Felk took stock of the other officers nearby. Number seven was a white-haired grandpa who seem bored but calm, and number eight was a twenty-something guy, all spit and polish and worthy of the corps. Then there was number nine.
What was her freakin’ problem? Felk wondered.
The CPB officer at number nine was Magda Vryke, and her problem was manifold.
Today was supposed to be Magda’s day off but fat-ass Daisy called in sick, which was total bull. Then, as Magda was leaving for work, feeling pissed off and bloated, her life partner, Lynne, told her she wanted to back out of their condo purchase. What the hell? And when Magda arrived at Pearson, she found a dump of new alerts on her computer monitor: three new “PAs,” her name for Parental Abductions; one from France, one from Austria and one from Italy. And there was an advisory for a German chemical engineer with suspected links to terrorist factions who may be en route to the United States.
All were Red Notices with Interpol, which meant the subjects were to be detained on sight and arrested by local authorities.
And—we’re not done yet—some several hundred miles south in Washington, D.C, the Office of Enforcement at U.S. Customs and Border Protection headquarters had processed an urgent alert from the FBI through Homeland Security to all CBP Preclearance facilities.
It advised to “detain any subject bearing a tattoo similar to the image shown.” Magda Vryke had glanced at the cobra-in-barbed-wire-bracelet picture; read the background history. She was familiar with the high-profile armored car heist murders in New York City. But the alert puzzled her and she gave her head a little shake. If anything, those guys would be fleeing the States, not entering. Whatever, Magda thought as she screwed the cap back on her water bottle and smacked her booth light.
“Next! Come on, step up!”
Ivan Felk arrived and placed his documents on her counter.
“Where are you going today, sir?” Magda Vryke folded his Canadian passport, cracking its spine before inserting it into her passport reader.
“San Francisco.”
She eyeballed him, then the passport photo on her monitor, to make sure they matched. Felk was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved turtleneck sweater that complemented his muscular build. He was clean shaven, as he was in the photo.
“Purpose of your trip?”
“Visit friends, see the sights, vacation.”
Magda punched a few commands on her keyboard.
“Where were you born, Mr. Chapman?”
“Belleville, Ontario.”
“Don’t they have a big base out there?”
“That air base in Trenton is close by, just west.”
“Drove by there once. Impressive.” Magda stamped his passport. “Have a nice trip.”
“Thank you.”
He’d just been admitted entry into the United States. Felk collected his papers, gripped the handle of his bag. Almost there. He exhaled as he moved on to the next stage of the process, preboard security screening.
It was on the next level up.
The lines were jammed. People were moving slowly through the scanning stations. Felk saw security cameras everywhere. Occasionally he recognized fellow travelers from preclearance. This area was operated by the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority. As Felk moved through the line, a CATSA officer directed him to a screening station.
He joined the hundreds of passengers in the global choreography of loading luggage on the conveyor belts, extracting laptops, removing belts, shoes, jackets, emptying pockets and depositing everything into trays. At the direction of the screening officer, Felk stepped through the scanner.
It sounded.
Damn it.
“Step forward and extend your arms, sir.”
He took a quick deep breath and complied as the officer passed a wand over his body, stopping near his right wrist.
“Pull back the sleeve of your shirt, please, so I can have a look.”
Felk hesitated, trying to remember, trying to calculate the risk.
“Are you refusing, sir? I need you to pull back your sleeve.”
“Oh, no, sorry. No.”
Felk rolled back his sleeve immediately, angry at himself for forgetting his watch.
“There you go,” the officer said. “Sir, go back through, put the watch on a tray to be scanned and come back.”
Felk did everything successfully and went to the end of the conveyor to collect his luggage and laptop where another officer was waiting.
“Is this your computer, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Could you put it aside here, and turn it on for me?”
“Yes.”
Felk had taken steps to remove everything incriminating on all the drives when he was on the train. He’d stored the videos online in email accounts. Nothing was on the laptop drives.
He’d also erased his history.
The officer used tongs and a patch of cloth to chemically swab the computer. Then he put the sample in a microwave-oven-size machine to determine if Felk had been handling explosive compounds.
Then it hit him.
The guns! Christ, the guns!
He’d forgotten about the guns and ammo Dillon had shown him at the cottage. He’d washed his hands, but was it enough not to set off any alarms?
Damn it.
Casually putting on his belt, Felk tried to read the face of the screening officer studying the swab results on the screen.
This could be it.
He swallowed hard. He could flee, but they had his photo. He couldn’t believe that it could be over. Just like that. His body tensed. He thought of Clay, the other men, and begged fate for a break.
No, please, no.
“You’re good, sir,” the officer said.
Felk nodded with a smile, his tension melting as he collected his things and headed to his gate, just like any other passenger at any other airport at any other time. No one could have imagined what he and his men had done, or what they were going to do.
Ninety minutes later, the thrust of his Air Canada Airbus A319 pushed him back into aisle seat number 23C. As the jetliner climbed and leveled, he savored a measure of relief.
That he’d gotten through without any problem told him that the team was clear. They’d gotten away from Ramapo cleanly. The FBI had nothing on them. Felk was on track to the next step of the operation at five hundred and fifty miles an hour. He lowered his seat and closed his eyes.
As he fell asleep he was haunted by the face of the eyewitness.
The supermarket clerk.
Don’t worry about her. We were careful. She saw nothing that could hurt them.
Nothing.
28
Queens, New York
Lisa Palmer’s two-story frame house was at the edge of Rego Park.
Mature maple trees lined the sidewalks of her block, shading the small, neatly clipped front yards of the postwar homes. Most were fenced and displayed small signs alerting potential intruders to their security systems. A few front doors were fortified with ornate steel.
It was a pretty neighborhood of fourth- and fifth-generation Irish, Italian, Russian and Jewish immigrants that had evolved to include new Albanian, Korean, Colombian and Iranian Americans.
How long since I left to close the deal on the cabin at Lake George?
Four days? Five days?
It didn’t matter, Lisa thought.
After everything that had happened, seeing her home again was balm.
Lisa and the kids took it all in from the back of Vicky Chan’s FBI car after it had rolled off Queens Boulevard, on to Sixty-third, then down their street.