Jack Du Brul - Vulcan's forge

“The concussion stunned your ears — it’s common. Go on.”

“There was an inflatable raft near me and I swam to it.”

Mercer interrupted again. “It was already inflated?”

“Yes, it was. Come to think of it, that’s awfully strange. They’re usually stowed in big plastic cylinders. Maybe the explosion released the CO 2used to inflate it.” That sounded a little far-fetched to Mercer, and he made a mental note to come back to it later. “I was in the raft all of the next day until the September Laurel rescued me.”

“That’s the freighter?”

“Yes. A couple hours later, a helicopter from the navy came to pick me up. The doctor on board gave me a shot, and when I came to, I was in D.C.”

“Can you describe the freighter?”

“I don’t know, it was just a ship. I don’t know the length or anything like that. It had a bunch of cranes and booms. There was a black circle with a yellow dot on the funnel, which was near the back of the ship.”

“What else can you tell me?”

Tish paused, her smooth forehead furrowed. There was something she wanted to say, Mercer could tell, but he didn’t think she was sure of the facts herself.

“I heard Russian,” she blurted out.

“Russian? Are you sure?”

“Well, no, not really.”

“When did you hear it?”

“When I was being pulled aboard the freighter. The crew were shouting orders to each other in Russian.”

“How can you be sure it was Russian? Some of the Scandinavian languages sound similar.”

“A year ago I was part of a research team in Mozambique, investigating the ruin that the government there has made of the prawn beds just off the coast. It was a joint venture between NOAA, Woods Hole, the Mozambique government, and a team of Soviets. I, well, I became involved with one of the Soviets. When we were alone together, he would always speak to me in Russian. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sound of that language.”

She looked at Mercer, as if defying him to judge her.

“Okay, so you heard Russian. Could be they had some expatriate Russian crewman or something like that. What happened when you were in the life raft?”

“Nothing. I was unconscious until just before I was rescued.”

“You don’t remember anything?”

“I had just been blown off a ship, what the hell am I supposed to remember?” Fatigue was taking its toll on her.

“I’m sorry. You must still be exhausted.” Mercer glanced at his watch. It was four-thirty in the afternoon. “Why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll wake you at seven. I’m sure you’re dying for a nonhospital meal.”

“Yes, that would be wonderful.”

Mercer led her to one of the two guest rooms. He showed her the bath and gave her several towels. He heard the water running even before he returned to the rec room.

Mercer pulled two more beers from the fridge and went to his home office. He switched on the desk lamp and grabbed the phone.

A moment later a female voice chirped, “Berkowitz, Saulman, and Little.”

“David Saulman please. Tell him it’s Philip Mercer.”

Of the dozens of lawyers that Mercer had dealt with in his life, David Saulman was the only one he liked. Saulman had been a ship’s officer during the late 1950s and early sixties, but an engine room accident had scalded his left hand so badly that it had to be amputated. Forced out of the Merchant Marine, he put himself through law school and within just a few years he was the man to talk to about maritime law.

Thirty years later, his office in Miami had over one hundred associate attorneys and his counsel rated five hundred dollars an hour. At seventy-five, Saulman was still sharp and his knowledge of ships and shipping was voluminous.

“Mercer, how are you? I haven’t heard your sorry voice in months. Tell me you’re in Miami and ready to get into trouble.”

“Sorry, Dave, I’m in D.C. and I’m already in trouble.”

“Don’t tell me the cops finally picked you up for flashing the tourists in front of the White House?”

“Hell, no one even notices when I do it. Dave, what do you know about a ship called the September Laurel ?”

“An official call, is it?”

“Yeah, charge it to NOAA.”

“NOAA, huh? Do they know?”

“Not yet, but if I’m right, they won’t mind.”

“The September Laurel was the ship that rescued that woman from the NOAA research vessel last night, right?”

“That’s the one.”

“The Laurel ’s owned by Ocean Freight and Cargo, head office in New York, but all of their ships are registered in Panama and have Italian crews. She’s just a tramp freighter, usually runs the north Pacific. Let me think, about four hundred feet, thirty thousand gross tons. Only notable thing about her is this rescue.”

“Dave, I want you to check her out — normal cargoes, big contracts — also I want the lowdown on her parent company. Dig deep. Also, could you get me any information on all the ships that have sunk in the same waters as the Ocean Seeker ?”

“What’s going on in that paranoid mind of yours?”

“I’m not sure yet, and I can’t really talk about what I suspect. Do you happen to know the design on her stack?”

“Yeah, a bunch of laurels.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, it’s OF amp;C’s trademark. Their ship August Rose has a bunch of roses on the stack and the December Iris has irises on hers.”

“So there’s no way that her stack could be painted with a black circle surrounding a yellow dot?”

“Not unless the company has changed a forty-year tradition.”

“Thanks, Dave, I owe you. Just fax the info to my home and I’ll take it from there.”

“Are you up for a trivia challenge?” Saulman asked. This had been a tradition since they’d first met in 1983, at a reception honoring the few remaining Titanic survivors.

“Fire away.”

“Who was the last person to own the Queen Elizabeth and what did he change her name to?”

“C. Y. Tung, and he called her Seawise University .”

Mercer just barely heard Saulman call him a bastard before he hung up.

Mercer flipped through his Rolodex for a second, searching for a number at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

“Time to call in another favor,” he muttered as the phone began ringing.

“Yo,” answered a familiar deep baritone.

Mercer instantly recognized the easy negligence of the greeting. The voice was pure Harlem. “Spook, whatever happened to hello?”

“Only one man dare call me that. Is that you, Mercer?”

“No, this is the Massachusetts chapter of the KKK soliciting donations.”

“So it is the Rock Jock, how the hell are you?”

Three years earlier, Mercer had been contacted by a Pennsylvania mining firm about a piece of property they had just purchased in upstate New York. The company was hoping to reopen a hard-rock anthracite mine first excavated in the 1890s. While doing the first exploratory trips into the half-submerged mine, Mercer and a small team from the mining company had come across a school of swift but blind fish. Not recognizing them as a normal subterranean species, Mercer had called in Woods Hole to investigate the mutated specimens. They sent over two marine biologists and several assistants. The mine was never reopened, but the research had given a young grad student named Charles Washington his Ph.D. thesis and a guaranteed tenure at Woods Hole. Mercer had given Washington the nickname Spook, not because of his black skin and inner-city manner, but because of his love of Stephen King novels and the frightening stories he’d tell to keep the crew entertained while working in the dark mine tunnels.