UnAlaska

11. Night Breeze

August 20, Juneau

Laura sat at a high bar stool on the pool deck, eating a wood-fired margherita pizza from a small counter service restaurant. She marveled at the thought of building a wood fired pizza oven fifteen stories above the cold Pacific ocean. But she couldn't argue with the results; a crisp, spotted crust and fresh and fragrant basil and tomatoes.

A chef walked in front of the oven and started launching small pies into the clay and brick behemoth with a large peel.

Laura cleared her throat. "Chef, can I ask you a question?"

The man nodded. "Sure, we have 90 seconds while these bake."

"How do you get fresh basil and tomatoes at sea?"

The chef wiped his forehead. "We load the tomatoes into the ship green, and then we ripen them with ethylene gas as we go." He leaned against the counter. "The basil is a little harder."

Laura nodded. "Makes sense."

"We buy it from a hydroponic grower, then we keep it alive in hotel pans of water. When we need it, we lop a chunk off."

"So you keep it on life support and then tear off its limbs one by one? Kind of morose."

The chef laughed, and his timer beeped. He pulled the pizzas out of the oven with the huge peel, and handed them off to another cook who sliced them with a large polished mezzaluna.

She started to hear a murmuring on the deck about whales. A couple in teak lounge chairs started talking about it. Well, the much younger wife anyway. The fossilized husband just grunted, bloody Mary in hand.

She walked back to her room and took off her blazer and her holster, stashing her sidearm in the room pin-pad safe, and hanging her blazer on a coat hook. She settled in to read her emails and scanned a new flurry of activity about a security detail for a controversial tech CEO. It was a slow, boring tennis match. A serve: where should we arbitrate disputes? A volley: are these performance milestones adequate?

There were about 25 emails about his office. He wanted to stay in a 30th floor corner office with glass, to look over his kingdom. Laura insisted that he move to a ground floor office. What if he needed to be evacuated? Why take the risk of waiting for an elevator if a bad guy with a gun shows up? Ultimately, Laura brought his insurance carrier into the fray, and they refused to cover him if he was above the second floor.

Laura heard a knock at the door and shook her head to clear her mind. She opened the door to Francis, still in a dark suit but holding the promised bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape Blanc, and two wine glasses in one hand. In the other, he held a plate with a wedge of Camembert, baguette, and a sliced peach. A large pair of binoculars hung around his neck.

"Get in, Francis. We're running a stakeout on some whales."

He smiled. "I have snacks."

"You understood the first rule of a stakeout: always bring snacks." She held the door as he walked in. "We're off to a good start."

She slid the door to the balcony all the way open. The smell of salt water blew in on the cool air. The low late evening sun cast long shadows over the water. Francis carried the wine and cheese to the small teak balcony table. He fiddled with the controls on one of the teak lounge chairs, and adjusted it to sit upright. He perched on the side of the chair. Laura grabbed her jacket and the waiter's corkscrew by her ice bucket.

She sat on the edge of the other lounge chair and picked up the wine bottle, looking at it appraisingly. "This is a solid bottle of wine, Francis. Thanks for sharing it. And great work with the fruit and cheese."