The Virus

by Janelle Diller

  “My health card?” But not my boarding pass. My heart pounded and my palms immediately felt damp.

  He nodded.

  I handed it to him, and he gestured for another TSA agent. He handed her my card and told me to follow her. I didn’t want to think about what this meant, but the only thing different this week compared to last week was that I had a new bandage and small stitches on my arm. And no RFID.

  I had to think very fast, but I wasn’t used to this kind of fast thinking. I never had to improvise to get myself out of trouble. Why hadn’t I at least thought about this possibility? Where would I start to lie? What had to be the truth?

  The TSA agent positioned me in the security stance to do her wanding—arms out, feet spread on the footprints on the mat. She waved the handheld metal detector up and down and around my body. I relaxed a very tiny bit. Maybe this was still about metal and it was just a momentarily malfunctioning machine. If it wasn’t—well, I tried to concentrate and think about what kinds of questions they’d ask me, and what I would say. She carefully patted me down, using her palms where it was okay to touch, the back of her hands where I might be offended. Did she feel my heart pounding when she patted down my chest?

  I finally thought clearly enough to ask, “What could have set the metal detector off? I’ve learned to be very good on travel days. I never wear anything metal.” I smiled at her, but she didn’t respond. Maybe I’d asked the question too late.

  I was sweating now. Could she smell it?

  “Please point to the things that are yours in security.”

  Not good. They would search these, too. I would miss my flight for sure now, but I felt strangely calm about that for the first time in all my travel years. I identified my suitcase, laptop, laptop case, shoes, and leather jacket.

  The TSA agent escorted me out of the main security area and into what had been an airline gate turned into a series of not-so-temporary looking clear glass booths. I couldn’t kid myself. This wasn’t about metal at all. “I’m afraid I’m going to miss my plane,” I said. I knew it wouldn’t make any difference, but couldn’t think of anything else to say. I should have asked what this was all about. I should have sounded far more surprised and far less edgy.

  The first TSA agent got help from a second one and carried all my things to a table outside the booth where I could see my stuff while they went through it piece by piece.

  I sat in the booth alone and waited, for what? I wasn’t sure, but I knew it couldn’t be good.

  The cranky, loud talker, who had been ahead of me in line, sat in the booth next to me. There were two people in there with him. The three were talking, and the traveler was very agitated, but I couldn’t hear what they said. The booths were more soundproof than I’d realized. Even though I couldn’t hear, I could see that the businessman was being too clear about the whole matter. He kept shaking a finger at the other two and his mouth and eyes worked animatedly in tandem. He could have used some coaching in playing his cards closer to his chest, but it was too late now.

  I shouldn’t have even been watching him. Not at all. I had my own story to think about, and I hadn’t made up a good one yet. My stomach gurgled a warning. I’d gotten up too early to be in a natural rhythm for anything. If things didn’t get resolved quickly, I’d be sick quickly.

  Satisfied that I hadn’t hidden any box cutters, bombs, or broken down shotguns in my luggage, the TSAs zipped everything up again, slapped a sticker on it that I’d never seen before and brought my stuff into the cubicle with me.

  “May I go now?” I asked, thinking there might be a one in a hundred chance.

  “No.”

  I sighed and tried my best to look like the agitated traveler I could have been.

  “May I at least get my cell phone out so I can reschedule the flight you made me miss?” I cringed inwardly as soon as I said “you.” The first rule in negotiating is to not intentionally antagonize the other person. Now I was the idiot.

  “No.”

  “How much longer will this take? Why am I in here?”

  But the TSA agent walked out of the booth and closed the door behind her.

  I knew every step was deliberate—the pat-down, the thorough luggage examination, the lack of explanation, the solitude in the clear booth. It was meant to rattle me, and it did. But I think it was also supposed to give me enough time and a bad enough case of nerves that whatever story I’d concocted prior to this morning would start to fray and unravel as I had time to think about it. But since I had to have an explanation in the first place before it could start to come undone, my story was still together by the time the TSA agent came in to question me. After all, I only needed three lies: why I didn’t have an RFID anymore; who took it out; and why didn’t the person replace it with a new one?

  The first one was easy and probably not quickly proven false. I’d had an infection and my arm was really sore and tender, so I had it removed. That made the third lie logical—I was skittish about having another one inserted. It wasn’t legal, but it was what I’d have to go with. The second lie was the hardest of all. How could I not know who removed it?

  If Zaan had taught me anything, it was confidence in myself. I’d stood up to tough CEOs and cantankerous unions. I might not have all the right answers, but I also wasn’t easily intimidated.

  Strategy was everything.

  CHAPTER

  24

  ABOUT SIX THIRTY, TWO TSA AGENTS ESCORTED MY NEIGHBOR, the foolishly visible businessman, out of his booth. His face was an angry red but he wasn’t talking. I saw him gather his things and head out of the security area. I couldn’t tell if they were escorting him to his gate or back out of the airport. He certainly wasn’t happy, but you don’t have to get arrested to be upset in an airport.

  A few minutes later, a slight and balding man finally made it to my booth and introduced himself. “You’re Margaret Rider?” He had good, blue eyes and an earnest expression. He was at the top of his career, which should have depressed him immensely.

  “I am.”

  “I’m Mr. Greggen, the TSA manager for the Colorado Springs airport.” He looked like he’d slept in his clothes. Maybe he had. What could they be paying the TSA manager at an airport with twelve gates? Fewer if you consider the one co-opted by the TSA.

  “What seems to be the problem here?” I started out with my pleasant and no-nonsense tone. No anger, but no sweetness either. This was business. “No one is telling me why you’re detaining me. I’ve missed my flight, and I’m not even allowed to use my cell phone to call and arrange for another flight or to let my client know that I’ll be late.” My insides jiggled quietly, but I didn’t think I sounded nervous or angry, even though I was unquestionably both.

  “Well, Margaret, we seem to have a problem with your health card.”

  “Excuse me, I didn’t catch your name.” He had my first name. I didn’t have his. I did my best to keep him off guard. That would be my only chance.

  “I’m Mr. Greggen,” he said again. This immediately made the rules clearer.

  “Certainly,” I said. His was a small game, but I wasn’t going to let him play it. “Please call me Mrs. Rider.” I smiled in a friendly way. I’ve been told I have a very disarming smile.

  He nodded, but didn’t return the smile.

  I may have been making things worse for myself, but I wanted him to understand that I was more street-smart than he first thought. People often do that to me because I’m told I look at least ten years younger than I am. I think it’s the money, which buys good hair color, silk suits, and a knack for makeup. Eddy says I turn heads, but I’ve never noticed. Still, if I’ve learned anything from Eddy it’s that men tend to be driven by the tiny brain below their belts rather than the real one above. I took advantage of that now.

  “Now help me understand why you’ve been holding me for over thirty minutes.” I smiled again.

  “Well, as I said, there seems to be some problem with your health card.”
/>   “And what is that?”

  “It would appear that your health card shows that you’ve been vaccinated.”

  “I was.”

  “But you no longer have the vaccination.” He stated it like it was a fact.

  “My understanding is that the government isn’t requiring a vaccination until the eighteenth.” No answer, no lie required. One down, two to go.

  “Are you currently vaccinated?” It would have been a good time for him to use my name, but he didn’t. He clearly didn’t want to call me Mrs. Rider.

  “I don’t understand why we’re having this conversation. The requirement doesn’t go into effect until tomorrow.”

  No response from Mr. Greggen.

  “Is that correct? Or do I have my dates wrong?”

  He didn’t need to know my stomach was upside down.

  “You have your dates correct.”

  “Then why am I sitting here and why are you asking these questions?” I stayed pleasant but persistent. I’d had lots of practice at this. He had no idea who he was up against.

  “Who removed it, Mrs. Rider?”

  “Did we establish that I did have it removed? Or was that purely conjecture on your part? I forget.” More smile. More dazzling white teeth.

  Mr. Greggen didn’t respond immediately. His eyes darted sideways like he was hoping for some insight to redeem him. “Why does your health card show you have a vaccination, but you don’t actually have it?”

  “Mr. Greggen, frankly I’m troubled that you keep asking whether I have the vaccination when it’s not even required yet. I’m very bothered that you are accusing me of this when I don’t understand how you could know whether I have it or not.”

  Good. His eyes darted around the tiny room and he kept swallowing, like that would save him.

  Me? I was perilously close to throwing up.

  “You’ve kept me isolated long enough that I’ve missed my flight,” I continued. “You’ve cost me a great deal of money, and you haven’t had any justification for this.”

  He reddened. His forehead beaded up with small dots of sweat. “Your health card is a problem,” he said. I don’t think the conversation was going at all the way he’d expected.

  “If you insist on holding me without a reason, then I’ll need to call my attorney, as well as my friend, Chris Edahart. You know Chris, I’m sure, since you’re quoted from time to time in The Gazette.” Chris Edahart was not my friend and had, in fact, never heard of me. But Mr. Greggen—the man with no first name—didn’t need to know the level of my intimacy with the managing editor of the Colorado Springs Gazette.

  Mr. Greggen didn’t say anything. It didn’t take a rocket scientist—or a consultant—to realize he had found himself stuck in a corner.

  “You know, it’s funny. Chris and his wife, Ellen, were over for dinner just last week.” I should have stopped while I was ahead. I had no idea what Chris Edahart wife’s name was. I didn’t even know if he was married. I couldn’t help myself, though. Mr. Greggen looked queasy. “Anyway, we were having this off-the-wall conversation about civil liberties. You know the discussion: when is it okay to sacrifice personal liberty for the greater good, and when do you need to take a stand? Of course, Chris, being the kind of thinker he is, came out far more liberal than I did. But—” I smiled a broad, white smile, “I’m certainly becoming a believer in more personal responsibility and less, shall we say, Big Brother, even as we speak.” I kept eye contact. I had nothing to lose.

  The man, however, hadn’t reached his level in the new organization just by surviving. Finally, he said, “Look, I don’t know who you know or what you’re doing. But you need to have a vaccination. Your card says you have it. The receiver—“ he’d said the word without realizing it “—says you don’t. Today, you’re right, that’s legal.” He leaned in and whispered. “You realize that tomorrow, this would be a felony.”

  Got it. Where was the restroom?

  “A felony?” Some other voice was coming out of some other body.

  “A felony,” he repeated.

  “To fly without a vaccination?”

  “To have a discrepancy between what your card says and what is reality.”

  “And how would I know that?”

  “Read the amendment to the Homeland Security Act.”

  “I’ll be sure to do that on my flight to San Francisco.” I smiled again. No doubt, it was a sicker-looking smile. “May I go now so I can rearrange my day?”

  “Sure,” Mr. Greggen said. He was a little weasel of a man. “Have a nice day.”

  I grabbed my things and then headed straight to the restroom so I could throw up. If they had cameras there, well, so be it. It was either the restroom or the concourse. I thought the restroom was more discreet.

  Afterwards, I brushed my teeth with the emergency travel toothbrush I carried in my computer bag, although up till now, that hadn’t been the emergency I’d saved it for. Mostly, though, I held myself against the sink and tried not to shake. The interrogation had told me multiple things:

  They clearly had RFID receivers to determine if the vaccination matched the health card.

  I had just barely escaped a felony. Is that what Martha Stewart had been accused of? Unlike her, I would have no mansion to return to.

  I was in deep, perhaps unredeemable, shit.

  I collected myself and called Zaan corporate travel to rearrange my travel only to find out that my original flight had been delayed and I could still catch it if I raced to the gate.

  It wasn’t until we were in the air that it registered what a colossal mistake I’d just made. All that game-playing adrenaline made me stupid, stupid, stupid. I should have caught a cab and gone home. Things might have turned out significantly different if I had.

  At the very least, I should have called Eddy before I called Zaan travel. He would have been a beacon of common sense. But he’d so persistently ingrained in me that if you were going to use a cell phone, you might just as well walk over to all your neighbors—well, and the NSA—and give them a typewritten copy of what you expected to say in your telephone conversation. This would also be the appropriate time to give them all your charge card, checking account, and social security numbers.

  So instead, I sat on my flight—patient on the outside, hysterical on the inside. I was too nervous to think, too upset to even read. Mostly, I just sat with my face in my hands and tried not to think about what I was going to do.

  CHAPTER

  25

  FRANK ZAPPA ONCE SAID, “There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.”

  And he said it without ever having met me.

  Mr. Greggen had rattled me so much that I could only think about getting on the plane and not, stupidly, about getting home again. What kind of a machine had I turned into? I dropped my load off at my desk at Baja Breeze and headed for a conference room for a private space to call Eddy on a landline.

  “Eddy,” I said as soon as he said hello. And then I started to sob. I’d held it in all morning and I couldn’t anymore.

  “Maggie, what’s wrong? What happened?”

  I couldn’t stop crying and hearing his soothing voice on the other end made it worse, not better. Things would never be the same again. I finally set the receiver down for a minute while I hunted down a handful of Kleenexes out of some stranger’s cubicle.

  When I came back, I was only slightly more collected. But gradually I managed to get the story out in a trickle of bits and pieces.

  When he’d finally put together enough of my story, he said, “So the bottom line is they knew you’d removed the capsule.”

  “Yes.”

  “But they didn’t say how?”

  “They knew it as soon as I walked through the metal detector.”

  “Damn. That should have been so obvious to us. In the larger scheme of things, the easiest part would be to add a receiver to the security process.”

  “It’s an interesting
dual system. You have to have the health card, but they’re surreptitiously checking the accuracy of the health card with what’s embedded in your arm.”

  “And the numbers have to match,” he said.

  “According to Tina,” I said.

  “Tina!” We both said it at the same time. I hadn’t even thought of her since I sat in that glass booth purgatory.

  “I’ll call her as soon as we get off the phone.”

  “Tell her that I didn’t ever tell them about her.”

  “But they asked about who removed it?”

  “They did. I steered them back to whether in fact it had been removed.”

  “But the next person might not be so adept.”

  “The next person will be questioned after the eighteenth. It’ll be a felony. They’ll give up all the information they have as a bargaining chip.” I started shaking again and the tears started welling up. It would have been me. What would I have said to escape a prison sentence?

  We were both quiet for a moment. I’m sure Eddy was thinking through his own version of what might have been. He was the first to talk. “So now we have to figure out how to get you home.”

  I sniffled. It was the only response I could get out. Finally, I said, “Maybe you can FedEx my capsule to me at Baja Breeze. I can tape it on my arm or carry it in my pocket. Surely that would get me past the RFID receiver. It’s not like the receiver could pick up that it’s not embedded in my body, could it?”

  “No. I don’t want you to take the risk.”

  “It’ll still match my health card. I think it could work,” I said. Maggie the optimist.

  “But we didn’t anticipate this fiasco. Maggie, I just don’t know if I can bear the idea of your going through security again.” Eddy the pessimist.

  “Just mail it. We can make a final decision after you’ve sent it. In the meantime, you can do some Googling. If you spot a red flag, we’ll know before we try it.”

  I felt a tiny bit calmer.

  It wasn’t till after we hung up and I mentally sorted through the day one more time that I realized we had a tiny glitch: Mr. Greggen had kept my health card.