Color Of Blood (11 page)

“OK, Miss Carter. I think I’m with you so far.”

“Well, the report was completed, and I made ten copies, and we sent it out. Well, it turns out that the paragraph that I messed up on was, like, the central conclusion the CG was making. I mean it was a huge problem when he discovered it. And he was really, really angry. He accused me of being incompetent and yelled at me for like ten minutes in front of two other people. I could have died. And of course I cried.”

“OK.”

“And then he said he was going to order me home. It was terrible.”

“I bet.” Dennis yawned and looked at the clock again.

“But when Geoff heard about it, he was furious.”

“Furious?” Dennis sat up.

“He was wicked angry. He said the CG had no business threatening me like that since I was so new there and I was covering for Janice in the first place. And then he said he was going to straighten it out with the CG.”

“How would he do that?”

“I have no idea. All I know is that I begged him not to make it worse, but he said he was going to talk to the CG about it.”

“Was Geoff that important that he could just go and talk to the CG about a personnel matter?”

“Well, not really. But Geoff was kind of like that. He didn’t care who he had to talk to in order to set things right.”

“So what happened?” Dennis said.

“He set things right.”

“How did he do that?”

“I don’t know. But the next thing that happened was that the CG asked me to see him in his office. And he apologized for being, like, a jerk. And said he was not going to send me home.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes, exactly like I said. It was creepy really, because I could see the CG just hated to talk to me, and to apologize. And he never bothered me again. Ever.”

“So what did Geoff say to the CG?”

“Like I said, I have no idea. Geoff wouldn’t talk about it.”

“But are you sure that he talked to the CG? Did something else happen that you didn’t know about?”

“Well, maybe, but you just had to know Geoff. He was that kind of stand-up guy. Really, really cool guy.”

They talked for a few more minutes, and Dennis rang off. He lay back on his bed and mulled over this little tidbit.

***

Dennis felt the sudden urge to walk, so he took off into the clean, unhurried city isolated on the other side of the planet. He found himself walking up and down St. George’s Terrace and Hay Street, cutting through connecting malls and side streets, staring at passersby and into shop windows.

The West Australian spring weather was pleasant, and he experienced the strange but inviting food smells from the stalls and restaurants. At one point he found himself walking past a small used-book store. He veered spontaneously inside, walked a few aisles and was about to leave when he spotted a hand-printed sign for a section: Poetry.

Browsing through a pile of books, he spotted a hardcover with a colorful dust jacket depicting a battle scene. The book’s title was
War Poetry
. Dennis smiled, picked it up, looked at the index, and found an entry for Owen, Wilfred.

He tried to read one of Owen’s poems, but struggled with the odd verbiage and strange sentence endings, amused and curious as to why Garder would possibly find this stuff interesting. Dennis was about to put the book down when he noticed an Owen poem titled “Anthem for Doomed Youth.”

Reading slowly and patiently, he found himself drawn to the simple, stark language. It created images he found oddly compelling; it was cynical and angry—feelings that he knew well:

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Dennis read on, repeating verses slowly, letting the images appear and disappear like on an old-fashioned slide projector:

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

He closed the book, took it to the register, and paid for it. Ten minutes later he stopped at a small coffee shop and found himself in the alien position of reading poetry while he sipped a cup of coffee. The strangeness of it was both liberating and worrisome.

***

It was a nondescript building, and Judy had to recheck the address to make sure.

“Yes,” she said. “This must be it: The Western Australian Bureau of Mines. Surprised there is no sign outside.”

Judy and Dennis went inside and asked the receptionist for Drew Pearson. The matronly receptionist picked up the phone and dialed an extension. She announced the guests to Pearson.

“Please take a seat,” she said after hanging up. “He’ll be right out.”

They sat, and Dennis tried to stop sneaking looks at Judy. He was increasingly fascinated with the attractive, shapely Australian, though her attitude toward him seemed to waver between boredom and outright irritation.

“So what did you tell Pearson?” Dennis asked.

“Just that his return message to Jansen was found at the consulate, and we were simply following up on that. He said he hardly knew Jansen.”

“Did he say why Jansen called him?”

“He said he called him to get information on mining operations: arcane information on the permits a particular company had taken out, details like that.”

“Hello,” a man said, standing next to them.

Dennis was surprised to see a man wearing a white short-sleeve shirt, blue tie, beige shorts, and pale kneesocks. He had never seen a grown man wearing kneesocks before.

The man invited them to his office, which was very small and cramped. Pearson borrowed a chair from an office next door, and the three of them were compressed into the very small space.

Judy reintroduced the reason for their visit, but Pearson interrupted. “Yes, yes, of course. Yes, the American fellow: quite tragic, yes? I read about it in the newspaper: just disappeared—quite tragic.”

Judy pressed ahead with several detailed questions on Pearson’s contact with Jansen, but he cut her off quickly.

“I only met him once, really. He sat right there.” Pearson pointed to the chair Dennis sat in. “Good heavens, he had a million questions about mining interests in WA. I pointed him to our records department down the hall and told him how to make requests for public information.”

“Was that the only time you talked to him?” Dennis asked.

“No; once or twice he phoned me to sort of, how do I say, prod me for more informal information.” Pearson chuckled. “I think he was trying to shortcut the request process, if you get my drift. And I hated to be so official, but it is really against policy for us to discuss the records of private companies doing business here.”

“What kind of questions did he ask?” Dennis said.

“Oh, you know, who owns this company and gee, isn’t such-and-such a Chinese company?”

“What did you tell him?” Dennis asked.

“I couldn’t tell him anything, poor feller. You know, I believe he was quite frustrated talking to me.”

“Mr. Pearson, it appears that you have been working at the Bureau of Mines for many years and some would say, informally, of course, that you know about as much about mining in Western Australia as anyone in the state,” Judy said. “Would that be a fair statement?”

Dennis was amused when Pearson blushed.

“Well,” Pearson said, “perhaps some might say that. Yes, perhaps.”

“And how many times would you say you spoke on the phone to Mr. Jansen?”

“Um, let me see.” He thought for a moment. “I would estimate three, maybe four times.”

Dennis quickly lost interest in the interview and hoped that Judy would end it soon, but she kept lobbing in questions. Dennis finally looked at his watch in dramatic fashion, and Judy appeared to get the message.

On the way out, Dennis said, “What a bore. Was he full of himself or what?”

“Well, he does know quite a lot,” she replied.

Judy dropped Dennis off at the hotel and reminded him she would be back to get him at 2:00 p.m.

Dennis thought briefly about sitting out near the pool to relax, but soon found himself at the bar again, sipping a glass of Macallan.

***

“We found him,” Judy said as Dennis slid into the front seat of her car.

“What?”

“We found him. Jansen—or Garder, I think you said his real name was.”

“Where is he?”

“Near Carnarvon: up north.”

“Jesus, what was he doing up there?”

“Snorkeling; poor fellow was probably taken by a white pointer.”

“A white what?”

“A pointer: a great white shark. Well, that’s just conjecture really.”

“So he’s dead?”

“Good lord, yes,” she said.

Judy described the call that had come into the AFP less than an hour earlier. Two commercial divers had visited one of the countless remote inlets south of Carnarvon to do some lobstering. They noticed a parked car and assumed the diver or divers were in the water. After two hours of collecting the spiny crustaceans, the two divers went back to their car and grew suspicious that they hadn’t seen anyone in the water. They called the police, who ran the license plate.

Dennis felt a little thrill, the same kind of primitive emotional rush he experienced at the end of every investigation. Game over: mission complete.

But today, sitting in the front seat facing Judy, his emotional victory lap was muted. He enjoyed spending time with Judy, the beautiful but sometimes sad little Australian police officer.

“Dennis, do you want to see the car? They have it cordoned off. Or should they just tow it back?”

“How far away is it from here?”

“About nine hundred kilometers.”

“What’s that in miles?”

Judy raised her head slightly in thought. Dennis’s gaze was drawn to a small opal necklace that twinkled in the sunlight. “About five hundred fifty miles. Something like that.”

“Can we drive there?” he asked.

“That would take too long, Dennis. Flying would be better.”

“Of course.”

Dennis held his armrests tightly. The two-engine SkyWest commuter plane had been in the air less than ten minutes but had run into thermals rushing up from the hot desert.

Amused, Judy wondered if her tough American CIA investigator might be bothered by the turbulence.

“Are you all right, Dennis?”

“Fine,” he said. “Why?”

“You look tense, that’s all.”

“I’m not tense,” he lied, releasing the grip on his armrest.

“I see.”

“Why are you smiling?”

“Because I don’t think you like turbulence.”

“Don’t be silly.” He turned to look out the small window. Below lay a barren, red-gray landscape. Long, oddly angled roads were the only geometric shapes he could make out. It seemed as if someone had taken a giant ruler and pencil and simply scraped random lines in the hard, unforgiving soil.

Judy now berated herself for thinking she had established a softer, more intimate relationship with this Yank. He was clearly angry at her teasing. Why did she have so much trouble judging men?
God, Judy,
she thought morosely,
you are hopeless with men.

“Actually, I am a little afraid of flying,” Dennis said, still looking out the window. “I don’t think I’ve ever admitted it to anyone before.”

“I didn’t mean to make light of it.”

“It’s stupid, really. Of all the things in my life I’ve had to grapple with, a little turbulence is nothing, really. I feel like an idiot sometimes. My therapist says my problem with turbulence is just a metaphor for my fear of losing control, or something like that. What the hell do therapists know?”

“Oh.”

Judy pulled the in-flight magazine from the seat pocket in front and started to flip through the pages, trying desperately to end the conversation that had started as a joking prod, moved to a dismissive response, and ended with a confession.
This Yank is so exhausting just to be near,
she thought. Still, she felt a small thrill.
A man is confiding something personal to me,
she mused;
how bloody nice.

Dennis, for his part, perceived an odd sensation of lightness, as if several large objects had just been taken out his pockets and thrown from the plane. He turned and stared at Judy, her hair partially shielding her face as she peered down at the magazine.

***

From the air the town of Carnarvon looked like a brownish clump of seaweed on an endless ochre ocean. The airport sported a simple T-shaped runway with several small terminal buildings. Nothing but red soil and emaciated plant life surrounded the runway. Dennis and Judy departed onto a small, rolling set of steps and walked across the gluey, hot tarmac. Halfway to the tiny terminal Dennis found that about a dozen flies had settled on the front of his shirt.

He brushed them away, and they resettled, some onto his neck and face.

Judy laughed. “Meet our good friends, the bush flies.”

“Do they bite?” Dennis brushed more of them away.

“No, but they’ll drive you mad if you let them.” She brushed at one that had settled on her cheek.

Soon afterward they were riding out of town, heading south along a paved, two-lane highway. Dennis’s sunglasses turned the bleak red-and-brown countryside into a bleaker black-and-white version. Red dust and stunted, forlorn bushes and grasses spread out to the ends of the earth.

After nearly thirty minutes, Judy slowed at a small road sign and pulled onto a dirt road that ran perpendicular to the main highway. Judy had spoken to a policeman on her mobile phone twice already and was frustrated by his directions.

“This better be the bloody road,” she murmured as they flew down the silt-lined path, leaving a trail of dust behind them.

“Why in the hell would he come way out here to snorkel?” Dennis asked. “Do people do that?”

“Yes, some do. Shark Bay is a big tourist area.”

“You know, I was looking through my notes, and it seems that only Garder’s friend, Roby, mentioned that he snorkeled. Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”