Vulcan's Forge (44 page)

“Positive.”

“I wonder?” Mercer mused, and then passed out.

M
ercer sat at the back corner booth of Tiny’s and slowly swirled his vodka gimlet so the cubes of ice clicked discreetly. He took a swallow and placed the glass back on the scarred tabletop. His movements were slow, deliberate. It had been three weeks since Eddie Rice had ditched his Sea King into the Pacific nearly a hundred miles from Hawaii and his body was still stiff and battered. Mercer fractured a leg during the impact and Eddie had given himself a severe concussion and turned his face into a vermillion patchwork of bruises and lacerations. The chopper pilot was still bedridden at the Pearl Harbor Naval Hospital. Valery Borodin wasn’t so much as scratched during the crash.

He swiveled his head and surveyed the room. Tiny was out of sight behind the bar, searching for something or other. There were four or five other patrons, workers from the local trucking firm. Looking at them, Mercer felt vaguely conspicuous not sporting a baseball cap or at least a cigarette. Umber light slashed through the windows as the sun dropped beneath the smoggy horizon.

Mercer had been back in Washington just long enough to jam a clear pin into Hawaii on the map at home, call Dick Henna to set up this meeting at Tiny’s, and give himself a decent buzz.

He drained the last of his drink and called to Tiny for another. The three gimlets already wending their way through his body were dulling the pain in his bruised joints.

Richard Henna came through the front door just as Tiny set the new drink in front of Mercer. Henna wore a dark suit and tie, his eyes hidden by the dark glasses seen on all FBI agents in the movies. Mercer stood slowly, supporting himself with one hand on the table, as Henna crossed the room to his booth.

“I see you’re alive if not well.” Henna shook his hand and the two men sat.

Henna removed his glasses and glanced around the dingy room. His expression matched one Mercer had made once in a public toilet in Istanbul.

“Lovely place you have here,” Henna said sarcastically.

“It has its charms.” Mercer grinned. “They water down the beer with bourbon.”

“I’ll stick to Scotch.”

“Tiny, Scotch and . . .” He looked at Henna, cocking an eyebrow.

“Neat.”

“Scotch and Scotch.”

“So where have you been since the navy fished you out?”

The explosions that sunk the
John Dory
had been heard by the sonar aboard the USS
Jacksonville
, the
Los Angeles
-class attack submarine attached to the
Kitty Hawk
battle group. She was the vessel poised to launch a nuclear-tipped Tomahawk cruise missile at the rising volcano. The sub raced to investigate the blasts and in the process found the sinking Sea King and three passengers. After an hour of argument with the captain, radio communication with the commander of the Pacific fleet, and finally intervention by Admiral Morrison, the
Jacksonville
abandoned her mission and headed for Hawaii.

“I stayed in Hawaii until just this afternoon.”

“A little rest and relaxation?”

“More like recovery and research.”

Henna thought better than to press for Mercer’s meaning. “How are you feeling?”

“Not bad. The cast on my leg came off yesterday and my ribs are okay as long as I don’t try to sing opera.”

Henna smiled, then thanked Tiny as his drink came. “I see how this place gets its name.”

“He used to be a jockey,” Mercer pointed out. “So what’s been happening in Hawaii?”

“You were there, you should know better than me.”

“No, I was up north on Kauai near a town called Hanalei, cut off from just about everybody and everything. The only news I heard was on the flight from L.A. to Washington, and even then I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“Well, let me fill you in a little bit.” Henna shrugged out of his jacket and laid it next to him on the booth. “The state, hell the whole nation, was stunned when we told them exactly what had happened. The President decided to come clean on the whole affair from Ohnishi to Kerikov to the bikinium. Valery Borodin was at the press conference at Pearl Harbor to back him up. The CIA found some old photographs of Evad Lurbud to match his corpse found at Kenji’s estate. Of course we needed two undertakers to make his body look human again after what he’d been through.

“The Russians deny all knowledge of the operation code-named Vulcan’s Forge, but admitted that Ivan Kerikov was known for operating outside government sanction.”

“You said ‘was known.’ Is he dead?”

“No, he’s vanished. He was in Thailand, then went to Switzerland, but from there, no one knows. He simply disappeared. The Russians are looking for him now, as well as the CIA and Interpol. He’ll turn up.”

“Don’t count on it. If he’s cagey enough to nearly succeed with an operation like this, he can easily stay lost too.”

“Maybe you’re right, I don’t know.” Henna nodded slowly. “Remember, though, there’s also a group of very pissed-off Koreans after him.”

“Have you been able to find out who was behind the Korean angle?”

“We got nothing from the bodies at Ohnishi’s house, but the guy found near the gardener’s shed at Kenji’s was the grandson of Way Hue Dong, one of the seven richest men in the world. To further link him to what happened, the day after you were rescued, a small flotilla of ships, one of them specially designed for high-temperature dredging and all owned by one of Way’s companies, arrived at the volcano site. You better believe they were surprised to see the U.S. Navy already there with a carrier and a half-dozen support ships. Way’s already lodged a formal complaint with the World Court at The Hague, but he doesn’t stand a chance of taking the bikinium from us.

“As for Hawaii itself—there was one more night of rioting after your raid, but that was it. Without the Koreans or Ohnishi to act as agitators, the mobs lost their will to fight and pretty much just went home. Hawaii’s senators have both resigned, claiming health problems, but it was either that or face prosecution for treason. The President has pardoned all others involved, and a special task force has been set up to deal with any legitimate claims by the Hawaiians. He felt it best to sweep the violence under the rug rather than make the nation relive it for months in the courts. In all, about three hundred people died during the riots.

“The President’s going to ramrod some funding through Congress to try to end a lot of the racial tension in this country—education programs, urban aid, that sort of thing. The Los Angeles riots and now this recent crisis have finally brought people to their senses. The old adage, ‘United we stand, divided we fall,’ almost came true, and it’s scared enough people who want to really do something about it. With the current conciliatory mood in Congress, he’ll get all the funding he needs.”

Mercer interrupted. “You can’t change people’s opinions with new laws and federal spending.”

“Thirty years ago doctors were advertising the health benefits of cigarettes,” Henna countered.

“Touché.”

“It will take some time but at least we are finally on the right track. No one wants the type of ethnic strife that’s tearing apart central Europe and the old Soviet republics. We’ve maintained racial diversity for two hundred years and we’re not going to let it slip away now. America is famous for pulling through a crisis just as things reach bottom, and we’ll do it again.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Henna took a swig of his drink. “Valery Borodin is with our own people at the volcano, assaying the parts of it now above the surface to see where to begin mining the bikinium. I believe Dr. Talbot is with him.”

“She is. As a favor to me, the President had her flown out there two weeks ago. I spoke to her on the phone yesterday, just before my flight back to Washington. She and Valery have rekindled the passion they once felt. Already they’re talking marriage.”

Henna smirked. “Kind of funny, you were the hero in all of this. I thought it was customary for the hero to get the girl at the end.”

“When they make the television mini-series, I’ll make sure they change the ending,” Mercer replied offhandedly.

“Well, don’t think you’re going to come out of this completely empty-handed.” Henna fished a set of keys from his pocket and tossed them to Mercer.

“What are these?”

“The keys to a new, black SJX Jaguar convertible with tan interior, cellular phone, CD player, and an aftermarket turbo charger. It was the least we could do.”

Mercer looked at the keys and gave Henna a sardonic smile. “After getting me shot at a few dozen times, nearly smeared against a train, almost drowned, beaten up more than once, crashed into the ocean, and within a few minutes of being nuked, you’re right, buying me a new car
is
the very least you could do.”

Henna knew by Mercer’s tone that he wasn’t really angry and gave a low chuckle. “The car’s parked in front of your house. There are two things I want to know: how did you know to go to Kenji’s house rather than Ohnishi’s? And how in the hell did you pinpoint the
John Dory
when the experts at NSA couldn’t find a damn thing?”

Mercer smiled slyly. “Finding the
John Dory
was easy. Those infrared photos showed a classic shield volcano, a number of small vents surrounding a central magma outlet. Normally those smaller vents are located on the side of the volcano and therefore under deeper water. Well, on all of the photos, there was a white hot signature nearly a mile from the central vent. At that distance, the thermal image would be yellow or orange, cooler because of the water depth. That white dot couldn’t have been a natural vent; it had to be something man-made, like the nuclear reactor aboard the
John Dory
as she rode near the surface.”

Henna was impressed. “And what about Kenji?”

“That was a hunch really, but I felt confident. I worked for Ohnishi as a consultant a few years ago in Tennessee. Ohnishi Minerals was interested in buying the second mining rights to some disused property owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority. Second mining is when the coal pillars that support the mine tunnels are ripped down to their very weakest tolerances. It’s dangerous work and cave-ins occur frequently, but the profit margin is astronomical if the mines can be bought cheap enough.

“The TVA didn’t want the old mines stripped the usual way, citing all sorts of possible insurance liabilities. I was brought in at the TVA’s request because there had never been a cave-in on any of the second mining operations I’d worked on. TVA was still reluctant to sell after they read my geomechanic report, but Ohnishi Minerals managed to end run them. Ohnishi bought off officials, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to some high-power lawyers, and in the end opened his own bogus insurance company to underwrite TVA’s liability.

“What he did was illegal to a degree, but American mining laws are gray enough that he got away with it. At the time the vice president in charge of Ohnishi Minerals was a guy I’d gone through the doctoral program at Penn State with, Daniel Tanaka. When his crew was reopening the mine, I met with him and explained that I had faked some of the figures, underestimating the strength of the coal pillars. I had rightly guessed that Ohnishi would order him to pull out more coal than I said could be safely removed. We both knew that I’d saved the lives of his men, so he owed me a favor. I called him just before I went to Hawaii and he told me confidentially that Ohnishi himself had no knowledge of the details of the transaction when they had acquired the mining rights. Anything that could be construed as illegal or corrupt was handled by his aide, Kenji.

“I assumed that when Ohnishi was approached by Ivan Kerikov concerning the bikinium, he’d ordered Kenji to handle any of the details. Therefore Kenji was the real linchpin, not his boss. It wasn’t until I reached Kenji’s estate that I found out the Koreans had gotten to Kenji too. He was the perfect agent-provocateur, working all sides. Koreans and Ohnishi against the middle, Ivan Kerikov.

“As near as I can figure the cycle of double-cross, Kenji screwed Ohnishi with the help of the Koreans while Ohnishi screwed Kerikov, who’d already sold him out to the same Koreans. Meanwhile those Koreans are screwing Kerikov right back by forming a partnership with Kenji. I think I have that right, but I’m not sure. The only thing that matters is that Ohnishi and Kenji are dead, Kerikov’s in hiding, and the wily Koreans have nothing to show for their effort.”

“That sounds about the same way we figured it, too,” Henna agreed.

Harry White staggered into the bar, a nearly spent cigarette clinging to his lower lip. He sat at the bar, hunching over in what he and Mercer referred to as “the bar slouch,” and took a swig of the Jack and Ginger Tiny had already poured for him.

“It’s hard to believe this all started over forty years ago with something as insignificant as the sinking of an ore carrier.”

“Not so insignificant if you were on that ship,” Mercer replied, still staring at Harry.

“You know what I mean. The crew of the
Grandam Phoenix
died without ever knowing that they were the beginning of a conspiracy that nearly tore this nation apart.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Mercer said quietly, then called to Harry, “What, I come back from a trip and no sarcasm from you?”

Harry heaved himself from his stool and started toward the booth. “I see you talking to a guy in a suit, I figure the IRS has finally nailed you for tax fraud. I thought it best to stay away.”

Mercer laughed as Harry slid into the booth next to Henna.

“Richard Henna, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Mercer said, drawing out each syllable, “I would like you to meet Ralph Michael Linc, former captain of the ore carrier
Grandam Phoenix
.”

For the rest of his life, Mercer would never again see such a look of incredulity as those on the faces of Henna and Harry. Their jaws had both dropped noticeably and they regarded Mercer with blank, expressionless eyes. Had he said he was the second coming of Jesus Christ, the reaction would have been more mundane.