Vulcan's Forge

by Du Brul, Jack

  The elevator took them up to the ground floor and disgorged them into a blue-carpeted hallway. Young staffers rushed past, reports and faxes clutched in their fists as if their jobs meant the safety of the free world. Which, in reality, they did. Only a few stopped to notice the cuffs that secured Mercer’s hands behind his back. He wondered if they thought he was a fellow staffer sacrificed to some as yet unknown scandal.

  “I won’t give any of you away,” he called over the din of the countless ringing phones.

  The agents pushed him roughly down the hall past numerous cramped offices until they reached a cluttered desk just outside a wide door. The presidential seal hung from the wall behind the desk.

  “Miss Craig, this is Philip Mercer and Tish Talbot. Is everything set inside?”

  “Yes, it is,” the plump woman said. She looked up at Tish and smiled sweetly. “You poor dear, I’ve heard about what you’ve been through. Come with me. I’m sure you’d love to freshen up a bit.”

  Tish looked at Mercer, stricken.

  “It’s all right. I’m sure you’ll be fine.” Tish allowed the President’s personal secretary to lead her away.

  Mercer turned to the agents flanking him. “Well, gentlemen, let’s get on with it.”

  They opened the door and Mercer stepped into the Oval Office.

  Mercer’s first impression was that the office was much smaller than he had imagined. He envisioned the President governing the country from a much larger room. He stepped over the seal embroidered into the pale blue carpet and studied the people in the room. He recognized most of them. Seated were Admiral C. Thomas Morrison, Richard Henna of the FBI, and Catherine Smith, the President’s chief of staff. Mercer guessed that the bald man standing against the far wall was the director of the CIA. The President sat behind his desk, his large hands resting on the leather top. Ms. Smith wore a conservative suit, white blouse, and a muted bow at her throat, and the assembled men were all wearing the customary Washington uniform—conservative suit, white shirt, and muted tie. Only Admiral Morrison, in his summer whites, and Mercer, still in the black clothing from the break-in, were dressed any differently.

  “Mr. President, I wish to congratulate you.” The President looked at Mercer quizzically. “I saw in the paper a couple days ago that your wife’s dog just had puppies.”

  “We are not here to discuss dogs, Dr. Mercer,” Paul Barnes, the head of the CIA, said sharply, clipping each word.

  “We’re not going to discuss anything until I know why Tish Talbot was brought to Washington and why she was placed under FBI protection.”

  “She is no longer a concern of yours,” Barnes snapped.

  “I’m beginning not to like you, friend.” There was no malice in Mercer’s voice, but his gray eyes hardened.

  “Dr. Mercer, we will answer all of your questions in turn. Rest assured that Dr. Talbot’s ordeal, as you put it, is at an end. She is upstairs right now with my wife and the puppies you just mentioned. She will be looked after.” The President cut through the mounting tension.

  “Christ,” Henna exclaimed as he realized that Mercer was cuffed. “Get those damn things off him and leave us.”

  The two agents removed the handcuffs and skulked from the room. Mercer helped himself to a cup of coffee from the silver urn next to the fireplace and took the last available chair.

  “So you wanted to see me,” Mercer said innocently, taking a sip of coffee.

  “Dr. Mercer, you have a lot of explaining to do,” Henna replied. “But first we all want to express our gratitude to you for saving Dr. Talbot’s life in the hospital. How did you know that the man in the room was an impostor?”

  “Lucky guess,” Mercer demurred. “We both used the same cover to get into her room. I figured your watchdogs might let in one urologist, but not two. I also noticed that his shoes were too uncomfortable looking for a doctor making his rounds. It was a calculated risk, but at worst I was risking an assault charge from an irate citizen. It turned out I was right. Who was he, anyway?”

  “Josef Skadra, a Czech-born agent who used to freelance for the KGB.”

  “Do you have any idea who he was working for when he went after Dr. Talbot?”

  “We’re not certain,” Henna admitted. “Remember, you didn’t leave him or any of his team in the position to answer questions.”

  “Dr. Mercer, you are here to answer questions, not ask them.” Barnes spoke again.

  “Paul, take it easy,” the President cautioned. “Dr. Mercer is a guest here, not a prisoner.”

  “Before you start asking questions, why don’t I fill you in on what I know,” Mercer said, and the President nodded.

  “On the night of May 23, 1954, an ore carrier named Grandam Phoenix sank about two hundred miles north of Hawaii in the middle of the Musicians Seamounts, a five-hundred-mile-long string of undersea volcanoes. Whether she was destroyed by the nuclear blast that occurred that night or she was already sinking, I don’t know. The bomb was under about seven thousand feet of water when it went off.” Mercer’s audience was too dumbstruck to speak, so he continued. “I pinpointed the epicenter by triangulating time delays and Richter scale differences from six different stations in Asia and the United States. The sharp spike recorded on the seismograph tapes that night is identical to ones measured after underground nuclear tests. There is no natural occurrence that even remotely resembles it.

  “Since that time, seven large vessels have sunk in a fifty-mile radius of the explosion’s epicenter, including, most recently, the NOAA research ship, Ocean Seeker.”

  “What are you talking about?” Henna finally found his voice.

  “Let me finish and you’ll see. That many ships sinking in such a relatively small area is strange enough, but there is a connection between them that defies random mishap. Of the seven ships that went down, only three had survivors—a tanker in 1968, a container ship in 1972, and the Ocean Seeker. The four other vessels, the ones where no one survived, all had something in common, very accurate bottom-scanning sonar. The trawlers lost since 1954 use them for finding shoals of fish, a cable layer sunk in 1977 would use it for locating a smooth path on the ocean floor, and a Chilean survey ship was mapping the Pacific basin in 1982 when it vanished without a trace.”

  “Is that from the list of vessels you received from that law office in Miami?” asked Henna.

  “Yes. I stared at it for quite a while until I saw a connection between all the ships that sank with no survivors. Once I saw that they all had bottom-scanning technology, I pieced together what it was they may have seen. I believe they were all sunk so they wouldn’t report a new volcano building its way to the surface.”

  “Is this volcano connected to the nuclear detonation?” the President asked.

  “I’m certain that it is. I believe that the explosion was the trigger that started the volcano’s eruption. The area around Hawaii, including the Musicians Seamounts, contains an intraplate hot spot. Put simply, a hot spot is a localized area of intense heat deep in the earth’s mantle that punches holes through the crust as a tectonic plate slides across it, forming chains of volcanoes that are progressively older the further from the spot they are.

  “By detonating a nuclear bomb over a hot spot, weakening the crust further, magma from the lithosphere was given a new, artificial outlet.”

  “Why would somebody want to do that?”

  “I have no idea, but it’s proved to be worth killing for.”

  “Let’s get back to more recent history,” Henna prompted.

  “The Ocean Seeker was sent out on an unscheduled survey to find the cause of some whale deaths. The whales had been found beached on Hawaii about a month ago with their digestive tracts filled with lava particles. Tish Talbot was an invited guest on the expedition. Twenty-four hours after leaving port, the ship exploded and Tish was thrown into the sea. After her rescue, she was transferred to George Washington University Hospital for observation. I received a telegram the day after she was a
dmitted to the hospital saying she was in grave danger.”

  “Who sent the telegram?”

  “It was signed by her father, but I later found out her father has been dead for a year, so I don’t know who sent it. It’s obvious that someone wanted me to get involved.”

  “Why?”

  “Mr. President, that is the million-dollar question.”

  “This is a waste of time,” Paul Barnes snorted. “He’s got more questions than answers.”

  “You’re right, I do have a lot of questions. Why was Tish Talbot purposely saved when the Ocean Seeker was destroyed? The Seeker has the most sophisticated sonar systems found outside the U.S. Navy, so Tish being found alive breaks a well-established pattern. Why was she held prisoner for a few days before her official ‘rescue’ by a freighter called the September Laurel? And then why did someone try to have her killed?”

  “Are these all things she told you?”

  “No, I’ve figured it out myself. When the ship exploded she was thrown clear by the blast and suddenly there was an inflatable raft right next to her.”

  “The raft could have been dislodged by the explosion,” Admiral Morrison pointed out.

  “Impossible. The raft would have been shredded, not inflated. She also told me she swam to it, but admitted that she could barely hear anything. How could she have swam in the turbulent water around a sinking vessel if the blast had stunned her so badly? I’m certain there was someone aboard who was forewarned about the ship’s destruction and whose job it was to save her life.”

  The men in the room all exchanged glances. Mercer felt that they knew something he didn’t.

  “To get back to your question about why Dr. Talbot was brought to Washington and placed under the protection of the FBI, you must know that we received a warning a couple of days before the Ocean Seeker disaster.”

  The President spoke slowly. “We felt putting her at George Washington University Hospital would raise less suspicion than bringing her to Walter Reed. You see, she is the only living witness to a terrorist act directed at the heart of America.” He pulled out the letter sent from Takahiro Ohnishi and read it aloud.

  “ ‘To the President of the United States. After World War II, Europe, faced with economic necessity, released her long-held colonies and let them struggle through the arduous process of independence. Some made the transition smoothly, while others continue to struggle internally and with their former masters. It is a painful chapter of human history that is still being inked in blood.

  “ ‘It is time now that the United States, too, face economic realities. The colonies that America maintains must be released, and that is how we on Hawaii feel we’ve been treated by you. The four-trillion-dollar debt that you carry is a burden too heavy to maintain. The stopgap efforts that you and your predecessors have attempted have done little but stave off the complete collapse of your system.

  “ ‘While U.S. tax dollars flood the coffers of foreign nations and banks and bloat already engorged government contractors, the American people slide deeper into an unquestioning torpor spawned by inane rhetoric and slick presentations.

  “ ‘Mr. President, this cannot be allowed to continue for Hawaii. The people of Hawaii are by origin not white Europeans nor should they be governed by them. We are a separate people with different beliefs and a different set of values, and it is wrong that we too should be bankrupted by the dying system to which you cling.

  “ ‘You must realize by now that mankind does not thrive with cultural diversity. We are a tribalist species, one most comfortable within well-defined groups, and it is wrong to deny this. The idea of a ‘melting pot’ is as outdated as the ‘white man’s burden.’

  “ ‘I fear that soon the United States will join that growing list of nations torn by factional fighting and I do not wish to see this come to pass for my people. Hawaii’s transition to independence must be made peaceably, but it must be made. Already plans are being implemented to draw us away from the United States and establish ourselves as a sovereign nation. Do not attempt to resist this action. I can promise peace, but only if you do not interfere.

  “ ‘As a demonstration of the seriousness of my concern and conviction, I have at my disposal the means to destroy any American government vessel within two hundred miles of these islands. If I detect any such vessel in the coming weeks of transition, I will not hesitate to sink it.

  “ ‘Please do not test my resolve or the resolve of the people of these islands. We are united in purpose and our goal will ultimately benefit all.’ It is signed, Takahiro Ohnishi.”

  The President placed the pages facedown on his desk and looked up at Mercer.

  Mercer remained expressionless while his mind churned through what the President had just read. He knew the eccentric billionaire’s views; in fact, he’d read one of Ohnishi’s books about the need for racial integrity. But he’d never believed the industrialist capable of this. Race relations between Hawaii’s Japanese majority and the island’s white population were strained, but what the President had just read was tantamount to a declaration of independence. He said as much.

  “As it turns out, there were no naval vessels scheduled to arrive or depart Pearl Harbor at the time that we received this letter, but NOAA did have the Ocean Seeker heading northward. Dick brought the letter to my attention only after she’d been lost. Before that, he had assumed it was just a crank. Since then, I’ve suspended all activity within the two-hundred-mile limit Ohnishi outlined in this letter. Dr. Mercer, you are the first person outside this group to know the situation.

  “We believed that this was a recent plot by Ohnishi, but the information you’ve brought us indicates that it goes back forty years.”

  “Mr. President, I’m not even finished yet. This goes even further than some crackpot billionaire with a decidedly Hitleresque mien,” Mercer stated.

  The men in the room turned to him intently.

  “You see, the Ocean Seeker was sunk by a Soviet submarine called John Dory, not by Takahiro Ohnishi.”

  Cairo, Egypt

  The sun was still a sizzling torture over the crowded city streets despite the onset of evening. The Arabs in their long white galabias seemed immune to the hundred plus heat, but the Westerners in the city suffered. Evad Lurbud bought a cup of warm date juice from a passing vendor who had a huge pewter urn strapped to his back. The juice tasted awful, but his body needed the fluids.

  Lurbud stood on Shari al-Muizz Le-din Allah, the main road in the Khan el-Khalili, a huge sprawling bazaar located three miles and about a thousand years from modern Tahrir Square at the center of Cairo. A rabbit warren of twisting alleys choked with people, the Khan is the true shopping center for the locals. Harried, red-faced tourists make it an obligatory stop after the pyramids, the necropolis at Memphis, and the crowded Cairo Museum.

  Founded by Sultan Barquq’s Master of Horse, Garkas el-Khalili, in 1382 as a way station for camel caravans, the Khan had grown enormously over time. By the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517, items from as far away as England were being traded in the sprawling bazaar. The Ottoman sense of order established a guild system within the bazaar that is still evident today. Perfume sellers congregate just south of the Khan’s main crossroads. Gold and silver are sold in specific areas, while carpet merchants are found in another. The heady aromas from spice merchants and food sellers compete throughout the Khan while tourist curio shops cling to the Khan’s perimeter.

  There were no cars in the Khan, but the din of the pedestrian traffic more than made up for the lack of engine noises. Hawkers touted their wares and the Arab tradition of haggling reached a great cacophony. The loudspeakers of the two mosques just outside the bazaar throbbed with cries of “Allah Akbar” with pious regularity.

  Soon, Lurbud knew, the Muslims would close up their shops and head to the mosques for sundown prayer. He scoffed at the notion of a God, especially one that demanded prayer five times a day, yet he respected their fealty. As a veteran of th
e Afghani campaign, he knew full well the strength the rebels derived from their religion. The Mujahedeen called their resistance a “Holy War,” and whipped the tribes into an amazing, cohesive force that possessed the power to resist the largest army ever maintained.

  Lurbud had spent his first tour of the war as an intelligence operative for the KGB, spending weeks and sometimes months away from the relative security of Kabul on deep cover insertions. Because of his swarthy complexion and knack for languages, he could ingratiate himself with a rebel band and act as one of their own while gathering data on their strengths and weaknesses, assessing the future plans of other groups of resistance fighters. When his task was complete, he would call in the feared helicopter gunships. The craft would thunder into an encampment where he was a trusted member and kill every man, woman, and child in sight. Lurbud would conveniently be on patrol during these massacres. During the two years he spent on this duty, Lurbud’s Afghani compatriots never once suspected that he was the cause of the devastation.

  His amazing nerve caught the eye of the KGB hierarchy, especially Ivan Kerikov. After one helicopter attack, when Lurbud couldn’t extricate himself from a rebel village yet managed to survive the scathing fire from the Hind-D gunships, Kerikov pulled him from the ranks of field operatives and seconded him to his personal staff in Kabul.

  There, Lurbud’s chief function was breaking captured rebels in the dank prisons the Soviets had established. Lurbud learned that the binding force that held the Mujahedeen together was also a major weapon in the interrogation rooms. The Muslim faith forbade the devout from coming into contact with swine, and even the threat of such contact was enough to break the hardest rebels Lurbud faced. It amazed him how the most solid fighter would panic when threatened to be placed inside the decayed carcass of a pig.

  What kind of God made men fear hogs, considering so many of them lived just like them? Lurbud wondered idly.

  The voice of the Muezzin blared from speakers high above the streets in the minarets, calling the faithful to prayer. Lurbud crouched deeper in an alley, shrinking into the shadows of stacked spice bags as the streets began to empty. The smell of saffron was nauseating. Glancing at his feet, he saw that he’d stepped into a pile of dog shit. He muttered in disgust and smeared the filth against one of the bags.