The Medusa Stone pm-3 Read online

  “It’s true we have our land, bought with blood and defended with yet more. But since the founding of our state, we have lacked a soul. We’ve existed, lived, and died but never have we truly felt our place. Many thought taking Jerusalem in 1967 would give us that soul — the Western Wall, for generations known as the Wailing Wall because it stood inside Jordan’s borders. It was the wall built by King David himself when he erected the Temple. It’s a tangible piece of what we once had.

  “We have it now,” Yosef scowled. “A towering wall of sandstone blocks that sits in the shadow of a mosque. I have been to the wall just once, back in ’67, as a soldier. I had killed to take those slabs of rock, killed joyfully. Since then, I find the area an abomination. There are more tourists there gawking than Jews praying. It sickens me.

  “I fought and killed and nearly got killed for a symbol. The Western Wall was a first step but it was never meant to be the end of what we wanted to achieve in our promised land. It wasn’t until the Scud missiles slammed into Jerusalem and Tel Aviv during the Gulf War that a select group remembered that there was more work before Israel was complete.

  “In a few weeks Defense Minister Chaim Levine will be Prime Minister. He’s going to nullify the peace accords and outlaw the PLO again. He’ll close our borders to the West Bank and Gaza, keeping the hordes in the slums they themselves have created. There will be no more suicide bombers because when he’s finished with the Palestinians, any of them willing to die for their cause will already be dead. In a short time, the Third Temple will rise on the foundation of its predecessors, and it will be the sacred heart of Jewry. It’s our mission to see that when the Temple is complete, God’s words will reside within its walls. That is our covenant with Him.

  “Ibriham gave his life to this belief. And his death has not weakened my resolve, nor should it yours. We are closer than any have come in two thousand years. Because I want the geologist Mercer dead does not mean that I have abandoned our cause.”

  Yosef finished what was the longest speech of his life, feeling bitter and empty inside. He cared nothing for the cause nor Chaim Levine. He’d only come out of retirement to help Ibriham. But his death gave Yosef a mission, a crusade more important to him than anything in the world. He wanted Philip Mercer to die.

  “I’ll be leaving tonight with the rest of the Eritrea team. Before I go, I’ll speak with Minister Levine about finding a more suitable safe house. We can’t stay here for very long. Both Mossad and Shin Bet are looking for us, and Levine can’t risk our capture. He’ll have to find a more secure place than this, preferably on a military base, perhaps the secret weapons research facility in the Negev. I know he wants to distance himself from us in case we’re captured, plausible deniability, but we need his protection now that Ibriham is gone.”

  Yosef knew that Levine would sacrifice everyone in the room if he felt it threatened his chances to become Prime Minister. Israeli politics was becoming as dangerous as those in some third world autocracy.

  “Before I call Levine, Moshe, check on Mr. White and see if there’s anything we need when we move him again.” Yosef lit another cigarette, blowing a mushrooming jet of smoke across the table. “Remember this will be the last time he’s transferred so if he makes any special requests, grant them. In case we need him for another video for Mercer, we want him in good humor.”

  “Yes, sir,” the young sabra said, getting up from the table to descend into the cellar.

  The cellar walls were undressed stone, and the floor was heavily packed dirt hardened to an almost cement shine. The air was cool and damp, smelling of mold and neglect. Off a central hallway, a door led to Harry White’s cell.

  There was no window in the wooden door, so Moshe had his pistol in hand when he threw back the dead bolts and kicked it open. By the murky light of the two dim bulbs strung along the ceiling, he could see the prisoner lying quietly on an army surplus cot. They had given him his clothes back for the move and allowed him this one measure of decency.

  Harry looked at the teenager with the gun in his hand, and if he felt intimidated by the weapon, his attitude didn’t show it. He recognized him from the earlier cell and took the fact that the guard’s face was now uncovered as a very bad sign. “How about some food, you bastard. I haven’t eaten in days.”

  In fact, it had been less than twelve hours but without natural light, Harry White’s circadian clock was fouled. Moshe looked at Harry blankly.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Harry nearly shouted. “You know, food. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, I don’t give a shit.” He pantomimed eating.

  “You want to eat?” Having been born in Israel, English for Moshe was a second language and a particularly difficult one at that.

  “Fucking camel jockey. Yes, I want to eat.” Harry sat up. He had taken off his prosthetic leg and Moshe stared morbidly at the empty trouser cuff that dangled off the bed. “And how about some hooch while you’re at it? My hand is killing me.”

  Again Moshe stared without comprehension.

  “You know, booze, swill, liquor, alcohol. Nectar of the gods, man! Bourbon, gin, vodka, scotch. Hell, I’d give anything for a Pink Lady right now.” Harry was getting nowhere and knew it. He lay back onto the bed, cradling his head in the cup of his hands for there was no pillow. “Ah, forget it. I may not know much, but I know Allah forbids you bastards from enjoying life’s last pleasure so just piss off.”

  Moshe turned to go, but Harry stopped him with a shout. “But don’t forget some food, you stupid son of a bitch.”

  Once again Harry was alone. There was a finality to the bolt slamming home that echoed. He heaved himself back up again, recovering his fake leg from under the bed and strapping it back into place under his pants.

  They had drugged him late that night — that he did remember. Three men held him down while a woman slid a hypodermic needle into his arm. Of the trip to this new place, he recalled nothing. The room wasn’t any better or worse than his last cell except for the blessed relief that the DTs had not followed him. He had wakened, slowly, fearfully, but after twenty minutes realized that the flying monkeys weren’t going to bother him again. What a nightmare that had been.

  As far as Harry was concerned, they could take detox and shove it up their collective camel-riding asses. He had spent the best part of forty years avoiding sobriety, and he wasn’t appreciative when it was forced down his throat. Apart from getting over the DTs, he was thankful they had left him his clothes.

  Even to him, the sight of a naked, eighty-year-old man with one leg was pretty depressing, especially trying to piss into the little pot they had given him. His hands shook more than he ever realized, throwing off an already notoriously bad aim. God, will Tiny get a kick out of this story when I tell him.

  For ten minutes he lay still, thinking. He had an advantage, two really, that his kidnapers didn’t know. One was that he didn’t fear death. He was too old for that. If they expected him to remain submissive, they’d made a big mistake. Thirty years ago, he knew, he’d be blubbering like a baby, but not now. That, he thought, was the one great thing about age. No one could hold death over you any longer. The fear just wasn’t there. His second advantage was his unshakable faith that if he couldn’t escape, he was sure that Mercer would come for him, someway, somehow. It was only a matter of time.

  The locks barring his cell slid open again, and the door slammed back with a crash. The guard had his pistol in its holster, his hands occupied with a huge hunk of dark bread and a wedge of cheese twice the size of a pizza slice. And blessings of all possible blessings, he held a bottle nearly filled with a clear liquid. Even at the sight of it, Harry’s mouth flooded with saliva and his hands steadied. He looked longingly at the bottle. He wanted a drink so badly that Moshe was startled when Harry crossed the room with the speed of a man one quarter his age.

  “I’ll give you a hand there,” he said, plucking the bottle from Moshe’s arms. He ignored the food the young Israeli had brought him.


  Harry didn’t recognize the bottle’s blue label. With or without his glasses, the writing was an illegible scrawl, but he knew the smell as soon as he twisted off the cap and held its open neck beneath his alcohol-attuned nose.

  “I have to say, I’m not much of a gin man myself, but under the present circumstances…” He tilted the bottle skyward, his throat bobbing rhythmically, gulping down three heavy swallows as if the harsh liquor had been mother’s milk. That first sip was the most pleasurable moment in Harry’s life and that included returning home after World War II. He sighed as the alcohol burned his throat and brought tears to his eyes. “I don’t suppose you’d want a snort?” He offered the bottle to Moshe.

  Harry was shocked and more than a little intrigued when the dark-haired guard, no more than a boy with wide clear eyes and a face that had only recently seen a razor, took the bottle and took a long pull from it.

  “I haven’t slept in two days,” Moshe said, proffering the bottle back to Harry. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me.” Harry was all charm. “It’s your booze. Take another pull, lad, you look like you could use it.”

  “No, that is not permitted.” Moshe shook his head and left.

  Harry sat back on the bed, the gin cradled in his lap. Damn. He’d hoped to get the kid drunk and escape but the little prick wasn’t going to fall for it. “Okay, Harry, old boy,” he said to himself, “what the hell is Plan B?”

  Eritrea

  Africa lolled tiredly below Europe, looking like the bowed head of some exhausted horse curled against itself as if struggling to draw life’s last breaths. Even its very shape was sorrowful, as bereft as the place itself. The red and white Ethiopian Airlines Boeing jet arced in off the Red Sea, taking an indirect route to avoid flying over Sudan. Even at twenty-nine thousand feet, the Boeing 737 was not safe from an errant missile from one of the world’s longest and bloodiest civil wars.

  The eastern escarpment of the Great Rift Valley rose nearly vertically from the coast in a solid wall of rock that stretched over a thousand miles, a buttress that had protected Africa’s interior for millennia. Mercer was looking out the ovoid window of the plane when it crossed this threshold; one moment the aircraft was a mile above the dry scrubby desert that meandered along the coast and the next, they were barely a hundred feet above the ground, the jetliner bucking in the thermal updrafts created by the hot winds lofting up the sheer cliffs.

  Though hammerheads of black clouds had gathered at the coast, lashing the shore with torrential rains, inland the air was clear. The sky was a particular shade of clear blue found only in nature; man’s pallet lacked the subtlety of light needed to create the effect. The African sky, Mercer felt, had an intimacy found nowhere else on earth.

  The last minutes of the flight seemed to be a battle between gravity and the pilot’s desire to see his plane land where he intended. Even as the Boeing recovered from a last whimsical twist of wind, the aircraft lined up for its approach. The plane landed right-side heavy, stripping rubber from the starboard tires in a rancid puff of smoke before it settled onto an even keel, slamming the remaining tires to the earth with enough force to ensure they stayed.

  Knowing he wouldn’t be able to enjoy ice until leaving Africa because it carried the same microbes as the water tourists were invariably told to avoid, Mercer swallowed the last cubes from his drink. He tucked the empty glass in the expandable magazine pouch on the seat in front of him and stood with the rest of the passengers to await his turn to deplane.

  Because of the gunfire in Rome the day before, da Vinci Airport had been temporarily closed, canceling last night’s flight. Good to her word, the ticket agent had secured him a first-class seat on this morning’s, which was the next available. He carried only the two matching briefcases. The remainder of his clothes and nearly four hundred pounds of essential equipment had been express-shipped to Asmara and was waiting for him at his hotel. He was through customs in a few minutes.

  Mercer noticed security in the terminal was high. No less than ten soldiers watched those stepping through customs and the people waiting to greet them. He hadn’t expected Habte Makkonen to meet him because of the delay, but a dusky youth leaning against one of the few cars outside the building approached as soon as Mercer exited.

  “Dr. Mercer?”

  “Yes.” There was a wary edge to his voice. “Are you Habte?”

  The boy grinned. “Habte’s cousin. Habte wait for you at hotel. Much trouble yesterday. He tell you.”

  On guard but with little option, Mercer shrugged. “Let’s go, then, Habte’s cousin.”

  Three miles separated the airport from downtown, and the road was lined with a sprawling, ill-kept housing project built by the Chinese during the Ethiopian occupation. The air blowing into the car’s open windows was dry and pleasantly cool, spiced with the desert scent and the cleanliness of a city without industry. Asmara itself, a city of half a million, was not what Mercer had expected.

  It was spotless. Old women meandered the hilly streets with brooms and rickety wheelbarrows, cleaning any rubbish from the gutters. The architecture was mostly Italianesque and because the capital had been spared during the war, the buildings were in excellent repair. Few were over four stories. The tallest structure was the brick bell tower of the Catholic church. If he could ignore the distinctive dome of a mosque nearby and the darker skin of the people, Mercer felt as if he had been transported to a Tuscan village rather than the capital of one of Africa’s poorest nations. Because there was little vehicular traffic, the roads had been turned over to a great many donkey carts.

  Mercer kept one eye out for possible tails, but they made it to his hotel without incident. Mercer had images of a classical colonial structure with columns and gardens, much like the British had left dotted all over the globe. The Ambasoira, however, was only four stories tall and located in a residential neighborhood. The “best” hotel in Asmara was boxy and uninspiring, and the lobby’s furnishings were hard-used and tired.

  Habte’s cousin chatted with the hotel’s manager while Mercer checked in, making certain that the crates he’d shipped from home had arrived. Then the young man led Mercer to the small bar in a back of the lobby, tucked behind the curving stairs leading up to the rooms. The alcove could seat no more than a dozen people, and Mercer counted only eight different types of liquor behind the bartender. A couple of European businessmen conferred at one table, and a lone Eritrean was seated at another. The local watched Mercer critically, as if weighing a decision, before he stood.

  “Dr. Mercer, I am Habte Makkonen.” Habte’s handshake was brief but firm. “Welcome to Eritrea. I am sorry I could not meet you at the airport, but there was trouble yesterday and I could not risk being recognized.”

  “Your cousin mentioned something.” Mercer noticed the young man had vanished. “Do you mind telling me what happened?”

  Mercer had already decided to trust Habte. If the Eritrean wanted him dead, he could have easily been killed on his way to town and left for the wild dogs. The fact that they were having a conversation lent credibility to Habte’s intentions. And on a deeper level, Mercer recognized a world-weary competence in the slim African that seemed to elevate him above the political machinations and dangers that Mercer had faced in Washington and Rome.

  Habte Makkonen smoked through several cigarettes while recounting the fight at the airport. He had already learned that Claude Quesnel, a medical supply salesman from Paris, had left Asmara, taking the first flight out of the country early this morning. When Habte had finished, Mercer told him about the gunman in Rome and the kidnapping of Harry White.

  “I think if they wanted you dead in Rome, you would not be here today,” Habte deduced. “You did not see who shot the man in Italy, but I am sure that he was part of the same group responsible for the attempted kidnapping here in Asmara. They apparently are opposed to the people who captured your friend.”

  “I agree.” Mercer rubbed the rough beard he hadn’t had t
he chance to shave. “Who are they and what do they want?”

  “They were no ordinary Sudanese rebels. They were too well dressed, too far out of their element, even for Asmara. And to operate like they did in Rome, they must have outside contacts and help. Perhaps they have been bought to act as mercenaries.”

  “Then, who’s paying them?”

  “That is something we will have to find out for ourselves.”

  “We don’t have the time to play detective.” There was an urgency to Mercer’s voice. “If I’m to get Harry back, I need to be in the bush no later than Monday. That gives us only five weeks to find the kimberlite pipe.”

  “There is nothing I can add to what you know of the region in terms of its geology. I know of no diamonds ever found there. But I do know the area. I have buried many friends in those desert mountains during the war.” A dark shadow passed behind Habte’s eyes.

  “We’ll get to that in a minute.” Mercer changed the subject. “Do you know Selome Nagast?”

  “I know of her family. But I do not know her,” Habte admitted. “They are wealthy by Eritrean standards, an old and honored family from here in Asmara. I only spoke with her on the phone when she hired me to be your guide.”

  “She’s not who she appears to be. You should watch her carefully.”

  “Why is that?”

  Mercer told the former freedom fighter about Selome’s connection to Israel and Prescott Hyde and how she’d lied to him from the beginning.

  “Is she coming with us when we head north?”

  “I’m not going to let her out of my sight until this is over.”

  Mercer and Habte spent the rest of the day at the bar discussing the upcoming expedition. Habte had secured a newer Toyota Land Cruiser for their transportation and had hired two locals as laborers. From Mercer’s earlier request to Selome, he had also rented an old Caterpillar tracked excavator and transporter that were waiting in Nacfa, the closest town to their target area. The other heavy equipment Mercer had leased was still en route and wouldn’t arrive in Eritrea for weeks.