“Chad, Mom’s in town for three days and she’s asked me and the boys to have dinner in her suite at the hotel. There’s a pool and a spa, so we may stay for awhile. Don’t expect us until late tonight or sometime tomorrow.”
He sighed, realizing with slight shame that it was a sigh of relief. He could have a shower sans nag, a drink or two or three sans whine, a lazy loll in front of the tube sans whimper from the background. Lord, Lord, why did men and women try to live together? Those South Pacific tribes that had the men and women living in separate houses had the right idea.
It was so peaceful that maybe he would even explore how he felt about two sari-clad women going up in a puff of nothingness at a top secret dinner which he had attended as liaison. He had made a point of approaching them and handing them things several times during the evening. He would swear they were material, real, living. He had sat across from the one who called herself Indira. She had smiled, joked, laughed, her face crinkling up in real humor. Then, poof, gone. He had suspended judgment, half expecting the bureau lab rats to come in and announce it had all been a trick, but the technicians were still examining the tapes, as baffled as everyone else.
Real aliens. Who had come to help the United States with, how had they put it, those “small areas that need adjustment.” That was the height of arrogance. Sure there were problems in the world, but damned if Chad would call any of them “small areas that needed adjustment.”
But the woman, Benita, she had been something different. Not only pretty, in a very natural way, but charming. That level look she gave you. The way she listened. That was really it … the way she listened. Chad felt he had not been listened to so genuinely in a very long time.
General McVane—THURSDAY
Elsewhere in Washington, General McVane had made a number of hurried phone calls rousing people from sleep and was now with “Dink” Dinklemier on his way to a small, out-of-the-way hotel previously owned by a drug trafficker, recently appropriated by the DEA and currently being “managed” by a semiretired CIA employee. Called Holiday Hill, it was often used by Washington spooks for stashing witnesses, hiding informants, or holding impromptu meetings.
“J’you get hold of Arthur?” Dink asked.
“He’s picking up Morse, and they’ll meet us. What about Briess?” Briess was the CIA link.
“He’s in California,” Dink replied. “I left him a message.”
Except for this exchange, their journey was silent, unbroken even when they arrived at the hotel and went directly to a small second-floor meeting room.
“Turn the heat off!” McVane complained. “It’s ninety in here.”
Dink obligingly turned down the thermostat and opened the two windows to the cooler night air while McVane loaded a tape into a player and called downstairs for refreshments.
“What’s that smell?” he asked.
Dink sniffed. “Something outside. I thought I’d cool the room down, then shut the windows.”
“Smells like . . . what? Smoke? Hot tar?”
“Probably odors from the kitchen, General.”
“Let’s not eat here, then,” he snorted, turning on the tape player to be sure it worked.
The tray of drinks arrived only moments before Arthur and Morse, the senator already in a state of outrage.
“What the bleep?” snarled the senator. “It’s bleeping midnight.”
“We figured you’d want to know about it,” said Dink. “Remember what we told you about last time we met? The unidentified objects flying from A to B to X. Well, McVane tells us X turned out to be right here. This tape was made earlier tonight. I think it’ll be self-explanatory.”
He pushed the button. The dinner party was on the screen. There was, however, no Indira, no Lara. There were, instead, two totally inhuman creatures who darted and clicked their way around the room and who ate, once dinner was served, in a peculiarly disgusting manner. At least, so thought the senator, though he knew he was more sensitive to such matters than many of his associates. He watched, both repulsed and fascinated, all the way through the speeches, the envoys’ explanations and farewells, and the disappearance of the envoys.