“He must mean to destroy the volcano — but why?” Borodin appeared more concerned with Kerikov’s motives than with the fact that his life’s work might be destroyed in a nuclear fireball. “There must be a leak somewhere in our security. He would have to destroy the entire project to maintain secrecy.”
“Don’t you understand that Kerikov has double-crossed you?” Anger made Valery’s voice sound like a hiss. “He never had any intention of turning over the volcano to the government. He’s used you since taking over Department Seven, hoping one day to sell your work right out from under you.
“The old regime is gone for good. The Russia you threw your life away for no longer exists. The world has changed since the 1950s, but you never took the time to notice. Vulcan’s Forge would have only worked under a Stalinist regime, and that has been gone for decades. This whole operation was doomed the moment Gorbachev started glasnost and perestroika. Give up your old man’s dreams and start living in reality.
“The Russian government would never attempt to occupy an island so close to American soil with one hand while the other was begging for economic aid. Kerikov knows this and he’s made some sort of contingency plan.”
“How can you be so sure, Valery? You are only my assistant; you’ve not been told everything.” Borodin dismissed the truth so easily because he really didn’t understand it.
“Give it up, Father, there is nothing more and we both know it,” Valery said sadly.
He saw, for the first time, how frail and weak his father looked. His eyes were rheumy behind his glasses and his once stocky frame had withered to a skeletal apparition. Borodin’s skin had the pallor and texture of modeling clay.
“It will work out,” Borodin said so softly that his lips barely moved.
Suddenly his body went rigid; his eyes snapped open as if they were ready to burst from their sockets. His lips pulled back, revealing his chipped and stained teeth in a death’s head smile. He convulsed once, gasping for a quick breath before once again being grasped by the immense pain that tore through his body. His fingers crawled up his torso as if grasping his chest to calm the faltering heart within.
Pytor convulsed again, his heels kicking up from the floor as he made one last struggle, and then he was gone.
Borodin’s prostate muscle had relaxed in death. The smell of urine hung heavily in the cramped office.
Zwenkov had seen enough death in his career to know that Borodin was beyond resuscitation. He crossed himself and leaned forward to close the old man’s staring eyes.
“I am sorry,” he said quietly to Valery.
Valery looked at his father for a long time before reaching out to touch the wrinkled hand. “It’s funny, so am I.”
Death had cut through all of his hatred at the end, leaving him clean inside, as if reborn. His bitterness had vanished with his father’s dying gasp and he knew it could not have been any other way. Even if he’d escaped with the data from the August Rose, he would’ve been forever plagued with this inner demon. But not anymore. The demon was put to rest, forever.
Arlington, Virginia
The insistent ringing of the phone dragged Mercer from a deep, deathlike sleep. His hand groped across the nightstand, knocking the Tiffany clock to the floor, then found the phone and swung the receiver to his head.
“H’lo.” His tongue was cemented to the roof of his mouth with congealed saliva.
“Mercer, Dick Henna.”
Mercer came a little more awake, opening his eyes. He was startled to see that night had descended — the twin skylights above his bed were black rectangles in the ceiling. He glanced across his balconied bedroom and saw that his whole house was dark. Tish, too, must have gone to sleep.
“Yes, Mr. Henna, what’s up?” Mercer ran his tongue around his mouth and grimaced at the taste.
“The President accepted your proposal and, believe it or not, Paul Barnes from the CIA backed you up.”
“That’s surprising. I got the impression I was at the bottom of his Christmas card list.”
“Kind of surprised me, too, but when it comes to the job, Barnes puts his personal feelings second. The commando assault that the President ordered will be postponed for at least twelve hours.”
“So what happens now?” Mercer realized that his body was bathed in sweat. His sheets were a damp tangle around his legs.
“A jet will be ready for you at Andrews Air Force Base in about an hour and a half. You should be aboard the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk by five tomorrow morning.”
Mercer glanced at his scarred and scratched Tag Heuer chronometer. 9:15.
“Okay, I’ll be at Andrews in about an hour.” Mercer swung his legs off the bed, the cool air evaporating the sweat, making the dark, coarse hair on his chest and legs tingle.
“I’ll meet you at the main gate with the recon photos you requested.”
“Thanks, Dick.” Mercer used the director’s given name for the first time.
He cut the connection and dialed Harry White’s number. After twenty rings, he hung up and dialed Tiny’s. Tiny told him to hold for a second while Harry came back from the restroom.
“Harry, are you up for a little more babysitting?”
“That you, Mercer?”
“Yeah, Harry, can you come over and watch Tish again?”
“Why? What’s she doing?”
“Sleeping in the nude.”
“Yeah, I’d love to watch that,” Harry said with mock lasciviousness. “I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”
Mercer hung up, plucked the clock from the floor, and straightened the silver framed photograph of his mother that was the only other item on the nightstand. He flipped a bedside switch and light from three round Japanese lanterns bathed the room in a milky glow.
He stood up and moaned. The punishment his body had taken in the past few days was taking its toll. His shoulders were bruised a rich purple from his scrape against the metro train, and his feet and lower legs still stung from his leap into the Potomac. The cuts on his face had scabbed over, but they pulled every time Mercer moved his jaw. There was a livid red weal on his calf where the bullet had grazed him in New York.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered as he headed for the bathroom.
He took a steaming shower, popped a handful of Tylenol, and dressed quickly in baggy black pants and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. His socks and desert boots were also black. Feeling slightly more refreshed but by no means normal, he spun down the old rectory spiral stairs to the ground floor, his feet gliding over the steps.
Because his cooking skills fell far short of gourmet, his kitchen cabinets were nearly barren. It took him ten frustrating minutes to make a mangled, runny omelet using his last three eggs, a slice of American cheese, a couple of cocktail onions pilfered from the bar and half a can of tuna fish.
He carried the plate of food into his office, letting his hand brush against the large bluish stone on the credenza near the door as he entered. Setting the plate on his desk, he turned on the green shaded lamp. With a huge chunk of omelet stuffed in his mouth he took a key from under a reference volume of mineralogy in the shelf behind his desk.
The key slid into the oiled lock of the closet adjacent to the office’s entrance and the oak doors opened smoothly. In the closet were a fire retardant safe, a twisted and blackened piece of duraluminum that had once been a support girder in the airship Hindenburg, and a multidrawer cabinet which housed over a hundred valuable geologic samples he had collected through the years. On the floor of the closet sat an antique steamer trunk filled with souvenirs from his mission into Iraq.