Our flights are booked, first-class back to Heathrow. Our last burst of luxury. The last of the honeymoon.
I packed our bags last night. Broke open the seal on the vacuum-packed cash and cut open the lining of my suitcase carefully along the seam with my nail scissors. We fill my lining and Mark’s lining with half each and slot the iPhone and USB in mine too. I fold a towel over and under the layer of money so it feels like lining padding; I pack it in tight so it won’t budge no matter how much the handlers throw the cases around. Then I sew the lining back up using the hotel mini sewing kit. We have to call for another one for Mark’s case.
I pack the diamonds into five separate little baggies, the ones the shower caps come in. Then I slice open five sanitary towels, remove the filler and place the baggies, one each, into the absorbent lining, slip them back into their purple wrappers and back into their cardboard sanitary-pad box. The customs guys will have to be damn thorough to find this stuff, especially considering customs doesn’t tend to open up first-class suitcases anyway. Sad but true—they just don’t.
But even if they do, I think we’ll be okay.
The main problem is the gun. Although part of me wishes we could keep it just in case this all goes wrong, there’s no way we’d get it through customs, and we definitely don’t want to draw any attention to ourselves, given what else we’re carrying. So last night we bundled the gun up in a pillowcase with rocks from the beach and dropped it into the choppy water on the ocean side of the resort. Into the murky darkness.
Leila comes to collect our bags in the morning and see us off to the jetty. She’s all smiles and get-well-soons. Mark hands her two hotel stationery envelopes. One has her name on it; it contains five hundred U.S. dollars. Not an unusually high tip for a resort of this sort; I’m sure they’ve had better. But it’s big enough that she’ll be pleased yet small enough to ensure we’re not particularly memorable.
And we’re off. Off to Tahiti, then LAX, then London. Then in a car to our house. I miss our home.
There’s a moment when we’re checking in our bags in Tahiti that I feel the check-in clerk’s eyes catch mine. Just a fraction of a second, but I think she sees. She sees the way I’m looking at the bag, at her, and I know she knows. But then she shakes it off. A brief toss of the head. She probably thinks she’s imagining things. Or maybe I imagined it? After all, what on earth could a honeymooner be smuggling back from Bora Bora? Hotel towels? I readjust my face to the way it’s supposed to look and she hands our passports back over the counter with a smile.
At Heathrow we collect our bags again. Another lovely flight. And we’re almost free. Almost home now. Just customs to walk through. I nip to the toilet before we go through. I check the lining inside my case; it’s all still neatly stitched up. Safe. I zip it back up and head back to meet Mark by the luggage carousels. Then I feel my phone vibrate against my leg. I stop halfway out of the ladies’ toilet. Something has happened. I freeze, then try to subtly make my way back into the washroom. I lock the cubicle and grab my phone.
But it’s not Mark calling to tell me to flush the diamonds or run. It’s just life flooding back in. Real life. Our real life. Emails from friends about the wedding, work, two missed calls from Phil. No emergency, just life-as-usual.
Mark senses my mood when I find him. He keeps me chatting. I know what he’s doing and it works. And, thankfully, by the time I look up, we’re through the “Nothing to Declare” aisle and out into the terminal concourse.
We did it, and it really wasn’t that hard.
I look around at the brightly dressed, tanned people returning to the gray. Out through the giant glass panels of Terminal 5, damp England lies in wait for them. For us. God, I’m glad to be back. Outside, the scent of rain hangs in the air.