After failing to respond to Oslett’s first “good morning, ” Clocker replied to the repetition of those words with the improbable split-finger greeting that characters gave each other on Star Trek, his attention still riveted to the paperback. If Oslett had possessed a chainsaw or cleaver, he would have severed Clocker’s hand at the wrist and tossed it into the ocean. He wondered if room service would send up a suitably sharp instrument from the chef’s collection of kitchen cutlery.
The day was warmish, already seventy. Blue skies and balmy breezes were a welcome change from the chill of the previous night.
Promptly at eight o’clock—barely in time to prevent Oslett from being driven mad by the lulling cries of sea gulls, the tranquilizing rumble of the incoming combers, and the faint laughter of the early surfers paddling their boards out to sea—the Network representative arrived to brief them on developments. He was a far different item from the hulking advance man who’d driven them from the airport to the Ritz-Carlton several hours earlier. Savile Row suit. Club tie. Good Bally wingtips. One look at him was all Oslett needed to be certain that he owned no article of clothing on which was printed a photo of Madonna with her breasts bared.
He said his name was Peter Waxhill, and he was probably telling the truth. He was high enough in the organization to know Oslett’s and Clocker’s real names—although he had booked them into the hotel as John Galbraith and John Maynard Keynes—so there was no reason for him to conceal his own.
Waxhill appeared to be in his early forties, ten years older than Oslett, but the razor-cut hair at his temples was feathered with gray. At six feet, he was tall but not overbearing; he was slim but fit, handsome but not dauntingly so, charming but not familiar. He handled himself not merely as if he had been a diplomat for decades but as if he had been genetically engineered for that career.
After introducing himself and commenting on the weather, Waxhill said, “I took the liberty of inquiring with room service if you’d had breakfast, and as they said you hadn’t, I’m afraid I took the further liberty of ordering for the three of us, so we can breakfast and discuss business simultaneously. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” Oslett said, impressed by the man’s suave-ness and efficiency.
No sooner had he responded than the suite doorbell rang, and Waxhill ushered in two waiters pushing a serving cart covered with a white tablecloth and stacked with dishes. In the center of the living room, the waiters raised hidden leaves on the cart, converting it into a round table, and distributed chargers-plates-napkins -cups-saucers-glassware-flatware with the grace and speed of magicians manipulating playing cards. Together they caused to appear a variety of serving dishes from bottomless compartments under the table, until suddenly breakfast appeared as if from thin air: scrambled eggs with red peppers, bacon, sausages, kippers, toast, croissants, hot-house strawberries accompanied by brown sugar and small pitchers of heavy cream, fresh orange juice, and a silver-plated thermos-pot of coffee.
Waxhill complimented the waiters, thanked them, tipped them, and signed for the bill, remaining in motion the whole time, so that he was returning the room-service ticket and hotel pen to them as they were crossing the threshold into the corridor.
When Waxhill closed the door and returned to the table, Oslett said, “Harvard or Yale?”
“Yale. And you?”
“Princeton. Then Harvard.”
“In my case, Yale and then Oxford.”
“The President went to Oxford,” Oslett noted.
“Did he indeed,” Waxhill said, raising his eyebrows, pretending this was news. “Well, Oxford endures, you know.”
Apparently having finished the final chapter of Planet of the Gastrointestinal Parasites, Karl Clocker entered from the balcony, a walking embarrassment as far as Oslett was concerned. Waxhill allowed himself to be introduced to the Trekker, shook hands, and gave every impression he was not choking on revulsion or hilarity.
They pulled up three straight-backed occasional chairs and sat down to breakfast. Clocker didn’t take off his hat.
As they transferred food from the serving dishes to their plates, Waxhill said, “Overnight, we’ve picked up a few interesting bits of background on Martin Stillwater, the most important of which relates to his oldest daughter’s hospitalization five years ago.”
“What was wrong with her?” Oslett asked.
“They didn’t have a clue at first. Based on the symptoms, they suspected cancer. Charlotte—that’s the daughter, she was four years old at the time—was in rather desperate shape for a while, but it eventually proved to be an unusual blood-chemistry imbalance, quite treatable.”
“Good for her,” Oslett said, though he didn’t care whether the Stillwater girl had lived or died.
“Yes, it was,” Waxhill said, “but at her lowest point, when the doctors were edging toward a more terminal diagnosis, her father and mother underwent bone-marrow aspiration. Extraction of bone marrow with a special aspirating needle.”
“Sounds painful.”
“No doubt. Doctors required samples to determine which parent would be the best donor in case a marrow transplant was required. Charlotte’s marrow was producing little new blood, and indications were that malignancy was inhibiting blood-cell formation.”
Oslett took a bite of the eggs. There was basil in them, and they were marvelous. “I fail to see where Charlotte’s illness could have any relationship to our current problem.”
After pausing for effect, Waxhill said, “She was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.”
Oslett froze with a second forkful of eggs halfway to his mouth.
“Five years ago,” Waxhill repeated for emphasis.
“What month?”
“December.”
“What day did Stillwater give the marrow sample?”
“The sixteenth. December sixteenth.”
“Damn. But we had a blood sample as well, a backup—”
“Stillwater also gave blood samples. One of them would have been packaged with each marrow sample for lab work.”
Oslett conveyed the forkful of eggs to his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, and said, “How could our people screw up like this?”
“We’ll probably never know. Anyway, the ‘how’ doesn’t matter as much as the fact they did screw up, and we have to live with it.”
“So we never started where we thought we did.”
“Or with whom we thought we started,” Waxhill rephrased.
Clocker was eating like a horse without a feed bag. Oslett wanted to throw a towel over the big man’s head to spare Waxhill the unpleasant sight of such vigorous mastication. At least the Trekker had not yet punctuated the conversation with inscrutable commentary.
“Exceptional kippers,” Waxhill said.
Oslett said, “I’ll have to try one.”
After sipping orange juice and patting his mouth with his napkin, Waxhill said, “As to how your Alfie knew Stillwater existed and was able to find him . . . there are two theories at the moment.”
Oslett noticed the “your Alfie” instead of “our Alfie,” which might mean nothing—or might indicate an effort was already under way to shift the blame to him in spite of the incontrovertible fact that the disaster was directly the result of sloppy scientific procedures and had nothing whatsoever to do with how the boy had been handled during his fourteen months of service.
“First,” Waxhill said, “there’s a faction that thinks Alfie must have come across a book with Stillwater’s picture on the jacket.”
“It can’t be anything that simple.”
“I agree. Though, of course, the about-the-author paragraph on the flap of his last two books says he lives in Mission Viejo, which would have given Alfie a good lead.”