“Should I be?” He smiled. His sportcoat had panels of Dupont Kevlar sewn into it, so it would stop any bullet smaller than a .45 caliber.
The young woman shrugged. ‘It’s your wardrobe, but I would have thought something like that would be required if you want to dress for success in your line of work.”
“Or yours.”
“I’m flat enough as it is. But the point is this. You’re not some kind of kamikaze, are you? Eager to die for the cause?”
“I’d prefer not to. What’s the cause?”
“We thought you might be a little cranky about what’s happened.”
“If the money is all you want, I don’t think we have much to worry about. I didn’t set any traps. I didn’t know I was going on a flight. If I had, I wouldn’t have known where. Most people would have assumed it would be any place but Los Angeles.”
The young woman looked away from him through the large plate-glass windows. The airplane was slowly moving toward the runway. She blew smoke in the air, then pushed her cigarette into the ashtray. “I hope you’re telling the truth, but we’ll know in a minute when we try to get out of here.”
They stood up and walked to the escalator, then rode it down to the ground floor and stepped onto the moving walkway. In front a family wearing Hawaiian shirts blocked them from passing, but the young woman didn’t seem to care. They stood on the long conveyor and drifted sedately toward the main foyer. In a moment, Porterfield knew, they’d be past the bank of metal detectors. From here on there would be danger. Armed men could reach this part of the airport from the parking lots without even passing security guards. He said quietly, “Did you have the courtesy to make a return reservation for me?”
She said, “Here. You might as well have this.” She reached into her purse and produced another airline ticket.
Porterfield accepted the ticket and studied it, then said, “This plane leaves in forty-five minutes. Am I going to make it?”
“As your travel agent, I sincerely hope so. You will unless you managed to get word of your itinerary to someone.”
“How could I do that?”
“The airplane has a radio, and I’m sure you also have a little card that says you can use everybody’s radio.”
“No, my electronic underpants cause static.”
The couple in front of them wearing Hawaiian shirts whispered together. The husband shook his head, but the wife said loudly, “He said ‘electronic underpants.’ I heard him.”
When they reached the end of the conveyor the young woman walked across the main foyer and through the exit to the sidewalk. Hundreds of people were moving into and out of the airline terminal, taxis stopped and started, pudgy little buses deposited streams of passengers. Porterfield said, “What now? We drive to a desert shack and hold me hostage for another”—he glanced at his watch—“thirty-eight minutes?”
“Some other time. Our desert shack is being remodeled, so the paint’s still tacky in the guest room. You’ll have to drop in and see us later. We’re expecting to be able to entertain more lavishly soon.”
“Thank you. I’d enjoy that. What do we do while we’re waiting?” He stepped back to allow a cabdriver to swing a suitcase onto the curb.
“Nothing,” she said, and put her arm in Porterfield’s, walking him to the bench beside the wall. “Sit here, relax. Some nice men in cars out there in the darkness have rifles trained on you right now. Some others are in the airport waiting for you to make a move, so you won’t be lonely. Right now I have to leave you, but I’ll be back.” She turned and walked down the sidewalk and into the terminal again.
Porterfield looked out at the thousands of cars in the lot, then scanned the five-story parking ramp across the drive. He could see nothing for certain—there were silhouettes of heads in many of the cars, and people stood on some of the tiers of the parking ramps, some fumbling with baggage, others just loitering, apparently without another way to pass the time before they expected an airplane to arrive or leave. Probably she hadn’t lied, and at least one of them was there to blow his head off if something went wrong. There was no reason to doubt it, and he knew he wouldn’t do anything different if there were no one watching.
The plan wasn’t bad, he thought. Even if he’d managed to shake the woman and get to a telephone, there was no way he could have done anything. He could tell the San Diego field office that a person arriving on the seven-thirty flight would pick up two brown suitcases that he had baggage claims to match. It would have taken longer than the three-quarter-hour flight even to organize a team, and then they’d see fifty or sixty people arrive and pick up two brown suitcases each. They had no way to arrest anyone or even examine the suitcases. Meanwhile, Porterfield would be here with guns trained on him. It wasn’t bad. He smiled as he glanced at his watch again. It was after seven-thirty already, and the baggage would now be rolling down the ramp in the San Diego airport. He waited.
The young woman appeared again far down the sidewalk. He watched as she walked toward him. She had one hand in her purse, fumbling around for something. His jaw tightened, then the hand emerged and it held a cigarette and a lighter. He leaned back on the bench and sighed.
She stopped in front of the bench and lit the cigarette. “Stretch your legs, Daddy. You’ve got a long flight ahead of you.”
“That’s a relief.” Porterfield stood up. “My wife will be pleased. I left word I might be gone for a couple of days.”
“You people have wives?” She seemed startled.
“Sure. Wives, kids. Of course, my kids are grown up and married. We even had a dog, but he died a few years ago.”
They walked on in silence between the metal detectors, along the moving walkway, and up the escalator to the boarding area. Finally she stopped him. “Wait. Here’s the locker key. Inside the locker is the original set of papers. You’ve got a minute or two. Don’t bother to be careful about the briefcase or the papers. There aren’t any fingerprints on anything.”
He stared at her. “That’s not necessary. We have copies.”
“But we wanted you to know, and we thought that if you had them back—”
“Know what?”
“That it’s over. As of this minute, we’re out of this business. There’s no reason now to hunt for us.”
Porterfield handed the key back to her. “Do me a favor. Just take it with you and burn it. Burn the other copies you have. Forget you ever saw it.” He turned and walked to the boarding gate.
Porterfield leaned back and studied Theophilus Seyell’s father. It was an impossible face, the features a child’s imagination would create to complete the specter that seemed to materialize at night among the clothes in his darkened closet. “There isn’t any problem unless we invent one. Everyone who might have been vulnerable has been rotated. Most of the people responsible for the papers are dead.”
“But there are still interests that need to be insured.”
Porterfield nodded. “Of course.”
“I’ll start organizing a field team as quietly as possible. My own people may be the only ones I can afford to use right now, but—”
“Don’t bother.”
“Given the time and the resources, anyone can be hunted down. And these people have too much money to remain invisible for long.”
“No. I’ll handle it.”
