Vulcan's forge

Phoenix.”

For the rest of his life, Mercer would never again see such a look of incredulity as those on the faces of Henna and Harry. Their jaws had both dropped noticeably and they regarded Mercer with blank, expressionless eyes. Had he said he was the second coming of Jesus Christ, the reaction would have been more mundane.

Before either man could speak, Mercer explained. “After I got out of the hospital at Pearl Harbor, I went to Kauai because it’s the closest big island to the new volcano. I went there hoping to find out if there had been any survivors from that night in 1954. I found a spry old lady, Mae Turner, who remembered a sea captain named Ralph Linc who washed up on shore four days after the Phoenix went down. He had lost a leg to a shark.” Unconsciously Harry rubbed his good foot against the prosthesis strapped below his knee. “She nursed him back to health, but never heard from him again.”

“How did you guess it was me?” Harry asked calmly.

“It was the telegram that started this whole mess for me, the telegram from Tish’s dead father. At first I had no idea who sent it, but when I learned that Valery Borodin had been involved with Tish, I figured it must have been him, but he denied having sent it. I wondered who else would want me involved and knew that Jack Talbot was a friend of mine.

“Then I remembered talking to you the night before the telegram arrived from Jakarta. I remembered telling you that I thought he was working in Indonesia and wondered if he knew his daughter had been hurt. You were the only person who could have known I thought he was there. I started thinking about motive, about why you would want to get me involved and I came up with revenge so I figured you had to be a member of the Grandam Phoenix’s crew. Mae Turner confirmed my suspicion. I never did figure out how you got the telegram sent from Jakarta.”

“Easy, really. I haven’t been to sea since ’54, but I still know mariners all over the globe. I just phoned a friend who knew someone in Indonesia and had him send the wire.”

“Why?” Henna asked softly.

“We had a deal with those bastards to scuttle the Phoenix for the insurance money. They were supposed to pick us up. Instead, they gunned us down in the lifeboats. They killed my entire crew. I caught two slugs myself.

“I blacked out after I got hit, and when I came to I was holding onto an overturned lifeboat, with a Great White using me as an after-dinner mint.

“I pulled myself up onto the boat, hatred keeping me alive, and eventually landed on Hawaii. After Mae nursed me, I went looking for those responsible. That’s when I changed my name to Harry White, so they wouldn’t ever know that one man managed to slip away. I searched for twenty goddamn years and didn’t get anywhere.

“Every time a ship vanished near Hawaii, I checked it out. Some were legitimate, sailboats found capsized, storms, that sort of thing, but I knew some were caused by the same people who killed my boys. But I never could find a connection between those ships and mine.

“After twenty years, I finally gave up hope and moved here to Washington. I felt like a failure. Then they hit that NOAA ship, and I thought maybe after all these years I’d have a chance at revenge. Surely the government would investigate and find some pattern to the disappearances. I even thought I might be able to help in some way, but, Christ, I’m crowding eighty now; who the hell would listen to me anymore?”

He turned to Mercer. “When you told me that your friend’s daughter had been rescued from that ship, I understood how fate really works. I called my friend and had his buddy in Indonesia send that telegram to your office, hoping that I could avenge my crew through you.

Listen, Mercer, I was wrong to involve you, but I just couldn’t stop myself. I am sorry.”

Mercer looked at his old friend for a long moment, his face a mask, his eyes neutral. “Do I call you Harry or Ralph?”

“I’ve been Harry White longer than I was Ralph Linc,” he replied sullenly.

“Well, Harry, from now on if you want Jack Daniel’s at my house, you bring it yourself, because I never drink the stuff.” Mercer grinned and reached across the table to slap Harry on the shoulder.

Harry was nearly in tears. “Thanks, Mercer. Thanks for finally avenging the boys who died that night and thanks for understanding.”

“Next time I fight one of your battles,” Mercer admonished mockingly, “make sure it’s not the goddamn KGB I’m up against, all right?” Mercer slid out of the booth and stood. “Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I have to pick up my private nurse from the airport. She couldn’t get a seat on the same flight as me.”

“Private nurse?” Harry and Dick said in unison.

“Well, not nurse, really, more like physical therapist. Her producer gave her one more week off, and I plan to spend it at a little bed and breakfast I know near Annapolis. It seems you’re wrong, Dick. The hero does get the girl at the end.”

Mercer left the bar before either man could speak. He only had thirty minutes to get to the airport and pick up Jill Tzu. It would be another hour’s drive to the hotel, and a certain part of his anatomy was telling him he would need her type of therapy by then.

Khania, Crete

Once an outpost of the mighty Venetian trading empire, the seaside town of Khania retains much of the influence of its renaissance benefactor. Though lacking the trademark canals of Venice, Khania can still fool even the most seasoned traveler into thinking he or she is on the Italian peninsula rather than the largest of the Greek islands. The calm Aegean spices the air of the resort town as breezes blow into the protected bay, past the stone lighthouse and domed mosque left over from the Turkish occupation. The cramped architecture of the port itself gives a person seated in one of the many quayside restaurants a feeling of contentment and belonging even as multitudes of tourists promenade by in arm-linked droves.

Khania sits nearly forty miles west of Crete’s capital, connected to it by a stretch of new highway dotted with beautiful beaches and luxury condominium developments catering to Germans and Scandinavians wishing to hide from winter’s fury. Because of the transitory nature of the population, no one paid heed to Khania’s newest arrival as he sipped a Scotch at an outdoor cafe, watching the tourists load themselves up like pack animals with souvenirs and mementos of their stay on Crete.

He was dressed in creamy linen pants and a silk polo shirt, his feet shod in soft leather moccasins. If tourists had taken the time to notice him, they would have assumed that he was just another rich German “getting away from it all.” They would have been dead wrong.

Ivan Kerikov had selected Khania with much care and deliberation. He knew that he was being hunted by the KGB, the CIA, and more importantly, Way Dong’s security forces, so any hiding place must have several avenues of escape. Khania’s transitory population almost guaranteed anonymity, while the island’s rugged interior offered thousands of hiding places. If things became desperate, Libya was only a ten-hour boat ride away.

Kerikov signaled his waiter for another drink and sat back contentedly in the cloth and steel tubing chair. He could think of no better place to sit and wait without fear of detection while still enjoying the amenities of civilization.

Before leaving Zurich, he’d managed to empty several KGB accounts held there for agents operating in the West. He had enough money to live on for at least a year.

The waiter brought his drink and Kerikov thanked him with a grunt.

A year would be all the time he needed to utilize the information locked away in a bank’s safe-deposit box near Sygtagma Square in Athens. That information, stolen from the archives of Department 7, would be worth millions to the right buyer, one eager for the power to bring America to her economic knees.