“You’ve got until Friday. That’s when I catch my flight to Eritrea. I plan to be in Asmara on Saturday morning and in the area of the search no later than Monday. I have a lot to go over with both of you before I leave, but that can wait until tomorrow. For now, you need to start working on getting me local support once I’m in country.”
“And if we take your earlier advice and abandon the project?”
There was no malice in Mercer’s voice when he responded. “Then I call a few friends, and within a month Eritrea will be dug up from one end to the other. I’ve got the contacts to guarantee your nation will be stripped clean with total impunity, and there is nothing either of you can do about it. I’ll talk to you again tomorrow.”
Mercer was panting when he hung up. He was gambling with Harry White’s life when he just bluffed Hyde and Selome, and it made him tremble. His nerves were fraying. He dialed the phone again.
“The Knight Medical Group,” a receptionist chirped.
“Is Terry there?”
“Dr. Knight is with a patient. May I have him call you back?”
“He’s playing video games in his office,” Mercer said. “Why don’t you give him a buzz and see if he’ll talk to me. This is Philip Mercer.”
A minute later Terrance Knight came on the line. “Great timing, Mercer. I was on the final level of
“I’m getting better. The last time I called it was coitus interuptus with one of your nurses.”
“Yeah. She sued me for sexual harassment a week after she discovered my sperm count is too low to knock her up.”
“That’s what I love about you, Terry. Your lurid attention to detail.” Mercer chuckled for the first time today. Terry Knight had been his personal physician ever since he moved to Washington. “I’m going to Africa again. I need a gamma globulin, a cholera booster, and I think I’m ready for another tetanus. And I’ll also need anti-malarial pills for a couple of months.”
“God, I love patients who know what they want. I’m going to give you an oral polio booster as well. The CDC in Atlanta posted warning for most of the continent. Since you’re headed to Africa, I’ll throw in a box of condoms while I’m at it. I doubt you’ll get lucky, so give them to a doctor before you come back. Anything else?”
Mercer laughed again. “Yeah, put together a med kit for me, nothing more elaborate than a couple of aspirin and a suture set. Write me a prescription for morphine and antibiotics.”
“You sure you don’t want a defibrillater and a portable CAT scanner?” Terry joked.
“No, not this time, but maybe later. I’ll be in sometime tomorrow for my shots.”
“Hey, I’m the doctor, I tell you when you come in, remember?”
“Go back to
“Knowing you is doom.”
Mercer sat back as far as possible in the cramped office, rubbing his eyes. There were a million details to be considered, yet his thoughts kept returning to Harry White. He was a tough old bird, a war veteran, but he was eighty now. Mercer focused on what his friend must be going through and used that anger to shove aside the exhaustion and refocus.
Tiny ducked his head into the room. “How you doing?”
“I’ve been better.”
“I know what you mean. Do you realize today is the first day in twelve years that Harry hasn’t come in. God, I never realized how much I loved the bastard until he’d gone.”
Mercer straightened quickly. “He’s not gone, Paul. I’ll get him back. No matter what it takes, I’ll get him back.” His bravado sounded empty even in his own ears.
After Mercer had hung up on them, Prescott Hyde and Selome Nagast looked at each other, both having similar thoughts. Hyde’s office in Foggy Bottom was well appointed, more New York executive than government official, with oil paintings gracing the walls and an antique desk that had been in his family for generations. The carpet was a thicker pile than standard issue, and the matching wing-back chairs had been given to Hyde’s father by President Kennedy. Selome was sitting in one of the chairs, dressed in a simple business suit.
“Well, what do you think?” she asked, breaking the silence.
“I just don’t think we can afford it. He’s talking about millions of dollars, and the best we’ve been able to come up with is three hundred thousand and a lot of that is for Mercer’s consulting fee. I never thought about all the equipment we would need.” Hyde’s voice was dull with defeat. “We should call the whole thing off. It was a long shot at best anyway.”
“You call it off, and I’ll have a congressional committee knocking down your door within twelve hours. They would love to hear how you really obtained the Medusa pictures from the National Reconnaissance Office,” Selome hissed. “We can come up with the money somehow.”
“Buying those pictures from Donald Rosen cost me nearly everything I have. If my wife finds out I took a second mortgage on our house, she’ll kill me.”
“I don’t care about your domestic problems. We are going to need more money very soon if this is going to work. I’ve had expenses on my end, too. Do you hear me complaining about them? Mercer is the best shot we’ve got. We need to support him, and that means cash. We both have our sources. If need be, we can cut in a few more people. We’re talking about a billion-dollar payoff when this is done. That’s worth a little more risk.”
“This is getting out of control,” Hyde complained.
“No, it isn’t. We’re still in control. We just can’t allow ourselves to forget it, that’s all.”
“I don’t know…” Hyde’s voice trailed off.
“You don’t know what?” she accused. “We’re about to make a major discovery, one that will lift my country into the twenty-first century and provide jobs for thousands. Both of us will get what we want if we don’t lose perspective. We’ll get the money, Bill. We have to.”
“You’re right,” Hyde nodded slowly. “I just don’t like the fact that Philip Mercer has suddenly decided that he is in charge.”
“But that’s why we wanted him in the first place. Like he said — what he wants, he gets. It’s up to us to make sure it goes smoothly.”
“You scare me, Selome,” Hyde said suddenly, looking her directly in the eye, seeing beyond the beautiful shell to the person who lay beyond.
“Good.” She had Hyde caught between his greed and his fear of exposure. To her, he was inconsequential, a means to an end, but it was reassuring to know how easily he could be dominated. She knew it wouldn’t be possible, but she wanted to see what happened when Hyde’s wife discovered how her husband had lost their house. The greedy pig would get what he deserved.
Paul Gordon drove, the headlights of his aging Plymouth lancing into the night. Mercer sat next to him, sweating heavily in two bulky sweaters and a leather jacket, a pair of skateboarder’s knee pads over his jeans. He fingered the motorcycle helmet on his lap. Both the helmet and the pads had been borrowed from his neighbor’s son.
“About another mile.” Paul glanced at Mercer in the intimate confines of the car. “You sure you want to do this?”
On this deserted stretch of road deep in the heart of Virginia horse country, it was easy to spot the headlights of the car that had been following them since Arlington. “Yeah, Tiny, I’m sure. It’s the only way.”
“I’ll say some good words at your funeral,” the little man said, his eyes barely above the arc of the steering wheel. “We’re coming up on it now.”
Mercer put on the helmet, cinching it tight beneath his chin. Ahead, the road curved sharply, the turn traced on its outside by a white picket fence belonging to one of the numerous Farquar County farms. Just out of view, Mercer knew there was a thick copse of pines within feet of the uncoiling road.
Easing into the corner, Tiny used the emergency brake to avoid telltale brake lights. Mercer didn’t even take the time for a breath. He threw open the car’s door and allowed himself to be sucked out by the vehicle’s centrifugal force, landing hard on the macadam and tucking into a tight ball as his body began to roll. The darkness swallowed him as Tiny accelerated away, his car vanishing even before Mercer came to a stop. New scuffs marked his battered bomber jacket, and his shoulder ached from the first contact with the road. He scrambled into the woods, ducking into the underbrush as another car passed by. He caught a glimpse of two dark-complected men as the car
