Patricia Hoag-Carrington had given up on Herodotus by the time I came back to earth again. Watching me tap on my keyboard was apparently far more interesting even though she couldn't see the screen.
"Doesn't a bottle of ice-cold water sound delicious?" she asked when I looked up at her.
I didn't know what was the matter with pushing the little button overhead that summoned a stewardess, but I was thirsty myself, for something slightly stronger. I closed my laptop down, put it back in its carrying case, and waited for Patricia to slip her legs to the side before turning toward the galley to see what I could rustle up.
At the far end of row 37, the Hofstra rat had a mini DVD camera out. Why couldn't he just snore and drool like everyone else on the plane, I wondered, or watch Erin Brockovich for the fiftieth time? As I headed up
the aisle, I caught Hofstra doing a quick pan around him. What ever happened to keeping a travel journal?
I've always felt safe in airplanes. Thieves, touts, garden-variety scum- airplanes were the one place where they left you alone. Even domestic crises could disappear when you're encapsulated in a plane. When Marissa and I were fracturing, I actually looked forward to shuttling back and forth across the Atlantic. Thirty-seven thousand feet up was the one place she couldn't call me. But I'd learned another lesson in my twenty-five years in the business, and that was: Trust No One. Even inside the sanctity of headquarters, surrounded only by people who have the highest clearances possible, when you have to take a piss, you carry with you every classified piece of paper you arrived with. That's what hit me now. The Hofstra kid's camera pan meant nothing, but it made me nervous enough to turn back, reach across my seatmate for my laptop, and stow it in my carry-on in the overhead rack.
The stewardesses were half asleep at the back of the plane. I roused one of them to find some of those miniature bottles of Scotch and an Evian for Patricia. She wandered into the rear galley and seemed to open twenty drawers. In the middle of it Muhlenberg popped in and asked for a Coke. I shrugged my shoulders to let the stewardess know I didn't mind waiting. Next, Muhlenberg asked for some peanuts, then a napkin; then she tried to strike up a conversation with the woman. I was beginning to think I might grow old and die exactly where I stood when she finally waddled back down the aisle. The stewardess looked as relieved as I did as she fitted me out with four drink-size hits of Dewar's, a plastic glass, and a bottle for my seatmate. The water was warm, but I wheedled a second glass out of her, filled with ice.
Back at row 37, Patricia was snoring daintily, glasses still perched magically on the tip of her nose, hands folded on the open pages of her book. My novel was lying on the seat, not in the pouch where I had left it. I reached over Patricia, gave the pages a shake, and when nothing came out, I knew my notes were gone.
My carry-on had been rifled, too. It almost fell on Patricia's head when
I flipped open the overhead bin. I could tell by its shape that the laptop was gone, but I stuck my hand in anyway, just to make sure. I must have stared at my carry-on for a full minute, wondering if I'd finally lost my mind, before I broadened the search. The inside pocket where I'd stowed my passport was empty. Who would steal a passport on a plane? Didn't everyone already have one when they boarded? Get robbed on an airplane, and any residual illusions about sanctity vanish completely.
I was returning my carry-on to the overhead compartment when I saw Patricia's Louis Vuitton staring me in the face. It, too, had been shifted slightly. Her black overcoat was skewed to the side. Patricia had been the one, after all, who sent me for water. Even if someone had been looking at her do it, they would have assumed she was searching through her own bag. It was insane, probably, but I eased back the zipper on her carry-on, stuck my hand inside, and began to feel around.
"For great wrongdoing, there are great punishments from the gods." The voice came from below me.
"Herodotus?"
She nodded her head yes.
"I don't suppose it would do any good if I-"
She simply shook her head in the opposite direction as I zipped her bag closed and quietly snapped in place the lid of the overhead bin. Patricia didn't bother to move her legs to let me in. By the time I had climbed over her, reshut my book and stowed it, and let down the table tray, her eyes were closed again, her breathing soft and steady.
I put Patricia's water bottle in the net pouch on the back of the seat in front of her, gave myself a reassuring hug, and was reassured in turn by the slim contours of my two stolen passports, my address book, and the tiny fortune safely tucked in the inside lining of my jacket. And a good thing it was because at that moment the last thing I looked forward to was presenting myself to the French airport police without a passport. They would have sent me on to the vice-consul at the American embassy, who would have forwarded my name to Foggy Bottom, where enough bells and whistles would have gone off that the Mothership would be alerted immediately and Webber could have treated himself to another diamond ring.
Of course, there was still a chance the French would figure out I was trying to enter the country on a stolen passport, in which event I'd be spending the day and night in La Sante, the notorious Paris prison where etiquette calls for welcoming each new invitee with a full cavity search. But that was a chance I was willing to take. I unscrewed the tops from my four bottles, poured them all into the glass, and reached up to flick off my own light. Time to self-medicate.