“Okay,” Agent Hepburn said, though she looked a little dubious. “So we’ll be in touch in the next day or so, when there’s something to report.”
“Right-o,” said Mercer.
Hepburn was right to be leery of his seeming disinterest in hunting down the remaining killers. Had she known Mercer better, she would have realized that he had been on the defensive for far too long, and was now ready to take the fight to his enemies.
21
Over the next forty-eight hours, Mercer put on an act. He left the brownstone only once, to accompany Harry to Tiny’s for a few drinks the second night, but other than that he busied himself at home. He polished all the brass accents in the bar. He caught up on some job offers, declining four and requesting additional information about another. Mostly, he made sure his behavior and conversations gave the appearance that he had given up any hope of finding the remaining crystals of Sample 681. He had indeed found two bugs planted in his house — one affixed under the edge of the bar and the other near his desk in his office, and Mercer was putting on a convincing show for whoever was listening in.
Agent Hepburn had sent him a text offering to post guards, but again Mercer declined, explaining that it would draw undue attention. It was better, he said, that the entire affair die for lack of interest.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t also making preparations. These he had actually started back in Kabul following their return from the cave. He had instructed one of the Gen-D Systems mechanics on how to build a proper Faraday cage for the sample he’d taken from the dead swami’s mouth. The makeshift contraption he’d cobbled together in the field showed he was on the right track, but he wanted to have something a bit better before transporting it.
The crystal had arrived in Washington, D.C., at the same time Mercer was landing in Des Moines. All of the photographs and notes he’d taken on the grotto/geode in the cave had preceded the package and had doubtlessly already been analyzed to death by perhaps the smartest person Mercer knew. Jason Rutland was his name, and he worked in Greenbelt, Maryland, at the Goddard Space Flight Center, a sprawling campus off the Capital Beltway that housed perhaps the nation’s greatest concentration of scientists and engineers outside of Silicon Valley. Mercer had met Jason several years earlier, working on a different project, and Rutland had amazed Mercer with his brilliance, both in the laboratory and with his analytical skills. Breaking all stereotypes of the nerdy science genius, Jason was as slick as they came. He wore stylish clothes, drove a classic Ford Mustang, and was currently dating, in Harry’s estimation, the sexiest weather girl on any of the local news stations. Even Harry, the aging lothario, had been tongue-tied when the four of them had bumped into one another at Pimlico for the Preakness Stakes.
For the last three days, Jason had been sending Mercer regular text updates on his findings as he followed a hunch Mercer had given him. That hunch now looked more and more likely to pan out. It was on the morning of the third day, long before sunup, that Jason’s latest text came through. It read simply: “Found her.”
Mercer got the message when he woke at six, and he felt the surge of adrenaline. Minutes later he was sitting on his bar stool, making sure he was positioned closest to the bug Jordan had planted, and he dialed Rutland at home. The machine picked up. Mercer started leaving a message, but Jason’s hurried voice rang through the line. “Sorry about that. I wasn’t screening calls. I just got out of the shower.”
“Even if you were screening, I made the cut, so you don’t need to apologize.”
“Hey, good point. Never thought of that.” Jason was excited and speaking way too fast, a clear indication he’d gotten little sleep in the past few days. “I can’t believe you did it, Mercer. I mean, Amelia Earhart…after all these years. Are you sure she crashed near—”
Mercer cut him off before he could say anything more. “Not over the phone! You know better than most that the NSA records every call placed in the D.C. area.”
“Take it easy. You think the government cares about her?”
“I think the fewer people who know about this the better, because whoever finds her plane is going to become a household name.” He then added for the extra ears that might be listening in, “Funding that trip to Afghanistan tapped me out, so it’s going to take me at least a year to mount an expedition to the South Pacific.”
“Ah. Okay, then. Mum’s the word.”
“Thanks. Can you meet me?”
“Sure. Where?”
“Someplace public, but safe.”
“Pentagon Metro stop.”
Mercer knew it. This particular subway stop was right at the entrance to one of the most heavily defended buildings in the world. “Perfect. What time’s good for you?”
“I was just about to crash. I’m beat. How about late this afternoon — say five o’clock? No, make it six. That gets us past the worst of the rush.”
“Okay. Six o’clock at the Pentagon Metro stop, right by the building’s entrance.”
“I’ll bring all my findings.”
“Not that ridiculous man purse of yours.”
“It’s not a purse,” Rutland protested. “Felicia calls it a satchel.”
“Felicia can call it a kumquat for all I care, it’s still a purse.”
“Eff you,” Jason said, hanging up. Mercer clicked off his cell with a sly grin.
It was a nice enough day, and the Pentagon was close enough that Mercer decided to walk partway when the time came. There was just enough breeze for him to throw on a khaki Beretta shooting jacket. Holstered at his spine was one of their signature 9mm’s, the Model 92. He left his house with plain white earbuds stretching down to the phone he’d stuffed into one of the coat’s numerous pockets.
Mercer walked casually, glancing into the glass office windows of the buildings beyond his block of townhomes. In their reflections he saw no obvious signs of a tail, but his instincts told him he was being watched. He could feel the eyes on him.
An elderly man in a fedora and rumpled suit stepped out of one of the office buildings, raising an arm to get the attention of a driver parked at the curb. The two men exchanged a greeting as the rumpled guy slid into the passenger seat. Traffic was snarled enough that they only got a few feet before being forced to stop. For the next two blocks it seemed the car and Mercer were in a slow-speed chase, neither getting much ahead of the other. The traffic lights cycled from green to red so quickly that only a few cars could squirt through the nearly gridlocked intersections.
The two men ignored him on the sidewalk and conversed casually enough for Mercer to put them out of his mind and scan other places for a watcher.
The car turned at the next cross street, the driver accelerating hard to get away from the worst of the traffic in an annoyed display.
Mercer walked ten yards past the Pentagon City Station and turned so suddenly that he almost plowed over a diminutive Chinese woman and her even tinier mother. He paid them no attention, his face the picture of annoyance at himself because he’d apparently walked past his destination, but his eyes were watchful for anyone caught off guard by his sudden reversal. No one seemed startled or upset, other than the two people he’d nearly trampled.
He descended into the city’s subway.
He fished a SmarTrip Metro card from his wallet, touched it to the scan pad, and passed through the turnstile. Built in time for the nation’s bicentennial, the Metro stations still possessed a futuristic feel that made one think the trains entering and exiting were headed to distant planets, rather than other stops along the Blue or Yellow Line. When the train came, he loitered on the platform until the bell sounded and the doors were about to hiss closed, before jumping aboard.