“Storm Investigations.”
Jones did not bother with niceties or small talk: “Have you made any headway?”
Storm relayed the brief version of how he ended up a guest aboard the Warrior Princess and provided some of the details from his conversation with Karlsson Logistics’s CEO.
“The Medina Society?” Jones said when Storm was through.
“You don’t think they’re behind it?”
Jones paused just a little. It was the delay that told Storm his boss was, as usual, hiding something. “No, actually, I’m not surprised,” Jones said. “That explains why we’ve heard so little about this. If it was one of the other extremist groups over there, we would have had ten different agents who would have been able to put schematics of this weapon up on a wall for us. The Medina Society is the nut we can’t seem to crack. We have been completely unable to infiltrate their ranks.”
“Yeah, not even Ingrid’s money has been able to,” Storm said. “They seem to be pretty careful, but they do have one vulnerability.”
“What’s that?”
“The promethium. It seems to be the limiting factor here. It’s incredibly rare, and finding a large supply of it is what has enabled them to make this weapon. Yet because it has such a short half-life and decays so quickly, they’ll constantly need more of it. They’ll want continual access to their source. I say we go full-court press after the promethium. If we do that, it’ll lead us to the Medina Society.”
“Funny you should say that,” Jones replied. “Because we had reached more or less the same conclusion over here. We brought the weapon you recovered back to the lab and have been crawling through every aspect of it. The weapon itself doesn’t turn out to be that complicated. It’s the promethium that makes it powerful. So we had our chemists study the promethium very closely. It turns out there may be a lead for us embedded within it.”
“Do tell.”
“Promethium is a metal, as you are aware. And, like all metals, it has magnetic properties. The way it interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field means that certain information about it is, in essence, recorded within it. If you study it under a powerful enough electron microscope, you can tell from the way the nuclei align themselves where the promethium was at the moment it came into its current form.”
“Sort of like nature’s version of a GPS,” Storm said.
“Something like that. In any event, one of the techs is a whiz with this kind of stuff. And she was able to determine the approximate coordinates of where this promethium came into being. The promethium used to make that laser came from 25.77392 north, 31.84365 east. That’s accurate to within plus or minus one point eight miles, within a ninety-nine percent confidence interval.”
Storm quickly scribbled down the numbers. “And what did you find when you had the satellite look at those coordinates?”
“Nothing. Sand. That one-point-eight-mile radius means we’re looking at ten square miles. We’ve looked at it as carefully as we could, but we could have missed something. It’s a stretch of the Sahara Desert not far from the Nile River in Egypt. And, of course, that’s just what’s on top of the Earth in that spot. Most rare earths come from inside the Earth.”
“Which means you need someone who probably looks a lot like me to go there and do some digging,” Storm said.
“Precisely. I’ve got Clara Strike on her way.”
Storm felt his brain hiccup on the name. He and Clara Strike had a complicated history, like two quarrelling clans whose members kept intermarrying. Sometimes they made love. Sometimes they made war. The only constant was the passion behind both impulses.
All he said was, “Strike, huh?”
“Don’t tell me you two are squabbling again.”
“I don’t know what we are at the moment,” Storm said. “Anyhow, why don’t you conjure up a helicopter and get me off this boat and on my way to Egypt? I’ll make sure to tell Ingrid’s people not to shoot it down.”
“Good plan. I told Strike you would meet tonight in Luxor. That’s the nearest big city to those coordinates. She’ll have the rest of the details about the operation for you there.”
Storm ended the call, then found Ingrid Karlsson, who was out on the foredeck watching the bow of her magnificent ship cut through the blue water of the Mediterranean.
“Egypt is a good place for you to be,” she said when he was through explaining where he was heading. “It seems that the Medina Society has used the recent political instability there to strengthen its foothold. I will keep the money flowing to my contacts and will be in touch if I learn anything. And if you need anything from me — anything at all — please know all you have to do is ask.”
“Of course. I appreciate your willingness to help.”
Karlsson surprised Storm by grabbing both of his hands in hers. She fixed her blue-gray eyes on his, looking at him with the same intensity she used to turn a Swedish shipping company into a multinational conglomerate.
“I often have railed against human beings pursuing their more savage instincts, and yet I…I do want vengeance,” she said. “I can’t even explain why it will give me comfort. But whoever did this to Brigitte must pay.”
“I’ll do my best.”
She gripped his hands even tighter. “And be careful of Jones. Please remember his nature.”
CHAPTER 17
LUXOR, Egypt
e smelled her before he saw her.
Clara Strike had this perfume that, as far as Derrick Storm was concerned, ought to have been regulated by the Food and Drug Administration as a psychotic drug. Storm had once read in Alice Clark’s book Mating Rituals: A Field Guide to Relationships that, much as in the animal kingdom, humans use their noses every bit as much as their eyes to pick a partner.
It sure worked when it came to Strike. Storm swore he could pick up even one molecule of her perfume, and he caught his first whiff of her even before he knew exactly where it was coming from.
Storm had been instructed to meet her in the bar at the Winter Palace hotel, the legendary British colonial–era establishment where Agatha Christie was said to have written Death on the Nile.
Storm felt like he could have used some of Hercule Poirot’s cleverness as he neared the hostess stand and the scent of Strike grew stronger. In addition to their perilous personal past, there were professional complexities as well. Unlike Storm, who worked for himself, Strike was a CIA asset, through and through.
The last time he had seen her was in an abandoned factory building in Bayonne, New Jersey. They had spoken of fresh starts, without saying exactly what that entailed. They had discussed a future, with no details as to when or how that future would take place. And then, in the midst of the mission, she had taken a bullet, albeit one that was stopped by her vest. It left Storm to chase a villain while Strike got whisked off for medical treatment. Then she had gone her way and he his, as usual. And — also, as usual — nothing had been solved.
He had gotten delayed in customs — traveling on his own passport was so tedious — and had not had time to check in before their rendezvous time, which had now arrived. The hostess led him through a large room whose furnishings looked like it hadn’t changed much since Queen Victoria’s time and whose chandeliers dripped with crystal. The next room was smaller, though no less opulent, and that was where Strike had selected a private sitting area.
She was dressed in what was clearly off-duty clothing: a yellow eyelet summer dress that cut off just above the knee, a garment that was both simple and, on Strike, spectacular. Her skin was a few shades darker than it normally would have been, suggesting she had either been on vacation or had just completed an assignment that involved less time than unusual under fluorescent lighting. Her wavy brown hair had acquired a few natural highlights from the sun.