In the ensuing silence, the large white-faced clock on the wall clicked through five minutes, its thin red second hand ratcheting off the time mechanically, uncaringly. Mercer stretched out, his eyes staring into a middle distance that only he saw.
“Where did they get it?” Mercer asked softly. “It doesn’t make sense that they got the nitrogen from the mainland and brought it out to sea with them. More than likely, they were conveying it to port when the fire occurred. Where the hell did they get tanks of liquid nitrogen in the middle of the Gulf of Alaska?”
“One more on the list of mysteries,” Henna said pessimistically.
“Not so fast.” Mercer turned to Lynn Goetchell. “Can you give me the date and time of death?”
“The body was discovered on the seventeenth and the Medical Examiner put the time of death at early afternoon the day before. I can’t prove it, but I’ll bet that he wasn’t off by more than a few hours.”
“Afternoon of October sixteenth.” Mercer turned to Henna. “I need a phone and a couple of hours and I’ll tell you where they got those cylinders. Hopefully, I’ll be able to give you a why after that.”
“Forget it. You’ve done your part.”
“What are you talking about?” Mercer was shocked that his friend was taking him out of the loop.
“If it hasn’t slipped your mind, there have been two attempts on your life in the past couple of days. You’re out of it as of right now.”
“Dick, don’t turn bureaucrat on me now. You still have no idea what’s happening, which means the attempts on my life aren’t going to stop. If I’m at risk, then I want a say in the investigation.”
“Forget it, Mercer,” Dick Henna repeated sternly. “I’ve got nearly two hundred agents working in and around Alaska right now, looking for anything that may threaten the opening of the Arctic Refuge and the building of the second Trans-Alaska Pipeline, and so far they’ve turned up nothing. Christ, two gas stations in Anchorage were firebombed last night no more than five blocks from our field headquarters. Now that we’ve gotten a lead, my personnel are the ones who are going to track it down. Not you.”
“Come on, none of those guys have my scientific background. If the FBI had had agents who knew that ammonium nitrate fertilizer and fuel oil combine to make an explosive, the Oklahoma City bombing might never have occurred. I was playing with Amfo when I was a kid.”
“Dr. Goetchell, would you please excuse us.” Henna’s tone was tight. She got up quickly, shaking Mercer’s hand and nodding to her superior before leaving the conference room.
Henna continued. “Number one, don’t think our friendship means you can talk to me like that in front of my people. It undermines my authority and makes you look like a jerk. Number two, I appreciate what you’ve done here, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give you free rein to continue. This is an FBI investigation, not a personal crusade. I like you enough not to want to see you killed. Kerikov never got close to you last time, but now he’s in the country, and if you go sniffing around, you’ll end up in the same condition as your three friends. If you think I’m being a hard-ass, you’re right. The country is a powder keg, Alaska is its fuse, and any moment someone’s going to light it. I have enough to worry about without you making this personal.”
Mercer knew that Henna was speaking from the heart. Henna was being forced against a wall by the administration, pouring a ton of man-hours into the Alaska crisis with absolutely no results. Mercer had just provided a major clue, but there was just no way Henna could let him get involved. Mercer understood this, respected Henna for it, but had no intention of backing down.
Rather than continue his entreaty, he changed tack. “What about those guys who attacked me last night? Have you found anything?”
Henna wrongly assumed Mercer’s question meant he was dropping a personal investigation. “The guy you left in your bar was named Burt Manning. Before he left the CIA in 1990, he was also known as ‘The Ghost.’ Consider yourself lucky. As far as we can determine, you’re the first man since Manning worked for the Phoenix Project who ever went up against him and walked away. The guy was the culmination of four years in Southeast Asia and twenty more as a cold warrior in the front lines against the Soviet Union. He’d run ops in Africa, South and Central America, Eastern and Western Europe, and Russia. His dossier at Langley reads like a spy thriller.
“Since retiring from the Agency, he has owned a private security consulting firm here in Washington contracting to corporations that feel their upper management is ripe for kidnapping or assassination. The other guy in your place was a former colleague of Manning’s from the CIA. We figured he was hired by Manning to back him up on the hit. We raided Manning’s office, but an alarm tripped when we broke through the door and crashed his computer system, erasing everything. A couple of our pet hackers are attempting to reconstruct the files, but they aren’t optimistic. We’ll probably never know who hired him.”
“Damn,” Mercer spat. “Knowing that would have saved you a shitload of time.”
“Be thankful we found out who he was in the first place.” Henna shot a glance at his watch. “I’ve got to get going. I need to coordinate with the Anchorage office and get them working on this new lead. You need anything?”
“I’m going home to pack and see about someone to repair my shattered skylight. Then I’m going on a vacation, maybe fishing in Belize.”
“There’s a contractor at your place right now, billed to my office. It’s the least we could do. Call before you go over just to warn the agents on guard. Have a good time. We should have this cleared up in a week or two. Don’t come home until then.”
Back in his room at the Willard, Mercer shed his jacket as soon as he passed the threshold and had his tie undone by the time he threw his key on an oak credenza. An ornate tabletop pendulum clock stood on the large desk in the corner of the elegant room. Ten-thirty A.M.
“Screw it,” Mercer said aloud and dialed room service. “I’d like two vodka gimlets and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, please, and the minibar is about to run out of ginger ale so send up a few more cans.”
He cut the connection, then dialed an outside line. A moment later, Harry White answered with a rasping hello that sounded more like a curse than a greeting.
“Have fun last night?”
“Mercer, knowing you is going to kill me quicker than the cigarettes or booze.”
“The women will do you in first, you lecher,” Mercer teased. “How’s the leg?”
“I’m going to be on the fucking peg leg for two weeks until my orthopedist can get a new prosthesis, you ungrateful bastard.”
“Ungrateful, you say? How’s this for ungrateful. I’ll let you use my new digs for a couple of days to show my appreciation.”
“Where are you?” Harry asked suspiciously.
“Willard Hotel.”
“I’ll be there in an hour.”
“I won’t be here, but I’ll leave the key in an envelope with the concierge. The room number’s on the key. You’ll find a bottle of JD on the nightstand. Dial zero for more. There’s full cable hookup, and the FBI is paying for the whole thing. You can stay until they throw you out.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Back to Alaska.”
“You figured out who Roger is, huh?”
“Yeah, he’s trouble.”
Alyeska Marine Terminal Valdez, Alaska
The light drizzle had turned into a driving slushy snow in the predawn darkness. It was merciless weather that soaked everything it touched, seeping into Lyle Hauser’s pea coat as he stood on the bridge wing, a walkie- talkie clutched in his numbing fingers. In the glare of the terminal’s powerful spotlights, the sky was an angry swirling mass, churned by a shrieking twenty-knot wind. The seas of Prince William Sound mirrored the ugly mood of the sky, whitecaps slicing through the slag gray water like daggers. Visibility was so poor that Hauser couldn’t see the lights of Valdez nestled across the bay.
“Start of another miserable day,” Hauser muttered to his ship. He lifted the walkie-talkie to his lips and barked, “Status.”
