“But who will die if we let him run with the box and can’t catch him again?”
“We’ll get him.” Ira Lasko considered leaving it at that, but he continued, his voice tinged with guilt. He edged Mercer away from the others for privacy. “Get me to a working phone and I guarantee that Rath won’t make it fifty miles from the Sea Empress.”
The confidence in Ira’s statement made everything suddenly clear to Mercer. The fury was like an explosion ten times more powerful than Greta Schmidt’s knee to the crotch. “You’re working with the goddamned CIA, aren’t you?”
Ira nodded. “I’m sorry, Mercer,” he said, meaning it.
“That fucker Charlie Bryce set me up.”
“You were my backup in case something went really wrong.”
“I can’t believe this!” And then Mercer thought it through and he could believe it. Who better to back up an agent on a scientific expedition than a scientist? His name wasn’t unknown in various government circles, including the CIA. It all made perfect sense in a compartmentalized, need-to-know sort of way. “You were after the boxes for our military.”
“Failing that, I was to make sure no one else got them. Personally, I was more than happy to see them sunk when the rotor-stat went down. Listen, I am really sorry about this. I would have told you if I could, but I was briefed personally by Director Barnes himself.”
“Christ,” Mercer spat. He’d met Paul Barnes a few times before and thought the CIA director was an ass. He tried to run his hands through his hair, and his fingers met naked skin. This only fueled his anger. “How the hell did the government know about the boxes and why didn’t you go after them years ago?”
“We didn’t know where the cavern was other than Greenland. That information came from documents brought to the States in the 1940s by German rocket scientists stationed at Peenemunde with Werner Von Braun. They’d been working on a Nazi plan to load V-2s with meteorite fragments and irradiate London. The scientists only knew that the meteor would be coming directly from Greenland’s east coast aboard a submarine.”
“Of course the sub never arrived and the Germans shelved the Pandora Project.”
“Right,” Ira said. “After the war, our Air Force learned about it from the Operation Paperclip scientists we were using for our early rocket program. They considered the Pandora radiation as a potential American weapon and established Camp Decade, in part, as a base to search for the cavern. After a few years of searching — too far south it turns out — the brass gave up, stating that the whole thing had been a pipe dream of Hitler’s and wasn’t true.”
Mercer recalled his conversation with Elisebet Rosmunder and how she’d asked if he knew why the U.S. government wanted to build an under-ice city like Camp Decade. Now he knew the answer. He let the anger wash out of him so he could concentrate on what Ira was saying.
“Shoot ahead sixty years, and all of a sudden, Kohl Industries is buying Geo-Research and planning to establish an Arctic research base close to where the cavern was supposed to be. The old documents hinted that Kohl was involved with the Pandora Project in some capacity, though there was nothing definitive, nothing we could use in a courtroom. Unwilling to take the chance that they knew something we didn’t, the CIA scrambled to have their base moved to our old site to throw them off.”
“That whole thing with the Danish government that Charlie Bryce told me the Surveyor’s Society engineered?”
“Was actually a CIA operation to get me to Greenland,” Ira said. “I was brought in to keep an eye on Geo-Research in case the cavern turned out to be real and they tried to find it. There’s a military strike team waiting in Iceland in case we needed them to stop Kohl.”
“So you weren’t a chief in the Navy?”
“My naval experience was why I was sent.”
“Of course!” Mercer exclaimed. “They knew a submarine was involved and wanted a man who had the proper background. That’s how you’re such an expert on the type VII U-boat.”
“Before leaving for Greenland, I spent two weeks at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry going over the U-505 they have on display. As to being a chief, well, I used to work on subs, but then switched to intelligence work. I retired as deputy chief of Naval Intelligence. My rank was admiral.”
“And the bit about owning a truck stop in Connecticut?”
“My father’s place. I grew up working there. My brother runs it now. In reality, I live about twenty miles from your brownstone and work in the White House for the president’s national security advisor.”
A piece of the puzzle was still missing. “I assume you had Marty’s military friend called away for active duty, but what the hell did you need me for?”
“Jim Kneeland, yes,” Ira answered. “We felt the fewer people at Camp Decade the better. We would have excluded Marty too if we could have come up with a better cover story to get me close to Geo-Research. Bringing you in was Director Barnes’s idea. While I have a background in subs and intelligence, he wanted someone who knew science but not one of the pencil necks from Langley’s technical-support division. When he showed me your dossier and I read that article about you in Time magazine, I knew you’d be perfect.”
“So I have you to thank?”
“No need to show your gratitude with a gift or anything. A card will be fine.”
They drifted back toward the others. “When we get out of this, you’re going to get a pounding,” Mercer said but already his anger toward Ira was abating. Paul Barnes, on the other hand, was going to pay. “Well, Agent Lasko, what do you propose?”
Ira turned deadly serious. “We have Rath contained on the Sea Empress, but we can’t risk him nuking these people.”
Mercer agreed. The Universal Convocation had to be protected at all costs. The men and women on this ship represented the hopes and dreams of billions of people. “We have to flush him out so we can take him at sea.”
“How? All Rath has to do is threaten to open the box and everyone on the ship is his hostage.”
Mercer shook his head. “He knows that he can’t win a hostage situation. No one ever does.”
“So what do you suggest? We’d be in for one hell of a mess if we alert the Swiss Guards. They’d probably make the situation worse in their zeal to protect the pope.”
“You’re right about the Guards not being an option, which means we’re on our own. Remember that Raeder said the ship’s security men are in Rath’s pocket. We have to get him to escape from the Sea Empress the way he came.”
“His boat is with the larger launches next to the marina I think you were hiding in,” Klaus Raeder offered.
“And Greta said Rath’s on the bridge,” Anika added.
Mercer had gone quiet, his eyes out of focus. Suddenly his features sharpened and he grinned wickedly. “I can think of only one way to get Rath to leave the ship without him feeling directly threatened. Actually, I can think of another way, but I doubt the seven of us could get the ship to start sinking.”
Anika and Ira exchanged startled looks and regarded Mercer as if he’d lost his mind. “Thank God you’re not thinking that,” she said. “So what is your idea?”
“Simple. We hijack the Sea Empress ourselves.”
ABOARD THE SEA EMPRESS
Before Mercer launched into his explanation, Ira suggested that Anatoly Vatutin’s cabin would be a better place to talk. Mercer gave him the MP-5 to tuck under his robes. He took point when they exited the machinery room, the pistol held behind his back with a round in the chamber. They left the guard Vatutin had dispatched behind a large hydro pump. Ira walked the drag slot, moving backward so they couldn’t get jumped. Because it was so late at night, the Sea Empress was running with just a skeleton crew on the bridge and fortunately no one in the engineering spaces. Mercer found an elevator after a few minutes, and they ascended to Vatutin’s deck. Moments later, they piled into the priest’s room.