The Medusa stone

by Jack Du Brul

"Mahdi, alert your men. We must move out quickly."

  Gianelli's emotions raised his voice to a shout. "The refugees have a head start on us that we'll make up in the trucks, but I don't want them getting too far ahead. Joppi, I think oung packed on the trucks?"

  "Ja." The Africaaner grinned. He was plainly relieved to escape the boredom of the camp. "We repacked them after checking each load."

  "Mahdi, how fast can that refugee caravan walk through the desert?"

  "If they left their women and children behind, twenty or more miles a day, but they are bringing their families. That would cut their progress in half."

  "Good." The refugees moving so slowly tempered Gianelli's haste and changed his plans slightly. "Send out scouts to track them. It shouldn't be too difficult. We'll remain in camp until they get a few days ahead of us. That way we won't trip over them when we leave. That also gives us more time to get another fuel truck from Khartoum."

  "Mr. Gianelli, if there are that many people at the mine, we're going to need more water too," Joppi remarked.

  Giancarlo opened his laptop again and began a list. "Water, fuel, what else?"

  The three of them worked for an hour, refining the list. By the time they had finished, they had the provisions to sustain the camp for several weeks without resupply. After that, they would start to bring stores from Sudan, which wasn't a problem given Gianelli's influence. In addition to his support to the rebels, he also maintained contacts with the government in Khartoum, working both sides of the civil war.

  Gianelli concluded their meeting. "Mahdi, send out those scouts now, have them take a hand radio to report their progress. I'm going to order the rest of the equipment and supplies from Khartoum and make the necessary security arrangements. Joppi, you just make damned sure your men are ready to go."

  "Yes, sir," both men said in unison. In the bizarre twist of Joppi Hofmyer's racism that made him hate the group but not the individuals, he held the tent fly open for Mahdi as they left the screened enclosure.

  Valley of Dead Children

  It was just before dusk when Habte, Selome, and Gibby arrived in the Valley of Dead Children on the half-loaded tractor trailer. Five minutes after the rig had crossed the secret bowl of land and trundled to the head gear, a bright yellow excavator tracked onto the plain, its hydraulic arm coiled to the boxy, rotatable cab. The operator had been forced to clear away part of the ancient landslide at the valley's entrance to allow the truck access to the mine site. Rather than reload the cumbersome machine, he'd driven it to the former Italian installation.

  Wind whipped the dust of their progress across the landscape, eddies and gyres forming and collapsing in their wake. At the camp, both vehicles were shut down, and silence rushed in on them. Habte quickly followed Selome out of the truck, and he dodged into the main bunkhouse. Returning outdoors, he shielded his eyes against the red sun nestled on the western rim of the bowl and scanned for Mercer. The Toyota Land Cruiser was gone and there was no sign of him.

  "Gibby," he called, and the boy scrambled off the trailer. "This is the right place. Where's Mercer?"

  "I don't know," Gibby admitted. "He said he was going to wait here for us. He was upset that the mine was empty and seemed eager to talk to us. I can't guess where he went."

  Habte ignored a creeping sens until I found this spot. The wind whips over the northern wall of the depression, curls back on itself in a vortex that can gust to about twenty miles an hour." Mercer used his finger to draw a crude sketch in the soil. The drawing showed the side of the mountain with a V-shaped symbol pointing at its flank.

  "The tricky part comes when you need to channel the air into the shaft, concentrating the flow exactly where you want it. Now, look again on the desert floor right below us."

  It was Gibby, with his younger, sharper eyes who saw it first. "There," he pointed. "I see what you drew."

  There were two faint lines in the dirt, just a shade darker than the rest of the desert. They were two hundred feet long, angling toward each other so they nearly met below where the party stood. They were too geometrical for nature to be their creator. They were the work of man.

  "What are they?"

  "All that remains of the foundations of two huge walls. Judging by their width, I'd guess they were at least seventy feet tall, more than enough to catch the wind blowing off the mountains and channel it into a mine entrance. I'm sure there are some vents driven into the mountain to allow an escape outlet for the wind, but I'm not too concerned with those quite yet."

  "You mean, we are standing on top of another mine?"

  "That's right." Mercer tempered his excitement with difficulty. "A horizontal drift tunneled into the mountain."

  "When was this excavated?" asked Habte.

  "I don't know. We can check the foundations to get an idea, but it's not really important."

  "The question I want answered is, who dug this in the first place?" Selome said.

  Mercer glanced at her, feeling she already knew the answer. "We'll find that when we open her up."

  An hour later, the excavator was ripping into the side of the hill, clearing away the dirt that had piled against the stone face. Mercer stood next to where the bucket clawed into the ground, using hand gestures to guide the operator. He kept a shovel with him, and every ten minutes or so would descend into the trench dug by the machine. The temperature was again hovering around a hundred degrees, and Mercer worked stripped to the waist. Every trip into the trench was more dangerous than the last. It was already fifteen feet deep and twice as long, its sides loose and crumbling. He used the hand shovel to dig a bit farther into the soil, exposing earth that hadn't seen daylight in who knew how many years. Carrying samples out of the trench, he examined each minutely before motioning for the excavator to continue.

  "What are you looking for?" Selome asked when he emerged after the sixth time. Habte, Gibby, and the truck driver were busy unbundling the pallets of equipment secured to the tractor trailer.

  "Overburden, the mine's waste rock." Mercer wiped the sweat from his forehead with a saturated bandanna. "When it was first excavated, they would have piled the worthless material at the entrance. It should be easy to detect it from the accumulated surface material."

  "But if the mine's at the point of the two walls, why don't we dig into the mountain there?"

  "Because I want to know what's in there before we reopen the sning the mine, but I want to go up there and talk to the priests. Gibby, do you know it?"

  "Yes. I think I can find it from here, but it is far." The teenager didn't sound sure.

  "Talk to Habte about it. We won't be leaving for a day or two anyway."

  "Why do you want to talk to the priests?"

  "That monastery has been here for a thousand years. And I'm willing to bet they already know about this mine and the people who opened it."

  "But what do you wish to learn?" Selome pressed.

  "If I knew that, I wouldn't need to talk to them, now would I?" Mercer stood and brushed off the back of his pants. He was sure that Selome had detected a change in his attitude toward her. She'd been playing him for a fool, and it pissed him off. She knew what this was all about, had known since the beginning, but still was asking questions she knew the answers to. Mercer had some questions of his own, and it was getting time for the answers.

  They worked for three straight days, each of them settling into a routine that left them wasted when the sun finally set. Habte and the truck driver rigged a plow on the front of the ten-wheeled rig to use it as a bulldozer. They worked in unison with the excavator, pushing aside the piles of debris that the big Caterpillar stripped from the side of the mountain. Mercer and Abebe took turns running the excavator while Gibby stood in the excavated sections, guiding the bucket to maximize the bite it took with every scoop. Only Selome, who didn't have a specific task related to the digging, balked at the traditional female role of housekeeper and chef.

  Late afternoon on the third day, there was still n
o sign of the mine entrance. The team was gathered at the excavation. The ground had been compressed by the movement of the excavator until it felt like concrete. They had opened up a chasm nearly sixty feet wide and over twice that deep. The mountain towered above them. It hung precariously. From the bottom of the chasm, the sky was just a narrow blue band between the two sides. Habte and Abebe were smoking cigarettes while Mercer pulled from a bottle of beer. They were all frustrated by the amount of work and the lack of results.

  Mercer broke the tired silence. "I'm going to have to blast the mountain. We've dug so deep, I'm afraid that lot over our heads is going to come down pretty soon. We have to cause our own avalanche, and that'll mean at least another full day to clear the debris before we can continue to dig for the mine entrance."

  "No other way," Habte agreed. "We did the same thing when I worked in the quarries."

  "Did you get the fertilizer I requested?" Mercer asked as he finished the last of the beer.

  "Ammonium nitrite, two hundred pounds' worth. And I got five thousand feet of detonator cord." The explosives Mercer had requested when still in Washington had been abandoned in Asmara so he was forced to improvise.

  "Good. We'll use the diesel from the truck's auxiliary tank. We won't need that much punch--the mountain will collapse with just a good swift kick." He looked at the hill, gauging where he would place the amfo. "After I make the shot, Selome, Gibby, and I are going to the monastery and have a chat with the good fathers."

  "Why do you need me?" Selome didn't sound like she minded the trip, bunal femalewench to interpreter."

  Selome smiled. "Give me another week and I'll be running this operation."

  "That's the spirit." Mercer matched her smile for the first time in days. They'd have a chance to talk on the ride to the monastery.

  Asmara, Eritrea

  Night was his element. Yosef had the ability to blend with the shadows so he was like a wraith on the nearly deserted streets, easing around the puddles of light cast by an occasional street lamp. His motions were deliberate, his pace deceptively quick though he did not hurry himself.

  After eleven in the evening, Asmara virtually shut down. Even the busiest streets were devoid of cars, and there was little chance of running into pedestrians. In all his previous nocturnal meetings, the rogue Mossad agent had yet to see a police patrol.

  Since their return from Nacfa, he and his team had holed up in a rundown hotel near the old Soviet-style parade ground. The hotel's owner, though harboring suspicions, had been paid enough not to ask questions about his guests. Asmara's police were on the alert for a European in connection with the shootings at the Ambasoira Hotel, and while they did not have a good description of Yosef, he maintained constant vigilance. According to Profile, the authorities were more interested in the two Sudanese terrorists and the others responsible for a disturbance at the old market and cattle stockade. The newspaper's editorial was calling for a crackdown on all Sudanese in the city, many of whom were there illegally, and barely mentioned the white man who had killed the two rebels.

  This apparent lack of interest gave Yosef the time he needed to cultivate a contact in the city. Because of his nationality, he already had an established support network nearly everywhere in the world. After returning to Asmara, he had needed only a few hours to find it.

  Asmara boasted a very small Jewish community, just a few families, and only a couple of them had the resources he could use. Of course, there was Selome Nagast's family, who would certainly be able to get the information he needed, but it would be impossible to go to them for obvious reasons.

  Though there were no formal synagogues in the city, there was a rabbi who taught and held services in his home, a man in his late thirties with a pretty wife and two children. His father had been a rabbinical student in the United States during the fifties who had trained his son so he too could shepherd Eritrea's Jews. Hoping for a better life for his own children, the ersatz rabbi wanted his children to go to university in Israel when they were old enough, and Yosef used the leverage to make him an accomplice.

  Aharon Yadid had welcomed Yosef that first night with something akin to worship. Not only was the secret agent from the fabled Holy Land, but he was also a member of the Mossad, the agency most responsible for protecting the Jewish state. The young rabbi had never been to Israel himself and felt disconnected by his isolation from the rest of world Jewry, especially since Operation Moses had air-lifted thousands of Ethiopian Jews to the homeland.

  Aharon met Yosef at the door of his one-story bungalow, having observed the Israeli agent through the curtained front window. "Shalom, shalom," he greeted eagerly, showing off his on fi there would be no problem finding a level place on which to land the aircraft near the valley. He forced a smile. "You have done very well, and when I return to Israel, I promise that I will make certain your children will be sponsored to study at Tel Aviv University."

  Before Aharon could show his gratitude, his wife stepped through the front door. Aharon told her of Yosef's offer, and she rushed across the room to throw her arms around the Israeli, tears of happiness streaming down her cheeks. She spoke to him in excited Tigrinyan, her emotions transcending language.

  Yosef barely acknowledged her joy. His mind was planning out the next and perhaps final phase of the operation. Mercer must have been at the mine when he had been contacted earlier and had lied about his location. The American had bluffed, and Yosef found his anger rising at such an insult. The Israeli agent had told Mercer that Harry White was going to lose a hand, though Yosef hadn't intended to carry out the threat. But now? Yes, he would order it done. He would record the sounds with the micro-cassette he carried, as he had done for White's previous message.

  He considered that if Mercer had found the mine and was working to reopen it, there would be no reason for his team to return to Asmara after reaching the valley. And after tonight Yosef could not afford to be seen anywhere in the country.

  "Yosef?" Aharon broke into his silent musings.

  "Yes?"

  "My wife wants to do something for you to show our thanks, perhaps a meal in your honor."

  Yosef gave him a sad smile, "That won't be necessary. Tell her another hug is thanks enough." He stood, his right hand hidden behind his back.

  The woman's arms came around his neck, her cheek pressed to his chest. "Yekanyelay," she sobbed. Thank you.

  "I am sorry," Yosef said quietly in Hebrew.

  He used his knife. Normal procedure dictated he kill Aharon first. As a man, he posed more of a physical threat. But Yosef decided that watching his wife die would stun the rabbi enough for him to dispatch the Eritrean before he recovered. Further, a woman's reactions are quicker than a man's, and her scream would likely have alerted the children asleep in their beds.

  Yosef was across the room, plunging the bloody blade into Aharon's chest before the body of his wife hit the rug covering the wooden floor. The rabbi stood still as the knife came at him, his eyes fixed on a horror beyond his comprehension. In seconds it was over, and Yosef was back on the street, heading toward his hotel.

  For security reasons, he had no choice but to kill them. Someday, Aharon Yadid would have told a friend about the Israeli agent he had helped, and that was a leak Yosef could not afford.

  There was a great deal to accomplish before he and his team left for the Valley of Dead Children. He had to contact the team members in Jerusalem guarding Harry White and order his mutilation, a task he would enjoy for the pain it would cause Mercer. He also had to reach Defense Minister Levine and order the helicopter for when the mission was over. The Israeli Defense Force had CH-53 Super Stallion helicopters that could make the flight with their upgraded inflight refueling capability and safely return with their precious cargo. It would take some coordination to have flying tankers standing by to supporteyond flooded his brain, Yosef still found a few seconds to consider what he would find at the mine. The idea was staggering. Not only would it ensure Levine's election,
there was something even larger at stake than a political victory. Out in the desert lay hidden a tangible link to the founding of Judaism, a talisman unlike any other religious artifact ever unearthed. If they could bring it to light, it would make the great Dead Sea Scrolls pale in comparison. A piece of living history was within his reach now, something stolen from Israel hundreds of generations ago that had become his destiny to bring home.

  He shook himself of these feelings and refocused on his job. Things were coming into place. First was the location of the mine. And now he finally had an idea who was behind the Sudanese attacks in Rome and at Mercer's hotel. Yosef had learned from Archive, their secret tap into the Mossad computer system, that Italian industrialist Giancarlo Gianelli was under investigation by the FBI and Interopol in conjunction with documents stolen from the United States. Yosef harbored the suspicion that they were talking about the Medusa pictures. Taking into consideration Italy's colonial presence in Eritrea, it seemed likely that Gianelli was after the pictures and the mine. He guessed that the Italian was behind the Sudanese, perhaps using them as a mercenary army to thwart Mercer's and indirectly Yosef's own efforts.

  What he didn't know was how close the Italian was and if he knew about what really lay hidden out in the northern wastelands.

  Jerusalem

  Security all over Israel was still on a heightened alert even after two incident-free months had passed since the deadly bombing at the Western Wall. Nowhere was this more apparent than within the towering ramparts surrounding Jerusalem's Old City. Armed patrols walked the narrow, twisting streets in even greater numbers than during the Infitata. While every Israeli citizen had to perform two years of active military service, it appeared that the IDF was using only the toughest veterans to patrol the sacred city. Uniforms and machine pistols were a common sight all over the country, but the grim faces of these shock troops chilled even the most impassive residents.

  The streets and meandering alleys were eerily quiet this night except for the low mutterings of the patrols and the occasional rustle of feral cats picking through garbage. The shops were boarded up for the night, and little light escaped from the shuttered windows of the houses. The gibbous moon shone on the cobbled roads, its milky, otherworldly light only adding to the haunted feeling of the city.