STARWAY AIRLINES WAS ONE OF THE OLDEST IN THE BUSINESS. They’d been one of the few not to go bankrupt in the early years of the new century, and they had responded by doubling down on their luxury offerings (leather seats, free checked bags, a steam room in the airport lounge) while the other airlines cut their costs. They specialized in long-haul flights, nonstop to Dubai and Melbourne and Kyoto, trips that took days and were expensive to begin with, and they decked out those planes with beds and masseuses.
Which is to say, one couldn’t look cheap for an interview to work as a Starway gate agent, not if one wanted to represent their brand. I slicked my hair back into a high bun and put on false eyelashes. I put on the skirt suit I’d pressed and prepared for the occasion. In short, I looked the part. There was pleasure in that.
At the airport, I gave my credentials at the Starway information desk.
“The recruiter will come and walk you there in about fifteen minutes,” the kind-eyed clerk said.
I asked him the exact time, and then where the toilets were, scrubbing out my accent into the Queen’s English. For whatever reason, Americans love the English. The clerk smiled and pointed the way, and now I knew he would remember both me and exactly when we’d met.
I had spent some time with the airport map these last few weeks. Starway had the smallest presence of any airline at this airport; their desk was at the far end of the terminal, and there was no one in line for the kiosks or for an agent, not at 9 a.m. on a Wednesday for an airline that had so few commuter flights. I waited until the only agent on duty stepped off for a break, and then, in my skirt suit and pumps, I stepped behind the counter and up to their monitor.
Thankfully, the agent had left himself signed in. I didn’t have to try the clearance code I’d watched an agent enter at Heathrow; it had been the weak point in my plan, and I was relieved to dispense with it.
Once in, I needed a moment to get myself oriented. The screen was black, with scrolling white text, and the only way to navigate was with keyboard shortcuts. It took several false starts before I even got myself into the right system. Above me, cheerful pop music was playing, and I tapped my foot along with it to steady myself.
There. Future reservations.
From the corner of my eye, I saw the desk agent approaching, hands in his pockets, looking out the giant windows at the end of the terminal. And then he focused his gaze on his destination. He saw me at the monitor, and he began to walk faster.
I’d assumed this would happen. I’d styled my clothes as closely as I could to the existing Starway employees so that, from a distance, any employee would have a moment of doubt that would keep them from immediately calling in the police. I knew I had about two minutes.
But I only had one hand to type with now, because with the other, I was pressing the desk phone up to my face and crying.
Reservations. I ran Michael Hartwell, then Peter Morgan-Vilk. Quickly I put the names into the system, and the results began to scroll downward. I’d watched hours of tutorials online, but there were a number of keyboard shortcuts I hadn’t quite mastered. When I pressed what I thought was the Page Down button, the screen went blank. I pressed it again, and the screen returned. Quickly with my index finger I punched in the three-key sequence to bring me back several pages, and I put the names back in again with that same finger, the phone against my face, my face itself in tears, my body angled away from the screen to make it seem as though I was a harmless young professional girl who couldn’t possibly be hacking into their system.
The agent was talking into his radio. By the door, the security officer perked up and turned my way.
Moments. I had moments. I needed a flight record, a complete one, and to know the next time Moriarty was arriving. Today was Wednesday. The day that Lucien always flew to New York, from what I’d seen from my weeks at Heathrow in London.
“Hey,” the agent said gruffly. “Hey, you! What are you doing?”
I’d found it.
Quickly I hit the Print key. The results tumbled out onto the carpeted floor. The agent was in sight of me now. “Stop! Stop what you’re doing!”
I gasped, dropped the phone, and crumpled to the floor.
He rounded the desk to find the screen blank, and me sobbing. “What—who are you? What are you doing? Young lady?”
“I’m having a panic attack,” I said, through the tears. “I have a Starway interview today—I couldn’t, I—I had to call my doctor. I couldn’t breathe. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, don’t arrest me.”
Crouching, he picked the phone up off the floor and put it to his ear. I could hear the cheerful message. Press eight if you need to make an appointment. Press nine to hear these options again.
“You don’t have a phone?” he said, helping me to my feet.
I smiled at him shakily. “Not one that works in the States,” I said, my accent posh and plummy. “I’m just getting myself set up.”
The agent’s eyes went again to his monitor screen. It was blank. He relaxed, infinitesimally. Let him think he’d signed himself off.
“This might not be the best job for you,” he was saying, steering me back toward the information desk at the center of the terminal. “It gets pretty stressful here.”
“Does it? I bet it’s awful around the holiday.”
It was enough to get him telling a funny story, something about a girl in a reindeer suit, and when the bewildered clerk at the desk confirmed that I was, in fact, there for an interview, that I’d checked in five minutes ago, that he had spoken to me himself, the agent said, “Listen, Charlotte, don’t worry about it—but maybe don’t take this job,” and before either of them had another thought about calling the police, I was outside and in a taxi en route to Manhattan.
The driver raised an eyebrow at me when I fished a sheaf of papers out from under my skirt. I’d barely had the time to stuff them into my tights.
I flipped through them slowly, trying to make some sense of what I was reading. Michael Hartwell wasn’t flying to New York. Peter Morgan-Vilk wasn’t flying to New York. They weren’t flying to Boston or D.C. Nothing confirmed, nothing in the reservation system. I checked it through again to be sure.
That left the last page. The contingency search I had done at the last possible second. We bumped along in traffic, thick now as any London rush hour, and as the driver rode his brakes, I took a deep, steadying breath, then held the last page up to the light.
There.
Lucien Moriarty was flying to America. Tonight. As Tracey Polnitz.
I had waited for this for the last year and still I wasn’t ready. I—I couldn’t quite breathe. Why couldn’t I breathe? I needed to speak to someone, to someone who knew me well, and from before all this, someone I could trust.
Without even really thinking about it, without considering the repercussions, I picked up my mobile and called the only number I had thought to save.