The Flight Attendant(82)

23




Airports fascinated Elena because of the way everyone was wired when they were there. Everyone was amped. There were the passengers who were nervous and tense, stressed because they were worried—and this was the anxiety spectrum—about their connections or they were white-knuckle flyers or they were on high alert for the heat and light and the eardrum-shattering thunder from a terrorist bomb. There were the more frequent flyers who were fretting about connections or upgrades, and those who were annoyed by the inconveniences of clear plastic three-one-one bags and metal detectors and having to step from their wingtips and sneakers. (Her own frustration? She was always piqued by the idiots who put their filthy shoes in the bins with their coats and bags. She cringed when she’d have to layer a cashmere sweater into a plastic tray that a moment ago had been cheek-to-cheek with soles that regularly stood before urinals.)

Elena had slipped the straw hat back into her duffel even before she had exited baggage. She considered ducking into the ladies’ room and pulling on a different wig, but she knew that Bowden wasn’t going to be leaving the airport anytime soon. There was nothing more to worry about.

The irony that the flight attendant had spotted her in passport control in Rome was not lost on her. Viktor was certain to say something. He might do more than that. Far more. And yet the possibility of running into Bowden was what had led her to fly out of Newark instead of JFK in the first place.

On the other hand, it was an unexpected little gift that Bowden had seen her and attacked her. And then there was the good fortune that some vigilante from Massachusetts had come to her aid. Elena had been ready with her own pepper spray, but she hadn’t needed it. She’d slipped what looked like an elegant Italian fountain pen discreetly back into her purse after Bowden had collapsed to her knees, her hands on her face.

She paused when she caught a whiff of jet fuel as she stood in line outside for a cab. She hated the smell of jet fuel. It nauseated her. But she shook it off because it was sunny and the encounter in baggage was a rather good thing. A rather good thing indeed. She would definitely tell Viktor that. As far as the gaping world was concerned, it was all further proof that the flight attendant was completely unhinged. The cause and effect was clear: Bowden murders Sokolov in Dubai. She is outed by the New York Post. She lunges at a strange woman in Fiumicino. Tomorrow morning when her body was found in Rome, everyone would think it was eminently likely—it was downright predictable—that the flight attendant had killed herself.

Assuming, of course, that she went ahead with the plan. First, however, she wanted to understand precisely what this brother-in-law did at the Blue Grass Army Depot and how much Sokolov could have picked up online. She knew what she herself could learn—easily, one call and then one call back—but she had to know what he could have learned. That was different. She also wanted to dive into onionland and her dark assets online to see if her instincts about Bowden, her brother-in-law Dennis McCauley, and the courier were correct. Then she had to have a consult with her handler. She knew she couldn’t stall very much longer. They knew that, too. She wondered what the next twelve hours would bring. Or, for that matter, the next twenty-four. Either they brought her in or Bowden was dead. It all depended on how badly they wanted to know about Viktor Olenin and his dreams of drones and poison gas.





24




Makayla told Cassie that she was thirty-six while they were seated in the backseat of the small cab into Rome. She and her husband, an ad executive, had a five-year-old daughter who was about to start kindergarten. They lived in Douglaston, Queens, and her in-laws lived nearby, which was a godsend when it came to childcare. She talked and talked, asking almost no questions, which was perfect, because the cab was stifling in the midday August heat and Cassie wanted only to listen. She might even have fallen asleep if, once they were inside the Rome traffic ring, the cab hadn’t been stopping and starting with unpredictable (and incessant) violence. But Makayla’s voice was low and kind, and Cassie imagined that voice reading aloud to her daughter those nights when she wasn’t flying to Frankfurt or Rome.

God, Cassie thought, what must it be like to have a daughter? To have children? One time she saw a quote written in blue and yellow chalk on a blackboard outside a clothing shop in the West Village: “Remember that person you wanted to be? There’s still time.” She wanted to believe that; she wanted to believe it almost desperately. She wanted to be different from what she was—to be anything but what she was. But every day that grew less and less likely. Life, it seemed to her in the back of the cab, was nothing but a narrowing of opportunities. It was a funnel.

“Here’s our hotel,” Makayla was saying, and before Cassie could reach for her wallet inside her purse, the other flight attendant had paid for the ride.

“Please, let me pay you back,” she said. She knew they were staying at the same hotel where the airline had booked them last week, but it still caused her to sigh in frustration when she looked up at the entrance. She thought instantly of how she would have to avoid Enrico. He would see the other crew members in their iconic black and blue and red uniforms and speculate that she was in the hotel, too.

“Not a big deal,” said Makayla. “You can buy me a drink tonight. How’s that?”

Cassie smiled at the suggestion. The fact that for Makayla alcohol was nothing more than a shorthand for friendship and camaraderie wasn’t lost on her. It was for so much of the world. “Okay,” she said and hoped that if they did have that drink, the gods would be kind to her and today would be Enrico’s day off. The driver lifted their two suitcases from the back of the cab. “Thank you,” she said to Makayla. “I mean that. Thank you for everything.”