But he was ignoring their ire. His phone rang again. He ignored that, too. He dragged the metal box up onto a small sidewalk, then hefted its leading edge up to the railing, so it was tilted at a fifty-degree angle. He was already breathing hard from the effort, but he didn’t mind the exertion. It had been a few days since he had gotten to lift weights. This scratched that itch.
He removed the box’s lid, tossing it quickly to the side, then lifted the back up so the container was now parallel to the ground. One end was still perched on the railing. The other was supported by Storm.
Then, slowly, so as to give the mighty Nile plenty of chance to sweep it away, he began pouring the promethium over the side of the bridge.
It took a little while, but Storm did not want to rush this. He took a kind of perverse pleasure in it: watching 382 pounds of pure promethium — with a fair market value of seventeen million dollars and a military value far greater — pouring off the bridge into the fast-rushing current below.
Chaos theory being what it was, some of those promethium molecules would sink at that spot, others a half mile away. Still others would be carried all the way to the sea.
The point was, no one would be able to recover them. They were effectively scattered to oblivion. Which, according to Storm — be it Derrick or Carl — was where they belonged.
AS STORM GOT BACK in the truck and got it under way, his phone rang again. He was going to ignore it once more, but this time the caller ID identified it as coming from MCRAE, WILLIAM.
He answered on the second ring. “Derrick Storm.”
“Mr. Storm, this is Alida McRae, I’m the wife of—”
“Of course I remember you, Alida. It’s nice to hear from you.”
“I’m sorry to trouble you. But I just got a phone call from Billy, and I thought you’d like to—”
“Did he say where he is?” Storm cut her off again.
“He’s on board a boat. He said it was a big boat, the size of a cruise ship.”
Storm was off the bridge now, heading toward the airport. He pressed down the accelerator. “That boat is called the Warrior Princess,” he said. “It’s owned by a woman named Ingrid Karlsson.”
“Ingrid Karlsson…You mean of Karlsson Logistics? That Ingrid Karlsson?”
“That’s right.”
“But why would she want to make laser beams and shoot down airplanes and do all this other crazy stuff?”
“Ideology. She pretends not to have one. But really, she’s driven by it. I’ll explain it to you in detail sometime, if you’re really all that interested.”
“Well, I suppose I don’t care. I just want Billy back. Right before he got cut off, he said the boat was in the Strait of Gibraltar, about ten miles south of that famous rock. I know you said you worked for the government in some capacity and I was wondering if you—”
“I’m on it,” he said.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Can I help?
“Yes. Bake a cake for your husband.”
“A…a cake? What…what kind of a cake?”
“Banana cream.”
“Why banana cream?”
“Because banana cream cakes are delicious. That doesn’t matter as much as what you’re going to write on it. It should say, ‘Welcome Home, William.’ He’ll be home to eat it in a few days.”
Alida was getting wound up in professing her thankfulness when Storm cut her off one final time. “Mrs. McRae, I appreciate your gratitude. But I have work to do. Just bake that cake. A man always likes a good cake.”
She wished him good luck, and he ended the call. Then he pulled off the highway and into a parking lot. He slid out his iPad, thankful that the airports were now open again and, furthermore, that the crashes had created a world full of jittery travelers. It meant the flight from Cairo to Tangier, Morocco, was only half full. He booked himself a ticket on it.
Tangier was located directly across a narrow strip of water from the Rock of Gibraltar. He had some ghosts there, yes. But he also had at least one friend who would be able to help him.
It just so happened to be a friend who would need some money. Storm typed out a quick e-mail to Jean-François Vidal, asking the chief operating officer of the Société des bains de mer de Monaco to have one hundred thousand euros worth of the recent winnings resting in the Derrick Storm account sent via wire transfer to an account in Morocco — an account owned by one Thami Harif.
He then sent a quick e-mail to his buddy Tommy, informing him that he was about to receive a visitor.
With that task settled, Storm got back under way. His flight left in two hours, but he was only a few miles from the airport. He turned the radio back on. The medicane had torn across Italy and was now regaining strength as it churned over the warm waters of the western Mediterranean.
Storm’s phone blurped at him, telling him he had a call. Storm peeked at the caller ID. RESTRICTED. It was surely the cubby again. But Storm decided it was time to deal with that annoyance.
“Derrick Storm.”
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Jedediah Jones asked. His voice had its usual tone: calm but insistent.
“Not sure what you’re talking about, sir.”
“Well, let’s start with Jared Stack. How did you know about him?”
“Jared Stack?”
“Don’t play dumb. It doesn’t suit you. Rodriguez tried to cover for you, but I listened to a recording of the call. You’re not going to weasel out of this one.”
“Hmm,” is all Storm said for a moment as he tried to formulate a lie. The last thing he wanted was for Jones to know about Ahmed. Storm doubted very seriously that Ahmed knew precisely where the promethium was coming from. He also doubted the man was harboring any additional product — he would have sold whatever he could to Ingrid Karlsson just as soon as he laid his hands on it. Still, there was the general rule of doling out information to Jones: the less, the better.
“Ah, yes, Jared Stack. Sorry, my mind blanked for a second,” Storm said. “The contact you hooked me up with in Panama, Villante? He picked up some chatter that Jared Stack might be in trouble and he passed it on, knowing my interest in the case. You may be aware Stack had taken Erik Vaughn’s place as the biggest legislative impediment to the funding of the Panama Canal expansion.”
“I see,” Jones said. “Well, moving on, Strike said the two of you were forced to split up and she lost contact with you. Have you made any progress on recovering the promethium that was stolen from the desert?”
Storm smiled. Clara hadn’t ratted Storm out, after all. She was probably still pissed at him. But that wasn’t exactly a first, nor would it be a last. At least she had covered for him with Jones. Or perhaps she was only covering for herself. Either way, it helped.
“No, sir, I’m sorry. I tried, but I failed. I have no idea where it is.”
He could have easily passed a polygraph test on the last part — inasmuch as he was unsure which sections of the river bottom over which the promethium would eventually spread itself once it was done floating on the current.
“Well, to a certain extent it doesn’t matter anymore,” Jones said. “Strike came through for us, big time. She told us about how the promethium was coming from the desert. One of our techs was able to apply a beta version of a rasterized video search algorithm to our archived satellite footage. The computer was able to crunch the data and find one of the previous trucks that had made the shipment. Our tech was able to latch on to that truck and trace it all the way from its source to its destination. It was a helluva piece of work on his part, let me tell you. Really impressive stuff.”
Storm knew from the way Jones was talking that everything being said was fiction. Jones was selling the story too hard, throwing in details that he ordinarily would have skipped, sounding more like a cheerleader than the hardened operative he was.