The Nix(171)

“I’m feeling a surge of pessimism about our plan,” Faye said to Samuel as they stood in the security line. “I mean, do you think they’re really going to let us through? Like, Oh yes, Miss Fugitive from Justice, right this way.”

“Would you keep it down?” Samuel said.

“I can feel the drugs wearing off. I can feel my anxiety bounding back to me like a lost dog.”

“We are normal passengers taking a normal vacation abroad.”

“A normal vacation to a country with very strict extradition laws, I sincerely hope.”

“Don’t worry. Remember what Simon said.”

“I can literally feel my confidence in our plan disintegrating. It’s like someone has taken our plan and applied a cheese grater. That’s what it feels like.”

“Please be quiet and please relax.”

They had taken a cab to the airport and purchased one-way tickets on the next available international flight, a nonstop to London. Their boarding passes were issued without a problem. They checked their luggage, again without a problem. They waited in the security line. And when they finally handed their tickets and passports to the blue-uniformed TSA agent, whose job it was to visually inspect their photographs and run their tickets over a bar-code scanner and wait for the computer to make a pleasant sound and for the light to flash green, the computer did not, in fact, make the pleasant sound. The sound it made instead was the harsh errrrrr sound like the buzzer at the end of a basketball game, that sound indicating authority and finality. And in case anyone was confused over the sound’s meaning, the light also turned red.

The security agent sat up straighter at this, surprised at the computer’s negative judgment. A rare moment of drama in terminal five.

“Could you please wait over there,” he said, pointing at an empty little holding pen whose boundaries were demarcated only by strips of dirty purple masking tape on the floor.

While they waited, the other travelers glanced at them once or twice, then were drawn back to their phones. A television above them showed the airport news network, currently a story about Governor Packer.

“They know about me,” Faye whispered into Samuel’s ear. “That I’m a fugitive. I’m on the run.”

“You are neither of those things.”

“Of course they know. This is the information age. They all have access to the same data. There’s probably a room somewhere covered with TV screens monitoring us right now. It’s in Langley, or Los Alamos.”

“I doubt you’d register as that high a threat.”

They watched the slow crawl of the line through the security checkpoint: people taking off their shoes and belts and standing in clear plastic tubes and putting their hands over their heads while gray metal arms circled their bodies, probing them.

“This is the post-9/11 world,” Faye said. “The post-privacy world. The law knows where I am at all times. Of course they wouldn’t let me fly.”

“Relax. We don’t know what’s happening yet.”

“And you. They’ll arrest you as an accessory.”

“Accessory to what? A vacation?”

“They’ll never believe we’re taking a vacation.”

“Aiding and abetting a weekend trip abroad? Hardly criminal.”

“We’re being watched right now on a bank of televisions and computer screens. Probably in the basement of the Pentagon. A feed from every port in the world. Bundles of fiber-optic cables. Face-recognition software. Technology we don’t even know exists. They are probably reading my lips at this exact moment. The FBI and CIA working in conjunction with local law enforcement. That’s how they always say it on the news.”

“This is not the news.”

“This is not the news yet.”

A man with a clipboard had by now begun talking in low tones with the security agent, glancing at them occasionally. He looked like he’d been pulled from a previous era—his hair cut into a severe and geometric flattop, a white short-sleeved shirt and thin black tie, square jaw, bright blue eyes—like he’d once been an Apollo astronaut but was now doing this. A badge hanging on his shirt pocket turned out to be, upon closer inspection, a laminated card with the image of a badge on it.

“He’s talking about us,” Faye said. “Something is about to happen.”

“Just stay calm.”

“Do you remember the story I told you about the Nix?”

“Which one was that?”

“The horse.”

“Right, yeah. The white horse that picked up children, then drowned them.”

“That’s the one.”

“Excellent story to tell a nine-year-old, by the way.”

“Do you remember the moral?”

“That the things you love the most can hurt you the worst.”

“Yes. That people can be a Nix to each other. Sometimes without even knowing it.”

“What’s your point?”

The man with the clipboard had begun walking in their direction.

“That’s what I was to you,” she said. “I was your Nix. You loved me most, and I was hurting you. You asked me once why I left you and your father. That’s why.”

“And you’re telling me this now?”