and lay out everything that had happened from the moment Cali had approached him in Kivu. Ira jotted a few notes on a napkin.
“White mercenary. Eye patch. Pauly or Poli. Eastern European accent. Got it.” The admiral set his pen aside and pushed away the near-empty plates. “So what’s your take?”
“At first I thought that village was where the U.S. mined its uranium for the Manhattan Project, but I can’t believe we’d kill off the witnesses.”
“Agreed. But where does that leave us?”
“It’s gotta be the Germans,” Mercer answered quickly. “They had a pretty sophisticated nuclear program during the war. Somehow they learned about a vein of incredibly concentrated uranium ore and sent out an expedition to get it.”
“And Chester Bowie?”
“It’s just a guess but maybe he was the prospector the Germans used to find the uranium. From what the woman told me it was just a few weeks or months after he left that a bunch of other white men arrived. If he got word to the Nazi high command, it would take about that long to put together a team and get them on the ground.”
“So he’s a traitor who helped the Nazis during World War Two?”
“Possibly. Or maybe he was coerced or didn’t know who backed his original exploration. That’s what I want to find out.”
“How?”
“I entered his name in a search engine and came up with over a hundred thousand hits. Bowie State University. Bowie, Maryland. Jim Bowie. Bowie knives. Teen sluts with big bowies. But I have a better plan to track him down.”
“Okay, I’ll leave you to that. What about the town now? Is the old mine still dangerous? I mean could someone go there and dig up their own concentrated uranium?”
“I doubt it. From what I saw it looks played out. Whoever mined it took everything. And as of three days ago the village no longer exists. In my report to Adam Burke I’m going to recommend that a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency go in once things calm down, just to make sure.”
“With Dayce dead, shouldn’t it be quiet now?”
“It’ll take a few weeks or months. With Dayce out of the way there will be a dozen or more petty warlords fighting to take over the remains of his army.”
Ira was quiet for a moment, furrows on his forehead extending up to the crown of his shaved skull. “How did Bowie find it in the first place?”
Mercer leaned back, a smile on his lips. He’d known Ira would get to the real mystery about the whole affair. “That’s the question nagging me since Cali and I got out of the CAR. The village isn’t even a blip on the map. The geology in the area doesn’t look conducive for uranium and yet sixty-odd years ago this guy walks into the jungle and starts to shovel overburden as though there was an X on the ground with a sign saying ‘Dig here.’”
“You have any idea how he did it?”
“Either he was the greatest prospecting geologist I’ve never heard of or the luckiest SOB in history.”
Ira motioned to the waiter that he wanted the bill, then stood. “I’ll call as soon as I learn anything.”
“What parts of this story do I keep out of my report to the United Nations?”
Ira didn’t have to think. “As much as you can. I told them about you as a favor to the President. It doesn’t mean I want you sharing any secrets with them. In fact, ax your recommendation about sending in a group from the IAEA.”
Having seen firsthand a number of UN failures in Africa and elsewhere, Mercer was inclined to agree. “I’ll contact Connie Van Buren at DOE.” Constance Van Buren was the secretary of energy, a longtime friend of Mercer’s. “I’ll see if she can send some of her own inspectors.”
“I’d wait on even that,” Ira said guardedly. “Let’s dig a little on our own before you contact her. You said the place is too dangerous now anyway.”
Ira Lasko had also picked up that there were elements to what had happened that didn’t add up. The admiral paused for a second, looking down at Mercer, who was sliding a credit card from his wallet. “What’s your sense of the group who took out Dayce and his men?”
“Don’t ask me how or why but I think they knew about the mine and had gone there to make sure Dayce didn’t discover it.”
“If the mine’s played out like you said, what’s the point?”
Mercer had no answer. But he would find it.
New York City
The Upper East Side co-op had a commanding view of Central Park and the apartment towers beyond. It had four bedrooms, a study, and a small suite for a live-in servant. The dining table could seat a dozen. The owner stood on the balcony, the first brush of a spring breeze blowing through his dark hair. He wore black linen slacks, a black silk shirt, and black shoes. He scanned the park like a hawk eyeing an open meadow, as if he too were searching for prey. In one hand he held a slim cell phone. In the other he cradled a snifter of seventy-year-old cognac.
The man was in his mid-forties, unmarried but handsome enough to rarely want for female companionship. He hadn’t earned the money to buy the co-op; that had been earned generations earlier. His older brother ran the family’s empire, a far-reaching conglomerate with interests on four continents. A lesser man might have been jealous of the power his brother wielded, not only over the company but over the family as well. Yet because of the career path he’d chosen and what he’d done with the contacts he’d made, he was close to reaching a pinnacle of power his brother couldn’t even conceive.
The roots of the operation came from within his own family history, from a story he’d learned from his grandmother, so in a sense he’d been planning it since childhood, although he’d never told a soul. This was to be something he alone would accomplish. His brother needed an army of lawyers and accountants to keep the business running, while he was about to change history with a select few.
The cell phone rang. He answered it quickly. “Hello?”
“It’s me, darling, I was wondering if you’d reconsidered my proposal.”
It took him a moment to recognize the voice-Michaela Taftsbury’s, an international attorney from London currently working in New York-and to recall her proposal-a weekend at a bed and breakfast in Vermont.
“Michaela, I told you I can’t leave the city.”
“It’s a weekend, not a fortnight, lover. I haven’t seen you in so long.”
Best to end it now, he decided. While she was a passable conversationalist and highly charged in the bedroom, she was becoming bothersome. “And you won’t see me for even longer,” he warned, “if you keep pestering me.”
“Pestering? Pestering! Screw you. I thought we were having a little fun. If I’ve become a pest then to hell with you.” She hung up.
But the phone rang almost immediately.
“Poli?” he asked when he opened the connection.
“No names!” the one-eyed Bulgarian assassin hissed.
The man in New York ignored the rebuke. He was about to hear the news he’d waited for all his life. “Was it there?”
“At one point maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t.”
“What are you talking about? Was it there?”
“If it was there someone beat us to it a long time ago.”
“It’s gone?”
