“Or would you like some coffee?” Decker dropped the book he’d been carrying onto the dining table, and turned toward the kitchenette.
The fridge looked like an antique too, thought Swenson. “A drink would be great, thanks.”
“I have some cabernet. Is that okay?”
Swenson flopped down onto the sofa and immediately began to sink into the soft foam pillows. “I’m of Norwegian stock, Agent Decker. Nothing stronger?” For the first time, she noticed that the walls were bare. There was no artwork of any kind. Not even photographs.
Decker rifled through the kitchen cabinets. “I think I have some scotch here somewhere,” he said. “At least I used to.”
“Scotch would be great. How long you been here?”
“Just a few weeks.” Decker pulled a brand new bottle of Dalwinnie single malt out of the cabinet, and began to remove the metal foil around the cork.
“I see you like the minimalist look. Very fashionable.”
He poured out a couple of drinks into what looked like juice glasses. “I prefer to think of it as neo-landfill,” he replied. “With a hint of post-modern nihilism.”
Swenson laughed. He handed her a scotch. She took a sip and felt it burn her throat. “I guess you like it neat,” she added, as her eyes grew misty. “Delicious.”
Decker sat down on the sofa beside her. He took a sip and smiled. Then he took another sip. “This was a good idea,” he said. “I mean the scotch.”
Swenson looked for somewhere to put her glass down and realized that there was no coffee table. She balanced the glass in her lap. No end tables either. No TV and no PC, unless they were in the bedroom.
She took another drink, braced herself, and said, “Like I told you earlier. Doris was abducted. This morning.” She put her glass down on the floor. “By three Arabic-looking men. And then a nurse said James called just two nights ago, from the Canary Islands. So I phoned the Parador Hotel in Santa Cruz. That’s where he normally stays. They said he’s taken a room there, but they haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since he checked in. No one knows where he is. He went hiking day before yesterday, and never came back.”
Decker sighed. “There’s nothing you can do here, Emily,” he said. “Frankly, I don’t know why you came.”
Swenson stood up. “What? I thought I should tell you,” she said. “About Doris, I mean. And James. Excuse me, but I thought kidnapping was a federal offense,” she added sarcastically.
“You could have just telephoned. You’re probably just over-reacting. Why don’t you go back to Woods Hole? Let me look into this. I’ll call you if anything turns up.”
“What are you talking about? What’s wrong with you, Decker? I’m not making this shit up. Hey! Remember me? I’m Emily Swenson — the woman who saved your life.”
He smiled, climbed to his feet. Then he shrugged and said, “I’m really rather busy right now, Emily. I’m not trying to be callous, but Dr. White’s disappearance isn’t high on my list of priorities. I don’t know what happened to your friend Doris. Perhaps Dr. White wanted her moved to another facility. Happens all the time. And just because some ‘Arabic-looking’ men were involved doesn’t mean it’s a conspiracy. There are lots of perfectly normal, law-abiding Arab-Americans in this country.”
Swenson peered down at the floor. Then she glanced up, wide-eyed, embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to make it sound like… like they all look, you know… alike. Oh, God. You know what I mean.” She picked up Decker’s book from the dining table, displaying it before her. “Look at this guy,” she added, pointing at the dust jacket. “Tell me he doesn’t look just like that picture of El Aqrab in all the papers. They could be brothers.”
Decker took the book from her hand. He studied the photograph. “A much younger brother, perhaps,” he said. “And fatter too. Yeah, they look alike. That’s the problem. Everyone looks alike through foreign eyes. The other. The generic enemy. The Islamic horde.” He dropped the book back on the table. “Okay. I promise,” he continued. “I’ll look into it. On one condition, though.”
“What’s that?”
“That you go back to Woods Hole and let me handle it. And that you relax and drink your scotch. Okay?”
Swenson moved back toward the sofa. She plopped down on the cushions and said, “Those are two conditions.” Then she reached down, picked up her glass, and took another slug of her drink.
“It’s just not a good time now, Emily, that’s all. I’m on a case.”
“I thought I was your case. Don’t tell me you didn’t recognize that guy who shot you? Whatever,” she said. “I guess that’s why you don’t have a coffee table.”
“What?” He sat back down beside her.
“This place could use a woman’s touch.”
“I’m hardly ever here.” Decker studied Swenson carefully, taking in each curve, each line of her face.
“What are you staring at?” she said.
“You’re the most… Nothing.” A heavy silence settled on the room. “How did you get to Woods Hole anyway?” Decker added, finally.
Swenson watched him struggle, trying to fill the space. “Born in Chance, South Dakota,” she said. “Gateway to the Badlands. It’s famous, you know. Doc Holiday lived there for a spell.” She took another sip of scotch and the living room blushed with heat.
“Actually, my dad’s a scientist too — a geologist. The ocean always seemed like such an incredible place when I was growing up. Opposites attract, I guess. We lived in a part of the country about as different from the sea as you can get. But it was an inland sea once, millions of years ago, and my dad used to bring home fossils from his digs. I guess you could say I ended up like him. Oceanography is geology in its liquid state.” She laughed. “That was a joke, Decker. A sciency, nurdy kind of joke — but still a joke.”
Decker smiled. “How about your mom?”
“She died of cancer when I was twelve.”
“Sorry to hear that.” Decker turned away. For a moment, neither of them spoke.
“I got my degree at USC,” she said. “But something happened, so I came east.”
“What happened?”
“You really are a cop, aren’t you, Agent Decker? You go straight to the dark side.”
“Actually, I’m a cryptanalyst forensic examiner. A code breaker. Most people join Homeland Security with visions of James Bond or Jack Ryan in their heads. In truth, most agents end up being more like something out of a Dilbert cartoon. You fight the bureaucracy more than the bad guys.”
“I had an affair with one of my professors.”
“What?”
“That’s why I came east. It ended badly.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m not.” She laughed. The scotch was going to her head. “It’s quite a funny story, actually. We’d ended the affair, you see, but we were scheduled to take this dive off the New Jersey coast, in a DSV called the Alvin. That’s a Deep Submergence Vehicle, and those kinds of opportunities don’t happen along every day. Anyway, we were descending and Dubinsky… That was the professor’s name. E.J. Dubinsky.”
“I think I’ve heard of him.”
Swenson smiled. “Have you?”
“Didn’t he write This Primal Earth? It was a best-seller.”