by Jack Du Brul
Mercer came across more and more tunnels that were relatively dry and wondered how that could be, considering the amount of rain that Jean-Paul had said had been falling. As he staggered down one, a sudden gust of foul air pressed against his back. He turned. The Chinese had yet to turn this corner, but beyond the intersection he’d just passed, a wall of water raced down the sewer carrying debris of every imaginable shape and size. The sewermen working up the line must have temporarily dammed the flow to build enough pressure to clear obstructions. It was a practice used in the city for more than a century. Mercer had also heard they used special boats equipped with sluice gates for the same purpose.
He jumped out of the channel just as the tide swept past, its force making the entire tunnel vibrate. He lay on the slimy floor for a moment, almost at the end of his strength. His breathing was too labored to properly fill his lungs. Slowly he pushed himself to his feet and felt that his pursuer had gained a few yards on him.
Mercer came to a junction that contained a number of valves and gates, a central area where several of the larger sewers came together. Nearly tapped out, he took cover behind an iron valve casing the size of a locomotive boiler. This was the best place he’d found to make a stand. He checked to see how many rounds remained in the Beretta and discovered that he had only one. Considering its corrosion, there was a fifty-fifty chance of the bullet firing or exploding in the pistol. He hastily searched for an exit. Just as he spotted an open hole in the floor that was usually covered by a hatch, the assassin burst into the chamber. He didn’t appear winded at all. His motions were crisp, precise, quartering the room with his eyes as his gun arm followed. Mercer couldn’t wait for the gunman’s gaze to swing toward him.
As silently as his sodden shoes would allow, he crept forward on the man’s blind side. When they were ten feet apart, Mercer launched himself at his attacker. The gunman was quick, but not quick enough. The impact sent both men against the railing that protected three sides of the hole. The assassin’s breath exploded as his ribs were hammered by the metal railing. Mercer used this momentary advantage to smash the gun out of his grip.
The killer had one arm free and whipped his elbow into Mercer’s chest, twisting out of reach and settling into a martial-arts pose. Mercer had learned a few basic karate moves, but considered his superior size his only weapon in this fight. When the assassin came in with a lightning kick, Mercer pushed him aside, wrapped both arms around the man, and began to squeeze. The Chinese used the back of his head as a battering ram against Mercer’s face, but Mercer lowered his own head so the two came together with a stunning crack.
Dazed by the contact, Mercer lost his hold and the assassin moved inside his defenses, putting two punishing blows into Mercer’s chest before using the heel of his hand against Mercer’s chin.
Mercer dropped.
The gunman was on him like a terrier, kicking him so that he was pushed toward the open manhole in the floor. Mercer couldn’t defend himself. Instead of resisting, he clutched his briefcase with one hand, wrapped his arms around the gunman’s leg and allowed himself to fall through the hole.
Mercer and the gunman dropped six feet into the trickle of water running along the floor of a perfectly round tunnel. It was more like an enormous pipeline than the previous tunnels, but seemed to date from the same time. A steady wind blew across the men as they lay in the water, too stunned to move for a moment.
Gaining his feet just before the gunman, Mercer faced into the peculiar wind while the Chinese killer had his back to it. He never saw what was coming for them out of the darkness. Mercer could see it and it was like something out of a nightmare.
This tunnel was one of the main feeds of the entire system and had been designed so that cleaning it didn’t require men to go into the channel with boats and their special shovels, called rabots. Here, whenever silt and debris clogged the conduit, they introduced a huge wooden ball exactly nine-tenths the diameter of the tunnel. The pressure of water behind it forced it down the pipe like a rolling plug.
Mercer now understood what Jean-Paul had meant when he said the street department was dropping the ball all over the city. He wasn’t using the American expression for a screwup. They were literally dropping a one-thousand-pound wooden ball into the storm drains to clear them of the trash washed in by the constant rains.
The ball rolled at them with unimaginable force, pressed forward by tons of water on its upstream side. Water jetted from the gaps between it and the tunnel’s lining. Mercer turned and ran, snapping on the spare flashlight he’d taken at the entrance to the catacombs. He looked back once to see the assassin limping after him. The man had injured his leg during the fall into the drain. His pace nowhere near matched that of the huge sphere.
The gunman must have known it too because a moment before he was overwhelmed, he stopped to face the ball. He screamed once, a high keen that carried over the thunder of so much pressure, and then he fell under the revolving weight. Without pause, the ball’s remorseless motion crushed him flat as though he’d never existed. Mercer dredged up the last of his reserves, running harder than he’d ever moved, his light licking at the smooth tunnel walls searching for an escape.
Ahead, he saw a pile of sand that blocked half the tunnel and dove over its crest in a flying leap. He rolled down its far slope, regained his feet and continued on. He glanced over his shoulder to see the ball hit the sand, hoping it would give him a moment’s reprieve. The ball was stopped for just a second before hydraulic forces dissolved the shoal. It continued its inexorable journey, mindlessly chasing Mercer down the tunnel.
The drain swept through a couple of gentle turns, Mercer maximizing his angle at each so as not to lose one inch to the wooden globe. He could feel its presence no more than a dozen paces back. An occasional drop of water hit his head and neck. He knew if he looked at it, it would fill his vision. He pushed himself even harder.
And just as he began to lose strength once again, his light flashed across a niche in the wall, a portal of some sort that protected a metal door. The surge of adrenaline carried him out of the spray that geysered from around the ball. He reached the niche just yards ahead of the ball and pressed the door’s lever handle. The metal shrieked as it opened and Mercer stepped into a smaller tunnel that ran parallel to the main trunk line. The ball passed the open door before Mercer could reseal it. A solid wall of water hit him full in the chest, knocking him back against the far wall, pinning him until the pressure dropped. He fell back to the floor, gagging on the sewer water that had filled his mouth.
After several minutes of coughing and vomiting, Mercer staggered to his feet and returned to the main drain line. The tunnel had been scoured clean, and a smooth stream of water coursed down its center. Mercer continued to follow it, knowing that eventually he’d come to an outlet where sanitation workers would be waiting to recover the ball. Fifteen minutes later he heard voices echoing in the humid tunnel.
The tension of the past two hours washed out of him. He had to brace himself to keep from collapsing. He touched the side of his sample case, wondering again what exactly he’d been lured into. Later, he knew, his desire to find the truth would build, but for now all he wanted was out of this reeking labyrinth.
Mercer staggered into the light cast by the sanitation workers’ mining helmets as they maneuvered one of their special boats into the stream from a side tunnel. They all wore tall rubber waders and thick gloves. They were as startled to see a filthy man blunder out of the gloom as Mercer was relieved to see them.
The crew leader finally found his voice, and called out in French, “How did you get down here?”
Mercer gave him an exhausted smile. “Let’s just say that Parisian toilets have one hell of a flush.”
After improvising a story about being mugged earlier in the day and dumped down a manhole, Mercer convinced the work crew to take him back to the surface, allow him to use their locker room for a long, long shower and even lend him some clothes. Merc
er had no intention of fulfilling his promise to go to the police with his tale. The last thing he needed was an official investigation into what had happened outside the catacombs. He recalled that he hadn’t given the taxi driver the name of his hotel and there was nothing in his abandoned luggage that gave away his identity. If the police did manage to connect him to what had happened, he’d be halfway to Panama.
Instinct told Mercer to lay low until his flight the next day, but he needed fast medical attention, and knew how to get it without raising too many questions. After buying more appropriate clothes from a trendy store that catered to a late-night crowd, he checked into the Hotel de Crillon at Place de la Concorde. He asked the concierge to get him a doctor with a bag full of antibiotics and an undeveloped sense of curiosity.
An hour later, with massive doses of drugs coursing through his veins and a second shower, Mercer called Jean-Paul Derosier and wasn’t surprised to find he wasn’t home. He spoke to Derosier’s wife, Camille.
“He called, Mercer,” she said, “and said that he wouldn’t be home until tomorrow.”
“You’re not surprised?”
“No,” Camille admitted. “He said that this might happen.”
“You do know that he set me up, right?”
“I swear he didn’t tell me a thing.”
Mercer wanted to vent his anger, but knew that targeting Camille wasn’t fair. This was something her husband had done. “When he finally shows up, give him a message for me. Tell him that when I’m done in Panama I’m coming back and I’m going to kick his pampered ass across every arrondissement in Paris.”
“Mercer, if it helps, he said that it wasn’t his fault. And he said that he was sorry.”
“Just tell him.” Mercer cut the connection.
A bellman knocked at his door and waited while Mercer slipped the Lepinay journal in an envelope the young man had brought and wrote out an address on the outside. Getting the journal to the States in twenty-four hours cost well over a hundred dollars, but Mercer could think of no better way to keep it secure. He tipped the bellman as he left and dialed an international operator. He heard four rings and was about to try Tiny’s Bar when the phone was answered.
“Mercer’s house. What do you want?” Harry White’s voice hit like a wrecking ball against an old building and resonated like the debris falling away.
“For you to not drink all my booze when you house sit and to answer the goddamned phone like a human being.”
Whether intentional or not, Mercer had built a life with very few anchors. His home was one, a comfortable base that allowed him to recharge between trips. But more important was his friendship with the eighty-year-old Harry White. In the years since they’d met at Tiny’s, they’d forged a bond that was stronger than that of most natural families. Despite what others who knew them thought, it wasn’t one of father and son, or even grandson, since Harry was more than twice Mercer’s age. They were more like brothers born four decades apart, each willing to do anything for the other without thought to cost or consequence. Because the emotional bond between them was understood and needed no further nourishment, their rapport tended to sound downright nasty to the uninitiated.
“Hold on a second,” Harry said, “I forgot to mail your bills a few weeks ago and the bank’s appraisers are here to sell your furniture. They said I could have your big-screen TV for a hundred bucks.”
“Sometimes I think that when you lost your leg, you also lost whatever sense of humor you might have had.” Harry’s left leg was gone below the knee. He told people that it was the result of an accident during his years in the merchant marine. Only Mercer and a handful of others knew the truth.
“Everyone knows the funny bone’s in your elbow,” Harry snorted. “Hey, I thought you were coming home for a few days. I had this whole thing set up for when you got here. I hired this knockout stripper to dress like a cop. We were going to be waiting for you with me in handcuffs on a charge of cat burglary.”
“I got stuck in Utah and flew straight on to Paris. Sorry to frustrate your plans.”
Harry gave a lecherous chuckle. “I wouldn’t exactly use the word frustrate. Before she left, the stripper gave me the handcuffs in appreciation.”
Mercer didn’t doubt Harry’s story, or at least part of it. It was something the octogenarian would pull. The idea of the stringy old man and his sagging pectorals and small potbelly with some hot stripper was an ugly picture that he quickly purged from his mind. “That was pity, my friend. She gave you the handcuffs out of pity.”
“Don’t get snippy with me just because you haven’t been laid for a few months.”
“And you haven’t since they put fins on cars.”
Harry allowed him that final shot. “So are you coming home?”
“No. In fact, I want you out of my place for a few days.” Mercer explained what he’d been through in the past hours. “I mailed the journal to Tiny at the bar, but just in case these Chinese, or whoever the hell they are, figure out who I am and send people to the house, I don’t think you should be there.”
“Screw that. You think I want to give up your three-story town house for my one-bedroom apartment so you can read some old book? Give them the damned journal.”
“I knew you’d understand. You going to Tiny’s tonight?”
“No, Doobie Lapointe is covering the bar. Tiny, me, John Pigeon and Rick Halak are going to a Georgetown basketball game.”
“Tell Paul”—Tiny’s real name was Paul Gordon, and the nickname certainly fit the former jockey—“about the book that’s coming. Have him put it someplace safe. I may need him to send it to me when I get to Panama.”
“You got it.” Harry’s tone matched the gravity he heard in Mercer’s voice. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, don’t steal my booze when you go home.”
“Sorry, Mercer.” Harry raised his voice as if the clear connection had suddenly become static-filled. “You’re breaking up. Did you say you wanted me to take your booze? Okay. I’ll guard it with my liver, I mean life.”
“I’ll call you in a couple of days.”
“Hello? Hello? Come in, Tokyo. I can’t hear you. Hello?”
Mercer never doubted that Harry could lift his spirits following his sewer swim. He was still chuckling when he dialed his third call, the one he feared making. His smile faded when he began to comprehend what Maria was saying, even if she didn’t understand the significance.
“Gary hasn’t answered his radio for hours,” she said over the sound of Latin pop music blaring from a stereo. “You know he never buys new equipment. It’s probably broken again.”
“Are you sure?” Mercer managed to keep concern from his voice. He didn’t believe that Gary was coincidentally out of reach at the same time three trained gunmen tried to steal the journal he needed to conclude his treasure hunt.
“Sí. Tomorrow he will fix it again and call. He always does.”
“Can you keep trying for me? I will call again just before my flight.”
“Well, sometimes it takes a day or two to fix. But I will try.”
Mercer finished off the second of three vodka gimlets that room service had brought up and started on the last. A couple more might dull the thoughts churning in his mind, but he wasn’t looking for release. He wanted answers. He assumed the mystery bidder at Jean-Paul’s auction had sent the assassins. They in turn had hired a street thief to steal the case in order to insulate themselves from the crime. But who had shot the kid just a few paces from his escape car? He doubted Jean-Paul knew. Camille had said he’d been forced to give the journal to Mercer. By whom?
Whatever was at stake, Mercer was sure the answers weren’t what he was expecting. He still didn’t believe that Gary Barber had found buried treasure. There was something else hidden in the jungle that people seemed more than willing to kill for, something on the banks of a tributary of the Rio Tuira that Gary had named the River of Ruin.
On the Rio Tuira, Panama
Maria Barber was also in the boat, sitting between Mercer and the natives, her vacant gaze fixed in space as the impenetrable jungle scrolled by. She was not what Mercer had expected. Maria no longer resembled the sad waif in the picture Gary had shown him. In the years since it had been taken, she’d replaced the suffering in her eyes with a sophisticated demeanor more befitting a native of Miami or New York than the barrios of Panama City. Her skin color and features showed heavy European influence, still considered an honor badge in Central America, and glowed with health. Despite the rough surroundings, makeup accented her full mouth and drew special attention to her dark eyes. She was dressed in bush clothes that cost twice what Mercer had spent on his. The khaki was only a shade darker than her face and still showed the creases of newness.
Mercer had met her in David, a town near the Costa Rican border. Circumstances demanded he sacrifice comfort for speed getting to Panama from France, so he’d reshuffled his route to shave off fifteen hours, flying on airlines he’d never heard of and replacing an overnight layover in Martinique with three hasty hours of sleep in Mexico City’s Benito Juarez Airport. She’d stepped off the private plane Mercer had chartered for her from Panama City as if born to such travel, wearing a simple silk dress, a string of pearls, and flashy earrings. His call from a pay phone in David had given her just an hour to get from her apartment to where the charter plane waited and it appeared he’d caught her getting ready for an elegant morning rendezvous. Mercer noticed the distinctive smell of Obsession perfume when they’d shaken hands. Her nails were beautifully manicured and painted a slick red.