its own sublevel of secrets, and our man Kyle held all the skeleton keys to this particular enchanted kingdom.
The trip through the public areas had been a breeze. The two men walked purposefully in front with Molly close behind them. For the most part they went unnoticed, though two or three random people did seem to sense that an incognito starlet might be moving in their midst. At every point along the way where the average passenger would have had to stop and deal with some slow, invasive procedure, there was a special someone stationed nearby to give the three of them a knowing wink, lift up the velvet rope, and wave them on through.
Halfway into the terminal Kyle stopped along the wall, looked furtively both ways, and then keyed open a featureless gray door. Like some portal from rural Kansas into the Land of Oz, inside this door was a large VIP room with elegant furnishings and sitting areas, a bar and some bistro tables, and down the center, a privately staffed setup for dignified, one-on-one security screenings.
“And now, my troopers,” Kyle chirped, “just a quick run through the metal detector and then we’re on to preboarding for a nice, cool glass of champagne. Are we holding up all right?”
“I think we’re fine,” Noah said. Molly breathed an Oscar-worthy sigh of impatience and leaned her head against his arm.
As they approached the area with the X-ray conveyor a TSA employee got up from his chair, put down his magazine, and sidled up to his security post.
When he saw this man Noah stopped in his tracks so suddenly that Molly bumped into him from behind.
“Is something wrong?” Kyle asked, frowning.
“Excuse us for a minute,” Noah said. “I just remembered, we need to make a quick phone call.”
He walked Molly over to the telephone kiosk near the door they’d come in, well out of earshot of Kyle and the others.
“Damn it,” he whispered.
“What is it?” Molly asked. “They’re all over there looking at us.”
“Pretend you’re calling someone on the phone. I’ve got to think for a minute.”
Molly picked up the receiver, put it to her ear, punched a few buttons, and pulled him a little closer. “Now tell me what’s going on.”
“Check out the guy in the TSA outfit.”
She did. “So?”
“Are you kidding me? That’s a Star Wars geek if I ever saw one.”
Maybe it was the Luke Skywalker blow-cut, his mismatched socks below the nerdish cut of his high-riding uniform trousers, or the soul patch and horn-rimmed glasses, but everything about this man was screaming king of the fanboys, and that was really bad news.
“I don’t understand-”
Noah lowered his voice even more. “Natalie Portman is in all three of the Star Wars prequels.”
“You’re remembering this now?”
“I guess I hated those movies so much I’d blocked them out of my mind. But I’d bet my last dollar that dweeb knows Portman’s face like the back of his hand. You don’t understand these guys; he’s probably got a candlelit altar in front of her picture down in his mother’s basement.”
Molly leaned around him to take another stealthy look, and swallowed hard. “What do we do?”
“I vote we get out of here and think of something else.”
“No,” she said, and it sounded like the word was final. “We don’t have time. This is it. We’re here, let’s just do it.”
After a last few seconds to find his nerve, he nodded, fixed her hood and eased the brim of Molly’s baseball cap down a little lower, hung up the phone for her, and then turned around to face the music.
Noah went first, and he passed through the arch of the metal detector without a single blip. Kyle had stationed himself next to the X-ray tech at the luggage conveyor, no doubt ready to smoothly rationalize any oddities that might show up in his clients’ carry-on. Their one item, her duffel bag, went into the long machine and came out the other side with no objection raised.
But the TSA man gave Noah a careful, steady look, as if he were toying with the idea of a wand-sweep and a pat-down, just for good measure.
Along with the recent change in alert status, an official DHS directive would have come around to remind all stations, even this special-purpose one, of the key markers for suspicious activity-last-minute ticket purchases for one-way travel, no checked luggage, nervous or flustered behavior, identification papers not in order-and this little party matched every warning sign.
Kyle cleared his throat meaningfully from where he was standing. This subtle, perfectly pitched intervention was sent to remind the room that this trip had already been preapproved from positions much higher than their own, and these two very important people weren’t to be unnecessarily troubled by the rigors of the standard inquisition.
With some visible reluctance, the stern young officer nodded and gave a jut of his chin to let the first subject know he’d been provisionally cleared for boarding.
So far, so good.
Noah retrieved his belt and his pocket items from the gray utility tub, and prepared to put on his shoes. He’d just begun to let himself believe that they were soon to be home free when the piercing tweet of the metal detector sounded off behind him.
CHAPTER 37
“Could you remove any metallic items and step back through for me, ma’am.”
Polite and professional though it sounded, it was a command and not a request.
Kyle hurried over to escort Molly back to the far side of the electronic gauntlet again, then he looked her up and down in search of whatever offending metal might have set off the alert. In all the rush she’d forgotten about the cell phone in her pocket. Kyle took that and then delicately helped her remove her necklace, bracelet, and the ring on her finger. He placed those items in a tray held out by the officer, and then nodded to her to indicate that all was ready for another try.
Molly walked slowly through the arch again. The vertical line of indicator lights twitched upward from dark green to barely yellow-maybe in reaction to the tiny hinges in her sunglasses-but this time there was no audible alarm.
Noah was the only one in a position to notice a touch of private relief on Molly’s face. She was nearly to the end of the exit track of the detector when she was stopped by the officer’s voice.
“Miss… Portman?”
When Molly turned around she must have seen exactly what Noah was seeing. The TSA man wasn’t focused on her at all. He was staring down at her possessions in his plastic tray.
“Yes?” she said softly.
Now he looked up at her, and raised his hand slowly above the tray. Molly’s silver necklace with its little silver cross was dangling from the knuckle of his thumb.
“I thought,” the officer said, “that you were Jewish.”
It felt like the temperature in the room suddenly dropped by fifty degrees. Noah’s mouth went totally dry, his skin tingling as though all the moisture had flash-frozen out of the atmosphere, settling into a thin layer of frost on everything exposed, suspending those six words on the air.
Cops know liars like plumbers know leaks. They encounter them every day, all day; they know all the little signs and symptoms, and they’re trained to understand that where there’s even a little whiff of smoke, one should always assume there’s a fire. As they challenge a person they study their reactions, pick apart the little telltale movements, listen to the timbre of the voice, and more than anything else, they watch the eyes. Most suspects have already made a full confession by the time they begin their denial.
This was one of the topics of light conversation in the wee hours of that first night when he and Molly had met. Noah had been so fascinated by the woman that he hadn’t stopped to wonder why she seemed to know so much about the art of deception.
