Public Enemy

Seeing as how the federal government had already handed Minister Roy his share of expense and inconvenience by way of the Coast Guard’s antics, Cooper decided he’d charge the first class airfare for the trip to Austin on his Agency expense account. Take a pound of flesh out of Uncle Sam’s hide: a $1,600 penalty for causing a temporary disruption of paradise.

Cooper came to the States twice a year at most. When he came, he tried to limit the extent of his travels to somewhere around a thousand-mile radius from Conch Bay. This pretty much meant Florida, though he was occasionally willing to stretch and hit a spot along the Gulf of Mexico or, on the rare occasion when it became necessary, Washington. Normally he stayed away from points in between. Normally, he stayed away, period.

He’d called Susa

Susa

“We’re here,” she said through a toothy grin, “Island Man.”

Cooper had a dive bag containing the pictures Riley had given him and a change of clothes for a one-night stay-along with his canvas bag of loot, which had required the Secret Service ID card he’d been trying out lately to get him through Houston customs without causing a four-alarm panic. He’d told the U.S. Customs supervisor he was part of a National Security Council task force, and that the artifacts were seized contraband. He provided a phone number and the name of a deputy secretary in the State Department in case the customs supervisor saw fit to delay him u

They came into the E.P. Schoch building, home of the department of archaeology, and Cooper saw that it looked pretty much like every other graduate school building he’d seen-classroom doors, bulletin boards, semigloss concrete floors, a lot of natural light, and a few fluorescent fixtures that added little to the illumination equation. Susa

He swung his bags onto the teaching slab, an island built perpendicular to the counters meant for the students. Susa

Then she put the glasses on and dropped them down her nose in a way that made her look a little older, though considerably more appealing.

“Whattaya got for me?” she said.

Cooper opened his two bags, stacked the pictures in front of her, and stood the three gold objects on the counter behind the pictures. He’d left the priestess idol on his shelf to ward off evil spirits like Cap’n Roy and Ro

“The pictures are of the whole set,” he said. “There’s literally a boatload of these things, some the size of the real deals here, some bigger than this table, some a lot smaller than what I brought.”

“Okay.”

“I’d like to know from what period they originate. What region, tribe, whatever, too. If they’re real, that is. Presuming that’s something you can determine. I want to know mainly so I can figure out what they’re worth and who would want to buy them. I suppose if you can answer my last two questions, I don’t really care about the others.”

Susa

Cooper admired the way she asked the question: jovial and deferential, giving him the chance to shoot down what she was implying, but still asking the question. He found a stool and pulled it under him.

“You’re not supposed to ask,” he said.

She took some closer looks at selected shots with a magnifying glass, moving it around, leaning down and peering through it. As she leaned forward, Cooper noticed, and remembered, the sheer, unadulterated size of her breasts. They were drooping loosely inside the cotton summer dress she wore. Susa

Susa

“You can have them if you like,” she said.

She refocused on her work, taking a look at the originals he’d lined up on the countertop, lifting the gold box, turning it upside down and around, ru

“You ever take a walk around the campus here?” she asked him from the corner, not bothering to look up from whatever she had begun working on.

“Here?” Cooper said. “No.”

“You’ll like it. Some of the finest-looking coeds anywhere in the country. Probably in the world. Blows me away sometimes.”

Cooper realized she was asking him to skedaddle.

“How long do you need?”

“Probably take me two hours. You’ll be able to take your collection home with you, but it’ll take a couple days to get results on some of the tests I’ll do. Even before you leave, though, I should be able to answer most of your questions.”

She continued to work on whatever it was she was working on.

Cooper stood, paused, almost said something, decided not to, shrugged, and took his leave of LAB 14, destined for a stroll around the campus of the University of Texas.

Cooper had worn pressed beige khaki shorts, a white polo shirt with stitched monotone patterns of tropical flowers, and a dressier pair of Reefs-brown leather with a buckle-to help him clear the customs check. It was warm in Austin, but not BVI warm, so he felt a little chill strolling from one quad to the next. He didn’t give a shit about the University of Texas coeds, and instead decided he’d use the two hours to get a dose of exercise. The dressy Reefs, which he’d almost never worn, weren’t as comfortable as his other pair, but he managed to avoid any blistering on his stroll, Cooper choosing a course he figured would take him on the widest possible loop around the campus.