by Jack Du Brul
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
The dream diverged from reality at the same place for the last three nights. Holding tightly to each other against the truck, Tisa and Mercer waited in the dark for Donny and Luc Nguyen to give up their search. In the dream, Tisa didn’t call out to her brother and swim away. In the dream, she stayed by Mercer’s side. In the dream Mercer was happy.
Reality came with the discreet chime of a Tiffany alarm clock. Mercer woke with an emptiness the past few days of activity had been unable to fill. The light filtering through the skylight above his bed was sodden and gray. The third straight day of rain matched his mood perfectly.
He turned to disable the alarm and came face-to-face with a long muzzle and red droopy eyes. Drag had been awaiting his chance. Now that Mercer was awake, the basset hound began to lick at his face, his tail thumping against the blankets like a sluggish metronome. Since Mercer’s return from Greece, the mangy dog had forgone his master, asleep on the barroom couch, and settled on the king-sized bed. Each morning he’d waited for the alarm before adding his own wet affection to prod Mercer out of bed.
“Those aren’t the kisses I wanted,” Mercer said as he scratched the hound’s floppy ears, “but I appreciate the gesture.” Drag wormed his way partially under the covers and presented his substantial belly for a little attention.
The dream always left Mercer bathed in sweat, so while Drag burrowed deeper into the warm spot on the bed and snored blissfully, Mercer took a quick shower and dressed, putting on jeans, T-shirt and sneakers. Down at the bar getting coffee from the automatic machine he looked fondly at Harry White asleep on the couch, his prosthetic leg on the floor next to him, his mouth slack. Harry had slept over ever since Mercer had returned. Although they hadn’t talked much beyond the bare facts of the past few weeks, Harry recognized that Mercer was hurting and refused to leave him alone. He’d wait until hell froze over for Mercer to be ready to discuss what he was feeling.
Drag sauntered down the spiral stairs, passed the bar and continued to the foyer, his nails clicking against the tile until he reached the front door. He woofed softly, demanding to go out.
By the time Mercer returned from the walk around the block, Harry was sitting on his customary stool with a cigarette between his lips. He’d poured himself a cup of Mercer’s tarry coffee rather than make his own pot and had a pen ready to do the Washington Post crossword puzzle. Mercer slid the paper to his friend and stepped behind the bar to turn on the room’s industrial air filter.
“You know,” Harry rasped, then cleared his throat. His voice didn’t improve. “Drag got used to sleeping in your bed when you were gone. If you let me have it back, he wouldn’t bother you in the morning.”
“It’s not the bed, Harry — it’s the fact you get up to take a leak a dozen times a night.”
“What can I say? I’ve always had a small bladder.”
“Small bladder, enlarged prostate, tomato, tomahto.”
“Potato, potahto, let’s call the whole thing off.” Harry sipped at his coffee and made a face. “You got any Bloody Mary mix back there?”
“Yeah. It’s that crap Tiny pawned off on me. You won’t like it.”
Harry dismissed Mercer’s warning with a wave. “You think I’m drinking it for the mix? Just use good vodka.”
Mercer snorted, thinking that Harry White should be added to death and taxes as life’s inevitabilities. He fixed the drink and placed it next to Harry’s ashtray.
“So are you spending your day on the computer again?” Harry asked, wrapping his long fingers around the glass.
Mercer had spent the first twelve hours after his arrival at Dulles Airport three days ago being debriefed by Ira Lasko and a joint team of CIA and FBI agents. He told them everything he knew about Tisa, her organization, the attack on the ferry, and her cryptic final words, which he still didn’t understand. He’d been through such meetings before and was able to keep his temper in check as they went over the same information again and again, trying to coax more out of him. At the end of the debrief, the agents had packed up their recorders, cameras, and notebooks and left the conference room near Ira’s office without comment.
Mercer and Ira were alone. “Now what?” Mercer had asked.
“Now nothing,” Ira said. “They’ll write up their report and fill in any gaps they can. I’ll go over it and forward it to my boss, who might or might not pass it to the president.”
“Ira, Tisa Nguyen laid her life on the line to convince me that her group can predict earthquakes. I’m sure she didn’t do it just to impress me. I think something big is coming, something she wanted, no, needed me to know. She’s giving us a warning, or at least part of one.”
“This Leper Alma she mentioned?”
“Yes. She told me the where, but didn’t have time to give me the when. Now I admit I have no idea what Leper Alma means, if it’s a place or the name of a nuclear power plant or what. But I think that whatever it is it’s about to be destroyed by an earthquake or a volcano.”
“We’ll look into it, of course.”
“Look into it?” Mercer snorted. “I’m the one who brought you this information and you’re cutting me out of the loop.”
“I’m not cutting you out,” Ira shot back, “but Christ, look at yourself. You’re a mess. You’ve pushed yourself for the past month without a break. Let the analysts do their job while you get some rest. In a day or two I’ll call and let you know what they’ve come up with.”
“Meanwhile Tisa is God knows where and no one’s going to lift a finger to help her.” Mercer was disgusted.
“For the time being that’s out of my hands. You’ve given us a lot and it’s going to take a while to substantiate your claims.”
“Claims? How many people died when Donny Randall blew up that ferry? Forty? Fifty?”
“Forty-seven.”
“Wouldn’t you call that substantiation that these bastards need to be stopped?”
“And they will be, but I’m not going off half-cocked.”
“The way you’re acting I doubt you even have half a one,” Mercer said angrily, twisting Ira’s cliche. “Are we through here?”
Ira held Mercer’s gaze but said nothing. As soon as Mercer closed the door behind him, Lasko shook his head and reached for the phone book in a bottom desk drawer. He found the number he wanted.
“Tiny’s.”
Ira recognized Paul Gordon’s high-pitched voice. “Paul, this is Ira Lasko. I’m a friend of Mercer’s. I’ve been at your bar a few times with him.”
“Yeah, I remember. What can I do you for?”
“Have you seen Harry White?”
“Morning, noon, and night.”
“Any idea where he is right now?”
“In the can. Hold on, he’s coming out now. Want to talk to him?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“Admiral,” Harry boomed. “What’s going on? Where’s Mercer?”
“He’s back. Just left my office.” Ira paused, thinking how he wanted to phrase his next statement. “I’m worried about him. Something happened to him in Greece. I’ve never seen him like this before.”
“What happened?”
Ira told Harry about how the ferry was sunk.
“That ain’t it,” Harry said. “Mercer’s been in worse jams than that. What else?”
“Well, there was this woman.”
“Ah, now we’re getting someplace. What happened to her?”
“Mercer went to meet her. She had some information. After they escaped the ferry she was kidnapped by the group she belonged to.”
“Terrorist group?”
“We’re not sure yet.”
“Doesn’t matter anyway,” Harry said. “You’ve known Mercer a couple of years, but not the way I do. What you gotta understand is he’s basically an overgrown Boy Scout and he takes responsibility for everything and everyone around him. It’s what drives him. Right now he’s blaming himself for that woman getting nabbed and he�
��s not going to stop until he gets her back.”
“I know all that. This seems more somehow. He’s taking this personal.”
“He takes everything personally.”
“No, Harry, you’re not listening. Personal, as in to heart.”
Harry needed a moment to get what Ira was driving at. The idea was shocking. “You don’t think he’s… I mean he can’t be in…”
“I don’t know,” Lasko answered. “All the signs are there.”
“Holy shit! Who would have thought it? Our boy in love. I admit this is new territory for me. As long as I’ve known him, he’s never fallen for anyone. He came close once with an oil heiress, good-looking girl with more money than sense, but even that was just a temporary thing.”
Harry paused. He was torn. Part of him wanted Mercer to find that kind of happiness while an equal part feared for what that would do to their friendship. Nothing, he decided quickly. Mercer wouldn’t fall for a woman who didn’t appreciate the company of a crippled rummy and his stinky dog. And when he accepted that, he knew he’d do everything in his power to help Mercer get her back.
“I wanted you to know,” Ira said. “Can you keep an eye on him? Try to get him to talk. He’s bottled up pretty tight and I don’t want to see him blow.”
“You don’t have to worry. No matter how tight he gets wrapped, Mercer knows his limits. He needs a little time, is all. But thanks for the heads-up. I’ll watch him for the both of us.”
“You’re a good friend, Harry White.”
“Yeah, well, truth be told, so are you, Ira. I’ll talk to you later.”
Harry had hung around Mercer’s place in the days since, watching and waiting for his friend to open up. Meanwhile, Mercer spent his time on his computer searching for everything he could about the legend of Rinpoche-La. What he found confirmed much of what Tisa had told him about the Chinese treasure fleet and the extraordinary voyages of Admiral Zheng He. There was little about Zhu Zhanji and the fabled treasure he’d spirited away and absolutely nothing about her organization. He did learn that the Chinese were the first to attempt developing accurate earthquake sensors. These were delicately balanced porcelain pots that when filled with water became unstable. The slightest tremor would cause water to spill from one of the multiple dragon mouth spouts. The direction and amount of water spilled would tell those watching it where and how strong the quake had been. The earliest one found was almost two thousand years old.
As for the mythical village, the Internet provided a great deal of conjecture but little in the way of fact. Most of what he found was on Web sites dedicated to mysticism and New Age mumbo jumbo. They said Rinpoche-La was the last truly unspoiled place on earth, a sort of terrestrial Nirvana where the inhabitants were free from the daily burden of human existence. They put the village’s location high in the Himalayas, deep in the Gobi Desert and a thousand locations in between.
The writers sounded so flaky, Mercer determined that no one had ever tried a scientific approach to finding the hamlet. He contacted a commecial satellite imaging company in La Jolla, California, and requested every high-resolution photo they had of the north flank of the Himalaya Mountains for the past five years. That’s where Tisa indicated she’d been born, and at five hundred dollars per picture, the cost of expanding the search beyond that area would be staggering.
As it stood, the weeks he’d spent consulting in Canada for De Beers would cover just a portion of the price of the two thousand prints that had been delivered late yesterday afternoon.
Until he studied the pictures, he would put the search for Rinpoche-La out of his mind and concentrate on the second puzzle Tisa had given him. Leper Alma.
“Yup,” Mercer finally answered Harry’s question about his day’s plans. “Another wasted effort on the computer. I can’t do much else until I hear from Ira.”
“Sure you can.” Harry held up his empty drink. “Pour yourself one of these and relax for a while. I’ll call Tiny and see if he’ll open early or maybe we can take a ride up to Pimlico to watch the ponies.”
As tempting as it sounded, Mercer shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Killing yourself won’t get her back,” Harry said softly.
Mercer froze. He wasn’t surprised Harry had figured out what was driving him so hard; he probably understood Mercer’s motivations even better than Mercer did. He was just startled that Harry had brought it up. In their unwritten code, neither man discussed their emotions much. Each carried several lifetimes’ worth of scars and saw little need to irritate them further.
“Do you love her?” Harry prodded.
“I don’t know.” Mercer’s reply was slow, deliberate. “Maybe. We only spent one day together, not enough time to know for sure.”
“When it comes to love, no one’s ever really sure.”
“That sounds like something you heard on Oprah.”
Harry smirked. “Jerry Springer. Overweight teen cross-dressers in love with their teachers was the show’s topic.” He turned thoughtful. “The amount of time you spend with someone doesn’t matter. A day, a week or a year. It’s all the same. Christ, there are couples who spend a lifetime together only to finally admit they’ve hated each other since day one.”
“Too true. More than anything, Harry, I’m pissed that some asshole has denied us the opportunity to find out.”
“And what if it isn’t love?”
“I’d still go after her for no other reason than the chance to kill Donny Randall.”
Harry smiled and slapped the bar. “Now that sounds like the Mercer I know.”
“So what the hell do I do?”
“Pour us that drink for one thing and I guess keep doing what you’re doing. Only don’t think about why you want to find her. It’ll cloud your judgment. Concentrate on the how.”
Not bad advice, Mercer admitted, considering the source. “What’s the longest you’ve ever spent with a woman?”
Harry gave him a lecherous look. “An hour and ten minutes, but that was at midnight when the clocks roll forward.”
“Seriously.”
“Seriously? About six months. This was years ago when I first moved to Washington and thought it was time to settle down.”
“What happened?”
“I realized that when I was with her I wasn’t being true to myself. I was already settled by then and was using her just to legitimize my life. For a while I hid my feelings in a misguided attempt to protect her. Big mistake. The night I broke up with her, she was expecting me to propose. She had no idea how I really felt. It was one hell of an ugly scene. I know it was for the best. I could have faked it for a while longer, years maybe, but in the end it wouldn’t have worked. I’m sure someday she realized it too. I guess in your situation, you have to ask yourself if you are still who you’re supposed to be when you were with Tisa. And that’s a trickier question than it sounds.”
“I know it is,” Mercer agreed. “And the truth is I don’t know yet.”
“But when you were with her?”
Mercer didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
Harry sat back in his stool, a smug expression on his weathered face. “There you go then. Go back to work, but at three o’clock we’re going to Tiny’s and I’m going to buy rounds until one of us is blind drunk. That’s not an offer. It’s a threat.”
With a fresh pot of coffee in hand, Mercer left Harry to his crossword puzzle and went down to his office. The room was decorated like the bar, with green carpet and plenty of oak and brass. In one corner was one of Mercer’s prize possessions, a blackened piece of lightweight metal that had once been a girder of the airship Hindenburg. Passing the credenza by the door, Mercer’s hand brushed a slab of a bluish mineral called kimberlite. He considered this particular rock, which was the lodestone for diamond mining, his personal good-luck charm. It had been presented to him by a grateful mine manager whose life Mercer had saved.
He sat at the antique desk and ramped on to the Internet. He typed “Le
per Alma” into a search engine and groaned when he saw there were a quarter million matches. He had no idea what the name meant yet the computer readily matched it to two hundred and fifty thousand Web sites.
After an hour’s worth of education about leprosy, he knew he was on the wrong track. There were only a handful of leper colonies, or leprosariums, left in the world and none of them was affiliated with the name Alma. Nor were there any famous lepers or physicians who treated them named Alma either.
“Wrong track?” he muttered. “I’m not even in the right station.”
He’d obviously misheard what Tisa had told him. The trick now was to recall her exact words. Mercer got up from his desk and went to the closet in the corner of the office. Amid the junk, files, and miscellaneous paperwork that was easier to shelve than sort, Mercer found a large shoebox. He returned with it to his desk. He pulled out a soft towel from the box and spread it across his desktop, then set a foot-long piece of railroad track in the center. Cans of metal polish, rags, and scraps of steel wool came next.
For thirty minutes he worked on the rusted section of rail, working the metal with the concentration of a diamond cutter facing a priceless stone. The repetitive act of polishing the track was the way Mercer helped focus his mind. It was a habit he’d formed in school as a way to alleviate the pressure of studying without turning his brain to mush, much the way Winston Churchill built brick walls in the yard behind Number 10 Downing Street even during the bleakest days of the Blitz.
A half hour after starting, he’d purged his mind of everything but those fleeting seconds as Tisa swam toward her brother. He could again feel how his movements had been slowed by the weight of water and the throb from where he’d hit his head against the tanker’s windshield.
“I’m here, Luc. It’s Tisa.” Her voice echoed across the dark sea, a cry that rang clear over the background of misery. Her head was barely above water as she swam awkwardly for her brother’s boat. Halfway there she stopped, turned back to Mercer, her body shuddering as she treaded water. “Oh my God! Leper Alma, Mercer. Watch for Leper Alma.”
