Passenger List

by John Scott Dryden

  His voice sounded so awfully flat, drained of any emotion, like he’d been drugged. ‘Dad, I was worried. Are you OK? You called.’

  ‘I just wanted to hear your voice, my daughter. It’s been so long.’

  She heard a faint slur in his words. Was he drunk? During the day?

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t called much, Dad. I—’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know, you have your life now. You don’t need us any more.’

  She felt stung by that, though she knew he didn’t mean it. ‘Dad, are you OK?’

  ‘We’re worried about you, Kaitlin, your mother and I,’ he went on as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘You were so close to Conor. And now … and now he’s left such a space in your life.’

  The words drained away and Kaitlin heard a stifled sobbing. A moment later, the line went dead.

  Feeling sick at the buried suffering she’d sensed, she hurried to call her mother’s number.

  ‘Mom. I just had a strange call from Dad. He seems so … I mean, not like himself. How’s he doing?’

  The brief silence that followed told her all she needed to know. Her mother was usually quick to fill every space with words.

  ‘Your father is finding things … difficult at the moment. He keeps a lot bottled up and then … well, it’s not good for him.’

  ‘Have you talked it through with him?’

  ‘You know how he is. He won’t admit to anything.’ She paused, then added hopefully, ‘You could come home for a while. He’d love to have you around.’

  Kaitlin felt her heart sink. ‘Mom, I can’t.’

  ‘OK. Not to worry. Your father’s a strong man. He just needs time to come to terms with this.’

  ‘Look, just … Just let me know if there’s any change, or anything … anything … You know.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I love you, Mom.’

  As she hung up, Kaitlin felt a dull ache seeping deep into her. She was worried about her dad. She was worried about her mom. She was worried about all of them.

  If she found answers, perhaps that would heal some of the pain. She had to focus on that. It was all she had.

  Dust motes danced in the sunlight slanting through the window of the Atlanta motel room. Kaitlin sat cross-legged on the bed and called Agent Dennison.

  ‘The moment I mentioned the CDC, he went from a professor geeking out to sketchy scientist protecting state secrets,’ she said.

  ‘And he said specifically that Dr Aziz was working on biological weapons, not chemical ones?’

  ‘Right. Could that have brought the plane down? I mean, if he’d had some sort of virus or nerve agent on board.’

  ‘Certainly. If he’d found a way to get the agent into the air recirculation system, disabled the filters, it could have incapacitated everyone in minutes. But I don’t think the plane was brought down.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The shadow, Kaitlin! That plane is safe and sound somewhere. If Dr Aziz had found a virus that was truly 7h:100c:95f and was planning on releasing it or selling it, that’s plenty of reason to ground a plane.’

  Kaitlin swallowed. Her mouth was too dry. She didn’t know if she could cope with this line of inquiry. She’d spent so long convincing herself that Conor was dead, she didn’t want to reignite all the feelings with false hope.

  ‘Who do you think he’d have been selling it to?’ she asked, forcing herself to be businesslike.

  ‘Anyone. The bioweapon black market is massive and global. He may have been smuggling something from Russia, or his own lab. I imagine there would be a buyer for it back home, but maybe he got a better offer here.’

  Her cell buzzed with another incoming call. ‘Gotta go. I’ll be in touch.’ She switched to the new call. It was her mother again. ‘Mom?’ she said. ‘Is everything OK?’

  ‘Is everything OK with you? After you called about your dad, I realised I hadn’t asked you how you are. I’m worried about you, Kaitlin.’

  ‘I’m OK, Mom. You don’t need to worry about me. Just focus on Dad.’

  ‘Kaitlin, why aren’t you in school?’

  Kaitlin sighed. She really didn’t want to get into those kinds of questions. ‘I’ll be back soon, Mom.’

  ‘You haven’t called me in so long for one of our talks.’

  ‘I texted.’

  ‘It’s not the same. I’m worried about you, Kaitlin. We both are. Your father, he misses you so much.’

  ‘I was just there not long ago.’

  ‘You know what I mean. He feels like he doesn’t know you any more. First we lose Conor and now we’re losing you too. I think … I think maybe your father knows you too well. You’ve always been like him.’

  ‘You always say that.’

  ‘You’re both so stubborn. You don’t give up. And that’s a good thing. But this isn’t good for you. You’ve seen what it’s done to him. Don’t let it do that to you, too.’

  ‘I just want to know the truth. About the plane, about Conor. About everything.’ Kaitlin furrowed her brow at the long silence on the other end. ‘Mom?’

  ‘I should have told you this before. Your father – I haven’t told him.’ Another silence. Then: ‘Conor was on that plane because I told him to come back.’

  Kaitlin reeled. ‘You told him to come back?’

  ‘He and Thomas were going to get married. Conor was going to tell Dad.’

  ‘Conor never told me that.’

  More silence.

  ‘He was going to. You know, I liked Thomas. I thought he was a nice boy. He made Conor happy. He really loved him. Your father thinks … differently.’

  Kaitlin felt hurt, not only that Conor had kept it from her, but her mother, too. Still, now wasn’t the time.

  ‘What do you think Dad would have done if he’d known?’ she asked. Her father was a deeply conservative man. He’d never really come to terms with Conor’s sexuality.

  ‘I don’t really know, my love. It was better not to tell him, I thought. But Conor wanted Dad to know.’

  ‘I wish you’d have told me. I wish he’d have told me.’

  ‘I don’t know why he didn’t. You and Conor were always so close.’

  One thought was scrabbling at the back of her head. ‘Mom, have you talked to Thomas?’

  ‘We both loved Conor so much.’

  ‘So, you have?’

  ‘He gave me a number, just for me and him.’

  ‘What do you talk about?’

  ‘Everything. Sometimes nothing. It doesn’t matter what, really. It just helps when I’m missing Conor badly. We call it the hotline. He says I can call anytime. Sometimes we talk for hours.’

  And yet Thomas hadn’t returned any of her calls. That feeling of hurt burned hotter. Had she really upset Conor that much?

  Once her mother had gone, Kaitlin flopped back on the bed. She felt relieved that finally, she now knew why Conor was on the flight back home. After all of her digging, it was an answer that was somehow both mundane and momentous at the same time. He was getting engaged and he wanted his father’s approval.

  And yet he still hadn’t been able to bring himself to tell her, his twin sister, and Thomas still refused to talk to her. That stupid argument, those hurtful words.

  Kaitlin thought back to when they were kids, riding their bikes after school. They’d travel for miles, pretending to be detectives trying to crack some mystery or other, or just talking and talking about anything and everything. They weren’t just brother and sister. They were best friends.

  She felt a deep ache in her heart.

  And now there was no way to put it right.

  Somehow, any information she’d gleaned from Professor Marshal paled beside that. For the first time, the scale of what she was trying to do dawned on her. She could no longer do this on her own.

  13

  A strip of light leaked out from under the door at the storage unit. Kaitlin stared at it for a long moment, wondering if she should go in to see Agent Dennison. Her flig
ht from Atlanta had landed an hour earlier and when she’d called Dennison again to update him, he’d sounded even more manic than when she’d left him.

  The truth was, her mother’s news about Conor still haunted her. She’d pulled together so much information about the passengers on Flight 702, but she still couldn’t see how the pieces fit together, if at all. She wasn’t sure if Dennison was helping or making it worse, either.

  Before she could reach a decision, the door rattled up and light flooded out. Dennison loomed, silhouetted against the glow from the bare bulb. Kaitlin noticed an odd posture, one hand thrust into his jacket pocket. Did he have a firearm tucked away?

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. He stepped out and looked up and down the line of darkened units. ‘I heard something. Can’t be too careful.’

  Kaitlin froze. Could he have shot her?

  ‘People are watching me,’ he continued, beckoning her inside. ‘Not sure which agency. NSA? Homeland Security? Maybe the CIA. That means we’re getting close. But that means this is the point of greatest danger. They’ll stop at nothing to prevent us from revealing the truth.’

  ‘OK.’ Kaitlin half wondered if she should run. Instead, she stepped inside the unit and Dennison clanged down the door.

  She couldn’t do this on her own, that was true. But the knot in her stomach told her Dennison wasn’t the right ally.

  ‘I’m getting close to finding out where they are,’ he said, spinning off to one of the piles of files.

  ‘Where? Where who are?’

  ‘My daughter! Your brother. The passengers. They’re all still alive.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true. There’s no evidence. It’s just wishful thinking.’ She couldn’t let herself be led down that road. She’d drive herself mad.

  ‘There’s evidence. All right, not evidence. But enough to cause a strong suspicion. Don’t lose heart now, Kaitlin.’

  ‘I need to focus on the reason why the flight went down. Not get distracted by—’

  ‘Wait. Hear me out.’ Dennison crashed over to the pile of files and began riffling through them. ‘There’s just a few more details that I need to … OK, for example, I think there was a passenger travelling with a fake passport. The Bureau were cagey about it, so it might have just been a smokescreen.’

  ‘You mean Dimo Dragov. Yeah, I already looked into him. He was a Bulgarian crime boss.’

  ‘No, no, no. I’m not talking about him. It was a woman.’ Dennison flipped through a file with frantic movements. ‘Laura something. She seemed to be … She was definitely … They had something about her.’

  ‘Agent Dennison …’

  ‘Seemed really—’

  ‘Agent Dennison!’ Kaitlin snapped.

  ‘Fishy.’

  ‘Jim!’

  Dennison snapped out of his manic state and stared at her.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry for your daughter,’ she began.

  ‘No. No, no. No. Don’t! Don’t give up on this, Kaitlin. Don’t let them get to you.’

  ‘No one’s getting to me. I don’t want to believe it any more than you do, but—’

  ‘No. My daughter’s still alive.’

  ‘Jim, this is—’

  ‘And she’s being held in a top-secret facility, along with your brother and … and … and the other 254 passengers of Flight 702. And I’m gonna find her.’

  Dennison ranged around the unit, tearing open the drawers of filing cabinets, grabbing files and books.

  ‘Jim, I’m leaving,’ Kaitlin said in a gentle voice.

  Dennison didn’t seem to hear her. He continued to search and even when she was back out in the night, she could hear him crashing around his space like a wounded beast.

  On the way back to the East Village, Kaitlin dialled Dylan’s number again. The same voicemail message, the same futile wait for him to call her back. She wanted to fill him in on her visit to Atlanta and get his perspective on what she’d learned. But it looked like she’d have to keep it to herself.

  As she climbed the steps to her apartment, Kaitlin felt the isolation close in around her. She’d forged this path on her own, but she’d always had Amelia and her other college friends around. Now she felt truly lonely.

  In the dark of her bedroom, she stared out at the city lights. Who could she turn to now?

  ‘Mr Murray, you have a visitor.’

  Kaitlin looked around the cramped office. The reek of the garbage boats hung in the air. Had she made the right decision? There was still time to get out.

  The lawyer jumped up from behind his desk when he saw her, rocking the take-out coffee from its coaster, splashing fresh brew over a pile of papers.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ he said, hastily shaking the moisture off them. ‘Come in. Take a seat. And thank you, Shana. Thank you. Hold all of my meetings until further notice.’

  ‘But, Mr Murray,’ his assistant began.

  The lawyer held up his hand and gave the woman a firm stare.

  ‘Thank you, Shana.’

  She hesitated a moment, then she left, closing the door behind her.

  ‘Mr Murray,’ Kaitlin began.

  ‘Rory,’ he corrected. ‘Please.’

  Kaitlin sat. She felt bone-weary, like she’d been running a marathon for days. Hungry. Directionless. The solution to the mystery of Flight 702 hovered like a mirage on the horizon and she never seemed to get any closer.

  ‘Tell me why I should trust you,’ she said.

  Rory held out both hands. ‘A great start. Let’s lay everything on the table. You know I’m putting together a class-action suit.’

  ‘I’m not interested in winning any financial award. I just want the truth.’

  ‘A noble pursuit. And of course, that lies at the heart of what I do.’ Rory paused and stared into the corner of the room. ‘OK. I’ll be honest with you. When I started to pull this together, I saw an opportunity. I’m not proud to admit it. I understand the suffering and the pain. But this is the business. It’s not a charity. And if I didn’t step forwards, someone else would. It’s easy to be dispassionate, treat it as just another legal conundrum, until you see the human face.’

  Rory looked at Kaitlin and for the first time, she thought she saw some honesty in his features. The last time he’d cornered her, in the park, he came across like a performer. Good with words, a surfeit of charisma and a dollop of flamboyance. That might work with some people. Not her.

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘I met with some of the families. I saw at first-hand what they’re going through.’

  ‘Grief does terrible things to people.’

  He nodded. ‘I want to help.’

  ‘So, now it’s about charity?’

  ‘No, I’ve not had some Damascene conversion. You’re a highly intelligent person, I could see that the first time we met, so I’m not going to try to give you the patter. You’ll see right through it anyway. I need this case, for my business, and personally. But that doesn’t mean that at the same time I can’t do it for the best of reasons. To help people find answers. To champion those who don’t have a voice, and to take a stand against the corporate cover-ups and the government lies.’

  ‘A knight in shining armour.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far. But if you want to say that, who am I to argue?’ Rory’s eyes twinkled. ‘And if I come out of this a better person, that’s win-win, right?’

  Kaitlin nodded. Maybe this was the right decision. ‘So, how do we do this?’

  ‘We have different areas of expertise – that’s always good in a team. Let’s exchange notes, see what we both know, and then we divide up the lines of inquiry.’

  ‘OK,’ Kaitlin said, holding out a hand. ‘Partners.’

  14

  The gulls swooped against the blue sky, their hungry screeches ringing out as they circled the heaps of garbage. Rory tracked their passage as he stood at the fence looking out over the water. A chill wind blasted from the north, but he felt toasty in his t
hick overcoat.

  He was worried about the woman standing beside him. She shivered from time to time in her thin hoodie and she had a hollow, hungry look to her face. He wanted to offer her his coat, but he didn’t want to offend her with some patriarchal nonsense. She was tough, though, he could see that. She didn’t complain. And more than anything, her investigation had dug far deeper than he’d ever imagined.

  ‘Let’s assess what we know,’ he said. ‘You think the people-trafficking gang is a dead end?’

  ‘They’re dangerous, no doubt about that. Hard. They’re running a lucrative trade and they’re linked to some extremely powerful people in DC who wouldn’t be happy to see their names exposed, to say the very least. Would they have brought down a plane if they thought Maria Elian might still expose them? Absolutely.’

  Rory nodded. ‘And I’d say the lieutenants wouldn’t have any qualms about taking out their leader, Dragov, under those circumstances. What about the evangelist woman?’

  ‘Definitely sick. The experts don’t think it was Ebola, but she’d travelled upriver. Who knows what she might have contracted.’

  ‘OK. How about the psychic witch? She sounds like quite a character.’

  ‘That’s one way of describing her. A con artist with ties to a war criminal.’

  Rory watched the gulls fight over some choice piece of garbage. ‘Unless the spirits really were in touch with her, she had knowledge Flight 702 was in danger. I think you’re right – she could have been tipped off by her friends in low places.

  ‘Though why she got on board in the first place …’ He turned over his thoughts. ‘But the important thing to me is that her story, that knowledge, hints at a plot, a wider conspiracy, perhaps a terrorist threat. Something that was circulating among that fraternity.’

  ‘And she mentioned the Syrian doctor, Mohammad Aziz, the immunologist. The FBI agent, Dennison, suggested he might have something to do with biological warfare. Maybe he was what set the alarm bells ringing for the psychic witch. Why she decided to get out of there.’ Kaitlin gripped the chain-link fence. She was staring at the water, but she seemed to be a million miles away.