“Just a sip.”
“No, thanks,” Chris said.
“Why, is it a religious thing?” Sonny persisted.
“Well, I’m a minister. Even if I wasn’t, my grandfather was an alcoholic. I loved him, and we were alike in pushing things to the limit, and I was always concerned I could become an alcoholic, too.”
“You steal cars and boats and kill people, but you won’t have a sip of alcohol. You’re a strange bird.”
Chris shrugged. Since he normally only emptied the pockets of people he’d captured or killed, he strategized with Hannah about the best way for him to pickpocket an unknowing living mark. As part of their strategy, Hannah readied some change.
“When I drop the change, the man will bend over to help me pick it up. That’s when you lift his passport.”
Chris nodded.
Then his doppelganger passed outside the front of the bar with something in his back left pocket the shape of a passport with its blue edge sticking out. Chris’s heart pulsated as he and Hannah left their seats and followed. Hannah passed the man and dropped her change. Chris’s heart beat faster and faster. When the man bent over to help her, Chris brushed against him from behind, removed the passport, put it in his pocket, and kept walking.
Minutes later, Chris and Hannah reunited with Sonny in the café. Chris drew the passport out of his pocket and looked at it. “Croatia,” he said. “Damn. This is no good. I can’t use this to get into the US without a visa. Croatia?”
Sonny and Hannah frowned.
“We’ll just have to find someone else,” she said. “Let’s try a new bar.”
They switched over to the other bar and poked their heads in. Inside, a John Malkovich lookalike sporting a moustache and wearing a suit jacket sat alone at a table drinking. Sonny smiled. His turn.
“I’ve got this one,” Hannah whispered. “Trust me. You guys can take another table and watch.”
While Hannah talked up Malkovich and bought him more drinks, Chris and Sonny sat at the table and scanned the area inside the bar and out for Chris’s double. Soon Hannah was laughing with Malkovich and touching his chest. Then she said she was going to be late for her flight, jumped up, paid her tab and rushed out. Chris and Sonny took their cue and departed the bar, too. When they were well out of sight of the bar, Hannah handed Sonny his passport — United States. An hour later, they lifted a passport for Chris.
Chris quickly dropped off the Croatian passport at the information desk. “Somebody lost this.” As Chris walked away, the desk attendant called the Croatian man’s name over a loudspeaker.
They found a secluded corner without surveillance cameras and sat down. Hannah put on makeup, making her eyes look bigger, similar to her passport photo. Then she applied makeup to Chris, to make his nose seem thinner, closer to his lookalike. She offered to help Sonny, but he balked: “Get that crap off me. I ain’t no faggot.” She tried to explain, but he refused.
“Are you prejudiced?” Hannah asked.
“Call it what you want,” he said. “I hate krauts, micks, niggers, limeys, honkies, spics, wops, pollacks, frogs, injuns, sweaties, cheese heads, mountain monkeys, camel jockeys, rutabagas, commies, kikes, nips, chinks, dinks, flips, and curry munchers, too — I hate them all.”
Chris felt like Hannah looked — as if someone had tossed a flashbang in the room.
“What?” Sonny asked. “Did I leave someone out?”
Hannah shook off his comment and checked her cell phone for ticket information. “Today Air France has the most flights of any airline to Washington Dulles International Airport, but all their planes left this morning. We can fly the next Brussels Airlines out of here if we hurry and get a connecting flight to DC.”
Chris and Sonny nodded.
The three of them rushed to the counter, purchased their tickets in seats away from each other, checked in their bags, passed security, and caught their plane. Chris tapped his finger on his armrest while he studied his passport and the immigration stamps inside. Know your identity.
26
At 1500 hours, they touched down at Washington Dulles International Airport. The clock was ticking down to when Mordet would attack the US, but Chris didn’t know how much time remained on that clock. They still had no idea what, specifically, he was plotting.
Once deplaned and inside the airport, they approached immigration separately. Chris went first. Focus. Believe your identity. He put on the tired, bored look he wore in so many countries, the one that helped him blend with his surroundings.
“Welcome home,” an immigration officer with studious eyes greeted him. They chatted minimally, and Chris walked through without incident, stopping just outside immigration. He pretended to search for something in his bag while he surveyed his teammates.
The same officer examined Hannah’s passport. Then he studied her. He seemed to focus on her hair. Again, he looked at her picture. He spoke, but Chris couldn’t hear what he said.
A broad smile lit Hannah’s face as she replied and proudly flipped her hair. The officer frowned, but Hannah glowed as she spoke again. He waved her through.
A little while later, Sonny came through a different line. The immigration officer, a woman with an angry face, questioned him.
Sonny returned her angry face with the same, and his lips said, No.
The grumpy lines in her forehead sank, as she appeared to ask more questions.
Sonny’s face upped the grumpiness. His voice became louder, but Chris still couldn’t hear his words.
Her eyes moved from Sonny’s face to his photo then back to his face. The moustache.
Their voices became audible to Chris, and people from the other lines stared at them. Sonny gave her an irritated look, and his voice blared: “It’s this neat invention they call a razor! You ought to try one sometime! Your upper lip ain’t looking so smooth!”
“Are you getting smart with me?” she snapped.
“No, ma’am! I thought we were exchanging beauty tips!”
She smacked his passport closed and stabbed him with it. “Next!”
Chris tried not to chuckle as he picked up his carry-on and headed toward baggage claim. Chris, Hannah and Sonny each picked up their bags and passed through customs independently, reuniting outside the airport at the nearest taxi stop.
“How much money you guys got?” Hannah asked.
“I’m down to twenty dollars and some change,” Chris said.
“Well, I had a donkey,” Sonny said.
Chris smiled.
Hannah handed each of them a wad of money. “We’ll have to buy fake IDs, weapons, and some other essentials.”
“Where do you get all this money?” Chris asked.
“I’ve got a Visa under a fake identity that I keep for such emergencies,” she said. “The Agency doesn’t know about it, but after we clear our names, I’ll tell them to reimburse me. I just made a cash withdrawal from the airport ATM.”
Chris and Sonny thanked her.
They caught a cab. Chris didn’t call Young — preferring to surprise him rather than becoming the surprisee. They travelled thirty minutes east to Annandale, Virginia, just south of Langley. Chris told the driver to circle Young’s neighborhood. They couldn’t spot any surveillance, so Chris had the driver drop them off.
Chris knocked on the door and noted it was made of wood and equipped with a deadbolt lock — average for security. A faint light emitted through the peephole. He pressed the button next to the door and heard a bell. The faint light disappeared. Someone was watching him — Chris hoped it was Young. Although they kept in touch, he hadn’t actually seen him since the rescue. The door opened and Young answered. Chris’s eyes were drawn to his prosthetic ears — they looked so real. His hand and lower arm were lifelike, too. Chris remembered Mordet, and his resolve steeled.