By the luminous dial of his watch, dawn was half an hour away. The moon hung near the horizon in its own bright corona. Mercer shuffled unsteadily to the Toyota. He retrieved a bundle from under the truck and returned to the low stools placed just outside the tent’s entrance. Mercer recalled that the headman’s name was Negga, and he was already sitting, his head hanging limply between his hands. Mercer tapped him on the shoulder and offered one of the Milotti beers he had left overnight in a sodden towel. The beer was refreshingly cold.
“Little hair of the hyena for you.” If Mercer was going to make it through the day, he’d need a beer to push back the effects of the tej. Harry called it the “deferred hangover plan. Party now and pay later.”
Habte and Gibby joined them after Mercer had passed a second beer to Negga.
“Habte, ask our host if he would give us a man to guide us to the Valley of Dead Children.”
“I am taking my family farther east to catch the rains,” Habte translated for the nomad leader. “My herds and flocks have been months without good pasturage. I want to help you, but I can’t delay. But heed my words. You don’t want to go up there. Not only do you have to worry about the mines, but I’ve heard there’s an army stationed on the Sudan side of the border. They arrived about six days ago.”
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know. They’re not regular soldiers, and it was said that there are at least fifty of them, all well armed. A force that size is too big for one of the shifta gangs.” The chieftain shrugged his shoulders. “Their presence is a mystery.”
Mercer retrieved his topographical map of Eritrea and spread it on the ground in front of Negga. “Can you at least show me where on the Hajer Plateau the valley lies?”
Negga stared at the map with incomprehension. Like most nomads, he relied on the accumulated knowledge of generations of wanderers to know his territory. Even after Mercer pointed to the Adobha River as a reference, Negga still couldn’t understand how the compressed lines on the flat projection represented the rugged northern mountains. “I don’t know what this paper means. The valley is on the west flank of the plateau, a long day’s ride on a swift camel from Ila Babu. That is all I can tell you.”
“Would you at least guide my people to Nacfa so they can get another truck I have waiting and then take them to Ila Babu?” There were no roads connecting the two towns.
“We have drunk from the same bottle. Of course, I will do this thing for you. But I will not permit my people to go beyond Ila Babu. I won’t lose any of my family for your search.”
“Fair enough.”
Negga’s expression brightened. “It will cost you only two hundred American dollars.”
In their debilitated state, it took Habte and Gibby a half hour to transfer the fuel from the jerry cans into the Toyota, lashing the spares onto the cargo rack under the stores already there. Mercer went to talk to Negga’s son, who spoke passable English, shook hands when they came to an agreement, and passed over some money.
“It sounds like we are not going with you,” Habte said when Mercer returned to the truck.
“You’re not. I don’t want Selome with us if I run into any trouble, and I can’t trust her alone with Negga’s guides.” Mercer paused. “There’s something else. Yesterday when we were talking about returning here, Selome asked if I thought I had discovered the mine’s location. Do you remember?”
Habte nodded slowly.
“As far as I know, she thinks we’re only looking for a kimberlite pipe, not a mine. It’s the same thing the kidnappers said. Unless she has outside knowledge, she shouldn’t know anything about the mine. I haven’t told her.”
Habte accepted this without a change of expression. “I’ll keep my eye on her, see if she tries to contact anyone in Nacfa.”
“Good. Thank you.”
“What about Gibby?”
“He stays with me.” Mercer secured the last corner of a cargo net. “I can use the help, and I’ll send him to meet you in Ila Babu to direct you to the mine site if I find it.”
“What were you talking to Negga’s son about?” Habte asked.
“Contingency plan B,” Mercer said and handed over his spare sat-phone with instructions on how and when to use it.
At last they were ready. Negga assured Mercer that two of his sons would take Selome and Habte to Nacfa the following morning. Selome was still asleep, and while Mercer felt a twinge of guilt leaving her without an explanation, he didn’t let it show. He swallowed three ibuprofin tablets, drank a full liter of purified water, then mounted the truck. Gibby was already strapped into the passenger seat, his head lolling as if its weight was too great a burden for his neck.
“Selome won’t be happy that you are leaving her behind,” Habte teased.
Mercer ignored the jibe. “I’ll call you after my next contact from the kidnappers. If I haven’t located the mine by then, plan on coming to meet us anyway and we can continue the search together.” When he saw Selome again, Mercer promised himself that they would have a long talk about what she already knew. The men holding Harry White were playing for keeps, and it was time for Mercer to do likewise.
Fairfax, Virginia
The first break in solving the murders of Prescott Hyde and his wife came about through sheer persistence.
On the day of the fire, the Fairfax police had canvassed Hyde’s neighborhood for anyone who may have seen the arsonist, but they came up empty. The only glimmer of hope remaining for the investigation were a certain Dr. and Mrs. Grady, who lived adjacent to the Hydes. They had left town only an hour before the fire was first noticed. Dr. Grady was an oral surgeon who donated two weeks of his time and skills every year to a charity clinic in Peru. Despite repeated attempts to contact them at the remote clinic, they had not responded.
Dick Henna himself was waiting in a government car when the Gradys finally returned to the country, arriving from the airport in a boxy Mercury Mountaineer. Normally, the director of the FBI wouldn’t have been involved with an individual case, but there were two factors that demanded his personal attention. One was the president’s interest in the murder of one of his appointed sub-Cabinet level officials and the implications for the missing Medusa photographs. Henna had briefed the chief executive soon after Admiral Morrison dumped the entire mess on his lap. While much of the evidence was destroyed by the fire, the twin bullet holes in the charred skulls of both Prescott Hyde and his wife, Jacqueline, had galvanized the Administration. Henna’s other reason was his friendship with Mercer.
Soon after the story of the fire and execution-style murders reached the press, the Washington Post had reported the details of the Justice Department’s investigation into Hyde’s life, including rumors of a sale of highly classified documents to unknown parties. The Post didn’t have anything concrete on this last piece of information, but they were leaning heavily on their sources and it was only a matter of time before someone disclosed the existence of the Medusa satellite and the missing pictures.
The president wanted this solved quickly, faces put on the unknown killers and names to go with the faces. If the scandal broke, the president had already primed his pointing finger and wanted a direction in which to aim it. His Administration was still reeling over last year’s Alaska debacle, and was not yet strong enough to handle another embarrassment. The president told Henna to sew the murders up tight, deflect any inquiries away from his African Affairs secretary, and make certain this scandal wouldn’t return to bite them all on the ass.