Jack Du Brul - Vulcan's forge

A battered wooden desk, covered with stacks of books and a gold measuring scale, occupied the center of the small office. A coffee urn, tarnished and pitted, sat on a low settee against one wall. The room smelled of dust mingled with the sweet odor of hashish. Lurbud sat behind the desk, the pistol in his lap. For twenty minutes, until Suleiman returned from prayer, the only movement in the room was the occasional blinking of Lurbud’s dark eyes. He waited with the same patience as the Sphinx just outside the city.

Lurbud’s entrance had disturbed the room, its air pattern, its volume, its feel. As he remained, motionless, the room had calmed, accepting his presence. This was a skill he had learned at a training camp on the shores of the Black Sea, where students were put into a completely dark maze. The one who walked out alive, graduated.

He remained motionless even when he heard the front door of the shop open and close. An instant later Suleiman’s immense bulk parted the curtain separating his shop from his office.

Suleiman had grabbed a demitasse of coffee and was almost upon Lurbud before he noticed the intruder. The thimble-sized cup fell from his pudgy finger, shattering on the stone floor. Behind his beard, Suleiman’s face drained of color and he staggered back several paces.

“I read in your dossier that you are never guarded here in the Khan.” Lurbud spoke fluent, unaccented Arabic. “You believed that your standing in the bazaar would protect you, yes?”

“Who are you?” Suleiman demanded, recovering from his initial shock.

“My name means nothing to you, Suleiman el-aziz,” Lurbud spoke without emotion. “You were hired to supply and ship nearly a thousand tons of arms, ammunition, and material to Hawaii. Is this not true?”

“I know not what you talk about.”

“I believe that you do. The order was placed by Takahiro Ohnishi possibly several weeks or months ago.”

“I am a simple jeweler. I don’t understand.”

Lurbud continued as if Suleiman had not spoken. “I represent a group that does not wish to see this order filled. We don’t want those arms shipped to Hawaii. In fact, we don’t want you to have any further involvement with Ohnishi at all.”

“Who are you to tell me how to run my business?” Suleiman retorted with a sneer.

“Ah, so no longer are you a simple jeweler.” Lurbud’s smile was devoid of amusement.

“I know your type,” Suleiman said, his tone scornful. “You’re some soldier of fortune who happened on that piece of information. Do you think you can blackmail Suleiman el-aziz Suleiman?”

“I am not here to blackmail you. I’m here to tell you that the order is canceled.”

“You are too late, mercenary. Those arms are on a freighter halfway to Hawaii.” Sweat had beaded on Suleiman’s creased forehead.

The Arab was lying. Suleiman hadn’t even purchased the arms yet. He was currently using Ohnishi’s deposit money to push up the bond prices of a hydroelectric project in Sri Lanka. Because of his contacts in the terrorist underworld, Suleiman knew that Tamil separatists were going to bomb the huge network of dams within two weeks. By pushing up the bond price and then selling at a slight discount just prior to the attack, Suleiman stood to quadruple the money. Only then would he put together Ohnishi’s order for weapons.

“I believe that you’re lying, Suleiman.” Lurbud brought the Takarov into view for the first time. “But to be honest, I don’t really care what the truth is.”

For such a large man, Suleiman’s reaction time was incredibly fast. He dove across the room, his body sailing through the air like a giant zeppelin.

Lurbud swung his pistol in an arc matching Suleiman’s leap, but his first shot amazingly missed the huge target. Suleiman crashed against the wall near the settee, one arm sweeping the coffee urn to the floor. Coffee flooded across the floor in a thick black tide. Suleiman’s hands, made dexterous through years of precision jewelry making, tore at a pistol which had been taped to the back of the old urn.

Evad caught a look of murderous rage in the Arab’s eyes as Suleiman torqued his huge body to bring the gun to bear. Lurbud fired an instant before the muzzle of Suleiman’s automatic caught a bead on him. The shot tore into the arms merchant’s body, the fat rippling in shock waves around the impact.

Suleiman’s arm was thrown up by the shot, the tiny Beretta spinning from his hand. Lurbud fired again, and again. The killing light in Suleiman’s eyes began to fade. Lurbud came around the desk, his pistol aimed directly at the Arab’s head.

With his free hand the Russian pulled a flask from inside his jacket. He unscrewed the lid from the pewter flask and knelt next to the dying Muslim.

“As a final thought, Suleiman el-aziz Suleiman,” Lurbud began, pouring the viscous red liquid from the flask onto Suleiman, “you will meet Allah with your body covered in pig’s blood.”

Suleiman opened his mouth to scream at this ultimate desecration, and Lurbud fired one more round down the gaping throat. The blood of the dead Muslim mingled with that of the unclean pig on the hard floor of the office.

Lurbud reholstered his gun, noting for the first time the thick pall of cordite smoke that hung in the air. The room reeked of smoke, but beneath that odor he detected the smell of blood and Suleiman’s voided bowels.

At the front door of the shop, he paused. There were a few people on the street, mostly old men heading back to the coffeehouses and their hookahs. The thick stone walls of the shop had muffled any sound from the silenced Takarov. Lurbud eased out of the shop and mingled with the crowd as best he could. Ten minutes later he was out of the bazaar, searching for a cab. He had two hours to dispose of the pistol and get to the airport before his flight to Hawaii.

There was a stunned silence in the Oval Office after Mercer made his revelation. He watched as everyone’s expression turned from surprise to confusion and finally to doubt.

“What makes you think Russia has anything to do with this?” Paul Barnes broke the silence. “Just because the assassin who went after Dr. Talbot once worked for the KGB doesn’t mean anything.”

Mercer realized that he had just stepped on the toes of the director of the CIA.

“Tish Talbot told me that after her rescue from the Ocean Seeker , she heard some of her saviors speaking Russian.”

“Christ,” Barnes said, glancing around the room. “You said she was blown from the ship, stunned. Who knows what she heard — she was half dead at the time.”

“I doubt that St. Peter speaks Russian during his interview at the Pearly Gates, Mr. Barnes,” Mercer said evenly. “But that’s not the fact I’m relying on.

“A friend of mine in Miami is an expert in maritime law. I had him research Ocean Freight and Cargo, the owners of the September Laurel . He found that the company is a front for the KGB.”

“I had a court order demanding Saulman turn over all the information that you requested,” Henna said incredulously. “He withheld that from the FBI.”

“If you knew Dave Saulman, you wouldn’t be surprised. He’s as crusty as a Paris bakery. But he is a walking encyclopedia concerning maritime commerce and his word is gospel truth.”

“If we take his word about the KGB for the time being,” Paul Barnes said suspiciously, “what about this submarine idea of yours?”

“The first piece of evidence is really just simple reasoning. According to the news reports there was a combined naval and coast guard search of the area, using, I’m sure, the most sophisticated hardware in the world. Yet they failed to find any survivors. The Ocean Seeker ’s last known position was well documented by her Loran transmissions, yet the search turned up nothing except an oil slick and a few pieces of debris.