Cabrillo thanked him for his foresight, not realizing how much they’d come to rely on computers until the capability vanished.
“We’re going to need schematics of the mine,” Juan said when they were all in agreement that this particular piece of property was probably what Bahar had extorted from Soleil’s father. “Can you get in touch with the inspector?”
“I haven’t spoken to him in years, but, sure. I don’t remember his phone number, but someone can look it up for me.”
Eric cleared his throat to get their attention. “I don’t want to sound paranoid, but calling from the ship would be a bad idea, and actually having Soleil place the call might not be so hot either.”
“Why?” Linda asked.
“Like Mark and I explained, this computer is everywhere at once. And we are targets already. Any communications from this ship are going to be intercepted. My fear is that it’s been told to listen for individual voice patterns.”
“Come off it, Eric,” Linda said. “There’s no way that computer can listen in to every phone conversation taking place around the globe and zero in on one single call.”
“That’s just the thing. It can. The NSA does it all the time. And Bahar’s computer has already proved itself thousands of times more powerful. It’s not called quantum for nothing. We’re facing a whole new paradigm, and we need to think and act as though our every move is being followed because, more than likely, it is.”
“What do you suggest?” Juan asked.
“We’ll put someone ashore, and they can make the call on Soleil’s behalf. We just can’t use her name, since that’s probably a flag too.”
Linda said, “But Bahar thinks she died when the Hercules sank.”
“It’s not worth the risk,” Juan countered. “Eric’s right. We need to cover our tracks completely. We’ll have Hux make the call. Bahar’s never met her, so he’d have no reason to be on the lookout for her voice. I also think that we shouldn’t pull into Monte Carlo. If our presence is reported in the area, Bahar might become suspicious.”
“Good idea,” Eric agreed. “And since we transited the Suez Canal using a fresh set of papers and ship’s name, he should have no idea we’re here. We might want to reconfigure the look of the deck in case he has the computer scanning satellite images for us. Also, while we’re at it, we should probably shut down all nonessential electronics. Just in case.”
Juan nodded and called down to the Op Center to go dark electronically and to have crewmen break out a bunch of fake containers and erect them topside. He turned to Soleil, “By the way, what was the inspector’s name?”
“Mercer,” she said. “His name is Philip Mercer.”
A FEW HOURS LATER they were close enough to the fabled playground of Monte Carlo to ferry Dr. Huxley, Soleil, and Cabrillo ashore in one of the hydrofoil lifeboats. They couldn’t go in by chopper because their arrival would be logged by French aviation authorities. Kevin Nixon had forged a passport for Soleil, so there were no problems when they got to the dock. She was along in case this Mercer guy needed more reminding if the code words she’d already supplied weren’t enough.
Juan paid cash for a prepaid cell phone, and they found a quiet park bench. He dialed the number Eric had tracked down for the mining engineer and handed the phone to Hux. After a couple of rings, a voice that grated like the business end of a wood chipper answered. “Hello.”
“Is this Philip Mercer?” Hux asked.
“Sure. Why not.”
“Mr. Mercer, I’m calling on behalf of—”
“First off, it’s Dr. Mercer. Second, if you’re calling on behalf of Jerry’s Kids or any other damned charity, I’m going to hold the phone next to my wrinkled white butt and—”
She heard another voice say, “Harry! Give me that, you old pervert. Hello. This is Mercer. Sorry. A friend of mine was at a bar when God handed out manners. Who is this, please?”
“I’m calling on behalf of someone you used to know. Please don’t say her name because this is not a secure line. You called her a Frenchy once, and she told you she was a Swissy.”
He gave a throaty chuckle. “I remember her fondly.”
“That’s good,” Hux said. “Not to sound overly dramatic, but this is a matter of life and death. Do you recall the place you met?”
“Yeah. Is she with you now?” he asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
“Since this is just a little on the bizarre side, I want to verify. Ask her where she has a mole.”
Hux asked and relayed the answer. “She says it’s private and you are still a cochon.”
“Good enough for me,” Mercer said with a grin that carried over the airwaves.
“We need to know everything there is to know about the salt mine.”
“Are you looking to throw good money after bad too?”
“Nothing like that. All I can say is that some very bad people have taken it over, and the group I work for plans on taking it back. What we need is a detailed schematic of the entire place, above ground and below.”
“It’s a little hard to describe over the phone,” Mercer informed her. “There’s about thirty miles of tunnels, as I recall.”
Hux was ready for this. “Could you draw it out for us? We have a courier already heading to Washington, D.C.” Tiny Gunderson wouldn’t like the idea that he’d been demoted from chief pilot to courier, but it was the fastest way without putting the plans into the electronic ether. “He’ll be in D.C. by nine o’clock your time, tonight.”
“I guess you don’t know that I’m playing poker tonight with a guy who’s got a tell a blind man can see.”
“This is urgent, Dr. Mercer, or we wouldn’t be asking.”
“Do you have my address?” he asked.
“Yes, we do.”
“All right. I’m game. Do me a favor. Say to her, ‘Mauve peignoir,’ and tell me what she does.”
“She blushed, and called you a pig again.”
Mercer laughed and said, “I’ll meet your courier at nine.”
“Well?” Cabrillo asked when Julia punched off the phone.
Hux looked pointedly at Soleil. “He’s quite the charmer. You’ll have to tell me the story of the mauve nightie.”
Soleil’s blush deepened. “Later.”
“Well?” Cabrillo asked a second time.
“He’ll do it. Tiny can pick it up tonight and be back with it by tomorrow.”
“Once we have his diagram, we can formulate our plan to take out Bahar’s computer.”
They headed back to the harbor and made a startling discovery. MacD Lawless was leaning negligently against a fence near where they had berthed the lifeboat.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Juan called out.
“Long story, but Ah came down to talk to the harbormaster to see if the Oregon had come in yet and saw the Or Death tied up pretty as you please.” His sunny smile faded. “We need to talk. Langston Overholt himself came to get me and had me flown here on an Air Force jet.”
“Let me guess,” Juan said knowingly. “Bahar has made his move with his quantum computer.”
MacD’s jaw dropped. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Eric and Mark figured out that he’d built it, and it stands to reason he’d use it against the United States. Tell me everything.”
They boarded the disguised hydrofoil as MacD told them what had been going on since he’d parted with the team in New Orleans, but it wasn’t until they were halfway back to the ship that the dread chill creeping up Juan’s spine went into overdrive. Linda had said Langston had phoned earlier about a mission involving a Chinese ship. That didn’t jibe with what was happening in Washington, and the sickening realization hit home.
As soon as they arrived on the Oregon he had Hali Kasim track Linda down.
“When you spoke with Overholt, did he sound different to you?” he asked without preamble.
“No. He sounded fine. Is something wrong with him???
?
“Did you tell him we were headed here?” Trepidation carried in his voice. If she had, they were blown.
“No. I said we had another op and would need a week. He said it was no problem, since the Chinese looked like they were sticking around the Gulf of Alaska.”
Juan let out a long-held breath. “Thank God.”
“Why? What’s up?”
“That wasn’t Langston. That was the quantum computer you were talking to.”
Cabrillo had taken Eric’s and Mark’s warnings seriously, but this was the first time he truly understood the staggering capabilities Gunawan Bahar had at his disposal. Like the president had remarked earlier, they were squared off against a man who wielded the power of God.
“We’re screwed, aren’t we?” Linda asked. She’d gotten it too.
“Yeah,” Juan replied. “Yeah, I think this time we really are.”
AS BADLY AS CABRILLO wanted a Predator drone over the Albatross Mine, he knew that the request was impossible because Bahar would get wind of it. Instead, Gomez Adams would be renting a helicopter there in Monaco and doing an aerial survey of the place. In the meantime they would have to make do with archived satellite imagery off the Internet. His concern went so deep that he had Mark ensure the images hadn’t been doctored recently. Fortunately, they were clean.
The mine sat in the Arc River Valley near the alpine town of Modane and, as Soleil had recalled, very close to the Italian border. From the air, there wasn’t much to look at. It was a basic industrial brownfield site, with several dilapidated buildings and the remains of the tower for the headgear hoist that once carried men into the mine and salt back out. A single access road snaked to the mine over an undulating series of switchbacks, but it also had rail access. Despite the graininess of commercial satellite pictures, they could see that some of the track bed had been removed, so that locomotives could no longer reach the facility.
A river approach was likely because the mine’s southern boundary ran directly along the banks of the Arc River. There was even a bridge crossing the river nearby that looked like it went to an abandoned gravel pit that must have worked in conjunction with the mine when it was in operation.
Linc, Eddie, Linda, and Juan were in the conference room, studying the images projected on the big flat-panel monitors.
“Why a mine?” Lincoln asked suddenly.
The others were so deep in their own thoughts, no one had really paid attention.
“What did you say?”
“I said, why put this thing in a mine?”
That was something Cabrillo hadn’t given much thought to, so he had no answer. He called Mark down in his cabin and posed the question to him.
“It’s shielding,” he replied. “Eric and I had considered this when we first realized Bahar had built a quantum computer and were trying to guess a location. You see, the operations inside the machine take place at the atomic scale. It can automatically correct for atomic vibrations because they come at a set rate and frequency. One of the things that could unbalance the computer and cause it to kick out error messages is if it got bombarded by a heavy enough cosmic particle.
“As you know,” he went on, “the earth gets hit tens of trillions of times an hour by subatomic junk winging in from space. A lot of this is deflected by the magnetosphere, and what does get through is generally harmless to us. Though an interesting note, there is a theory posited that some cancers are the result of genetic damage caused by a single cosmic ray hitting a DNA strand.”
Juan knew to let him ramble but still had to grit his teeth.
“Anyway, on the exacting scales the computer works at, an impacting cosmic ray could disrupt the machine’s function catastrophically, so they need to shield it. Here’s the rub. I have no idea why they chose this salt mine. If cosmic radiation is a threat, we would have thought they would have buried it deeply under the densest rock they could find. The best theory Eric and I could come up with is, there might be some other mineral mixed in with the salt to help shield against one particular cosmic ray that would cause the most damage.”
“Okay, thanks,” Juan said, and ended the call before Mark could expound further.
“Sorry I asked,” Linc said sheepishly.
“Listen, why don’t we pick this up again when we have something more concrete to work with? We’ve got a good overview, but to plan the assault we need details.”
Heads nodded around the table, and the meeting broke up.
It wasn’t until after supper that Tiny arrived back aboard with Philip Mercer’s diagrams. Most of the crew were lounging around the dining room, some sipping brandy, others nibbling after-dinner cheeses. Cabrillo, who’d dined with Soleil, decided that this was as good a spot as any to take their first look at the plans and ordered the lights be set on bright. The clubby feel of the room lost some of its luster under a bright halogen stare.
Juan slipped out of his suit coat and loosened his tie. He fiddled with the cap of a Montblanc pen while he waited.
“Hey, gang,” Tiny called jovially when he entered the room. He wasn’t a regular feature aboard the Oregon, so his arrival was greeted warmly. The big pilot never looked so rumpled. His blond hair stuck out in tufts, and there wasn’t a square inch of his white uniform shirt that wasn’t rumpled. In his hand he carried a yellow legal pad and a single rose.
He crossed through the dining hall, shaking hands and slapping backs, until reaching the Chairman. “Tah-dah,” he said with a flourish, and set the pad on the table. He handed the rose to Soleil. “Mercer sends his compliments.”
She smiled.
Cabrillo spun the pad so he could see it. Mercer had written out a several-page description of the facility and the underground conditions. He detailed how over the years the miners had dug too close to the bottom of the river and that they refused to work the lower shafts. Roland Croissard had bought the facility during what he thought was a regular labor dispute. It was only after hiring Mercer and reading his report, and a report by another expert when he didn’t like what had been said in the first, that he realized he’d been swindled.
The first time he’d even visited the place was on the day Mercer delivered his report. Soleil had come with him on a lark.
Water seepage had been manageable, but Mercer calculated that the continued use of explosives deeper in the tunnels would cause the plug of rock between the mine and the river to fail. The flood would be catastrophically fast.
There was a gem among all the technical information, one that Mercer hadn’t disclosed to Croissard, and it was something he doubted many of the original miners remembered.
“There it is,” Juan blurted out when he read it.
“What do you have there?” Max asked. Unlike Juan, who had dressed for dinner, Hanley wore jeans and a western-style checkered shirt, complete with pearl snaps.
“One of the mine’s upper tunnels intersects with a piece of history.”
“Come again?”
“The miners bored their way into an old tunnel that was once part of the Maginot Line. Mercer writes that they had boarded it up, but he took the boards down and checked it out.”
Constructed after World War I as the ultimate defense for the homeland, the French had built a near-continuous wall of underground bunkers and forts along the border with Germany and, to a lesser extent, Italy. The forts had armored turrets that could pop up from the ground like obscene mushrooms and unleash directed cannon and mortar fire. Many of the structures were interlinked so that troops could be shuttled from one to another on subway trains. And some were so large, they were virtually underground cities unto themselves.
The Germans never obliged the French to use their grand fortification. When they invaded in 1940, they hooked through Belgium and Holland and poured into France where the defenses were weakest.
Because the Arc River Valley lacked the strategic protection of the mountains that surrounded it, it was little wonder that the French would have built casements and bu
nkers there.
“Does he say if he could reach the topside outlet?” Linda asked.
“No. He said he didn’t go that far. But it can’t be too tough to find.”
“I think,” Mark said, “that the bunkers that weren’t turned into museums and tourist attractions were permanently sealed by the French. Just so you know.”
“We can cut our way in with Hypertherm,” Max rebutted confidently. “Like how we cut apart that tanker. What was her name?”
“The Gulf of Sidra,” Juan answered with a shudder. He’d still been aboard when the steel-cutting explosive had burned through the hull like a wire garrote through cheese. He got back to the topic at hand. “This is our back door into the mine in case we need it.”
What followed in the legal pad were hand-drawn plans of each of the mine’s twenty-eight levels. They showed how the salt was excavated in huge rooms where massive pillars had been left in place to support the weight of the rock above. Mercer included information about ventilation shafts and water-removal conduits.
“The level of detail is beyond belief,” he said as he flipped though the pages.
“He has a photographic memory,” Soleil said. “We talked about his work, and he told me he remembers the layout of all the mines he’s ever entered.”
“This information’s a gold mine.” Cabrillo turned to Mark and Eric, who sat next to each other across from Max and Linda. “You guys think Bahar will put the computer on the lowest level?”
“Close, but that mine’s been inactive for years. More than likely the bottom levels have flooded due to groundwater seepage.” Mark cocked his head as he ran some esoteric numbers through his brain. He looked at Soleil. “How long ago did your father buy the mine?”
“Six years.”
“The bottom four levels and half of the fifth are inundated. He’ll put it on level 23.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” Linda accused.
“Au contraire. As you can see, the area of each level is clearly labeled, as is the height. That gives me their volume. It’s then a simple calculation of time versus the water permeability of the upper strata.”