Warren Murphy: The Sky is Falling

"Sure," said Remo. "Don't worry about the airport. People only see what they're trained to see."

"You can make us invisible?"

"No. People don't look."

"I thought Orientals were more sensitive to their surroundings."

"Only compared to whites. They don't see either."

She was amazed at how simple and logical it all was, so natural. The human eye noticed what startled it, what was different. It noticed what it was supposed to notice. The mind didn't even know what it saw. People thought they recognized others by their faces, when actually they recognized them by their walk and size and only confirmed the identification by face.

This Kathy knew from reading. The way Remo explained it, it sounded more mystical but still logical. He said the mind was lazy, and while the eye really saw everything, the mind filtered out things. It filtered out twenty men and blurred the message into a marching column. Remo and Kathy easily joined a line of marching guards, and by being part of the mass, just moved with it. If she had dared, she would have moved her head to look into the faces and see them actually staring through her and Remo. But Remo had told her to listen to her own breathing and stay with him. That way she would remain part of the natural mass of the moving column. He told her to think of his presence.

For Dr. Kathleen O'Donnell that was easy. She was ready to stay with this man forever. She listened to her breathing as she sensed the choking odor of burning jet fuel and felt the ground tremble with the big engines revving up. She knew she was boarding an airplane because she was climbing up. But the miraculous thing was that she did not feel as though she were climbing.

Then they were in the aisle and there was a fuss over seats. The problem was that two other people did not have seats. They did not have seats because she and Remo were sitting in them. Remo settled it by showing the others two seats even the flight attendants weren't aware of in the back. The people didn't return.

"Where did you put them?" she whispered.

"They're okay," said Remo.

When the flight was airborne it was discovered that a stockbroker and a tax lawyer had been stuffed into the lavatory seats.

It was a British airplane. They had to find someone who could determine what had gone wrong, why there were two extra people for seats that did not exist when the extra people had tickets.

Since there was a new labor contract with the British airline, a crew member who was also practiced as a mediator took charge. Remo and Kathy sat comfortably all the way across the massive Pacific to San Francisco. By the end of that flight, the mediator had formed a committee to establish who should be blamed for the failure to provide seats. The stockbroker and the tax lawyer stood the whole way, massaging where they had been pressed into the lavatory.

At the airport, Remo dialed Smith's special number. "It ain't there, Smutty," said Remo. "Not even remotely there."

"We have found one in the Northeast but we can't locate it. I am sure the Russians are going to attack. I am alone in this, Remo, but I know I am right."

"What do you want me to do, Smitty?"

"We have got to make the Russians trust us."

"Do they trust anyone?"

"They think we are behind the fluorocarbon beam. They are sure of it. They are sure we are using the beam to destroy them."

"That doesn't sound like they are going to trust us."

"They may, if we do something."

"What?"

"Stay there. Right on that line."

Kathy waited contentedly by the baggage-return racks. Every once in a while she blew Remo a kiss. Men glanced at her longingly. They always did that. She had never met a man she couldn't have if he liked women. But she had never met a man until this one whom she wanted. "Wanted" was too weak a word. This was a man who was like air to her lungs and blood to her cells. This man was hers, part of her, beyond separation.

She blew him another kiss. She knew her clothes were dirty by now. She was penniless. She had lost the sole of one shoe in Hanoi. Her undergarments had ceased to be comfortable in San Gauta. And she did not care. Kathleen O'Donnell, whose dress had been regal armor all her professional life, did not care. She had everything she needed, especially for her secret desires.

Her only thought at that moment was whether Remo wanted children. He had mentioned something about his friend wanting him to get married and have children. Kathy could give him children. She could give him everything. And more.

She wanted to trot over and kiss him. She wondered what people would say if he took her right there on the baggage rack. Would she mind? She would enjoy it, of course. But she wondered if she would mind what people would think.

No, there was only one person whose opinion she cared about, and that one person was no longer herself. He had just hung up the telephone and was coming over to her. "You need money or anything?"

"No. I don't need anything, Remo," said Kathy. "It's strange, I used to think I needed things before. But I don't now. I have everything."

"Good," said Remo. " 'Cause I'm leaving."

Kathy giggled. "I love your sense of humor."

"Bye," said Rerno.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm leaving," said Remo. "Gotta go. Business."

"Where?" said Kathy, suddenly realizing that he was actually leaving her. She shivered under the shock, her hands tight and trembling.

"Gonna save the world, sweetheart. So long," said Remo.

"What about saving the world from the destruction of the ozone shield? That's saving the world."

"That's number two. Disasters nowadays have to wait in line."

"How can it be number two? It can make the entire world unlivable."

"Not right away," said Remo. He gave her a kiss on the cheek and headed for an Aeroflot office. The way Smith had set this up, there was a chance, a fair chance, that even Sinanju might fail. In his effort to save the country, he had all but told Russia that he was sending a man in.

"Thanks a lot," Remo had said when he heard the plan the President of the United States had approved. "But how do you expect me to come out of this alive?"

"You can do anything, it seems, Remo."

"Except what you set up for me. You're going to get me killed."

"We have to risk that."

"Thanks."

"Look, Remo. If you don't make it, none of us will make it."

"Then kiss your bippee good-bye."

"You'll make it, Remo," said Smith.

Remo had given a little laugh and hung up. That was before he kissed Kathy good-bye and before he went to the Aeroflot office. He had looked at a picture of the crude Aeroflot jet, remembered how many men Russia was willing to lose in the Second World War, and then slowly backed away. Very slowly. He could not use that plane.

Dr. Kathleen O'Donnell watched Remo leave. She waited, believing that he would return. She told herself that he was playing a joke on her, a cruel joke. He would come back and she would insist that he never play that joke on her again.

Do anything he wanted to her, she would plead, but not that. Never leave her like that again. Several men stopped to talk to her, seeing she was alone. A few pimps at the airport offered her work.

When she let out a scream that halted everyone at the baggage racks, she acknowledged that he had done it. He had actually left her.

Someone tried to quiet her. She poked her nails into his eyes. Airport police came running. She poked them, too. They wrestled her into a straitjacket. Someone gave her a sedative. With the chemicals heavily drugging her mind, she felt only a roaring, all-consuming hate. Even drugged, she was planning her revenge.

Someone found her passport on her body. They wondered how she had just gotten a British entry stamp, without the debarkation stamp from their customs.