The Casey Collins Trilogy

5

5Startled, I said, “State Department Security interviewed you?”

“Why not? Who knows you better?” She was smiling and the perfect evenness of her teeth reminded me of a fox’s incisors. “But the guy wasn’t from State. Would you believe FBI?”

“FBI.” I couldn’t keep the shock out of my voice.

“You don’t think I’d tell them anything they didn’t already know? But you don’t want the FeeBees to find out you’re zipping over to Europe to meet the Pole, am I right?”

I said, “You’re right.”

“Must be really hung up on this guy. He invite you home to meet his mom yet?”

“Both his parents are dead.”

“An orphan? That’s a problem. You know these old-world types can’t marry without the family’s approval. Maybe he’s got a big brother or something?”

“No such luck,” I said. “There was a half-brother, but he died before I ever met him.”

She pursed her lips, made a worried sound. “Doesn’t look like there’s much chance this Pole will make an honest woman of you.” Then she laughed. “Or is that his main appeal?”

“Could be right about that, too,” I said.

“Well, I’m always glad to help a horny friend.” She studied her nails. “Fair’s fair. You did me a favor down in San Sal. Now I’ve done you a favor. So we’re even?”

Something was off. I’d called in my biggest marker to get on this plane. I might as well have stamped “URGENT” on my forehead. But Lura was pretending our whole transaction was routine. I tapped my fingers on the armrest, then forced myself to stop. “We’re even,” I said.

“Tell me again,” Lura said. “How was it you got mixed up with this guy?”

“We worked on a project together.”

“Right. A project.” She paused as if she were letting an old conversation come back to her. “And the two of you really pissed off some people. So now there are some Arabs out there, want to blow you away?”

I hadn’t told her that. And the FBI wouldn’t have mentioned it. Where was Lura getting her information?

My laugh sounded genuine. “Nobody’d bother with me. My role was peripheral.”

The expression on her face told me she didn’t believe a word. My shirt was wet under both arms and I could feel more sweat along my hairline.

She asked, “Spoken to your dad lately?”

Warily, I said, “Thanksgiving. I flew out to spend a few days with him.”

“You know how much he loves you?”

“Where’d that come from?”

“Oregon, actually,” she said. “I visited my mom over Christmas. Your dad joined us for dinner one night. He tell you we had a nice chat?”

“Sure didn’t mention your mother and love in the same sentence.”

Lura laughed. “Not fated, I agree. No, your dad wanted to know, could he talk freely to me about you?”

And she’d said yes, of course. So I said, “You know fathers. They tend to embellish the facts.”

“Your dad never stretched the truth in his life. Remember, when we were kids, you started telling everybody he’d been some hot-dog fighter pilot in the war? And he marched you around, practically door-to-door, doing a retraction? ‘Dive bombers, not fighters.’ ‘Purple Heart, not a Silver Star.’” She laughed again. “You’re not saying that Victor Collins has started making up stories?”

“‘Embellish’ was the word I used.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He treats my career as his hobby.” My turn to laugh. “Like his collection of airplane memorabilia. Always adding another piece. Some more authentic than others.”

“What he told me about you sounded authentic enough. Then I thought about my sit-down with that fat guy from the FeeBees. Didn’t make much sense to me at the time. Him so earnest and concerned about your loyalty and patriotism. I couldn’t understand why he was making such a big deal out of you and the Polish guy. Then your dad fills me in. Wow, Casey, it knocked my socks off.”

Lura leaned closer, her hand on my arm. “That’s why I called you, soon as I got back to DC. The thing’s so damn sexy. Nice American girl saves the free world. Her reward? Death threats from the Abu Nidal Organization, FBI harassment and a career shot down in flames. Make a great news story. You’ll tell me the whole thing?”

I shifted in my seat, freeing my arm. “Old news. Not even good background. You’d never get on the air with it.”

“FBI interest in you is old?”

“A routine check,” I said. “No story there.”

“Maybe you could give me a zippy angle?”

“Wish I could.” I forced a smile. “But there isn’t one.”

“You sure about that?” she asked.

“So that’s why you came along. Hoped I’d give you some hot story of international intrigue.” I managed a chuckle. “Sorry to disappoint you, Lura, but I’m my same old boring self.”

“You certainly are that,” she agreed. But her tone was off.

I faked a yawn and leaned back, shutting my eyes. Lura was making me nervous. The less conversation we had, the better. I wanted to kick myself for giving in to the impulse to trade war stories with my father. Talking about things that had happened to me years ago didn’t constitute a breach of national security. But I’d told him anecdotes that I didn’t ever want to read in the newspapers. I’d asked him not to repeat what I’d said, and I’d figured there was no risk he’d do that. I hadn’t figured on Lura.

My dad never claimed to be a certified war hero, but he was an ace to me. I hungered to be one for him.

My weakness. It had made me act as if I were ten years old again. If I knew Lura, that lapse was going to cost me.

I tried to lose myself in the vibration of the seat beneath me, the steady throb of the engines, the musty odor of old fabric. The diesel-like rumbling transported me into an old nightmare where my fear never lessened, though I’d suffered through it ever since the night Stefan and I fled from Poland. I smelled the ocean, tasted the salt of the Baltic, shivered under its cold spray. The ferry lurched and I clutched the railing, legs apart, braced to stay upright on the deck. Somewhere beyond me in the midnight darkness was a gun. Somewhere out there was the gunman who had pursued us from Warsaw. Nazer al-Nemer, a murderous member of the Abu Nidal Organization. Had he killed Stefan? I heard an Arabic curse. A scratching, scraping noise. Saw the darker shape of a man crawling. The glint of metal that was the missing gun. The clawlike fingers closing around the pistol grip.

My body paralyzed, except for my right leg. Moving like a thing apart. Booted foot settling gently at the base of the man’s skull. The brittle sound as the boot pressed against the delicate bones. Crushed the cervical discs. Ground the particles of bone into dust. I looked down, expecting to see Nazer al-Nemer. But this time I saw Stefan, his face in an agony of death, mouthing words I couldn’t hear.

I woke up shaking, my neck stiff, my throat dry and my cheeks damp. Loving Stefan had brought violence back into my life. And that violence had taken him from me.

Beyond the few unblocked windows, the blackness had faded to navy blue. Lura was asleep next to me, her features relaxed into innocence, an expression I never saw when she was awake.

I fumbled my way into the toilet and splashed water on my face. The paper towel dispenser was empty. I used my sleeve.

The poker game was still going. The bald man had a stack of newspapers next to his right hand and a sack of fruit by his left. I begged a Washington Post and a banana and settled myself in a vacant seat.

The jet was slow, weighed down by the extra fuel. A commercial airliner would make the trip in six hours; we’d be lucky to get there in nine. But I couldn’t complain. I’d gotten away, thanks to Lura.

Lura. She’d phoned me. And my father had tried to reach me, so worried he’d gotten out his emergency-contact number and called Harry. He must’ve also left a message on my machine. But who’d left the third one? And who’d removed the cassette? Not the FBI. They’d surely taped every incoming call. Their man wouldn’t have removed my cassette. Not after he’d been so careful to cover his tracks.

I must have had a second visitor. Someone who came in after the Feds had been there. Someone who hadn’t bothered to rewind and replay the cassette first. If he had, the digital read-out would have disappeared. Someone who wanted the recording itself. And didn’t care if I knew it.

The FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign came on and the plane shuddered its way into a cloudbank. Lura stumbled to the rest room, carrying a makeup case. Someone passed me a paper cup of lukewarm coffee. Lura reappeared after fifteen minutes, her hair artfully arranged in a smooth cap, her skin glowing with moisturizer and her eyes carefully lined and mascaraed.

The plane slid out of the clouds into drizzle, the raindrops glistening like slug tracks across the Plexiglas window. We bumped onto the Hamburg runway soon after that and taxied to a parking area.

We left the plane via a set of portable stairs. An airport bus idled at the bottom, streaking the slick tarmac with amber and red reflections from its lights. The wet air was sticky with the fumes of jet and diesel exhaust.

Lura sat primly on the rear seat of the bus. Her hair and makeup were perfect. Only a patch of silken calf and her red shoes protruded from beneath her coat. The pilot and the co-pilot and the rest of the United Network News people sprawled on the bench seats filling the bus’s midsection, surrounded by their piles of carry-on luggage. An emaciated cameraman with a graying ponytail sat by the rear exit door, holding a camcorder.

I stayed on my feet, clutching one of the center poles. The driver snapped the doors shut, then eased the bus forward. The engine was so silent, I heard only the squeal and thud of the wipers clearing the windshield. There was one passenger on the bus who had not been with us on the plane. The seat behind the driver was filled by a broad-shouldered man in a business suit. He’d been making notes on a clipboard and hadn’t looked up when I passed him. From the rear, I saw only dark hair so close-cropped it exaggerated the bullet shape of his head and neck. His shirt lay in a thin white stripe at the base of his skull, like the crimp on a cartridge, the only indication of where his neck began.

We were headed toward the terminal building. I was edgy. I didn’t expect trouble with Passport Control, not in Hamburg. Buchanan would have red-flagged my name and passport number in the computer system used by the airline counter people—the ones who ask international travelers for their documents along with their tickets. At any airport in North America, I’d have been stopped at check-in. Buchanan hadn’t had time or justification to do more. It was only midnight back in DC. The FBI should be trying to serve me with their subpoena.

Still, I was uneasy. I tried to calm myself. Buchanan might alert Immigration at Heathrow or Kastrup, but he wouldn’t bother the people in Hamburg. If I’d flown commercial, I couldn’t get here without first stopping at a major hub. No, I reassured myself, I needn’t worry. No drowsy border guard coming off the night shift in Hamburg was going to notice Casey Collins. But it took all my self-control not to shift my weight from my right foot to my left, let everyone see how nervous I was.

The driver turned, following a grid layout that would bring us around three sides of a rectangle to park parallel to the curb in front of the terminal. Seat springs complained on my right as Ponytail shifted his position. He raised the camcorder and stared through the lens, making adjustments. I let go of the pole and stepped closer to the rear door. I rubbed condensation off the window and peered out at the building.

A quartet of uniformed policemen stood in front of a television crew, its members dressed as haphazardly as my companions. They were watching our bus approach.

Something clicked. The red light lit up on the camcorder. It was aimed at me. I jerked back from the doorway and faced Lura. She was staring at the terminal, her mouth open. I said, “Some favor you’re doing me.”

“You should have told me.” Lura’s voice was shrill. “I’d never have let this happen.”

“Let what happen?”

“I pitched my idea about you to my producer. She smelled a bigger story.”

From the corner of my eye I saw Ponytail rise, angling for a better shot. I turned and slammed my open palms against the camcorder. It crashed to the floor of the bus.

Ponytail bellowed.

“A bigger story?” I yelled at Lura. “That’s why you’re here!” I looked for a button that would open the door in front of me.

“I’m your friend.” Lura was on her feet. “That’s why I’m here. My producer said, ‘What if Casey’s in trouble? What if she’s on the run? The network can’t aid and abet a fugitive.’”

“Why didn’t she call Buchanan, she thought I was a wanted woman?”

“I told her you weren’t,” Lura said. “You couldn’t be.”

“And she believed you, right?” I spotted no convenient button promising to open the door in front of me. I ran to the front of the bus, searching for a device that would do the trick. I didn’t spot a lever. I threw my body against the door. A jarring pain shot from my shoulder to my sternum. The door didn’t flex.

The stocky man seated behind the driver tossed aside his clipboard. He stood and said something terse in German. Instead of turning right toward the terminal, the driver held the wheel steady and accelerated through the intersection.

“Hey, buddy,” the pilot said. “What’s going on?”

The suited man held up a badge case and flashed a gold-embossed credential. “We’re making a detour for reasons of security.” His accent was hard to place—not German, not French, with a peculiar richness that wasn’t Scandinavian either. “After I remove the woman, the driver will deliver you to the terminal.”

Lura was standing in the aisle. “I never thought this would happen,” she said to me. “My producer was going to call the FBI after we took off, to cover the network.”

“You set it up so you could film my arrest.” I made a disgusted noise. “You’re the reporter on the scene.”

“But I didn’t want that. I wanted you to be innocent.”

She’d wanted. Past tense. She’d abandoned that desire. Decided I was guilty of something. Moral dilemma neatly resolved. She’d done her civic duty and now she’d get her ninety seconds on prime time.

I pressed my back against the door and shoved harder. My heart was pounding. I looked wildly around. Maybe I could grab something heavy enough to break glass.

Ponytail appeared behind Lura, holding the camcorder.

“No film,” said the plainclothes policeman.

The bus driver made a wide turn that took us around the far side of the terminal. He braked there, slowing us gently to a stop opposite an unmarked door.

The arresting officer stood at the head of the aisle, blocking my retreat toward the rear. He was no more than three inches taller than me, but his body was much thicker. His closely cut hair receded at the temples, and the overlarge forehead glistened like the deadly nose of a dum-dum round.

Ponytail ran his hands over the camcorder, as if checking for damage. Then the red light came on. He pushed past Lura to crouch in the center of the bus, aiming at me again.

The cop stepped forward on his right foot. Then his left leg came up and his foot smashed the camcorder against Ponytail’s face. There was a popping noise, like twigs snapping. Again the camera crashed to the floor. The cameraman was curled beside it, clutching his nose, blood running between his fingers and into his mouth.

The policeman picked up the shattered device and twisted out the film cartridge. He stuffed it into his pocket and said, “Here we do not appreciate the media circus.” He tossed the broken camcorder on a seat as he came toward me. He grabbed my left bicep and barked again at the driver. The door flew open and the cop pushed me through it. I stumbled, but his grip was so strong, I couldn’t fall. As soon as we were both on the ground, the door slammed shut and the bus rumbled away.

With his free hand, the cop jerked open the door in front of us and shoved me inside the building. I found myself in a corridor lit by a single fluorescent tube on the ceiling. I smelled old dust. The corridor went straight for a hundred feet, then turned left at a ninety-degree angle. Somewhere out of sight, machinery clattered. My heart was beating fast. Adrenaline had my nerves tuned tight. I gathered my muscles and got ready.

The cop let go of my arm. “Run if you prefer.” He gestured down the corridor. “That path will take you to the working side of the baggage-claim area. Perhaps you can slip out that way.”

His bluish lips curled in a way that made his expression as snide as his tone. He knew I couldn’t saunter unnoticed through a crowd of baggage handlers. And my odds were no better if I went alone back out onto the tarmac. Which left me with this man and his strange accent. “You’re not German,” I said.

“Obviously not.” He removed a satchel from a niche beside the door and pulled out a pair of blue coveralls. He tossed them to me. Then he started jamming himself into a matching set.

There was a change in the din coming from the far end of the corridor. People talking more loudly. A shrill whistle. A dog’s bark. A man’s bellow. I didn’t understand the German, but I recognized the abruptness of a command. The dog barked again and the footfall of heavy boots echoed down the corridor.