by Jack Du Brul
Harry roared in triumph. “Thirty grand, my boy! I crushed ’em. I was unstoppable. I even told them I was staying at Trump’s so they’d comp me a suite last night to keep me here.”
“You wily son of a bitch,” Mercer muttered in astonishment.
“Congratulations,” Cali added. “What are you going to do with all that money?”
Harry eyed her as though she were an idiot. “Gamble it away tonight, of course.”
Cali looked like she was going to try to dissuade Harry from blowing his winnings. Mercer knew better. Her laptop pinged and all thoughts of Harry’s windfall vanished. It was an e-mail from the Hebrew University. The archivist who sent it wasn’t happy about answering a request past midnight but said they’d found what Cali had asked for. “This is it,” Cali said and opened the attachment. It was a telegram sent to Einstein in April of 1937 from Athens, Greece. Mercer read over her shoulder:
May I inquire as to your health, sir? It has been seven weeks since I left. I have spent my vacation near Lake Como. My hotel reminds me a little of that monstrosity Hearst built. At least there is plenty of sunshine and fresh air. I’ve found some trinkets you’d enjoy and plan to ship soonest. I could not find the Gibson print of Drake’s Golden Hind you so wanted. I did locate that recording by Stephan Enburg you asked for. In my opinion that is a small success, but I can’t imagine why you liked it. Too much oboe, not enough flute.
Ch. Bowie
PS fail fall ball bill fill pill poll pall pail pain gain
Cali was the first to voice her assessment. “What the hell is this? It’s meaningless. Lake Como? He was in Africa, and that bit about seven weeks. Bowie’d been gone for months. How did he end up in Athens? And what’s with the postscript?”
“It’s got to be code,” Mercer said. “Maybe he and Einstein had some prearranged signal concerning the expedition. He says he had a small success. The name Stephan Enburg could mean something specific, like that Bowie found the mine. Had he not found it, maybe it would have been a different name.”
“Maybe, maybe, maybe. Damn it.” She blew a frustrated breath.
“Let me see that,” Harry called. Mercer swiveled the laptop so Harry could read the telegram.
“Gibson’s print of Drake’s Golden Hind?” Cali questioned aloud. “What is that?”
“Drake is Sir Francis Drake,” Mercer replied, “an English admiral and privateer around the time of Queen Elizabeth the first. The Golden Hind was his flagship. My knowledge of art ends with dogs playing poker, so I’m guessing that Gibson was an artist who created a famous portrait of him. When Harry’s done, we can search it on the Internet along with a composer named Stephan Enburg. It might give us a clue what Bowie meant.”
“Don’t bother,” Harry said, looking up from the computer. His blue eyes were alight with a devilish spark. “The real question you need to answer is if Chester Bowie made it aboard the Hindenburg like he planned.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Give me a pen and a piece of paper and I’ll show you.” Cali handed him some hotel stationery and her Montblanc. “The clue’s in the postscript. That line Bowie wrote is called a doublet, a word game invented by Lewis Carroll, the guy who wrote Alice in Wonderland. The object of the game is to transform one word into another, usually with the opposite meaning, by changing one letter at a time and using as few words as possible. Bowie turned fail into gain using eleven words including the original.”
“Oh I see,” Cali exclaimed. “Change an I into an L and fail becomes fall, then change the F to a B and you get ball.”
“And so on. Except Bowie messed it up and it was deliberate.”
“How so?” asked Mercer.
“It’s obvious that he knew the rules of a doublet since he wrote one out, but he used eleven words when you can change fail into gain with only four.” And he wrote: fail pail pain gain.
Mercer nodded at what Harry had done. “This is all well and good and I’m sure provides hours of entertainment to the gaming set, but how does this get us to Bowie being on the Hindenburg?”
“Eleven words when four would do. I guessed eleven is the key to the telegram, and when you count out every eleventh word you get…” Harry wrote out the secret message: May seven Lake Hearst air ship Hind Enburg. Success oboe. “Bowie was telling Einstein that he was returning to the United States aboard the airship Hindenburg and to have him met on May 7 in Lakehurst. Success is obvious, but I don’t know what that bit about oboes means.”
“I do,” Mercer and Cali said at the same time and exchanged a grin. He indicated for her to explain. “Obo is a large town in the Central African Republic. It’s pretty close to where we found Bowie’s canteen.”
“He was telling Einstein the approximate location to the uranium deposit,” Mercer summed up.
“Didn’t everyone die when the Hindenburg blew up?” Cali asked the men, but she was looking at Harry.
Harry edged his chin toward Mercer. “Ask him. He’s the expert.”
Mercer demurred. “I’m no expert. I was fascinated by airships when I was young, so I’ve read a few books about the disaster. A couple of years ago I managed to buy a piece of a girder from the wreck. I hate to say it’s been in a closet ever since. And to answer your question, sixty-two of the ninety-seven on board got out of the zeppelin alive. If Bowie was on her that fateful day, there’s a one-in-three chance he survived. The man we need to talk to is Carl Dion. He’s the real expert and the guy who sold me the girder.”
Mercer’s near-photographic memory failed him. He knew Dion lived in Breckenridge, Colorado, but couldn’t remember the number. He got it from information and dialed the retired aerospace engineer.
“Hello?” a timid woman answered after the seventh ring.
“Mrs. Dion?”
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Dion, my name is Philip Mercer. I’m an acquaintance of your husband. Is he there?”
“One moment please.”
Three full minutes went by before Carl Dion came on the phone. “Hello. Who is this?”
“Carl, it’s Philip Mercer.”
“Oh, hello, Dr. Mercer. My wife doesn’t hear so well and she told me it was my friend Phyllis Matador, a friend, I needn’t point out, I don’t have. What can I do for you?”
“I need a little information about a passenger on the last flight of the Hindenburg. His name was Bowie, Chester Bowie.”
The aviation expert’s reply was as instantaneous as it was damning. “No such passenger, I’m afraid.”
Tension flooded Mercer’s shoulders even as he felt his body deflate. He collapsed into a chair. “Are you sure? I have a telegram from him saying he was going to be on the flight.”
“Sorry, but there was no Bowie listed on the passenger manifest. He wouldn’t have had a difficult time booking passage. The flight from Germany wasn’t even half-full. The zepp’s trip back to Europe was, however, fully booked by people going to a coronation.”
“Think, Carl; this is important. Is there any way he could have gotten on? Stowed away, perhaps, or under an assumed identity.”
“Now that you mention it, there was an anomaly.” Mercer’s fist tightened around the phone as if physical strength would draw out what he wanted to hear. “A German couple, Professor and Mrs. Heinz Aldermann, were to have been aboard but never showed up in Frankfurt for the flight. However, their luggage did make the crossing. If I recall, there was a substantial amount of it.”
“Enough so it could cover the weight of a stowaway?”
“Oh, yes, four or five hundred pounds.”
“Then someone could have been in their cabin?”
Dion became a little more excited. “Now this is pure rumor, mind you, but witnesses claim there was a foot found in the debris after the crash that didn’t correspond with any of the bodies. This has been widely discredited as, oh, what do you call them, an urban legend, a tidbit to make the disaster just that much more horrifying.”
Mercer
wasn’t sure if this was good news or bad. It brought Bowie that much closer to home, but if he’d died as a result of the crash then the trail went cold again. “But if the rumor was true, then it could belong to Chester Bowie.”
“Like I said, it’s a rumor.”
“What happened to the luggage?”
“Oh, gosh, what little wasn’t burned beyond recognition was returned to its rightful owners or their heirs. Mind you not much made it out of the blaze, though. I don’t know specifics about the Aldermanns’ luggage.”
“And the stuff that wasn’t claimed?”
“Shipped back to Germany, actually. There were a few bits and pieces carted off by the curious, like that small piece of duraluminum you bought from me, but the Hindenburg’s skeleton and everything else went back and was recycled into fighter planes for the Luftwaffe. Goring was never a fan of airships and detested Dr. Eckner, the head of the Zeppelin Company.”
“Dead end.” Mercer sighed. Harry had turned on the television and Mercer waved at him to lower the volume.
“What’s this all about?” Dion asked.
“Oh, nothing, Carl. This guy Bowie might have been carrying some important geologic samples. I’m trying to track them down.”
“I see. Well I have another rumor for you and take it for what it’s worth, which I believe is nothing. About fifteen years ago, right after the publication of my book on the disaster, I received a letter through my publisher from a gentleman in New Jersey who claimed to have a safe thrown from the Hindenburg on the afternoon she crashed.”
“A safe?”
“Yes. He even included a photo. Smallish affair, totally unremarkable. He claimed his father found it a few days after the wreck when he was plowing a field. Because there were no tire prints around the safe, he said it must have been thrown from the airship and wanted to know if I wished to buy it.”
“How much?”
“This was when zepp memorabilia was at its peak. He wanted fifteen thousand dollars and would provide no provenance other than what his deceased father had told him. I spoke to him once. Very disagreeable fellow. I didn’t even make an offer. I believed then, and I still do, that the man is a shyster and the safe is something he, or his father, had bought in a pawnshop.”
“Do you have his name?” The chances the safe was real or that it had belonged to Bowie were so remote they were off the chart and into the realm where early cartographers wrote “beyond here there be dragons,” but Mercer was desperate.
“I knew you’d ask. I’m searching for it now. I remember what you’re like when you want something. You were after me for years to buy that piece of the Hindenburg. I certainly hope you have it prominently displayed.”
“Er, yes,” Mercer lied. “It’s on a credenza next to my desk.”
“Ah, here we go. He still lives on his family farm in Waretown. Believe it or not his name is Erasmus Fess.”
“Mercer!” Harry shouted from where he was reclined against the bed’s headboard.
Mercer didn’t turn, just held up a finger for Harry to wait. “Erasmus Fess?”
“That’s right.” Mercer wrote out the address Dion rattled off.
“Goddamn it, Mercer!”
“Hold on, Carl.” He covered the phone. “What?”
Harry was pointing to the television. Mercer looked. On the screen cops and a medical team were swarming around a small suburban house. Mercer tuned into the reporter’s voice. “…this morning by a neighbor who describes the scene inside as a slaughterhouse. While the body has yet to be found, sources have been unable to locate Miss Ballard and the amount of blood in her house indicates foul play.”
Mercer went numb and the color drained from his face. He cut the connection without saying good-bye to Carl Dion. “Serena?”
“Yes.”
Another few seconds ticked by as the trio watched the news change to another story. Cali was the first to pull herself together. “We have to get out of here. If they tortured her, they know we’re staying at the hotel. Probably the room number too. Mercer, do you have a car?”
“Yes,” he said, his mind spinning faster and faster. “It’s in the garage.”
“Mine too. That’s where we should head.” Cali had already closed her laptop.
“Bad idea. If they’re already here they’ll have it staked out. Harry, do you still have that suite?”
“Sorry, the room they gave me is reserved tonight. They’re giving me another but it won’t be ready until seven.”
Mercer just nodded at the news. “Okay, then we’ll just slip from the hotel, amble down to the next casino on the boardwalk, and hail a cab. If we can get that far without being spotted, we’re clear. Cali, any chance you have a gun?”
She shook her head. “In my desk drawer at the office I’ve got a Glock, but that doesn’t help us here.”
“My spare Beretta’s in my bedside table,” Mercer admitted, handing Cali her computer case and casting an eye around the room for anything important. “Ready?”
Harry and Cali nodded.
Mercer opened the door and peered quickly down the long hallway. It was deserted but that didn’t mean someone wasn’t lurking in the elevator vestibule. With Harry in tow the stairs weren’t an option. He motioned for them to hold still and he took off down the hall, moving so his shoes made the barest whisper against the carpet-a sound easily masked by the hotel’s humming ventilation system. There was no one hiding by the elevators so he pressed the button and motioned for Harry and Cali to join him. On the odd chance the people who murdered Serena Ballard arrived on the next car, the three of them had better odds using surprise to overpower them than had Mercer waited alone.
His stomach was calming after the first jolt of adrenaline at seeing the news piece, and he began to wonder what they had stumbled into. It was no coincidence that Caribe Dayce was operating near Kivu at the same time Cali was searching for a potential uranium deposit. The key had to be the one-eyed mercenary, Poli. Mercer’s thinking about what had happened in Africa was backward. Dayce hadn’t hired Poli to work with his troops. Poli was paying the African rebel to secure the lode of highly radioactive ore.
Answering that question to his satisfaction left Mercer with another. How the hell did they know about the uranium in the first place? He glanced at Cali. Was it possible she wasn’t who she claimed to be? Mercer discounted that idea even as it formed. Too many bullets were flying in her direction for her to be working with Poli and Dayce. The answer lay someplace else.
The light above one of the Deco elevator doors popped on with a discreet chime.
The instant before the doors opened, Mercer heard the distinct sound of an automatic pistol being cocked inside the elevator car. They had less than a second before the gunman saw them, not nearly enough time to run more than a few feet. And if they had their weapons drawn, Mercer could forget about overpowering the assassins. Their only chance was to hide in plain sight. The gunmen were looking for two men and a woman. But not a couple and another man.
Harry stood closer to Cali than Mercer, so he pushed his friend into her arms and hissed, “Kiss her.”
Mercer was sure Cali understood what he had in mind but felt confident that Harry would just give in to his natural lechery. As the elevator doors slid open, the two wrapped their arms around each other.
“Oh, thank you, John,” Cali squealed in a little girl voice and pressed her lips to Harry’s.
Mercer had turned away just enough so it was evident he wasn’t with the May/December couple.
The three men who stepped from the elevator held their pistols under their coats. Each gave Harry and Cali a passing glance, and as their eyes swiveled to Mercer, he bent as if to tie his shoe. Mercer didn’t recognize two of the men, but the third was indelibly imprinted on his brain. Poli wore a black turtleneck and suit, and rather than give him a piratical air his eye patch made him all the more menacing.
Cali made sure she kept Harry between herself and the gunmen as she and
Harry strode into the elevator.
“Room 1092,” one of the assassins said, studying a plaque screwed to the wall. He motioned to their left. “This way.”
Mercer felt Poli’s eyes burning into the back of his skull but remained calm as he stood erect and casually moved into the elevator behind Cali and Harry. Harry pressed the button for the lobby. “How’s your luck holding out, chum?” he asked Mercer, playing the part of strangers.
The elevator doors began to whisper closed. “Just fine,” Mercer replied and began to turn to face the front of the car.
Poli stood rooted in the vestibule, ignoring his men as they moved down the corridor toward Mercer’s room. His single eye went wide as he recognized Mercer, and his mouth split into a rictus of anger. He lunged for the elevator doors, trying to prevent them from closing, but he was a second too slow.
“Holy shit,” Cali gasped as the car began to plummet for the lobby. “How did he escape the counterattack in Africa?”
Mercer didn’t have an answer and knew now wasn’t the time to worry about it. “We have just a few seconds once we reach the lobby,” he said, then added grimly, “or no time at all if Poli has more men and a radio.”
“What’s your play?” Harry asked.
“Can you get around okay without your cane?”
Harry smiled, understanding what Mercer really wanted. “I think I’ll be all right.” He handed over the polished wood cane that Mercer had given him for his eightieth birthday.
Mercer had commissioned the cane from one of the finest knife makers in North America. He took the walking stick from Harry and pressed a hidden button to release a two-and-a-half-foot-long rapier. The blade was as sharp as a scalpel, and while Mercer had no formal fencing training, the barest touch would split cloth and skin. He gave the black walnut scabbard to Cali.
“Clubs and swords against pistols?”
“Desperate times,” he replied with a smirk.
Mercer’s hands were slick on the silver handle and he rubbed the sweat against his pants, leaving a damp smear. He kept the blade tucked behind his leg while Cali held the baton across her chest and under her suit jacket. They remained silent as they watched the indicator lights fall inexorably toward the lobby.
