Now-standing in the midst of that vast, polished, glittering space that was the main "sales hall" in Schiphol Duty Free-Burt realized that he had been understating the case somewhat. There was more stuff here to buy than he had ever seen in one place in his life. Jewelry, clothes, liquor, watches, cameras, vidders, tricams, sound systems, porcelain, crystal, gold by the gram, ounce or kilo, diamonds by the carat or gram-He had stopped to stare in front of a little open-countered stall where a handsome young woman in a trim Schiphol staff uniform was weighing an emerald-cut diamond the size of Burt's thumbnail for a young man, while his girlfriend pored over another part of the case where still bigger ones lay under the security-wired glass, each in its little box, each labeled for size and brilliance. Burt had lingered there for a while, wishing he could bring something of the sort home for Wilma. But he didn't even have to look at these to know that their prices would turn him a whole lot paler than the ones on the Net cubicle back in the hotel.
He turned away regretfully, checked his watch. The pickup's ten minutes away. Better go put myself where I'm supposed to be.. He started walking the eighth of a mile or so to the place where he had been told to wait, looking as he went at the stall next to the diamond place. There was a large rectangular hole in. the floor, there, and Burt stopped to look at it curiously as a discreetly hooting klaxon began to sound. At the desk in front of the hole in the floor, a man in a dead black sliktite was bent over some paperwork, signing it, as the glittering new car he had just bought ascended from out of the depths to be examined before it was crated up and put on the man's flight out.
I want this, Burt thought. I want to live like this. I like this kind of life! Not that he had had much of it himself, so far. But he had seen other people living it now… and that was enough for him. He would do as much of this work as he had to to keep on living this way. No life Burt had ever thought possible for him at home had had this kind of wonder about it. It was uncomfortable, too, but it was worth it.
Burt made his way to the spot where he had been told to make his pickup-a fast-food shop owned by a famous chain. Burt hated their hamburgers, but he had been told to buy one, and which table to sit at to eat it, with his carry-on bag on the seat beside him. Then he was to go to the newsstand five stores down from the hamburger joint and buy a copy of a magazine called Paris-Match.
He did all these things, though he had never cared for hamburgers, finding them too greasy. Afterward, the rack carrying Paris-Match was well toward the back of the newsstand, and Burt had to go digging on the shelf for it, as someone had piled copies of some noisy yellow tabloid called Blick in front of it. He had put his bag down by his left foot, and was watching it out of the corner of his eye, so that when another bag that looked just like it appeared there, having been placed there by the owner of a very shapely pair of legs in blackline stockings, Burt was not surprised. After a little while the stockings moved away, their owner having picked up Burt's bag in exchange for her own, and vanished.
Shortly thereafter Burt squeezed his way back out to the front of the newsstand, between a number of other people who had appeared there, paid for the magazine with his debit card, and went on out into the concourse to see if his flight had been called. He knew from what he had been told that he should have had little time to do anything but go straight to his gate after making the pickup. But the big holographic display hanging in the middle of the sales hall, and automatically "repeated" in smaller versions down the length of the hall, said "delayed" in several languages. Burt sighed and went to the men's room.
Inside the stall, he sat down and stared at the bag. He had been told not to look… but he couldn't help it. What was the point of doing this kind of thing if you didn't have a hint of what was going on?
Very quietly Burt zipped open the bag. There was another jiffy bag in it, identical to the last one, but he had felt the difference in the weight of the bag the moment he picked it up. Burt peered into the bag, then took some toilet paper and used it to protect his hands as he pulled the jiffy bag out of the overnighter.
The jiffy bag wasn't closed. Burt peered into it. Inside was something which appeared to have been vacuum- sealed in heavy clear plastic. It was a brown substance. He couldn't smell anything, but Burt could see a faintly fibrous structure…
Burt sat there and just went cold. He had always laughed at people's description of the blood draining out of their faces and down to his feet, but now he felt it happening to him, and he wasn't laughing. He was no expert on drugs… but this was what either marijuana or hashish looked like when you pressed it down tight and vacuum-packed it: Burt had seen enough news broadcasts featuring seizures of the stuff to have at least this much of a clue about what he was carrying.
Now he broke out in a genuine cold sweat. Burt had told Mr. Vaud that he would never ask questions. At the time he had meant it. But now everything had changed… for everyone knew how carefully flights that came in from Amsterdam were checked. There were old drug connections there that never went away, no matter how the Dutch authorities tried to stamp the trade out. An old tradition of tolerance for the "soft" side of the culture had created tremendous problems for them, adding to the ones already in place by virtue of the Netherlands' position as a country on the coast.
Why didn't this occur to me before? The answer was simple. Too excited, too glad to get away to think things through…
And what do I do now?!
Burt glanced hastily around him for places he might "lose" the package… but then he let out a long breath, for there was no way that was going to work. The courier who would be expecting to make his pickup would be waiting for him on the far side of U. S. customs, Vaud had told him. If he didn't have the package… it would be very bad for him. Burt shivered.
Yet at the same time, he was sure that something just as awful would happen to him if he went through U. S. Customs, and if one of the people there, possibly just by looking to see how nervous Burt was, should ask him to stop and be checked. The sniffers they were using these days were delicate and accurate beyond belief: if one of them took a smell of his hands, there would be no question of what Burt had been in contact with, toilet paper or no toilet paper. He would go to jail for about a million years. And Wilma.. what would Wilma think, when she heard about it on the news?
Why have they done this to me?! I was doing what I was told! I cooperated with everything!
Why?
And what do I do now?
Chapter 9
Megan had often suspected her father of some level of affiliation with Net Force that had never been made fully plain to her, and probably wouldn't be for a long time… if ever. It had occurred to her privately that being a writer, with the freedom to go places without warning and investigate almost anything with no better reason than "I'm writing a book about it," would be a very useful cover for someone who was actually doing a whole lot more than writing a book about it. But she had never said this to her father, and she wasn't going to start now. She simply got out of the Net, went straight down into his office, and said, "Daddy, James Winters said I should talk to you."