Anonymous Sources

by Mary Louise Kelly

  She nodded again. “They better not lose mine this time. I’m off on holiday. Couple of days in Washington and then hiring a car with my mates to drive down to Florida. Should be a laugh.” She fished around in her handbag and pulled out what looked like a prescription bottle of Ambien. “Just to warn you, I’ll be popping one of these as soon as we take off. I’m dead tired and hoping to sleep like a baby the whole way.”

  “I’ve never tried those. Gin seems to do the business for me.”

  She laughed. “Aye, gin works fine too.”

  “Well, I’ve got work I need to get done. And I may be up and down a bit. If you like, we can trade seats once we’re up in the air. So you can sleep and I won’t be having to crawl across you the whole time.”

  “That’d be lovely. Thanks for that.”

  She flicked open a magazine. I leaned back and stared out the window.

  It was only five days since I’d landed at Heathrow from Boston. I’d managed two bylines, if you counted the silly LSAT-score-first-reported-by-ABC-News driblet that was running in today’s paper. Not exactly setting the world on fire, but not a disaster either. I would score another story tomorrow—knock on wood—if the Lowell Carlyle interview went according to plan. And this Nadeem Siddiqui thread might turn into something yet.

  The curious development was this twist with Lucien. There is no point jinxing a good thing by overanalyzing it. But here is a fact: I felt lighter now than when I’d stepped off the plane last week. Physically lighter. A woman who floats rather than plods. Great sex two nights in a row can do that, I suppose. But this felt less about sex and more about rediscovering an ability to belly-laugh.

  It was as if, without my quite realizing it, something like a stone had grown heavy and cold inside me. I imagined it nestling against my lungs, stooping me over a little. Had it been with me all these years since the summer of my daughter? Or had it hardened slowly, a calcification of the soul? Either way, I had lived with it long enough that I only noticed it now, now that—just an inch—the stone was shifting. Loosening. I had been unhappy for so long. It was strange now to feel myself, if this is the right word, unclench.

  THE IRISH WOMAN WAS TRUE to her word. She popped a sleeping pill right after takeoff, pulled a blanket tight around her, and passed out. Once she mumbled something in her sleep and nuzzled in closer to the window. Then she was still again, her hair falling like a curtain across her face.

  Meanwhile I watched the first half of a movie, got bored, then padded around some in my cozy socks. I went to the bathroom, then over to pester the stewardess for tea and some crisps. Finally I forced myself to work a bit. I sketched out five questions and follow-ups for the Carlyle interview. I wrote a to-do list for myself of leads to follow up on and drafted several e-mails to send once we’d landed and my phone had service again. By the time the final food trolley came rumbling down the aisle, hawking an unappetizing spread of cheese sandwiches and stewed tea, I was feeling in good shape.

  I glanced at my seatmate to check if she might want a tray, seeing as she hadn’t eaten the whole flight. Nope. Still out like a light.

  I sipped at the tea. Reluctantly slipped off the socks and forced my swollen feet back into the Manolos. I touched up my lipstick, ran a brush through my hair, hesitated, then nudged her. The captain had announced we were landing shortly, and she looked as if she might need a few minutes to pull herself together.

  I nudged her again. “Hey,” I said gently.

  When did I first suspect something was wrong? I shook her arm. It flopped against her side. I shook her again, harder. I glanced around for the little bottle—how many of those pills had she taken? Tentatively I reached for the curtain of flaming hair and brushed it away from her face. Her eyes were closed. I slapped her cheek. Not hard, but hoping the sting would jolt her awake. That’s when I saw it. A fat drop of blood. It had stained her collar. I forced myself to touch it. Wet. Fresh. My eyes traced its path back up her neck. In the hollow below her jaw, the tiny circle of a puncture wound was just visible. A bruise the size of a fingerprint was spreading purple across her white skin.

  I stifled a scream. What was happening? Was she dead? My breath was jagged, my thoughts racing very fast. This woman—this woman with blood staining her neck—looked quite like me. She had been sitting in my seat. I had given her 38A, the seat printed on my boarding pass, the seat anyone searching my name in the airline database this morning would have pulled up. No no no no. This couldn’t be.

  I felt a jolt and nearly cried out. It was the plane landing. I hunched my shoulders up close to my ears and twisted my hands in my lap. The nerves in my own neck twitched. All around me people were sliding on shoes, stuffing newspapers into seat pockets, gathering up their things. No one was staring at us. No one else looked worried.

  I wanted nothing more than to leap up and run. But from the chaos of my mind two thoughts were gelling. This was no accidental overdose. Someone had tried to kill this woman. Perhaps had succeeded at killing this woman. Had they been trying to kill me? But why? I shivered. It made no sense.

  The second thought was even worse. We were locked inside an airplane. Whoever it was, was still on this plane. My breath came in frantic little pants now. I should press the button for the flight attendant. I should call out for a doctor. Or an air marshal—did they have them on international flights? I looked at her again. I forced myself to reach for her wrist. My own hands were shaking so badly, it was hard to hold on to her. My lips moved, praying. Please, God, please, God. It took a minute before I was sure: she had no pulse.

  I needed to unravel this—needed time to think it through—but first I needed to get off this plane alive. Whoever had done this must think I was dead. I looked around again. Bored faces, tired faces—no one who seemed to be paying attention to me. As the plane started to empty, I stood and checked the overhead bin. My laptop bag was gone. I closed my eyes and pictured it: my Chronicle business card, laminated and dangling from the strap. Fortunately I kept my wallet, phone, and reporter’s notebook in my handbag, which had never left my side. I stole one last look at her, still primly bundled in her blanket, her hair disheveled and lank now across her face. She looked like a passenger who had greedily grabbed too many minibottles of wine and needed to sleep it off.

  Quickly, head down, one foot in front of the other, I knifed down the aisle, making eye contact with no one. Off the plane now. Just keep going. I felt, if anything, more vulnerable in the vast open atrium of the terminal. My knuckles were white on my handbag strap. I felt a brief moment of security at passport control—at least cameras were everywhere—then sped past customs, out through swinging doors, and into a sea of faces in the arrivals lounge. I started to jog and then to run. I left my suitcase spinning on the baggage carousel. I darted down a ramp and into daylight and to the front of the taxi line, repeating hoarsely, “I’m sorry—it’s an emergency—I’ve got to get—please—I’m so sorry—”

  People grumbled but let me through.

  The driver turned languidly around, thrust a pamphlet at me, and began explaining the fares to the District, to Maryland, to Virginia.

  “Go. Just go, go,” I hissed. I thrust a $20 bill at him. He rolled his eyes, but pocketed it and pulled away from the curb. I slapped down the door lock with my elbow and clutched my handbag tighter across my chest. I turned around. Looked back. Was it my imagination, a trick of my frightened eyes? Or was a woman holding up her phone as if to snap a picture as we sped away?

  THERE WAS A WOMAN, HER name was Jane, and at that moment she was staring at the retreating taxi in horror.

  How could it be? Jane wondered. How on earth could this have happened?

  The assignment had come in at the last minute. Nothing unusual about that. And then the plan kept shifting. Even as she had navigated the snarled traffic to Heathrow Airport, a text arrived directing her to switch her ticket to a different flight, headed to a different city. But there was nothing particularly unusual about that either. Jan
e—not her real name, but the one she used with this particular client—was a professional. By the time she pulled up at the Heathrow terminal, she had the information she needed. The target’s name, her seat assignment, and her photograph. The photo was grainy. It showed the target in profile, twentysomething, red hair.

  Jane had managed to change her ticket to a business-class seat on the Washington plane. She could have planned everything better if she’d had more time. But the client was quite specific: the hit must be accomplished before the target arrived on US soil. Absolutely no flexibility on this point. Otherwise things would get complicated.

  On the plane it had been easy to swish back from business class to the main cabin. The target was obligingly asleep in her assigned seat, her red hair slanting over her face. There was even an empty seat next to her. Yes, it had been easy to glide in, administer the injection, grab the satchel from the overhead bin, glide out. No one had noticed. The nearby passengers were engrossed in their in-flight entertainment; the target herself had barely stirred. Done. Jane felt a certain satisfaction in her professional competence. She might be in a loathsome business, but she was exceedingly good at it.

  So then—who was this woman who had just streaked past her in the taxi line, panicked and pale and looking exactly like the target? And if it was—if the woman who’d just sped away in a taxi was Alexandra James—then who, exactly, was slumped dead in seat 38A?

  34

  Where to?”

  I snapped my head around, startled. The driver was staring at me in his rearview mirror.

  “Where to?” he repeated.

  A reasonable question. I had no idea. Where to, when someone has just tried to kill you? I stared back blankly as if he were speaking alien gibberish.

  The driver glanced at the oncoming traffic and then looked back intently at me. “Lady?” He appeared to be making up his mind that the best destination for me might be the loony bin.

  “Yes.” I sat up and tried to pull myself together. “Let’s go downtown, into Washington,” I said, fluttering my fingers vaguely in what I thought was the right direction. “I’ll get you the address in a minute.”

  He sighed and turned his attention back to the road.

  We were speeding along the bank of a river that I assumed was the Potomac. I don’t know Washington well, but I was pretty sure it only has one river. Soon the silhouettes of the Jefferson Memorial and the Washington Monument appeared on the far bank.

  I pulled out my phone and tried to figure out what to do. It was still two hours before my appointment with Lowell Carlyle. If that even mattered given what had just happened. Whom should I call? Hyde? Elias? The police? And tell them what, exactly? That a passenger sitting next to me on a plane had died, and that I feared it was meant to be me instead. It made no sense. Almost nothing that had happened these last couple of days made sense.

  I screwed my eyes shut. The red-haired woman on the plane was already starting to seem unreal. Perhaps I had dreamed her. Perhaps . . . the blood on her collar was a mosquito bite she’d scratched, perhaps she really was just sleeping.

  But no. My laptop bag. It was gone. It had not disappeared on its own. I tried to remember what was in there, what information I had on the computer. And my checked suitcase. I wondered in a detached way whether it was still circling on the baggage carousel, or whether a porter would have lugged it away by now. It would find its way back to me eventually. My phone number was on a tag on the handle.

  My phone number. A chill went down my spine. It was entirely possible I was imagining all this, that I was losing my mind. But if I was not—if that puncture wound had really been intended for my neck—how had someone known to look for me on a British Airways flight to Washington? I had only changed plans this morning. The only people I’d told were Hyde and Elias, when I e-mailed them from Heathrow. And Lucien, when he called me in the lounge.

  I had no idea how these things worked. Would someone who knew what they were doing be able to break into my e-mail account that easily or listen in on my calls? This was more Elias’s world than mine. My typical workday—at least until recently—involved trying not to doze off during faculty meetings. It was Elias who ran around meeting sources in trench coats and signaling for meetings by moving flowerpots, or however they did things on the intelligence beat. He was the one who reported on classified code words and wiretapping and warrants. Not that someone into murdering people would likely pause for a warrant, mind you. For Christ’s sake.

  I considered my phone again. A terrible, paranoid thought occurred to me. I tapped on Google maps. A message appeared: Mapping would like to use your current location. Allow?

  A couple of seconds later, there I was: a flashing red dot, moving down the bank of the river. If I could see this, who else could? I felt nauseous. We were turning. I looked up. The taxi had swung right on to a wide bridge. The square façade of the Lincoln Memorial loomed straight ahead. I rolled down my window and breathed in the humid air. Toward the middle of the bridge, I flicked my wrist and threw as hard as I could. The phone sailed out across the water.

  The driver looked back at me with alarm.

  Where to?

  “Take me to the White House,” I told him.

  LOWELL CARLYLE’S SECRETARY LOOKED ONLY mildly surprised at my turning up an hour and a half early.

  I’d been pre-cleared through security into the White House. It still took a few minutes for the guards manning the checkpoint outside the West Wing to examine my passport, consult their list, and shepherd me through the X-ray and metal-detector machines. I was directed to cross the lawn. A wall of TV cameras was lined up in what looked like a permanent formation on the right. Cameramen stood smoking and drinking coffee in pairs, waiting for correspondents to rush out to do their live shots. The door to the West Wing swung open and a couple of reporters shot past, chasing a woman I recognized from TV as the president’s press secretary. No sign of Nora, thank God for small favors. Inside was a large and dimly lit waiting room. The receptionist took my name again. Aides scurried past.

  Ten minutes passed before Mr. Carlyle’s secretary appeared. She offered me tea and coffee.

  I declined. Instead I smiled politely, thanked her for working me in, and asked whether I might see him earlier than scheduled. Like, how about now?

  She raised her eyebrows in an expression that meant You’ve got to be kidding me.

  “He’s in with the president just now, as it happens,” she said, stretching her lips into a thin smile. “And it’s amazing he’s here at all, what with the funeral and Mrs. Carlyle still in Cambridge. So terrible.” She shook her head. “Anyway, so far he’s running on time for your interview. Anything else I can get you while you wait?” She had already turned and begun sidling away.

  “Actually, a phone. If there were somewhere where I could make a couple of calls?”

  A few minutes later I was installed in a cupboard just outside the briefing room. All the major news organizations keep cubicles somewhere in the press warren. The few remaining newspapers with national ambitions were clustered in one corner. The network television and cable-news channels shared their own hallway, cleaner and reeking of hair spray. Closest to the briefing room—and thus to the news—were the wire services. An aura of panic and deadline pressure radiated from behind the half-shut doors. I could hear keyboards clicking frantically inside. Mr. Carlyle’s secretary tried to usher me into the Chronicle’s booth, but thankfully it was locked tight and Nora was nowhere to be found. So now I found myself in what appeared to be a general-use/transient space. The closet-size cubby contained a buzzing fluorescent light, the curling transcript of a speech the president had given three months ago, and several chewed-on styrofoam cups in which stewed the remnants of God-knew-how-old coffee. All that, and a phone. Hallelujah.

  I picked up and dialed Hyde’s cell phone. No answer. Then I tried Elias.

  “Hello, Elias Thottrup,” he answered, sounding harassed.

  “Elias. T
hank God.”

  “Hello?” A pause. “Alex?”

  “Hi. Yes. It’s me. I need—”

  “Hey. Are you in DC yet? Listen, I’m on deadline. But I got your message—”

  “Never mind that. I’m at the White House. I’m going to do this Carlyle interview, but I really need to find Hyde—”

  “I got your message,” he continued, as if he weren’t listening to a word I said, “and I’ve got to go now, but I wanted to tell you—”

  “Elias!” I shrieked. “Please—is Hyde there in the newsroom?”

  “What? No. He was before. You can stay tonight, by the way. But what I was going to tell you—”

  “Please, can I just—”

  “Shut up, Alex, for once,” he barked. “What I was going to tell you is, I remembered the banana thing.”

  “The banana thing?”

  “Your Pakistani guy ordering all the bananas. And it was bugging me that I’d just heard something interesting about bananas.”

  “Elias—”

  “It was at this big Homeland Security conference the other week,” he pressed on, ignoring me. “They get waved past radiation detectors. Because of the potassium. I was at this panel talking about dirty bombs, and how the screening systems at ports in places like Newark and LA are basically useless. Because all kinds of stuff apparently emits low-level radiation. Kitty litter and denture cleaners and, let’s see, manhole covers. And bananas. The detectors can’t tell the difference between fruit and a nuclear bomb. Unbelievable, huh? This one guy on the panel, from Los Alamos, he said they just wave banana shipments right through.”

  He paused. “Alex?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought it was funny. I mean, funny in a freaky kind of way, right? Since this banana baron of yours actually works on nuclear weapons at Kahuta.”

  I was gripping the desk in front of me tightly. I felt sick and quite cold at once.