Jack Du Brul - The Medusa Stone

Yosef was pleased to see the passion in his nephew’s eyes. This would be his last mission. He’d only agreed to come in order to help Ibriham on his first command. None of the others even knew they were related. “No, he won’t.”

Despite what he’d said to Hyde, Mercer couldn’t leave this one alone. No sooner had he gotten home than he found himself at his desk poring through reference books and the volumes of information available on the Internet. Darkness settled heavily, leaving the city washed by the pink glow of streetlamps, but the passage of day to night had gone unnoticed. While many would find such research work tedious, Mercer enjoyed it. Searching for one fact invariably led to countless other avenues of research, and a tug at any of these steered him to even more. It was easy to become lost in such a deluge of information, but Mercer was able to distill what he wanted, his mind sifting through mountains of useless data for the few elements he found important. It was a gift that he exploited to its fullest.

His final report to Yukon Coal lay forgotten on his word processor as he tore through the material searching for a trace of validity in what Prescott Hyde described existed in northern Eritrea.

He turned up nothing. The geology of the region was all wrong for a kimberlite pipe. Eritrea stood at an edge of the Great Rift Valley, and while there had been active volcanism in the region millions of years ago, there was no indication that diamonds were present. None of a diamond’s tracer elements had been found, nor had there been any recorded discoveries of alluvial stones, those washed away from a vent by rivers or streams. Nothing he could find pointed to even a hint that Eritrea was the home of a potential strike.

But those satellite pictures suggested otherwise. Mercer could not deny that the Medusa pictures of Eritrea looked remarkably like the computer projections of the environs around Kimberley. There might be hundreds of reasons for this similarity, most notably an error in the modeling, but he could not let go the possibility that Hyde was right, that an unknown kimberlite pipe lay out there waiting to be discovered.

He was shocked by how much he wanted it to be true. He’d never been to Eritrea, knew no Eritreans, but he wanted this for them badly. He wanted it for himself too. There hadn’t been a kimberlite pipe discovered in more than a decade, and he wanted to be the one who found the next. He admitted that his reasons might be more selfish than charitable, but if he could find diamonds, everyone would win.

Mercer spent the rest of the day running down possible leads, but all the evidence pointed to a mistake on Hyde’s part. Yet, against all of his scientific training, he found himself searching for evidence to fit Hyde’s theory rather than allowing a hypothesis to develop out of the accumulated facts. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Hyde was somehow right.

Earlier in the afternoon, he found he was correct to turn down Hyde’s offer. He had telephoned Dick Henna at the FBI, but the director was in New York, so he’d spoken with Marge Doyle, the deputy director and the real hands-on head of the organization. Mercer didn’t know her well, but she knew of him and went out of her way to provide Mercer with an outline of Hyde, his past and his future, which did not look that bright.

Prescott Hyde came from a family whose service to the American government stretched back to the drafting of the Constitution. The Hydes had played significant roles during every major watershed in our history, from the Revolution through the Civil War and Reconstruction to the development of the United States as a superpower during the forties and fifties. Hyde’s father had served with Eisenhower when he was Supreme Allied Commander during World War Two and later as President, working closely with Allen Dulles during the early years of the CIA and with Adelai Stevenson at the United Nations.

Prescott Hyde had turned out to be the only disappointment the family had ever produced. He was barely holding on to his current position as an Undersecretary of State, a job given to him more out of nepotism than individual achievement. He’d already shown a great deal of ineptitude during his brief tenure heading the State Department’s Africa section, missing the clues of a coup in Zambia last year and so insulting South Africa’s ambassador that the man returned to his homeland for two weeks in protest.

Mercer suspected that if Prescott had not been one of the Hydes, he would have been fired months ago. As it stood, Mercer wondered just how much time the man had left. The current President was more interested in foreign relations than domestic issues, and he liked to have the best people leading the charge for him. Mercer guessed that one more screw-up on Hyde’s part and he would be out on his ass.

Hence, Eritrea. If Hyde could pull it off, not only would he save his floundering career but could also add himself to the anointed pantheon of his ancestors. Thus Hyde’s motivation was more personal than professional, and Mercer was glad he had flatly refused the contract offer. To get involved with someone gambling to save a sinking career would be foolish at best.

At eight, Mercer logged off his system, his eyes gritty with fatigue and his stomach making not so subtle noises. Maybe when he had the time to delve into it again he would, but for now he put Eritrea out of his mind. Tomorrow he would work on his report to Yukon Coal.

He went into the kitchen and pulled a frozen entree from the packed freezer, set his oven to the prescribed temperature, and slid the stiff meal onto the center rack, confidently ignoring the directions about peeling the film from certain portions. While his meal was transformed from a frozen mass to a gelatinous one, he spiraled up the circular stairs to the master suite and took a long shower.

Precise to the minute, he was back in the ground-floor kitchen when the oven timer beeped. He ate standing just a few steps from a polished birch table long enough to seat eight, using a plastic fork while one of the countless drawers contained matched silverware for a dozen. Finally he tossed the press-form tray into the garbage, and left his house for the short walk to Tiny’s.

Paul “Tiny” Gordon was behind the bar as usual, and the diminutive former jockey had a vodka gimlet poured by the time Mercer crossed the barroom to sit next to a slouched Harry White. Already, Mercer felt the tension in his shoulders ease. There were only a handful of other people in the bar.

“I read somewhere that people who drink on a Tuesday are either drunks or alcoholics,” Harry said, looking at Mercer.

“What’s the difference?”

“Alcoholics have to go to meetings,” Harry deadpanned.

“And this from the guy who thinks booze is the missing link on the food chain,” Mercer smiled. “Old joke, Harry.”

“What do you want? I’m an old man.” In his large hand, Harry’s highball glass looked like a thimble.

“Are you still on that?”

“No, not really.” Harry sparked a match for a cigarette that had materialized between his lips. “I did a little soul searching and realized that if I’m still alive, despite myself, I should just accept it. Most of the people I’ve known who made it to eighty never took what time they had left to enjoy themselves. They just sat around nursing homes and griped about how much better they used to feel. Well, I still feel pretty good, and goddamn it, I’m going to make the best of it.” He rapped on the bar top. “Tiny, fetch my friend another drink and put it on my tab.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Paul Gordon threw up his hands theatrically. “You are really dying, aren’t you? The only reason you’d ever buy Mercer a drink is if you planned on checking out before you paid your bill.”