It’ll be okay, babe, I heard Zack’s voice in my head.
“I know it will,” I said, just a whisper, as I opened the second folder I had brought with me, the one with the file marked Agency.
I could almost see his smile. Because I’m with you? he asked, hopeful.
“No,” I replied, with just a tinge of regret at disappointing him but with hope of my own because of the true answer. “Because I am.”
Chapter 40
I stepped to the front of the customs line hours later in the Minneapolis airport. The direct flight was a pleasant bonus, even if the reading material hadn’t quite been what I had expected. I fingered the strap of my bag as I thought about the folder within it, the one marked “Agency.” I hadn’t quite known how to process what I’d read from it, and it had been all I could do to keep from expressing my surprise in a way that would disturb my fellow passengers.
The synthetic smell of airport air and travelers who had been cooped up in a plane for far too long hit my nose as I broke away from the strangled mass of humanity that had snaked its way through metal posts bound together by straps to form the line. The man behind the customs desk waved me forward and I walked up to him, handing him my passport.
“Anything to declare?” he asked as he took it from me and scanned it like it was a can of beans at the supermarket. It even made a little beep.
“England is a lovely country filled with lovely people,” I said.
He gave me a half nod, a grudging concession as he stared down at the computer screen he had just below my eye level. “Any fruits or vegetables?”
“No.”
“Did you stay in England during your entire trip?” His voice was almost mechanical, as if he’d asked these questions a time or two before. He looked up at me on this one, and I thought I sensed just the faintest amount of stress in his expression as he looked back at me expectantly.
“Yes.”
With a final nod, he handed my passport back to me. “You’ll need to submit to luggage inspection to make sure you’re not bringing any fruits and vegetables in—”
“My word’s not good enough?” I asked with faint amusement.
He smiled tightly. “Random inspections, you understand. Just the luck of the draw that your number came up.” He pointed to a door beyond the luggage carousels, just to the left of the Customs exit. “Go through there, they’ll be expecting you, Ms. Clarke.”
“Thanks,” I said, remembering Clarke was the name on my passport. I gave him a phony smile in return and headed off across the customs area. At least I knew I wasn’t going to have to worry about getting caught with any fruits or vegetables.
The air was stale and the lines had stopped moving. I glanced back at the kiosks set up for travelers, but every single one of them was on a kind of hold, shuffling papers, not calling anyone else forward. I wondered if they were in the process of doing some sort of shift change but didn’t give it another thought as I approached the men standing next to the door beneath the sign that declared, “INSPECTIONS,” in bold letters.
They were shuffling quietly, having something that almost seemed like a casual conversation but wasn’t. I could read the tension in their bodies, as if they weren’t quite comfortable with each other. I wondered which of them had slept with the other’s wife, but I realized that wouldn’t account for the tension in both. I took a breath and smelled the same cologne on both of them, then wondered if maybe they’d slept with each other and were embarrassed by it. I chucked that distraction aside as I passed between the two of them with a weak smile at each that wasn’t returned.
I entered the customs inspection room to find one man waiting for me about twenty feet away, dressed singularly unlike the rest of the customs employees. He was waiting behind a table, in a suit that was far cheaper than most of the ones I’d seen in my life, and had his shoes sticking out beyond the edge of the table in front of me. His hands were back behind his head, and he watched me with almond eyes, his Asian heritage obvious as he stared me down.
The sound of a door slamming behind me was the signal that finally drove home to me that I had landed in some form of trouble. As I turned from the man at the table to the door at his left, that route evaporated as well as eight men in tactical vests with submachine guns stormed through and lined up behind him, their weapons trained on me.
They had me. There was no way I could take them all out before they riddled me with bullets. I gave them the once-over, looking for weaknesses but seeing none that were obvious. When enough time had passed that it had been made plain to me exactly what my situation was, the Asian man finally spoke, sliding his chair back and standing, straightening his suit.