Mercer wanted to toss his cell across the room but calmly thumbed it off and slipped it back into his jeans pocket. There was nothing less imaginative or more risk averse than the bureaucratic mind. He retrieved his phone and dialed the hospital only to be told that the FBI, in cooperation with her immediate family, was withholding all information on Agent Hepburn as a matter of policy.
He pocketed the phone again and slumped onto a bar stool. He glanced at Drag. The dog gave a halfhearted wave of its tail and closed its eyes. Harry and Jordan trooped up from the kitchen with plates laden with leftovers including lobster mac and cheese, brisket, and some homemade bread that still smelled like it was fresh from the oven. “Looks like someone stole your lollipop,” Harry said.
“Kelly Hepburn was in a car accident this morning.” Mercer continued speaking into the astonished silence. “She has a broken leg and what sounds like a concussion. I can’t get word from the hospital because of an FBI blackout, but Lowell was kind enough to share the fact that the Bureau doesn’t much care about our inquiry with the Hoover Library. For all practical purposes we’re dead in the water.”
“Shit,” Harry spat.
“That about sums it up, yes.”
“What about the people who killed Abe?” Jordan asked.
“The FBI is going to keep investigating, of course, but from what I gather from Lowell, we’re no longer relevant.”
“What about calling Dick Henna again,” Harry suggested.
“It’s one thing to use him for some protection, it’s another to ask him to interfere with an active investigation. I just can’t do that.”
Jordan asked, “What happens now?”
“Not sure. I guess it depends on what we learn from the archivist at the library. If it’s something credible we pass it on to Lowell, I guess, and hope they follow up.” He didn’t add that no matter what they passed on, he was not going to back off his own inquiries.
It was nearing four o’clock when the phone rang. Mercer recognized the Iowa area code. He clicked it on before it could ring a second time. “This is Mercer.”
“Dr. Mercer. Sherman Smithson here.”
“Mr. Smithson, glad you could call back so quickly. Thank you.”
“Not at all. It has been my pleasure,” the archivist replied, a little less reserved and fussy than he’d been earlier. “Doubly so because I think I have been successful.”
“Really?”
“Indeed. President Hoover was in possession of something he called Sample 681. It was sent to him by a man named Mike Dillman sometime after World War One but before Hoover became president. I am sorry I can’t be more specific than that.”
“Do you know anything about this Dillman character?”
“No, I am sorry to say. I’ve never heard of him before today, and I did perform a cross-reference check for you through our databases. He appears nowhere else in President Hoover’s papers. On a lark I also checked for him on the Internet. I turned up dozens of people with that name, but none appeared in any historical context. This may be something you would wish to pursue further.”
“I will, of course,” Mercer said. “How about anything more on Sample 681?”
“There you run into a bit of luck. It was the president who gave it that number classification for his personal collection of geological samples. Mike Dillman called it a ‘lightning stone’ in a letter he wrote to the president that came with the sample. In it he gives longitude and latitude reference lines for where he found it. At least that’s what I think they are.”
Mercer opened Google Earth on his computer. “Would you read them to me, please?”
“Certainly.”
Mercer’s fingers entered the numbers as soon as Smithson rattled them off. The stylized globe on the flat-screen display rotated and then began zooming in on the precise location. Mercer let out a groan before it was even halfway to the coordinates.
“What is it, Dr. Mercer?” Smithson asked.
“Sample 681 came from south-central Afghanistan.”
“Ah, that explains the last line in the note Dillman sent along.”
“What does he say?”
“He writes, ‘Mr. Hoover, many places claim to be the navel of the world — Delphi and Jerusalem to name but two. I can assure you, however, where I found this sample is Earth’s one and only anus.’ That seems apt from what I’ve heard of the country.”
“And just my luck,” Mercer said without enthusiasm, “I get to play planetary proctologist.”
12
The man who met Mercer at the Kabul International Airport just north of downtown looked like an ordinary Afghani, with three notable differences. He was almost a full head taller than the other drivers clustered outside the terminal building clamoring for fares. He wore Western-style combat boots with high ankle support and steel toes. And his skin was about two shades darker than any other man within many miles. This dark countenance split into a broad grin when he saw Mercer cut through the multitudes that congregated around airports in every Third World city he’d ever visited.
They embraced when they met, and the black man shook the single rucksack slung over Mercer’s shoulder. “I see you still pack like a teenage girl heading to summer camp.”
“Half of what’s in here is for you, Book. A fifth of Maker’s Mark because you and Harry just have to drink different whiskeys, and a carton of duty-free Marlboros because they’re as good as dollars when it comes to baksheesh.”
“Ever since the Fed started quantitative easing, the locals want to be bribed in euros.” Booker Sykes placed two fingertips to his lips and gave such a piercing whistle that everything around them seemed to pause for a beat. A four-door Toyota pickup detached itself from a line of similarly dusty vehicles and approached them. Armed soldiers stationed outside the terminal watched warily, always on the alert for a suicide bomber striking at so many soft-target foreigners.
Sykes had spent a lifetime honing his body into a force of lethality; when he moved, he did so with the grace and reserve of an apex predator. He swung open the truck’s passenger door but paused there until Mercer had settled into the backseat before easing his bulk into the truck. His eyes never stopped scanning the crowd.
“Welcome to Kabul,” he said over his shoulder, his basso voice easily outclassing the Toyota’s rusted-out exhaust. “I still can’t believe you’re here.”
“Neither can I,” Mercer agreed.
He thought of the world map behind the bar back home, with pins stuck in over seventy countries documenting his work as a consulting geologist in some of the remotest locales on Earth. Mercer was familiar with how much of the population lived in grinding poverty among the ruins of failed states. Ten minutes into his first visit here and he could tell Afghanistan, and in particular Kabul, was no exception. What struck him most on flying into the country and again now out on the streets was the near-monochromatic scenery. The roads, the mountains, the buildings, the camels — everything was hued in a muted brown palette.
The exceptions were the yellow-painted taxis that made up the majority of the cars on the streets, and the bright blue of the women’s burkas. The Afghan women moved like wraiths, consciously unseen by the men jostling along the sidewalks. It made no sense to Mercer that the vividness of their costumes should make them stand out against the dull background, when the sack-like burkas were meant to hide them entirely. It was like going into combat wearing safety orange rather than camouflage.
Mercer laughed. “I guess it’s better than if the sample had been found in North Korea.”
The traffic was insane. The roads might have had lines painted on them at some point in the distant past, but the brutal summer heat and biting winter winds had scoured them away. Drivers maneuvered any way they chose. The only thing they all did consistently was try to drive around the worst of the potholes, some of which were deep and broad enough to hide an Abrams tank. Young men on motorcycles and bicycles wove in and out between the stalled cars, often using a fender or tire to rest a leg if things slowed to a stop. Carts led by horses and donkeys, many full of manure, were as common as the gaily painted trucks with Pakistani license plates bringing in goods from over the Khyber Pass.