Arlington, Virginia
“I have to call my boss at NEST,” Cali said at once. “We have a national emergency on our hands.”
“In due time,” Mercer cautioned. “I want us to get everything together first. Figure out what we know and determine what we need to find out. Once we’re ready, you can present it to your nuclear response team while I’ll go to Ira Lasko at the White House.”
Cali looked uncertain.
“Besides,” he went on, “it’s almost midnight. We should be able to put a report together by morning if we work through the night.”
She relented. “Okay.”
“Harry?”
“What the hell,” the old man said. “I’ll get plenty of rest when the big sleep comes.”
“Thanks, I owe you a favor.”
“Actually you owe me twenty thousand favors, but who’s counting?” He set to work on Chester Bowie’s thirty-page letter to Albert Einstein.
Mercer made a less sadistic pot of coffee for Cali while she slipped into the guest bedroom to clean herself up a bit. When she came back her eyes were clear and bright and her hair was tucked into a ponytail. She’d applied lip gloss which accentuated her generous mouth.
“Mind my asking why you have women’s toiletries in your guest bathroom?” she said teasingly.
“They’re Harry’s,” Mercer deadpanned. “Old letch is a cross-dresser.”
“Something’s bothering me,” Cali said, taking a seat at the bar. “Actually everything’s bothering me but what I don’t understand is how can there be naturally occurring plutonium. That’s physically impossible.”
“Not at all. Traces of it are found all over the planet. What’s more difficult to explain is a large concentration of it and I think I know the answer. Ever heard of Oklo, Gabon, in West Africa?” Cali shook her head. “In the early seventies a French team discovered unusual ratios of isotopes in a bunch of uranium deposits. The discrepancy was tiny but important. Something had happened to the uranium.
“At first they thought the sample had been contaminated in the lab or at the site, but they ruled it out. The only logical conclusion was that at some time — and they later figured out it was about two and a half billion years ago — the natural uranium deposit had gone critical.”
“And started a chain reaction,” Cali finished. “I have read about it. A natural nuclear reactor that operated just like one in a power plant. It had all the elements, fuel in the form of concentrated uranium-235. There was plenty of water to act as a moderator so the chain reaction didn’t turn into a runaway explosion, and there weren’t any neutron absorbers in the rock to prevent the mass going critical in the first place.”
“That’s exactly right. The water that seeped down to the uranium deposits was high in calcium, which acted just like the control rods of a nuclear power plant. The water also kept the reactor cool enough to allow for a sustained chain reaction.”
“How long did it burn, do you know?”
“Estimates range between five hundred thousand and a million years.”
“Wow.”
“And just think — no one around to protest it,” Mercer joked.
“Do you think the ore Chester Bowie discovered came from another natural reactor like Oklo?”
“With one critical difference. Bowie’s didn’t go critical until much more recently; otherwise the plutonium would have decayed. It has a half-life around twenty-four thousand years, so the size of the reactor and the ratio of remaining plutonium-239 would determine its age. But if I were to hazard a guess, I’d say it couldn’t be more than a couple million years old, which in geological terms is yesterday.”
Cali was impressed. “I hadn’t thought about that. Is it possible there are other natural reactors, young ones I mean?”
Mercer shook his head. “I doubt it. And even if there were, chances are they’re buried deep in the crust.”
Cali became thoughtful. “It’s weird to think my original hunch about elevated cancer rates in Africa led us to a natural source of plutonium.”
“And something else tipped off someone else.”
Cali cocked her head. “What do you mean?”
“Poli. When we saw him in Africa I assumed he was a mercenary hired by Caribe Dayce to help in his revolution. Now it’s more likely that Dayce was the muscle hired to protect Poli and help him find the deposit.”
“That’s right! Damn, I hadn’t seen the connection. Poli’s been on the trail of the plutonium all along. Which leaves us with tonight’s visitors. What did they call themselves?”
“Janissaries,” Mercer answered. “You just knew this would end up involving Middle Eastern terrorists.”
“Who or what are Janissaries?”
“During the Ottoman Empire they were elite soldiers bound personally to the sultan. They were some of the fiercest fighters in history. Totally ruthless. If I remember correctly they grew so powerful that some sultan in the 1800s organized another army and massacred the Janissaries to a man.”
“And now they’re back.”
“I doubt these guys have any legitimate claim. They’re just using the name.”
“You know, though, they didn’t act like any terrorist I’ve dealt with over the course of my career. They aren’t wild-eyed jihadists ready to blow themselves up at the drop of the Koran. Think about it. They saved our lives in Africa and again in Atlantic City. And tonight, other than scaring me to death, they didn’t hurt me. They were actually kind of respectful. I sleep in the nude and when I got out of bed they averted their eyes.”
“Cali, devout Muslims wouldn’t want to look at your naked body.” Mercer couldn’t stop such an image of her flooding his mind. He was sure she knew exactly what he was picturing and turned away. He added hastily, “Besides, they had guns.”
“First of all, a year in Iraq taught me that men are men all over the world. They’ll cop a feel or sneak a peek any chance they get. Muslim, Jew, Christian — it’s all the same. But these guys didn’t and why try to warn us off? Why not just kill us and be done with it? If I was a terrorist that’s what I would do.”
Mercer considered her point and admitted it had merit. Poli Feines and company obviously didn’t care about human life. From what he’d seen they looked like they enjoyed taking it, but the two Janissaries hadn’t hurt Cali tonight and hadn’t even threatened them. The leader just warned them that if they kept investigating they might get caught in the cross fire. What was it they thought he and Cali were looking for? The Alembic of Skenderbeg. Mercer still didn’t know what that meant.
“Any idea what they thought we were after?” he asked her. “The Alembic of Skenderbeg?”
“No clue,” Cali admitted. “Do you have a dictionary?”
From down the bar Harry said, “An alembic is a device once used in distilleries to purify booze.”
“Figures you’d know that,” Mercer remarked sarcastically. “What about Skenderbeg?”
Harry returned to his notes. “Couldn’t tell you.”
Cali followed Mercer down to his home office. He brushed his hand against a bluish rock on a credenza near the office door. It was a personal talisman, a piece of kimberlite, the lodestone of every diamond mine in the world. This particular piece had an exquisite diamond embedded on its underside and had been the gift of a grateful mine owner from South Africa.
“I haven’t had the chance to tell you,” Cali said as Mercer fired up his computer. “Your home is beautiful.”
“Thank you,” Mercer replied. “I travel so much that I needed to make my home more of a retreat.” He accessed the Internet, found a search engine, and typed in “Skenderbeg.” He read silently for a few moments, then said, “Looks like Skenderbeg was an Albanian general who revolted against the Ottoman Empire.”