They all knew he’d do whatever it took to get the list. Still, the words of warning were appreciated. Roddy nodded. “Thanks.”
“Do you want me to go with you?” one of the Legionnaires asked.
Lauren seemed to have forgotten the soldiers were here and leapt back to the bathroom in an embarrassed dash when she realized her half-clothed state.
“Thank you, no,” Roddy answered. “It’ll be tricky enough getting just myself inside.”
The soldier offered his Heckler and Koch P9S pistol. “It’s loaded. Safety is on the left side. Click it off and give the trigger a long pull to fire the first round.”
“No need to cock it?” Roddy asked, accepting the matte-black automatic.
“Oui.” The soldier gave him a second magazine. “Nine rounds each.”
“Gracias.”
“Pas de tout.” The soldier shook his hand by slapping palms and grasping Roddy’s thumb in a tight grip. “Bon chance.”
Roddy turned to Mercer, his voice steady. “You’ll talk to Carmen for me?”
“Talk to her yourself when you get back.”
Roddy paused at the door and smiled. “That’s what I mean. She’s going to kill me when she finds out I did this.”
“Get out of here.” Mercer laughed. The gravity of their situation had been suspended, at least momentarily, by the collective relief at Lauren’s miraculous salvation.
She emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, her hair still damp and shimmering. The duffel bag of clothes she’d lived out of for the past days had been brought to the room by Carmen Herrara, so she had on a fresh shirt and jeans. Mercer took a few seconds just to admire her.
Enough of that, he thought, and addressed the issues at hand. “Before you tell me how you survived the ambush at the lock, have you spoken with your father?”
Lauren took a seat, her elbows on her knees. “Yes. He was already in the National Military Command Center. That’s like the heart of the Pentagon, the place where senior officers monitor the world situation and make appropriate recommendations to the White House.”
“And?”
“And, well, not much,” she admitted. “This kind of thing takes more time than you realize.”
“But they are looking into it?”
She nodded. “He couldn’t get into specifics because we weren’t on a secure phone.”
“Where can we get a secure comm link?”
“That’s problem number one.” Fingers of wet hair swung down over her eyes. She swept them aside. “He’s already getting reports of a disturbance at our embassy.”
Mercer understood the implication immediately. “Liu’s trying to isolate us from getting help. We’re going to have to chance coordinating our efforts over unsecured phones. Better using land lines than cells.”
“Agreed. In fact, I should call him now.” Lauren reached for the phone next to her chair. Mercer picked up an extension near where he sat and Harry went into the bedroom so he could listen in. Miguel remained at the coffee table, practicing some of the fancy card shuffles Harry had taught him.
“Vanik,” the general answered after a single ring.
“Dad, it’s me. I’m back in the hotel with Mercer. He’s on an extension.”
“General,” Mercer said, “I’m sorry about the scare I gave you earlier.”
“Understood under the circumstances, Dr. Mercer,” John Vanik replied. “Hold one second, I’m transferring this call to another line. It should guarantee us a bit more privacy.” After a moment of clicks and squeaks, the general returned. “You still there?”
“Yes, sir,” Lauren and Mercer answered together.
“Have you debriefed that woman you told me about?”
“No, General,” Mercer said. “We have her, but we’re waiting for the French agent to return from his embassy before we talk with her.”
“Let me know as soon as you get something from her.”
“We will. We’ve also sent someone to the canal administration building to recover a manifest of tomorrow’s scheduled transits. Apparently the old manifest has been changed to accommodate Liu Yousheng’s expedited timeline.”
“You’re looking for a ship called Gemini?”
“That’s right.”
“I’ve already had someone check with Lloyds in London. Appears to be six registered vessels with that name plus another dozen with variations. Everything from a Greek supertanker called Gemini Sea to a trawler in New Zealand just called Gemini. We have no way of tracking a fraction of them before tomorrow.”
“That’s why we’re getting the manifest, Dad. It’ll give us an exact time the ship’s going into the canal. How about on your end? Anything?”
“Maybe.” Vanik cleared his throat. “A refrigerator ship called the Korvald was seen leaving Shanghai harbor less than twenty-four hours after a special armored train arrived in the city. Security was tight during the transfer of eight individual payloads onto the ship. The operative on the ground couldn’t tell what they were but at least knew the count.”
“This came from the Taiwanese?” Mercer asked
“No comment,” the general said quickly. “The important thing is that the ship had been in port for five weeks without any kind of activity going on and it appears that nothing other than the cargo from the train was loaded aboard.”
“I doubt it’s a giant takeout order of Peking duck,” Harry White said.
“Who the hell is that?” Anger flared in General Vanik’s voice.
“Sorry, sir,” Mercer said. “That’s a colleague of mine.” He covered the mouthpiece and shouted across the suite, “Harry, keep your goddamned comments to yourself.” The octogenarian scowled.
“Any idea where the train came from?” Lauren asked her father.
“HUMINT wasn’t that good. This all happened about two and a half weeks ago, more than enough time for a ship like the Korvald to reach Panama. Can your friend verify if that ship is in Panamanian waters?”
“I’ll call him right now.” Harry hung up his extension and returned to the living room, where Mercer gave him Lauren’s cell phone.
“Could it be the missiles that go along with the launchers Lauren and I saw?” Mercer mused.
“CIA has been sitting on that piece of information since the ship sailed, but as soon as I got some analysts looking for eight rockets it took on a new meaning,” Vanik answered. “It had been filed away with the hundreds of other bizarre things the Chinese do every day.”
Like with so many rogue operations, the hindsight of combing old intel often revealed direct links that only looked significant after it was too late. Learning about the Korvald this quickly was a major break.
“What’s going on at our embassy?”
“A group of about fifty protestors are there. Marine detachment says they’re pretty riled up but haven’t done anything other than burn a couple of flags and prevent anyone from leaving or entering.”
“Liu’s cut us off.” Mercer repeated what he’d said when Lauren first told him.
“Appears so,” General Vanik agreed. “Worse still, if the Panamanian government doesn’t allow us to land troops, any Special Forces team we send down won’t have weapons and can’t get access to the armory at the embassy.” He added sarcastically, “Thank the Clinton administration for not pressing to keep at least one active base in the Canal Zone.”
Lauren knew a tirade was coming and headed him off. “Dad, if you can get us the troops, I’ve got the contacts to get the weapons down here.”
“To be on the safe side I did call General Peter Horner, the head of Special Operations Command. He’s put a team on alert status.”