Mercer’s expression matched the desperate look in Selome’s eyes. They couldn’t allow the interrogation to continue. Already tonight one priest was dead.
“You’re going to have to cover me. Stay close.” He opened the door before Selome could say anything.
Mercer’s sudden appearance in the hallway startled a Sudanese who was walking past. Mercer reacted instinctively and struck out with the butt of the AK-47. The wood cracked against the rebel’s jaw, shattering bones and spraying blood and teeth against the wall. Before the unconscious man hit the floor, Mercer was in motion. Easing into the dining room, he could feel Selome at his shoulder.
Father Ephraim was stooped over the prone form of one of his brothers, blood pooled around the ruined mouth of the other priest. Three more monks stood against one wall, guarded by several soldiers. The Italian stood close to where Mercer remained partially hidden. He faced away from Mercer, and in the fraction of a second it took a Sudanese to spot him, Mercer raised the AK by its pistol grip, grabbed a handful of the Italian’s bush shirt, and rammed the barrel of the assault rifle into the man’s lower spine, nearly bringing him to his knees with the force.
The Italian shouted a name. “Mahdi!”
One of the Sudanese raised his own pistol, locked back the hammer with his thumb, and leveled it at Mercer’s head.
“Selome!” Mercer shouted, and she came into the room, her weapon covering Mahdi with chilling calm. “One more gun goes up, friend, and your guts are going to decorate the walls,” Mercer said.
Mercer suspected that his prisoner spoke English, but he twisted the barrel of the AK further into the man’s spine for emphasis.
“I think you call this a standoff, yes?” Giancarlo Gianelli said casually, not a trace of fear in his voice. “Let me end it for us now, Dr. Mercer.”
A shot rang out, a sharp crack that split the air, and Brother Ephraim was slammed backward against the wall. A tendril of smoke coiled from the pistol Gianelli had kept in front of him, out of Mercer’s view. “Go ahead and shoot, Doctor. None of us have anything to gain by standing around.”
Ephraim breathed in shallow gulps, his face drained to an unnatural gray. He held his hands over the massive wound in his belly, blood cascading over his fingers.
“There are another dozen priests here,” Gianelli continued conversationally. “I give you my word that they will not live five seconds after you kill me.”
Gianelli had played the end-game so quickly that Mercer had no choice. He could kill the Italian and would end up killing himself and Selome as well, gaining nothing. Or he could lower his weapon and hope for another opportunity. Since the beginning, he’d felt he was one step behind the other players, and true to form, he was behind again now.
Mahdi sneered when Mercer released Gianelli, a contemptuous twist of his mouth that told Mercer he would have welcomed the suicidal gunfight. Selome lowered her own pistol, letting it drop with a metallic clatter. She moved to Ephraim’s side, settling herself so that the priest’s limp head lay in her lap. Gianelli showed no interest in restraining Mercer as he joined her on the floor. One of the Sudanese retrieved Selome’s gun and the AK.
“I’m sorry,” Mercer whispered to the dying man, knowing how empty the apology sounded.
Ephraim was losing his fight as they watched. When he spoke, it was a wet wheeze that brought blood to his lips.
“The children,” Selome translated softly. “The children who died in the mine. They were killed by…” His last word was not even loud enough to be a whisper.
“What did he say?”
“I’m not sure. It sounded like he said the children were killed by sin.”
“We’ve wasted enough time tonight,” Giancarlo said. Mahdi and another rebel hauled Selome and Mercer to their feet. “Dr. Mercer, we’ve been looking for you for the past couple days. You have some questions to answer for me about that ancient mine.”
Mercer guessed that the Italian had completed the work he and Habte had started. They had opened King Solomon’s mine but probably didn’t recognize the find. That was his only advantage if he hoped to stop Levine. He knew if he expected to keep himself and Selome alive, he was going to have to make himself indispensable.
“I’ll tell you what you want to know.” It wasn’t hard to let defeat creep into his voice.
“I know you will.”
“Tell me first, who are you?”
“My name is Giancarlo Gianelli, and it was my uncle who opened the barren shaft you discovered.” Gianelli shook his head. “Poor Enrique knew there were diamonds in the region, but he was apparently off by a couple of miles, sinking his mine in the wrong place. But someone long ago discovered the kimberlite pipe and, judging by the depths we explored before coming to find you, had worked it for many years. And now it’s time for me to take up where my uncle failed and you, good doctor, are going to help.”
Mercer knew what Ephraim meant about the children being killed by sin. He saw it in every fiber of Giancarlo Gianelli; it lurked behind his urbane veneer like a monster. The sin that Ephraim spoke of was one of the original deadly seven. Greed.
Valley of Dead Children
Answers to the dozens of questions swirling through Mercer’s mind had to wait until the column of Giancarlo Gianelli’s trucks ground back to the mine site. Mercer was in the back of one of the rigs with six heavily armed Sudanese while Selome rode in the back jump seat of another with Gianelli himself. He hoped that her proximity to the Italian was for her protection from the lewd intentions of the troopers and not for the magnate’s own carnal thoughts.
Mercer knew of Gianelli. The name had been synonymous with European finance for centuries, almost as famous as the house of Rothschild. He couldn’t recall how many of Europe’s wars the Gianelli family had funded, but much of their fortune had been soiled with the blood of countless thousands. He did remember that they were heavily involved with the Facist movement during the 1920s and ’30s and after World War Two had come under the protection of the United States because of their strong anti-Communism. Of the current head of the family dynasty, he knew little except that the ambition that had made them so powerful ran in Giancarlo’s veins.
It was mid-morning when the caravan entered the Valley of Dead Children. They drove past the open shaft bored by Gianelli’s ancestor and headed to the ancient mine. When they stopped, a guard in Mercer’s truck flipped up the soft canvas flap above the tailgate and jumped to the ground, covering Mercer with his rifle as he too leapt from the vehicle. Mercer had lost track of the number of days he’d been away from the mine, but was staggered by the amount of work that had taken place in his absence.
It took his ears a moment to adjust from the clamor of the truck to the sharper and significantly louder sounds of the work area. Apart from the large truck-mounted generators pounding away a short distance from the mine, Gianelli had two bulldozers, several Bobcat skiploaders, the Caterpillar excavator that Mercer had brought, and an Ingersoll-Rand rotary drill rig for pulling core samples. The equipment’s din echoed and reechoed off the bowl of mountains into a deafening racket that shook the dusty air. Amid this mechanical maelstrom, Mercer saw perhaps fifty Africans — the Eritrean refugees — toiling by hand with shovels, picks, and reed baskets.
He couldn’t believe the sheer volume of dirt they had managed to move. The mountain that he and Habte had dynamited had been clawed up by the machines and carted away by the African laborers one basket at a time. The mine that Brother Ephraim had spoken of had been exposed, a dark shaft driven into the side of the mountain. It was wide enough for the skiploader to charge into the earth and return again with its bucket loaded with overburden. The operator would dump it into a mound, and a stream of men attacked it with their hands, filling baskets which they hoisted to their heads and carried away.
Mercer thought about the heavy equipment that would be arriving soon, machinery he had either leased or bought on behalf of the Eritrean government. Alone, the 5130 hydraulic shovel could have moved the same amount of dirt in about an hour. Still, the Eritreans’ endeavor was miraculous.
A guard prodded him with an ungentle thrust of his assault rifle toward where Gianelli waited near the mine entrance. Mercer watched as one of the troopers, bothered by the slow pace of an Eritrean, knocked the worker to
