The Flight Attendant(75)

Perhaps Miranda was even behind the dude in the black ball cap.

Unfortunately, there were also still those occasional moments when she wondered if, just maybe, she was blaming Miranda needlessly—because she herself had killed Alex Sokolov. Usually she was able to walk herself in from the ledge when her mind would go there. It was just that over the years there had been so many other revelatory and appalling morning-after discoveries of what she had done when she was on the far side of the blackout zone.

Cassie, you really don’t remember when you were kicking the jukebox? You were weirdly pissed off because they had nothing by Taylor Swift. Have you looked at your foot this morning?

You were screaming like a porn star, girl. The people in the apartment next to mine were banging on the wall.

You were about to give this homeless guy your credit cards, Cassie—all of them. You were, like, emptying your wallet. It was sweet, but insane.

Houdini Bikini. That’s what you called it. You took off your top and were trying to step out of your bottom.

Once when Paula was sober she’d ruminated that one of them was destined to die via “death by misadventure.” Apparently that was what coroners wrote on death certificates when people died doing something monumentally stupid, usually while drunk. They drowned or they fell off buildings or they tumbled down long flights of stairs. Paula had joked that it wasn’t the worst way to go.

The small talk among the crew grew awkward fast. Usually they all would have chatted casually and gotten to know each other a bit, but how do you make small talk with a person of interest in a murder investigation in Dubai? Cassie got it. She understood. She was by no means a pariah, but no one could quite figure out how to transition from a discussion of the murder of some hedge fund manager to asking if you had any hobbies.

Yes, she would have answered, had they asked. I drink. Want the secret to a dirty martini? Plop an ice cube and a little water in the glass and place it in the freezer for a couple of minutes before mixing together the gin, the vermouth, and the olive juice.

And yet somehow she had done her job for three hours now. She was working the business-class cabin with a kind woman her age named Makayla, and it probably helped that the other flight attendant was almost heroically competent. She was always a step ahead of Cassie on the hot towels and warmed nuts, opening the different wines and gently—very gently—helping her remain on task as they warmed the trays with the steaks or the salmon or the risotto. When Cassie introduced herself to the passengers, she used her middle name, Elizabeth, and asked them to call her Ellie. (She had taken off the badge with her name, which was technically a uniform violation, but she didn’t care this evening. She just didn’t care.) She was pretty sure that the paunchy guy in the ugly, short-sleeve jacquard shirt knew who she really was, but he was traveling alone and hadn’t bothered to share his reconnaissance with anyone else on the plane. He just eyed her knowingly, as if he got it, he was in on the joke.

Now for the first time, in the dark over the Atlantic when most of the passengers were starting to sleep, she was able to sit down in her jump seat and stare at her phone. To read and reread the story. To see her “no comment,” which seemed profoundly incriminating in the context of this nightmare, but also the deft way that Ani Mouradian managed to defend her and deflect the allegations. She couldn’t help but scan the comments from readers that followed the story, most of them fatuous and some accusatory, but all of them hurtful and cruel. She examined the way that the saga was being discussed on the social networks. Finally she returned to her own e-mails, including the ones from Ani and Megan and her sister. Rosemary chastised her, writing that she couldn’t understand why Cassie hadn’t told her what was going on, either on the phone immediately after she returned to the United States from the Emirates or at some point on Saturday. After all, we spent all Saturday together, she reiterated. Her sister was angry and sad and worried about her. The e-mail was as judgmental as ever, and Cassie knew that she had earned every word.

And then there was the e-mail from her friend Gillian: it was a well-meaning but appalling joke about just how bad this guy must have been in bed for her to cut his throat.

Brendon and Makayla and the rest of the crew left her alone, undoubtedly aware of what she was facing.

She honestly wasn’t sure what was worse: the online jokes or the online hatred. There were lots of both, all of it mean-spirited and sexist. The news story didn’t include her confession (quasi-confession, if she were honest with herself) to the FBI on Friday that she had indeed spent the night with Alex Sokolov; no one at the FBI had leaked that bit of information. But the story certainly suggested that she had, based on both the hotel surveillance camera footage of her and an interview with a hotel employee who said he had seen the flight attendant with the murdered businessman. She was sipping Coke to settle her stomach, but she wanted a drink. She sighed. She didn’t dare try and sneak one. Not now.

The strangest part of the news story, she decided, was a quote from Alex’s father. It was after his rather straightforward expression of his faith that the FBI and the Dubai police would find his son’s killer. It was after his lovely observation about the gentleness of his son’s interests, such as Alex’s “childlike” fascination with numbers and the way he had built it into a career. After that, however, Gregory Sokolov had volunteered how surprising and unwarranted he found the allegations that his son was a spy. The idea had crossed Cassie’s mind numerous times, the seed planted originally by Derek Mayes when they had first had breakfast. But it was almost as if Alex’s father was protesting too much. Moreover, she hadn’t realized that the notion was out there in the zeitgeist. Sure enough, however, when she Googled Sokolov now she found the innuendo and the rumors that had emerged with the suddenness of dandelions in May. There was plenty of speculation that he worked for the CIA and plenty that he worked for Mossad and MI6 and the FSB. There were even a few conspiracy theorists who argued that he worked for some assassin squad far darker than the CIA or the FSB, and he reported directly to the American or the Russian president. She saw groups with names like Double O (British), Cossacks (Russian), Phoenix (American), and Kidon (Israeli). None of it matched well with the young man she had dined with in Dubai, a gentle fellow from Virginia. The guy was into money and math, for God’s sake. He liked to read books from the nineteenth century. She was pretty sure that she knew more about guns than he did.