Nelson Demille - The Lion's Game

We had fifteen minutes to catch the flight, and I suggested a quick drink, but Kate looked at the departure board and said, "They're boarding now. We'll get a drink on board."

"We're carrying."

"Trust me. I've done this before."

Indeed, there was another side to Polly Perfect, which hadn't been revealed to me heretofore.

So, we flashed the creds and the Firearm Boarding Pass at the security point and got to the gate with minutes to spare.

The First Class flight attendant was in her late seventies or thereabouts, and she put her dentures in her mouth and welcomed us aboard. I asked her, "Is this a local or an express train?"

She seemed confused, and I recalled that seniority sometimes equaled senility.

Anyway, I was out of airline jokes, so we gave her our Firearm Boarding passes, and she looked at me as though wondering how I'd been licensed to carry. Kate gave her a reassuring smile. But perhaps this was all my imagination.

The flight attendant checked her manifest to assure herself of our identity, then went into the cockpit with the boarding passes, as per regulations, to inform the captain that two armed law enforcement people were on board, a nice lady and a weirdo, traveling together in First Class.

We found our seats, two bulkhead seats on the port side. First Class was half full, mostly people who looked like Angelenos going home, where they belonged.

Well, we weren't tarmacked too long, considering this was JFK, and we took off only fifteen minutes late, which the captain said we'd make up in the air, which is better, I guess, than making it up on the ground at LAX by taxiing to the gate at six hundred miles an hour while deploying the emergency chutes.

So, off we went, into the wild blue yonder, armed, motivated, and hopeful.

I said to Kate, "I forgot to buy clean underwear."

"I was about to mention that."

Ms. Mayfield was in a rare mood.

Another First Class flight attendant came around with newspapers, and I asked for the Long Island Newsday. I looked for and found a story about the Cradle of Aviation murders, which I read with interest. I noticed that this major Long Island story had no byline, which is sometimes a tip-off that the authorities were managing the story a little. In fact, there was no mention of Asad Khalil, and the motive for the murders was described as a possible robbery. Right. Standard armed robbery of a museum. I wondered if anyone was buying the museum robbery-homicide story. Specifically, I was wondering if Khalil would buy it if he saw it and believed that we were clueless. Worth a try, I guess.

I showed the story to Kate, who read it and said, "Khalil left a very clear message in that museum. That means he may be finished and heading home, or he has tremendous arrogance and contempt for the authorities, and he's saying, 'You won't figure this out until it's too late. Catch me if you can.'" She thought a moment, then said, "I hope it's the latter, and I hope he's going where we're going."

"If he is, he's probably there already. I just hope he's waiting until dark to make his next move."

She nodded.

Well, I needed a little drink or two, so I asked Kate to sweet-talk the grandma flight attendant into alcoholic beverages.

Kate informed me, "She won't serve us. We're armed."

"I thought you said-"

"I lied. I'm a lawyer. I said, 'Trust me.' That means I'm lying. How stupid can you be?" She laughed.

I was stunned.

She said, "Have a root beer."

"I'm going to have a fit."

She took my hand.

I calmed down and ordered a Virgin Mary.

The First Class meal wasn't too bad and the movie, starring John Travolta playing an Army CID guy, was terrific, despite a bad review that I recalled reading in Long Island 's Newsday, written by John Anderson, a so-called movie critic, whose opinion I trusted to be the exact opposite of mine.

Kate and I held hands during the movie, just like kids in a theater. When the movie ended, I put my seat back and fell asleep.

As often happens, I had a revealing dream about what I couldn't think of when I was awake. I mean, the whole thing just came to me-what Khalil was up to, where he was going next, and what we had to do to catch him.

Unfortunately, when I woke up, I forgot most of the dream, including the brilliant conclusions I'd come to. It's sort of like having a great sex dream and waking up realizing you still had a woody.

But I digress. We landed at LAX at 7:30 P.M., and for better or worse we were in California. This was either where we needed to be, or it wasn't. We'd soon find out.

California, The Present

Go then and slay a man I shall name. When you return my angels shall bear thee again to Paradise. And should you die, nevertheless they will carry you to Paradise.

The Old Man of the Mountain, a thirteenth-century prophet, and founder of the Assassins

We deplaned first, went outside, and were met by an FBI guy from the Los Angeles office, who drove us to the police heliport where a waiting FBI helicopter flew us to Ventura, wherever the hell that is.

Everything on the ground looked like Queens, except for the palm trees and the mountains. We flew a few miles out over some ocean, I guess, then along the coastline with some hefty hills just to our right. The sun sat right above the ocean, but instead of rising, like it does on my ocean, it was setting. Is this place weird, or what?

Within twenty-five minutes, we landed at a heliport at the community hospital on the east side of Ventura.

A blue Crown Victoria sedan was waiting for us, driven by a guy named Chuck. Chuck was dressed in tan pants and a sports coat and wore running shoes. Chuck claimed to be an FBI agent, but looked like a parking attendant; FBI, California version. But they all think the same because they all attended the same Manchurian Candidate school at Quantico.

Chuck asked us lots of questions as he drove us to the Ventura sub-office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I guess they don't handle that many international terrorist mass murder cases in Ventura. In fact, Kate had mentioned on the plane that this office had been closed once and recently reopened, for some reason.

The office was located in a sort of modem office building surrounded by palm trees and parking lots. As we walked through the parking lot, I looked around. I smelled flowers in the air, and the temperature and humidity were perfect. The sun had almost set, but there was still a glow in the sky.

I asked Kate, "What does the FBI do here? Grow avocados?"

"Adjust your attitude."

"Sure." I pictured the agents here with blue Brooks Brothers suits, sandals, and no socks.

Anyway, we went into the building, up an elevator, and found a door that said FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION. They had their round coat-of-arms on the door, too, which said JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, and showed the standard scales of Justice, balanced, not tipped, and the motto FIDELITY, BRAVERY, INTEGRITY. Can't argue with that, but I said to Kate, "They should add, 'Politically Correct.'"

She'd gotten into the habit of ignoring me and rang the buzzer.

The door opened, and we were met by a nice lady agent named Cindy Lopez, who said, "Nothing new. We have three Ventura agents in the Wiggins house, joined by three agents from the L.A. office. There are two dozen L.A. and Ventura agents in the neighborhood, the local police have been alerted, and everyone is in radio and cell phone contact. We're still trying to locate Elwood Wiggins. We discovered from papers in his house that he flies for Pacific Cargo Services, and we visited them, but they informed us he's not scheduled to fly until Friday. But they mentioned he sometimes calls in sick on Friday. We have two agents at Pacific Cargo at Ventura County Airport in the event he shows up there. We've also assigned agents to locations where he's known to frequent. But we're developing a picture of this man as a free spirit whose movements are erratic."