Mercer replied without hesitation, “I’ll help you pack.”
A cell phone buzzed in the awkward silence that followed. None of the agents, especially the two seniors in their suits and button-downs, expected such detachment in the face of overwhelming force and firepower. The old man was more concerned about his dog and was practically foaming at the mouth in righteous indignation over the poor thing, while Mercer himself was as icy calm as a surgeon. If anything, there was a spark behind his eyes as if he knew this was some sort of practical joke that only he was in on. The female agent pulled a sleek black phone from her jacket pocket, and her eyes widened and her mouth tightened when she saw the calling number on its display.
If Mercer’s suspicions were right, her self-control was impressive. He figured if this particular call had come to the male agent, he would have had an accident far worse than Drag’s.
She swung the phone to her ear and turned away. The sonic blast of the caller’s voice forced her to pull the cell away from her head, but she was aware that the two prisoners could hear the verbal broadsides coming through the tiny device and clamped it back again. Mercer felt a bit of regret. Because of the culture within the FBI, the chewing out she was now receiving for a screwup that wasn’t her fault could set her career back significantly. Mercer made a mental note to call Dick Henna once more and make sure she and the tac team were protected from the inevitable bureaucratic furor. The male agent could fend for himself.
Though he couldn’t hear the man berating her over the phone, he could listen in on her responses, each one preceded and postscripted by “Sir.”
“Sir, yes sir…Sir, a few minutes ago, sir…Sir, Mike Gillespie and Tom Walsh’s tactical team, sir. Sir, two others, a female and an older male, sir. Yes, sir, one moment, sir.” She clamped a hand over the cell’s microphone and said to Harry, “Sir, is your name Harry White?”
Wary, Harry said, “Who’s asking?”
“My boss about five times removed, Deputy Director William Higgins.”
After a moment’s thought Harry’s wizened face brightened. He had met Higgins years earlier when the FBI had placed a protective detail at Mercer’s house following a murder attempt linked to a radical environmental group. Higgins had been an agent on the rise and had obviously done very well indeed. “Tell Billie it’s old Harry all right and that I haven’t forgotten I still owe his grandmother a night out on the town.”
“Yes, sir. It is White and he says he owes your grandmother a night out. Sir? Yes sir, I will be sure to tell him. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. You will have my report by nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Sir? Yes, of course. Eight o’clock. Good night, sir.”
She clicked off her cell but remained turned away from the men for a moment, no doubt composing herself following what must have been the worst drubbing of her life. She took a deep breath, raked her fingers through her hair, and turned. She pointed a long finger at the leader of the tactical assault team. “Tom, uncuff everyone, and you and your guys can stand down.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the FBI commando replied and nodded to his men to carry out her order.
She then looked to Mercer. “Obviously we have gotten off on the wrong foot. Would it really smooth things over and let us start fresh if we pick up the dog pee?”
Mercer took a moment to delight in the mental image of her knuckle-dragging partner on his knees with a wad of urine-soaked paper towel in his hands. It was a nice fantasy, but he would be better served by not antagonizing the agents any further.
“No,” he said at last. “We can take care of it. For the record, I am Philip Mercer, this is Harry White, and the woman upstairs is Jordan Weismann. The dog’s name is Drag, but short of torture through starvation you won’t get much out of him.”
Her brief smile was partially at the joke, but mostly it was gratitude for not making her order her subordinate to pick up Drag’s mess.
“I am Special Agent Kelly Hepburn and this is Special Agent Nate Lowell.” Both whipped shields and credentials from their belts and flashed them perfunctorily. “At the outset, let me apologize for this intrusion. It was not our intention—”
Mercer cut her off. “Agent Hepburn, it most certainly was your intention to barge into my home, so please don’t apologize. You are sorry because I happened to know the former director of the FBI, and he finally got around to talking to your bosses about who I really am. You are sorry for unfortunate timing. If Harry had waited ten more minutes to walk his dog, Drag probably would have peed in the house anyway, but Deputy Director Higgins would have called in time to warn you not to treat me like a typical suspect and to just knock on my front door. Am I right?”
This time her smile was one of respect. “Yes, sir. You are.”
“You will find my home office is in the back of the house just past the kitchen. I’m going to check on Jordan and I’ll meet you two there in a minute. If you’re so inclined there’s a Keurig in the kitchen. Coffee and cups are above it in the cabinet, but I doubt the milk in the fridge is less than a month old, so I’d take it black.”
“Don’t forget the party,” Harry said, tugging at Drag’s leash to get him out the front door. “There’s some fresh soy milk in there. A few of my guests were lactose intolerant.” He added with a wrinkled nose, “And a few didn’t care they were.”
Jordan was still drugged enough that her being dragged from her bed and deposited on a wingback chair in the library overlooking the foyer didn’t register in the slightest. She was sound asleep, and for a second time Mercer scooped her into his arms and carried her back to the bedroom, then shut off the lights. He took a few more minutes to brew a coffee from the old machine behind the bar that was dialed to his masochistic tastes. He grabbed the plastic bag containing the evidence from Abe Jacobs’s office and joined the two agents in his office. Nate Lowell sat in one of the chairs facing the desk, trying not to look like a leashed and muzzled pit bull. Agent Hepburn resembled neither of the actresses with whom she shared a surname but was attractive in her own right. She was bent over a geological sample Mercer kept on a credenza to the side of his desk. The gray-green stone was unremarkable and rather crumbly, and anyone who wasn’t a geologist would dismiss it as nothing.
“That’s kimberlite,” Mercer said, swinging past her and lowering himself into the chair behind his leather-topped desk. “Named for Kimberley, South Africa, where the first industrial diamond mine was located.”
“Is it valuable?” she asked, taking the chair next to Nate Lowell. She activated the recorder function on her smartphone.
“No,” he replied. “It’s just a souvenir.”
Technically he wasn’t lying. The hunk of kimberlite was practically worthless. The large, gem-quality diamond embedded on the underside was another matter entirely. He placed the plastic scrubs bag onto his desk.
“Why don’t you start from the very beginning,” Kelly Hepburn prompted.
“Before I do, has anyone thought to secure the home and offices of Dr. Susan Tunis, the lead scientist on the project that was attacked in Minnesota?”
The two agents exchanged a look that Mercer had little trouble deciphering.
Hepburn said, “Both her office at Northwestern University and her home in Evanston were destroyed. Her husband was lucky and only slightly injured when he tried to enter the burning house.” She added, “It happened about five hours after the murders at the Leister Deep Mine.”