Vulcan's Forge

by Jack Du Brul

  Reclaiming his jacket, Mercer retraced his steps to the stairway and cautiously made his way to the ground floor.

  The lobby of the building also occupied an entire floor. The waiting area was furnished with several tasteful couches, a large Turkish carpet, and an expansive reception desk. The walls were painted a calming salmon color and the prints which lined them were all of ships. A few dim lights kept the room more in shadow than light.

  A figure leaned against the front doorframe, a holster cocked off one hip. For a moment, Mercer wondered if he could kill a man from behind, without warning.

  As if alerted by some primal instinct, the guard whirled around, drawing his pistol and firing in one continuous motion. The bullet grazed Mercer’s pantleg as he dove out of the way. Mercer hit the floor rolling as bullets gouged the marble floor near his head and torso. He managed to duck behind the reception counter, and when he looked back to see where the guard had gone, another round slammed into the wood, driving splinters deep into his jaw and right cheek.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, wiping blood from his face.

  Suddenly, the lights went out in the lobby.

  Mercer rolled silently from behind the counter, hugging one of the walls. His plan was to crawl to the light switch and flip it back on, hopefully using the surprise to target his opponent. Halfway to the switch, he bumped into the guard’s leg.

  Neither man had anticipated the contact, so neither had an advantage. Mercer reared back, then sprang forward like an all-pro lineman playing in the Super Bowl, his shoulder connecting with the guard’s knee. The joint failed and the guard fell forward, but he still had time to whip his pistol at Mercer’s head, shearing skin from his already bleeding cheek. Mercer smashed a fist into the guard’s thigh, paralyzing the leg momentarily and giving himself time to bring up the Hi-Power.

  The guard kicked out with his good leg and sent Mercer’s pistol skittering across the marbled floor. Mercer twisted away from the guard who was already trying to regain his feet. The room was too dark to see where the pistol wound up, so Mercer ignored it and concentrated on his opponent. He leapt to his feet and charged again, catching the guard low in the stomach and forcing the breath out of him in a loud whoosh. The guard backpedaled as Mercer continued to push him but twisted aside just before they hit the sofas. Mercer flew over one of them and crashed to the floor, wrenching his shoulder painfully.

  There was a brief spark of muzzle flash as the guard fired his silenced pistol at Mercer, but the shot was several feet off target. Mercer used the flash to locate the other man in the darkness and leapt at him, but missed. The guard had moved. Mercer hit the floor and rolled twice, coming up hard against another wall. It was cat and mouse again. Neither man could see the other in the gloom and neither could hear the other over his own labored breathing. Mercer edged forward, feeling along the floor, and found his pistol. The cool steel was a needed reassurance.

  Just then the lights snapped back on in full brilliance. The nerves and muscles that controlled Mercer’s pupils reacted just the barest fraction of a second faster than the assassin’s. While the other man was squinting through nearly closed eyes, disoriented by the glare, Mercer’s gaze was sweeping the room. Tish stood next to the bank of light switches, one hand still on the rheostat, the other holding the bulky night-vision goggles. The guard was twenty feet away, peering off to Mercer’s left. Mercer didn’t take the time to properly aim. He fired from the hip, his first two shots going wide but his next six catching the guard squarely, pounding his torso into an unrecognizable mess.

  Mercer moved over to Tish and took the goggles from her slack hand. “Tish.” Her eyes swiveled to his. “I told you to wait upstairs. Please, from now on, never listen to me again, okay?”

  He slid his arms around her and her body eased into his embrace. He calmly stroked her hair for a moment. “Now we’re even. I saved your life and you just saved mine. Thank you.”

  “I waited until you had your gun and he was turned away from you,” she replied after a moment.

  They went back up to the third floor, dousing all the lights again and relying on Mercer’s goggles to get them to the executive offices. Quickly scanning the names on the doors, they found the locked door of the highest ranking employee, a vice president. Mercer smirked at the man’s name: Russo.

  “Nice touch,” he commented.

  “If they are Russian,” Tish replied.

  “To have guards like those two, they’re something.”

  It took Mercer five frustrating minutes to pick the lock. Although he remembered the technique from his CIA training, theory and practice were two entirely different things. One of Hat’s men could have done it in ten seconds.

  The office was paneled in rich oak, the carpet was soft under their feet. A window behind the broad desk looked out onto Eleventh Avenue. Mercer shut the thick drapes and turned on the desk lamp. Pictures of the OF&C fleet adorned the walls. David Saulman in Miami had been right. Each ship had a different bunch of flowers painted on the funnels: April Lilac, September Laurel, December Iris, and a score of others. There was a fish tank against one wall, and though it was large it only contained a single fish.

  Mercer turned to the four squat filing cabinets and opened a drawer at random. He started leafing through the folders within.

  “Pick a drawer, any drawer,” he said lightly.

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Anything that might jog your memory. There could be something here that you may remember from when you were rescued, a name, anything.”

  Tish pointed to a picture on the wall. “That’s the ship that rescued me, I think.”

  Mercer looked at the picture and recognized the September Laurel as she calmly plied some distant sea.

  “That may be the ship that reported finding you, but I don’t think it’s the ship that pulled you from the water. You remembered a black circle and a yellow dot on the funnel, not a bunch of flowers. Besides, Dave Saulman told me that her crew are mostly Italians, not Russians.”

  “I could have been wrong about hearing Russian.”

  “Even if you are, it’s obvious that something is going on here. Let’s just go through the files and see if anything turns up.”

  For the next half hour, Mercer and Tish pored through the files without turning up anything conclusive. The only odd thing was a loose file tab labeled “John Dory” lying on the bottom of the drawer containing the ownership papers of the OF&C ships. There was no file to go along with the tiny scrap of paper. Because all OF&C vessels were named after a month and a flower, Mercer guessed that John Dory was the name of a captain or ship’s officer employed by OF&C.

  “This has been a complete waste of time, hasn’t it?” There was hopelessness in Tish’s voice.

  “I know I’m right. There has to be something here that we haven’t seen,” Mercer persisted. “But we have to get out of here.”

  “Did you kill those guards without a reason?”

  Mercer looked up from the file. It was a question he did not want to address. Was there a chance he was wrong about OF&C’s involvement?

  “No, we didn’t, and I’ll tell you why. Look around this office. There’s nothing personal anywhere, no photos, no diplomas, nothing. This may be a legitimate shipping line to some, but to the man who occupies this office, shipping is not his career.” Mercer walked to the desk and scanned the address file. “There isn’t one ship broker’s number in here, not one chandler. Christ, he doesn’t even have the private numbers of his captains.”

  “He could be just a figurehead.”

  “He is, don’t you get it? Most shipping lines are built by individuals and based on personal contacts. I’m willing to bet this Greg Russo wouldn’t know a hawsepipe from a hole in the wall. Whoever occupies this office has a job to do, but it has nothing to do with shipping.”

  “Hold it right there,” a male voice commanded.

  Mercer froze, his pulse pounding. Hat’s son had said o
nly two men had entered the building, and they had already been eliminated. Whose was the voice behind them?

  “Step away from the desk and turn around slowly.” The command was punctuated with the cocking of a revolver.

  An overweight security guard stood in the doorway. He was a frightened rent-a-cop with a pale, jowled face and a trembling grip on his weapon.

  “You got a lot to answer for. Keep your hands where I can see them. Move toward the fish tank.”

  Mercer backed away from the desk, Tish right beside him. She hadn’t screamed when the guard entered and seemed in control. Mercer wished that he felt as calm as she appeared. The guard had scared the hell out of him.

  Greg Russo must have called in additional security after Cap had left his post across the street. Mercer had no way of knowing if more men were scouring the building. The guard crossed to the desk, his eyes and gun never straying from Mercer. With his free hand he fumbled for the telephone. Mercer’s chance was coming.

  The instant the guard glanced down at the phone, Mercer launched himself.

  Time slowed to a crawl. Mercer’s senses were heightened so that he could see the individual hairs on the guard’s face, smell the nervous sweat of the man, and hear his labored breathing. Mercer flew across the room, focusing on the hand holding the revolver, the rings of fat around the man’s wrist, the knuckles tightening around the trigger. The hammer began to drop and Mercer’s fingers were still inches away from their mark.

  The gun discharged just as Mercer grabbed the guard’s wrist. The sound was like a burst of thunder in the small office. Cordite smoke burned Mercer’s eyes, blinding him. Next to Tish, the large fish tank exploded, water, gravel, and the fish cascading to the carpet in a frothing wave.

  The recoil lifted the gun high over the guard’s head so that Mercer’s shoulder barreled into the guard’s unprotected flank. Mercer could feel the man’s ribs snap as he smashed into them. The guard was thrown across the desk, the gun spinning from his hand. He fell against a wall, moaning.

  Mercer recovered the revolver, aiming it at the fallen guard, but did not pull the trigger. “You’re not with those others, you don’t have to die.” Mercer lowered the revolver and turned to Tish. “Are you all right?”

  “Shaken, but not stirred.”

  “We’ve got to get out of here—someone must have heard this gun go off.”

  Mercer held out his hand and Tish came toward him and took it in hers. He stared at the dying fish for a moment as it flopped on the soaked carpet and the sight triggered a vague memory. “Benoit Charleteaux,” he mumbled.

  “What?” Tish asked as they started cautiously back to the fourth floor and the ladder outside.

  “Another clue.” Mercer’s muted voice sounded triumphant.

  Potomac, Maryland

  Richard Henna was just getting back into bed after a late-night foray into the kitchen when the bedside phone rang. He grabbed the handset before the second ring. His wife, a twenty-five-year veteran of middle-of-the-night calls, didn’t even stir.

  “Henna.”

  “Dick, it’s Marge.” Margaret Doyle was a deputy director of the bureau and Dick Henna’s oldest and best friend. She didn’t bother apologizing for waking him. “Philip Mercer has left the Washington area.”

  “How?” Henna snapped.

  “By train. The agents we had watching Union Station never saw him because he boarded the Metroliner at New Carolton. We just found out through his credit card. He purchased two one-way tickets for New York from the conductor on the train.”

  “Christ.”

  “What is it, dear?” Fay mumbled in her sleep.

  He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “Nothing, hon,” then spoke softly but clearly into the phone. “All right, Marge, call the New York office, have them put a few men at Penn Station in case he tries to return by train. Fax them the picture of Mercer we got from the U.S. Geological Survey.”

  “I’ve already made the calls.”

  “If they pick him up, I want to be notified right away. Then I want him and Tish Talbot flown immediately to Andrews Air Force Base.”

  “Should we cancel the surveillance on his house?”

  “No, I’m willing to bet he’ll get by us again. Call me back if there are any new developments.”

  “Sorry about this, Dick.”

  “Not your fault. I think we’ve all underestimated Mercer.”

  Henna hung up the phone and slipped into a bathrobe. He knew he would get no more sleep this night. He went downstairs, made a cup of coffee, and sipped it in the darkened kitchen for a few minutes before crossing through the large federal-style house to his study. He turned on his desk lamp, groaning as the light flashed into his eyes.

  He dialed the combination of the Chubb safe behind his desk and removed a single file. The file, headed “Antebellum,” recorded Henna’s personal observations about events since the letter from Ohnishi came to his attention.

  He read his own handwriting slowly, mostly because it was too sloppy to scan. The first page was a bare chronology. Henna now added Mercer and Talbot’s trip to New York at the bottom of the list.

  On a clean sheet of paper, he began drawing flow charts, tying events into each other. In minutes, he had created an indecipherable series of lines, circles, and swirls. The only thing he knew for certain was that Mercer had gone to New York in response to the information he had received from the law offices of David Saulman.

  He reread the information that Mercer had requested from Saulman, obtained by the FBI through a Dade County judge’s court order. Saulman’s office had grudgingly turned over a few lists of ships’ names and some basic information on Ocean Freight and Cargo.

  This time he saw it—the ship that rescued Tish Talbot was owned by OF&C, whose offices were in Manhattan. Henna spilled his coffee as he grabbed for the phone. Ignoring the mess, he dialed the New York FBI office.

  “Federal Bureau of Investigations,” a tired voice answered the phone.

  Without preamble, Henna gave his personal recognition code to the night duty officer, establishing his identity without question. In situations like this, the code numbers saved valuable minutes needed when a person high up in the organization wanted to speak with someone out in the field. Henna had heard a similar system was used by many of the crime syndicates the FBI fought. Henna asked to speak with Special Agent Frank Little.

  “I’m sorry, Agent Little is on the day shift, may I be of assistance? This is Agent Scofield.”

  “Who else is there now?” Henna needed to speak with someone he knew personally, someone who wouldn’t want to use this phone call for some favor in the future.

  “I’m sure, sir, that I can be of some . . .”

  Henna cut the man off. “Just tell me who else is there.”

  “Agent Morton is here and so is—” Pete Morton had been a rookie agent when Henna was station chief in New York six years earlier.

  “Great, let me talk to him.”

  A moment later, “Morton.”

  “Pete, this is Dick Henna in Washington.”

  “Jesus.” Henna could almost hear the man spring to his feet.

  “Relax. I need a favor.”

  “Yes, sure, anything, Mr. Henna.”

  “Get on the horn to one of your contacts in the NYPD. I want to know if there was any trouble near Eleventh Street tonight.”

  “I don’t see how—”

  “Pete, just do it, all right.” Henna remembered that Morton used to ask a million questions about everything. “Call me at this number when you’re done,” Henna gave him his home number, “and then lose the number.” He hung up.

  He skipped through the file in front of him until he came to Philip Mercer’s dossier, compiled by the CIA in 1990. Mercer had been born in the Belgian Congo. His father was an American mining engineer employed by Mines Belgique, a firm mining diamonds from the rich Katanga province. His mother was a Belgian fashion model. They had met during a photo shoot in L
eopoldville, the capital of the Congo. Philip was their only child. Both parents had been killed during an insurrection in Rwanda in 1964; the details of their deaths were sketchy.

  Mercer was raised by his paternal grandparents in Barre, Vermont. His grandfather worked in a granite quarry and his grandmother was a homemaker. He graduated top of his class in high school and cum laude from Penn State with a degree in geology. He then went to the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, again graduating near the top of his class. After four additional years of schooling at Penn State while doing contract work for various coal mines around western Pennsylvania, he received his Ph.D. in geology. His thesis on metamorphic rock dynamics as it pertains to quarry mining was still supplemental reading for graduate students at Penn State.

  After completing his doctorate he went to work for the U.S. Geological Survey, but lasted there only two years. Interviews with coworkers from that time showed that Mercer was simply unchallenged by the work the USGS had given him.

  Henna noted that Mercer’s case was another example of the government’s inability to retain top minds in whatever field. He couldn’t count the number of agents he had known who left to work for private security firms. It wasn’t just the pay or the benefits that caused people to leave, government work simply drained people of their spirit.

  After the USGS, Mercer went into business for himself assaying mining properties for investment firms eager to know potential returns before committing huge amounts of money. He built a reputation quickly within the industry. After just a few years, two weeks of his time cost up to fifty thousand dollars plus, in some cases, bonuses in the form of stock if he believed the property to be extremely valuable. The year that the CIA did the background check, Mercer’s income, as reported to the IRS, was slightly over three quarters of a million dollars. The CIA had also contacted the U.S. Customs Service, who listed thirty overseas trips since his latest passport was issued.