Mercy Killing (Affairs of State Book 1) (4 page)

“Thank you,” she breathed.

“Meanwhile, no more talking with strangers who try to lure you away into the night.”

“Fine.”

“And we won’t let your mother’s insane lifestyle spoil
our
special night. Right?”

Her mother’s lifestyle had always been a point of pride for Mercy. But she refused to start another argument. Peter had promised to act. That was the important thing. “Right,” she murmured.

Peter wasn’t perfect. Neither was she—although she’d never cheated on him and never would. They respected each other’s talents. His diplomatic; hers artistic. They made a good team. Everyone said so. Their shared goals would carry them through the rough times. She was sure of it.

4

By early the next morning Mercy had come to a decision. As accommodating as Peter seemed, she knew Foreign Service Office business came first. Which meant it actually might be the end of the work day before he pushed for information about Talia’s whereabouts.

Meanwhile, there were steps she could take, aside from finishing the packing for their move to Mexico City.

She’d finally reached Mark, late the night before, and now she called him again. “Just checking in,” she said. “Anything yet?”

“
Nada.
” He sounded disheartened. “No call from her or anyone else.”

“And you have absolutely no clue where she is?”

“I know her basic itinerary,” he said. “La Guardia to Orly by way of Air France. From Paris she was flying to Kiev where she’d pick up some kind of tour. A new tourist attraction, she said. Something weird and unexpected. She promised to tell me about it when she returned home.”

Kiev, one of the largest cities in the old Soviet Union, was now the capital of the independent nation state known as Ukraine.

“Disney World in Ukraine?” Mercy suggested.

He chuckled. “I doubt it.” She could hear him adjusting his position or the phone.

Mark had suffered a spinal injury as a young man and no longer had the use of his legs. Despite this he was as active and virile a man as any she’d known. He lifted weights and stuck to a regular workout routine that kept his upper-body strong. He played basketball, competed in half-marathons. He just happened to be on wheels. Her mother was devoted to him.

“She called me from the airport in Paris,” Mark said. “Promised to fill me in on what her hotel in Kiev looked like. Said, if they had decent mobility facilities, maybe we could go back there together on another trip. But that was the last I heard from her.”

And that, she thought, was now three days ago. Mark was right. This was so unlike her mother. “What’s the name of the hotel?”

“I don’t know, which is strange. She always gives me contact names and phone numbers. I guess she just forgot.”

Mercy thought for a moment. “Is there anything else you remember her saying that might help us locate her?”

“Not really. I talked to Harold, her editor at
Geo-World—
you’ve met him, I think
—
but he was no help. 'Ukraine,' he said. 'Just a bus tour.'“ Mark made an annoyed sound in his throat. “Maybe it’s my imagination but he sounded defensive.”

“As if he was holding something back?”

“Could be, although I can’t see why.”

Mercy shook her head, puzzled. Why would the man not volunteer information about an employee’s whereabouts when her partner voiced concern? “I’ll call him and see what else I can find out.”

“Keep in touch, okay?”

“Will do.” Mercy found the number she needed. Although Talia was a freelance photo-journalist, she kept an office at the magazine’s Manhattan address and had given her daughter the editor’s number in case of an emergency.

Harold Gilmer, she was told by an editorial assistant—male and young, she guessed by the voice—was in the building but very, very,
very
busy. He absolutely was not taking any calls. He’d get back to her if she wished to leave her name, number, and a brief message. No, probably not today. Yes, he understood it was important. Mr. Gilmer would most likely return her call later in the week. Next week at the latest.

What the fuck?

“I’ll talk to him
now
.” Mercy put force behind her words. “This is Talia O’Brien’s daughter. And I expect he’ll know why I’m calling.”

“Of course, I just…” the young man stammered. “I’m sorry I was so abrupt. We’ve been extremely…never mind. I’ll put you through.”

After another minute, a deeper, oddly chipper voice replaced the jittery young man’s. “Mercy, how are you, dear?”

“I’ll be a lot better as soon as you tell me how to reach my mother, Harold.”

“Is anything wrong? You’re well, I hope.”

“No, nothing’s wrong here. Mark and I are just concerned that we haven’t heard from Talia in days. Have you?”

“No-o-o.” Did she imagine a wavering in his voice? “I expect to hear back from the American embassy in Kiev soon. When I do I’ll give you a call.”

Mercy frowned for a beat before asking the obvious: “Why did you contact the embassy?”

“Only precautionary, I assure you.”

“Why?” she asked again. “This was a routine assignment, wasn’t it?”

“There were,” Gilmer said slowly, “a few special circumstances. It wasn’t actually an assignment,” he explained. “The story was your mother’s idea. I agreed to put up travel expenses since she was so keen on it.”

What a sweetheart
, she thought, rolling her eyes. “This story was about a tour in Kiev?”

“Near Kiev. At least, that would form part of the article, yes.” He seemed to be picking his words very carefully. “You see, your mother was interested in a new rage in travel. Extreme tourism. People pay guides to take them to out-of-the-way places, usually involving a theme of some kind. Camping out at the South Pole. Sleeping in tree houses in Colombian rainforests. Circumnavigating the world in a sailboat.”

Mercy couldn’t help laughing. “Sounds right up Mother’s alley.” And it did!

“Exactly. Always up for an adventure, that’s Talia.” But her boss didn’t sound particularly happy about it. “Well, this particular tour starts out by bus from Kiev. Apparently the Ukrainian government has decided it’s now safe enough for people to view--briefly of course, and with due precautions—the site of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl.”

At first Mercy thought she couldn’t have possibly heard him right. She didn’t know what to say. “Chernobyl? You’re not serious.” But the disaster had happened thirty years ago and was hardly news now.

“My reaction exactly,” he said. “But Talia felt there was a great story in it and, after some discussion, I agreed. Now I'm not sure I should have let her go.”

The muscles in her neck throbbed, probably from the force with which she’d clenched her jaw.
Mother, what have you gotten yourself into?
“What else do you know about her plans?”

“Not much. I know she reached Kiev and checked in at her hotel. They said she did.”

“Then you have the hotel’s name.”

“I’ll have Raymond pull it from the file for you. I’ve forgotten its name.” He coughed, cleared his throat. “There is one other thing.”

“Yes?”

“She was researching the original accident and the number of people who died in it. There have been internationally funded studies, as well as rumors and all sorts of wild conjecture. But never anything definitive.”

“The Soviets originally claimed thirty-one dead. Didn’t they?” She remembered her mother telling her about it. Of course she, herself, had been a baby at the time, but her mother had kept video of the disaster and showed it to her when she was older. Talia had been obsessed with the dangers of nuclear leaks and the possibility of radiation being used as a weapon. She swore there had been a cover-up by the Soviets and thousands had died, if not on the day of the accident then in the following months. She’d wanted to fly straight over there, she told Mercy, but her friends talked her out of it.

“Ridiculous, right?” Harold said. “Everyone knew the radioactive fallout must have spread over hundreds if not thousands of miles. Ten years after the event, a European conclave of nuclear physicists claimed the number killed from the effects of the radiation, as well as from the blast itself, was in the tens of thousands. Over the years the Ruskies gradually admitted to the deaths of residents of surrounding villages and towns. ‘Volunteers’ they called them, although they were pretty much forced to risk their lives in the cleanup. These were in addition to the actual reactor employees killed. The public never has been made fully aware of what happened over there, the immensity of the catastrophe.”

“But this is hardly news. It’s now been…what? Decades?”

“Well,” he added, “Talia thinks there’s more to it than old news. Do you have time to listen?”

“You bet,” she said.

After getting off the phone with Harold Gilmer, Mercy felt totally drained. If what he’d told her was true, the story her mother was trying to bring to the world was nothing short of mind blowing.

She’d think about that more, later, but now she had leads to follow. She spent the next three hours on the phone.

By noon Mercy had spoken with the Ukrainian Embassy in D.C.—whose representative told her that it would take a minimum of nine days to process a visa for her. She then talked to the Ukrainian Tourist Bureau, and after that a consultant at the State Department’s travel-alert system, a consul at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine whom she’d gotten out of bed in the middle of the night, and assorted friends in high places who had known her parents and held considerable power in DC.

She relayed Talia’s MIA status and dropped Lucius Clay’s name to see if she got any reaction, although she didn’t mention their meeting.

Everyone voiced concern for her mother’s safety and promised they would keep an ear out for any news that might drift their way on the political grapevine. But she uncovered no additional information. Not an ounce.

If the name Clay meant anything to anyone, they weren’t saying. Mercy felt in her bones that something wasn’t right. It was almost as if people—people who might not even know each other—were closing ranks. A conspiracy? She had never been one to jump to such conclusions. But it seemed reasonable that someone had to know something. They just weren’t saying.

Shit!

Mercy ticked off on her fingers the few facts she already knew about the part of the world that had been the USSR before Communism failed there. The immense territory had covered an amazing one-sixth of the Earth’s land surface. It eventually splintered into a handful of smaller countries, always unstable, struggling to find new identities while holding onto what they could of their individual cultures. Ukraine was just one of the mysterious many. After a little more thought, she came up with one more possible source for information.

After consulting the Federal Central Directory, she dialed the Dirksen Senate Office Building, then the proper extension. A receptionist put her on hold.
Of course!
Mercy chewed the end of her pen and watched the clock as ten minutes crawled by like days.

Senator Evan O’Brien had been as liberal as Senator Diane Moxley was conservative. They’d battled each other on bill after bill throughout their careers on Capitol Hill. But no one had comforted Mercy, or her mother, more compassionately than Diane when Evan became ill with cancer and slowly, painfully wasted away then died.

“Mercy!” the familiar smoky voice barked through the receiver at last. “How long have you been holding, dear? I’ll have to fire the dragon guarding the castle. The girl is new. If it’s important, next time just tell her if she doesn’t put you straight through, I’ll fire her ass.”

Mercy laughed. “I wouldn’t bother you while you’re shepherding that new education bill through Congress if it weren’t important.”

“Of course not. What is it, my dear?”

The woman had to be in her late sixties, but she possessed more energy than most human beings three decades younger. Rumor had it she swam in the Potomac River every morning at dawn. Only the ice of winter stopped her. And then, or so she bragged, it had to be more than an inch thick.

Mercy sighed, suddenly feeling exhausted, if only in comparison to the older woman’s liveliness. “It’s my mother.”

“Talia? Is she ill?” Genuine anguish tinged the Senator’s voice.

“No. At least I don’t think so. It may be nothing. But neither Mark nor I have heard from her for days. She was traveling solo. Shooting photos for a story, we think in the Ukrainian countryside. We’re getting worried.”

“Where exactly was she last seen?”

Mercy explained that Talia’s last contact with her editor had been from Kiev. “He tells me that she was initially interested in covering a new market in extreme tourism—the site of the Chernobyl explosion. Sort of like people visiting the World Trade Center memorial, I guess. A government tour agency buses people in, getting between two and four hundred dollars a head.”

“Good Lord, I don’t believe it,” Diane said. “The radiation levels can’t have bottomed out totally.”