Toby Bogner took the bottle out of the man's hands. "Something tells me I don't think I want to know where you got this. Right?"
Queet's ebony face released in a broad smile. "You can ask questions if you want to, mon, but I don't have to answer."
Bogner broke the seal, splashed some of the Cardhu into glasses, and handed one to Queet. That's when the Jamaican's smile faded.
"Have you heard the news, mon?"
Bogner laughed. "You know the rules. Same as they've been for every one of the eight years that I've been coming down here. No radios. No television. No newspapers. And above all, no phone calls. If it's an emergency, they call Harpe down at Rick's barand I get back to them only if I agree it's an emergency."
"Terrorists blew up the Royal Opera House in London," Queet said evenly. "At last count they had recovered over two hundred bodies."
Bogner sobered.
"They think it was an attempt to assassinate the Queen, but they say she left a half hour or so before the explosion."
Bogner stood up, walked across the room, and looked out the window at the last rays of color in the western sky. "Do they know who did it?"
"Some group that calls themselves the Fifth Academy," Queet said.
Bogner turned away from the window. "Queet, old buddy, you're about to see me break an eight-year-old tradition. Where's the nearest damn telephone?"
Chapter Two
"Those bastards," Capelli muttered.
"I can't believe it," Breeden said, shaking his head.
As the camera from the news helicopter scanned the billowing clouds of black, acrid smoke and the wall of flame belching from the rig's production platform, Bogner closed his eyes. It was Oklahoma City, the Royal Opera House, the World Trade Center, and Flight 800 all over again. Now there was a new name in the growing list of terrorist attacks: Tuxpan.
All three video receivers in the Bolling Hangar 7 VIP lounge were showing the same scenes of carnage and devastation. Only the voices of the anchormen, and in the case of CBS, his ex-wife, Joy, were different.
Frank Myers, the ISA agent from New York City, snuffed out one cigarette and lit another as the camera zoomed in on a combination emergency and firefighting vessel dredging bodies from the water. The aft deck of the ship was littered with the charred remains of victims hurtled overboard by the initial blast. No one was paying any attention to the bodiesthere was no need to.
In the background, Bogner could detect the burning hull of one of the rig's supply support ships. The three-story-high superstructure was enveloped in flames, and its cargosupplies, crates, barrels, replacement personnel, and wooden containers, all crammed into the ship's open aft holdwere rapidly becoming victims of the same fate.
As Bogner watched, the crew of the listing craft began leaping into the oil-coated sea, quickly disappearing beneath the turgid surface.
The scene changed to the CNN newsroom, and the camera zeroed in on a silver-haired, visibly shaken news commentator who began again reciting the grim details Bogner and the three other ISA agents had already heard several times.
"This is Reed Barkley in the CNN newsroom," the man said, trying to clear his throat and give his voice authority. "What you are viewing is Saratoga Rig Seven-Two some seven miles off the coast of Tuxpano and approximately eight miles east of Islas Mariaswhere, just two hours ago, Mexican President Carlos Cerralvo attended ceremonies opening this latest Saratoga Oil Corporation super rig for production.
"The blast occurred at 7:47, just moments after President Cerralvo boarded the rig's helicopter for the trip back to the mainland at Tepic"
The camera panned right and another man joined Barkley on camera. The newcomer was short, his tie was loose, and he wore an expression of shock and disbelief. Unlike Barkley, his voice was measured and somber. "We are joined now by Blake Harold, who has been in touch with Saratoga authorities and with Rosa Sales of our CNN affiliate in Guadalajara. Ms. Sales is on the scene of the disaster…"
The short man looked into the camera and began repeating much of what had already been reported.
"The initial blast occurred shortly before eight o'clock this morning, just moments after President Carlos Cerralvo boarded a helicopter to take him back to the mainland. Witnesses aboard the Cerralvo aircraft say that the blast occurred in the area of the blowout preventer on the second level of the seven-hundred-foot-tall rig and directly beneath the area where President Cerralvo had made the dedication only a few minutes earlier.
"At this point officials on site claim that a hundred thirty-seven bodies have been recovered. Most of these were officials and families of officials of the Saratoga Corporation who were on hand for the rig's dedication ceremonies.
"One Saratoga official, according to Ms. Sales, claims that approximately one hundred and twenty workers conducting shakedown tests were below deck at the time of the blastand so far there is no word on their fate."
The camera panned from Harold back to the silver-haired Barkley. "At eight-fourteen EST, five-fourteen in California, the station manager at our CNN affiliate in Los Angeles received a call from a man who played an audiotape by a man who identified himself as Tang Ro Ji. Tang claimed to be an officer with a faction of the Chinese army, a terrorist group known as the Fifth Academy. Tang stated that the group, who has claimed credit for a number of recent terrorist attacks, including the bombing of the Royal Opera House in London just three weeks ago in which two hundred and thirty-seven died, was responsible for the explosion on Saratoga Rig Seven-Two, and he repeated what many are now calling the Fifth Academy anthem, 'Chin wha` do~ dun kow'"
Bogner translated the words: "China, one world, one universe." He got up from his chair and walked out of the lounge. When he did, Harvey Breeden, the youngest of the four men assigned to the Schubatis detail, followed him. In the hallway, Breeden checked his watch and stared out at the cold, wet tarmac.
"You know, T.C.," he began, "there was a time I thought if you lived in the States you were safe from this kind of thing."
Bogner knew better. Instead of looking at the young man, he scanned the deck of low-hanging, steel-gray clouds and allowed his thoughts to careen away from the wholesale slaughter he had been witnessing on the Saratoga oil rig, to the image of Joy sitting behind the CBS anchor desk. Finally he looked at the young agent.
"We should have known we weren't safe after that thing at the World Trade Center," Bogner said. "If nothing else, it proved those bastards could go anywheredo anything."
Breeden agreed.
For Harvey Breeden, this was a special occasion. It was an opportunity to work with T. C. Bogner. Clancy Packer had advised him once that if he wanted to find a role model in the ISA, there was no need to look any farther than Tobias Carrington Bogner. Now he was actually working the Schubatis detail with the man.
Bogner was a twenty-year veteran, a Navy captain, and a former carrier pilot. Like Breeden, he was assigned to the Washington-based ISA, the Internal Security Agency. He was a Colchin man, inclined to be somewhat withdrawn, and when not withdrawn, a bit taciturn. But on this occasion, he seemed inclined to be neither. Breeden assumed that Bogner had decided the occasion was appropriate for neither. What Breeden didn't know was that the other two men on the detail, Capelli and Bogner's longtime friend Frank Myers, were equally sober in view of their assignment.
"What's the skinny on this guy Schubatis?" Myers asked, coming out of the lounge.
Bogner reached in his coat pocket and handed him the abbreviated dossier Miller had passed out in Packer's office at the Friday meeting. Myers opened it and scanned it.