“Come in, Uncle,” Ibriham said. “And save me from thinking too much.”
Yosef sat so close to his nephew that their knees almost touched. “What were you thinking about?”
“Violence and its meaning.”
“It has no meaning, it’s a tool. Like the plow or the tractor or the AK-47.”
“I know, but I wonder about its nature.”
Yosef smiled indulgently. He’d trained Ibriham since the day after his niece’s death and yet the boy continued to ask questions. He was proud that Ibriham wasn’t one of the mindless drones that blindly followed orders. “It has no nature. Only people have that. And while the tenets of humanity call for peace, if we are threatened, violence becomes an option. Its nature then becomes ours. We use it for defense and it is virtuous, but if we use it to kill without thought, then our nature is reflected in its wastefulness.”
“And using violence against this Mercer?”
“Justified.” Yosef didn’t even pause to consider the question. “Especially when you hear what I have to tell you. I didn’t want to mention this in front of the others until I told you first. While Mercer was meeting with Hyde, I searched his house.” Yosef took Ibriham’s silence as acceptance of the unauthorized break-in. “I didn’t have enough time for a thorough job, but I learned enough to make me a bit leery.”
“Go on?”
“Mercer’s security system is good, not perfect, but it provides more than enough protection from all but the best trained.” Yosef smiled, thick wrinkles enveloping the corners of his dark, deep-set eyes. “I have to admit, I’m getting too old to scale staircases using the handrails alone.”
“And what did you find?”
“A cache of weapons in an office closet, a Heckler and Koch machine pistol, a Beretta 92 autoloader, ammunition, smoke and fragmentation grenades, night-vision gear, and several blocks of plastique. The stuff looks like it’s been in the bottom of a trunk for a while, but its presence is disturbing.”
“Souvenirs from some earlier mission for the U.S. government?”
“I assume, but if he kept the stuff, it means he would probably use it again.” A worried scowl crossed Yosef’s face. “These weapons, and Mercer’s doubtless familiarity with them, raises the stakes considerably when we consider what type of action is necessary to force him to Eritrea.”
“But it doesn’t stop us from doing it,” Ibriham agreed.
“I think we should proceed with a bit more caution than originally thought warranted. My instinct tells me that there is more to Philip Mercer than can be learned from a computer dossier.”
Ibriham sat silently absorbing this.
“And one more thing. Mercer’s Rolodex contains the direct office and home phone numbers of Richard Henna, the head of the FBI. I think their relationship has a personal element stemming from some past mission.”
This revelation rocked Ibriham. “There is nothing I can do about that now. We must proceed. Cautiously, yes, but this mission must go on.” His voice intensified as the image of their goal flashed in his mind. “It’s there, Uncle, waiting in the African desert, buried for thousands of years and we will get it. A symbol for our people all over the world, a link to God that will make believers out of everyone. Even if he is friends with Henna, do you really think Mercer will stand in our way?”
Yosef was pleased to see the passion in his nephew’s eyes. This would be his last mission. He’d only agreed to come in order to help Ibriham on his first command. None of the others even knew they were related. “No, he won’t.”
Arlington, Virginia
Despite what he’d said to Hyde, Mercer couldn’t leave this one alone. No sooner had he gotten home than he found himself at his desk poring through reference books and the volumes of information available on the Internet. Darkness settled heavily, leaving the city washed by the pink glow of streetlamps, but the passage of day to night had gone unnoticed. While many would find such research work tedious, Mercer enjoyed it. Searching for one fact invariably led to countless other avenues of research, and a tug at any of these steered him to even more. It was easy to become lost in such a deluge of information, but Mercer was able to distill what he wanted, his mind sifting through mountains of useless data for the few elements he found important. It was a gift that he exploited to its fullest.
His final report to Yukon Coal lay forgotten on his word processor as he tore through the material searching for a trace of validity in what Prescott Hyde described existed in northern Eritrea.
He turned up nothing. The geology of the region was all wrong for a kimberlite pipe. Eritrea stood at an edge of the Great Rift Valley, and while there had been active volcanism in the region millions of years ago, there was no indication that diamonds were present. None of a diamond’s tracer elements had been found, nor had there been any recorded discoveries of alluvial stones, those washed away from a vent by rivers or streams. Nothing he could find pointed to even a hint that Eritrea was the home of a potential strike.
But those satellite pictures suggested otherwise. Mercer could not deny that the Medusa pictures of Eritrea looked remarkably like the computer projections of the environs around Kimberley. There might be hundreds of reasons for this similarity, most notably an error in the modeling, but he could not let go the possibility that Hyde was right, that an unknown kimberlite pipe lay out there waiting to be discovered.
He was shocked by how much he wanted it to be true. He’d never been to Eritrea, knew no Eritreans, but he wanted this for them badly. He wanted it for himself too. There hadn’t been a kimberlite pipe discovered in more than a decade, and he wanted to be the one who found the next. He admitted that his reasons might be more selfish than charitable, but if he could find diamonds, everyone would win.
Mercer spent the rest of the day running down possible leads, but all the evidence pointed to a mistake on Hyde’s part. Yet, against all of his scientific training, he found himself searching for evidence to fit Hyde’s theory rather than allowing a hypothesis to develop out of the accumulated facts. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Hyde was somehow right.
Earlier in the afternoon, he found he
Prescott Hyde came from a family whose service to the American government stretched back to the drafting of the Constitution. The Hydes had played significant roles during every major watershed in our history, from the Revolution through the Civil War and Reconstruction to the development of the United States as a superpower during the forties and fifties. Hyde’s father had served with Eisenhower when he was Supreme Allied Commander during World War Two and later as President, working closely with Allen Dulles during the early years of the CIA and with Adelai Stevenson at the United Nations.
Prescott Hyde had turned out to be the only disappointment the family had ever produced. He was barely holding on to his current position as an Undersecretary of State, a job given to him more out of nepotism than individual achievement. He’d already shown a great deal of ineptitude during his brief tenure heading the State Department’s Africa section, missing the clues of a coup in Zambia last year and so insulting South Africa’s ambassador that the man returned to his homeland for two weeks in protest.
Mercer suspected that if Prescott had not been one of
Hence, Eritrea. If Hyde could pull it off, not only would he save his floundering career but could also add himself to the anointed pantheon of his ancestors. Thus Hyde’s motivation was more personal than professional, and Mercer was glad he had flatly refused the contract offer. To get involved with someone gambling to save a sinking career would be foolish at best.
At eight, Mercer logged off his system, his eyes gritty with fatigue and his stomach making not so subtle noises. Maybe when he had the time to delve into it again he would, but for now he put Eritrea out of his mind.
