There was heavy evening traffic on the Beltway, so even with the lead car blooping the siren, it took them almost an hour from Dunning’s house to get to the base. The driver had radioed ahead, so the uniformed guards at the gate were at crisp attention as they came right through.
It turned out to be some pretty perfect timing. Through the tinted window, Reyland could see the lights of the AC-130 turning in the dark sky as they came alongside the hangar. As they slowed just beside the tarmac, Emerson, riding shotgun with the driver, turned to see if he should open the door, but Reyland shook his head.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something, Mr. Reyland,” Dunning’s very attractive black-haired daughter, Belinda, said as they stopped.
She was sitting opposite from him across the rear of the limo beside her devastated mother, Catherine.
Reyland folded his hands in the blue serge lap of his Brooks Brothers suit.
“Please, like I said, anything,” Reyland said.
“I know you’ve told Mother here, but I’d like to hear it from you. How was it that my father died exactly?”
Reyland blinked at the thirtysomething. She was tall and chic and stunning in her all-black and sunglasses. Like other rich women, she had been a ballerina once and still retained that thin, gracious, model-like comportment.
A flash of memory came to him. Stopping by Dunning’s villa once with some paperwork, he’d come upon Belinda soaking wet in a white one-piece with her other smoking-hot private high school BFFs by the pool.
Reyland swallowed.
“The doctors at the hospital in Rome said it was a massive stroke, Belinda,” he said quietly. “They assured me that he wouldn’t have felt anything. He just went to sleep and that was it.”
Reyland watched Belinda slowly absorb this.
“Will we get a chance to see him?” Belinda finally said.
He glanced at the curve of her Swan Lake throat, perfect and smooth and pale between the stark black collar of her coat and the salon-perfect line of her dark hair. She was wearing a most-enchanting scent. A hint of peach over something mysterious and sumptuous that Reyland couldn’t quite name.
“At the base here? No. I’m so sorry,” Reyland finally said. “The civilian funeral home representatives need to take him straight from the plane in order to make the final preparations.”
Reyland glanced over to where the hearse waited. A marine honor guard was standing at attention in the doorway of the hangar beside it, starched white gloves and the black patent leather shining.
He certainly couldn’t complain about the optics, he thought. Even Dunning, who was a hard-ass stickler in just about everything, would have approved.
“C’mon, Mother,” Belinda said. “I can see the plane. Father’s coming in.”
“It’s perfectly fine if you need more time. We still have a few minutes,” Reyland said, bringing his hands together as if in prayer.
“Okay,” Catherine Dunning finally said. “Okay.”
The vice president’s retinue showed up as the plane made its taxiing turn. The president, still on his Asian trip, couldn’t make it, but he would be back just in time for the funeral. The VP came over and gave Belinda a hug and patted Catherine’s hand, whispering to her. He smiled at Reyland as they nodded at each other.
“Nice to see you again, Ron,” the VP said to him.
“You, too, sir,” Reyland said, not correcting him that they had never met before and that his name was actually Robert.
It didn’t matter. DC was a kinetic place. Factions were already making movements, readjustments.
He wouldn’t make that mistake twice, Reyland thought in the roar of the approaching plane.
The turboprops roared even louder in the cold as the big plane crawled over to where they stood. Its back ramp was already down as it finally stopped before them. The marines, on the march, entered and went up with robotic precision.
The casket they came out with was straight lined and much smaller than Reyland expected. Under the flag, it looked like the kind of cardboard box that ready-to-assemble Walmart furniture came in.
The pallbearers stopped before the widow, and two of the marines from the honor guard marched over, giving the flag the required thirteen folds. As they did this, Reyland looked at himself in the limo’s tinted glass and smoothed his black tie. When he glanced over at the photographers in the media pen set up beside the hangar, he could see that they were going stone-cold bat shit.
Roll ’em, boys, and don’t forget my good side, Reyland thought, raising his chin high.
And why not? It was a moving performance. Solemn, austere. All of it. A splendorous display of reticence. Emerson had suggested taps, but Reyland had nixed it. Better to save it for the burial.
As the soldiers finally slid the boss into the dead-mobile, Reyland nodded to himself, pleased. There were still some long hard miles to go before he slept, but at least the press was already swallowing the Rome thing like a widemouthed bass. By tomorrow, the arrow of the bullshit wheel would be firmly landed upon one of the grandstanding press’s all-time favorite chestnuts, A Nation in Mourning.
As the marines headed back to the hangar, Reyland glanced over at the tears flowing freely past the soft bud of Belinda’s brilliant diamond-pierced earlobe a foot in front of him.
As she began to tremble, Reyland leaned ever so slightly forward and placed his hand on her perfect shoulder, careful to keep his chin up for the photographers as he mournfully closed his eyes.