Lang only needed a little luck for the guy not to have time to make another call before he got back.
Returning to the waiting area, Lang glanced around as though trying to find a seat. He selected one next to the kid, who was engrossed in a Game Boy. Moving the child's backpack slightly with his foot, Lang sat so that the little boy was between Lang and the boy's companion. Lang swiveled in the seat so that the yellow pack was partially obscured by his legs.
"Whatcha playin'?" Lang asked the child.
He wasn't shy of strangers. "In-ig-ma," he said without looking up.
Lang watched the blips scramble across the tiny screen. He could feel the adult's question: Did Lang know? But there wasn't a whole lot Lang's shadow could do without attracting attention.
"How d'you play?" Lang asked innocently.
He listened to an explanation surprising in its detail for a child that age.
"Sounds like it would be more fun for two," Lang suggested.
"That's mighty nice of you, mister," the man said, "but you don't have to…"
Lang couldn't place the accent but it certainly didn't come from Atlanta.
"But I want to," Lang said."Reminds me of my own son." He managed a pained expression. "He was about this age when he died of leukemia."
The eyes of the white haired woman in the seat across from Lang instantly glistened. There was no way the man could gracefully get Lang to leave the little boy alone. From the expression on his face, that had occurred to the minder, too.
"May I?" Lang held out a hand.
The child looked at the man for approval and handed the game over.
"Oops!" Lang dropped it.
As he reached under the seat to retrieve the little electronic box, Lang slid something out of his pants leg and into his hand.
Lang suddenly jerked erect and pointed down the concourse. "Isn't that Mel Gibson?"
Heads snapped around in unison. Lang slipped the object into the backpack and retrieved the Game Boy.
"Guess I was mistaken," Lang admitted sheepishly. "Show me one more time how this works."
Lang was getting soundly thrashed when the flight was called a few minutes later.
As a first-class passenger, Lang went to the head of the boarding line, noting the table that, since 9/11, always stood ready for random searches. When he handed his ticket to the gate attendant, he also leaned forward and spoke in low tones. From her reaction, he might have made a lewd proposition.
She hurriedly turned her duties over to one of the ticket agents and scurried away.
Lang waved to the little boy and boarded.
He was sipping Scotch and trying to find his place in a paperback novel when a woman slipped a thin bag into the overhead bin and slid into the seat beside him. She wore a business suit, a matching gray jacket and skirt. Lipstick and a slight blush were her only makeup. Her ash-blond hair was gathered into a chignon by a tortoiseshell comb. The important finger sported a diamond that anywhere other than Texas would have been vulgar. She was young, twenty-something, but puffing like an octogenarian climbing his third flight of stairs.
Lang smiled at her as he put down the drink glass. "Sounds like you ran the whole way."
She gulped a lungful of air. "I thought they were gonna cancel the flight and I have to, absolutely have to, get to Fort Lauderdale."
If the ring hadn't been a tip that she was a native of the Lone Star State, the flat drawl was.
Lang mustered his very best surprised expression. "Cancel the flight?"
The few stray hairs outside the comb waved like an insect's legs as she bobbed her head. "Guy tried to smuggle a gun on board."
"No!"
"Yeah, in his son's backpack. Somebody tipped Security to bring one of those portable X-ray machines an' there it was, big as life, right in the child's pack."
Lang gasped in amazement. "You see it, the gun?"
"No, but they, the security people, were hauling the guy away, said they were gonna search the kid's backpack in a secure area. Wanted to make sure he didn't have a chance to use a weapon with all the people around, I guess. Feel real sorry for the little fella."
Lang lifted sympathetic hands. "Pretty low, involving a child in something like that."
It was at that moment he noticed he still had smudges of chocolate under his fingernails. It had gotten there while he sat on the john, waiting for his palms' heat to soften the outside of the Peppermint Patties so he could fashion them into the L shape of a pistol before using the tinfoil wrappers, highly X-ray-reflective, to encase his creation.
International intelligence or not, they could be outwitted.
Lang stood, stooping to avoid bumping his head. "Reckon I've got time to wash my hands before they make us strap this airplane on?"
CHAPTER TWO
1
Leonardo da Vinci International, Rome
The next morning
Rumpled and gritty-eyed, Lang disembarked, relishing the cool spring morning after the fetid, recirculated air of the L-1011. It was a relief to be outside even if the smell of diesel fuel filled his nose. At the base of the stairs pushed against the plane, he watched vehicles scurry across Leonardo da Vinci International like bugs across a pond's surface. Along the airport's perimeter, perpetual smog turned distant trees into gray lace.
A herd of busses chugged to a stop and his fellow travelers clamored aboard. For reasons as mysterious as the Poussin, the Italians rarely used jetways that allowed passengers to enter the terminal directly from the aircraft. He suspected the owner of the bus company was well connected.
Speaking of connected, the Rome airport had been a joke in years past, construction ongoing in what Lang and his peers had assumed was a permanent political boondoggle. Now it was finished. White concrete slabs, bowlike angles and portholes of tinted glass gave the international terminal a slightly nautical appearance. Inside, another surprise awaited. Elevators, escalators and stairs were also new, although their multidirectional confusion-was much the same as before.
Under the bored gaze of customs officials at the nothing-to-declare exit, Lang submitted his passport to cursory inspection before ducking into the first available men's, both from necessity and to see who from his flight might follow.
No one.
Opening his single bag, he swapped his Levi's and button-down shirt for French jeans and a shirt with the distinctive Italian taper. Oxblood Cole Haan loafers were exchanged for the Birkenstock sandals European men insist on wearing over dark socks. A mirror splattered with hairspray and streaked with substances best not inquired into gave him back the reflection of a man dressed in Euro-fashion, the combination of the worst a common market had to offer.
The unfavorable exchange of dollars for euros at the airport posed a financial hit. Still, he was willing to pay for the opportunity to see if anyone he recognized lingered while a machine completed what amounted to small scale extortion.
Another series of people-moving devices deposited him into the train station, the one place unchanged since his last visit. A pavilion like roof sheltered four tracks and a small arcade. He bought espresso from an old woman and a ticket from another machine. Then he sat, waiting for both the caffeine high and the train into Rome. Predictably, the coffee did its work before the Italian Railway. The train was as refreshingly new as the airport. Comfortable seats upholstered in tasteful blue fabric had replaced dirty and cracked vinyl. Instead of small, dusty windows and cramped aisles, the cars boasted panoramic views on either side of a generous aisle.
The ride was unchanged. Lang inevitably expected a countryside dotted with ruins of temples and crumbling arches, alabaster badges of glories past. After all, this was Rome, the Eternal City. All he ever saw from train windows were weed-infested switching yards, rusting rolling stock and the backs of drab housing projects. The same disappointing intrusion of the twenty-first century every time.