Davidson pushed back his chair and stood up. He motioned for Deng to follow him. The two men walked through the customs office and out to the shipping dock. It was raining again and the wind had increased. Davidson shivered as he walked around the cylinder. "Borneo fever, huh," he repeated. "Never heard of it."
Deng shrugged. "We picked the body up at the funeral home earlier today."
Davidson stopped, glanced at the papers again, and studied the aluminum container. "Better open it," he said. "If he wasn't going to China, it wouldn't be necessary. Your government over there gets on their high horse when we don't follow procedures. I guess they think we're gonna ship them some bombs or something."
Deng Zhen did not smile. "I'll open it, but I don't advise it. Madam Yan is Chopan. The Chopans' religion doesn't allow for embalming. Besides being contagious, I'm afraid he might be a little ripe."
Davidson stepped back. "No shit? No embalming?"
Deng Zhen nodded. "Just thought I'd warn you. Still want me to open it?"
Davidson shook his head. He laid the papers on top of the cylinder, initialed them, took the seal out of his pocket, and embossed the papers. Then he handed them to Deng Zhen. "Borneo fever, huh?" he asked again. "Never heard of it. Contagious?"
"Highly contagious, I'm told."
"Hope we don't get that shit over here."
The two men walked back to his office, and Davidson instructed Deng to take Madam Yan to the Northwest terminal.
"Tell her everything is okay," he said. When he did, he bowed slightly to the young woman. "And you might tell her that we are sorry we had to put her through all of this… Red tape, you know."
"Red tape," Deng repeated. "I know all about it." He managed a smile. It was one of his infrequent attempts at humor.
Harry Driver was in the process of making his first important decision of the day: whether or not to shave. He was leaning in the direction of avoiding the ordeal. He had shaved the previous evening before he left Nellis, and the current crop of stubble was barely visible.
He decided against shaving, walked into the sitting room of his suite, and poured himself another cup of coffee. It was his third, and it occurred to him that if he did not have to meet the swabbie at 0800 hours in the hotel coffee shop, the coffee would have been bourbon. Bourbon, in Harry Driver's opinion, was a helluva lot better way to start the day than coffee.
Harry Driver was known to the world as an Air Force man, a colonel, a full bird, a bird that had managed to somehow screw up each and every chance he had to move up to brigadier. There was the infamous escapade in Hickham's officers' club in 1988, the ill-timed flyover at March Air Force Base during his longtime friend General William Shilling's retirement party in 1993, and the all-too-recent "tell-it-likeit-is" incident concerning a young lieutenant's flying capability at March. That young lieutenant had turned out to be the grandson of the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Strike three.
Despite the hour, he dropped down on the edge of the bed, picked up the receiver, and punched out a nearly forgotten number.
The foggy voice on the other end was decidedly feminine and openly disgruntled. It was exactly what Driver had anticipated at a quarter to six in the morning.
"Susan?" he grunted.
There was a pause before the expected response. "Harry?" Another pause, this time longer because he knew she was fumbling around for a cigarette. Finally she said, "I just looked at the goddamn clock. Do you know what time it is?''
"'Course I do," he blustered. "I've had my ass cramped up in a borrowed F-16 for the last couple of hours flying in from New Mexico."
Susan Driver, forty-seven years old and onetime bed and board partner of the man she called H.D., was used to her former husband's odd-hour, middle-of-the-night telephone calls. He called whenever he thought of itand he thought of it often, something he'd failed to do when they were married.
"You're in Washington, I take it?" she said. The voice was a little clearer.
Driver grunted again. His ex-wife recognized the guttural sound as his version of an affirmative response.
"For how long?" If she wanted information, she knew she would have to work it out of him. She had once likened it to prying the hook out of the mouth of a slippery bass.
"Who knows. I'll tell you at dinner tonight. I'm meeting some guy later this morning. As soon as I get rid of him, I'll give you a call. You still workin' at the same place?"
"Suppose I told you I had a date tonight?"
"You know what I'd say," he shot back.
"You'd say, 'Bullshit'?"
"You got a great memory."
When Bogner rolled over, he felt Joy's hair brush against his cheek. He paused to savor the sensation before he answered the phone.
"Hello," he mumbled. Few people besides Reese Smith's boss down at AP knew the telephone number. Even fewer knew that Bogner hung his hat there when he was in Washington. Packer was always the exception.
"Didn't want to roust you out too early in the morning," Packer said. He sounded like a man who had been up for hours already. "I knew you went to bed late, and I don't figure you had a chance to get much sleep. How do you feel?"
"Sore," Bogner admitted. He glanced over at the clock and then at Joy's clothes on the floor. The CD player was still playing the sounds of an obscure Chopin piano concerto. She moved her foot and caressed it down the length of his leg. Bogner felt that old tingling sensation race up his spine and spread into his shoulders. There were other sensations, but he tried to ignore them. "What's up?" he finally managed. He was still laboring under the illusion that he could get Packer off the phone and accept Joy's invitation.
Packer was brief. "Eight o'clock in the coffee shop of the Claypool. Driving time from the Corydon shouldn't be any more than twenty minutes."
"Set it back an hour." It came out sounding more like an order than a request. He hadn't intended that.
"Can't. This is Lattermire Spitz's show. While you've been sleeping they've flown in some hot jock from Nellis. You, Miller, Spitz, and I are meeting this guy at 0800 sharp."
Bogner felt Joy slide out of bed, heard her walk across the room into the master bath and close the door behind her. Her movements had been quick, a shade edgy even, colored with anger. It occurred to him that in some ways people never change.
"I'll be there," he said.
Bogner knew what to expect when he hung up the receiver. He got out of bed and walked to the closed door. "That was" he started to say.
"I know who the hell that was," she snapped over the sound of the shower. "When Clancy Packer barks, Toby Bogner jumps. Same old shit; Navy first, Joy second. I don't like the batting order."
"Dinner tonight?" He knew his voice and the invitation sounded emptya peace offering that was destined to be rejected before it was acknowledged.
"Like hell. Where you're concerned, Tobias Carrington Bogner, I'm planning on having one helluva headache."
For Bogner, there was a smell associated with hotel coffee shops. During the morning rush hour, sweet rolls, citrus juices, bacon, perfume, shaving lotion, soap, overstarched linen, and coffee all competed to dazzle the senses. Bogner would have preferred any number of other scents, especially that of Joy after her shower.
He searched the montage of people in the room before he found Packer and Miller tucked away at a table at the far end. Then he realized that Spitz was standing behind him. Standing beside Colchin's assistant was an Air Force colonel, short in stature with a decidedly unmilitary bulge straining his blues. He had a small cigar cupped in his hand.