Sacred Stone

Keeping low to avoid being seen, Truitt climbed out onto the deck, closed the door, and crept toward the still- open door. Prying it slowly back, he peered inside. No one was visible—and he carefully entered.

Truitt was in the huge open living room of the penthouse. A half-round sunken conversation pit with padded benches encircled a rock fireplace. Off to one side, lit only by a light above the stove, was a commercial-style kitchen. To the other side was a massive wet bar with beer taps mounted into the wall. The room was lit by unseen lights into a sort of twilight. Bluegrass music played through invisible speakers.

Truitt crept down the hall toward where the plans showed Hickman’s office.

28

THE LARISSA LIMPED into the Isle of Sheppey and tied up to the dock. The captain took his forged documents and walked up the hill toward the customs shack. A man stood at the door locking up for the night.

“I just need to note arrival,” the captain said, showing him a paper.

The man unlocked the door again and entered the tiny shack. Without bothering to turn on the lights, he walked over to a chest-high table and removed a stamp from a rotisserie on the top. Opening an ink pad, he wet the stamp and motioned for the sheet in the captain’s hand. Once he had it, he placed it on the top of the table and stamped it.

“Welcome to England,” the customs official said, motioning for the captain to walk back outside.

As the official started to lock the door again, the captain spoke. “Do you know where there is a doctor nearby?” he asked.

“Two blocks up the hill,” the customs official said, “and one block west. But he’s closed now. You can visit him tomorrow—after you’ve come back here and made full declarations.”

The customs official walked off. The captain returned to the Larissa to wait.

TO THE REGULARS at the waterfront bar on the Isle of Sheppey, Nebile Lababiti must have seemed like a gay man looking for a lover. And they didn’t like the implications. Lababiti was dressed in an Italian sport coat, shiny woven silk pants and a silk shirt unbuttoned to show a neck encircled with gold chains. He smelled of hair pomade, cigarettes and too much cologne.

“I’d like a pint,” he told the barkeep, a short, muscled and tattooed man with a shaved head who wore a grimy T-shirt.

“Sure you don’t want a fruity drink, mate?” the barkeep asked quietly. “There’s a place up the road that makes a mean banana daiquiri.”

Lababiti reached into his sport coat, removed a pack of cigarettes and lit one, then blew smoke in the barkeep’s face. The man looked like an ex–carnival worker who had been fired for scaring the customers.

“No,” Lababiti said, “a Guinness would be fine.”

The barkeep considered this but made no move to fill a glass.

Lababiti removed a fifty-pound note and slid it across the bar. “And buy the rest of these fine men a drink as well,” he said, sweeping his hand along the bar toward the ten other customers. “They look like they’ve earned it.”

The barkeep looked down to the end of the bar, where the owner, a retired fisherman who was missing two fingers on his right hand, was clutching a pint of ale. The owner nodded his okay and the barkeep reached for a glass.

Even if the Middle Eastern man was a swish on the prowl, this was a joint that couldn’t afford to turn down cash-paying customers. Once the stout was placed on the bar in front of him, Lababiti picked it up and took a swallow. Then he wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand and stared around. The bar was a sty. Mismatched chairs sat in front of battered and scarred wooden tables. A coal fire was burning in a smoke-stained fireplace down at the end of the room. The bar itself, where Lababiti was standing, had been etched and scratched by numerous knives over the years.

The air smelled like sweat, fish guts, diesel fuel, urine and axle grease.

Lababiti took another sip and glanced at his gold Piaget wristwatch.

NOT FAR FROM the bar, on a rise overlooking the docks, a pair of Lababiti’s men stood watching the Larissa through night-vision binoculars. Most of the crew had already left the ship for a night in town; only one light was still visible in the stern stateroom.

On the dock itself, another pair of Arabs were pushing a cart that appeared to be filled with trash along the pier. As they passed the Larissa, they slowed and swept a Geiger counter near the hull. The sound was turned off, but the gauge told them what they needed to know. They continued on toward the end of the dock slowly.

BELOWDECKS, MILOS COUSTAS, captain of the Larissa, finished combing his hair. Then he rubbed some salve on his arm. He wasn’t sure why he was doing this—since he’d bought the salve, it had seemed to have little effect. He only hoped that the doctor he’d see tomorrow would come up with something more powerful.

Finished with his grooming, Coustas walked out of his stateroom then up to the deck.

He was due to meet his client at the bar just up the hill.

LABABITI WAS JUST starting his second pint of Guinness when Coustas walked into the bar. Lababiti turned to see who had entered and instantly knew it was his man. Had Coustas worn a T-shirt imprinted with “Greek ship captain” he could not have been more visible. He was wearing a pair of baggy peasant pants, a loose white gauze shirt with ropes through the hood and the sloped cap it seemed all Greeks who lived near the water favored.

Lababiti ordered Coustas ouzo from the barkeep then motioned him over.

THEY WERE TERRORISTS, but they were not incompetents. As soon as the men with the night-vision binoculars confirmed Coustas had entered the bar, the pair of men pushing the cart headed back down the pier and stopped alongside the Larissa. Quickly they climbed aboard and began searching. Within minutes they had located the crate containing the nuclear bomb and they radioed the lookout team, who were sitting behind the wheel of a rental van. The van rolled down to the end of the pier at the same time the two terrorists aboard the Larissa were sliding the crate over the side. Lifting up a plastic cover with trash glued on top, they slid the heavy crate into the reinforced cart.