Chapter 12
“Please empty your pockets and step through the gate. Thank you. Please empty your pockets, you can use one of the buckets there, sir, and proceed through the gate. Thank you.”
The security guard at Shannon Airport in Ireland watched as each of the people in line followed procedure like docile sheep. He liked to think maybe once, just once, someone might step out of line and then he would have to tackle him to the ground, put his suspect in handcuffs, maybe even draw his weapon. He, Logan Hurley, would be a hero. Stopping terrorism at its origin.
And since the terminal he typically worked housed most of the planes heading to America, he’d be a hero over there, too. They might even want to have a parade for him. He could stay with his cousin Patty in Boston, then go on to New York…
It was the sheets, or what he figured were sheets, wrapped around the body of a woman that caught his attention and brought him back from his daydream of ticker tape parades. No doubt someone at the ticketing counter had already checked the woman’s passport, and again as she passed through customs, but still Logan was suspicious.
How could he not be when the woman was practically invisible to the world but for her eyes. He noted her exceptionally long lashes and thought that she was probably very pretty underneath all the robes and such. Not for the first time he wondered what inspired a woman to dress this way.
But people had their customs. His dear mother wouldn’t be caught out on the street without her rosary wrapped around her hand. He assumed it was much the same for this woman. Still, she had to accept that if she dressed like this she was going to elicit suspicion. And there was nothing in the rule book about not checking a passport twice.
“Step through the gate, ma’am.”
She did so and Logan noted that she wore nothing to set off the metal detector.
“Now, if you would step over here for a moment.”
She didn’t hesitate and immediately raised her glove-encased hands out to her sides already anticipating that he would use the wand on her. It signaled to Logan that she traveled often and understood the procedures. It was also a signal that she was accustomed to drawing attention.
For a moment, a wisp of guilt hit him. She hadn’t done anything wrong but had followed the dictates of her religion and for that she was a suspect? Logan decided to forgo the wand.
“You can put your hands down, ma’am. I do need to see your passport, though.”
He could see the question in her eyes, but she said nothing. Reaching inside her pale gray wrap she extracted a passport and showed him the picture, fumbling a little bit with the tiny book as the gloves appeared to be a little long for her fingers. In the picture her face was uncovered from forehead to chin. He noted the long lashes and a mole above her lip.
“You’re going to have to let me see your face, ma’am.”
She started to shake her head, then stopped. Instead she began to pull down the fabric that rested high on the bridge of her nose until she had revealed the dark mole just above her upper lip.
Once Logan spotted the mole, he figured that was good enough.
“All right, ma’am, you can be on your way. Have a nice flight.” He handed the passport back to her and it disappeared into her robes. As she walked away from him, Logan thought again about her lashes. They really were very long and very pretty.
There were two things that Ali Kahsan knew about airplane travel. Women were always overlooked by security-at the gates, at customs, it didn’t matter.
And the airline food was always prohibitively bad.
He counted on the first being true, and he always ate before he flew.
There were times when he wondered how the Western world, so intent on the safety of its people, could be so easily duped by a simple costume. Not that he minded. Still a challenge, just once, getting through what he loosely termed
For now there was no point in creating such a challenge. He had easily made his way on to the plane. Easily made it past the customs officers waiting in Boston who, because of his costume, didn’t notice his sneer as he read the large Welcome To America sign set against the red, white and blue background over the doors leading out to the airport. And easily made it outside the building to the rows of narrow busy streets where buses dropped off and picked up their charges, and wives and husbands and friends picked up their loved ones.
Amidst the chaos he found the limousine he’d arranged for waiting for him.
Once securely inside it, behind the tinted windows, he removed the abaya, revealing a very American-looking Polo shirt, complete with a pony rider over his heart, and a pair of khakis. He peeled off the fake eyelashes. Plucked off the mole. The gloves, a size too large because they made his hands seem smaller, were tossed aside, as well.
Sitting back against the plush leather seat, dressed in nothing more than a short-sleeved shirt and lightweight pants, it occurred to him suddenly that it was cold. Damn cold. How people suffered through this thing known as winter, he would never know. He thought of his home in the desert and almost sighed longingly. Instead he turned up the heat.
Speaking the clear refined English he’d learned well at Oxford, Kahsan asked the driver for the estimated time of arrival to their first destination. There was something that he needed to pick up before he could proceed with his mission. The driver responded in English, although with a heavier accent, that they had approximately a three-hour drive.
“Have we heard from my men?”
“Not for over an hour.”
Past the designated check-in time. No doubt dead, he concluded. But that wasn’t his concern. Their mission was accomplished. He was in the country now, on the East Coast where he needed to be. He’d originally considered making the trip via a cargo ship, but had decided that the precaution was unnecessary and time-consuming. Given the success of this costume, his calculated risk had proven to be the right move.
“Have we heard from her?”
“Not yet.”
Soon though, he thought. If he’d lost contact with his men that meant they’d been engaged. The government had finally moved on her and should be taking her to the final destination. If she hadn’t been lying to him, she would be able to give him the location within hours. The clock was on. Three hours was going to be a tight fit, but the detour was absolutely necessary. It was his contingency plan. For he was a very cautious man.
“Excellent. Oh, and somewhere on the way if you spot a store of some sort, I think I’m going to need a sweater. Make that happen, will you?”
The driver didn’t need to reply. He simply needed to make it happen.
“You know there are times when you make it very easy to hate you,” Sabrina puffed out as she jogged the last few steps, finally catching up with Quinlan, who had stopped jogging as soon as the motel came into view.
“I told you those cigarettes weren’t good for you.”
She scowled at him. He wasn’t even breathing hard. It had been his idea to pick up the pace by jogging. Which, under normal circumstances, she might have been able to handle. On a flat road, in jogging clothes and socks. And after a full night’s rest. As of now, she’d been awake twenty-four hours and it wasn’t as though she’d done a whole lot of sleeping since the night she’d gotten Arnold’s e-mail. She was starting to feel it, but Quinlan looked as if he could jog another ten miles if he had to.
Bastard.
They made their way into the motel lobby where an older Indian man sat behind a desk with a bored expression on his face. A mini-TV could be heard but not seen leading her to believe it was situated somewhere under the counter. Sabrina heard Matt Lauer talking about the ramifications of computer viruses. Predictably, the name he invoked was Sal Ploxm’s.
She huffed. This time not because she was out of breath. Ploxm’s reputation was getting a little out of hand. Whoever he was, he was just a hacker. Talented, sure, but the world was full of them. She wasn’t certain why she
