Jack Du Brul - Charon's landing

“Aggie, we’re about to strike a real blow against the fascist corporations whose greed is destroying the planet.”

“My father’s included?” She didn’t mean to sound like she was defending her father, but her tone was harsh and accusatory.

“We’ve talked about that,” Voerhoven said, holding up his hands as if warding off a physical assault. “I thought you understood that he has always been one of our fiercest adversaries. Petromax is one of the most ruthless exploiters in the world. I thought you were okay with what we are doing. You’ve said countless times how you want to get back at him. Now is your chance! We’re on the verge of something great here, something that will save Alaska and maybe the rest of the world as well. In the next couple of days we are going to force the world to live without oil, Aggie. Don’t you know what that means?”

“No, Jan, what does it mean?” she replied sharply. The spell he could so easily weave around her seemed no longer to hold her enraptured. For the first time she was seeing him for what he was, not what she wanted to see. What has Mercer done to me? she thought.

“You’ll understand when we’re finished. You will see. We are about to save the planet from its greatest scourge, its thirst for oil.”

Again Aggie found herself thinking about Mercer’s words. “What will you replace it with?”

“What?” Jan asked tenderly.

“If you shut off the world’s oil, how will you supply energy for schools and hospitals, provide jobs for the millions of people who depend on oil for their livelihoods?” Aggie shook herself free from his embrace.

“Aggs, I’m not going to shut off the world’s supply of oil. I’m going to make it such a repugnant source of energy that no one will want to use it.”

“What are you talking about?”

He took her into his arms again, pressing his engorged groin against her body, his hands traveling the length of her back in fervent strokes. “Later, Aggie.” He kissed the hollow of her throat, his tongue deftly stroking one of her most sensitive areas.

“Jan, please. I told you.”

He ignored her pleas. “Aggie, I haven’t seen you in so long. God , I want you.”

She felt herself being maneuvered out of the office portion of his cabin and into his stateroom. Allowed herself to be maneuvered, she thought, for she could have resisted. If he felt the stiffness of her body, he ignored it.

At his bedside, he laid her gently on the eiderdown duvet. “You are so beautiful,” he breathed, his face flushed with desire.

“Jan, please don’t,” Aggie whispered. Why was this happening? Why was she allowing this to take place? As much as she wanted to stop him, part of her mind told her she owed him. And even as she thought it, she knew it was wrong. She owed him nothing.

He unsnapped the top button of her jeans and slowly pulled down the zipper. She made no move to help him, nor did she try to stop him either. His hands were so familiar on her body, caressing her narrow hips, tracking across her breasts. Didn’t she owe him? They’d been lovers for nearly a year. Surely this was right.

He undressed himself and a moment later entered her painfully, for her body had not responded to his advances. He seemed not to notice. He covered her completely, his nude form supported by his hands as he pistoned up and down, head arched back, eyes closed. He came, burying his head into her shoulder in a silent explosion.

Aggie felt like a whore.

Mercer made it back to his hotel room about midnight, his mind cleared, his raging emotions of an hour earlier kept firmly reined in. He was frozen to the core. Having surrendered his jacket to Aggie, he’d had to walk to his hotel in nothing more than a shirt, and this was not the weather for it. He thought of taking a shower, but a quick check of the time told him that he should make his call before turning to his body’s needs.

He dialed and was surprised that four rings went by before the other end of the line was picked up by a gruff, “What?”

“Evening, Dick, Mercer here.”

“Jesus Christ, Mercer, where in the hell are you?” Henna exploded. “I’ve got an entire task force searching for you right now.”

“Come on, Dick. I’m at the Willard Hotel, where you left me,” Mercer replied innocently.

“Laugh it up, funny guy,” Henna snorted. “You’re going to get the bill for all the booze Harry smuggled from the hotel. Now, where are you?”

“Valdez, Alaska.”

“I told you to stay away from Alaska. Are you deaf or something?”

“Come on, Dick. The coelacanths are on their spawning runs. The fishing’s supposed to be great.”

“For your information, coelacanths are found only in the Indian Ocean.”

“That’s why I haven’t caught one yet,” Mercer laughed. “I thought I was using the wrong bait.”

“Okay, so you’re in Alaska,” Henna said with resignation. “What have you found?”

“Nothing concrete, yet, but I’ve got my suspicions,” Mercer replied. “By the way, Dick, where are you?”

“I’m at the White House with the President and the Secretary of Energy. Care to talk to either of them?”

“Tell Connie that she should ditch those sensible shoes she’s wearing.”

Mercer heard Connie Van Buren’s distinct laughter and knew Henna had put his cellular on speaker mode.

“How are you doing with Max Johnston’s daughter?” Van Buren called. “I saw you two leaving the reception together.”

“You know me and women, Connie,” Mercer chuckled. “She hates my guts. Listen, Dick, I need a favor.”

“What else is new?”

“You know that group PEAL? The environmentalists? Well, I think they may be up to something here.”

“That’s not the way we’re reading it on this end, Mercer. We’re tracking the Kerikov angle to what’s happening. PEAL doesn’t fit in.”

“I just watched a few of them tear apart a barroom full of rednecks. These guys moved like a trained army. Not your typical style for a bunch of earth-loving druid wanna-bes.”

“If you’d listen, I was about to say we’ve found Ivan Kerikov,” Henna exclaimed. “And he appears to be working with some Middle Eastern types, not a group of trust-fund radicals.”

“What do you have?” The last traces of humor vanished from Mercer’s voice.

“We tracked his false passport to the Holiday Inn Tower Hotel in Anchorage. He took three different rooms. A suite for himself and two other rooms for what sound like bodyguards. The staff remembered that three of the guards, Arabs, and a man matching Kerikov’s description did leave the hotel for a couple of days. The time frame corresponds with when Howard Small vanished. Unfortunately, when we raided the hotel this morning, we missed them by a couple of hours. The whole party had already checked out.”

“Shit,” Mercer said bitterly. “Wait, did he make any calls?”

“Dead end there, too, I’m afraid. He did make a couple, but they turned out to be a private manual exchange in New York.”

“A what?”

“It’s like a dead letter drop only for telephone calls. You phone the place and they patch you through to another line using an old manual PBX, that way any traces end with the exchange, not with the person you’re trying to reach. KGB used them for years in this country.”

“It still doesn’t add up. More than two hundred tons of liquid nitrogen have been smuggled into Alaska over the past couple of months. Kerikov is going to need more than a few Arabs and a couple of bodyguards to do anything with it.”

“And you think PEAL is somehow involved?” It was the unmistakable voice of the President, who’d been listening to the conversation.

“Yes, sir, I do. I don’t have any proof, but they make me suspicious as hell.”