China Sea (6 page)

Since then they'd spent weekends together and gone hiking and camping in the Blue Ridge. He'd been out to Charles County to meet her family. No promises, no commitments, just a strange sort of camaraderie, respect, and (he had to admit) great sex.

Neither had much time for the other. Or for much of anything but work. That was the price you paid, he figured, for being dedicated to what you did.

But sometimes he wondered if what you got was worth what you were charged. He came back to being naked, dripping, holding the phone and her saying, “I was calling because the base closing commission's going to be in Philly and I can make it an overnight. If you want.”

“Sure. We're pretty busy here, but—sure! When?”

“Thursday. I'll have my assistant set something up. I don't think I want to be down near the shipyard area. That's in South Philly, right?”

“Yeah—why not?”

“Haven't you heard? About the Philly Ripper?”

“Sorry, I haven't been following the news.”

“They found one woman dead, and pretty badly mutilated. Another was attacked and escaped but couldn't give much of a description.”

“No, I haven't heard about that. I've had my head inside these repairs. Thursday, fine, it'll be nice to see you. What time'll you be in?”

She said she wasn't sure but would have her assistant call. She made a kissing noise and said good-bye.

A tap at the door: Foley. The seaman stared, then coughed into a fist. “Excuse me, sir. Quarterdeck wants to know where you wanna hold the progress conference.”

Dan grabbed for the towel. “Uh, make it in the wardroom. Call damage control central, see if they can get the word to Mr. Armey to meet me there.”

*   *   *

HE was on his way when shouting came from a ladderway, a clang of metal on metal. He wheeled, dropped a deck, and came off the ladder into a pushing, shouting melee.

“Marsh” Mellows, the big chief master-at-arms, held two people apart at its heart. One was a livid Pakistani; the other, a snarling woman in coveralls and a yellow hard hat. “What's going on?” Dan said as all eyes swung to him.

“Got a situation, is all,” said Mellows, still holding them both, the Pakistani and the woman, well separated. He
did
look like Mr. Clean, just as burly but sort of friendly at the same time, with knotted curly eyebrows like Leonid Brezhnev. “You don't need to get involved in this, sir.”

He liked Mellows—had come to depend on the chief master-at-arms's calm efficiency, the way he seemed to know everything the crew said or even thought. Still, he didn't like the mix of angry sailors. “Maybe I'd better.”

The chief said reluctantly, “Seaman Usmani here. Sounds like the son of a bitch couldn't keep his hands to himself.”

“How about it?” Dan asked the woman. Before she could answer, someone else said, “She's one of the yardbirds. She says he came on to her, started humping her ass like a dog.”

“Is you the captain? I'm filing a complaint on this filthy animal.” Powell was young, stocky, a grimy canvas toolbag over her shoulder. “This little prick been hassling me all day. Make sucking noises when I go by. Then I goes to get a drink of water and he come up behind me. That's when he says it.”

“What did you say to her, Usmani?”

“All I say, I bump into her, I say, ‘Excuse me, please'.”

“Like shit. He said, ‘Screw me, please.' Then he start pushing his crotch into me. I'm putting in a paper. This ain't right, that all—”

“Great, great.” Dan looked at the guy, already sorry he'd gotten involved. Mellows had tried to warn him. More people were arriving, coming down from the mess decks, hanging on the ladder. He couldn't let it go by. On the other hand, he wasn't certain how far his authority over the foreign crew extended.

“Is there a problem here?” said a British-accented voice.

Dan half-turned, but Khashar was already pushing past him.

The sailor's eyes had time only to widen before the captain slapped him, followed by a torrent of abuse. Khashar turned to Powell. “These men see American television, movies. They watch the women naked in bars, offering themselves. They think this means all American women. This man will be broken in rank and restricted to the ship until we return to Pakistan. I hope this will be satisfactory?”

“You didn't need to hit him,” said the worker. “I figured chew his ass a little, that kind of thing.… You didn't have to hit him.”

Dan said, “So you're satisfied?”

“Long's it don't happen again, and none of those others starts grabbing me. I'm here to do a job. Leave me alone, it'll get done.”

Usmani stood against the bulkhead, face blank, cheek reddening where he'd been struck.

Mellows shouted, “You guys all got work to do, don't you? Or do I need to think up something?”

The knot broke, drifted apart. The situation seemed to be defusing itself. But when Dan looked after the dispersing sailors, he noted the way the Americans stayed an arm's length from the Pakistanis, how they didn't intermingle at all.

4

THE lobby of the Four Seasons smelled of perfume and flowers. Low sofas and armchairs and an antique sideboard holding an immense Chinese vase of fresh gladiolas were scattered over the silver-veined marble floor. The concierge asked, “Can I help you, sir? You look as if you're lost.”

“No, no, just waiting for someone.”

He was turning from an eighteenth-century engraving when he saw her through heavy glass, a doorman dressed like a Ukrainian general ushering her in. He lifted a hand and her face lit up and she swung toward him, tall and cool and looking so damn good, feeling so damn good in his arms.

“How fares the BRAC? Are we losing the navy yard?”

“I'm not actually on the committee. But base closing and consolidation's obviously one of Armed Services' prime concerns.” Blair Titus checked out the lobby, then him. “You look tired. How about tea? Or would you rather just do room service?”

“I've never been a big fan of tea.”

*   *   *

THEY lay together, when they were both exhausted, close as the twists of a cruller, and the touch of her legs against his, scratchy here and petal soft within, was sweeter than powdered sugar. He felt himself relaxing for the first time in weeks. He opened his eyes to examine her closed lids, the lashes lowered to shade the penetrating intelligence of her gaze. He cupped a white breast and let his drift closed, too.

The first time, in Manama, he'd been wary of her, wary of love. Disappointed twice, once by divorce and once by death, he'd tried to fight clear. But it hadn't worked, and though he hadn't told her yet and they had never discussed it seriously, he knew now he was one cooked gosling.

Some time later she stirred, and he jerked awake. She yawned, lifting a bare arm shining with fine golden hair to check her watch. “You awake?”

“Sorry. Didn't mean to drift off.”

“Don't apologize. You did great for somebody who looked as bushed as you did. Are we going to lie around here all evening?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Are you really that sleepy?”

“No.” He rubbed his eyes. “What do you want to do?”

“It's almost dinnertime. Then I have to make this reception, at least for a little while.” She half-rolled, then stopped at his choked protest. “Have I got something caught?”

“Let's just say I'm not in a position to object.”

“I sense signs of returning life. Let's investigate.”

Looking down at her shining hair, he lifted his body in a half-protesting arch, then resigned himself to her frictionless caress. A moment later she mounted him, taking him with a sudden ferocity that matched the mouthwatering impulsion he'd brought to his first ingress, and rode him to her own eye-clenched climax and then, changing rhythm and grip, with a mischievous grin and quick vertical strokes brought him to a second exquisitely near-painful discharge that left him sagged back sweating into the damp, wrinkled sheets as she swung a leg off and went briskly into the bathroom.

*   *   *

THE restaurant was dim and the chandeliers glittered above white linen. After some encouragement he ordered braised Norwegian salmon and black truffles. Blair decided on lamb
en crèpinette.

“So how's the overhaul going?”

“We should be done in two more weeks. Maybe sooner, if the hydros go well.”

“You were having trouble with the foreign commanding officer, weren't you?”

“Actually, that's smoothed out. Khashar doesn't do things the way I would, that's for sure. But he's not actually around all that much. I wind up dealing with Commander Irshad; he's the operations officer and general whipping boy.”

The wine steward. She ordered a pinot noir. He asked for orange juice and tonic.

“The trouble is, you get attached. I have to keep reminding myself she's only mine for a little while. Unless the transfer's preempted by operational considerations—”

“Meaning Desert Shield.”

He nodded, wanting to ask her if the Allies were going to attack but knowing he had no right to. He had no doubt she knew, though maybe not the exact hour. He couldn't ask her about
Gaddis
, either, whether Munro's charge to him was based on a concrete plan for canceling her transfer. So instead he asked about the base closing commission, and she sketched diagrams on the tablecloth with her fingernail to show how reduced infrastructure translated into force modernization.

“That's why all our ships are going away?”

“There's no reason to keep them. Iraq, Iran, North Korea—none of our remaining potential adversaries is a sea power.”

“What about five years down the road? Ten years?”

“I don't want to get into an argument with you. But there's a real question how much insurance an obsolete ship actually represents.”

“It's a lot quicker to install up-to-date equipment and put an old hull to sea than it is to design and build a whole new one. We proved that with the battleships.
Missouri
's on her way to the Gulf right now, loaded with Tomahawks.”

“I take your point, but we have to look at political realities. The shipbuilders don't want those old hulls around. The Navy would rather build something glamorous like Arleigh Burkes and Seawolf. Weighing it all, we've approved leasing or selling them. We get a political advantage out of it; the smaller allies are happy; on paper there's even a cash flow.” She waved a hand. “Anyway. Have you been back home?”

“Yeah. I went to see my mom.”

“How is she?”

“OK.”

“I haven't met any of your family yet.”

“Yeah, sometime I'll have to take you up there.”

She was silent for a time, then said, “What is it? You look uncomfortable. You don't want to talk about your family. And now I think about it, you never have. Have I said something wrong?”

He looked at her, shining in a simple black evening dress, and admired that poise, that coolness she could turn on and off like flipping a switch. “It's nothing you did. I'm just not used to all this.”

“You mean this hotel? The restaurant? What?”

“All of it. I was pretty poor growing up.”

“But it's all show. No one here sees you as a poor kid, with holes in your shoes.”

“I know. It still makes me nervous, though.”

“Like you don't belong here? You're some kind of impostor?”

“Right. I know; it's silly.” He was also, though he didn't mention it, remembering another woman, one who'd thought whatever you had beyond your needs was not far short of theft from others. To her this sumptuous display, these rare foods, would have been an obscene theft from the poor and the homeless.

“Well, you worked your ass off to get here,” Blair told him. “You graduated from Annapolis. You're commanding a ship. You've done damn well, and you have every right to enjoy it.” She signaled to their server. Dan reached for the check, but she was too fast. “Courtesy of the Senate Armed Services Committee,” she told him, scribbling their room number on it. “All right, let's go do our duty.”

*   *   *

A SIGN at the entrance of the Museum of Art read:
CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC. PRIVATE RECEPTION
, but the men in dark suits smiled at Titus and swung the doors wide. She told Dan to keep his cap, not check it, and he tucked it under his arm.

He felt uncomfortable, like a stuffed dummy in service dress, following her into a reception area set up with a drink table and canapés. Titus circulated fast, into each small circle of tanned older men, perfectly groomed women, shaking hands and exchanging chitchat. She knew everyone. She introduced him as “Captain Lenson.” After half an hour she turned to him suddenly and said, “That's enough of that. Let's go someplace more interesting.”

She led him into the museum, through dimly lighted display areas, then out a back door and down a flight of stone steps toward the sound of rushing water and the scents of flowers. They strolled through a small wood of azaleas and oakleaf hydrangeas and emerged at the bank of a river. Looking back, Dan saw the classical roofline of the museum and below it the chaste and beautiful pillars of a small Greek temple.

“I remember this,” she said. “I visited the University of Pennsylvania when I was in high school. Thinking I might want to go here. I thought this was incredibly romantic. I remember hoping someday I'd stand here with someone I cared for.”

“You're right. It's nice.” He looked across calm water that reflected colored lanterns hung above distant boathouses. In the evening light he could see the line where the calm water broke into falls, the Schuylkill pouring over the race with a dull roar and whirling downstream in pools of faintly glowing foam.