Jack Du Brul - Vulcan's forge

Mercer moved over to Tish and took the goggles from her slack hand. “Tish.” Her eyes swiveled to his. “I told you to wait upstairs. Please, from now on, never listen to me again, okay?”

He slid his arms around her and her body eased into his embrace. He calmly stroked her hair for a moment. “Now we’re even. I saved your life and you just saved mine. Thank you.”

“I waited until you had your gun and he was turned away from you,” she replied after a moment.

They went back up to the third floor, dousing all the lights again and relying on Mercer’s goggles to get them to the executive offices. Quickly scanning the names on the doors, they found the locked door of the highest ranking employee, a vice president. Mercer smirked at the man’s name: Russo.

“Nice touch,” he commented.

“If they are Russian,” Tish replied.

“To have guards like those two, they’re something.”

It took Mercer five frustrating minutes to pick the lock. Although he remembered the technique from his CIA training, theory and practice were two entirely different things. One of Hat’s men could have done it in ten seconds.

The office was paneled in rich oak, the carpet was soft under their feet. A window behind the broad desk looked out onto Eleventh Avenue. Mercer shut the thick drapes and turned on the desk lamp. Pictures of the OF amp;C fleet adorned the walls. David Saulman in Miami had been right. Each ship had a different bunch of flowers painted on the funnels: April Lilac, September Laurel, December Iris , and a score of others. There was a fish tank against one wall, and though it was large it only contained a single fish.

Mercer turned to the four squat filing cabinets and opened a drawer at random. He started leafing through the folders within.

“Pick a drawer, any drawer,” he said lightly.

“What are we looking for?”

“Anything that might jog your memory. There could be something here that you may remember from when you were rescued, a name, anything.”

Tish pointed to a picture on the wall. “That’s the ship that rescued me, I think.”

Mercer looked at the picture and recognized the September Laurel as she calmly plied some distant sea.

“That may be the ship that reported finding you, but I don’t think it’s the ship that pulled you from the water. You remembered a black circle and a yellow dot on the funnel, not a bunch of flowers. Besides, Dave Saulman told me that her crew are mostly Italians, not Russians.”

“I could have been wrong about hearing Russian.”

“Even if you are, it’s obvious that something is going on here. Let’s just go through the files and see if anything turns up.”

For the next half hour, Mercer and Tish pored through the files without turning up anything conclusive. The only odd thing was a loose file tab labeled “John Dory” lying on the bottom of the drawer containing the ownership papers of the OF amp;C ships. There was no file to go along with the tiny scrap of paper. Because all OF amp;C vessels were named after a month and a flower, Mercer guessed that John Dory was the name of a captain or ship’s officer employed by OF amp;C.

“This has been a complete waste of time, hasn’t it?” There was hopelessness in Tish’s voice.

“I know I’m right. There has to be something here that we haven’t seen,” Mercer persisted. “But we have to get out of here.”

“Did you kill those guards without a reason?”

Mercer looked up from the file. It was a question he did not want to address. Was there a chance he was wrong about OF amp;C’s involvement?

“No, we didn’t, and I’ll tell you why. Look around this office. There’s nothing personal anywhere, no photos, no diplomas, nothing. This may be a legitimate shipping line to some, but to the man who occupies this office, shipping is not his career.” Mercer walked to the desk and scanned the address file. “There isn’t one ship broker’s number in here, not one chandler. Christ, he doesn’t even have the private numbers of his captains.”

“He could be just a figurehead.”

“He is, don’t you get it? Most shipping lines are built by individuals and based on personal contacts. I’m willing to bet this Greg Russo wouldn’t know a hawsepipe from a hole in the wall. Whoever occupies this office has a job to do, but it has nothing to do with shipping.”

“Hold it right there,” a male voice commanded.

Mercer froze, his pulse pounding. Hat’s son had said only two men had entered the building, and they had already been eliminated. Whose was the voice behind them?

“Step away from the desk and turn around slowly.” The command was punctuated with the cocking of a revolver.

An overweight security guard stood in the doorway. He was a frightened rent-a-cop with a pale, jowled face and a trembling grip on his weapon.

“You got a lot to answer for. Keep your hands where I can see them. Move toward the fish tank.”

Mercer backed away from the desk, Tish right beside him. She hadn’t screamed when the guard entered and seemed in control. Mercer wished that he felt as calm as she appeared. The guard had scared the hell out of him.

Greg Russo must have called in additional security after Cap had left his post across the street. Mercer had no way of knowing if more men were scouring the building. The guard crossed to the desk, his eyes and gun never straying from Mercer. With his free hand he fumbled for the telephone. Mercer’s chance was coming.

The instant the guard glanced down at the phone, Mercer launched himself.

Time slowed to a crawl. Mercer’s senses were heightened so that he could see the individual hairs on the guard’s face, smell the nervous sweat of the man, and hear his labored breathing. Mercer flew across the room, focusing on the hand holding the revolver, the rings of fat around the man’s wrist, the knuckles tightening around the trigger. The hammer began to drop and Mercer’s fingers were still inches away from their mark.

The gun discharged just as Mercer grabbed the guard’s wrist. The sound was like a burst of thunder in the small office. Cordite smoke burned Mercer’s eyes, blinding him. Next to Tish, the large fish tank exploded, water, gravel, and the fish cascading to the carpet in a frothing wave.

The recoil lifted the gun high over the guard’s head so that Mercer’s shoulder barreled into the guard’s unprotected flank. Mercer could feel the man’s ribs snap as he smashed into them. The guard was thrown across the desk, the gun spinning from his hand. He fell against a wall, moaning.

Mercer recovered the revolver, aiming it at the fallen guard, but did not pull the trigger. “You’re not with those others, you don’t have to die.” Mercer lowered the revolver and turned to Tish. “Are you all right?”

“Shaken, but not stirred.”

“We’ve got to get out of here — someone must have heard this gun go off.”

Mercer held out his hand and Tish came toward him and took it in hers. He stared at the dying fish for a moment as it flopped on the soaked carpet and the sight triggered a vague memory. “Benoit Charleteaux,” he mumbled.

“What?” Tish asked as they started cautiously back to the fourth floor and the ladder outside.

“Another clue.” Mercer’s muted voice sounded triumphant.

Richard Henna was just getting back into bed after a late-night foray into the kitchen when the bedside phone rang. He grabbed the handset before the second ring. His wife, a twenty-five-year veteran of middle-of-the-night calls, didn’t even stir.

“Henna.”

“Dick, it’s Marge.” Margaret Doyle was a deputy director of the bureau and Dick Henna’s oldest and best friend. She didn’t bother apologizing for waking him. “Philip Mercer has left the Washington area.”