Arlington, Virginia
Mercer woke just before
six in the morning, the jet lag he’d expected burned away by the
previous day’s adrenaline overdose. He rose stiffly, gently
fingering the livid bruises on both shoulders. He shaved and
showered before descending to the rec room. With a cup of thick
black coffee in hand, he tried unsuccessfully to concentrate on the
morning papers. Throughout the night, his sleep had been
interrupted with new questions about Tish’s story, but there were
no answers. He resigned himself to waiting for the information from
David Saulman in Miami.
By quarter of seven, his coffee cold in the cup,
Mercer impatiently folded the newspapers and slid them down the
length of the bar. Behind the bar, between a bottle of Remy Martin
and one of Glenfiddich, lay a one-foot section of railroad track.
Half of it was rust-colored and pitted, the other burnished to an
almost mirror finish.
Mercer retrieved the heavy rail and set it on a
towel on the bar. Beside it he placed a shoe box containing a metal
polishing kit, usually stored next to the antique fridge. He began
polishing the rail with a remarkable amount of concentration, as if
when the steel was beneath his fingers, nothing else in the world
mattered. As the rust and grime slowly dissolved under the chemical
and physical onslaught, he silently thanked Winston Churchill for
giving him the idea for such a meditative device. When the British
prime minister found himself under even greater stress than his
legendary constitution could handle, he would build brick walls in
the courtyard behind Number 10 Downing Street. The repetitive act
of mortaring, setting, and pointing allowed his mind to disengage
from the frantic pace of the Second World War and focus on one
particular problem. When a solution was thrashed out in this
fashion, an aide would tear down the wall, chip the mortar from the
bricks, and stack them neatly for the next crisis.
Emulating this idea, but adapting it for
apartment life, Mercer had begun polishing railroad track while
attending the Colorado School of Mines. He would polish a section
for an hour or so before a big exam, clearing his mind and focusing
his energy on the upcoming challenge. He graduated eleventh in his
class and swore that this ritual was the key.
Of course, he chuckled as he worked on the rail,
a near photographic memory didn’t hurt. Since school, Mercer
estimated that he’d polished nearly sixty yards of track.
He was still polishing when Tish entered the rec
room a little past nine.
“Good morning,” she said.
Mercer laid his polish-soaked rag in the shoe
box, feeling no need to explain his actions. “Good morning to you.
I see they fit.”
Tish pirouetted in front of him, the thin black
skirt twirling around her beautiful calves. Her top was a simple
white T-shirt from Armani. Mercer had bought the clothes for her at
a local mall while she had slept through the previous
afternoon.
“I assumed that you’re not a transvestite and
these were for me.” Tish grinned, smoothing the skirt against her
thighs.
“No, I gave up drag years ago. Are the sizes all
right?”
“Right down to the 34C cup, thank you for
noticing.” She threw him another saucy grin. “Is that coffee I
smell?”
“Yes, but let me make a new pot, this is my own
blend, brewed especially to wake the dead.”
“Sounds fine to me.” She took a tentative sip
and winced. Mercer started a fresh pot. “Why didn’t you wake me
last night for dinner?”
“I figured you needed sleep more than you needed
my cooking.”
“I’ve found that most bachelors are excellent
chefs.”
“Not this one, I’m afraid. I travel so much that
I never took the time to learn how to cook. I live by the principle
that if it can’t be nuked, it can’t be edible.”
Mercer saw Tish’s eyes dart to the map behind
the bar. “I’ve only been on a few field trips. Most of my time is
spent in a lab in San Diego. It must be exciting, all that travel,
I mean.”
“At first it was, now it’s cramped airline
seats, cardboard food, and dull meetings.”
Tish scoffed but didn’t press. “Do you have any
new clues as to what’s going on?”
Before answering, Mercer glanced at his watch.
It was well past his personal cutoff limit of 9:30. He strode
around the bar and pulled a beer from the fridge. “I placed some
calls yesterday, after you went to bed. We should be hearing
something soon. Until then, I think it best that you stay here. Is
there anyone you need to contact? Boyfriend, anything like
that?”
“No.”
“Good. I hope by this afternoon we’ll know
something that will lead us in a direction. But right now, all we
can do is wait.”
“Don’t you have to go to work?”
Mercer laughed. “I’m consulting for the USGS.
They expect me to be irresponsible.”
They talked for the next hour or so, Mercer
deftly turning the conversation away from himself so that Tish
spoke most of the time. She had an infectious laugh and, Mercer
noticed, several charming freckles high on her cheeks. She had
never been married, just engaged once, when she was younger. She
was a Democrat and a conservationist, but she didn’t trust her
party’s candidates or the mainstream environmental groups. She
never knew her mother, which Mercer already knew, and idolized her
late father, which he’d guessed. She enjoyed her work for NOAA and
wasn’t ready to settle down into a teaching job just yet. Her last
serious relationship had ended seven months before so right now the
only thing she needed to worry about were several house plants that
her neighbor promised to look after when she had gone away to
Hawaii.
Around eleven, a phone rang in Mercer’s office.
He made no move to answer it. A few seconds later, the fax machine
attached to that phone line began to whirr. When it finally
stopped, Mercer excused himself and retrieved the dozen sheets from
the tray.
He walked slowly back to the bar, eyes glued to
the first page. As he finished each page, he handed it to Tish.
They read for twenty minutes; occasionally Mercer would grunt at
some piece of information, or Tish would gasp.
“I don’t understand that question at the end of
the report.”
“It’s a trivia challenge between Dave and me.
Goes back years. I have to admit he has me stumped.”
Tish read the question aloud. “ ‘Who was the
captain of the Amoco Cadizo?’ I’ve never
even heard of that ship.”
“She was a fully loaded supertanker that ran
aground in the English Channel in March of ’78. I’ll be damned if I
can remember her captain’s name.”
Tish regarded him strangely, but changed the
subject. “What do you make of this information?”
“I’m not too sure yet.” Mercer opened another
beer.
Ocean Freight and Cargo, the company whose ship
rescued Tish, was headquartered in New York City but the corporate
money came from a Finnish consortium headed by a company once
suspected of being a KGB front. “Slicker than Air America,” was
David Saulman’s assessment. Their ships sailed mostly in the
Pacific, running fairly standard cargos to established ports of
call. Saulman did find that OF&C had a “Weasel Clause”—his
words—written into all of their contracts concerning the August Rose. The clause allowed the
five-hundred-foot refrigerator ship to break contract with only
twelve hours’ notice, provided that cargo had not already been
onloaded. In all of Saulman’s years of maritime law, he had never
seen such a stipulation and couldn’t even guess its purpose. Since
1989, OF&C had evoked this clause several times, refusing to
load cargo onto the August Rose in the
States. The clause was odd, Saulman concluded, but certainly not
nefarious.
Her present position was north of Hawaii,
hove-to because of engine difficulties. Saulman’s sources said that
she would be under way within fifteen hours and that the company
had not requested outside help for their idle ship. Her cargo of
beef, scheduled to be picked up in Seattle, was currently being
loaded onto a Lykes Brothers’ vessel.
Mercer’s request for information about vessels
sunk in the same waters as the NOAA ship Ocean
Seeker had opened quite a Pandora’s box. No less than forty
ships had sunk in that area in the past fifty years, although
sinkings had been less frequent since the 1970s. Mercer assumed
this was because of new weather-tracking technology. He noted that
most of the vessels lost were charter fishing boats, pleasure
craft, or day sailors. He checked off the notable exceptions with a
black Waterman fountain pen.
Ocean Seeker, NOAA
research vessel, June this year.
One survivor.
Oshabi Maru, Japanese
long-line trawler, December 1990. No survivors.
Philipe Santos, Chilean
weather ship, April 1982. No survivors.
Western Passage, American
freighter converted to cable layer, May 1977. No survivors.
Curie, French oceanography
research ship, October 1975. No survivors.
Colombo Princess, Sri
Lankan container ship, March 1972. Thirty-one survivors.
Baltimore, American
tanker, February 1968. Twenty-four survivors.
Between the loss of the Baltimore in 1968 and the sinking of an ore carrier
named Grandam Phoenix in 1954, no large
ships had sunk north of Hawaii. Any large vessel lost before 1954
could be attributed to World War II.
“I don’t know what to make of it either,” Tish
added.
“Well, if the ship that rescued you is somehow
connected to the KGB, that would explain why you heard Russian as
you were being rescued.”
Mercer scanned the pages again, but kept
returning to the list of sunken ships, noting that the Grandam Phoenix had been lost with all hands. There
was something . . .
“Jesus.”
“What?” Tish said.
He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud. “I have to
go to my office.”
“What for?”
“I have a hunch.” Mercer reached for the phone.
A second after dialing, Harry White’s bleary voice rasped,
“Hello.”
“Harry, Mercer. I need you over here to keep an
eye on a friend of mine. . . . No, don’t bring a guest and yes, I
do still have some Jack Daniel’s. . . . Right, see you in a
few.”
Mercer hung up and turned to Tish. “A friend of
mine will be here in a few minutes. I want you to stay here with
him; I can’t trust you out on the streets just yet. Not until I
know more.”
There was a pleading look in Tish’s eyes. Mercer
couldn’t tell if she wanted reassurance or more information. “I’ll
be back in a few hours. If what I suspect is true, we’ll have this
cleared up by tonight and you’ll be on a plane home in the morning.
Besides, Harry is better company than I am.”
Ten minutes later the doorbell rang and Harry
let himself in. When he entered the rec room, a few millimeters of
unfiltered cigarette dangled from his lips.
“Christ, Mercer, no wonder you called me over.
This girl is too pretty to be here of her own free will. You must
have kidnapped her.”
“Actually, I did. Tish Talbot, this pathetic
creature is Harry White. Harry, Tish.”
Harry ran a hand through his hair. “If I were
twenty years younger, I’d still be old enough to be your father,
but it’s good to meet you anyway.”
Mercer could see that Tish was immediately
charmed. The old lecher still had it, he admitted. She would be in
good hands while he was away.
“I’ll be back in an hour or two.”
“Take your time,” Harry responded. “I’m free all
day and I’m sure that the lovely lady is eager for some good
company.”
“Harry, you’re a paragon. Tish, I won’t be too
long. Try not to encourage him, bad heart, you know.”
“Leave us,” Harry barked, and turned to stare
into Tish’s eyes.
Mercer heard Tish’s rich laughter before the
front door had closed behind him.
JENNIFER Woodridge looked up in shock as Mercer
entered his outer office.
“And where have you been since yesterday?”
“I took a long lunch, Jen, and just lost track
of the time.”
“Right. Next time you do that, let me know first
so I can cover for you. Richard has been frantic trying to reach
you.”
As if by mystic perception the phone rang. It
was Richard Harris Howell, the corpulent, whiney deputy director of
the USGS, Mercer’s immediate boss.
“Dr. Mercer, I need to see you in my office
right away. I have a list of travel vouchers in front of me that we
need to discuss.” Howell was more accountant now than scientist.
“It seems that you abused government money on that South Africa
trip.”
Mercer held the receiver away from his ear while
Howell continued in this vein for another minute. “You’re right,
Rich.” Mercer knew that Howell hated that nickname. “Listen, I’ve
got some stuff to clear up here. I’ll be in your office in ten
minutes.”
Mercer hung up the phone, forestalling any
complaint. “I’m sure he’ll waddle right over. Tell him I went to
the bathroom.”
“Where are you really going?”
Mercer sat on the corner of her desk and
affected a mock serious tone. “Jen, I can’t implicate you in this.
What if Howell resorts to torture?” She giggled. “As soon as the
little toad leaves, take the rest of the day off. Ah, hell, take
the week off, I don’t think I’ll be around much.”
“Is there anything I can help you with?”
“Just keep Howell off my back.”
He grabbed his briefcase from his inner office
and descended to the basement of the USGS building, where the
extensive data archives were stored.
Although Mercer had not met the USGS chief
archivist, Chuck Lowry, he had heard about him. Most people who
fought in the Vietnam War agreed that their tour had changed them
in some profound way. The staff at the USGS believed that two tours
in ’Nam had perhaps made Chuck Lowry a little more sane, but by no
stretch of the imagination was Lowry a normal man. He wore
eight-hundred-dollar sports coats and tattered jeans. His face was
hidden behind a beautifully manicured beard, but his hair was a
gnarled mess. The black eyeglass frames perched on his squat nose
had no lenses, and he swore like a truck driver but possessed an
amazing vocabulary.
When Mercer entered the computer room of the
USGS archive, Lowry was seated behind his desk, a trashy romance
novel in his hand. A brass plaque next to the telephone read,
“Eschew Obfuscation.”
“I purchased this yesterday,” Lowry said,
holding up the garishly covered book, “along with a packet of
condoms and an economy-size jar of Vaseline. Fucking cashier didn’t
even bat an eye. The times are fecundating a truly preternatural
disinterest between people. The book, though, is delightful. Except
the authoress constantly describes the heroine’s breasts as supple
and the hero’s torso as glistening under a sheen of manly sweat. If
she does it once more, I will track her down and truncate her. Who
are you?”
“Philip Mercer. I’m a temporary
consultant.”
“Oh, Jen Woodridge works with you.”
“You know her?”
“Just as a potential stalking victim.” Mercer
hoped Lowry was joking. “You’re the guy that’s busting Howell’s
balls, right?”
“Let’s just say he and I don’t get along.”
“That’s been his problem since he first darkened
our door. He doesn’t play well with others. He’s also a vexatious
little dilettante with a permanent fecal ring environing his mouth
from so much ass-kissing. What brings you to my Dante-esque
nook?”
Mercer ignored the fact that he understood only
about a quarter of Lowry’s words. “I need to see the seismic
records of Hawaii during May of 1954.”
“Somewhat obtuse request, but I can oblige. Come
back tomorrow, I’ll have everything you need.”
“Sorry, Chuck, this can’t wait. I’ve got Howell
breathing down my neck again, so I have to get out of here
ASAP.”
“In any way will this research piss off that
cock-in-the-mouth?”
“Only to the effect that it has absolutely
nothing to do with my contract with him.”
“Good enough, walk this way.” Lowry hopped off
his chair and shuffled into a back room, doing a perfect impression
of Lon Chaney’s “Igor.”
Lowry seated himself in front of a computer
terminal that was hooked into the data retrieval mainframe and
lifted a heavy data reference book from the drawer beneath the
keyboard. He thumbed through it slowly, whistling the theme from
Gilligan’s Island. Several minutes passed
before he put the book aside and began hammering at the keys.
“I always type fortissimo rather than
pianissimo—lets the fucking machine know who is Maestro around
here.”
Mercer could not suppress a grin at Lowry’s
antics. After a few minutes at the keys, the computer chirping,
whirring, and beeping, Lowry pushed himself away from the terminal.
“There, seismic records of the Hawaiian Islands for May of 1954.
Why the fuck you want it, I’ll never fathom. Now I’ll return to
Bimbo St. Trollop and her hero, the redoubtable Major Tough
Roughman.”
Lowry left the room and Mercer took his seat at
the computer. Because of the tremendous volcanic activity in and
around Hawaii, the records, even for a single month, would take
days to assimilate, but he had a specific date in mind.
Twenty minutes later, Mercer shut off the
computer and thanked Lowry for his help.
Lowry’s response was a quote from the romance
novel. “Tough tore the bodice from her young flesh, exposing her
supple breasts to the pirate crew.” Lowry looked up. “This bitch
writer is going to die.”
Mercer chuckled and closed the door to the
archive. He took the stairs directly to the street. Because the
Jaguar, or what was left of it, was still impounded, he was forced
to take a cab back to his house.
Tish and Harry were not home, but a note taped
to the television screen in the rec room stated they had gone to
Tiny’s bar. Mercer was furious for a moment, but realized that Tish
would be just about as safe there as at the house. Before he could
join them at Tiny’s he had to place a call to New York City, to set
up what he hoped was the beginning of a plan.
Ocean Freight and Cargo, the KGB, or whoever was
behind all of this had gotten Mercer into the fight. Now it was
time to return the favor.