“Time was I wasn’t married to her.”
“And,” Kyle said, unheeding, “she was never going to be satisfied with shore duty. You knew going in she was going for her own ship as fast as she could, and you barely got through graduation before you married her anyway.”
The silence stretched out. “Hugh?”
Hugh sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Yeah. I knew.”
“Besides, it’s not like you aren’t a fart in a skillet your own damn self, always going three different directions at once in your job.”
“Yeah, Kyle, I think I’m going to let you go as my marriage counselor, you’re not exactly inspiring me with hope here.”
Kyle said simply, “Who else you got?”
Kyle Chase and Hugh Rincon had been two of a trio of friends born in a coastal village in south-central Alaska. The third was Sara Lange. All three of them were children of successful fishermen, and all three of them had been expected to follow in their fathers’ footsteps on the decks of their respective family vessels. All three sets of parents had been vastly disappointed, and if a childhood of getting into as much trouble as humanly possible hadn’t formed an unbreakable bond, then the joint sufferance of massive parental disapproval certainly had. Hugh laughed shortly. “No one. Apparently.”
“Not true. You’ve got me, and you’ve got Sara. You’ll always have me. Question is, will you always have Sara?”
“I’m not sure I’ve got her now.”
“Be good to find out.”
Hugh looked at his desk, piled high. “I’ve got to get back to work, Kyle.”
“Yeah. You might want to think some about that, too.”
“Tell Lilah and the kids hi.”
“Will do. And Hugh? All you have to do is figure what’s more important. Sara? Or your job?”
Kyle hung up, which was all right, because Hugh didn’t have an answer for him. His assistant, plump, perky, bright-eyed Marie, stuck her head in the door. “We ordering out for lunch, boss?”
He looked at the clock to discover that four hours had passed. “Oh. I guess.”
“The usual?” When he clearly couldn’t remember what the usual was she elaborated. “Turkey and cranberry sauce on sourdough, side salad with blue cheese, chips, and a bottle of water.”
“Sure.”
“Okay.” But Marie lingered.
He looked up. “What?”
Marie’s look admonished him for his abrupt tone. “Are you going to see her or not? She’s been waiting all morning.”
“Who’s been waiting all morning?”
“Arlene Harte.”
Hugh sat up straight. “Arlene’s here?”
Marie huffed out an impatient breath. “I left you a note.”
Hugh picked up the soapstone bear. The note, stained with coffee, was stuck to the bottom. Arlene Harte here requesting an audience with His Nibs. Marie’s neat handwriting had even made a note of the date and time, that morning, 7:55 a.m.
“Shit,” he said, and got to his feet.
Arlene was sitting in an anonymous anteroom just off of one of Langley’s equally anonymous hallways. Hugh had long thought that the idea behind the decor or lack thereof was that if the barbarians ever got inside the gates they would be incapable of finding their way through this much bland to any worthwhile target.
“I’m sorry as hell, Arlene,” he said. “I missed seeing your note until now.”
She smiled and stood up. “No problem. Finished the Sunday New York Times crossword while I was waiting.”
He took it from her. “So you did, and in ink at that, you slimeball.” They shook hands warmly. “Come on in. Coffee? Tea? Wait a minute.” He stuck his head back out the door. “Marie, make that lunch for two.”
“Gotcha, boss.”
Arlene settled herself in the chair across from his desk. “Thanks for seeing me without an appointment.”
“Anytime, Arlene, you know that.” He smiled at her. Bad mood or not, he was always very nice to Arlene. A comfortably sized blond in jeans and blazer over a white turtleneck, she looked like someone’s youthful grandmother. In truth she was anything but. Retired from the Associated Press after a thirty-year career reporting every global conflict from Vietnam on, she was spending what was commonly referred to as her golden years as a monthly columnist for Travel + Leisure. She was unmarried, without children, made her home in a one-bedroom walk-up in Georgetown, and seemed comfortable with the choices she had made in her life. She spoke French to the Paris-born and was famous for never missing three square meals a day in any war zone. It wasn’t a bad resume in the spy biz. “How’s the job?”
“They pay me to travel around the world and write about it. What’s not to like?”
He laughed. “I want to be you when I grow up.”
“So do I.”
“What brings you home, Arlene?”
She let her smile fade. “You know I was in Pattaya Beach the day of the bombing, right?”
Hugh looked at her. “Really,” he said. “I didn’t know, as it happens.”
Her mouth tightened. “I was afraid of that. I sent my report in by way of the American embassy in Bangkok. I knew when I didn’t hear from you that you’d probably never gotten it. Diplomats.” The word was an epithet.
“Squared,” Hugh said with feeling.
“That’s why I came in when I got back.” Without hurrying, Arlene unwedged an envelope from a battered leather bag on a short strap designed to hug her shoulder. Hugh had never seen her without it. He had been curious enough one day to rifle through it when she was out of the room and had excavated a reporter’s notebook, her passport, a lone Visa card, a fistful of Travel + Leisure business cards imprinted with her name, her office phone number, her cell phone number, her fax number, Marie’s phone number, Hugh’s phone number, and a Hotmail e-mail address to which Hugh had an icon on his desktop with the password already programmed in. He had just excavated a twelve-pack of Uniball gel pens with medium points when she came back into the room.
“Where’s your computer?” he had asked, and she had laughed and told him she had accounts in cybercafes from Bakwanga, Zaire, to Galahad, Alberta. “Cheaper than trying to find a tech when your computer freezes up.”
“And a lot harder to trace,” Hugh had said. “Why so many pens?”
“Two reasons. One, you can use pens for currency in a lot of third-world countries.”
“And?”
“And I might run out of ink.”
Marie brought in the sandwiches and drinks. Arlene waited for the door to close behind her before laying out a row of photographs across Hugh’s desk. They ranged from clear to indistinct, and once Hugh mentally filtered out the background noise in the way of waiters and drinkers and diners and Arlene, smiling at the camera with her curly hair frizzed into steel wool from what appeared to be a high level of humidity, they featured four men sitting at a table in front of a white sand beach with a strip of blue ocean beyond. He fished a magnifying glass out of a drawer and ran it over their faces. Two of them in particular drew his attention. “Hey?” he said, with a gathering sense of incredulity.