedly feline gesture.

“How do you feel?” Mercer asked. Making a quick decision between keeping his floor dry and his need for a drink, he gingerly stepped behind the bar.

“I’m not sure,” Tish responded, then noticed his appearance. “My God, are you okay?”

“Let’s just say, I’m not ready to do that again.” Mercer pulled two beers from the antique fridge and popped the lids.

“No, thanks,” Tish said. “I took the liberty of opening a bottle of wine.” She indicated the half-filled glass on the coffee table.

“I wasn’t offering,” Mercer replied as he tilted the first bottle to his lips. The beer vanished in seven heavy swallows. “I need a shower and a change. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He left the empty on the bar.

Ten minutes later, Mercer returned wearing jeans and a Pittsburgh Penguins jersey. Tish had folded the blanket and was sitting at the bar. “Your home is beautiful. I made the mistake of going for cute rather than practical when I bought my condo in San Diego. My whole unit is smaller than this room.”

“One of these days I’ll finally admit that I live here and decorate some of it.”

“I did notice a definite lack of decorating skills.” Tish smiled warmly. “Oh, my God, your hand!”

Mercer looked down at the back of his right hand, where the skin had been scraped off by the rough subway tunnel. In the bathroom, he’d awkwardly wound a bandage around it, but the self-ministrations had come apart and the angry cuts had opened again. They were painful and still bled freely, but weren’t serious. He grabbed for a clean bar towel, but Tish snatched it from him.

“Let me do that,” she said, and began wiping the blood from his skin.

As soon as her hand touched his, she gasped as if she’d touched something hot. She turned Mercer’s hand over slowly, inspecting it like the scientist she was.

His hands were exactingly sculpted by labor and pain. His palms were horny callused pads and the backs were criss-crossed with the raised white ridges of old scar tissue. The nails, though neatly tended, were scored and pitted and one nail, on his pinkie, was cracked all the way to the cuticle. Despite the damage, they were beautiful hands, rugged like a new mountain chain yet with a tapered masculine elegance.

Tish released his hand and looked into his eyes searchingly.

“I work for a living,” he grinned, “and these are my tools.”

“Then I guess this scrape doesn’t bother you much?”

“Hell, yes, I just won’t admit it.”

Tish looked away and when she spoke, her voice had a serious timbre. “I want to thank you for saving my life today.” She chuckled. “Christ, does that sound like a cliché.”

Mercer smiled at her. “It’s the least I can do since your father once saved my life. How is Jack?”

“My father died about a year ago. You didn’t know?” Mercer’s face went ashen. “I tried to tell you back at the hospital, but that man came in.”

Mercer managed to croak, “How?”

“He was killed on an oil platform near Indonesia. It capsized in a freak typhoon.”

A numbness started at the base of his skull and raced through his body in seconds. He almost had to hold onto the bar for support. Without a word, Mercer ran up to his bedroom and returned a moment later holding a soggy scrap of paper, the telegram sent by Jack Talbot. He held it out to Tish, but she seemed reluctant for a moment, fearful of even touching the page. Finally, she took it and read it quickly.

Bewildered, she looked up at him. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” Mercer said slowly, “neither do I. But someone wants me involved in this, whatever ‘this’ is. And they were right about you being in danger.” He finished the beer and pulled another from the fridge. “You said at the hospital that you had no idea why you were under guard or why your father or whoever sent this telegram might think you’re in danger?”

“That’s right. Listen, I’m just a marine biologist. Who would want to kill me? And by the way, how did you know that man in my hospital room wasn’t a real doctor?”

“For one thing, he said he was a urologist, which was the same line I used to get past the FBI guards. One of them would have come to recheck my credentials. Also, no doctor making rounds would wear shoes as uncomfortable-looking as his.” Mercer shrugged. “As to why someone is trying to kill you, that is what we have to find out. It’s obvious that it has to do with the last voyage of the Ocean Seeker. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

Tish was almost at the point of tears and had to slow her breathing before she could speak. “Do you think all those people were killed because of me?” She sobbed once.

Mercer came around the bar and took her into his arms. She sagged into him gratefully. Her hair smelled like hospital soap, and was smooth and slippery against his skin. He let thirty seconds go by before straightening up. Looking deeply into her eyes, he spoke softly. “I don’t think anyone was supposed to survive that trip. Now tell me about the last voyage.”

Tish took a moment to compose herself.

“A few weeks ago, seven gray whales were found beached just west of Hana on Maui. They were all dead. A biologist from the University of Hawaii performed a necropsy.”

“A what?” Mercer interrupted.

“Necropsy — an animal autopsy,” Tish replied as if everyone should know the word. “He found that their digestive tracts were clogged with minerals. About fifty-five percent silica, with some magnesium, calcium, and iron, plus traces of gold.”

“You’re describing lava.”

“That’s what the biologist thought as well. His theory was the whales had been attracted to the huge schools of plankton that would surround a new undersea volcano for its warmth. The whales, while feeding, would also ingest the particles of lava suspended in the water. Eventually, their digestive tracts would fill with the minerals and they could no longer feed.”

“So what happened then?”

“Well, NOAA was called in to investigate. An aerial search of the waters north of Maui showed nothing. No new island, no clouds of ash or even steam. Then some sonar buoys were dropped, and within twelve hours we had found our new volcano, about two hundred miles from the Hawaiian islands.

“The Ocean Seeker was sent out late last Thursday night.” Tish stopped speaking for several seconds. “Twenty-four hours later, the ship exploded. When I was first rescued, I just assumed that it had been some sort of accident, but now I don’t know what to think.”

Mercer poured her another glass of wine and opened another beer for himself. The adrenaline rush from a few hours ago was wearing off, leaving him thirsty.

“Why are all those pins in that map?” Tish said, changing the subject and referring to the map of the world hung behind the bar. It was studded with numerous pushpins in several different colors.

Mercer felt that the distraction would let Tish calm down enough to answer the dozens of questions he still had for her. “It’s a map of places I’ve been. The different colors indicate why I was there. Green is for pleasure, like most of the Caribbean islands. Red is for work overseas for the U.S. Geological Survey, mostly meetings in Europe and Africa. And blue is for private consulting work that I’ve done for various mining companies.”

Tish noted that this last category included some pretty exotic places — Thailand, Namibia, South Africa, Alaska, New Guinea and at least fifteen others. “Why is there a clear pin in central Africa? I can’t tell which country.”

Mercer looked pained as he replied. “The pin’s in Rwanda. I was there for six months in 1994 when the world looked on as 800,000 Tutsi tribesmen were slaughtered by the Hutu majority. I was on a consulting job when the violence erupted, and rather than run away, I joined a band of soldiers trying to defend fleeing villagers.”

“My God, why would you do something like that? I heard that the fighting was absolutely savage.”

“I was born in that part of the world. My parents and I lived in Rwanda during the early days of independence. I was too young to remember the massacre of 1964, but I’ve never lost my sense of loyalty to the Tutsi friends I had growing up.”

Tish knew he was keeping something from her, but she didn’t press. “And what about the clear pin in Iraq?”

Mercer smiled. “I was never there — and even if I was, I can’t talk about it.”

She threw him a cheeky grin. “Real James Bond, hush hush.”

“Sort of.” Mercer still carried scars from that mission. The information he had brought back had been the trigger for Operation Desert Storm. “Now tell me about your rescue.”

Tish spoke quietly. “The ship exploded late Friday night. I was on the fantail, rigging some acoustical gear. I didn’t hear or even see the explosion. One second, I was standing there, and the next I was in the water. There were a lot of flames. I remember that I couldn’t hear anything. I think I had gone deaf for a moment.”

“The concussion stunned your ears — it’s common. Go on.”

“There was an inflatable raft near me and I swam to it.”

Mercer interrupted again. “It was already inflated?”

“Yes, it was. Come to think of it, that’s awfully strange. They’re usually stowed in big plastic cylinders. Maybe the explosion released the CO₂ used to inflate it.” That sounded a little far-fetched to Mercer, and he made a mental note to come back to it later. “I was in the raft all of the next day until the September Laurel rescued me.”

“That’s the freighter?”

“Yes. A couple hours later, a helicopter from the navy came to pick me up. The doctor on board gave me a shot, and when I came to, I was in D.C.”

“Can you describe the freighter?”

“I don’t know, it was just a ship. I don’t know the length or anything like that. It had a bunch of cranes and booms. There was a black circle with a yellow dot on the funnel, which was near the back of the ship.”

“What else can you tell me?”

Tish paused, her smooth forehead furrowed. There was something she wanted to say, Mercer could tell, but he didn’t think she was sure of the facts herself.

“I heard Russian,” she blurted out.

“Russian? Are you sure?”

“Well, no, not really.”

“When did you hear it?”

“When I was being pulled aboard the freighter. The crew were shouting orders to each other in Russian.”

“How can you be sure it was Russian? Some of the Scandinavian languages sound similar.”

“A year ago I was part of a research team in Mozambique, investigating the ruin that the government there has made of the prawn beds just off the coast. It was a joint venture between NOAA, Woods Hole, the Mozambique government, and a team of Soviets. I, well, I became involved with one of the Soviets. When we were alone together, he would always speak to me in Russian. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sound of that language.”

She looked at Mercer, as if defying him to judge her.

“Okay, so you heard Russian. Could be they had some expatriate Russian crewman or something like that. What happened when you were in the life raft?”

“Nothing. I was unconscious until just before I was rescued.”

“You don’t remember anything?”

“I had just been blown off a ship, what the hell am I supposed to remember?” Fatigue was taking its toll on her.

“I’m sorry. You must still be exhausted.” Mercer glanced at his watch. It was four-thirty in the afternoon. “Why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll wake you at seven. I’m sure you’re dying for a nonhospital meal.”

“Yes, that would be wonderful.”

Mercer led her to one of the two guest rooms. He showed her the bath and gave her several towels. He heard the water running even before he returned to the rec room.

Mercer pulled two more beers from the fridge and went to his home office. He switched on the desk lamp and grabbed the phone.

A moment later a female voice chirped, “Berkowitz, Saulman, and Little.”

“David Saulman please. Tell him it’s Philip Mercer.”

Of the dozens of lawyers that Mercer had dealt with in his life, David Saulman was the only one he liked. Saulman had been a ship’s officer during the late 1950s and early sixties, but an engine room accident had scalded his left hand so badly that it had to be amputated. Forced out of the Merchant Marine, he put himself through law school and within just a few years he was the man to talk to about maritime law.

Thirty years later, his office in Miami had over one hundred associate attorneys and his counsel rated five hundred dollars an hour. At seventy-five, Saulman was still sharp and his knowledge of ships and shipping was voluminous.

“Mercer, how are you? I haven’t heard your sorry voice in months. Tell me you’re in Miami and ready to get into trouble.”

“Sorry, Dave, I’m in D.C. and I’m already in trouble.”

“Don’t tell me the cops finally picked you up for flashing the tourists in front of the White House?”

“Hell, no one even notices when I do it. Dave, what do you know about a ship called the September Laurel?”

“An official call, is it?”

“Yeah, charge it to NOAA.”

“NOAA, huh? Do they know?”

“Not yet, but if I’m right, they won’t mind.”

“The September Laurel was the ship that rescued that woman from the NOAA research vessel last night, right?”

“That’s the one.”

“The Laurel’s owned by Ocean Freight and Cargo, head office in New York, but all of their ships are registered in Panama and have Italian crews. She’s just a tramp freighter, usually runs the north Pacific. Let me think, about four hundred feet, thirty thousand gross tons. Only notable thing about her is this rescue.”

“Dave, I want you to check her out — normal cargoes, big contracts — also I want the lowdown on her parent company. Dig deep. Also, could you get me any information on all the ships that have sunk in the same waters as the Ocean Seeker?”

“What’s going on in that paranoid mind of yours?”

“I’m not sure yet, and I can’t really talk about what I suspect. Do you happen to know the design on her stack?”

“Yeah, a bunch of laurels.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, it’s OF&C’s trademark. Their ship August Rose has a bunch of roses on the stack and the December Iris has irises on hers.”

“So there’s no way that her stack could be painted with a black circle surrounding a yellow dot?”

“Not unless the company has changed a forty-year tradition.”

“Thanks, Dave, I owe you. Just fax the info to my home and I’ll take it from there.”

“Are you up for a trivia challenge?” Saulman asked. This had been a tradition since they’d first met in 1983, at a reception honoring the few remaining Titanic survivors.

“Fire away.”

“Who was the last person to own the Queen Elizabeth and what did he change her name to?”

“C. Y. Tung, and he called her Seawise University.”

Mercer just barely heard Saulman call him a bastard before he hung up.

Mercer flipped through his Rolodex for a second, searching for a number at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

“Time to call in another favor,” he muttered as the phone began ringing.

“Yo,” answered a familiar deep baritone.

Mercer instantly recognized the easy negligence of the greeting. The voice was pure Harlem. “Spook, whatever happened to hello?”

“Only one man dare call me that. Is that you, Mercer?”

“No, this is the Massachusetts chapter of the KKK soliciting donations.”

“So it is the Rock Jock, how the hell are you?”

Three years earlier, Mercer had been contacted by a Pennsylvania mining firm about a piece of property they had just purchased in upstate New York. The company was hoping to reopen a hard-rock anthracite mine first excavated in the 1890s. While doing the first exploratory trips into the half-submerged mine, Mercer and a small team from the mining company had come across a school of swift but blind fish. Not recognizing them as a normal subterranean species, Mercer had called in Woods Hole to investigate the mutated specimens. They sent over two marine biologists and several assistants. The mine was never reopened, but the research had given a young grad student named Charles Washington his Ph.D. thesis and a guaranteed tenure at Woods Hole. Mercer had given Washington the nickname Spook, not because of his black skin and inner-city manner, but because of his love of Stephen King novels and the frightening stories he’d tell to keep the crew entertained while working in the dark mine tunnels.

“Another day older and deeper in debt.”

“Shit, man, you ain’t seen debt until you see the payments on my new BMW.”

“Whatever happened to scientists with leather-elbowed jackets, untrimmed beards, and beat-up Saabs?”

“That’s for old white farts, not us lean and mean black brothers. ’Sides which, last I knew you was drivin’ a Jag.”

“Just to prove I’m not an old white fart, that’s all.”

“Bullshit, but I love ya anyway. This ain’t no social call, what up?”

“A year ago, Woods Hole sent a team to Mozambique to look at shrimp beds. You know anything about it?”

“No, but hold on, I know someone who does.”

Mercer could hear him shout to someone else in the room. A few minutes later a frail female voice came on the line. “Hello, this is Dr. Baker.”

“Good afternoon, Doctor, my name is Philip Mercer. I’m a geologist with the USGS.” Mercer thought it best to sound formal. “I’m trying to get some information about an expedition to Mozambique that Woods Hole was involved with last year.”

“That’s what Charley said. I was on that expedition as lab director.”

“Do you happen to remember any of the Russian scientists? A youngish man in particular. I’m sorry, I don’t have his name.”

“Probably you’re referring to Valery Borodin. Supposedly he was a biologist, but he knew more about geology than anything else. He spent most of his time with one of the women from NOAA, lucky girl.”

“Why’s that?”

“I may be sixty-six years old, Mr. Mercer, and have four delightful grandchildren, but these old eyes can still appreciate a handsome man. And Valery Borodin was a very handsome man.”

“So you say he knew more about geology than anything else, huh?”

“That’s right. If you want to know more about him, I suggest you contact the woman from NOAA. I can’t think of her name right off the top of my head, but if you give me a second I can get it.”

“That’s okay, Dr. Baker, you’ve been more than kind. Thank you, and please thank Dr. Washington.” Mercer hung up and leaned far back into his seat.

He reviewed the information he’d gathered. A bunch of dead whales. An explosion on a research vessel. An assassination attempt on the only survivor. A telegram from a dead friend. One freighter with two different designs on its stack. An Italian crew that speaks Russian. A Russian biologist that doesn’t know biology and probably has nothing to do with what’s going on, and, Mercer looked ruefully at the empty beer bottles on his desk, the beginning of a good buzz.

“In other words, I’ve got nothing,” he said aloud, and switched off the desk lamp.