“No, no, Sam. The whole thing is my fault. You’re an auditor, a good one. But you’re not a security operative, and I shouldn’t have expected you to be one. I was only trying to make it a little easier for Charlie. A little less awkward, if that makes sense. Obviously I miscalculated. And, not to speak poorly of the dead, but Charlie didn’t exactly help himself. He made his own bed, Sam.”
“But I—”
“No. Not another word. Stop blaming yourself.”
The car slowed, easing into what appeared to be a horrendous traffic jam. The driver gestured in exasperation toward a cordon of orange cones, where a backhoe was hefting a slab of broken pavement.
“They make new roundabout,” he complained. “For only two days I not come here, and already they make new roundabout.”
Without replying, Nanette reached forward to press a button. A smoked-glass window slid shut between them and the driver. Incredibly rude, but mildly thrilling. They were secluded in boudoir comfort. In Sam’s sleep-deprived mind, aching for solace, almost anything seemed possible.
“I hope you’ll have time for dinner later,” she said.
“Sure. Absolutely.”
He was too tongue-tied to say more.
To Sam’s surprise, the U.S. Consulate was a Dubai anomaly—plain and unremarkable. He had once seen it portrayed in a movie as a palatial spread of marble and glass, with a luxurious courtyard of bubbling fountains and towering palms. Instead, it was a dreary block of offices on the twenty-first floor of the Dubai World Trade Centre, which was itself an uninspiring slab of concrete at the east end of Sheikh Zayed Road. The ambassador, the round- the-clock U.S. Marine guards, and the bulk of the diplomatic workforce for the Emirates were all based at the big embassy over in Abu Dhabi.
A green military truck from the Dubai Police was parked outside the building’s ground-floor entrance, with a drowsy sentry at the wheel. Visitors had to pass through metal detectors in the downstairs lobby, and the elevator wouldn’t stop on the twenty-first floor unless you punched in a numeric code, which Nanette seemed to know by heart. Sam watched out of the corner of his eye, unable to prevent himself from registering the sequence. Part of the auditor’s curse, he supposed, forever filing away extraneous data, like a Web crawler that never slept. Stanley Woodard, whose taxi had fallen behind in traffic, barely made it aboard before the doors shut, and seemed none too pleased about it.
Hal Liffey welcomed them as the doors opened upstairs, except now he was dressed in a charcoal suit. To Sam’s surprise, Nanette greeted him like an old pal.
“Hal’s the commercial attache,” she told Sam.
“We’ve met,” Liffey said, a little embarrassed.
“Is it always the commercial attache’s job to retrieve the personal effects of the deceased?” Sam asked.
“It is when he’s the only person available. We’re just an outpost here, and are staffed accordingly.”
Liffey led them to a conference room where a gray-haired man and a slender young woman with a severe haircut waited at a long wood-grain table. Narrow windows offered a prime view of another tall building across the way. Its white sides were wrapped partially in a robe of brown marble. Perched atop it was a dimpled sphere that looked like a giant tan golf ball. With a good swing you could have swatted it up Dubai Creek, which shimmered beyond it on a dogleg left.
The gray-haired fellow at the head of the table stood. “Todd Mooney, consul general. I’m sorry for your loss.” He turned toward the woman with the bad haircut. “Maura Steele, my assistant. I take it you’ve met Hal. We’re here to do what we can to make everything go as smoothly as possible. We know this must be a trying time for you.”
He sounded like a funeral director. Maybe that was the recommended demeanor in the Foreign Service manual. Sam wondered if their duties also involved interceding with the local police. He wished he had brought along Charlie’s datebook. This would have been a good time and place to drop it off.
“Hal tells me he has taken possession of all personal effects of the deceased,” Mooney said. “And, Ms. Weaver, am I correct in assuming that next of kin have been notified?”
“That is correct.” Nanette offered a subdued smile.
“In that case, the next order of business is to obtain the death certificate from the UAE Ministry of Health. Then we’ll proceed with the official Foreign Service Report of Death. Maura here will assist with that.
“And now, although Ms. Weaver is no doubt familiar with these logistics, I am nonetheless required to brief you on the various local laws and customs with a bearing on the disposition of Mr. Hatcher’s remains, as well as the procedures for their subsequent shipment to the United States.”
He continued in a similarly bureaucratic vein for several minutes more, repeating the words “disposition of remains” far too often. Woodard took copious notes. Sam tuned out when Mooney began discussing local embalming practices and the shipment costs of a loaded coffin. Nanette had already done so. She had retreated to a rear corner with Liffey, where she was whispering intently while he nodded with his head down.
Woodard tapped Sam’s arm.
“He’s asking you a question.”
“Oh. Sorry. I’m a little out of it.” He felt ready for a nap, and oddly vulnerable. He wished someone would just say, “Look, why don’t you go on home and let us handle this?”
Instead, Mooney said, “I was just wondering if, once the death certificate is issued, you would be available to sign out the body from the refrigeration unit, in order to expedite transportation. Not that there’s any monetary urgency. Refrigerated storage is provided free of charge.”
“I, uh, don’t know. Shouldn’t there be an autopsy first?”
“That’s not our understanding. According to Ms. Weaver, the family hasn’t requested one.”
It would have been an appropriate time for Nanette to jump in. But she was still conferring with Liffey, and
