“Games, dames, dimes, times, ah, tiles, tills, fills, falls, balls. Perfect.”
“Way to go, Harry,” Mercer applauded. “Figure out the last one and we’re in business again. You know the fourth word has to be a number.”
“Give me a minute.” A few minutes passed. Harry finally looked up. “You realize that Bowie wrote this just before he tossed the safe.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Just think what kind of mind he had to create the doublets and then write out the letter to Einstein making sure he kept his word count straight. He could do this stuff in his head without really thinking about it. And from the sound of it he’d been through hell and back.”
“From what I’ve gathered, he was an eccentric, that’s for sure,” Mercer said. “And from the tone of this letter it sounds like he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”
“Oh, I’d say he’d crossed the verge and was deep into la-la land.”
Mercer asked Harry for Drag’s leash so he could take the mangy basset for his last walk of the night. From long years of experience, he knew Harry wouldn’t leave until he’d solved the code, and even then he’d sleep on the leather couch rather than return to his dingy one-bedroom apartment up the block.
Mercer dragged the old basset to the circular stairs, and once he got him going the dog made good progress, the fat of his belly rippling as it scraped over the stair treads. He even waddled across the polished marble foyer. Usually Harry had to drag him to the door but for Mercer he was a little less stubborn.
Mercer had just reached the front door when the doorbell chimed. He automatically checked the TAG Heuer strapped around his wrist. It was quarter past eleven. No one visited at this hour unless the news was bad. He thought for a moment about running upstairs for the Beretta nine-millimeter he kept in his bedside table, but he caught a glimpse of his visitor through the door’s side lights. He smiled and opened the door.
Cali Stowe wore jeans and a black tank top with a man’s white oxford shirt thrown over it. Mercer got the impression she’d dashed over in a rush. She wore no makeup and her red hair was a little disheveled, but still she looked beautiful, in that vulnerable way men love but women never understand.
Then three things struck Mercer at once. Cali hadn’t returned his smile, he’d never given her his home address, and there were two men standing behind her.
“Sorry,” she said sadly. “They didn’t give me much choice.”
One of the men showed Mercer the pistol he held to Cali’s back.
Anger came in hot black waves. “Who are you?” Mercer demanded.
“Why don’t we step inside, Dr. Mercer,” the gunman said.
Both men had dark hair and dark complexions, with thick mustaches, but they appeared more Mediterranean than Middle Eastern. The one with the gun was Mercer’s height and had a slender build and an angelic face that belied the weapon in his hand. The other was older, his mustache and hair shot with silver, and shorter, five seven or so. While both wore conservative dark suits, Mercer had the impression that the shorter man was the leader.
“Are you okay?” Mercer asked Cali as he stepped back from the door.
“I’m fine,” she said.
He couldn’t see any bruises on her and she wasn’t limping, but Mercer knew that in front of these two Cali wouldn’t tell him if she was hurt. She was too brave for that.
“What do you want?” Mercer demanded of the one he thought was the leader.
“I am here to deliver a warning, Dr. Mercer, nothing more.” The man had an accent Mercer couldn’t place and spoke gently, almost like a priest.
“Warn me about what?”
“You must stop your search for the Alembic of Skenderbeg. The more you look the more you help others who are also searching for it.”
If one of them didn’t have a gun in his right hand, Mercer would have laughed at them. “Friend, I don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know what an alembic is or who Skenderbeg is, so why don’t you leave and we’ll pretend this never happened.”
“It is much too late for that.”
“Jesus!” Mercer recognized the voice, and his reaction suddenly tripped Cali’s memory too. She blanched.
“That was you in the village,” Mercer said. “You saved Cali and me.”
“Had I known you would continue your quest,” the man agreed, “I would have delayed my attack and let Caribe Dayce kill you.”
“We’re not on any quest,” Mercer said, somehow feeling more in control. Had these two wanted them dead they wouldn’t be talking, and the gunman had lowered his weapon, which Mercer realized was the first gun he’d seen in a long time that wasn’t firing at him. “We’re trying to find out what happened to the uranium that was mined near that village almost seventy years ago. This has nothing to do with your Allergy of Skinbag, or whatever it is.”
“The Alembic of Skenderbeg.” He said it almost reverently. “You don’t even know what you’re searching for, Doctor, but I must tell you to stop. We have saved your life twice.”
“That was you last night at the casino?” Cali asked.
He nodded. “Yes. A mercenary has been hired to retrieve the alembic and we have managed to follow his movements. We tracked him first to Africa and then to Atlantic City last night. But at the casino we underestimated the size of his forces and didn’t know he had rented a helicopter.” He turned his gaze to Mercer. His eyes appeared haunted, like he knew too many secrets. “You led them to a clue they would have never found. What was it by the way?”
“A safe,” Mercer said, guilt edging into his voice as he again thought about Serena Ballard and all the others. “A classics professor brought back ore samples from Africa. He had gone there believing he’d found the source of the metal Zeus used to forge Prometheus’s chains. What he found was a vein of unusually powerful uranium, not the mythical adamantine.”
The two men exchanged a look when Mercer said the word “adamantine,” as if they knew of it. “Was there anything else?”
“The safe’s owners said there was nothing else in it but the ore samples,” Mercer lied, praying that Harry wouldn’t come out to the library overlooking the foyer. “The mercenary-”
“Poli Feines,” the man with the pistol offered.
“He stole the safe before I had a chance to verify, but I have no reason to doubt what the owners said. They knew nothing beyond the fact that the safe had been tossed from the
Again the two men glanced at each other. “Interesting,” the leader said at last. “But it changes nothing. I came here to warn you. You are caught up in an ancient battle you can’t possibly understand. I beg you to end your investigation now. You have been lucky so far that I have been in a position to save your life. The next time you might not fare so well.”
The two men backed toward the door, the one holstering his pistol. Cali and Mercer remained where they stood. “And know this, Dr. Mercer, if I could find you and Ms. Stowe so easily, Poli Feines will be able to do so as well.”
“Who are you?” Mercer asked before they disappeared into the night.
The leader paused, considering the question. He searched Mercer’s eyes and found whatever it was he was looking for. “Janissaries,” he said at last and closed the door.
It was as though the room had been dark and suddenly there was light. Mercer took a deep breath and stepped close to Cali. He rested his hands on her thin shoulders and looked her in the eye. What he saw was anger rather than fear. “Are you okay?”
“I’m pissed,” she answered and stepped back just a bit. Her freckles stood out in relief against her smooth, pale skin and her small ears were reddened. She didn’t need comforting. She needed to vent. “They came in through a supposedly alarmed window right into my bathroom. I was a soldier for God’s sake and I didn’t even hear them. They turned on the light and I just kept on sleeping. They had to shake me awake. Which I will admit was one of the scariest moments of my life. You can imagine what I was thinking. But, Jesus, then they never said a goddamn thing. That was the worst part. They held out clothes for me and motioned me to get dressed. Weird thing was they shielded their eyes so they could only see my feet when I got out of bed, so I figured they weren’t going to rape
