by Jack Du Brul
“Aggie,” Max Johnston said tenderly, “what are you talking about?”
“I was at Mercer’s house last night. I was there when Burt Manning tried to kill him.”
“Burt Manning?”
“He broke into Mercer’s house. Him and another man. They were there to kill him. And I know you sent him there. I know you wanted to have Mercer killed.” Despite her anger, Aggie began crying again.
His eyes went wide with shock. “Burt Manning tried to kill Mercer last night? Are you sure?”
“I was there, Daddy. Burt and another man broke into the house. They killed an FBI agent. Burt almost killed me before Mercer shot him. Mercer was shot in the shoulder and a friend of his in the leg, though it was an artificial leg so he was okay.” Aggie knew she was babbling. She’d wanted to be strong when she confronted her father, but it came pouring out of her in a torrent. “I know you sent them. That’s why you didn’t want me to see Mercer again.”
Max took Aggie in his arms, holding her trembling body close to his, stroking her hair, all the while muttering softly in her ear. “It’s okay now, you’re all right.”
A few minutes passed as Aggie recovered, her sobs easing into silence. When she calmed, Max held her at arm’s length so that he could look her in the eye. “You weren’t hurt?” Aggie shook her head, and he hugged her again, relief making him clutch her tightly.
“Aggie, listen to me,” he said at length. “Burt Manning doesn’t work for me anymore. He hasn’t for months. He has his own business as a security specialist. I knew even when he worked for Petromax that he was unbalanced. He was good at his job, but he was too unstable to control. I fired him last spring. I don’t know anything about him trying to kill Mercer, but I can tell you it has nothing to do with me.”
Max smiled, his own eyes glistening with concern and love. “Ever since you were little, you’ve accused me of a lot of things, and some of them were even true. But I draw the line well short of murder. Besides, why would I want to kill Mercer? He’s a good friend of mine.”
“But you told me not to go near him again,” she accused quietly.
“Sweetheart, I did that to protect you. I know you’ve had a crush on him and I just didn’t want you to get hurt. He has quite a reputation with women. A schoolgirl infatuation is one thing, and even though it’s been years since you’ve seen him, he’d surely break your heart. I like Mercer, but I wouldn’t trust him with you. That’s why I warned you away. Oh, my poor little girl.” They hugged again as she wished they’d done more when she was a child, but even now it wasn’t too late.
“Aggie, I know you’re involved with the leader of that organization you work for. I don’t approve of him, but I know he treats you well and makes you happy.” He didn’t know that they were discussing marriage. She’d never had the courage to tell him. “Get Philip Mercer out of your mind. It’s for the best. Okay?”
Aggie nodded slowly, her tears finally drying up.
“How’s this, kiddo? I’ll make you a deal. I won’t say anything about you smoking or ask why you were at Mercer’s house at quarter past ten last night, if you promise to forget about him.”
Aggie smiled up at her father, a frail, hurt smile full of trust. She threw her arms around him again, losing herself in him like she did with her favorite chair. “I love you, Dad.”
“And you are my life, sweetheart. Don’t you ever forget that. Are you going to be all right?”
“I’ll be fine. I think I’ll leave town for a while. I just need to get away.”
“Sure, you do that. Listen, nobody’s using the company house on Hilton Head. A Petromax jet could have you there in an hour. Do you want me to arrange it for you?” Aggie nodded. “Excellent. How’s this? I have to go to London for a couple of days. After I get back, what do you say I join you?”
“That would be great.” She smiled as best she could.
As soon as her father had gone, Aggie dialed US Airways. The ticketing agent came on the line after a few frustrating minutes of voice mail.
“What’s your next available flight out of Reagan Airport?” Aggie demanded sharply.
“What is your destination, miss?”
“Alaska eventually but right now it doesn’t matter, I just need to get out of Washington.” Aggie hadn’t told her father what time she was at Mercer’s house last night, yet he had known.
Oh, God.
Arlington, Virginia
While Aggie Johnston was making frantic preparations to flee the nation’s capital, Mercer was only ten miles away doing the exact same thing, though without the urgency of fear. When it came to packing, he considered himself something of an expert. Rarely would he carry an item that he wouldn’t use or forget anything essential. Not only was he economical in his selections, he was quick. Eleven minutes passed from the time he tossed his leather garment bag and hand grip onto his destroyed bed until he zipped them both closed.
Since leaving the Willard Hotel late that morning, this was the first eleven minutes he’d spent away from the telephone. If he was going to leave the protective custody of the FBI, he was going to give himself the best possible odds. Getting information he might need in Alaska, Mercer called in almost as many favors as he’d promised. Even with Kerikov trying to kill him, and knowing the Russian would redouble his efforts, there was still no way Mercer was going to let this drop. He was enraged that his home had been violated and his friends put in danger. The threats to his life were something he could handle, but not when they involved those he cared about, especially Harry and, now, Aggie. He’d gotten her unlisted number from a friend at the phone company but had been frustrated by a continuous busy signal.
His phone rang as he was ready to carry his bags downstairs. The portable was on the nightstand. “Hello.”
“Dr. Mercer? This is Chief MacLaughlin in Homer. I have a message here that you’ve been trying to reach me.”
“Thanks for returning the call. I have a suspicion that I’d like you to check for me. It’s connected to the deaths of Jerry and John Small.”
“I’m afraid that’ll have to wait, Dr. Mercer. We had a murder here last night that’s got the whole town real jumpy.”
“A murder? What happened?”
“A fishing boat was found beached about a mile south of town. The owner was discovered in a forward cabin, his throat slit. Pretty gruesome stuff, if you know what I mean.”
“Was it a local boat?” Mercer felt hair rising on the back of his neck.
“Yeah, she was kept at the marina. The owner was born and raised right here in Homer.”
“What kind of boat was it?”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Mercer, but I really don’t have time for this right now.” There was a weariness to MacLaughlin’s voice, like he’d seen and done too much in the past couple of days.
Mercer sympathized, but he persisted. “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
“She wasn’t a commercial vessel but a good-sized charter boat. In fact, she’s the largest in town. Can handle a twenty-person charter, she can.”
“Chief, would the victim have known the Loran coordinates where the Coast Guard sank the hull of the Jenny IV?”
“Sure. The Coasties make them available so the chartermen can use them when they turn into reefs after a few years.”
“You’ve got to send someone out to drag the bottom and make sure that the hulk is still there.” Mercer already guessed it wasn’t, but he had to make sure.
MacLaughlin bristled at Mercer’s demanding tone. “Now just a damn minute. I appreciate your cooperation concerning the Smalls, but I’ve got an important investigation and don’t have time for this.”
Mercer relaxed his tone. “I’m sorry, but if my suspicions are correct, you’ll find the boat’s owner was killed last night after being forced to use his boat to haul the Jenny IV away from where the Coast Guard deep-sixed her. There was something on the wreck that no one noticed, some piece of evidence that wasn’t supposed to be f
ound, ever. The same men who killed Jerry and John Small as well as their cousin, Howard, undoubtedly committed this latest murder too.”
“And who are these men?” MacLaughlin asked suspiciously but nonetheless intrigued.
“I don’t know yet,” Mercer lied, “but you can believe that I’m going to find out.”
MacLaughlin responded after a long silence. “I suppose I can ask my brother-in-law to go out in his boat to snag the hull with a grapple hook on the end of a rope. I guarantee he’ll find her on the first pass.”
“Don’t bet on it, Chief. The Jenny IV won’t be there. You won’t be able to reach me at home by the time he gets back. I’m flying up to Alaska this evening, so I’ll call you later.”
“Yeah, sure. In case I’m not here, let me give you my home phone number.”
“I can’t tell you what this means to me,” Mercer said. He took MacLaughlin’s number and snapped off the phone.
He exhaled a long breath, relieved that the Alaskan had agreed to help. Mercer didn’t like lying to MacLaughlin, but he felt he had no choice. He doubted that MacLaughlin’s investigation would lead him beyond the Homer town line, so the less he knew, the better his odds of avoiding Ivan Kerikov’s interest. There was no amount of warning he could give that would prepare the Chief for an international terrorist like Kerikov, and Mercer couldn’t take another death on his conscience if MacLaughlin got too close. But having him look into the whereabouts of the Jenny IV did free Mercer to pursue other avenues.
He hefted the bags off the bed and noticed that the powerful sunlight beaming through the new skylight was drying the first coat of joint compound. In just a day or two, all the physical evidence of the attack would be gone. As promised, Dick Henna had hired a crew to restore his house. There was already new carpeting in the bar where Burt Manning’s blood had been spilled, and a master carpenter was repairing the bullet holes in the library and on the balcony and the antique staircase.
Mercer knew from experience that the psychological effects of the assault would take much, much longer to mend.
The phone rang again when he was halfway down the stairs. He left his luggage in the library and rushed to pick up the extension in his office.
“Enrico Caruso said it,” a voice said triumphantly before he could say hello.
“Took you long enough,” Mercer chastised with a smile.
David Saulman, a longtime friend, and Mercer had been engaged in a grueling trivia contest for as long as they’d known each other. Each enjoyed the tests immensely, Saulman because it allowed him to use his inexhaustible research skills, and Mercer because it taxed his phenomenal memory.
The latest question had been posed by Mercer three months earlier and it had taken all that time for Saulman to find the answer. “Who was quoted as saying, ‘The chandelier tried to touch the ceiling and the chairs chased each other across the floor,’ in reference to the great San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906?” It was one of Mercer’s most esoteric questions, but he felt vindicated by posing it because he hadn’t remembered that Benjamin Briggs was the captain of the Mary Celeste, the answer to Saulman’s last query.
Invariably, Mercer’s questions dealt with earth sciences or engineering while Saulman limited his to maritime lore and history. Both were experts in their chosen fields and could draw from an unfathomable well of knowledge.
David Saulman had been an underage deckhand aboard merchantmen during the Second World War, slowly working his way through the ranks, “up the hawse pipe” in the vernacular. But an engine explosion in the early 1960s had cost him an arm and cut short his career. Forced from the working ranks, he turned his experience to the legal side of maritime commerce, putting himself through law school. Since then, he’d become one of the best marine lawyers a tremendous amount of money could buy. His offices in Miami boasted nearly one hundred fifty associates, and his new satellite office, recently opened in the shadow of Lloyd’s in London, was doing better than expected. With contacts ranging from stevedores to tycoons, he knew more about the industry than anyone in the world.
“I got your message from my secretary this morning,” Saulman said, his Brooklyn accent still crowding his speech after so many years. “I just now got the information you wanted.”
“I’m surprised you got it so fast.”
“I can’t remember how the hell we did business before computers,” Saulman said with the respect of those who really did remember the world before silicon chips took over. “So who do I bill the time to?”
Mercer laughed. Although Saulman would have done the research pro bono, he knew that when Mercer asked for a favor, there was always someone else equally interested in the information. “Charge it to the FBI. A bill from your office won’t seem too bad when Dick Henna finds out that I lied to him about my travel plans. What have you got for me?”
“All right.” David Saulman paused and Mercer could hear him arranging papers on his desk. “There were one hundred and three ships in the Gulf of Alaska at the time you asked about. Ninety-four private or commercial fishing vessels, including the Jenny IV. There were also four large ferryboats operated by Alaska Marine Highway. Three container ships owned by the Lykes Line, either running equipment north for the new pipeline or deadheading south. Finally, a vessel named Hope owned by an environmental group called PEAL and a tanker headed to the Alyeska terminal at Valdez.”
The mention of PEAL sent a charge through Mercer. “What do you know about the Hope?”
“An old English survey ship bought about a year ago and converted into a pseudo-research vessel. She’s more about public relations than hard science. You’ll find her wherever there’s some ecological controversy. She’s been anchored in Prince William Sound for nearly three weeks.”
“Has she left the area recently?” Mercer asked quickly, a glint of victory in his murky gray eyes.
“Sorry, no.” Saulman dashed his hopes.
The PEAL vessel would have been his logical choice for smuggling large quantities of liquid nitrogen, but if she hadn’t left Valdez, she couldn’t be the one. “Okay, what about the tanker?”
“Ah, let me see.” Saulman searched for the specifics of the tanker. “Here we go. It was the Petromax Arctica, a 255,000-ton VLCC making her regular run between Valdez and Long Beach—”
“Petromax?” Mercer interrupted. “I just talked to Max Johnston a couple of days ago. He said they sold their tankers.”
“If you’d let me finish, I was about to say that she sailed into Valdez as the Arctica but left the day before yesterday as the Southern Cross. Her new owners are Southern Coasting and Lightering out of New Orleans. It’s a big step for SC&L.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re a midsized outfit. Their biggest vessel before they bought Petromax’s fleet was a fourteen-year-old hundred-thousand tonner. They shelled out one hundred and fifty million dollars for the Arctica and her sisters. For them, its like going from a Yugo to a collection of Bentleys in one move.”
“Did your firm draw up the papers for the sale?”
“No, it was handled in Louisiana. But when I heard about it, I was a little suspicious and did some checking. It was weird right from the start. Petromax almost tripped over themselves unloading those ships. The first day anyone heard that Max wanted to dump the tanker arm of Petromax Oil, Southern Coasting comes along and, pretty as you please, cuts him a check for the $150 million dollars, no negotiations, no financing, nothing.”
“Sounds like he was anxious for the money,” Mercer said.
“The Greeks or the Japanese would have bought those tankers in a heartbeat for a hell of a lot more. Christ, the Petromax Pacifica is only eight months old. She must be worth $75 million all by herself,” Saulman pointed out.
“No shit.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Saulman agreed. “And here’s another weird one. Southern Coasting demanded that all the ships’ names be changed immediately upon signing of the deal, not just in the books but
physically changed on the ships as well. They’re even paying for a crew to fly to Valdez to rename the Arctica while she’s en route between Alaska and California.”
“What about the other two tankers?”
“The Petromax Arabia is in the Persian Gulf. Her new name is the Southern Accent, and the Petromax Pacifica is unloading in Tokyo where she becomes the Southern Hospitality.”
“Strange, but it doesn’t really help me any.” Mercer kept the disappointment from his voice. “Do you have anything else?”
“Well, the Arctica was eighteen hours late arriving at Valdez, and her captain had to be choppered from the ship to Anchorage after he was involved in some sort of accident.”
“Jesus, why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?”
“Hey, you wanted a list of ships in the Gulf of Alaska. You never told me why.”
“Sorry,” Mercer replied sheepishly. “Is a tanker running late a common occurrence?”
“Like hell. One of those monsters costs roughly a thousand dollars an hour to operate, so we’re talking eighteen thousand dollars just for fuel, wages, and insurance. That doesn’t factor in lost haulage time and lateness penalties paid to the chartering companies. Tankers are never late.”
“Any idea what happened to the captain?”
“No. All that’s listed in the accident report sent to Lloyd’s was that he lost his forearm. Petromax is paying to have him sent to a specialist in Seattle.”
Mercer was silent for a few moments. He wanted to believe that the Arctica was the ship that smuggled the cylinders of liquid nitrogen to a rendezvous with the Jenny IV, but that didn’t make sense. Petromax was a world leader in oil exploration; they wouldn’t be involved in a smuggling operation, especially something as innocuous as liquid nitrogen. Their position in Alaska was already difficult because of opposition to opening the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, and they wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize it further.
“I think we’re barking up the wrong tree,” Mercer finally said.
“Tell me what you’re looking for and maybe I can find it,” Saulman offered.
