Vulcan's Forge

by Jack Du Brul

  The voice of the Muezzin blared from speakers high above the streets in the minarets, calling the faithful to prayer. Lurbud crouched deeper in an alley, shrinking into the shadows of stacked spice bags as the streets began to empty. The smell of saffron was nauseating. Glancing at his feet, he saw that he’d stepped into a pile of dog shit. He muttered in disgust and smeared the filth against one of the bags.

  Looking up, Lurbud recognized his quarry as the man left his shop across the Khan’s main road. The sign above the shop’s door stated that Suleiman el-aziz Suleiman was a jeweler, and the size of his shop indicated that he was prosperous. Evad Lurbud knew differently.

  Suleiman was one of the richest arms merchants in the Middle East. Not having the notoriety and ostentation of other death merchants, Suleiman had been able to practice his trade unmolested by the United States or Western Europe. Although his arms were used to fight in Beirut, Italy, Ireland, Germany, the drug-choked cities of America, and countless other places, he had never once been questioned by the authorities.

  The obese Arab waddled down the street to the Mosque of Sayyada al-Hussein, his body waggling with every step as huge sacks of extra flesh slid against each other. His face was round with an almost childlike openness.

  According to his KGB dossier, Suleiman was far from the fool whose image he projected. He had distinguished himself in two of the wars against Israel and in the subsequent years had established a relationship with nearly every terrorist organization on the planet. The KGB figured that Suleiman’s personal wealth was somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred million dollars.

  Too nice a neighborhood for a stinking Arab, thought Lurbud as he crossed the now empty street.

  Lurbud paused by the door. The streets were now eerie. He had been watching Suleiman’s shop since noon from various vantage points, and during that entire time the streets had been crowded and loud. There was no one about now; even the countless cats that skulked through the alleys had vanished. Since crime is nearly nonexistent in the Khan, there was no need for elaborate security systems. Lurbud expertly picked the frail lock to Suleiman’s shop.

  He knew from the dossier that the Arab always returned to his shop for a few minutes after prayer before leaving the Khan for his home on Shari El Haram, the road which leads to the Great Pyramids at Giza. Lurbud closed and locked the door after once again checking the empty street.

  Inside the shop, Lurbud passed display cases that gleamed with gold in the dusty light that streamed in through the transomed windows. The setting sun cast long shadows across the room. Lurbud eased a Takarov pistol from its holster under his jacket and parted the beaded curtain that led to Suleiman’s back office.

  A battered wooden desk, covered with stacks of books and a gold measuring scale, occupied the center of the small office. A coffee urn, tarnished and pitted, sat on a low settee against one wall. The room smelled of dust mingled with the sweet odor of hashish. Lurbud sat behind the desk, the pistol in his lap. For twenty minutes, until Suleiman returned from prayer, the only movement in the room was the occasional blinking of Lurbud’s dark eyes. He waited with the same patience as the Sphinx just outside the city.

  Lurbud’s entrance had disturbed the room, its air pattern, its volume, its feel. As he remained, motionless, the room had calmed, accepting his presence. This was a skill he had learned at a training camp on the shores of the Black Sea, where students were put into a completely dark maze. The one who walked out alive, graduated.

  He remained motionless even when he heard the front door of the shop open and close. An instant later Suleiman’s immense bulk parted the curtain separating his shop from his office.

  Suleiman had grabbed a demitasse of coffee and was almost upon Lurbud before he noticed the intruder. The thimble-sized cup fell from his pudgy finger, shattering on the stone floor. Behind his beard, Suleiman’s face drained of color and he staggered back several paces.

  “I read in your dossier that you are never guarded here in the Khan.” Lurbud spoke fluent, unaccented Arabic. “You believed that your standing in the bazaar would protect you, yes?”

  “Who are you?” Suleiman demanded, recovering from his initial shock.

  “My name means nothing to you, Suleiman el-aziz,” Lurbud spoke without emotion. “You were hired to supply and ship nearly a thousand tons of arms, ammunition, and material to Hawaii. Is this not true?”

  “I know not what you talk about.”

  “I believe that you do. The order was placed by Takahiro Ohnishi possibly several weeks or months ago.”

  “I am a simple jeweler. I don’t understand.”

  Lurbud continued as if Suleiman had not spoken. “I represent a group that does not wish to see this order filled. We don’t want those arms shipped to Hawaii. In fact, we don’t want you to have any further involvement with Ohnishi at all.”

  “Who are you to tell me how to run my business?” Suleiman retorted with a sneer.

  “Ah, so no longer are you a simple jeweler.” Lurbud’s smile was devoid of amusement.

  “I know your type,” Suleiman said, his tone scornful. “You’re some soldier of fortune who happened on that piece of information. Do you think you can blackmail Suleiman el-aziz Suleiman?”

  “I am not here to blackmail you. I’m here to tell you that the order is canceled.”

  “You are too late, mercenary. Those arms are on a freighter halfway to Hawaii.” Sweat had beaded on Suleiman’s creased forehead.

  The Arab was lying. Suleiman hadn’t even purchased the arms yet. He was currently using Ohnishi’s deposit money to push up the bond prices of a hydroelectric project in Sri Lanka. Because of his contacts in the terrorist underworld, Suleiman knew that Tamil separatists were going to bomb the huge network of dams within two weeks. By pushing up the bond price and then selling at a slight discount just prior to the attack, Suleiman stood to quadruple the money. Only then would he put together Ohnishi’s order for weapons.

  “I believe that you’re lying, Suleiman.” Lurbud brought the Takarov into view for the first time. “But to be honest, I don’t really care what the truth is.”

  For such a large man, Suleiman’s reaction time was incredibly fast. He dove across the room, his body sailing through the air like a giant zeppelin.

  Lurbud swung his pistol in an arc matching Suleiman’s leap, but his first shot amazingly missed the huge target. Suleiman crashed against the wall near the settee, one arm sweeping the coffee urn to the floor. Coffee flooded across the floor in a thick black tide. Suleiman’s hands, made dexterous through years of precision jewelry making, tore at a pistol which had been taped to the back of the old urn.

  Evad caught a look of murderous rage in the Arab’s eyes as Suleiman torqued his huge body to bring the gun to bear. Lurbud fired an instant before the muzzle of Suleiman’s automatic caught a bead on him. The shot tore into the arms merchant’s body, the fat rippling in shock waves around the impact.

  Suleiman’s arm was thrown up by the shot, the tiny Beretta spinning from his hand. Lurbud fired again, and again. The killing light in Suleiman’s eyes began to fade. Lurbud came around the desk, his pistol aimed directly at the Arab’s head.

  With his free hand the Russian pulled a flask from inside his jacket. He unscrewed the lid from the pewter flask and knelt next to the dying Muslim.

  “As a final thought, Suleiman el-aziz Suleiman,” Lurbud began, pouring the viscous red liquid from the flask onto Suleiman, “you will meet Allah with your body covered in pig’s blood.”

  Suleiman opened his mouth to scream at this ultimate desecration, and Lurbud fired one more round down the gaping throat. The blood of the dead Muslim mingled with that of the unclean pig on the hard floor of the office.

  Lurbud reholstered his gun, noting for the first time the thick pall of cordite smoke that hung in the air. The room reeked of smoke, but beneath that odor he detected the smell of blood and Suleiman’s voided bowels.

  At the front door of the shop
, he paused. There were a few people on the street, mostly old men heading back to the coffeehouses and their hookahs. The thick stone walls of the shop had muffled any sound from the silenced Takarov. Lurbud eased out of the shop and mingled with the crowd as best he could. Ten minutes later he was out of the bazaar, searching for a cab. He had two hours to dispose of the pistol and get to the airport before his flight to Hawaii.

  The White House

  There was a stunned silence in the Oval Office after Mercer made his revelation. He watched as everyone’s expression turned from surprise to confusion and finally to doubt.

  “What makes you think Russia has anything to do with this?” Paul Barnes broke the silence. “Just because the assassin who went after Dr. Talbot once worked for the KGB doesn’t mean anything.”

  Mercer realized that he had just stepped on the toes of the director of the CIA.

  “Tish Talbot told me that after her rescue from the Ocean Seeker, she heard some of her saviors speaking Russian.”

  “Christ,” Barnes said, glancing around the room. “You said she was blown from the ship, stunned. Who knows what she heard—she was half dead at the time.”

  “I doubt that St. Peter speaks Russian during his interview at the Pearly Gates, Mr. Barnes,” Mercer said evenly. “But that’s not the fact I’m relying on.

  “A friend of mine in Miami is an expert in maritime law. I had him research Ocean Freight and Cargo, the owners of the September Laurel. He found that the company is a front for the KGB.”

  “I had a court order demanding Saulman turn over all the information that you requested,” Henna said incredulously. “He withheld that from the FBI.”

  “If you knew Dave Saulman, you wouldn’t be surprised. He’s as crusty as a Paris bakery. But he is a walking encyclopedia concerning maritime commerce and his word is gospel truth.”

  “If we take his word about the KGB for the time being,” Paul Barnes said suspiciously, “what about this submarine idea of yours?”

  “The first piece of evidence is really just simple reasoning. According to the news reports there was a combined naval and coast guard search of the area, using, I’m sure, the most sophisticated hardware in the world. Yet they failed to find any survivors. The Ocean Seeker’s last known position was well documented by her Loran transmissions, yet the search turned up nothing except an oil slick and a few pieces of debris.

  “Then, two days later, the September Laurel happens along, ‘aiding’ in the search, and miraculously they find Tish. That freighter, which was a hundred miles away from the Ocean Seeker when she blew up, managed to accomplish something the coast guard and navy couldn’t do. I don’t buy it. There were no weather problems during that time, no storms, no fog.”

  “You’re wrong there, Dr. Mercer,” Admiral Morrison interrupted. “There was a tremendous amount of surface fog, and because of the President’s order not to send out surface ships, we were confined to an aerial search only.”

  “Admiral, tell me honestly, is there any logical reason why your planes would have missed her, even with the fog?”

  The chairman of the Joint Chiefs ran a hand across the tight whorls of hair on his large head before answering. “If she had been out there, my boys would have found her.”

  “Since there is no logical reason why she wasn’t found by the coast guard or navy, I looked for an illogical one. The only one that fits, gentlemen, is a submarine.”

  Morrison turned to the President. “It makes sense, sir. There could have been a sub out there and we never would have known it. None of the search aircraft used sonar buoys or acoustical gear in the search for survivors. That sub could have sat just under the surface and listened to us flounder around.”

  The President nodded. “What other proof do you have, Dr. Mercer?”

  “Since I couldn’t learn anything more about Ocean Freight and Cargo from Dave Saulman, I knew I needed a firsthand investigation, so Tish and I broke into their offices in New York.”

  “What did you find?” asked Dick Henna.

  “For one I found a fish tank in the vice president’s office, a large tank that contained only a single fish.”

  “So?”

  “Well, OF&C has a practice of naming their ships after months and flowers and painting those flowers on the stack of vessels. Tish remembers seeing the design on the stack of the ship that rescued her. It was a black circle surrounding a yellow dot, yet the September Laurel is marked with a bunch of laurels. The distinctive pattern that Tish remembered matches that of a European game fish I once caught in France.”

  “What’s the connection?”

  “The name of the fish is John Dory and that tank at the OF&C office contained a prime specimen.”

  “That’s the thinnest connection I’ve ever heard,” Barnes remarked.

  “I’d agree with you, if I hadn’t found a base file tab in the drawer with the ownership papers for the company’s vessels. The tab read ‘John Dory.’ At the time I thought the reference was simply a misfile, but it makes more sense that they own a ship by that name but don’t keep any paperwork on her. When I got back to D.C., I called the friend I went fishing with and he confirmed the name of the fish. The design on the stack pins down the source of the name, and the only ships ever named after fish are submarines.”

  “You’ve got to be joking.” Barnes chuckled indolently.

  Mercer stood up. “Mr. President, you said I was a guest and not a prisoner. If that’s true, I want to leave. If you don’t want to listen to what I have to say, then I see no reason to stay here and try to explain. In the past few days, I’ve been shot at a dozen times, and not because I have a bad standing in the community. I’ve stumbled on something, and if you gentlemen are not interested in what I have to say, I’m going.”

  “Dr. Mercer, please wait,” Henna said. “Tell us what happened in New York.”

  Mercer told them about the break-in, the armed soldiers guarding the building, and his impressions about the office.

  “There is something nefarious behind Ocean Freight and Cargo, and so far all indications point to the Russians,” Mercer concluded. “I just don’t know why.”

  “Mr. President,” Henna said, turning in his seat, “I had some agents go to the OF&C offices soon after Dr. Mercer and Dr. Talbot had left. The scene had been sanitized—no corpses or blood. My men could tell that a gun had been discharged in the building. The air fresheners couldn’t mask the smell of the cordite. I can’t confirm what Dr. Mercer reported, but I certainly can’t deny it either.”

  “I just remembered something.” Paul Barnes rejoined the conversation with a more accepting tone. “I can’t remember any details, but a report crossed my desk a few years ago from a metallurgist in Pennsylvania. It sounds similar to the conditions Dr. Mercer described about the explosion in 1954. He had obtained a sample of some element; I can’t remember what it was called, but it had something to do with radiation and seawater.”

  “Do you remember anything else?” Admiral Morrison prompted after Barnes had lapsed into silence.

  “Abraham Jacobs,” Barnes finally replied. “The scientist’s name was Abraham Jacobs. I’m sure he knew something about what we’re discussing.”

  “Can you find him?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want him in my office by this afternoon.” The force in the President’s voice galvanized the room. “We now have a more grave situation in Hawaii than we first estimated. If Dr. Mercer is right and this does go beyond Ohnishi’s personal coup and in some way involves the Russians, I don’t even want to think of the consequences.”

  “It seems too far-fetched to me that Takahiro Ohnishi and the Russians have been planning this since the 1950s. Too much has changed in the world to make a plot of this type viable.” This from Henna.

  “This could be an alliance of convenience,” hazarded Mercer. “Something that was formed recently, as new situations developed.”

  “That makes sense,” the President a
greed. “But we have to get in touch with this Dr. Jacobs. Hopefully he can tell us exactly what’s at stake here.”

  “You mean over and above the possible secession of Hawaii?” Henna said caustically. The President shot him a scathing look.

  “Mr. President, may I make a request?” asked Mercer.

  “Yes, Dr. Mercer, what is it?”

  “I have a feeling that we’re working under a time limit. Ohnishi or the Russians must know we’re on to them in some respect. They are probably being forced to push up their deadlines because of my action in New York. I have a feeling that the situation in Hawaii is going to get critical real soon.”

  “I know what you are going to ask and it’s already been taken care of. The carrier Kitty Hawk and the amphibious assault ship Inchon are already on alert three hundred miles from Hawaii.”

  “A good idea, sir, but not what I wanted. I think to better understand what we’re up against, a series of infrared photos should be taken of the area where the Ocean Seeker was sunk.”

  The President looked toward Barnes, who rummaged through a briefcase at his feet. “Let’s see, there’s a KH-11 flyby of the north Pacific in thirteen hours. That bird has the right cameras and it wouldn’t take much to change her orbit to pass north of Hawaii.”

  “Thirteen hours, that’s too late,” Mercer said.

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Either an SR-1 Blackbird or one of the air force’s superspy planes that no one is supposed to know about.”

  “Paul?”

  “There’s an SR-71 Wraith at Edwards, but I need your authorization to get her airborne.”

  “Do it. How long before we get some pictures back?”

  “At mach six the Wraith will be there and back in about an hour and a half. Say a half hour for film processing and transmission here.”

  “Dr. Mercer, I needn’t remind you that you have not heard any of this, correct?” the President cautioned.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Mercer smiled. “I haven’t been listening. Did you say something?”