Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

woman’s voice was clipped. She wasn’t asking, she was telling.
    “Who’s calling?”
    “It’s his uncle returning his call.”
    “Sounds more like his aunt.”
    “Is Donovan there or not?”
    “Yes.” Hannah turned to Archer. “It’s your uncle,” she said clearly, handing him the phone.
    The change in his eyes made her realize just how warm they had been. She looked at the phone in his big hand and stepped back away from it. From him. Neither the phone nor the man was her business, no matter how curious she was about both.
    She headed for the bathroom, saying over her shoulder, “I need a shower.”
    Archer glanced in the readout window on the cell phone. There was no number for the incoming call. It was in the clear, unscrambled, available to anyone who wanted to overhear.
    “This is Donovan,” he said. His voice said a lot more. Impersonal, leashed, merciless. “How the hell are you, Uncle?”
    Though Archer didn’t watch Hannah, he was aware that she had withdrawn. Just to make sure the distance was far enough, he walked out onto the verandah. Against the blazing sunset, the new screens gave the land and sea a metallic, surreal glow.
    “You waited a long time to call,” the woman told him.
    Silently he absorbed the fact that the U.S. government already knew something about Pearl Cove and cared enough that they had been hoping he would have to ask for help.
    Not good.
    “If I’d known you were waiting, I would have called sooner.”
    “Save it for someone who believes you, slick.”
    “Slick, huh?” He smiled thinly. The agent who had reluctantly helped Kyle chase ancient Chinese jade had called both Donovan men “slick.” April Joy had been in and out of Donovan lives several times since then. She was a very beautiful, very intelligent, and very ruthless agent. At one time he would have been attracted to her. He was a lot older now. “I thought your specialty was jade.”
    “That’s why I’m not happy. As far as I’m concerned, pearls are the end product of constipated oysters.”
    Archer smiled thinly. “My requests are simple. Do you want them in the clear?”
    “Knowing you, I doubt it.”
    Static poured into his ear before a status light blinked on his phone and words came out instead of electronic garbage. Obviously the two computers had found a code they both could translate.
    “. . . understand?” she asked.
    “Loud and clear. Ready?”
    “I was born ready.”
    He didn’t doubt it. “Two passports. Married couple. Mine should have blue eyes instead of gray. Hers should be brown. Black wig, long enough to put in more than one hairstyle. The woman is five feet ten inches, one hundred and twenty-five pounds, brown hair and brown eyes, thirty-four, dressed like designer sin. Expensive.” With a faint curving of his lips, he wondered if Hannah would object to having five years, one inch, and some odd pounds piled on her life, plus a courtesan’s clothes. “One pair of brown contacts. One pair of dark blue. Tickets from Broome to Darwin under one alias. Tickets from Darwin to Hong Kong under the second alias.”
    “Got it. You’ll be Mr. and Mrs. Murray on the flight from Broome to Darwin. Darwin to Hong Kong you’ll be Mr. and Mrs. South. Where to after Hong Kong?”
    “I’ll take care of it from there.”
    There was a humming silence on the other end of the call that told Archer he wasn’t making April happy.
    “How soon?” she asked, her voice clipped.
    “Yesterday.”
    She snorted. “Next week.”
    “Tonight.”
    “Tomorrow, Mr. South, and you should be thanking me on your knees with your face buried in my deepest cleavage.”
    Archer smiled despite the urgency gnawing on him. “South. Right. I have a rental car. White Toyota, left rear taillight will be broken.”
    “Careless of you.”
    “I’m a careless kind of guy.”
    April laughed at that, a sound of genuine amusement.
    “The car will be parked in the airport lot at Broome,” Archer continued, “as close to the entrance of the lot as possible.”
    “Do better. I’m not sending some joker cruising the airport parking lot for hours, looking for a broken taillight.”
    “You ever been to Broome?”
    “No.”
    “You can cruise the whole town in five minutes, max.”
    “East Bumblefart,” she muttered. “Anything else?”
    Archer gave her a few more items, waited, and asked, “What do you want from me?”
    “The betting is that you know all about Len McGarry’s