Jack Du Brul - Charon's landing

“And who are these men?” MacLaughlin asked suspiciously but nonetheless intrigued.

“I don’t know yet,” Mercer lied, “but you can believe that I’m going to find out.”

MacLaughlin responded after a long silence. “I suppose I can ask my brother-in-law to go out in his boat to snag the hull with a grapple hook on the end of a rope. I guarantee he’ll find her on the first pass.”

“Don’t bet on it, Chief. The Jenny IV won’t be there. You won’t be able to reach me at home by the time he gets back. I’m flying up to Alaska this evening, so I’ll call you later.”

“Yeah, sure. In case I’m not here, let me give you my home phone number.”

“I can’t tell you what this means to me,” Mercer said. He took MacLaughlin’s number and snapped off the phone.

He exhaled a long breath, relieved that the Alaskan had agreed to help. Mercer didn’t like lying to MacLaughlin, but he felt he had no choice. He doubted that MacLaughlin’s investigation would lead him beyond the Homer town line, so the less he knew, the better his odds of avoiding Ivan Kerikov’s interest. There was no amount of warning he could give that would prepare the Chief for an international terrorist like Kerikov, and Mercer couldn’t take another death on his conscience if MacLaughlin got too close. But having him look into the whereabouts of the Jenny IV did free Mercer to pursue other avenues.

He hefted the bags off the bed and noticed that the powerful sunlight beaming through the new skylight was drying the first coat of joint compound. In just a day or two, all the physical evidence of the attack would be gone. As promised, Dick Henna had hired a crew to restore his house. There was already new carpeting in the bar where Burt Manning’s blood had been spilled, and a master carpenter was repairing the bullet holes in the library and on the balcony and the antique staircase.

Mercer knew from experience that the psychological effects of the assault would take much, much longer to mend.

The phone rang again when he was halfway down the stairs. He left his luggage in the library and rushed to pick up the extension in his office.

“Enrico Caruso said it,” a voice said triumphantly before he could say hello.

“Took you long enough,” Mercer chastised with a smile.

David Saulman, a longtime friend, and Mercer had been engaged in a grueling trivia contest for as long as they’d known each other. Each enjoyed the tests immensely, Saulman because it allowed him to use his inexhaustible research skills, and Mercer because it taxed his phenomenal memory.

The latest question had been posed by Mercer three months earlier and it had taken all that time for Saulman to find the answer. “Who was quoted as saying, ‘The chandelier tried to touch the ceiling and the chairs chased each other across the floor,’ in reference to the great San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 1906?” It was one of Mercer’s most esoteric questions, but he felt vindicated by posing it because he hadn’t remembered that Benjamin Briggs was the captain of the Mary Celeste , the answer to Saulman’s last query.

Invariably, Mercer’s questions dealt with earth sciences or engineering while Saulman limited his to maritime lore and history. Both were experts in their chosen fields and could draw from an unfathomable well of knowledge.

David Saulman had been an underage deckhand aboard merchantmen during the Second World War, slowly working his way through the ranks, “up the hawse pipe” in the vernacular. But an engine explosion in the early 1960s had cost him an arm and cut short his career. Forced from the working ranks, he turned his experience to the legal side of maritime commerce, putting himself through law school. Since then, he’d become one of the best marine lawyers a tremendous amount of money could buy. His offices in Miami boasted nearly one hundred fifty associates, and his new satellite office, recently opened in the shadow of Lloyd’s in London, was doing better than expected. With contacts ranging from stevedores to tycoons, he knew more about the industry than anyone in the world.

“I got your message from my secretary this morning,” Saulman said, his Brooklyn accent still crowding his speech after so many years. “I just now got the information you wanted.”

“I’m surprised you got it so fast.”

“I can’t remember how the hell we did business before computers,” Saulman said with the respect of those who really did remember the world before silicon chips took over. “So who do I bill the time to?”

Mercer laughed. Although Saulman would have done the research pro bono , he knew that when Mercer asked for a favor, there was always someone else equally interested in the information. “Charge it to the FBI. A bill from your office won’t seem too bad when Dick Henna finds out that I lied to him about my travel plans. What have you got for me?”

“All right.” David Saulman paused and Mercer could hear him arranging papers on his desk. “There were one hundred and three ships in the Gulf of Alaska at the time you asked about. Ninety-four private or commercial fishing vessels, including the Jenny IV . There were also four large ferryboats operated by Alaska Marine Highway. Three container ships owned by the Lykes Line, either running equipment north for the new pipeline or deadheading south. Finally, a vessel named Hope owned by an environmental group called PEAL and a tanker headed to the Alyeska terminal at Valdez.”

The mention of PEAL sent a charge through Mercer. “What do you know about the Hope ?”

“An old English survey ship bought about a year ago and converted into a pseudo-research vessel. She’s more about public relations than hard science. You’ll find her wherever there’s some ecological controversy. She’s been anchored in Prince William Sound for nearly three weeks.”

“Has she left the area recently?” Mercer asked quickly, a glint of victory in his murky gray eyes.

“Sorry, no.” Saulman dashed his hopes.

The PEAL vessel would have been his logical choice for smuggling large quantities of liquid nitrogen, but if she hadn’t left Valdez, she couldn’t be the one. “Okay, what about the tanker?”

“Ah, let me see.” Saulman searched for the specifics of the tanker. “Here we go. It was the Petromax Arctica , a 255,000-ton VLCC making her regular run between Valdez and Long Beach-”

“Petromax?” Mercer interrupted. “I just talked to Max Johnston a couple of days ago. He said they sold their tankers.”

“If you’d let me finish, I was about to say that she sailed into Valdez as the Arctica but left the day before yesterday as the Southern Cross . Her new owners are Southern Coasting and Lightering out of New Orleans. It’s a big step for SC amp;L.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re a midsized outfit. Their biggest vessel before they bought Petromax’s fleet was a fourteen-year-old hundred-thousand tonner. They shelled out one hundred and fifty million dollars for the Arctica and her sisters. For them, its like going from a Yugo to a collection of Bentleys in one move.”

“Did your firm draw up the papers for the sale?”

“No, it was handled in Louisiana. But when I heard about it, I was a little suspicious and did some checking. It was weird right from the start. Petromax almost tripped over themselves unloading those ships. The first day anyone heard that Max wanted to dump the tanker arm of Petromax Oil, Southern Coasting comes along and, pretty as you please, cuts him a check for the $150 million dollars, no negotiations, no financing, nothing.”

“Sounds like he was anxious for the money,” Mercer said.