“How long until I can claim the body?” It was the right way to handle it, though that didn’t make the decision any easier. By taking the body, I was closing their investigation. I would get no help from them going forward. The thing was, this man could not be left behind.
“May I assume you’ve made the necessary arrangements on your end?”
I answered with a simple nod.
“For us, it is only a matter of signing a few forms and you can be off. Would you join me for a drink while the doctor sees to preparing the body for transport? I’ve taken an office here until the resolution of this matter.”
“Certainly.”
Sun led me toward an office at the opposite end of the hallway. Once inside, I took the nearest chair and made myself as comfortable as possible. Sun poured us both three fingers of bourbon. As usual, I sniffed the drink before putting the glass to my lips. I found the aroma unpleasant, but I didn’t want to appear unappreciative.
Sun sat behind the broad desk and smiled politely. “You’ve had quite the illustrious career, Colonel.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard it referred to that way, Mr. Sun.” Why was he spending time talking to me?
“I too served my country for a time. Not with such distinction as yours. Perhaps our paths crossed and we didn’t even know it.”
“You’d have known it,” I said flatly. “But unless you’ve been somewhere besides Asia, it’s doubtful.”
“Not even once?”
“I’ve visited, but never served in this part of the world.”
I wouldn’t have copped to it even if it were true. My special operations work was always sensitive in nature and not a thing for idle chitchat.
“Yes, well, perhaps not. Your country has fixed its sights on the Middle East. Her war heroes forged in the desert. You see little else.”
“9/11 didn’t really lend itself toward that luxury, Mr. Sun. Is there anything else?”
“I merely require your signature on the documents before you.” He’d had it all prepared in advance. Not suspicious at all.
Skimming the papers, I signed them quickly before downing the stiff bourbon, ignoring its cheapness that burned the back of my throat. One more thing wrong with the entire situation here at the morgue.
Sun offered his hand as I rose to leave, and I said, “Just one more thing—did you retrieve a laptop?”
Sun checked his paperwork. “No laptop was found on his person or in his suite.”
“What about in the hotel safe?”
“We had it opened. It contained his passport and traveling papers only. This is of concern?”
“No,” I assured him, though it was.
Owen’s computer was a personal build. He never left it unsecured, despite its heavy encryption. Aaron Sutter had put Owen and Maggie up at the Four Seasons, and their security was impeccable. If it was missing, somebody took it.
“You said there was a companion who talked to you about Owen. Do you have their name?”
“The police took the report but neglected to get a name.”
“Did you speak to Maggie Tomlin at all? Owen’s roommate?”
“Ms. Tomlin had flown home to Chicago for her sister’s wedding. She has not yet returned, and Mr. Sutter’s liaison was unsure if she would.”
As I’d already spoken to Maggie—who was utterly broken by Owen’s reported passing—I just wanted to make certain the stories were the same. She was, of course, blaming herself. If she’d never left… As if Owen would not have become entangled in whatever this was if she hadn’t gone home. This wasn’t her fault, and neither was it Owen’s. Something else was going on, and that was clear from how much work had gone into trying to get this body to look like Owen.
“Perhaps we will meet again, Colonel?” Sun said, returning me to the present.
“My organization’s philanthropic work doesn’t usually bring me this far east.”
“Perhaps it should. The Tai Po Waterfront in spring is a truly breathtaking sight.”
I nodded affably.
When he gripped my hand, Sun offered in a low voice, “May Buddha grant him a generous share of eternity.” His smile blew away like sand.
Outside, I was instantly enveloped in the heat and humidity of Bangkok in September before the sky opened up and it was raining again. It had stormed earlier, making it like a sauna when I reached the morgue, with the high being in the upper eighties. Now it was back to pouring. I was soaked in seconds, my shirt sticking to my back and chest.
I just wanted to take the body and go. I had so much to work through, and I needed to get started.
The body was loaded into an enormous black SUV, and within an hour, I was being waved through security at the airport, and the driver pulled right onto the ramp of the commercial terminal where my Gulfstream G650ER sat, engine idling. My plane had arrived while I was claiming the body, and it was a relief, even if only a momentary one, to see something familiar amid the craziness of the last forty-eight hours. Even better to see Arden Stewart, my pilot, coming down the boarding steps with a golf umbrella. She was there, on the tarmac, waiting as we drove up, looking as crisp and polished as ever even in the sweltering heat and drowning rain.
She moved quickly to reach me, and I waited until she got to the car. The second I got out of the passenger side, she covered me with the umbrella and walked with me around the front of the car. I knew she was dying to ask me questions, but she was silent as my eyes met her long-lashed onyx ones. She knew better than to ask me anything in front of the driver and the others who’d accompanied me. They were strangers, and she never made queries in front of people she didn’t know.
I tipped my head at her, and she nodded, nothing betraying the emotion I knew she had to be feeling. She’d been with me for over ten years, had flown Owen and me around the world and back, and had been with me in a number of dicey situations, flying things that, from a physics standpoint, should not have been able to take flight. To say she was a gifted pilot was putting it mildly. Plus, she was an excellent shot.
The Thai officials loaded the remains onto the plane, and when they were done, I signed a custodial release and boarded. Moments later, the airplane rolled onto the runway and accelerated, lifting off. Shortly after, Jing Khoo, one of my assistants, came from the back of the plane, looking like absolute hell.
“It’s not him,” I assured her.
She had to grab for the seat closest to her.
I put my head back, taking great gulps of air, finally feeling, even for a moment, like I could breathe.
“What the fuck is going on?” Even when swearing, she sounded posh, years of boarding school, then Oxford, making it impossible for her not to sound like she should have been narrating nature documentaries.
“I have no idea,” I told her, noting that even the messy bun, the clothes that looked like she’d slept in them, and the Converse sneakers did not diminish her incandescent beauty. Everyone noticed her looks, and she hated that people didn’t take her seriously because of it. Except me. I always looked at the inside.
“I’m drinking,” she told me. “May I assume you are too?”
I nodded.
“Bourbon?”
Another nod.
“I’ll make it a double.”