Vulcan's forge

through the air like a giant zeppelin.

Lurbud swung his pistol in an arc matching Suleiman’s leap, but his first shot amazingly missed the huge target. Suleiman crashed against the wall near the settee, one arm sweeping the coffee urn to the floor. Coffee flooded across the floor in a thick black tide. Suleiman’s hands, made dexterous through years of precision jewelry making, tore at a pistol which had been taped to the back of the old urn.

Evad caught a look of murderous rage in the Arab’s eyes as Suleiman torqued his huge body to bring the gun to bear. Lurbud fired an instant before the muzzle of Suleiman’s automatic caught a bead on him. The shot tore into the arms merchant’s body, the fat rippling in shock waves around the impact.

Suleiman’s arm was thrown up by the shot, the tiny Beretta spinning from his hand. Lurbud fired again, and again. The killing light in Suleiman’s eyes began to fade. Lurbud came around the desk, his pistol aimed directly at the Arab’s head.

With his free hand the Russian pulled a flask from inside his jacket. He unscrewed the lid from the pewter flask and knelt next to the dying Muslim.

“As a final thought, Suleiman el-aziz Suleiman,” Lurbud began, pouring the viscous red liquid from the flask onto Suleiman, “you will meet Allah with your body covered in pig’s blood.”

Suleiman opened his mouth to scream at this ultimate desecration, and Lurbud fired one more round down the gaping throat. The blood of the dead Muslim mingled with that of the unclean pig on the hard floor of the office.

Lurbud reholstered his gun, noting for the first time the thick pall of cordite smoke that hung in the air. The room reeked of smoke, but beneath that odor he detected the smell of blood and Suleiman’s voided bowels.

At the front door of the shop, he paused. There were a few people on the street, mostly old men heading back to the coffeehouses and their hookahs. The thick stone walls of the shop had muffled any sound from the silenced Takarov. Lurbud eased out of the shop and mingled with the crowd as best he could. Ten minutes later he was out of the bazaar, searching for a cab. He had two hours to dispose of the pistol and get to the airport before his flight to Hawaii.

The White House

There was a stunned silence in the Oval Office after Mercer made his revelation. He watched as everyone’s expression turned from surprise to confusion and finally to doubt.

“What makes you think Russia has anything to do with this?” Paul Barnes broke the silence. “Just because the assassin who went after Dr. Talbot once worked for the KGB doesn’t mean anything.”

Mercer realized that he had just stepped on the toes of the director of the CIA.

“Tish Talbot told me that after her rescue from the Ocean Seeker, she heard some of her saviors speaking Russian.”

“Christ,” Barnes said, glancing around the room. “You said she was blown from the ship, stunned. Who knows what she heard — she was half dead at the time.”

“I doubt that St. Peter speaks Russian during his interview at the Pearly Gates, Mr. Barnes,” Mercer said evenly. “But that’s not the fact I’m relying on.

“A friend of mine in Miami is an expert in maritime law. I had him research Ocean Freight and Cargo, the owners of the September Laurel. He found that the company is a front for the KGB.”

“I had a court order demanding Saulman turn over all the information that you requested,” Henna said incredulously. “He withheld that from the FBI.”

“If you knew Dave Saulman, you wouldn’t be surprised. He’s as crusty as a Paris bakery. But he is a walking encyclopedia concerning maritime commerce and his word is gospel truth.”

“If we take his word about the KGB for the time being,” Paul Barnes said suspiciously, “what about this submarine idea of yours?”

“The first piece of evidence is really just simple reasoning. According to the news reports there was a combined naval and coast guard search of the area, using, I’m sure, the most sophisticated hardware in the world. Yet they failed to find any survivors. The Ocean Seeker’s last known position was well documented by her Loran transmissions, yet the search turned up nothing except an oil slick and a few pieces of debris.

“Then, two days later, the September Laurel happens along, ‘aiding’ in the search, and miraculously they find Tish. That freighter, which was a hundred miles away from the Ocean Seeker when she blew up, managed to accomplish something the coast guard and navy couldn’t do. I don’t buy it. There were no weather problems during that time, no storms, no fog.”

“You’re wrong there, Dr. Mercer,” Admiral Morrison interrupted. “There was a tremendous amount of surface fog, and because of the President’s order not to send out surface ships, we were confined to an aerial search only.”

“Admiral, tell me honestly, is there any logical reason why your planes would have missed her, even with the fog?”

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs ran a hand across the tight whorls of hair on his large head before answering. “If she had been out there, my boys would have found her.”

“Since there is no logical reason why she wasn’t found by the coast guard or navy, I looked for an illogical one. The only one that fits, gentlemen, is a submarine.”

Morrison turned to the President. “It makes sense, sir. There could have been a sub out there and we never would have known it. None of the search aircraft used sonar buoys or acoustical gear in the search for survivors. That sub could have sat just under the surface and listened to us flounder around.”

The President nodded. “What other proof do you have, Dr. Mercer?”

“Since I couldn’t learn anything more about Ocean Freight and Cargo from Dave Saulman, I knew I needed a firsthand investigation, so Tish and I broke into their offices in New York.”

“What did you find?” asked Dick Henna.

“For one I found a fish tank in the vice president’s office, a large tank that contained only a single fish.”

“So?”

“Well, OF amp;C has a practice of naming their ships after months and flowers and painting those flowers on the stack of vessels. Tish remembers seeing the design on the stack of the ship that rescued her. It was a black circle surrounding a yellow dot, yet the September Laurel is marked with a bunch of laurels. The distinctive pattern that Tish remembered matches that of a European game fish I once caught in France.”

“What’s the connection?”

“The name of the fish is John Dory and that tank at the OF amp;C office contained a prime specimen.”

“That’s the thinnest connection I’ve ever heard,” Barnes remarked.

“I’d agree with you, if I hadn’t found a base file tab in the drawer with the ownership papers for the company’s vessels. The tab read ‘John Dory.’ At the time I thought the reference was simply a misfile, but it makes more sense that they own a ship by that name but don’t keep any paperwork on her. When I got back to D.C., I called the friend I went fishing with and he confirmed the name of the fish. The design on the stack pins down the source of the name, and the only ships ever named after fish are submarines.”

“You’ve got to be joking.” Barnes chuckled indolently.

Mercer stood up. “Mr. President, you said I was a guest and not a prisoner. If that’s true, I want to leave. If you don’t want to listen to what I have to say, then I see no reason to stay here and try to explain. In the past few days, I’ve been shot at a dozen times, and not because I have a bad standing in the community. I’ve stumbled on something, and if you gentlemen are not interested in what I have to say, I’m going.”

“Dr. Mercer, please wait,” Henna said. “Tell us what happened in New York.”

Mercer told them about the break-in, the armed soldiers guarding the building, and his impressions about the office.

“There is something nefarious behind Ocean Freight and Cargo, and so far all indications point to the Russians,” Mercer concluded. “I just don’t know why.”