Vulcan's Forge

by Jack Du Brul

  “Very good. Gentlemen, we all have jobs to do.”

  The group started for the door. “I want everyone to meet back here in two hours. Dr. Mercer, ask my secretary for a temporary pass if you plan to leave the grounds.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Mercer spoke with Miss Craig and learned that Tish was asleep in one of the White House guest rooms. He scribbled a quick note for her in case she woke up while he was gone and then hailed a cab near Pennsylvania Avenue. He was home twenty minutes later. After a quick shower and an even quicker beer, he went to his study, touched the large bluish stone that was his good luck piece, and sat behind his desk.

  He dialed a number and two rings later the phone was answered. “Geology department, Carnegie-Mellon University.”

  “I’d like to speak to Dr. Jacobs, please.”

  “One moment.” After about a dozen moments the same voice came back on the line. “I’m sorry, Dr. Jacobs is with a class.”

  “My name is Vince Andrews from the Hiller Foundation, the group that supports Dr. Jacobs’s research,” Mercer said, putting as much bluff into his voice as he could. “Dr. Jacobs is in serious trouble and will probably lose his grant. It’s imperative that I speak to him now.”

  “I understand, please hold the line.”

  A minute later a more mature voice spoke. “I don’t know who this is since my grant comes from Cochran Steel, but you’ve piqued my interest.”

  “Hi, Abe, it’s Philip Mercer.”

  “I should have known.” Abraham Jacobs laughed. “Mercer, give me a second to get into my office. I don’t want my assistant realizing the low caliber of some of my friends.”

  A few seconds later, Abe Jacobs was back and the assistant had hung up the antechamber extension. “So, to what do I owe the honor of this call, and by the way thank you for getting me away from that class. They’re an even bigger group of idiots than you and your class when I taught at Penn State.”

  Abe Jacobs had been Mercer’s academic advisor during his graduate work at Penn State, and Mercer had continued to seek his former professor’s advice in the years since school. They rarely saw each other now, but the tight bond between master teacher and star student had not dimmed.

  “Abe, I was just in a meeting where your name came up.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re on Carnegie-Mellon’s ethics board?”

  “Abe, we both know your wife’s leash on you is just long enough for you to roam to your classes and your lab.”

  “Too true.”

  “Well, she might be in for a surprise tonight, because you won’t be home for dinner. A couple of years ago you apparently sent a research paper to the CIA.”

  “Hold it right there, Mercer. How did you know that? That information was top secret.”

  “I was told by Paul Barnes, the head of the CIA.”

  “Ah.”

  “The CIA is tracking you down right now, but it’ll probably take them a few hours to find you. They think you’re a metallurgist, not a geologist. I thought I’d beat them to the punch and teach Paul Barnes a lesson in humility at the same time. They want you in Washington as soon as possible with any relevant material about your paper.”

  “What’s this all about? It was basically a theoretical paper. Without twenty years of development, what I found would be unfeasible.”

  “Let’s just say someone may have already put in the development effort. Get to the Pittsburgh airport general aviation counter. I’ll have a charter plane ready to bring you down here.”

  “I don’t understand. How could—”

  Mercer interrupted. “Abe, I’ll explain on the way to the White House this evening.”

  He cut the connection, then called general aviation at the airport. Securing a plane and pilot for Abe maxed out two of his credit cards, but Mercer shrugged off the expense. He was keeping a running tally of what the government owed him, and the price of the chartered Lear jet wasn’t even close to the repair bill for his shot-up Jaguar.

  Bangkok, Thailand

  Minister Lujian, the Chinese representative, scratched his name into the heavy book slid to him by Minister Tren of Taiwan. Lujian finished his signature with a flourish and slid the book across the burnished mahogany table to the person at his left, Ambassador Marco Quirino, the representative from the Philippines.

  With each successive signature, the oppressive air in the meeting room lightened. There were murmurs from the small gallery of spectators allowed to see the ambassadors pledge their nations’ consent to the document. Those in the gallery had not been privy to the weeks of frustrating delays that had plagued the Bangkok summit, but still they sensed the great accomplishment these diplomats had achieved.

  The official signature book was passed to the Russian ambassador, Gennady Perchenko. A close observer could easily detect a slight rise in tension among the delegates. The wily Russian had been the reason for the past weeks of utter frustration. Then, inexplicably, this morning he announced to the delegates that he had no further comments. Because the symbolic documents for the representatives’ signatures had been prepared at the start of the accords, Thailand’s ambassador Prem motioned that the delegates commence with the signing and the others nearly fell over themselves seconding him.

  U.S. undersecretary of commerce Kenneth Donnelly leaned over toward Perchenko and whispered out of the corner of his mouth, “I sure hope you know what you’ve been playing at, pardner.”

  “Mr. Secretary, I’m not playing at anything, I simply wanted to ensure all nations’ rights were explored here.”

  Perchenko heard America’s delegate mutter, “Bullshit,” under his breath, but let the comment pass. No sooner had he signed the document than a wave of applause rippled through the room. Perchenko acknowledged the ovation with a smug smile and slid the book to Donnelly.

  Donnelly signed with a tight smile focused on Perchenko and closed the book with a resounding snap.

  A pounding rain lashed the night, the drone of the water interrupted only by the booming thunder that echoed across the city. The storm did little to cool the overpowering heat, and Perchenko found himself nearly panting as he raced from the courtyard of the Arun Wat toward the protection of the temple itself.

  Kerikov’s orders had been explicit; that he wait by the low stone wall that separated the Temple of Dawn from the Phraya River at eight p.m., but the spy had said nothing about drowning in a torrential downpour.

  Gennady dashed into the shadow of one of the four ceramic-tiled towers which surround the conical two-hundred-and-sixty-foot spire of the Wat. His suit was soaked through and his sparse hair hung limply against his pale face, a face once tight and healthy looking, but now worn by exhaustion so that bags drooped under his eyes and slabs of skin hung down his cheeks and throat.

  He could hear the faint chanting of monks within the huge temple, but the storm drowned out all other sounds save his labored breathing.

  “What the hell am I doing here?” he wheezed aloud.

  “Not following instructions, Gennady Perchenko,”

  Ivan Kerikov replied from the deep shadows to Perchenko’s right.

  Kerikov stepped into the light given off by the temple’s numerous floods and spots. He seemed unaffected by the rain; his shoulders were squared against the deluge and his eyes remained open and alert. In contrast, Gennady hunched miserably, and he squinted at Kerikov as if he were a spectral apparition.

  “I told you to wait by the wall.” Kerikov gestured with his arm, then smiled warmly. “But under the circumstances, I understand.”

  Gennady relaxed a bit and smiled, but still regarded Kerikov with a wary, nervous eye.

  “I assume that all went well?” Kerikov moved toward Gennady so that he stood in the protection of the temple’s massive portal.

  “Yes,” Gennady muttered. His fear of Kerikov, oppressive yesterday in the open crowd of the Royal River Hotel’s bar, was crippling now that the two were alone.

  He had been terri
fied of Kerikov since learning of the KGB man’s unlimited influence so when he had shown up the day before, Kerikov had dismissed Gennady’s concerns over the missing maître d’ and assured him that the time had come to wind up the Bangkok Accords. Gennady wanted to ask why the delay had been necessary in the first place, but fear froze the question in his throat. Even in the relaxed atmosphere of the open-air bar, Kerikov was the most malevolent man Gennady had ever seen.

  “Relax, Gennady, it is done and you have triumphed.” Kerikov slipped a sterling hip flask from his jacket pocket. “Vodka from home.”

  Gennady took a long pull from the flask. Even warm, the vodka went down his throat with the smoothness of silk. Kerikov motioned for Gennady to take another drink, and he did so gratefully.

  “Tell me, were you able to insert my amendment into the accords?”

  “Yes, that was done weeks ago. It was simple, really. I’ve had more difficulty in actually delaying the signing ceremony. I’ve made some promises to the Taiwanese ambassador that may be out of my bounds.”

  “Yes, yes,” Kerikov said dismissively. “You had no trouble with my amendment, though?”

  “The wording had to be changed some to accommodate the American, Donnelly, but they all agreed to it.”

  “Changed?” There was no panic in Kerikov’s voice, but its pitch had raised slightly. “How?”

  “I thought you’d ask, so I brought that section of the accords with me.” Perchenko pulled a sheet of paper from within his jacket and read aloud:

  No sovereign nation has the right to claim additional land created through volcanism or coral buildup or any other natural process, i.e., not created by man, not within a two-hundred-mile line radiating from that sovereign nation’s territory. Any land created in this fashion is open to exploration and exploitation by any nation or other party which lays upon it first rights as laid down in Article 231 of this treaty. All contentions for said lands are to be settled by the World Court in The Hague.

  “Donnelly wanted that last bit about the World Court in Holland.” Gennady took another swallow of vodka, waiting for a reaction from Kerikov.

  Kerikov thought for a few seconds, letting Perchenko’s words soak in, then decided that the diplomat had followed close enough to the original wording. Thanks to that single amendment, Kerikov could turn over the volcano to the Korean consortium without any fear of international recriminations. The United States and Russia had just signed away any title to the volcano and its unimaginable wealth.

  Kerikov did not betray his emotions to Perchenko when he spoke. “This is acceptable. Come, I have a boat waiting in the river; we will celebrate your success.”

  Kerikov hurried Gennady away from the towering temple. They nearly sprinted through the driving rain toward the stone wall and the river beyond. Despite the water streaming into Gennady’s eyes, he could see enough to realize that there was no boat waiting at the quay. He had just turned to question the KGB man when Kerikov struck.

  Kerikov moved with the speed of a mamba, smashing a short truncheon over Gennady’s head. Blood sprang from the wound over his left eye, mingled with the falling rain, and ran down Perchenko’s face in a pink sheet.

  The diplomat crumpled to the ground in an untidy heap. Kerikov easily dragged Gennady to the low stone wall; the river beyond was as black as an oil slick. Hidden in some shrubs near the wall was a large plastic ice chest. Beside it were two large cement blocks connected by a chain. The chain was wrapped in soft cloth and its two ends were joined not by a padlock, but rather by the thick chunk of ice that nestled in the cooler.

  Kerikov rubbed the falling water from his eyes. On a night like this he didn’t have to fear discovery by a casual stroller, but there was always a chance that a monk might come to the river to make an offering. He hoisted Gennady’s still-unconscious body onto the low wall; the diplomat’s breathing was shallow but even. Good.

  After lifting the two cement blocks and the ice chest onto the wall, Kerikov slung the chain around Perchenko’s neck. He had to hurry—the ice was melting faster than he’d anticipated. Kerikov heaved the loyal ambassador into the turgid water. The dark river swallowed Perchenko with a minimal splash, the cement blocks dragging him quickly toward the bottom.

  Kerikov threw the cooler in also and watched as it was washed away by the river’s subtle current, then started back to his hotel, shoulders hunched against the biting rain. He could imagine the police report when the body was finally discovered. Perchenko had been out celebrating the conclusion of his meetings; the alcohol in his system would show he wasn’t drunk but certainly tipsy. He had slipped in the rain near the river, smashed his head against the stone wall, and fallen in.

  There would be no indication of foul play because the padding around the chain would leave no marks around his throat and the chain that anchored him to the muddy bottom while he drowned would have vanished. The ice that held it together would melt in about ten minutes and then Perchenko’s lifeless body would simply float free.

  An hour later, Kerikov was seated in the living room of his hotel suite, showered and dressed in a conservative suit with a Scotch in his hand. He could hear the rain pelting the patio just outside the curtained French doors. The lighting in the elegant room was muted except for the lamp over the couch, which shone brightly on the papers spread across the coffee table. Kerikov had gone over them a dozen times in the past few days and felt he could recite them by heart. They were his ticket to a future outside Russia, a future that he had barely dreamed of.

  The ice in the glass tinkled delicately as he took a sip. He placed the glass exactly onto its condensation ring on the glass-topped table and picked up a sheet of paper at random. It was the assay values of the mineral compiled by Dr. Borodin in his survey runs over the past few months. The figures were staggering. In one ton of mined volcanic material, eight pounds of usable ore were present. Processed, those eight pounds would produce about one pound of high-grade metal with all its extraordinary properties. By comparison, Borodin had explained that in open-pit diamond mining, 250 tons of overburden had to be removed per carat of diamond recovered, a ratio of one billion to one.

  Kerikov selected another sheet of paper. This one was Borodin’s plan for the actual mining of the mineral. A ship fitted with a huge cycloidal pump would be stationed near a less active vent of the volcano. A tungsten steel tube would be lowered into the vent and the pump turned on. Lava would be drawn directly from the volcano into the ship, where it would be cooled and systematically broken up into workable chunks, which would be off-loaded onto waiting ore carriers for refinement at a land-based smelter. The only real cost in the mining operation was the pump ship and since selling the idea to the Koreans, they had already had the ship built in Pusan.

  There was a knock at the door. Kerikov stacked the papers neatly, took another sip of Scotch, and went to answer it. Two young Orientals stood there, each holding a bulky suitcase. He let them in without a word.

  The Koreans opened the suitcases, revealing a daunting mass of electronics. They hurriedly set up the equipment: camera, monitor, and computerized transceiver. One man placed a small collapsible dish antenna on the teak railing of the patio. From the street seventy feet below, the steel mesh dish was invisible.

  Once the equipment was set up, one of the young men began typing commands. The machines beeped and whirred and a test pattern appeared on the color monitor. The other man held a cardboard card in front of the camera. In Pusan, the image of that second test pattern filled the screen of a huge wall-mounted high-definition television. The two technicians nodded to each other and retreated from the room. An instant later the test pattern vanished from the monitor and was replaced by a view of a beautiful room.

  Kerikov sat on the couch in front of the cyclops eye of the minicam. On the monitor, nine aged gentlemen were seated around a black lacquer table. None of them was under seventy years of age, yet their dark eyes were all alert and steady. Each man’s face was deeply lined a
nd there was not a single dark hair to be seen. Behind the men hung a red tapestry chronicling Genghis Khan’s conquest of Asia, flanked by two huge terra-cotta vases.

  Kerikov nodded slightly to show respect to the nine heads of Hydra Consolidated. In turn, the men merely dipped their eyes for a moment. That piece of Eastern nonsense complete, Kerikov spoke. “Good evening, gentlemen.”

  “Good evening to you, Mr. Kerikov.” The satellite feed scrambled their voices and automatically translated from Korean into Russian and vice versa. The system worked well enough, as long as their sentences were not filled with enigmatic phrases. Way Hue Dong spoke for the syndicate, as he had during all their earlier negotiations. “I trust that this method of meeting is agreeable.”

  “I am ready now to commit to our agreed-upon proposal.”

  “We would like to know why the delay was necessary?” The electronics masked the annoyance in Way’s voice, but the question made his emotions clear.

  “It was needed, I assure you, gentlemen.” Kerikov knew that a placating smile would be lost on these men, so he refrained. “When you see the location of the mineral deposit, you will understand that significant steps were needed to ensure its safety.”

  “I trust that our future activities will not be disturbed?”

  “No, they will not,” Kerikov responded hurriedly. With the Americans’ and Russians’ hands tied by the Bangkok Accords, only Takahiro Ohnishi presented any obstacle, and by the time the Koreans reached the volcano, Ohnishi would be eliminated.

  Dealing with the race-crazed billionaire was a necessary hazard during the final play of Vulcan’s Forge. Ohnishi had been programmed to attempt his break away from the United States, and up until the last possible moment, Kerikov had needed him. But now the mineral wealth lay beyond America’s control—and beyond Ohnishi’s, if he ever succeeded in his bid for independence.

  “Then all is in order?” Way asked, snapping Kerikov’s attention back to the present.