The Flight Attendant

by Chris Bohjalian

  “Please, tell us exactly what happened,” Marco was saying. His English was excellent, though his accent was thick. “There were passengers in the area who feared that some sort of attack was in progress—a terrorist attack. One said she expected explosions and gunfire. Another Amsterdam. Another Istanbul.”

  Cassie had felt the adrenaline draining like water from an unstoppered tub as the nurse had treated her for the pepper spray, and now she wanted nothing more than to go to the airline’s hotel and sleep. She had been awake roughly twenty-four hours and the result was the sort of bedlam that she wrought usually when she was drunk—not sober. But she was also anxious to talk to Ani and tell her what had happened. There were three points that she wanted to make: She had seen a woman with an uncanny resemblance to Miranda in passport control, and the woman had vanished before exiting into baggage. She had spotted a second woman with the same carry-on duffel near the luggage carousels, and she had also looked a bit like Miranda, but with different-colored hair. Then she had accosted that second woman by mistake—and wound up pepper-sprayed by a third.

  She was not quite ready to admit that she had not seen Miranda at the airport. She thought it unlikely that she had, but a small part of her still believed (or at least tried to believe) that she had indeed spotted her and the woman had managed to disappear. It was that same part of her that had the distinct sense she had been tailed in Manhattan and someone was watching her. And so she wanted to learn if there was any way that Ani could check the passenger manifests of the flights that morning into Fiumicino and see if there was a traveler with that name on a plane. She also wanted to ask Ani this: if it was Miranda, why would she be here? It couldn’t be a coincidence. It had to mean that the woman had followed her to Rome.

  She tried to recall details of Miranda’s face from her visit to Alex’s hotel suite—her eyes, her lips, the way she was wearing her hair—piecing them together with the person she had glimpsed that morning in the passport queue. The truth was, she had already been well beyond blitzed by the time she had met Miranda in Dubai. How accurate was her memory, really? And now she had just accosted some poor, innocent woman who simply had a passing resemblance to the individual she’d met one time in circumstances that were (as they frequently were in her life) clouded by alcohol. Meanwhile, it was possible that the actual woman had eluded her and gotten away.

  “Late last month,” she began, “I spent the night in Dubai with a man I had met on an airplane earlier that day. I was in his hotel room. After I left the next morning to catch my flight to Paris, someone murdered him. And that woman I was trying to talk to in baggage…she reminded me of someone who had come to his hotel room the night before.”

  Marco raised an eyebrow: “She spent the night, too, so it was the three of you?”

  “No. Not at all. She just came by for a drink. Then she left.”

  “What’s her name?” he asked.

  “I don’t know her last name. But she said in Dubai that her first name was Miranda.”

  “And you attacked a passenger this morning because you thought it was her?”

  “I didn’t attack anyone. That woman with the pepper spray overreacted and attacked me.”

  Marco and Tommaso exchanged a glance, and instantly she felt judged. Tommaso looked at something on his laptop. “I will rephrase,” said Marco. “And so you approached a passenger this morning because you thought it was her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I was trying to stop her.”

  “Stop her from what?” Marco inquired.

  “From getting away. She—”

  Marco put one hand up, palm flat, quieting her. “Please,” he said firmly. Then he leaned forward and clasped his hands together on the table. “Please, let’s start again. If you don’t mind, let’s go back to the beginning. To Dubai.”

  “Do I need to call the American embassy? Do I need a lawyer?”

  “Why? We’re not arresting you. The woman who you…approached…isn’t even here. She’s probably left by now. She’s probably begun her vacation here in Italy.”

  “She left?”

  “Yes.”

  Again Cassie felt a surge, as if she had just pressed her foot down hard on the treadle that powered her angst. The fact the woman had fled meant something. Wouldn’t a normal person have stayed? “Can you find her?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Will you try? Maybe use the security camera footage and the witness descriptions? You must have both.”

  “Her back was to the camera in that section. It’s not as well lit as we’d like. And she was wearing a beautiful hat and sunglasses. We can’t even say for sure what color her hair was.”

  “It was blond.”

  “Fine. You think it was blond.”

  “And you have witnesses. God, you have that nut ball with the pepper spray!” she said, and she heard a quiver in her voice. She knew that sound: it was exhaustion and frustration mixing rather toxically together. She considered adding, illegal pepper spray, because pepper spray—especially one disguised as a lipstick—wasn’t allowed in a carry-on bag.

  “We do,” he answered. “And they—including the American with the pepper spray—can describe you beautifully. And, yes, they can describe the way you threw yourself on the lady.”

  “I didn’t throw myself on her.”

  Again the two men glanced at each other. She realized that while they weren’t going to arrest her, neither were they going to help her.

  “Can we go back to Dubai?” Marco asked. “Tell us about that night.”

  “I think I should just go.”

  “We want to understand what happened.”

  “Then call the U.S. embassy or let me call them. I’m too tired to talk to you right now without someone from the embassy with me.”

  “It will take at least an hour—maybe more—for them to get here. And that assumes someone is available. I’m sure you don’t want to wait that long.”

  “Then I’m just going to leave, thank you very much. You said you’re not arresting me.”

  “No.” There was a long beat, and then Marco lifted from the table a photocopy of her passport and waved it almost dismissively. “But we know exactly who you are, Ms. Bowden. Interpol knows exactly who you are.”

  “Then why did you waste my time asking me about Dubai?” she snapped. “I’m exhausted, and I was just attacked!”

  “When people are exhausted, they are often the most cooperative. The most talkative.”

  “So, what’s next? Waterboarding?”

  He shrugged. “Your country does that. Not mine.”

  “I’m leaving.”

  “As you wish,” he said. He asked her for the name of the hotel where she was staying and her cell phone number, which he wrote down on the copy of her passport. Tommaso typed it into the laptop.

  “How long will you be in Rome?” he asked.

  “Until tomorrow. Late morning.”

  “Flight two-ten to JFK, right?”

  “Right.”

  He nodded a little smugly. “I know your airline’s schedule well. I know most airlines’ schedules well.” Then he stood and Tommaso stood, and so she rose from her chair as well. “We’ll call you today if we need to talk to you again. But Ms. Bowden?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please, for your own sake, don’t attack—pardon me, approach—strange women while you’re here.” He was smiling, but there was a cloying, ominous lilt to his voice, and she felt his words were more threat than advice.

  23

  Airports fascinated Elena because of the way everyone was wired when they were there. Everyone was amped. There were the passengers who were nervous and tense, stressed because they were worried—and this was the anxiety spectrum—about their connections or they were white-knuckle flyers or th
ey were on high alert for the heat and light and the eardrum-shattering thunder from a terrorist bomb. There were the more frequent flyers who were fretting about connections or upgrades, and those who were annoyed by the inconveniences of clear plastic three-one-one bags and metal detectors and having to step from their wingtips and sneakers. (Her own frustration? She was always piqued by the idiots who put their filthy shoes in the bins with their coats and bags. She cringed when she’d have to layer a cashmere sweater into a plastic tray that a moment ago had been cheek-to-cheek with soles that regularly stood before urinals.)

  Elena had slipped the straw hat back into her duffel even before she had exited baggage. She considered ducking into the ladies’ room and pulling on a different wig, but she knew that Bowden wasn’t going to be leaving the airport anytime soon. There was nothing more to worry about.

  The irony that the flight attendant had spotted her in passport control in Rome was not lost on her. Viktor was certain to say something. He might do more than that. Far more. And yet the possibility of running into Bowden was what had led her to fly out of Newark instead of JFK in the first place.

  On the other hand, it was an unexpected little gift that Bowden had seen her and attacked her. And then there was the good fortune that some vigilante from Massachusetts had come to her aid. Elena had been ready with her own pepper spray, but she hadn’t needed it. She’d slipped what looked like an elegant Italian fountain pen discreetly back into her purse after Bowden had collapsed to her knees, her hands on her face.

  She paused when she caught a whiff of jet fuel as she stood in line outside for a cab. She hated the smell of jet fuel. It nauseated her. But she shook it off because it was sunny and the encounter in baggage was a rather good thing. A rather good thing indeed. She would definitely tell Viktor that. As far as the gaping world was concerned, it was all further proof that the flight attendant was completely unhinged. The cause and effect was clear: Bowden murders Sokolov in Dubai. She is outed by the New York Post. She lunges at a strange woman in Fiumicino. Tomorrow morning when her body was found in Rome, everyone would think it was eminently likely—it was downright predictable—that the flight attendant had killed herself.

  Assuming, of course, that she went ahead with the plan. First, however, she wanted to understand precisely what this brother-in-law did at the Blue Grass Army Depot and how much Sokolov could have picked up online. She knew what she herself could learn—easily, one call and then one call back—but she had to know what he could have learned. That was different. She also wanted to dive into onionland and her dark assets online to see if her instincts about Bowden, her brother-in-law Dennis McCauley, and the courier were correct. Then she had to have a consult with her handler. She knew she couldn’t stall very much longer. They knew that, too. She wondered what the next twelve hours would bring. Or, for that matter, the next twenty-four. Either they brought her in or Bowden was dead. It all depended on how badly they wanted to know about Viktor Olenin and his dreams of drones and poison gas.

  24

  Makayla told Cassie that she was thirty-six while they were seated in the backseat of the small cab into Rome. She and her husband, an ad executive, had a five-year-old daughter who was about to start kindergarten. They lived in Douglaston, Queens, and her in-laws lived nearby, which was a godsend when it came to childcare. She talked and talked, asking almost no questions, which was perfect, because the cab was stifling in the midday August heat and Cassie wanted only to listen. She might even have fallen asleep if, once they were inside the Rome traffic ring, the cab hadn’t been stopping and starting with unpredictable (and incessant) violence. But Makayla’s voice was low and kind, and Cassie imagined that voice reading aloud to her daughter those nights when she wasn’t flying to Frankfurt or Rome.

  God, Cassie thought, what must it be like to have a daughter? To have children? One time she saw a quote written in blue and yellow chalk on a blackboard outside a clothing shop in the West Village: “Remember that person you wanted to be? There’s still time.” She wanted to believe that; she wanted to believe it almost desperately. She wanted to be different from what she was—to be anything but what she was. But every day that grew less and less likely. Life, it seemed to her in the back of the cab, was nothing but a narrowing of opportunities. It was a funnel.

  “Here’s our hotel,” Makayla was saying, and before Cassie could reach for her wallet inside her purse, the other flight attendant had paid for the ride.

  “Please, let me pay you back,” she said. She knew they were staying at the same hotel where the airline had booked them last week, but it still caused her to sigh in frustration when she looked up at the entrance. She thought instantly of how she would have to avoid Enrico. He would see the other crew members in their iconic black and blue and red uniforms and speculate that she was in the hotel, too.

  “Not a big deal,” said Makayla. “You can buy me a drink tonight. How’s that?”

  Cassie smiled at the suggestion. The fact that for Makayla alcohol was nothing more than a shorthand for friendship and camaraderie wasn’t lost on her. It was for so much of the world. “Okay,” she said and hoped that if they did have that drink, the gods would be kind to her and today would be Enrico’s day off. The driver lifted their two suitcases from the back of the cab. “Thank you,” she said to Makayla. “I mean that. Thank you for everything.”

  “You’re welcome—though I really didn’t do anything. Now, you should go get some sleep. I can certainly use a nap.”

  Cassie nodded and watched a bellman carry her suitcase up half a dozen marble steps and then roll it to the reception desk. She would sleep. But first she would call her lawyer back in New York. It was almost seven a.m. on the East Coast. Ani would most likely be up.

  * * *

  « «

  “You saw her?” It was a question, but Cassie could hear the shock and incredulity in Ani’s voice over the phone.

  “Maybe,” Cassie said. “I’m torn. I thought I did. I was sure at the time I did. But the more I think back on the moment, the more it seems possible I was mistaken. Maybe this is just one more example of the way I’m losing my mind. It’s just getting harder and harder to keep it together. That may scare me as much as anything right now.” She was perched in the desk chair in her hotel room, one leg underneath her. She feared that if she sat on the bed, she would lie down and fall asleep midconversation. Maybe she’d never get up. She was on a different floor from last week but on the same side of the building, and once more she could see the towers of the Trinità dei Monti outside her window.

  “Tell me exactly what happened,” Ani demanded, and so Cassie did, including her interview with Fiumicino’s airport security.

  “Did you just yawn?” Ani asked when she had finished.

  “I’m exhausted.”

  “I get it. But you must realize that going after some poor woman in baggage is exactly the sort of thing that gives the airline a reason to put you on a leave of absence. Today’s New York Post? Nah. They won’t ground the Cart Tart Killer—that’s just alleged craziness—but they will ground a flight attendant who is demonstrably unstable in baggage at a major international airport.”

  The magnitude of that sentence caused Cassie to nod, even though she was alone in the room. “That has crossed my mind,” she admitted.

  “And obviously you have given the prosecution, when they get around to you, a little more fodder. This is a thousand times worse than calling Sokolov’s family in Virginia on Saturday night.”

  “I know.”

  “And yet you went up to this lady in the airport just because she had the same duffel bag as the person you saw in line? What did you think, she’d put on a disguise?”

  “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. I was just so frustrated that the woman I thought was Miranda was suddenly gone.”

  “God. I really am worried about you. You are completely out of control.”
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  “I know. I’m a little scared, Ani. I’m scared I’m not thinking straight anymore, even when I’m sober. I mean, I thought I was being followed in New York.”

  “What?”

  “Twice I saw a guy with a black ball cap on the street behind me. He was wearing sunglasses. Another time I was sure he was there.”

  “But you didn’t see him?”

  “Not the third time. That’s my point. I think I’m losing it.”

  “Maybe you are. But maybe not. I wouldn’t be surprised if the FBI has someone watching you.”

  “So I’m not crazy?”

  “Oh, you are crazy, Cassie. You’re an absolute mess. But that doesn’t mean you’re not being followed. Please view the pepper spray as a wake-up call. A warning. I’m sorry it happened. I really am because I hate to think of your discomfort. But I’m also a little grateful that someone dialed you down before you did something absolutely insane.”