reminded sharply. “And I didn’t stay because they showed up.”
The disappointment was too much. The whole thing could have been wrapped up in a couple of days. Now he was being told the ore was gone. And then Poli’s statement finally cut through the man’s frustration. “Wait, ‘they’? Who are ‘they’?” But he knew. All too well, he knew, but still he persisted. “My God, man, you had an army behind you. Caribe Dayce’s men are more than ample protection.”
“Dayce’s dead and so are a lot of his men, so you can forget about paying him the other half you owed to get me to that village. I barely got out myself. This happened five days ago. It’s taken me this long to reach Khartoum.” A note of professional respect crept into Poli’s voice when he added, “You warned me the opposition was good. I had no idea a fire team could move like that.”
“They’ve had centuries to refine their craft. What of the American who was in the area?”
“Which one? There were two. A man and a woman.”
“I know nothing of the woman,” the man in New York admitted.
“In either case, I don’t know what happened to them. I was running the first instant the opposition showed up. Last I saw of the pair they were staked out and about to be executed by Dayce. It’s possible they were killed in the cross fire. I don’t know.”
“I will make inquiries. You’d best come to New York. I have a feeling you’ll be needed here.”
“My flight’s in two hours.”
Mercer knew exactly how he’d find Chester Bowie, and he began his search with the optimism of the fatally misguided. He worked under the logical assumption that Bowie wasn’t the luckiest SOB in history and that he was a trained geologist, and a damned good one at that. He also assumed that a guy older than fifty wouldn’t trek into one of the remotest spots on the globe without a support team. Placing the excavation at the village sometime in the early 1940s and working backward Mercer guessed that Bowie would have graduated from college no earlier than 1913. He gave himself a cushion of another five years and decided to begin his search in 1908.
The next step was simple and that was to search the electronic database for Academics Who’s Who for the years between 1908 and 1945. The computer search took less than a second and came up with no Chester Bowies. Not yet concerned, Mercer pushed the search back to 1900, the oldest records on the database, and still came up empty.
He leaned back at his desk and wondered if Bowie hadn’t been a good student in college or, worse, if he’d been a self-taught geologist. Mercer was so sure of his investigative technique, he hadn’t considered either alternative. He idly brought up Bowie’s name on the search engine again and for a fruitless hour called up and scanned random entries.
He wouldn’t let go of the idea that Bowie had formal training. No one could have found the uranium deposit without it. He phoned the alumni offices of a dozen schools with preeminent geology departments. No Chester Bowie. He called all the major mining schools and still no Bowie, even going back to 1900, which would have made Bowie at least sixty when he went to the CAR. He ate lunch hunched over his computer and let his answering machine pick up the twenty incoming calls. Dinner was Chinese delivery, which he also ate at his desk, and he finally called it a night past one.
He was at his desk at six the following morning, the coffee at his elbow strong enough to take the enamel off his teeth. He continued on with the search engine until nine, when he called the company that ran the Who’s Who Web site. He talked his way past two secretaries and finally got the chief archivist on the line. She introduced herself as Mrs. Moreland. From the frailty of her voice he guessed that she might have graduated a couple of years before Chester.
“How can I help you, Dr. Mercer?”
He thought it prudent to use his title,
The disappointment was too much. The whole thing could have been wrapped up in a couple of days. Now he was being told the ore was gone. And then Poli’s statement finally cut through the man’s frustration. “Wait, ‘they’? Who are ‘they’?” But he knew. All too well, he knew, but still he persisted. “My God, man, you had an army behind you. Caribe Dayce’s men are more than ample protection.”
“Dayce’s dead and so are a lot of his men, so you can forget about paying him the other half you owed to get me to that village. I barely got out myself. This happened five days ago. It’s taken me this long to reach Khartoum.” A note of professional respect crept into Poli’s voice when he added, “You warned me the opposition was good. I had no idea a fire team could move like that.”
“They’ve had centuries to refine their craft. What of the American who was in the area?”
“Which one? There were two. A man and a woman.”
“I know nothing of the woman,” the man in New York admitted.
“In either case, I don’t know what happened to them. I was running the first instant the opposition showed up. Last I saw of the pair they were staked out and about to be executed by Dayce. It’s possible they were killed in the cross fire. I don’t know.”
“I will make inquiries. You’d best come to New York. I have a feeling you’ll be needed here.”
“My flight’s in two hours.”
Mercer knew exactly how he’d find Chester Bowie, and he began his search with the optimism of the fatally misguided. He worked under the logical assumption that Bowie wasn’t the luckiest SOB in history and that he was a trained geologist, and a damned good one at that. He also assumed that a guy older than fifty wouldn’t trek into one of the remotest spots on the globe without a support team. Placing the excavation at the village sometime in the early 1940s and working backward Mercer guessed that Bowie would have graduated from college no earlier than 1913. He gave himself a cushion of another five years and decided to begin his search in 1908.
The next step was simple and that was to search the electronic database for Academics Who’s Who for the years between 1908 and 1945. The computer search took less than a second and came up with no Chester Bowies. Not yet concerned, Mercer pushed the search back to 1900, the oldest records on the database, and still came up empty.
He leaned back at his desk and wondered if Bowie hadn’t been a good student in college or, worse, if he’d been a self-taught geologist. Mercer was so sure of his investigative technique, he hadn’t considered either alternative. He idly brought up Bowie’s name on the search engine again and for a fruitless hour called up and scanned random entries.
He wouldn’t let go of the idea that Bowie had formal training. No one could have found the uranium deposit without it. He phoned the alumni offices of a dozen schools with preeminent geology departments. No Chester Bowie. He called all the major mining schools and still no Bowie, even going back to 1900, which would have made Bowie at least sixty when he went to the CAR. He ate lunch hunched over his computer and let his answering machine pick up the twenty incoming calls. Dinner was Chinese delivery, which he also ate at his desk, and he finally called it a night past one.
He was at his desk at six the following morning, the coffee at his elbow strong enough to take the enamel off his teeth. He continued on with the search engine until nine, when he called the company that ran the Who’s Who Web site. He talked his way past two secretaries and finally got the chief archivist on the line. She introduced herself as Mrs. Moreland. From the frailty of her voice he guessed that she might have graduated a couple of years before Chester.
“How can I help you, Dr. Mercer?”
He thought it prudent to use his title,
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