by Allen Wyler
The cop leaned closer to the door. “There a problem?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Cause you been in here twice in the last hour.”
Mind racing, he started sorting through likely excuses, searching for something at least halfway reasonable. What? Travel . . . something to do with travel.
“A problem? Yes. Nothing major though. Must’ve picked up a bug in Mexico. Touch of diarrhea . . . nothing serious.” Shut up. Don’t overdo it.
The Mountie put his hands on his hips. “That why you’ve been hanging around?”
Jon figured someone must’ve noticed him on a security video. The airport was full of ceiling-mounted CCTV cameras. But so what? Travelers not infrequently endured lengthy delays between flights.
“Is that a problem?” Jon rattled the toilet paper dispenser for effect.
“Matter of fact, it is. For security purposes we don’t like travelers to loiter. Same reason we don’t allow people to park in front of the passenger loading bays.”
He didn’t want to leave the stall and come face-to-face with the officer. Would he give him a few minutes? “Okay. I’ll leave soon as I finish here.”
“I’ll wait.”
Shit! Jon flushed the toilet, stood, rattled his belt buckle, opened the stall door. The RCMP officer looked him over. “Waiting for a flight?”
Jon moved past him to the sink to wash his hands. Anything to keep him from looking directly at his face. “Not exactly.” Mind racing again, searching for a dovetailing lie. “I was scheduled for a stop in Vancouver. A business trip. But my boss asked me to go over to Victoria first. My luggage didn’t come off the flight, so I’ve been waiting to collect it before catching the Victoria flight.” He ripped off a paper towel, thought, hey, that didn’t sound too bad.
“Sorry, but I can’t allow you to loiter here. Either wait in town for your luggage or catch a flight, but you can’t wait here in the terminal. While we’re on the subject, I want to see some identification.”
Oh man, here we go. “Not a problem.” Jon handed over the forged passport.
51
THE RCMP OFFICER flipped through the passport, inspecting some pages, ignoring others. “Travel a lot, I see.”
Jon’s legs felt rubbery, ready to collapse, so he put a hand against the wall for support, hoping the officer wouldn’t notice his nervousness. “I do. Business . . . a lot of business travel.”
The Mountie seemed to take an interest in one page in particular and studied it a moment. “Uh huh. Know where the commuter terminal is?”
“No. Don’t use this airport much. Matter of fact, I hardly ever travel in Canada.” Well, at least this was the truth.
“Here,” the officer handed the passport back. “Victoria flights depart from the domestic terminal. Come with me, I’ll show you.”
Jon nodded, more out of relief than gratitude. “Thanks. That’s very nice of you.”
He followed him into the hall, turned left into the long hallway, the officer falling almost into lock-step next to him. Halfway down the hall, the cop stopped and pointed ahead of them. “See that, where the hall turns right?”
Jon did. A sign suspended from the ceiling had a left pointing arrow with the words COMMUTER TERMINAL. Something only an idiot would miss. “Thanks, you’ve been a great help.”
“Well then, you’re on your way, eh? I’ll leave you here. Just don’t let me see you back in this area. Understood?”
“I do.”
After the turn, the hall funneled into a narrower, descending passage that seemed to extend forever without an exit. Meaning, of course, he was now trapped like a rat. His gut tightened as he kept moving, trying to think of what to do if caught here. Probably the best thing at this point was to clear the hall as quickly as possible, so he increased pace without breaking into a trot, like a typical pedestrian in New York. The descending hall finally leveled off at a point probably designed to serve smaller, lower aircraft. Another turn emptied from the hall into the domestic departure/arrival lounge. Filled with travelers, some milling aimlessly, some slouched in molded green plastic chairs, while others stood in queues feeding a variety of ticket counters. Just inside the entrance, a small concession cart sold a limited selection of beverages and prepackaged fast food. To his left a mother sat rocking a baby in an infant car seat and next to her, a disheveled businessman with his nose in a book. No police. Not yet, at least. Best of all, no one took an interest in him.
He noticed a blinking light above an open gate. A slide-in plastic sign behind the ticket counter had the word VICTORIA. A haggard flight attendant in a navy jumpsuit and maroon scarf was collecting tickets from a small line of passengers. Jon approached and asked her, “Any room left on this flight?” Only two passengers remained.
She accepted a boarding pass from the second to last, tore it along perforations, said, “You’re in luck. One seat left,” before returning the stub to the passenger.
“I’ll take it.”
She nodded. “Soon as I finish here I’ll take care of you.” She inspected the final passenger’s ticket.
Figuring a passport wasn’t needed for a domestic flight, he pulled the Visa card from his wallet and set it on the counter.
His peripheral vision caught movement at the entrance to the hall he just came from. Head lowered, he turned just enough to look. From the corner of his eyes he watched two uniformed RMCP officers survey the crowd. Must’ve just walked in the door. Why? Looking for him?
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up, snaking a chill down his spine that screamed for him to make a break for the stairs and the tarmac below. Do that, then what? Running would only draw attention, plunging him right back into a pursuit situation. No, better to stand pat and hope they don’t notice him. Besides, they looked seriously fit, not the pot-bellied rent-a-cops manning the security gates. Shit, they’re armed.
“Will that be cash or credit card?”
He snapped back to the ticket agent, her fingers clicking the keyboard, unaware his credit card was already on the counter. With his fingers shaking badly, he simply nudged it across the counter and hoped she wouldn’t notice. “Visa. Here you go.”
A moment later, she returned it. Instead of replacing it in his wallet, he simply stuffed it in his pocket. Did she notice his nervousness and would it cause her to pay more attention to him? The urge to flee ratcheted up a few notches. Against his better judgment, he chanced another glance over his shoulder. The officers were split up now, covering opposite sides of the room, the female weaving slowly along the periphery of the chairs, checking out each person, while the male with intense eyes and drooping black moustache slowly worked toward him.
“Here you are, sir. Seat 6A.” The agent passed him a ticket stub. “Any baggage to check?”
“No. Thanks.” He smiled and stepped to the open door and sunshine beyond.
A voice behind him called, “Sir, wait a minute.”
His heart seemed to stop, a wave of prickly heat swept over him as he turned. “Yes?”
The flight attendant waved him back. “You need to sign the charge slip.”
“Oh, sorry.” With a forced laugh, he returned to the desk. The approaching RCMP glanced over at him. Quickly, Jon scrawled a signature on the charge slip. “Sorry, didn’t want to hold up the flight.”
“Thank you.”
Then he was moving again, out through the open doorway, onto the uncovered galvanized landing, down a flight of narrow metal stairs to black asphalt, one hand sliding along a cold metal railing. The moment his foot touched tarmac he exhaled. Another hundred feet to the portable stairs up to the open hatch of the waiting Air Canada turboprop.
A deep male voice called, “Sir?”
He turned to see the thin mustachioed RCMP officer at the top of the landing. No mistake, he’d been addressing him. The officer called, “Hold it,” and came clamoring down the stairs, tall and young, probably able to outrun him. Shit! He fought the instinct to flee. But
there was no place to go out here in the open with only taxiway, planes, and baggage carts. Besides, it’d only delay the inevitable. Jon watched him approach. The officer studied his face a beat before holding out his hand. “Here.”
Jon looked at the slip of yellow paper between his fingers. “What’s that?”
“Your charge copy. You left it on the counter. Can’t be too careful these days with so much identity theft.”
Fuck me! “Thank you, officer.”
A close look at the imprint showed the name and card number too faint to actually read.
A moment later, he buckled into the hard, leather seat of the narrow-bodied commuter flight. Five minutes after that, with both engines screaming, the pilot popped the breaks and the turboprop accelerated down the runway. As the nose lifted, the tailbone-jarring vibrations abruptly stopped, and along with it, a huge weight lifted from Jon’s shoulders. He’d made it out of Vancouver! But, he reminded himself, he would be landing on an island. Somehow, he still needed to find a way to cross the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the border.
52
SIDNEY, BRITISH COLUMBIA, is a funky seaside retirement town on the craggy east coast of Vancouver Island. A patchwork of English-style rose gardens, manicured hedges, pastel stucco houses, sheer curtains behind leaded-glass windows, two marinas, and Victoria International Airport due east across Highway 17.
Jon stepped from the shaded plane cabin into squint-producing sunlight, clamored down the portable stairway, crossed the tarmac, passed through a modest one-level terminal to automatic sliding glass doors. Only one police officer stood listlessly next to the baggage conveyer talking to an elderly woman with a luggage cart. Maybe such casual security was a ploy to lull drug smugglers into a false sense of confidence.
Two taxis waited at the curb outside Baggage Claim, the drivers standing between the vehicles smoking cigarettes and chatting up each other. On the opposite side of the access road, a driver was handing a parking attendant money. No one in the immediate area so much as looked his way. He approached the first cab and asked to be taken to the main marina.
After paying the cab fare he waited for the taxi to vanish around the corner before starting south along a street bordering the harbor, the tang of salt water and drying seaweed stirring memories of a weekend getaway here with Emily.
He followed the curving seawall for three blocks, realigning his faded memories with reality. Three blocks later, he reached his destination, hooked fingers through a high, razor wire–topped cyclone fence, and looked down at two acres of trees; lawn; a weathered, peeling white clapboard United States Immigration building; and a road curving downhill to a dock. A Washington State ferry was loading a string of RVs, cars, and pickups. One by one they crept over the metal ramp onto the main deck.
He knew the boat made the two-hour run from Sidney to Port Angeles only once a day, so if he intended to board, it’d have to be now. He walked through the gate and headed to Immigration.
The waiting room was small, with an American flag draped over a seven-foot pole, a framed color photo of the president, a large corkboard pinned with layers of overlapping notices, faux wood veneer walls, worn checkerboard floor, and a middle-aged woman in a white short-sleeve US Immigration shirt leaning on the counter reading USA Today.
“Still time to board the Anacortes ferry?” he asked.
She glanced up. “If you hurry. Walk-on passengers boarded a couple minutes ago.”
“One, please.”
She reluctantly glanced at the page as if memorizing her spot and straightened up. “Passport.”
He handed it to her and forced himself to not look away. Or fidget. Or hold his breath.
She took it, flipped it open to the first page and studied the picture a moment too long, her lips squeezing together. Her eyes darted back to Jon before swiping the passport through a bar code reader. “This’ll take a few seconds. The computers are running slow today for some reason. But we’ll get you on. I’ll just make a call, be sure to have ’em hold the boat.” Turning away from him, she raised a handheld radio to her lips and whispered.
The room turned deathly still. He heard idling engines outside, then a seagull cry. The floor joists creaked as she shifted weight uneasily. Five silent seconds ticked past.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
She smiled. “Nope, nothing at all. Just need to get the ticket agent up here. That’s who I was calling.” She nodded affirmation, smiling a little too much, looking uncomfortable.
On his toes now, Jon craned his neck for a better angle out the window in the direction of the dock. The line of boarding vehicles was now stopped, and a male Immigration officer came trotting toward the building, left hand clutching a similar radio. Shit! Jon smiled at her, said, “I’ll wait outside.”
She shook her head and glanced out the window. “No, no, wait here so we don’t waste no time. Got a schedule to keep, you know.” She lifted a section of counter to step into the reception area, but Jon was already out the front door, running for the gate.
53
JON RAN FLAT-OUT for three blocks through a residential neighborhood, cut left at random, flew down a sidewalk of curbed cars, took a right a block later to an alley, dodged an overturned recycle bin, passed a barking Rottweiler with its front paws four feet up the fence, and on out the other end, at which point he slowed to a walk and thanked himself for replacing his loafers with running shoes in Seoul. Which made him think of Yeonhee again.
Lungs burning, shirt damp, he stopped to glance around and get oriented. One lot down, an older woman knelt in front of a stucco house, planting flowers in a well-weeded bed. Across the street a girl about nine or ten hopscotched a chalk course on the sidewalk.
Just then a police car shot by, light flashing, no siren.
Well so much for flying under the radar.
And, he realized, they had a description of what he was wearing. Well, he couldn’t go back into the commercial area of town. Best to get out of the area as quickly as possible. He didn’t recognize the neighborhood because he and Emily never really drove though residential areas, but he had a vague idea of which area of town this was. The main highway would be cutting diagonally east to west to the south. He started walking in that direction.
He’d gone half a block when he noticed a clothesline in the back yard of a small white house. He couldn’t believe anyone still used one. A faded navy blue sweatshirt hung from the line. Without thinking, he darted into the yard and crept along the side of the house, not looking around to see if he was noticed by a neighbor. Quickly, he took off his shirt, balled it up, and threw it in the bushes. Then, after one glance into the back yard to make sure no one was there, he ran over to the sweatshirt, pulled it off of the line, and put it on.
Back on the street, he continued walking at a pace that was quick but not fast enough to attract attention. Four blocks later he encountered the road he needed, waited for a break in traffic, then sprinted across. Walking backwards along the shoulder to face oncoming traffic, he held out his thumb. The third vehicle, a white F-350 pickup mounded high with dark brown beauty bark, slowed to a stop. Jon ran to the passenger door, said, “Thanks,” tossed in his athletic bag, climbed in.
The driver, a thin sunburned man with a straw cowboy hat and hatchet chin, nodded before pulling a white Styrofoam cup from the console to spit out a load of tobacco. He wore denim bib overalls and a faded plaid shirt with the sleeves smartly rolled past bony elbows. The radio was playing Toby Keith—a song about his favorite bar. “Where you headed?”
Jon kicked aside an empty Diet Coke can so he could pull the door shut. The cab smelled of tobacco and creosote. “Victoria.”
“Might want to buy yourself a Lotto ticket, seeing how this is your lucky day. I can haul you all the way into the center of town, you want.”
The driver pulled the Ford over on Wharf Street across from Bastion Square. Jon jumped down onto concrete, slapped the door twice to let the driver know he was clea
r, yelled, “Thanks,” and stepped back to watch the pickup merge into traffic. For a moment he looked around while patching together memories of the city. Late afternoon sun angled off windows, the temperature a perfect seventy degrees. But, he reminded himself, don’t let it lull you into carelessness. Surely by now the RCMP throughout all of British Columbia would be looking for him. At least Victoria was a large town, making finding him more difficult than in Sidney.
If memory served, Harbour Square Mall was only a few blocks away. He headed in that direction, mentally refining a possible ploy to get across the border. Which raised an interesting question: what about Feist? Was he already back in Seattle waiting for him? The way he figured, Stillman probably contracted Feist. But how far did that go? And if he could eliminate Stillman, would that get Feist off his back? A plan started to take form and soon as he found a place to hide, he’d spend more time thinking it through. For right now his highest priorities were to buy a change of clothes and a clean cell phone, then find a place for the night. Stillman and Feist . . . there had to be a way to take them both down. . . .
54
JON WALKED OUT of the mall in a complete change of clothes: navy polo shirt, blue jeans, tan windbreaker, and baseball cap, the old set once again stuffed in a plastic shopping bag at the bottom of the men’s room wastebasket. He exchanged the athletic bag for a rucksack and replaced the few toiletries he’d left on the plane. Most importantly, he purchased a throw-away cell with a two-hundred-minute card, a number Stillman wouldn’t know about. If his plan took more air time than that, he’d be in serious trouble.
Two blocks later he turned onto Wharf Street, a pretty boulevard bordering the harbor, the air scented with drying seaweed and mussels. He paused at a bulkhead half a block east of the dock for the Victoria Clipper, a passenger/sightseeing ferry connecting Seattle to Victoria. The boat sat idle at the mooring, ready for the return trip to Seattle later this afternoon. A straight shot to Seattle. . . . Hmmm, now there was an idea.
