Cali interrupted. “Ottoman connection again.” She’d retreated to the leather sofa against the wall, throwing the steamer robe that was folded on the arm over her lower body.
“U’huh. He died in 1468. Seems he held off a Turkish army five times the size of his and managed to keep Albania independent for twenty-five years. He’s considered one of their national heroes. Sort of a medieval George Washington.”
“What about an alembic?” Her eyes were closed and Mercer could tell she was moments from falling asleep.
Mercer’s fingers blurred across the keyboard as he tried several variations on his search but came up empty. “Nada.”
When Cali didn’t respond, he looked up. Her breathing was shallow and even, her lips slightly parted. She was out. He came around from behind his desk to stand over her. Despite her considerable height she’d managed to turn herself into a tight ball with one hand under her cheek.
He couldn’t help but think of Tisa again, although there was no similarity between her and Cali. Tisa had dark sloe eyes and delicate Asian features and the small body of a gymnast. Cali was all-American with her red hair and freckles, which Mercer could see covered her upper chest, and he suspected the rest of her as well. She was tall and lanky, more angles than curves, but she moved with an athletic grace that softened her hard edges. And, Mercer admitted, she was the first woman he had been attracted to since Tisa’s death.
In truth they had spent very little time together, but under the intensity of the circumstances he had come to understand her — the way she thought, the way she reacted, and most importantly, what she thought of herself. She was confident and self-assured, characteristics that Mercer found appealing above everything else.
But now wasn’t the time for any of these thoughts.
He had to resist the urge to brush a wisp of hair from across her forehead. He straightened the blanket instead, pulling it up so it was just under her chin, and removed her shoes. Her feet were long and narrow, with delicate bones and skin so pale he could see where veins came close to the surface. She made a little sound, then sighed as she drifted deeper to sleep. He gave her one last look, smiled, then left the office, turning down the lights to a faint glow so if she woke during the night she’d be able to see a bit.
Mercer made sure all the doors were locked before heading up to the master suite on the third floor. The Beretta 92 in his nightstand was probably the fifth or sixth one he’d owned. Some he’d lost in fights, while others were in evidence lockers. It was a reliable weapon and he knew its capabilities as well as he knew his own. He knew the nine-millimeter was loaded but checked it anyway. There was a round in the chamber and the safety was off. He safed the pistol and stuck it behind his back. He doubted Poli would come tonight, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. He’d make sure that starting tomorrow Harry stayed at his own place, while he would ensure that Ira Lasko got him and Cali into a safe house.
Back in the bar Harry was snoring on the couch, a deep rumbling that sounded like the dying gasps of a bear. Drag was curled around Harry’s prosthetic leg, his nose near where the leg was strapped to the stump so he could spend the night smelling his beloved master.
Mercer didn’t adjust Harry’s blanket.
He took a seat at the bar and saw that Harry hadn’t finished his work yet, so he set aside Harry’s notes and instead read the lengthy letter to Einstein to keep himself awake through the long night.
At noon the next day Ira Lasko’s secretary led Cali and Mercer through to Lasko’s office in the Old Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House. Ira came around his big desk to shake Cali’s hand as Mercer made the introduction.
“So you’re the lady Mercer met in Africa à la Stanley and Livingstone?” The top of his bald head barely reached her chin. “When he called me from New Jersey night before last he mentioned you’re with DOE.”
“I’m a field investigator with NEST.”
“Nuclear response team. Your boss is Cliff Roberts, then?”
“That’s right.”
“He’s an ass.”
Cali grinned, warming to Lasko’s directness immediately. “That he is.”
“He’s ex-navy like me. I spent a year with him at the Pentagon. He has the imagination of a kumquat and half the brains. He only got his gig at NEST when Homeland Security was created after 9/11.” He indicated they should take the chairs in front of his desk, while he slid around to his seat.
The office was large and comfortable, with wainscoting and a plush green carpet. There were only a few framed pictures and papers on the walls, as well as an American flag. Ira also wore a flag lapel pin. There was a model of a submarine on a credenza, an old Sturgeon class that Lasko had served on as executive officer before moving over to naval intelligence.
He turned to Mercer. “So what’s so hellfire important that I have to give up a golf game with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs?”
“A couple hundred pounds of plutonium that’s been missing for seventy plus years.” Mercer explained about the naturally occurring nuclear reactor at Oklo and his theory of how what they thought was an unusually concentrated uranium deposit was in fact the remnants of a much younger reactor that hadn’t fully decayed.
“What are the chances there are other such reactors?” Ira asked when Mercer finished.
“Cali asked the same thing last night. Remote. I think this is probably the only one like it in the world.”
“So how did that guy find it? You told me at dinner the other night that he was either the best geologist in the world or the luckiest.”
“Chester Bowie was his name,” Mercer said, “and he wasn’t a geologist at all. He taught classics at a small college in New Jersey. He wasn’t looking for uranium or plutonium. He was searching for a mine out of Greek mythology.”
“Lost me.”
“According to mythology Zeus chained Prometheus for defying him and giving fire to humanity. The chains were made from an unbreakable metal called adamantine. Bowie thought he knew where the adamantine had come from. He ran into a little problem of funding his expedition and talked it over with a colleague from Princeton, hoping the Ivy League school might see merit in his research.”
“Not likely,” Ira growled.
“On the contrary. Someone at Princeton was very interested. None other than Albert Einstein himself. From what I gather, Nikola Tesla, the Croatian-born genius who invented the alternating current electrical system we use today, had contacted Einstein in the mid-1930s with the theory that there were elements higher than uranium on the periodic table. Remember this was six or seven years before Enrico Fermi created the first sustained chain reaction at the University of Chicago and four or five before Einstein wrote his famous letter to Roosevelt indicating the theoretical possibility of an atomic bomb.
“Bowie didn’t know how Einstein became aware of his grant request, but he did, and agreed to have Princeton fund his trip. Einstein warned Bowie that what he might find wasn’t adamantine from his mythology but a new and potentially dangerous element. Bowie was certain Einstein and Tesla had it wrong and was eager to prove himself to two of the greatest minds of his generation.”
“Was Bowie well regarded in his field?” Ira asked.
Mercer chuckled. “The guy was a total flake. A real zealot when it came to his theories. He refused to believe anyone but himself.”
“He sounds deranged.”
“He was. Obsessive-compulsive, arrogant, you name it.” Mercer picked up the story again. “So he went to Africa and using his research into Greek mythology, he found the mine. He mentions in his journal that there was an ancient stele there to mark the site.”