“Looks to me like someone’s reopening the place,” Max remarked.

“Yes, sir. About five months ago. The rail line was refurbished to accommodate larger ore cars, with an eye toward extracting coal from the old mine.”

“Did anyone ask if this makes sense in a country sitting on forty billion barrels of oil?”

“I did as soon as I figured out what this place was,” Eric replied. “And, in a word, it doesn’t. Especially in light of their government’s attempts to go green with the tidal generating station farther down the coast.”

“So what’s going on here really?”

“The CIA thinks it’s a cover for a new subterranean nuclear-research program.”

“I thought Uncle Muammar gave up his nuke ambitions,” Max remarked. “Besides, the CIA was probably convinced my mother-in-law was pursuing a nuclear program when she had a new root cellar dug.”

Eric chuckled. “Foreign intelligence services dismiss the CIA estimate. They think this is a legit enterprise. Problem is, I can’t dig up any corporate entities charged with working there. Which isn’t all that surprising. The Libyans aren’t known for their transparency. There was one article in a trade publication that said Libya is interested in pursuing coal gasification as an alternative to oil, and claims they have a system that will be cleaner than natural gas.”

“You don’t sound convinced,” Max said.

“It took some digging, but I found records from ships that had once used the station back in the day. Building up a picture over time, it appears vessels that regularly refueled there showed a fifty percent increase in maintenance and a twenty percent reduction in efficiency.”

As an engineer, Max immediately grasped the implications of Eric’s findings. “The coal is filthy, isn’t it?”

“An archived log from the captain of a coastal freighter called Hydra says he’d rather fill his bunkers with sawdust than use the coal from the station.”

“There’s no way any current gasification technology can make it clean. So what is this place, really?”

“The facility to the north of the mine was once used by the Libyan military as a training base.”

“This whole thing is government sanctioned after all,” Max said, jumping ahead.

“Not necessarily,” Eric countered. “They stopped using it a couple of years ago.”

“Back to square zero,” Max said bitterly.

“ ’ Fraid so. In the past two days, there have been suspicious military maneuvers in Syria, so our satellite coverage has gone east to keep an eye on them. This picture here is two months old, and is the most current I could find.”

“What about getting some shots from a commercial satellite company?”

“Already tried and struck out. Even offering double their normal fees, we can’t get new shots until a week from now.”

“Too late for Juan or Fiona Katamora.”

“Yup,” Eric agreed.

“And you’ve tried everything to pierce the corporate veil of the company working on the rail line?”

“Do onions have layers? They’re better shielded than anything I’ve ever seen before. I’ve hit dead end after dead end trying to trace ownership. But the thing I learned about companies working in Libya is, they are generally partnered with the government in a sort of quasi-nationalized arrangement.”

“So we come full circle, and it’s Libya’s government behind all this?”

“You’re familiar with Cosco, aren’t you?”

“It’s a Chinese shipping company.”

“Which many suspect is actually owned by the People’s Liberation Army. I’m wondering if we don’t have something similar going on here.”

“You’re saying it’s not Libya’s central government that’s involved but a segment of it?” Max asked, and Eric nodded. “The military?”

“Or the JSO, the Jamahiriya Security Organization, their principal spy agency. Ever since Qaddafi started playing nice, the JSO has been marginalized. This could be a play for them to regain some of their lost prestige.”

“One hell of a gamble, since we know these people are somehow connected to the downing of Katamora’s plane,” Max said. Stone didn’t argue, so Hanley went on. “What about terrorists paying this rogue faction to look the other way? That worked for Bin Laden in the Sudan, and then Afghanistan, until we toppled the Taliban.”

“That was my next thought.” Eric said. “We know Libya’s sheltered terrorists in the past. The mine and railroad could be a terrorist front for a training camp, with an eye toward using the proceeds to fund their activities. Al-Qaeda had done that in Africa, trafficking conflict diamonds.”

Max took a moment to light his pipe, using the familiar distraction to organize his thoughts. When it was drawing evenly and a wreath of smoke began to form a haze along the ceiling, he said, “We’re spinning our wheels. There’s no sense in you and me trying to guess who’s doing what. Juan will probably have the answer. So as I see it, our priority is to get him out of there and find out what he’s learned.”

“Agreed.”

“Any suggestions?” Hanley invited.

“Not at this time. We need to wait until he makes contact.”

Max Hanley was known by the crew as a man who kept his own counsel, so Eric was surprised when he suddenly blurted in frustration, “I hate this.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Juan shouldn’t have taken off like that.”

“He saw it as a tactical necessity. How else would we know where they staged from?”

“There are better ways. We could have tracked the chopper on radar.”

“We never saw them flying to the accident site,” Eric replied. “How would we have tracked them out? They were flying nap-of-the-earth the whole way. Completely invisible to us from this distance. And before you say it, there wasn’t time to get satellite coverage again. Juan made the only decision open to him.”

Max raked his hand through his thinning ginger hair. “You’re right. I know. I just don’t like it. There are so many variables at play here that I don’t know if we’re coming or going. Is this state-sponsored terrorism, a rogue faction within Libya’s government, or some garden-variety terrorist group, most likely Suleiman Al-Jama’s outfit? We have no idea who we’re up against or what they want. We don’t know if Katamora’s alive or dead. Basically, we don’t know squat. Linc, Linda, and Mark discover a chopper that looks like it was armed to take the Secretary’s plane down, but, again, we don’t know who’s behind it. Then we’ve got a group of missing archaeologists who may or may not be involved, and some other academic weenie who says they’ve all been navel-gazing so he can pay off an ex-wife. Did I miss any other pieces to this jigsaw puzzle? Oh yeah, the most important peace conference since Camp David is in a couple of days. And with Juan incommunicado, I don’t know what piece fits where.”

And there it was, Eric thought. The crux of Max’s problem. Hanley wasn’t a natural leader, not the way Cabrillo was. Give Max a technical challenge and he will work it until he has a solution, or present him with a plan and he will see it carried out to the letter. But when it came to making the hard decisions, he agonized because it wasn’t his forte. He wasn’t a strategist or tactician, and he, more than anyone else, knew it.

“If it were up to me,” Eric said diplomatically, “I would get Mark and the others to within striking distance of the mine-terrorist camp for when Juan calls.”

“What about the archaeologists and the scrolls?”

“A distraction, for now. Our priorities are the Chairman and then Secretary Katamora.”

Max’s phone rang. He could tell from the display it was the communications duty officer. He hit the button to put the phone on speaker. “Hanley.”

“Max, I just received a secure alert from Overholt.”

“Now what?” he groused.

“A chopper fitting the description of the one Juan flew in earlier showed up at the Roman archaeology site across the border in Tunisia. Armed men kidnapped Professor Emile Bumford, the Tunisian government overseer, and one member of the camp staff, a local boy that may be related to him.”