The Medusa Stone pm-3 Read online

  “I do not like it here,” he muttered.

  “Me either.” Mercer couldn’t shake his own feelings of disquiet.

  They were halfway across when Mercer spotted something. About a mile away. Near where the protective ramparts rose off the bowl’s floor, stood a man-made structure of some sort. “What the hell is that?”

  He recognized it when they were a quarter mile off. “I’ll be damned! It’s a head gear, a mine’s hoisting derrick.”

  The structure resembled an oil well drill tower, a tall spiderweb of rusted steel girders supporting a large flywheel forty feet above the ground. Next to the tower was a cluster of crumbling wood buildings, one of which, Mercer knew, would contain the head gear’s machinery. The tower worked as the elevator mechanism for a mine. It would lower men into the bowels of the earth and haul mineral-rich material back to the surface in giant containers called skips.

  After finding the diamond yesterday, he’d expected this discovery to be anticlimactic, but it wasn’t. Every step that took him closer to Harry was better than the last. He was grinning at the old mine when a sudden thought struck him.

  There were diamonds here. The Medusa pictures were a strong indication, and the stone rattling in a dashboard cup holder was the proof. Why, then, had the mine been abandoned? Mercer guessed the buildings were at least fifty years old, and that age made him understand. Most likely, this had been an Italian operation built during their occupation of Eritrea and abandoned when British forces ousted them in 1941. It was possible that the Brits didn’t know about the mine site. Its location was remote enough to ensure its secrecy, and if Negga was any indication, the nomads avoided this valley. It was quite plausible that the mine had never been rediscovered, and if it had, during the revolutionary war maybe, the men who found it had been pounded into the earth by the long-distance artillery barrage.

  Another question tickled the back of his mind. Eritrea’s civil war had been over for a few years. Why hadn’t the Italians returned and resumed their work? It was possible they hadn’t struck the diamondiferous kimberlite, but they had to know of its presence. Surely they would have come back. And then he wondered if the kidnappers were Italian and not Middle Eastern — a complication that he hadn’t even considered. This discovery was changing everything. Again.

  Mercer braked next to the head gear, throwing open his door. Since this was a “lost mine,” he felt confident that the ground had not been sown with explosives. The head gear tower straddled a twenty-foot square opening in the earth, an ominous black pit that dropped into the stygian underworld like the mouth of Hades. At its edge, Mercer tossed a stone into the hole, his eyes glued to the second hand of his watch. His wait was longer than expected. Finally, there was a faint click from deep below. He calculated the drop: one hundred and sixty feet. “Jesus.”

  “Effendi.” Gibby stood in the doorway of one of the larger buildings.

  The building looked like something out of an old Western, rough planking and a shallow roof covered with rusted metal. Mercer peered through the doorway over Gibby’s shoulder, forcing himself to remain calm after he recognized the object on the floor. A mummy sat propped against one wall, the body of an Eritrean soldier left here by his comrades when they made their suicidal race out of the valley and into the waiting guns. The body had been so dried by the desert air that the skin on his face looked like a tight leather mask and his hands resembled claws. A dark stain blotted the front of his battle jacket. Obviously he had been wounded in a previous engagement and had either died here or was abandoned because of his injuries. The eye sockets were empty holes, the ragged teeth exposed in a gruesome rictus. Gibby dashed off and returned with the tarp, draping it reverently over the corpse, crossing himself repeatedly.

  There were other reminders of the men who had camped here: empty shell casings, the mangled clip spring from a broken ammunition magazine, a blackened circle of stones that had been a fire pit, a heap of trash in one corner.

  “We’ll bury the body before sundown and use this building as our base,” Mercer said. “It’s too late to explore the mine shaft.”

  It was dark by the time Mercer and Gibby finished their grim task. Gibby fashioned a cross from a tent pole he’d snapped in two, thrusting it into the ground, praying over it silently. An hour later, the young man was snoring softly. Mercer rested with his back against the bungalow’s wall. Though he was tired, it was still easy for him to stay awake. The kidnappers would be calling at midnight. Because he had given Habte the sat-phone with the stronger battery, he would power the device moments before the appointed contact time. He had plenty of thinking to do before then, about the mine, the kimberlite, and about Harry. As midnight approached, he felt his palms get sweaty and his heart race. There was a knot in his stomach that cramped his breathing.

  He feared for the retribution Harry would suffer for the death of the European at the Ambasoira Hotel. Mercer knew it would be bad.

  Washington, D.C

  Dick Henna had tried unsuccessfully to contact Mercer as soon as he left the Gradys, and when he couldn’t reach the geologist, he called the White House. The president was in Alabama consoling the victims of a recent tornado and unavailable despite his desire for continuous updates. The man spent the night in Huntsville, returning to the White House more than twenty-four hours after Henna had made his discovery. He finally got the president on the phone shortly after seven in the evening.

  “Yes, Dick, what can I do for you?”

  “Sir, I’m calling about Prescott Hyde.”

  “What have you got?”

  “I’d rather not say over the phone, Mr. President. I’m in my car right now heading into town. I should be at the White House in another twenty minutes.”

  “We’re throwing a party here tonight for last year’s Super Bowl champion Seahawks.” The president was from Cincinnati, but he had met his wife while attending Washington State. He’d waited half a lifetime for this occasion. “I’ll be in the main ballroom.”

  “After you hear what I’ve got to say, you won’t be in the mood for a party.”

  Traffic was snarled crossing the Potomac, delaying Henna by an hour. The guard at the south gate checked him through quickly, and he parked in the underground garage. The main ballroom was filled to capacity, men in tuxedos and women attired in glittering gowns. There was the usual coterie of film stars and Washington elite as well as about a hundred of the biggest men Henna had ever seen. Despite the relaxed atmosphere, the largest men, the team’s offensive line, still mustered around their handsome young quarterback, protecting him as effectively as they did on the field. The young superstar seemed grateful for the phalanx of teammates shielding him from the predatory advances of some of the city’s more infamous man-eaters.

  The president was at the head of the room, chatting with the team’s coach. The First Lady stood stiffly at his side, bored with the whole affair. For Administration insiders, it was no longer a secret that their marriage would end as soon as his term in office was over. The president was just a few years older than Henna, but didn’t look anywhere near his age. His body was trim despite a legendary appetite, and his hair was thick, gray just at the temples and along the edge of a boyish cowlick.

  Henna ignored the introduction to the team’s coach and took the president by the arm. He spoke only when they were out of earshot of the other guests. “Prescott Hyde was killed by the Israeli government, probably the Mossad.”

  In less than a minute, they were seated at the sofa cluster in the Oval Office. The president fixed each of them a scotch and listened to Henna’s description of his time with the Gradys and about Selome Nagast and her connection to Israel. “Call Lloyd Easton at State if you want verification of his phone call from the Israeli Prime Minister,” Henna concluded.

  “I’m doing one better.” The President’s outrage was contained behind a calm expression, but it poisoned his voice. He roused a White House operator and had an international connection a moment lat
er.

  In Jerusalem, it was after two o’clock in the morning but David Litvinoff, the Israeli prime minister, was wakened by an aide as soon as it was learned that the President of the United States was calling.

  “Mr. President, this is an unexpected surprise,” the Russian-born Jewish leader said.

  “Does the name Selome Nagast mean anything to you, David?”

  There was a weighty pause on the secure phone line. “Yes, it does,” the Israeli admitted. “Is she okay?”

  The question took the president off guard, but he was too angry to consider why it had been asked. “She’s going to be put in the Virginia gas chamber if we get our hands on her. She murdered a top State Department official and his wife, burning their house to cover her tracks. Do you know anything about this?”

  “Damn,” Litvinoff muttered. The president could hear him swing himself out of bed, mumbling something to his wife. “Mr. President, I am going to my study. I will call you back in just a few minutes. I can clear this up for you, but it’ll open a whole new set of problems.”

  “Well?” Henna asked when the president put down the phone.

  “He’s calling me back, but it sounds as though he’d been expecting me to call.”

  “He knows Selome Nagast?”

  “Apparently. He said he would explain everything, but it’s going to cause us trouble.”

  “Any idea what he means?”

  The phone rang before Henna received his answer. The President put the phone on speaker mode. “David, Dick Henna of the FBI is with me, and we both want an explanation why one of your Mossad agents is going around killing members of my administration.”

  “It is fitting that he is there,” Litvinoff replied. “Selome Nagast does not work for Mossad. She’s a member of Shin Bet, our version of your Federal Bureau of Investigation, and she did not kill Prescott Hyde.”

  “How do you know I was talking about Hyde? I doubt his death made the Jerusalem newspapers.”

  “Mr. President, if you’ll permit, I will explain,” Litvinoff said. “This is going to take a few minutes, so please bear with me.

  “You know that I am facing a vote of no-confidence in the Knesset that will dissolve my government and call for general elections. If this happens, Chaim Levine, my current defense minister, will probably become our new P.M. I don’t need to remind you of his facist views and his plans to tear up the peace accords with our Arab neighbors. He also has this ridiculous idea about destroying the Dome of the Rock and rebuilding Solomon’s Temple in its place. He has tremendous support since the Wailing Wall massacre two months ago. Even our moderate majority is leaning toward his camp.”

  “I don’t need the political lesson, David. I have my own sources. Our prediction is that he’ll defeat you by a five-to-three margin. We don’t want to see it happen any more than you; the guy is a lunatic.”

  There was a new gravity to Litvinoff’s voice. “What I’m about to tell you will damage relations between our two countries for many years to come. I would have rather not admit this, but I see no other way. The greater good must be considered.” Henna and the president exchanged glances. “The Mossad has cultivated an asset in your National Reconnaissance Office, a highly placed photo interpreter. I would rather not reveal his name at this point. To do so would put his life in danger. However, he has been feeding us information gathered from your spy satellites, including the latest-generation Medusas.”

  Henna hated the idea of allies spying in the United States. Enemies he could understand, but Israelis using the U.S. in this way infuriated him. His hands clenched. He wondered if Admiral Morrison or Colonel Baines knew about this conduit and doubted they did.

  “He started with the NRO two years after the first of those spy craft was launched and discovered a forgotten set of pictures taken during the ill-fated 1989 flight of the first Medusa. Because of security restrictions, he couldn’t pass them to us through his normal channels, nor could he steal them directly. They could not be copied either. I understand it has something to do with the type of paper used in the printing process. However, he devised a plan to get them out of the NRO involving an Air Force officer as an unwitting courier. Our agent expected to meet up with the officer later that evening, but Major Rosen, the courier, discovered that he had them, realized their value, and made his own plans for disposing of them. As you know, they ended up with Prescott Hyde.

  “Realizing he’d lost the images, our agent contacted his superiors, outlining what was on the pictures. Their contents came to the attention of Chaim Levine.”

  “I thought the Mossad was a civilian agency. Doesn’t the military have its own intelligence arm?” Henna spoke for the first time. He recalled Rosen was the guy that the CID investigator said they’d already arrested. That meant the Israelis still had a spy operating in the NRO. He made a mental note to pass this new piece of information to Baines.

  “It does, but Levine has many supporters in the upper echelons of Mossad. You are aware that the pictures show the northern sections of Eritrea and southwestern Sudan and may or may not reveal the presence of a diamond vent in the earth’s crust. They may also reveal something else, something that I will get to in a moment, but trust me when I say Levine became very interested in getting the actual pictures.

  “For some time, he’s been building a private army from the ranks of our military, intelligence services, and anywhere else he could find useful people. These are men and women who share his beliefs and are willing to die for Levine’s vision of Israel’s future. Shortly after learning of the Medusa images, Levine sent one of them to Eritrea posing as an Austrian archaeologist. His name was Jakob Steiner, and his real job, of course, was to search for the kimberlite vent. He had been recruited by Levine from the geology department of Tel Aviv University. He was killed by bandits before he could find the vent.” The Prime Minister paused, as though considering how much more he should say.

  “Go on, David,” the President prompted, his face suffused with the dark blood of fury at Litvinoff’s disclosure. If anything, he was angrier than Henna.

  “Levine had to get those pictures, so he ordered a team to Washington under the leadership of Ibriham Bein, a brilliant field operative who is both Palestinian and Jewish. Bein had turned his back on his Palestinian heritage and became a vehement Zionist. His orders were to get the Medusa pictures at any cost.”

  “Are you saying that Selome Nagast was working for this Bein?” the President asked.

  “No, she’s actually one of my people ordered to stop Ibriham and his team. We found out about Rosen’s sale of the Medusa pictures to Prescott Hyde and sent Selome to Washington, putting her in contact with Hyde. Her Eritrean nationality convinced him that she could help discover the kimberlite pipe.”

  Things were clarifying for Henna. “That must be where Mercer comes in.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know anyone by that name.” Litvinoff was clearly confused.

  “He’s an American mining engineer currently in Eritrea looking for that vent,” Henna explained. “Selome Nagast and Prescott Hyde approached him to make the search.” Suddenly Henna stiffened. “Oh Jesus, it’s Israelis holding Harry White, not Arabs!”

  “What?” the President asked.

  “It’s this bastard Bein who kidnapped Mercer’s friend, Harry White.” It took a physical effort for Henna to calm himself. “Mercer didn’t want anything to do with Hyde, but shortly after their first meeting, Harry was taken from his home. His ransom is Mercer’s participation in the search. Harry was spirited out of Washington on a private jet destined for Beiruit, which led Mercer and I to believe the kidnappers were Arab terrorists. Neither one of us considered there could be Jewish ones.”

  “I did not know about this kidnapping and apparently neither did Selome, but you have my word that if Harry White is in Israel, I’ll do everything in my power to rescue him,” Litvinoff promised. “And Mr. Henna, fanaticism and terrorism are not just the province of our Muslim frien
ds. We Jews also have a long history of terrorist activities, less publicized, but no less brutal. Ask any British soldier stationed here after the Second World War.”

  “Then it was this Ibriham Bein who murdered Hyde and his wife?” Henna realized Selome must have gone there right after Bein had shot them.

  “Yes. He had probably tried to acquire the Medusa images through nonviolent methods, but when that didn’t work, he resorted to intimidation or torture to get what he wanted.”

  Henna was putting the pieces in place. “Mercer must have been in possession of the pictures by then. Hyde was killed when the Israelis realized he was no longer an asset, was now, in fact, a liability because he knew about the diamonds.”

  “Correct! Selome Nagast showed up at their house after they were killed. She set the fire to delay an investigation and protect us and then got out of Washington. She returned to Israel right after that to brief me personally about what had happened. I’m surprised she never mentioned that mining engineer you just told me about, but she has an independent streak that tends to protect her friends if she feels our knowledge of them may pose a threat to their lives.”

  “So where is Ibriham Bein now and what can we do about him?” Henna asked.

  “He’s dead, which leaves us with a much bigger problem. It’s now time to tell you why Levine is so interested in that kimberlite pipe and introduce an entire new faction, Italian and Sudanese, that complicates this mess even further.”

  It took an hour. Both Henna and the President were held spellbound by the story David Litvinoff told. It bordered on the unbelievable, but there was so much supporting evidence in the past weeks that neither doubted what was really at stake. When he had finished, the President had just one question. “Do you believe it’s buried in that abandoned mine, David?”

  “I don’t know. It’s possible. We’re talking about an artifact my people have coveted for thousands of years, and Lord knows we’ve looked everywhere else. I guess it’s a question of faith, Mr. President, which is a force of immeasurable power. Mine gave me the strength to survive labor camps in Russia and build a life here in Israel. However, it doesn’t matter whether I believe it. Our concern is that Chaim Levine does, and no amount of bloodshed is going to stop him from proving he’s right. If it is in Eritrea and Levine recovers it, he’ll use it to rally Jews from all over the world to his cause. After that, you can forget about there ever being peace in the Mideast again.”