Free The Medusa stone by Jack du Brul

going far outside Mercer's realm, and the implications were beginning to scare him.
    "No other. He told me that he'd just received a call too, this one from Israel's foreign minister. We are to back off Selome Nagast or face serious consequences. She's one of theirs, operating in the United States on a mission--get this--'not detrimental to America and therefore none of our concern.' The guy told us to piss off in our own back-yard. He said by investigating her mission, we are jeopardizing our close alliance with his nation."
    "What the hell is going on here, Dick?"
    "You tell me," Henna shot back. "I thought this would be a routine inquiry, and the next thing I know, I've got shit coming down on me faster than I can shovel. What do you think?"
    Mercer thought for a moment, paying little attention to the ambulances and police vehicles around them. "I didn't trust her from the beginning. I thought there was something dirty about her--Prescott Hyde, too, for that matter--but this is unbelievable."
"Why can't you be like the rest of my friends?" Henna wasn't upset, but he was serious. "When they call up for a favor, it's usually to help paint their garage or put together a gas grill. With you, it always has to be something else, doesn't it? And it gets worse every time. Harry's kidnapping has turned into a bloodbath. What is it about you?"
    "Lucky, I guess. What'd you find at Harry's?"
    "Too early to tell. The team went to his place just as I was heading for the airport. What can you tell me about the night Harry was grabbed? It'll help sift through the evidence the forensic team picks up."
    "There's nothing I can tell you that would help. It was a night like any other. We were drinking at Tiny's until Selome arrived. We had a couple more after she left, then Harry took off and I headed home too."
    "I guess there's nothing we can do unless we can track that plane." Henna rested an arm on the Jag's open door as Mercer finally swung into his car. "Except wait for the forensics reports."
    "When do you think you'll have something from Harry's apartment?"
    "A couple hours for a preliminary, I'd think," Henna replied, watching his friend critically. "After this mess, I won't be going to California, so why don't you come over to my place tonight and we'll go over it? We'll have a couple of drinks."
    "I know what you're trying to do and I appreciate the gesture, but don't bother. I've got too much work. I know my limitations better than anyone." Mercer fired up the Jag's throaty V-12. "When I reach the end of my rope, I'll stop."
    "I just hope the end of your rope isn't a noose, you crazy son of a bitch," Henna muttered at the receding car.

Venice, Italy

    Giancarlo Gianelli brooded with his back to the windows in the spacious drawing room of his ancestral home located on the Grand Canal. The windows--huge floor-to-ceiling affairs of leaded glass and wrought iron--were over three hundred years old, made at a time when the glassmaker's art was still being perfected. There was a blister in each of the eight hundred individual panes where the blower's pipe had once been inserted into the molten glass. The sunlight streaming through them cast a grid shadow on the floor that matched its checker pattern of beige and rose carrera marble.
    The room's furniture were all antiques, each piece exceptional in its own right but coming alive when blended with the rest of the surroundings. It was a room of extraordinary wealth and was only one of forty-three in the home. Gianelli, too, looked as if he were a furnishing for the house, an elegant addition placed just so. His sports coat had been custom made in Milan, his shirt of Egyptian cotton, and his tie had been given to him personally by the late Gianni Versace. He was the epitome of an Italian merchant prince, comparable with the Renaissance Medicis.
    Today, the planet was a small place. Anyone had global accessibility in just a few hours with jet aircraft or instantly with the telephone and the