decision.”
“Why don’t you just turn this over to the Eritreans?” Mercer asked, circling a finger at the waiter. He didn’t know if Hyde was still thirsty, but he wanted another gimlet.
“Good question. And I can answer it very simply. Medusa does not, nor has it ever existed.”
Mercer looked at him, puzzled.
Hyde continued. “While the Air Force may have given me these pictures, they’re still considered secret. It took a lot of persuasion for them to allow me to bring you into this, but there was no way they would allow us to show them to a foreign power. My armed forces liaison could neither verify nor deny that other satellites with similar capabilities haven’t been launched since Medusa was lost. For purposes of national security, these pictures do not exist.”
Mercer waited for Hyde to continue, for he knew there was another motive. He had lived in and around official Washington long enough to know that ulterior motives were as common as tourists on the Mall.
“The other reason is strictly a policy decision from my office.” Hyde leaned forward conspiratorially. “What I want to do is present the government of Eritrea a fait accompli, not just a suspicion of fabulous wealth, but the exact location of the diamonds, potential worth, and proper means of extraction. I understand this kind of work is your stock and trade. I want you to go to Eritrea, find the kimberlite pipe, then figure out the value of the vent and just how to get the diamonds out of the earth.”
Mercer said nothing, but he was certain Prescott Hyde was lying to him. Maybe not directly, but lying through omission. He hadn’t liked the Undersecretary on the phone yesterday, and he liked him even less now.
The man from State continued, playing his final hand. “If you’re concerned about security, I can tell you that, while not really sanctioned, I did bring in someone from Eritrea’s embassy here in Washington. I didn’t go into many details, merely hinting at the possibility of a tremendous mineral find, testing the waters for possible opposition if we took the initiative ourselves. As you can guess, our plan was literally jumped on. While not getting full sanction from their government, I’ve managed to get you the next best thing.” Hyde paused and smiled. “If you’re willing to go, that is.”
“Finding the pipe, if it’s even possible, would take months. That’s a big chunk of time, and my time doesn’t come cheap. I’m going to need to think about this awhile. How about I give you an answer in a week or two?” Something was up here. Hyde still wasn’t telling him everything, and no matter how interesting the project, Mercer was getting a bad feeling. He saw his tablemate’s stricken expression. “Is that a problem?”
“No, no,” Hyde covered. “It’s just that I led my Eritrean associate to believe that this could be done quickly. Already plans are in motion, you see.”
Suddenly the restaurant became very uncomfortable. That prickly feeling was back with a vengeance. Mercer knew when he was about to be railroaded, and rather than wait to blow Hyde off later, he made his decision. He stood abruptly. “Then I guess I’m the wrong person for the job. Sorry. I’m familiar with how to handle national secrets, I know a few myself, so rest assured what was discussed here will go no further. Please don’t try to contact me again.”
He wasn’t particularly angry about being lied to. From a government employee, he almost expected it, but that didn’t mean he was going to waste any more time listening either. There was another agenda in place here, some shadowy plan that either Hyde wouldn’t discuss or couldn’t. Not that the reason really mattered to Mercer. He might be in a professional rut, but he knew Hyde’s proposal wasn’t the way out of it.
He didn’t pay any attention to the businessman at a table in the bar working from an open briefcase. The case hid a sophisticated unidirectional microphone. The entire conversation had been recorded.
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
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.
