“I found a body inside a cave near the coordinates. I did some research, and I think he was a guru who died around 1881. The real expert on him is a professor in Mumbai, and since it’s a short detour I thought it better to meet face-to-face than to ask a bunch of potentially disrespectful questions over the phone. Apparently the academic is a descendant.”
“And you think knowing more about the dead guy can help.”
“It’s more of a case of it not hurting, I suppose,” he replied. “They just called my flight. I’ll give you a ring when I get the chance. How’s Harry?”
“He’s given up smoking, embraced temperance, and has started doing Zumba.”
Mercer laughed. “That sounds like Harry, always striving to make himself a better person.”
“Oh wait,” Jordan said as if giving color commentary at a sporting event. “What’s this? Yes, he just shut off the workout DVD, poured a Jack and ginger, and he’s fishing in his pocket for his Chesterfields. He was a better person for all of…eight seconds, ladies and gentlemen.”
Mercer heard Harry over Jordan’s teasing chuckle. “I’d give you a spanking, young lady, but your behind’s so tight I’d probably break my hand.”
“Talk to you soon,” Mercer said with a smile. “And watch yourself because he’s more than willing to test that hypothesis.”
He didn’t like lying to her, but if his suspicions were right it would be better for them both that he had. At least in the short term. Long term? Who knew? He boarded the Boeing jumbo jet and took his seat in first class. He was asleep before the plane even left the ground, and only had a vague recollection of being awoken for a meal.
It was pouring rain when he finally left the climate-controlled confines of the modern air transportation system, once again stepping back into nature. The sky was pewter colored and blotchy and looked like it hovered just a few feet over the ground. The concrete and asphalt around the terminal ran with runoff that poured through downspouts with the force of fire hoses. The sound of rain muted the occasional honks of taxis jostling for position, the cried greetings of drivers picking up loved ones, and the rumble of shuttle buses as lumbering and ponderous as dinosaurs. Passing cars hydroplaned as they went, kicking up rooster tails that rivaled those of offshore racing boats. The air was chilled and heavy. Mercer’s leather bomber was more than adequate, but he ducked back into the terminal and bought the first baseball cap he could find, a black one with a stylized red bird above the brim.
He had to wait with a dozen other passengers for a minibus to take him to the closest rental car lot, but as a preferred customer he found his name on a lighted board outside their office/garage directing him to his vehicle, an SUV only slightly smaller than the beast he’d driven just a few days earlier.
He plugged his destination into the satellite navigation system, thankful for it since he had no idea where he really was. He tried the radio, got a slot of static and something that sounded even more jarring than what had been playing at the Gen-D Systems compound in Kabul, and decided to let the storm be his companion.
By the looks of things he had a couple-hour drive, and once again marveled at the vast expanses of the American Midwest. Iowa in particular, even under a biblical storm, looked like it was nothing but wide-open spaces.
Sherman Smithson turned the lock on his front door and sniffled. He was coming down with a cold, which made the past week of rain even more miserable. Despite his somewhat precise nature, what others called prissy, Smithson wasn’t a small man. He topped out at over six feet, and for a year back at Iowa State he had been on the Cyclones football practice squad. He was forty-seven now, and what physique he had once possessed had slouched into humped shoulders and a pronounced belly that he couldn’t muster enough pride to be ashamed of. What bothered him was the retreat of his ginger hair that had left him just a horseshoe fringe around his shiny scalp. Mrs. Jenkins, one of the volunteers at the Hoover Presidential Library, had rightly dissuaded him from the comb-over several years back.
He would never grace the cover of a magazine, but he had been able to win the affections of Alice Holmes, a childless widow only a couple years his senior. She worked for a lawyer in Iowa City but lived only a few miles from his home near the library in West Branch. He had been looking forward to cooking her dinner tonight, but with all this rain there were flood warnings for eastern Iowa, especially along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. She had opted to stay with a friend in the city rather than chance driving out into the storm.
As a native Hawkeye, he didn’t think the flooding was any worse now than when he was a boy, but Alice, a transplant from Chicago, was convinced that each storm was getting worse and that something had to be done about it. He thought she should brave it out so they could have spent a cozy weekend trapped in his house by the rain with some nice wine and Trivial Pursuit, Genus Edition.
He stepped into his overheated house and sneezed.
Maybe it was best she didn’t come over. The living room was gloomy, the light coming in through the windows somehow menacing, and the rain cascading off the eaves made it impossible to see more than a few feet into the back or side yards. Smithson reached to flip on the light switch, when a hand clamped over his wrist and he was yanked into his house and tossed bodily to the floor. The front door closed with a solid thunk. He tried to scramble to his feet, his hands coming up in a defensive stance like he’d seen in movies, but an unseen foot kicked out and connected with the side of his knee. He yelped at the stabbing agony and collapsed, clutching the joint and whimpering.
“Eh, enough of that,” a voice said in a guttural accent, something foreign — likely European. “If I wanted to break it, I would have.”
A light finally went on. Smithson saw two men. Both wore black leather jackets, like bikers, but without any patches or insignia. They wore dark shirts and jeans with work boots, not Western styled. But what held his attention and weakened his resolve were the black ski masks both men wore over their faces. All he saw were eyes that bulged from the holes in the knitted wool, and mouths that looked too large and too red. Meant just to hide their features, the masks made them look all the more terrifying. Neither man had a visible weapon, but at this point they didn’t need them.
The leader of the two, the man who had tossed him so casually to the floor, hunkered down so he could look Smithson in the eye. “We have a couple of questions and we’ll leave you alone. Okay?” He slurped as though his mouth was filled with saliva.
Smithson could only nod. He was grateful he had urinated before leaving the library because the small trickle that just ran down his leg was the entire contents of his bladder. The masked man seemed not to notice.
“I couldn’t ask you outright, okay, so we had to do it this way. See? I am not a bad sort, really. It’s just that I’m asked to do some rough stuff sometimes. Hell, man, I started out as one of the good guys. I used to protect workers in Angola from terrorists. There are a lot of kiddies out in the world today who still have their daddies ’cause of me. I’m telling you so you aren’t so scared, okay. Tell me what I need to know and we go. I’ll need to tie you up, you understand, but we won’t hurt you.”
“Nik?” the other man prompted.
“Nee! There’s no need for more killing.”
“What do you want?” Sherman Smithson asked through gritted teeth. His knee felt hot and swollen. He stayed sitting on the floor, the joint cradled in his hands.
“The same thing your friend Philip Mercer wanted. We found that Sample 681 was once owned by your President Hoover, from a file in Ohio that gave the location where it was discovered. Mercer learned all that from you, ja?”