The Flight Attendant(79)

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“I know someone in passport control: line six. I have to talk to her.”

She wondered briefly about the eyeglasses she had spotted Miranda putting into her purse, because Miranda hadn’t been wearing them when they had met in Sokolov’s hotel room in Dubai. But perhaps she didn’t wear contact lenses on overnight flights so she could sleep. Or they were reading glasses. Didn’t matter. Cassie speculated that the woman wasn’t wearing eyeglasses in her passport photo, and so she didn’t want to be wearing them now when the security officer looked up at her and did the obligatory compare-and-contrast with the thumbnail image in her navy blue book.

If it was a navy blue book. For all she knew, it was red or black or green. She realized she had presumed the woman was a regular American with a regular passport. Maybe not. Maybe she wasn’t American. Or maybe she was, but she had some sort of diplomatic stature.

“Who?”

It would have taken too long to explain to Makayla specifically who the passenger was, and so Cassie answered simply, “Someone from Dubai. Someone who’s part of the shitstorm that’s my life right now.” All she had to do was say the word Dubai and she guessed that everyone in the flight crew would have a pretty solid inkling of what she was talking about. Adding shitstorm had been a reflex, an uncharacteristic flicker of self-pity. But it was also unnecessary: they all had their theories about what might or might not have occurred in Dubai—what she might or might not have done—and if only out of a gawker’s curiosity they were not about to desert her right now.

She watched the woman stand before the passport officer, watched him stamp her passport (though the color remained a mystery), and then she raced to the end of the funnel where the passengers exited into baggage, frustrated that it meant taking her eyes off Miranda. But she hadn’t a choice: she couldn’t risk allowing her to disappear into the hordes of travelers who weren’t slowed by lines or checked bags. All her postflight exhaustion was gone, her eyes were alert, and she didn’t worry about what she would say or what she would ask. Because she knew. She knew.

While she waited, she sent Ani a text telling her that she understood she was sound asleep in New York, but she was about to confront Miranda at Fiumicino. She was going to ask her who Alex Sokolov really was and who she really was, since the woman sure as hell didn’t work for his hedge fund. A part of Cassie understood well that she was playing with fire: if Miranda had killed Alex, who knows what she might do if she felt cornered. But Cassie was ready. She told herself the woman was likely unarmed because she had just disembarked from a transcontinental flight; even if, somehow, she had snuck a weapon onto the aircraft, how could she possibly attack her amidst the baggage carousels in a crowded—packed—international airport?

But the seconds went by, and she didn’t emerge. The people kept coming, an endless, steady stream, and there was no sign of Miranda. Cassie considered whether she might have missed her while she was texting, but she didn’t believe that. She had only looked down at her phone for milliseconds at a time; she’d always been watching. She craned her neck to see back toward passport control, but there was no sign of her. She scanned the area for a ladies’ room where she might have gone, but there wasn’t one between security and baggage. There was only one behind her.

Then, however, she saw the bag—that beautiful calfskin leather duffel. It was over the shoulder of a woman who had indeed walked right past her, a woman with blond hair and sunglasses and a wide-brimmed straw sun hat who was already beyond the first baggage carousels. Cassie once more scanned the exit from passport control, and when she didn’t see Miranda, she made a decision. She turned and ran after the woman in the sun hat, well aware that she must have looked like a madwoman, but no longer caring.

Cassie reached her well before the passenger had exited. She grabbed her from behind, taking her shoulder and spinning her around to face her. She couldn’t see the woman’s eyes behind her sunglasses and what she could see of her hair beneath her hat was so much lighter than Miranda’s. She couldn’t decide if it really was her or not. She tried to recall whether this was the same blouse—white and a little baggy—that Miranda had been wearing a few minutes ago while in line, but it was so drab and nondescript that Cassie wasn’t sure.

The woman looked past her, offering not the slightest hint of recognition.

“It is you, isn’t it?” Cassie asked, pleading, and though she hadn’t shouted, she had the sense that if anyone were listening they would think she was hysterical.

“Pardon me? Have we met?” The tone was light and unflappable. Had Cassie heard it before? Maybe. Maybe not.

“You’re Miranda, aren’t you? You have to come with me to the police.”

“I’m sorry, but my name isn’t Miranda. Is there something I can do to help you?” she asked.

“Dubai! Room five-eleven at the Royal Phoenician!” Cassie insisted, her voice almost a wail.

“I don’t know what any of that means,” she replied. “I’ve never been to Dubai.”

So Cassie shook the woman, not because she still believed that it was Miranda but because she understood that it wasn’t. It wasn’t. Either she’d never actually seen Miranda or she’d gotten away, and Cassie feared in her heart that it was the former. In her despair, she was more violent with this stranger than she had intended—she was even about to reach for the brim of the woman’s hat and whip it aside, one last pathetic gesture, one last hope—when she saw someone else from the corner of her eye, another passenger, and this person was turning a small red tube of lipstick toward her. And even before Cassie could respond, she knew what was going to happen. What was happening already. She felt the spray on her face, the sting more excruciating than a sunburn, and though she had closed her eyes and brought her hands to her face, instantly her eyes were running and her nose was a melting glacier and every breath was a raspy, asthmatic wheeze or a cough. She collapsed to her knees, she used the kerchief around her neck to wipe her face. She tried to call out, to speak, to apologize. Instead she was aware of someone standing over her as if she were a vanquished pro wrestler, and sensed it was the Good Samaritan who had pepper-sprayed her. The passenger was calling out for help, and Cassie heard people running—the tile floor was vibrating beneath her—and then the woman with the pepper spray was pulled away from her.