Vulcan's Forge

by Jack Du Brul

  “About five minutes after he started rowing us away, the Seeker exploded. I swear I don’t remember anything after that. I think he knocked me out.”

  “Then you never heard Russian or saw the design on the stack of the ship that rescued you?”

  “That part I do remember. I must have come to as we were pulled aboard that freighter.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

  “I didn’t want anything to spoil Valery’s chances of escape, so I stayed quiet. You see, the group he was going to work for, the one headed by his father, was incredibly ruthless. He told me that everyone involved with the project was sworn to lifelong secrecy and anyone who tried to leave the group before Val’s father said they could would be hunted down and killed. He told me he knew his father would never let him leave. He was bound to the old man forever, he said. But he was still determined to get away. He said his father was completely insane and what they were working on could upset the balance of power all over the world. Valery told me before he left Mozambique that he would contact me just before he escaped. I assumed that this rescue was that contact.”

  “That may be, but he’s made contact since then too.”

  “When, how?” Tish asked, a trace of excitement creeping into her trembling voice.

  “The telegram I received, the one I thought was from your father, must have been sent from him. Christ knows how he made the connection between us.” Mercer spoke slowly at first, but as ideas correlated in his brain, he talked faster. “I was suspicious about your rescue from the Ocean Seeker, it seemed too pat, but now it makes sense. Valery must have ordered an agent to board the ship and save your life when he learned that the Seeker was headed toward the volcano with you as a member of the research staff.”

  Mercer stood silently behind the bar, both hands cupped around his coffee mug. His eyes had lost their focus as he stared beyond Tish at a Ken Marschall lithograph of the Hindenburg, just before she exploded over Lakehurst, New Jersey. It was one of the only pictures that Mercer had gotten around to hanging apart from those in his study.

  “He plans to steal his father’s work when he leaves, doesn’t he? That’s why he just didn’t run away with you in Mozambique.”

  “How did you figure that out?”

  “It fits with his actions so far and with the brief description you gave of his psychological state. He would want to bring something of value with him so that he could provide for the two of you. At the same time, stealing his father’s work would fulfill his need for revenge against his father for abandoning him.”

  “You can’t know that.” Tish was uncomfortable by Mercer’s accuracy and covered it with an accusation.

  “The first reason is obvious. He’s going to want to be a provider for you and a possible family, unlike his father had been to him, and that data could make the two of you quite comfortable for the rest of your lives. I’m even more familiar with the second reason.

  “Remember I said that I used to live in Africa when I was younger, that I was actually born in the Congo? Well, I left there as an orphan. My parents moved to Rwanda so my father could work on opening a copper mine. They were killed during an insurrection in 1964, ambushed going to a party on the first night of the fighting. Both of them were burned alive. My nanny, a Tutsi woman, took me back to her village the next day. I lived there for a couple of months until the fighting died down, then she turned me over to a World Health Organization team, who eventually contacted my father’s parents in Vermont.

  “Even though my grandparents were kind and loving people, I hated being with them and I hated my real parents even more for abandoning me. I felt utterly betrayed. I remember winter nights when I’d go cross-country skiing. I’d stop in some meadow, miles away from the nearest house, and scream at them, cursing them, accusing them of leaving me on purpose. It was the loneliest time in my life.

  “If I could foster that much hate against my parents who actually died, I can only imagine the hate Valery must feel toward his father for leaving him for some government project and then just as casually returning.”

  “How did you ever get over your parents’ death?” Tish asked quietly. Mercer’s story had touched her deeply.

  “An old farmer overheard me one night when I was about sixteen and we talked. He was the only person I ever opened up to. When I’d finished my story, he told me I was acting stupid and if I kept it up he’d slap me around because I was upsetting his dairy cows. I guess I’d received so much sympathy before that, I saw myself as a perpetual victim. By callously saying I was stupid, he made me realize that, in fact, I was. My parents’ deaths were beyond their control—it was never their choice to abandon me. Finally I could accept that.” Mercer poured a shot of Scotch into his coffee, then drained the cup in three deep swallows.

  Tish didn’t say anything, but the tension had eased from her neck and shoulders and her blue eyes were misted and soft.

  “I owe you an apology,” Mercer said softly. “I thought you were part of this operation. I thought you knew all about it.”

  “No,” Tish said quietly, “I didn’t.”

  “Do you still love him?”

  “I don’t know,” Tish replied haltingly. “The time Valery and I had together was the most precious in my life, but it was so long ago. Is that shallow of me?”

  “That’s not for me to decide,” he dodged the question adroitly. He took the bar stool next to her and held her slim hands in his.

  “I was in love once.” Mercer spoke slowly, deliberately. “I was twenty-five years old, taking summer classes at a mining school in England. She was four years older than me, a police psychologist just getting her start in the London constabulary. We spent every moment together that we could. I would commute a hundred miles to see her in the city, and she took the maximum number of sick days she could without being kicked off the force.

  “One weekend toward the end of the summer, she was seeing me off at Paddington Station. We had just talked about marriage for the first time.” Mercer’s voice was barely a whisper, but the force of his words carried to the far corners of the room. “My train was just pulling out from the station. Suddenly there was gunfire. A man had burst into the station and opened up with a machine pistol. I watched from the window of the accelerating train as he emptied the clip, then dropped the weapon and pulled a revolver. By then the police had begun to swarm into the station. The gunman grabbed a woman and used her as a shield, the revolver screwed into her ear. It was a standoff.

  “Then the woman, my possible fiancée, started talking to the gunman, trying to calm him down, get him to surrender. It was her job. Later they found that the man, an IRA terrorist, had taken so much heroin that he probably never heard a word she said. She spoke for only a few seconds before the gunman simply pulled the trigger and then turned the gun on himself.

  “I saw their bodies fall across each other just as my car pulled out of the station. I was too numb to try to get off the train. I just sat there as we sped north. I never returned to London. I didn’t even go to her funeral. . . .” Mercer’s voice trailed off.

  “What was her name?”

  “Tory Wilks,” Mercer replied evenly. “You’re the first person who’s ever heard that story. I finished my classes in England and came home as if nothing ever happened.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Mercer looked at her squarely. “We never had a chance to start a life together. I told you about Tory and what I lost because you at least deserve a chance. You once loved Valery Borodin and lost him because of circumstances out of your control.” Mercer’s voice firmed. “I’m going to make sure you have a fair shot at making it work.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s simple.” Mercer smiled warmly, the wrenching emotions of a few moments earlier safely tucked back where they belonged. Again he was his normal sardonic self. “I’m going to help him escape.”

  “How? You don’t know where he is.”
<
br />   “Don’t I, though?” Mercer raised a mocking eyebrow. “I happen to know down to the inch where he is at this very moment.”

  “Where?” Excitement raised Tish’s voice an octave.

  “All in good time,” Mercer replied vaguely. “I’ve got some things to figure out first. Why don’t you take that nap you wanted?”

  Tish saw that she could get nothing further out of him, so she went to the couch. She looked over at Mercer and saw he was already scratching away at a note pad with a fountain pen. She tucked the Normandie lap robe up around her chin, and for the first time in a long time, started considering a real life with Valery.

  Ten minutes later, Tish sat up suddenly. “Mercer?”

  He looked up from the pad. His normally dark complexion was drained and his wide set eyes were narrowed by exhaustion.

  “I was thinking—Valery took a risk to have me rescued from the Ocean Seeker and put you in contact with me, right? Well, who tried to kill me in the hospital?”

  Mercer stared at her for a moment, his weary mind grinding away at her question. He tore the top sheet of paper from the pad, crumpled it up, and tossed it into the plastic trash can behind the bar. “Back to the drawing board.”

  Several hours later, as the sun ambered the room with its dying rays, Mercer finally put down his pen, drank the last sip of his second pot of coffee and stood for a stretch. He had written twelve pages of notes and made eighteen phone calls. Tish was still asleep on the couch.

  Mercer knuckled the kinks out of his lower back and squeezed his eyes tight, trying to clear his sleep-deprived brain. The caffeine he had drunk left him feeling weak and with a pounding headache. He pulled Dick Henna’s card from his wallet and dialed his office number. Henna himself answered the phone.

  “Mr. Henna, it’s Philip Mercer.”

  “Do you have anything new?” Mercer liked the squat director for his bluntness.

  “I need to get to Hawaii,” Mercer stated flatly.

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible. Two hours ago all communications from the islands stopped, no telephones, radio, or television. All aircraft that could be routed to other destinations were turned back. Our reports from Pearl Harbor say the mob has started taking potshots at soldiers. I’ve gotten unconfirmed reports from ham radio operators that Honolulu is under martial law by authority of Mayor Takamora and that National Guard troops are shooting any white face they see.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Mercer breathed. “The fucking lunatic has started it.”

  “It appears so. There’s no way to get you out there even if I wanted to.”

  “Listen, I have some theories that, if true, can clear this up in twenty-four hours, but I have to get to Hawaii.” Mercer wouldn’t allow his horror at Henna’s news to dissuade him.

  “Dr. Mercer—”

  “I prefer Mister, or just plain Mercer.”

  “Really, most Ph.Ds I know flaunt their titles.”

  “I only use mine when I’m trying to get dinner reservations.”

  Henna chuckled. “I can respect that. Anyway, the President has authorized a covert action against Ohnishi in light of his involvement with this coup.”

  “Jesus.” Mercer was shocked. “That’s a stupid mistake. Ohnishi’s just a pawn in this whole thing. Taking him out won’t accomplish anything.”

  “You know something we don’t?” Henna asked tiredly.

  “Yes, I do, but it’s going to cost you at least a ticket to that amphibious assault ship stationed near Hawaii.”

  “That’s extortion.”

  “Extortion is such a genteel word, Mr. Henna. I prefer blackmail. What if I said I can hand over the mastermind of the entire operation?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I won’t talk until you guarantee transport to that ship.”

  “Christ.” Mercer could almost see Henna throw his hands up in exasperation. “All right, I’ll get you out there. Now, what have you got?”

  For the next twenty minutes Mercer spoke without pause and Henna listened. Hard.

  “You got proof for any of this?” Henna asked when Mercer finished.

  “Not one single shred. But it all fits together.”

  “I said it before, Mercer, if you ever want another job, the bureau would love to have you.”

  “Do you think the American Civil Liberties Union would stand to have an FBI agent making accusations like I just made? Shit, they’d skin us both alive.”

  Henna chuckled again. “You’re right. I’ve got a meeting with the President in an hour. I’ll take your proposal to him. The only way I can get you out there is as an observer, nothing more.”

  “That’ll be fine,” lied Mercer smoothly. “I really can’t ask for more. Call me back when you’re finished with the President.”

  A minute after hanging up the phone, Mercer was between the sheets of his bed. Despite his battered body’s need for sleep, he tossed and turned for twenty minutes before drifting into unconsciousness.

  The Pacific

  Unlike most conventional helicopters, the Kamov Ka- 26 lacked a stabilizing rotor in the stern; rather, it had two main rotors stacked on top of each other. Their counter-rotating blades kept the tiny copter from gyrating through the skies. The craft was much noisier than normal helicopters because of this arrangement, though the rotor noise couldn’t drown out her two radial engines mounted in pods outside the cramped cabin.

  The Ka-26, code-named “Hoodlum” by NATO, pounded through the clear skies at one hundred knots, near her maximum cruising speed. The sea below was an azure plane which rolled into infinity. The August Rose, mother ship to the small chopper, was nearly two hundred miles astern and steaming hard for Taipei, a gift to the Taiwanese ambassador. Dr. Borodin had ascertained the precise location of his island’s birth, so the sophisticated gear on board the freighter was no longer needed.

  The Hoodlum had been stored inside a huge packing crate on the deck of the refrigerator ship, her double set of rotor blades folded back along the twin booms of her tail. The chopper had remained hidden long after the freighter had started her long journey westward, away from the volcano, which was now no more than a few days from broaching the surface. Already dense, sulfur-laden steam clouds clung to the surface of the sea, marking the eruption.

  With an operational range of 380 miles in her unitarian configuration, the Hoodlum remained on the August Rose until she was nearly two-thirds that distance away from the rising volcano. Only then had the pilot lifted from the deck with his two passengers.

  Now, three hours after takeoff, the pilot was beginning to sweat, not from the humid air that whipped through the tiny cabin, but from fear. The antiquated radar on the twenty-five-year-old craft could no longer detect the August Rose, not that they had fuel to reach her in any case. They were alone, five thousand feet above an empty sea. The pilot looked back at his two passengers. The older one apparently slept while the younger one watched the ocean far below. The earphones over his head kept his fine hair from blowing about, but the wind worried at his olive drab flight suit. The pilot turned back to his instruments, scanning fuel, altitude, speed, and course in a quick glance before he gazed again at the endless horizon.

  Valery Borodin turned away from the open door. He touched his father on the shoulder and Pytor’s eyes cleared instantly. “We should be only about ten kilometers away.”

  The pilot overheard the comment through the intercom and replied, “Ten kilos away from what? We’re at least three hundred kilometers away from Hawaii and running out of fuel. Do you mind telling me what this is all about?”

  “Of course. Take us down to about two hundred meters first.”

  The pilot shrugged and complied. He doubted these two men were planning their suicides, so they must have a plan. Relieved, the pilot put the Ka-26 in a gut-wrenching dive. The rotors clawed at the air as they drove the chopper toward the surface of the sea. In an expert maneuver, the pilot pulled back on the collective pitch and leveled the craft at
exactly two hundred meters. He looked back and was disappointed to see that his passengers appeared bored at his antics and expertise.

  “Two hundred meters, sir.”

  The elder Borodin pulled a cylinder from the pocket of his flight suit. The yellow plastic case was no more than three inches in diameter and about a foot long. He pressed a red button at the top of the cylinder and casually threw it out the open door of the helicopter.

  “What was that?” the pilot asked.

  “A high-frequency transponder,” Valery answered for his father. “Fly a one-kilometer box pattern and in a moment you’ll see what we’re up to.”

  The chopper banked sharply to starboard as the pilot began running his boxes. He had completed two kilometer-long legs when he saw a disturbance in the sea. The limpid blue water was frothing as if Leviathan itself was surfacing. The pilot brought the chopper to a hover near the boiling water.

  The maddened sea grew more turgid until the bow of a ship burst from the waves, water streaming off her black hull. She rose swiftly, revealing her forward deck, studded with cranes; a boxy superstructure crowned with a single funnel; her aft deck; and finally her jack staff, sporting a limp Panamanian flag. It was like watching the death throes of a sinking ship, only in reverse. Water poured through her scuppers with the force of fire hoses as the ship wallowed in the frenzied swells of her own creation. After a minute the ship settled to an even keel, the waves dispersing quickly.

  “Jesus,” the pilot muttered.

  “That,” Borodin said with triumph, “is the watchdog of Ocean Freight and Cargo and our destination, the steamer John Dory.”

  If the pilot had had time to notice the decoration on the ship’s funnel as he brought the Hoodlum toward the landing pad aft deck of this extraordinary vessel, he would have seen a black circle surrounding a yellow dot.

  The Hoodlum settled on the rolling deck with deceptive ease. The pilot was truly a professional. The deck-hands tossed chains around the four wheels of the copter and signaled him to cut power. An instant later the blades slowed to a stop, sagging like palm fronds.