“Hold on there. I’m with Selome right now and you’re on a speaker phone. She’s shaking her head something fierce.”
“Dr. Mercer, I can’t authorize any of that. It’s just too much money.” Selome’s voice sounded distant over the speaker connection.
Somehow he’d expected her there. It only deepened his suspicions.
“Listen, you two wanted this project in the first place. If I’m going to get results, it’s got to be done my way or not at all,” Mercer said sharply. “I didn’t set this six-week rule, you did. If I’m expected to find anything, I’m going to need to move a lot of dirt. I’ve got a pretty good lease package for us, and if need be, I can get a sales contract on the excavator for when we’re finished with it. That’ll save you a couple million bucks. You’re lucky — my first idea was to bring in a walking dragline with a forty-million-dollar price tag, but we’d lose too much time with its on-site assembly. As it is, the 5130 will take two weeks to put together once it’s shipped in.”
“You don’t understand. We just can’t do it this way,” Selome protested. “I can’t guarantee your safety if you present that kind of target.”
“By the time the equipment rolls in, I’ll have pinpointed the best site, and you’ll only have to protect a single camp. From what I understand, nearly every Eritrean over the age of thirty has a military background, so surely you can muster a protective force? When I’m doing the actual prospecting, I’ll basically be on my own, so you won’t have to worry about me.”
“We wanted something much more low-key,” Selome said.
“You know what she means,” Hyde broke in. “A small team, minimal equipment and maximum secrecy. You’re talking about bringing in an army.”
“That’s what it’s going to take,” Mercer snapped. “I tried telling both of you that earlier. Selome, you said your government doesn’t want to get involved in a mining operation. You just wanted oversight, right? Well, consider this a trial run, but this is going to be my show. I’ll bring in the equipment I need and any people I want. If you don’t like it, if it isn’t what you expected, well, tough shit. This is what you got.”
Hyde finally broke the silence. “I guess we caught a tiger by the tail here. You’ve taken us both a little by surprise. We need some time to digest all of this.”
“You’ve got until Friday. That’s when I catch my flight to Eritrea. I plan to be in Asmara on Saturday morning and in the area of the search no later than Monday. I have a lot to go over with both of you before I leave, but that can wait until tomorrow. For now, you need to start working on getting me local support once I’m in country.”
“And if we take your earlier advice and abandon the project?”
There was no malice in Mercer’s voice when he responded. “Then I call a few friends, and within a month Eritrea will be dug up from one end to the other. I’ve got the contacts to guarantee your nation will be stripped clean with total impunity, and there is nothing either of you can do about it. I’ll talk to you again tomorrow.”
Mercer was panting when he hung up. He was gambling with Harry White’s life when he just bluffed Hyde and Selome, and it made him tremble. His nerves were fraying. He dialed the phone again.
“The Knight Medical Group,” a receptionist chirped.
“Is Terry there?”
“Dr. Knight is with a patient. May I have him call you back?”
“He’s playing video games in his office,” Mercer said. “Why don’t you give him a buzz and see if he’ll talk to me. This is Philip Mercer.”
A minute later Terrance Knight came on the line. “Great timing, Mercer. I was on the final level of Doom and I still have two men left.”
“I’m getting better. The last time I called it was coitus interuptus with one of your nurses.”
“Yeah. She sued me for sexual harassment a week after she discovered my sperm count is too low to knock her up.”
“That’s what I love about you, Terry. Your lurid attention to detail.” Mercer chuckled for the first time today. Terry Knight had been his personal physician ever since he moved to Washington. “I’m going to Africa again. I need a gamma globulin, a cholera booster, and I think I’m ready for another tetanus. And I’ll also need anti-malarial pills for a couple of months.”
“God, I love patients who know what they want. I’m going to give you an oral polio booster as well. The CDC in Atlanta posted warning for most of the continent. Since you’re headed to Africa, I’ll throw in a box of condoms while I’m at it. I doubt you’ll get lucky, so give them to a doctor before you come back. Anything else?”
Mercer laughed again. “Yeah, put together a med kit for me, nothing more elaborate than a couple of aspirin and a suture set. Write me a prescription for morphine and antibiotics.”
“You sure you don’t want a defibrillater and a portable CAT scanner?” Terry joked.
“No, not this time, but maybe later. I’ll be in sometime tomorrow for my shots.”
“Hey, I’m the doctor, I tell you when you come in, remember?”
“Go back to Doom, Terry.”
“Knowing you is doom.”
Mercer sat back as far as possible in the cramped office, rubbing his eyes. There were a million details to be considered, yet his thoughts kept returning to Harry White. He was a tough old bird, a war veteran, but he was eighty now. Mercer focused on what his friend must be going through and used that anger to shove aside the exhaustion and refocus.
Tiny ducked his head into the room. “How you doing?”
“I’ve been better.”
“I know what you mean. Do you realize today is the first day in twelve years that Harry hasn’t come in. God, I never realized how much I loved the bastard until he’d gone.”
Mercer straightened quickly. “He’s not gone, Paul. I’ll get him back. No matter what it takes, I’ll get him back.” His bravado sounded empty even in his own ears.
After Mercer had hung up on them, Prescott Hyde and Selome Nagast looked at each other, both having similar thoughts. Hyde’s office in Foggy Bottom was well appointed, more New York executive than government official, with oil paintings gracing the walls and an antique desk that had been in his family for generations. The carpet was a thicker pile than standard issue, and the matching wing-back chairs had been given to Hyde’s father by President Kennedy. Selome was sitting in one of the chairs, dressed in a simple business suit.
“Well, what do you think?” she asked, breaking the silence.
“I just don’t think we can afford it. He’s talking about millions of dollars, and the best we’ve been able to come up with is three hundred thousand and a lot of that is for Mercer’s consulting fee. I never thought about all the equipment we would need.” Hyde’s voice was dull with defeat. “We should call the whole thing off. It was a long shot at best anyway.”
“You call it off, and I’ll have a congressional committee knocking down your door within twelve hours. They would love to hear how you really obtained the Medusa pictures from the National Reconnaissance Office,” Selome hissed. “We can come up with the money somehow.”
“Buying those pictures from Donald Rosen cost me nearly everything I have. If my wife finds out I took a second mortgage on our house, she’ll kill me.”
“I don’t care about your domestic problems. We are going to need more money very soon if this is going to work. I’ve had expenses on my end, too. Do you hear me complaining about them? Mercer is the best shot we’ve got. We need to support him, and that means cash. We both have our sources. If need be, we can cut in a few more people. We’re talking about a billion-dollar payoff when this is done. That’s worth a little more risk.”