I pulled the blanket over my head to cut out the smell.
TEN
The flight touched down ten minutes early, at eleven thirty local time. One of the first off, I followed the signs for baggage reclaim and Customs, past banks of chrome and brown leatherette seating.
After three hours of air-conditioning, the heat hit me like a wall. In my hand were the two forms we'd been given to fill in on the aircraft, one for Immigration, one for Customs. Mine said that Nick Hoff was staying at the Marriott there is always a Marriott.
Apart from the clothes I stood up in jeans, sweatshirt and bomber jacket the only items I had with me were my passport and wallet containing five hundred US dollars. It had come from an ATM in Miami departures, courtesy of my new Royal Bank of Scotland Visa card in my crap cover name.
Feeling like one of the Camden lot, I'd looked at myself in a toilet mirror:
sleep creases all over my face and hair sticking up like the lead singer in an in die band.
I needn't have worried. Passing through Immigration turned out to be a breeze, even without any luggage. I just handed over my declaration form to a bored, middle-aged man and he waved me through: I guessed they'd hardly be on the lookout for anyone trying to smuggle drugs into Central America.
I also shot through Customs, because all I had was nothing. I should really have bought a piece of hand luggage in Miami to look normal, but my head must have been elsewhere. Not that it mattered; the Panamanian Customs boys were obviously in the same place.
I headed towards the exit, fitting my new Leatherman on to my belt. I'd bought it in Miami to replace the one Sundance had nicked from me, and airport security had taken it off me and packed it into a Jiffy-bag in case I tried to use it to hijack the plane. I'd had to collect it from the luggage service desk when we landed.
The small arrivals area was hosting the noise-and-crush Olympics. Spanish voices hollered, Tannoys barked, babies cried, mobiles rang with every tune known to man. Steel barriers funnelled me deeper into the hall. I walked on, scanning the faces of waiting families and taxi drivers, some holding up name cards. Women outnumbered men, either very skinny or very overweight but not much in between.
Many held bunches of flowers, and screaming two-year-olds mountaineered all over them. Three or four deep against the barriers, they looked like fans at a Ricky Martin concert.
At last, amongst the surge of people, I spotted a square foot of white card with the name Tanklewitz' in capitals in marker pen. The long-haired man holding it looked different from the clean-cut CIA operator I'd been expecting. He was slim, about my height, maybe five ten, and probably in his mid- to late fifties.
He was dressed in khaki shorts and a matching photographer's waistcoat that looked as if it doubled as a han drag at the local garage. His salt-and-pepper hair was tied back in a ponytail, away from a tanned face that had a few days' silver growth. His face looked worn: life had obviously been chewing on it.
I walked straight past him to the end of the barrier, wanting to tune in to the place first, and watch this man for a while before I gave myself over to him. I carried on towards the glass wall and sliding exit doors about ten metres ahead.
Beyond them was a car park, where blinding sunlight bounced off scores of windscreens. The Flying Dogs hot dog and nacho stall to the left of the doors seemed as good a place as any to stop; I leant against the glass and watched my contact getting pushed and shoved in the melee.
Aaron1 presumed it was him was trying to check every new male arrival who emerged from Customs, whilst also checking every few seconds that the name card was the right way up before trying to thrust it above the crowd once more. The taxi drivers were old hands at this game and were able to stand their ground, but Aaron kept being buffeted by the surge of bodies. If this had been the January sales, he'd have come away with a pair of odd socks.
Now and again I caught sight of his tanned, hairless legs. They were muscular and scratched around the calves, and the soles of his feet were covered by old leather Jesus sandals, not the more usual sports ones. This wasn't holiday attire, that was for sure. He looked more like a farmhand or hippie throwback than any kind of doctor.
As I watched and tuned in, Tiger Lil burst into the hall, heaving an enormous squeaky-wheeled suitcase behind her. She screamed in unison with two equally large black women as they jumped all over each other, kissing and cuddling.
The arrivals area was packed with food and drink stalls, all producing their own smells that bounced off the low ceiling and had nowhere to escape to. Brightly dressed Latinos, blacks, whites and Chinese all clamoured to outdo each other in the loudest shout competition. My guess was that Aaron would lose that as well as the keep- your-place-in-the-crowd contest. He was still bobbing around like a cork on a stormy sea.
The air-conditioning might have been working, but not well enough to handle the heat of so many bodies. The stone floor was wet with condensation, as if it had just been mopped, and the bottom foot or so of the glass wall was fogged with moisture. The heat was already getting to me. I felt sweat leak from my greasy skin and my eyes were stinging. Taking off my jacket, I leant against the glass once more, my clammy arm sticking to my sweatshirt.
A group of five stony-faced policemen hovered about in severely pressed khaki trousers and badge-festooned, short-sleeved shirts. They looked very macho with their hands resting on their holstered pistols and feet tapping in black patent leather shoes. Apart from that, the only things moving were their peaked hats as they checked out three tight-jeaned and high heeled Latino women passing by
Sitting on a bench to the left of the policemen was the only person here who wasn't sweating and out of control. A thirty something white woman, she looked like GI Jane, with short hair, green fatigue cargos and a baggy grey vest that came high up her neck. She still had her sunglasses on and her hands were wrapped around a can of Pepsi.
Two things struck me as I looked around the hall. The first was that virtually everybody seemed to have a mobile on their belt or in their hand. The other was the men's shirts. Like the police uniforms, they were dramatically pressed and the arm crease went all the way over the shoulder and up to the collar. Maybe there was only one laundry in town.
After about a quarter of an hour the crowd was thinning as the last of the loved ones trickled through and the taxi fares got picked up. Calm descended, but probably only until the next flight arrived.
Aaron was now in my direct line of sight, standing with the remaining few still waiting at the barrier. Under his dirty waistcoat he had a faded blue T-shirt with some barely readable Spanish on the front. I watched as he held up his card to the last few passengers, even leaning over the barrier, straining to read the flight numbers on their luggage tags.
It was now time to cut away from everything else going on in my head except work, the mission. I hated that word, it sounded far too Army, but I was going to use it to keep my head where it should be.
I had one last check around the hall for anything unusual, then realized that everything I saw fell into that category: the whole arrivals area looked like a dodgy-characters convention. I started my approach.
I must have been about three steps away from his back as he thrust his card under the nose of an American business suit pulling his bag on wheels behind him.
'Mr. Yanklewitz?'
He spun round, holding the card against his chest like a schoolboy in show-and tell He had bloodshot but very blue eyes, sunk into deep crow's feet.
I was supposed to let him initiate conversation with a story that involved a number, something like, 'Oh, I hear you have ten bags with you?' to which I would say, 'No, I have three', that sort of thing. But I really couldn't be bothered: I was hot, tired, and I wanted to get on.
'Seven.'
'Oh, that would make me six then, I guess.' He sounded a little disappointed. He'd probably been working on his story all morning. |l I smiled. There was an expectant pause: I was waiting for him to tell me what to do next.
'Er, OK, shall we go, then?' His accent was soft, educated American.
'Unless of course you want to-' I don't want to do anything, apart from go with you.'
'OK. Please, this way.'
We started towards the exit and I fell into step on his left. He folded the card as he went, moving faster than I'd have liked. I didn't want us looking unnatural but, then, what was I worrying about in this madhouse?
