“I knew I should have gone on another diving trip rather than stay home and take your abuse—” Mercer paused. He heard a strange sound that seemed to be climbing the spiral staircase. A sort of click, click, shuffle, wheeze.
The clicking stopped while the wheezing continued. It sounded like something had reached the top of the wooden stairs and was moving slowly across the carpet in the library. Mercer looked to Harry. Harry swiveled to look through the French doors that separated the bar from the reading room.
“Come on, boy,” he rasped. “It’s okay.”
A moment later, Mercer’s eyes widened. “What the hell is that?”
“A dog, for Christ’s sake. What do you think it is?”
“If I had to guess I’d say an overstuffed sausage.”
The basset hound seemed to understand he was the center of attention. His tail gave a feeble wag before drooping back to the floor. He was as long and round as an old canister vacuum cleaner and so bowlegged his belly rubbed the floor. His frayed ears dragged like neglected laundry as he tottered into the room. The old hound’s bloodshot eyes complemented the gray fur on his muzzle and the silver string of drool coming from his slack lips. Mercer put the dog’s age somewhere between fifteen and fifty. “They say that people look like their pets, Harry. That poor thing’s gonna have to get a lot uglier if you two are gonna be twins. Where did you get him?”
“He was rooting in the Dumpster behind Tiny’s.” Tiny’s was a neighborhood bar run by a former jockey, Paul Gordon. Harry was as much a fixture there as the horse-racing pictures on the walls. “No tags, no collar. Tiny wanted to call the Humane Society, but I figured no one was going to adopt him so I took him home. That was just after you left for Canada.”
“My God. A kind gesture. From you?”
“Up yours,” Harry growled, but couldn’t hide his self-satisfaction.
“Have you named him?” The dog heaved himself onto one of the leather sofas.
“ ’Cause the damned thing never wants to go for a walk, I call him Drag.”
The basset heard his name, let loose a long bawl and collapsed in exhaustion. He was snoring in an instant.
Mercer smiled. Harry had spent a great many nights passed out on the very same couch. “You two are more alike than I first realized.”
“At least I still have my balls.”
“Even if you don’t need them,” Mercer teased.
Harry downed the last of his drink and lit a fresh cigarette. “Viagra, baby. Viagra.”
Shuddering at the image that conjured, Mercer mixed Harry another whiskey. Mercer had been awake for less than an hour, but with nothing to do for the next five days, he poured himself a vodka gimlet and turned on the commercial air purifier. The cigarette smoke was already becoming a noxious cloud.
“You sure you don’t want to go diving or something?”
“I’m sticking around,” Mercer replied cautiously. Harry’s tone put him on alert.
“In that case, I guess I have to invite you to the party I’m throwing here on Saturday.”
“Mighty nice of you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Harry demurred. “Least I can do.”
An hour later, Harry was on his fourth drink and Mercer his second when Harry hauled himself to his feet. “If I’ve got to pump ship, I’m sure Drag does too.” He had the dog’s leash in his jacket pocket. He clipped it to Drag’s collar and tugged gently to wake him. The basset snored on. “Come on, you mangy beast.”
Drag’s skin twitched like a horse shooing flies and he woofed in annoyance. It took Harry a minute to coax him down the stairs. Mercer went to the library balcony to watch the tug-of-war. True to his name, Drag slid onto his belly when he reached the tiled foyer, forcing Harry to pull him by his leash until he realized stubbornness wouldn’t get him out of the walk.
Harry looked up. “Told you so.”
The doorbell rang an instant before his hand touched the knob.
The two men standing on the doorstep were dressed in off-the-rack suits that screamed government employee. Their muscular builds, overly short hair, and expressionless faces narrowed the field to law enforcement or military. Startled that the door had opened so quickly, both reached inside their jackets. They stopped from drawing their concealed weapons a second before the pistols were shown, but there was no disguising what they’d almost done.
“Are you Dr. Philip Mercer?” The taller of the two men made it sound like an accusation.
“Yes, I am,” Harry replied automatically.
The shorter of the pair stepped closer, pushing Harry back a couple paces. He was a few years older than his partner and appeared to be the leader. He looked Harry in the eye so there could be no misunderstanding when he said, “Omega ninety-nine temple. Counter?”
Harry had been a merchant-marine officer during World War Two and recognized a code when he heard one. He said the first thing that came to mind. “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.”
Standing above them, Mercer hadn’t heard the exchange nor did he see the play of confusion turning to anger. He had no idea who the men were or what they wanted. Didn’t particularly care either. He was on vacation. And then Harry called up to him, “Does omega ninety-nine temple mean anything to you?”
The jolt of adrenaline hit like an electric shock. He’d been given the recognition code at a White House briefing three months earlier by the deputy national security advisor, Admiral Ira Lasko, USN (ret.). These men were Secret Service agents, doubtlessly part of the president’s detail. The counter code flashed in his mind. He yelled down, “Caravan eleven solstice.”
The lead agent shot a furious glance up to where Mercer stood above them. “You’re Mercer?”
“Yes.”
Although Mercer didn’t know the specifics, he knew why the agents were here and it was his own fault. It had to do with his past accomplishments.
Long ago Mercer had realized there were two ways to look at the distribution of the earth’s mineral wealth. Either Mother Nature had deliberately hidden her treasures in some of the world’s most turbulent political hot spots, which seemed rather unlikely, or the presence of mineral reserves turned indigenous people on each other in order to control the resources. Mercer knew it was the latter. He’d seen it firsthand too many times not to.
The illicit diamond trade and the need to control the gem-producing regions funded nearly all of Africa’s recent civil wars. Colombia’s rebel groups, FARC and others, had been fighting for thirty years, buying their weapons with illegally mined emeralds. And the Middle East wouldn’t be able to export its particular brand of aggressive fundamentalism without the oil deposits to pay for it. It came as no surprise to him that the increased levels of rebel activity in Indonesia came shortly after the opening of an enormous gold mine on the island of Irian Jaya.
The truth of it all was that wealth generated greed in some and jealousy in others and eventually the two sides would fight for dominance. The banners they rallied behind, the causes they claimed, were contrived disguises to hide the ugly truth of this most basic of human conflicts.
Mercer’s career had embroiled him in all of it: the terror, the massacres, the unbelievable savagery. He’d been in the middle of a half dozen low-grade wars, ethnic conflicts, and revolutionary coups. It wasn’t in his nature to remain passive in situations like that, or to turn tail as many foreign workers tended to do. Often, Mercer stayed behind and through his direct involvement had been instrumental in saving countless lives.