Ma Zhen began to glare over the top of his glasses. A dark man with a thick beard stood behind the girl, close enough that he was obviously her father — or some kind of protector. The man smiled at the little girl’s skill but his eyes challenged everyone around him. Tang had been a police officer himself for eleven years. Either this man was a policeman or something very close to it. He tried to shrug off the worry. It would not matter. A policeman could do nothing to stop them once they were in the air. Tang touched his wife on the shoulder. “Come,” he said. “We should prepare to board.”
Lin ignored him. She smiled openly now — something he hadn’t seen her do in a very long time.
The little girl put a hand to her chest, introducing herself. “Wo jiao Mattie,” she said.
“We need to get in line.” Tang mustered a tight smile of his own. It felt like he was squinting at the sun.
“It is so nice to meet you, Mattie,” his wife cooed. She grudgingly got to her feet, and then turned back to the child. “My name is Lin. Maybe I will see you on the plane.”
The dark man with the beard called the little girl to him, praising her Mandarin. He acted as though he spoke the language himself, which made sense considering his daughter was so fluent. Tang made a mental note to remember that when speaking around him.
Ma Zhen came up to stand beside them when they got to the other side of the room. Arms folded, he looked sternly at Lin, then back at Tang, frowning. He’d been close enough to hear the exchange.
“It would be best if you avoided conversations with other passengers,” he whispered so they could both hear. “It will only complicate matters at this stage of the affair.”
“The child spoke to her,” Tang said through clenched teeth. He was put out with Lin, but furious that this boy would doubt their commitment. “Everything will be fine.” But when he looked at Lin, the remnants of a smile on the corners of her mouth told everyone he was a liar.
Ma Zhen stalked away and flopped down next to Gao, sulking like an angry teenager. When he wasn’t making bombs, he rarely did anything but sulk. Fate had dealt him that sort of life. Tang supposed such a look was to be expected from a man who had resolved to kill himself — even for a greater good.
Any evidence of Lin’s smile vanished by the time the gate agent called for them to board. Tang calmed some as they walked down the Jetway, considering what lay ahead.
British Airways, Lufthansa, Emirates, and several other airlines had Airbus A380s in their fleets, but Global was the first American carrier brave enough to snub venerable US-made Boeing. Most of these passengers had never flown on this type of aircraft and they stood in nothing short of awe when they first boarded, clogging the aisles when Tang and his wife finally made it down the Jetway. It took time to find their seats and get their carry-on luggage situated. Tang inched ahead slowly, memorizing the surroundings in case he needed them later. Years as a policeman had taught him nothing ever went as planned.
The interior was double the size of any plane he’d ever seen. Highly polished walls of marbled teak rose up on bulkheads at either side of the boarding door to form a wide and welcoming foyer. Three well-groomed flight attendants, wearing Global Airline’s red pencil skirts and white blouses, stood under an ornate glass light fixture that hung down like a palace chandelier. Rather than the musty smells of old carpet and recirculated sweat common to commercial aircraft, the pleasant odor of fresh espresso wafted up from a plush galley. Leather stools ran along a rolled leather bar just inside the entrance. It looked more like a fancy nightclub than something found on a commercial airliner.
Tang could picture the diagrams he’d seen on the Internet and knew the exact location of their seats. Still, it wasn’t good to appear too self-assured, so he showed his ticket to an overly helpful bald man wearing a red vest. The man directed him to his left, forward and through the luxurious first-class cabin and up a flight of teak stairs located across from the cockpit door, which for the moment was open, revealing a crew of at least three as they prepped the plane for takeoff. Tang knew the crew could be completely self-contained once in the air, with their own rest quarters and lavatory facilities. He sighed to himself. It wouldn’t matter. Hiding behind a reinforced door would do little to keep their precious airplane in the sky.
Once at the top of the stairs, Tang worked his way back, through the forward business-class seats, past another galley with yet another coffee bar, this one only slightly smaller and no less elegant than the one in first class. A Global flight attendant with brunette hair piled on top of her head like an urn approached as he helped Lin get situated next to the window. She was wearing a barista’s apron and offered freshly ground espressos and scones before takeoff.
Tang thanked her and stuffed their camera bags into the cubbies under each footrest so they’d be able to access them without having to drag everything out of an overhead bin when the time came. Each seat sank down inside its surrounding plastic walls when it reclined to meet its footrest, forming a plush bed and a good semblance of privacy. Lin’s seat was located one row back from the forward emergency exit door, closest to the wall. On the flight from Las Vegas to LA, she’d planned to wedge the bomb between her armrest and the skin of the airplane. Business class on the A380 provided a small storage bin along the outer wall, next to her armrest, much like a lazarette on a boat — a perfect place for the device.
The flight attendant brought two cups of espresso for them before their flight. Lin waved hers away, but Tang accepted his in order to appear compliant.
“That little girl was amazing, don’t you think?” Lin said, once the attendant had moved on with her tray.
Tang gave a thoughtful nod. His stomach began to knot again. Now? After a nearly two years, Lin had chosen this moment to display some hint of emotion — all because a filthy guizi child had picked up her boarding pass? His hand shook when he tried to sip the espresso. He took a deep breath, screwing his face into a calm smile.
“She spoke passable Chinese,” he said. “In any case, her father looks dangerous. We will have to be careful of him.”
Lin ignored the last, thinking only of the child. “She was so… I cannot even say it… so alive.” She turned away, the refection of another smile clearly visible in the aircraft window.
She didn’t say the words, but Tang knew what she was thinking. The child named Mattie made her think of their daughter — happy thoughts of better times that threatened to ruin everything.
Chapter 40
Not ready to relax until the plane was in the air, Quinn herded Mattie down the aisle in front of him. Their seats were on the main deck, in the far back section of the aircraft that Thibodaux would have called “steerage.” Out of habit, Quinn studied the faces and moods of the other passengers as he passed, watching for people who seemed out of place or more interested in him than they should have been. So far, no one seemed to care about anything but grabbing the overhead bin space before it was all gone.
They walked nearly the full length of the plane to get to their seats so Quinn got a pretty good look at the passengers who’d boarded before him. Of course, there were still plenty who came in later, and an entire second floor of potential threats that Quinn knew he had to consider. This “unseen threat” way of thinking had driven Kim crazy during the years they’d been married. Stupidly, he’d tried to explain to her that just because she wasn’t paranoid didn’t mean someone wasn’t out to get her. They’d shared all too many silent dinners, with her staring daggers across her Greek salad, because he’d observed someone who looked suspicious in the restaurant.