Jack Du Brul - Vulcan's forge

“When?” Mercer snapped.

“In the sixties, I believe. He had published some brilliant articles about the changes in metals after nuclear tests, but his work centered mostly on the effects on the armor of tanks and ships. His name was Borodin, Pytor Borodin.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Mercer moaned. “Do we have those photos yet from the spy plane?”

Paul Barnes slid the 8 X 10s from a thin envelope and placed them on the President’s desk. Their colors were phantasmagorical: fuchsia, teal, blinding white, indigo blue, vibrant yellow. They created a concentric pattern on the photos, each color ringing another so that the image looked like a distorted bull’s-eye. At the bottom of each photograph was printed the time, location, and altitude of each shot. Mercer couldn’t help but notice the shots were taken above one hundred and fifty thousand feet, miles above the earth’s atmosphere. He was very impressed with the new SR-1 Wraith.

He wondered idly, as he waited his turn to closely study the photos, why all the men crowded around the desk to see them. Apart from Barnes, he doubted any of them had ever seen an infrared photo of this type. He passed it off as the same kind of curiosity that caused people to stare into construction pits.

Mercer looked at the near identical photos until his eyes found the one he wanted. Longitude and latitude lines had been etched onto the film by the computer that controlled the camera.

Mercer muttered something under his breath.

“What was that?”

“The Bangkok Accords,” his voice barely a whisper in the quiet room. “I said, the Bangkok Accords.”

“What is…”

“Meetings taking place right now that may just give away the greatest discovery of this or any century,” Mercer said, anticipating the question. “Abe, did this Dr. Borodin have any children?”

“I can’t see how that-”

“Answer me, goddamn it.” The vehemence in Mercer’s voice made Jacobs pale.

“Yes, one son.”

“We’ve been had.” Mercer leaned away from the photographs, his eyes betraying respect for the master of the plan.

“What do you mean?”

“Dr. Borodin is alive and well, gentlemen, and he beat us to the punch by forty years.” Mercer spoke slowly as his brain began unraveling the four-decade-old mystery. “Bear with me for a few minutes.

“Let’s assume that this Borodin somehow discovers the existence of bikinium back in the early fifties and wants to create his own. He persuades the Russians to give him an atomic bomb. Remember, those things were in short supply back then, so his project must have gotten a high priority.

“Then he fills an ore carrier with high-grade vanadium ore, sails her to a predetermined location near volcanic activity, and sinks her, along with the bomb. Once she settles on the ocean floor he touches off the nuke. Later, he fakes his own death, so there wouldn’t ever be any connection to him.”

“Is there any record of a lost ore carrier?” Abe asked.

“ Grandam Phoenix , missing since May 23, 1954,” Mercer replied sharply. “She was listed as running bauxite ore from Malaysia, to the States, but Christ only knew what she carried.”

Mercer’s voice trailed off, his eyes glazed for a second and then snapped back into focus. His voice was firm, commanding. “I need a phone, now.”

In a moment that Mercer would remember for the rest of his life, the President of the United States obeyed and handed him the receiver to one of the telephones on his desk. Mercer gave the White House operator a number and waited patiently for the connection, oblivious of the stares.

“Berkowitz, Saulman…”

Mercer cut off the secretary. “Skip it. Give me Dave Saulman right away; this is an emergency.”

The secretary was used to emergencies in the uncontrollable world of ocean commerce and cut in on Saulman while he was on another line.

“Saulman here,” the old lawyer answered quickly.

“Dave, it’s Mercer.”

“Oh, you finally have an answer for me?”

Mercer knew that Saulman was asking about the trivia question at the bottom of the faxes he had received two days earlier. Without thinking, Mercer replied, “The captain of the Amoco Cadio was Pasquale Bardari.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Dave, I need to know who owned the Grandam Phoenix .”

“Never heard of her.”

“She was on the list you sent me of the vessels that disappeared north of Hawaii.”

“Oh, right.” Recognition lightened Saulman’s voice. “Might take me a couple of days to find. I’m swamped in work right now on a towing contract for an Exxon tanker that’s drifting off Namibia. The fucking Dutch tugs are holding out for Lloyd’s Open and the value of that tanker and cargo is somewhere around one hundred and thirty million dollars.”

“Not to name-drop,” Mercer said with a fiendish smile, “but I’m sitting with the President, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the heads of the FBI and CIA, and we’re all waiting for your answer.”

There was a moment’s silence from the other end of the phone. Mercer marveled that there was no static on the President’s phone line. Must be nice, he thought.

“You’re not kidding, are you?”

“Want to talk to one of them?”

“No. It’ll take a few minutes to get the info. Do you want me to call back?”

“I don’t think AT amp;T cares how long the President is on the phone, I’ll hold.”

“What’s this all about?” the President asked, not really caring that Mercer was now sitting on the corner of his desk.

“Conclusive evidence,” replied Mercer enigmatically.

The President exchanged glances with the men around the room, but none of them spoke. They waited five long minutes, clearing throats, shuffling feet, and rattling papers, but their gaze never left Mercer.

“I’ve got it.” Saulman was breathless. “The Grandam Phoenix was owned by Ocean Freight and Cargo.” Saulman continued to speak, but Mercer was already hanging up the phone.

“The ore carrier that sank in 1954 and the ship that rescued Tish Talbot have the same owners, Ocean Freight and Cargo, the same company I broke into last night.”

“The ones suspected of being a front for the KGB?”

“Right.”

“You said something about the ore carrier being sunk over a volcanic area, why?” Henna asked.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Abe, but the deeper the explosion and the more water pressure, the purer the bikinium.”

Abe Jacobs nodded, then added, “That’s just my theory, though.”

“Well, in 1954, there was no way to mine any minerals from even a few hundred feet underwater and we’re talking depths in the thousands. Even today, the Frasch process of using superheated water for mining can’t work any deeper than two hundred feet.

“Dr. Borodin borrowed a line from the Koran and, like Muhammad, had the mountain come to him. By setting off the blast over a volcanic area, he would trigger an eruption, and the lava would transport the bikinium to the surface.”

“Jesus, that would work,” Jacobs said, respect lowering his voice. “I never would have even considered it.”

“But volcanoes take millions of years to grow,” the President pointed out.

“Normal geologic processes are that slow,” Mercer agreed. “But volcanoes, like earthquakes, are very dynamic. A volcano in Paricutin, Mexico, grew out of a farmer’s field beginning in the summer of 1943. After the first week, the field was a five-hundred-foot-tall mountain and growing by the second. Borodin’s volcano has had more than enough time to reach the surface.”

“What do we do now?” The President locked eyes with each man in the room.