by Jack Du Brul
Placing the Kimberley computer projection next to one of the actual Medusa pictures, Mercer quickly traced nearly a dozen similar features between the two. Rather than let his imagination run wild, he studied them more closely. But the truth was right there. His heart raced, and his fingers and palms began to sweat as excitement tore into him. Such a discovery was made once in a lifetime, and Hyde was setting it right in front of him. Buried in the wasteland of northern Eritrea was a kimberlite pipe very much like the one discovered accidentally a century and a half ago in South Africa. He looked up at Hyde, his amazed expression verifying Hyde’s suspicion.
“Some of our people think so too. If there is a diamond-bearing pipe in Eritrea, it could mean economic prosperity for a nation that has absolutely no other prospects.”
Mercer reined in his excitement, forcing neutrality into his voice. “Intriguing, but from what I know of the region, there has never been any indication of diamonds or their marker minerals in the area. I can’t say for certain that Eritrea has been gone over with a fine-toothed comb, but it’s pretty unlikely that a find like this has gone unnoticed for the past hundred years. Especially since Eritrea fell under British protection after World War Two. The Brits rarely miss things like this.”
“But they didn’t have Medusa,” Hyde said. “Because Medusa was destroyed before it was calibrated, we have no way of knowing the depth of the pipe or exactly where it is on the map. It could be anywhere between the surface and ten thousand feet underground. It’s impossible to tell until we get a man on site, stake the area out, so to speak, and assay it for what treasures lie hidden.”
Despite himself, Mercer felt drawn to the possibilities. The pragmatic side of him knew the chances that what was on the picture was actually a kimberlite pipe were remote. And even if it were, it was likely it didn’t contain diamonds; many pipes had been found to be barren. Or its glittering cache had been washed away by erosion over the eons since the vent first reached the surface if, in fact, it ever had. A team could spend a lifetime scouring the wilderness and never find even a trace of the pipe.
On the other hand…
“You can guess why I wanted to talk with you now,” Hyde said. “I’ve got to warn you that the best we can give you from the pictures is a two-hundred-square-mile area for your search in some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet. But I’ve every confidence you can find the kimberlite pipe and prove whether or not there are diamonds present.”
Hyde paused while a waiter cleared their plates. “I also have to tell you that until independence, that part of Eritrea saw some of the fiercest fighting of the war and is littered with a quarter-million land mines courtesy of Ethiopia’s Soviet backers. And bandits from Sudan prey on the region regularly. Just a few months ago, I got word about an Austrian archaeologist who was killed, butchered really, very close to the epicenter of the search area.”
“Is this part of your sales pitch?” He should have been turned away by those two admissions, but Mercer’s interest increased. He’d talked with Harry about his need for a challenge that went beyond his normal job, and Hyde was laying a big one on him.
“No.” Hyde smiled disarmingly. “But I want to tell you everything I know. I don’t want there to be any secrets between us. This mission is not without its risks, and I want you to be fully apprised before you make a decision.”
“Why don’t you just turn this over to the Eritreans?” Mercer asked, circling a finger at the waiter. He didn’t know if Hyde was still thirsty, but he wanted another gimlet.
“Good question. And I can answer it very simply. Medusa does not, nor has it ever existed.”
Mercer looked at him, puzzled.
Hyde continued. “While the Air Force may have given me these pictures, they’re still considered secret. It took a lot of persuasion for them to allow me to bring you into this, but there was no way they would allow us to show them to a foreign power. My armed forces liaison could neither verify nor deny that other satellites with similar capabilities haven’t been launched since Medusa was lost. For purposes of national security, these pictures do not exist.”
Mercer waited for Hyde to continue, for he knew there was another motive. He had lived in and around official Washington long enough to know that ulterior motives were as common as tourists on the Mall.
“The other reason is strictly a policy decision from my office.” Hyde leaned forward conspiratorially. “What I want to do is present the government of Eritrea a fait accompli, not just a suspicion of fabulous wealth, but the exact location of the diamonds, potential worth, and proper means of extraction. I understand this kind of work is your stock and trade. I want you to go to Eritrea, find the kimberlite pipe, then figure out the value of the vent and just how to get the diamonds out of the earth.”
Mercer said nothing, but he was certain Prescott Hyde was lying to him. Maybe not directly, but lying through omission. He hadn’t liked the Undersecretary on the phone yesterday, and he liked him even less now.
The man from State continued, playing his final hand. “If you’re concerned about security, I can tell you that, while not really sanctioned, I did bring in someone from Eritrea’s embassy here in Washington. I didn’t go into many details, merely hinting at the possibility of a tremendous mineral find, testing the waters for possible opposition if we took the initiative ourselves. As you can guess, our plan was literally jumped on. While not getting full sanction from their government, I’ve managed to get you the next best thing.” Hyde paused and smiled. “If you’re willing to go, that is.”
“Finding the pipe, if it’s even possible, would take months. That’s a big chunk of time, and my time doesn’t come cheap. I’m going to need to think about this awhile. How about I give you an answer in a week or two?” Something was up here. Hyde still wasn’t telling him everything, and no matter how interesting the project, Mercer was getting a bad feeling. He saw his tablemate’s stricken expression. “Is that a problem?”
“No, no,” Hyde covered. “It’s just that I led my Eritrean associate to believe that this could be done quickly. Already plans are in motion, you see.”
Suddenly the restaurant became very uncomfortable. That prickly feeling was back with a vengeance. Mercer knew when he was about to be railroaded, and rather than wait to blow Hyde off later, he made his decision. He stood abruptly. “Then I guess I’m the wrong person for the job. Sorry. I’m familiar with how to handle national secrets, I know a few myself, so rest assured what was discussed here will go no further. Please don’t try to contact me again.”
He wasn’t particularly angry about being lied to. From a government employee, he almost expected it, but that didn’t mean he was going to waste any more time listening either. There was another agenda in place here, some shadowy plan that either Hyde wouldn’t discuss or couldn’t. Not that the reason really mattered to Mercer. He might be in a professional rut, but he knew Hyde’s proposal wasn’t the way out of it.
He didn’t pay any attention to the businessman at a table in the bar working from an open briefcase. The case hid a sophisticated unidirectional microphone. The entire conversation had been recorded.
College Park, Maryland
The tape deck had been placed in the center of the small, faux-wood dining table, the four chairs clustered around it occupied by the station chief and the three senior members of his team. All of them had listened to the recording just forty-five minutes after Mercer’s exit from the Willard Hotel.
“Comments?” the team leader, Ibriham, invited at last.
“Sounds like a bust,” the only woman present stated. “He’s not going to jump at the bait.”
“I agree,” said another.
“I was surprised by the level of detail Hyde went into with this one,” the team’s most experienced operative noted. “The last two he approached got far less from him than this Philip Mercer.”
“True,” the leader said. “However, neither of those engineers had Mercer’s reputat
ion. I read through his dossier from Archive. His academic and field qualifications are impeccable, and he has a substantial resume with American covert activities, first during the Gulf War and later during the Hawaii crisis and last year when the Alaska pipeline was threatened. I’m willing to bet that Hyde wanted Mercer all along, but had to try the other two first because he was unavailable.”
“What should we do?” the woman asked. “It’s obvious Dr. Mercer isn’t interested. Do we wait and see who is next on Hyde’s list?”
“I don’t think so,” Ibriham replied. “We need to take the initiative now. We’ve burned nearly a quarter of our budget already, and the operation hasn’t really started yet. We need to get more actively involved. Without results, we may soon be recalled. And this mission’s too important to let that happen.”
Already he had a plan in his mind.
“I believe Philip Mercer’s the man we want. Hyde failed to recruit him through normal means, so it’s up to us to get him with other, harsher tactics. We need to get leverage on this man, something to force him to Eritrea. Not only as Hyde’s agent, but ours as well. From the dossier, I know he has no living family, but we have to find a weakness we can exploit, some vulnerability. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that is off-limits. This takes our highest priority. Mercer must be in Eritrea within two weeks.”
“So you’re saying our operational perimeters are wide open?”
“Yes. Use any means necessary to compel him into accepting Hyde’s offer. We know that bribery won’t work—he is too wealthy—but there’s something out there that will coerce him. I need you to find it. And use it. Any more questions?” Ibriham received nothing but accepting looks. “Good. Get to work. I’ll stay on Archive, but I doubt I’ll turn up anything more.”
Ibriham dismissed the others and headed into their command room, closing the door behind him. He booted up the main computer terminal and logged on to the Internet, using the World Wide Web as a conduit to the secure Archive database. While his eyes were on the monitor, his mind was elsewhere.
Born into a family who had resided just outside the walls of Jerusalem for the past nine hundred years, he was no stranger to either tradition or sacrifice. In his youth, many of Ibriham’s friends had been Christians and Muslims, but his family was part of a small handful of Palestinian Jews who’d lived for generations in the Holy Land. For centuries that distinction made little difference. But then strife came. Since Israel’s creation, first Ibriham’s neighborhood and later his family had been shattered by divided loyalties, torn between clan and God. He, too, faced the personal dilemma. On one side was the fiery Palestinian in him, raging to see his people free from outsiders for the first time since Saladin’s conquest five hundred years earlier. On the other was the desire for a homeland for his displaced fellow Jews, a place where once and for all they would no longer fear pogroms and anti-Semitism.
Much like Americans during their Civil War, his family was ripped asunder. One of Ibriham’s uncles had been shot and killed by another during the Infitata, the Palestinian uprising that swept the West Bank and Gaza during the 1980s.
Ibriham had tried to stay out of it, but he, too, was swept into the violence. It happened after the murder of a favorite cousin, a young woman of promise who was slain by Israeli security forces for being at the wrong place at the wrong time following a PLO demonstration in 1989. Ibriham changed that day. He took up arms and began a new life of violence. Putting aside the morals that had shaped his youth, Ibriham deliberately became that which all abhorred. He became a terrorist, one driven by the perverse belief that, no matter what, the ends always justified the means.
“Ibriham?” Yosef stood at the door of the office. He was the most experienced member of their team, a veteran who had seen more action than any other team member, including Ibriham.
“Come in, Uncle,” Ibriham said. “And save me from thinking too much.”
Yosef sat so close to his nephew that their knees almost touched. “What were you thinking about?”
“Violence and its meaning.”
“It has no meaning, it’s a tool. Like the plow or the tractor or the AK-47.”
“I know, but I wonder about its nature.”
Yosef smiled indulgently. He’d trained Ibriham since the day after his niece’s death and yet the boy continued to ask questions. He was proud that Ibriham wasn’t one of the mindless drones that blindly followed orders. “It has no nature. Only people have that. And while the tenets of humanity call for peace, if we are threatened, violence becomes an option. Its nature then becomes ours. We use it for defense and it is virtuous, but if we use it to kill without thought, then our nature is reflected in its wastefulness.”
“And using violence against this Mercer?”
“Justified.” Yosef didn’t even pause to consider the question. “Especially when you hear what I have to tell you. I didn’t want to mention this in front of the others until I told you first. While Mercer was meeting with Hyde, I searched his house.” Yosef took Ibriham’s silence as acceptance of the unauthorized break-in. “I didn’t have enough time for a thorough job, but I learned enough to make me a bit leery.”
“Go on?”
“Mercer’s security system is good, not perfect, but it provides more than enough protection from all but the best trained.” Yosef smiled, thick wrinkles enveloping the corners of his dark, deep-set eyes. “I have to admit, I’m getting too old to scale staircases using the handrails alone.”
“And what did you find?”
“A cache of weapons in an office closet, a Heckler and Koch machine pistol, a Beretta 92 autoloader, ammunition, smoke and fragmentation grenades, night-vision gear, and several blocks of plastique. The stuff looks like it’s been in the bottom of a trunk for a while, but its presence is disturbing.”
“Souvenirs from some earlier mission for the U.S. government?”
“I assume, but if he kept the stuff, it means he would probably use it again.” A worried scowl crossed Yosef’s face. “These weapons, and Mercer’s doubtless familiarity with them, raises the stakes considerably when we consider what type of action is necessary to force him to Eritrea.”
“But it doesn’t stop us from doing it,” Ibriham agreed.
“I think we should proceed with a bit more caution than originally thought warranted. My instinct tells me that there is more to Philip Mercer than can be learned from a computer dossier.”
Ibriham sat silently absorbing this.
“And one more thing. Mercer’s Rolodex contains the direct office and home phone numbers of Richard Henna, the head of the FBI. I think their relationship has a personal element stemming from some past mission.”
This revelation rocked Ibriham. “There is nothing I can do about that now. We must proceed. Cautiously, yes, but this mission must go on.” His voice intensified as the image of their goal flashed in his mind. “It’s there, Uncle, waiting in the African desert, buried for thousands of years and we will get it. A symbol for our people all over the world, a link to God that will make believers out of everyone. Even if he is friends with Henna, do you really think Mercer will stand in our way?”
Yosef was pleased to see the passion in his nephew’s eyes. This would be his last mission. He’d only agreed to come in order to help Ibriham on his first command. None of the others even knew they were related. “No, he won’t.”
Arlington, Virginia
Despite what he’d said to Hyde, Mercer couldn’t leave this one alone. No sooner had he gotten home than he found himself at his desk poring through reference books and the volumes of information available on the Internet. Darkness settled heavily, leaving the city washed by the pink glow of streetlamps, but the passage of day to night had gone unnoticed. While many would find such research work tedious, Mercer enjoyed it. Searching for one fact invariably led to countless other avenues of research, and a tug at any of these steered him to even more. It was easy to become lost in such a deluge of information, but
Mercer was able to distill what he wanted, his mind sifting through mountains of useless data for the few elements he found important. It was a gift that he exploited to its fullest.
His final report to Yukon Coal lay forgotten on his word processor as he tore through the material searching for a trace of validity in what Prescott Hyde described existed in northern Eritrea.
He turned up nothing. The geology of the region was all wrong for a kimberlite pipe. Eritrea stood at an edge of the Great Rift Valley, and while there had been active volcanism in the region millions of years ago, there was no indication that diamonds were present. None of a diamond’s tracer elements had been found, nor had there been any recorded discoveries of alluvial stones, those washed away from a vent by rivers or streams. Nothing he could find pointed to even a hint that Eritrea was the home of a potential strike.
But those satellite pictures suggested otherwise. Mercer could not deny that the Medusa pictures of Eritrea looked remarkably like the computer projections of the environs around Kimberley. There might be hundreds of reasons for this similarity, most notably an error in the modeling, but he could not let go the possibility that Hyde was right, that an unknown kimberlite pipe lay out there waiting to be discovered.
He was shocked by how much he wanted it to be true. He’d never been to Eritrea, knew no Eritreans, but he wanted this for them badly. He wanted it for himself too. There hadn’t been a kimberlite pipe discovered in more than a decade, and he wanted to be the one who found the next. He admitted that his reasons might be more selfish than charitable, but if he could find diamonds, everyone would win.
Mercer spent the rest of the day running down possible leads, but all the evidence pointed to a mistake on Hyde’s part. Yet, against all of his scientific training, he found himself searching for evidence to fit Hyde’s theory rather than allowing a hypothesis to develop out of the accumulated facts. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Hyde was somehow right.