The Medusa stone

by Jack Du Brul

  He caught the attention of a stewardess and ordered two black coffees and a glass of orange juice. They were waiting for him when he returned from the rest room, where he'd cleaned himself up. Selome Nagast was waiting for him as well, an enigmatic smile on her face.

  "I hope you don't mind?" She batted her eyes playfully. "I don't have your expense account to enjoy myself with. I'm sitting in the back with the rest of the sardines, and I knew from Bill that you have two first-ting to pull us apart. Religion will be the curse of Eritrea, not the tribalism that has torn apart a lot of other African nations. But the outcome will be the same. Devastation.

  "Muslims and Christians are already rattling their sabers from church and mosque alike, calling for the elimination of the other. Sudan's Muslim government isn't helping, exporting their version of fanaticism. Bandits raid us constantly, killing those who don't believe in Allah. Have you ever been to the Sudan?"

  "No."

  "Pray you never go. I've been to the refugee camps a number of times. In fact, I was on the trip where those photographs Bill Hyde showed you were taken."

  Mercer winced, remembering.

  "When we finally ousted the Ethiopians, they practiced a scorched-earth policy during their retreat," Selome explained. "They burned villages, destroyed roads and bridges and irrigation dams. They even cut down nearly every tree in the country in an effort to demoralize us. The trees lining the streets in Asmara are the tallest in Eritrea because all others were hauled back to Ethiopia. No matter how bad off we were when the Ethiopians withdrew, it is nothing compared to the ruin found in the Sudan. There are roving bands of guerrillas, terrorizing everyone, some allied to the government, others to the Sudan People's Liberation Army, and still others that are just mercenaries looking to capitalize on the bloodshed. Slavery is rampant and some say government sanctioned."

  "What's the reason for their war?"

  "Religion. The government in Khartoum is Islamic and has made life unbearable for those in the south who are mostly Christian and animists. If this war is allowed to spread, we will see the same thing in Eritrea. And you are the key for preventing this from happening. It's an old axiom that hatred is the fuel of the hopeless and peace the progeny of the satisfied."

  Watching her face, Mercer felt confident that Selome Nagast's loyalties lay in her native Eritrea. He didn't doubt that she also worked for the Israeli secret police, but for this mission her only goal was the welfare of her people in Africa. Knowing this peeled away only one layer of complication, however. He felt there were still depths here that he didn't know.

  Before leaving home, Mercer had spoken extensively with Dick Henna about the preliminary findings of Harry's abduction. The private jet that had spirited him out of Washington had been chartered by a corporation in Delaware, but the company was just a post office box, a front. They had been unable to track the fleeing Gulfstream except for a report that it was seen flying over Maryland's eastern shore low enough to burn leaves off trees. They also had a sighting in Liberia, where it landed to refuel before continuing east. The plane's final destination was Lebanon. A CIA agent arrived at the airport in Beruit just in time to see an older man bundled into a van and taken away. He'd lost the vehicle in traffic near the city's Christian Quarter.

  A Mideastern connection was further confirmed by Harry's few neighbors who had heard the abduction. The language they described spoken by the kidnappers sounded like Arabic. The only neighbor to see anything reported that the four men all wore black coats and jeans and had dark complexions and dark hair.

  All this matched with what Mercer and Henna had seen at the airport. Henna still didn't have any identification of the one kidnapper's body, but he assured it was only a matter of timev width="1em">His need for a drink was an overpowering craving that was driving his mind beyond the realm of sanity.

  He used the blanket not only to ward off the chills, but also to protect him from the flying monkeys that circled the room with the maddening persistence of hornets. He knew they were a DT-created hallucination, but they were terrifying nevertheless.

  He'd seen the first one only an hour after waking and had called out in horror. The rational part of his mind told him it wasn't real, but he was too weak to prevent its wheeling attack. A guard had come to check on him, a red and white kefflaya headdress covering his features. As Harry cowered, the man determined that nothing was wrong and left. The monkey clung to the wall near where it joined the ceiling and winked.

  Two more appeared to terrorize him. They flew at him without mercy, breaking off their aerial charges just inches from his face. He could feel the air move from their swift passage, and their unearthly screeches were like nails drawn across a chalkboard. They would swoop by briefly and then land on the walls, their sharp little claws digging into the stone.

  None of the monkeys had touched him yet, but it was only a matter of time.

  "There's no place like Tiny's," he moaned aloud, praying the invocation would transport him away from here.

  After three long hours his hallucinations ended, and Harry fell into a nightmarish sleep more haunting than his periods of wakefulness. Demons more cunning than the monkeys were after him, chasing him down an endless hallway. They carried bottles of Jack Daniel's, which they tried to pass to him like relay runners, but the bottles slipped out of Harry's hands.

  When he woke, his mind had cleared some. A breakfast tray lay on the floor near the bed, the coffee still steaming. His stomach was too knotted to eat the fruit or the jam-smeared bread, but he drank the coffee quickly. And then his lungs reminded him that he'd smoked a couple packs a day for the past six decades and he wanted a cigarette. Needed one.

  "For the love of God, you sadistic sons of bitches, give me a smoke," he yelled.

  The guard appeared again, and Harry repeated his request with a little more civility, shouting just a few decibels quieter. The guard didn't seem to understand the words, so the octogenarian pantomimed smoking a cigarette. With a sympathy known by smokers the world over, the guard pulled a half-empty pack from his pocket and tossed them on the floor with a book of matches.

  "How about some booze, you bastard," Harry said halfheartedly as he scooped up the rumpled pack. The splint made it difficult to light one of the cigarettes, and it took him several tries.

  As the nicotine coursed through his system, he looked at the monkey that had appeared on the wall again, its teeth bared in an aggressive display.

  "Screw you, too," Harry said to the apparition, a filterless cigarette hanging from his lips. He knew from experience that the DTs would pass quickly and the monkeys wouldn't bother him much longer.

  He sat back on the bed, keeping one eye on the monkey just in case, and massaged his injured hand. He didn't know where he was or who had grabbed him, or even why. He hadn't seen the guard's face, but the colorful headdress made him pretty sure they were Arabs and that his abduction involved Mercer and his search for the diamond vent.

  "No, not really," Morrison admitted. "The bird hadn't been calibrated when we lost her. The pics looked like a bunch of junk to our people."

  "Well, they're not junk to the group who perpetrated that attack at Dulles."

  "We need to get that material back. Not only is it highly classified, but it's also evidence," Baines said.

  "No. What we need to do is haul in Prescott Hyde, I mean today, right now and then let Mercer figure out just what the hell is going on."

  "Dick, we can help Eritrea later. Dig up the diamonds in a few months or something. We have to get those pictures back." Morrison's voice was backed with every ounce of command in his body but Henna didn't even blink.

  "Tom, if you want to pick up Hyde on your own authority and have this make the six o'clock news tonight, be my guest. But if you want the help of this office, then we do it my way."

  A tense minute passed, the gleaming pendulum of the wall clock knifing through the time, carving the seconds away.

  "All right," Morrison relented. "If w
e do it your way, what happens now?"

  "I get an arrest warrant from Justice and we all go over to pay Hyde the worst visit of his life."

  Morrison looked over at the still quiet Baines. "What do you think, counselor?"

  "Once we have Hyde, we can send someone to Africa to get the photographs from the man Mercer."

  "Ass covering, Tom?"

  "Mine's on the line. Goddamn right I'm going to cover it. Let's get it over with."

  Henna rode with Morrison in the back of a Bureau car, Baines sitting in the front with the driver. Three other dark sedans followed them in convoy as they headed toward Fairfax, Virginia. Before leaving FBI headquarters, Henna phoned Hyde's office and determined the undersecretary wasn't at work and hadn't shown up all morning. He then called Hyde's home but the line was disconnected. Fearing that Hyde had already fled, Henna fast-tracked a warrant through the Justice Department and put together a small team to make the arrest.

  As they drove, he sorted details in his head, mentally writing items on note cards and shuffling them randomly, searching for patterns. It was an old trick that served him well. On the first card was Rosen with the stolen Medusa photographs followed by their purchase by Hyde. After that, everything could fit together any number of ways. He wondered if, after Rosen sold them, he was approached by a group in Europe who also wanted them, someone from the Balkans, for example. It was possible that Harry's neighbors heard one of those languages and not Arabic. When Mercer refused Hyde's offer, the terrorists had kidnapped Harry to force him to go to Africa to find the diamonds for them. From security briefings, Henna knew that Iran supported Muslim groups in Albania and Serbia and also had ties to the factions in Beruit. The tie-in was circumstantial at best, but it was a good lead.

  That still left Hyde and his motivation. Money was the most obvious answer. He was using his position at the State Department to deal himself in on any potential wealth, Henna thought. He bought the pictures himself, then hired Mercer for the expedition. But where, Henna eftalized Israel, through Selome Nagast, was footing the bill. Hyde paid for the photographs and they were paying for everything else. The reasons were obvious when he considered the Iranian connection. Israel was trying to prevent some terrorist group from securing a new font of untraceable wealth, an unknown diamond mine.

  He was thinking about his upcoming interview with Hyde and knew he could use any information he got from the undersecretary to get the Mossad to open up about their operation. He'd always felt that America's security arrangement with the Jewish state was too one-sided. This was a perfect opportunity to level the playing field.

  Henna's first inkling of a disaster in the making came in the form of a police siren's rising Doppler screaming behind the convoy. An instant later, a cruiser rocketed passed the FBI vehicles in a bejeweled blur, its bubble lights flashing sapphire and ruby. They were on the Little River Turn-pike, just beyond the Beltway, and the police car raced through traffic lights with little more than a tap on its brakes. Another siren was approaching fast.

  Because of traffic, it took them a further twenty minutes to get to the residential neighborhood where Hyde had his home. It was an affluent subdivision, each four- and five-bedroom house built on more than an acre of land with plenty of old trees to shield neighbor from neighbor. The newly macadamed streets were spotlessly clean, and the telephone poles had yet to darken with the patina of age.

  The closer they got to Hyde's street, the darker the sky became and the thicker became the awful stench of burned wood and melted plastic.

  Beginning ten houses from Hyde's, the street looked like a riot scene. The police had established a cordon behind which the curious gathered anxiously. Henna's credentials got him through with only a moment's delay and they drove on, the car weaving around police cruisers, fire engines, and idling ambulances in a slow slalom. When the breeze tugged at the clouds of smoke, they could see the bright inferno that had been Prescott Hyde's slice of the good life.

  Henna's self-satisfaction disappeared. He was no arson specialist, but he knew enough to realize that an accelerant, no doubt gasoline, had been used to start the fire and was still burning. Hyde's house would have been soaked through to create a conflagration of this size. Given the number of emergency vehicles on the scene, the fire must have been called in half an hour ago or earlier.

  The driver eased the sedan to a stop two hundred feet from the fire, close enough for them to feel the heat from the blaze as they stepped from the vehicle. Even as Henna watched, a section of roof collapsed into the churning guts of the building, sending up a fireworks display of popping sparks and burning bits of paper and fabric. The air was laced with the petrochemical stench of melting roof shingles, making Henna close his eyes when the wind shifted into his face. Two pumper trucks siphoned water from separate hydrants and showered the house with ballooning arcs, but still the place burned. Heat washed off the building in visible waves.

  The structure was a total loss. The siding had burned through in places to reveal the skeletal fingers of the house's framing. On the far side of the house had stood a chimney, but all that remained was a seven-foot stump. The rest of it lay across the charred lawn in an elongated pile of debris.

  Henna saw his theories burning in the fire. Without Hyde, there was no case and all the theorizing in the world wouldn't change that fact. He had no doubt that when the house cooled, they would ht inf said as she and Mercer took seats. "They had you as a standby passenger for coach. You might have been bumped from the flight if I hadn't checked you in. I doubt that witch at the counter"-- she tossed her head--"was going to tell you until you tried to board the plane."

  "You sound like you're not coming with me."

  Selome nodded, her hair cascading over her face. She tamed it with a flick of her wrist. "I've got a meeting in London tomorrow. I'll meet up with you in Asmara the day after. I never asked--where are you staying?"

  Mercer took this news in stride. "The Hotel Ambassoira."

  "Good choice, one of our country's finest. But don't expect too much," she cautioned. "The Ambasoira was built during the occupation."

  "Ethiopia's?"

  "No, Italy's. The hotel dates back to the twenties," she grinned. "And unless you're a masochist, avoid their coffee, and never take the plumbing for granted. I believe that Habte Makkonen is going to meet you at the airport. I don't know him, but I'm sure you'll be fine."

  She slung her bag over her shoulder and stood, extending her hand to Mercer. He felt he was being dismissed. The rapport they had built during the transatlantic flight was gone, replaced by a brusque professionalism he hadn't seen from her before.

  "Well then," Mercer stood formally. "I guess I'll see you in a couple of days."

  Unexpectedly, Selome stepped close to him and kissed him on the cheek. "Don't think this was my idea. I'll see you at the Ambasoira the day after next." She was gone in a flash.

  "Not if I don't see you first," Mercer said under his breath, his gray eyes hardening as he watched her cut a swath through the terminal. He returned to the same agent at the ticket counter.

  "I'm terribly sorry about all that." His smile was disarming as he laid his ticket on the counter. "I'm afraid there was a slight language problem. I called the airline this morning to say that I wanted to take a later flight and I'm afraid my traveling partner didn't understand. I want to be on tonight's flight which, I believe arrives at 9:00 P.M. local time."

  In fact, Mercer had been booked on this flight, but had changed his reservations with a call from the Air Italia plane when Selome had gone to the rest room. He'd had a lingering suspicion that she might ditch him once they got to Rome and he needed the time to track her movements. He had an idea where she was really going. Just because he believed her motivation didn't necessarily mean he believed her.

  "I understand." The agent pouted, enjoying a singular female delight in the discredit of another. "These sorts of things happen all the time." Her nails clicked on the computer keys for a mo
ment before handing Mercer a new ticket. "There you are, tonight's flight, departing at 7:20 and arriving at 9:15 P.M. I even managed to get you a first-class upgrade at no additional cost. Our night flight isn't nearly as booked as this afternoon's."

  "Thank you so much," Mercer said. "One more question. Where does El Al have their waiting area?"

  "At the end of this concourse, to your right, I believe."

  Mercer thanked her again and took off down the hallis destination, he slowed, blending in with the crowd so that he walked past the El Al waiting room shielded by a half-dozen people. He scanned the room once and then looked again. Selome wasn't there! A flight was boarding and Mercer cursed himself for being too late, but then saw the flight's destination was Lisbon. He was sure she wasn't going to Portugal.

  He continued down the corridor until he came to a cluster of television monitors. Directing his attention at the ones displaying departures, he saw that El Al had a flight to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport in ninety minutes. He spent the time in a crowded, smoky bar at the other end of the terminal, as far from the El Al departure lounge as possible, in case Selome was waiting in a similar fashion. The two gimlets he drank cost twelve dollars each and he was thankful that European bartenders didn't expect tips because he wasn't in the mood to show his gratitude.

  He wasn't really in the mood for the drinks either, but he needed something to dilute the bitterness that scalded the back of his throat. He'd been lied to by some of the best, but Selome Nagast was world-class. He had fallen for her story from the moment she sat next to him on the plane, and all along he should have known it was a setup.