Marc Zicree - Magic Time

Derisive laughter bubbled from the crowd. Cal flushed hot embarrassment. An elevator opposite dinged, and its doors slid open. Cal was carried along with the press of bodies into the car, the mass that needed to be somewhere, whether they wanted or not. He saw the young woman over their heads for just a second, turning back to her labors. Then the doors slid shut, and she was gone.

IN THE AIR

Nobody asked her questions at the car rental return.

Nobody asked her questions at check-in.

Nobody asked her questions at security.

( Am I really going to get away with this ?)

It was part of Jerri Bilmer’s job to look unconcerned, to blend in with other caffeine-deprived morning travelers jostling along the concourse. To stand in line in the Kigali airport or at a bus stop in Baghdad without even a quickening of breath while RPF or Republican Guard came around checking papers and ransacking luggage at random. To appear, not innocent-they always go for those who look innocent-but simply as part of the background. To appear like nothing, no one, with microdots or little rolls of fiche burning holes in her purse strap or shoes.

Thinking about something else helped.

But this wasn’t like Kigali or Baghdad or Port Sudan. For the first time since she was a recruit, Bilmer felt a skittery sense of being out of control, of waiting for something to happen and not knowing what the hell it would be.

Bilmer floated restlessly, uneasily in the vicinity of the gate without sitting down, listening for boarding, watching the standbys. Pretending to look at magazines, books, candies, souvenir-covered wagons and shot glasses inscribed with the Royals’ logo. Straining all her senses, without the slightest idea what she was looking for.

She didn’t wear the sunglasses that so many of her colleagues favored- I mean, how obvious can you be? — so it was more difficult to scan the concourse around her, but she saw no threat.

Or at least, saw nobody who looked like Russian mafia or Serbian nationals.

But what would this threat look like?

Stay cool. Stay cool and you can get away with anything.

Jetway.

Boarding pass.

Seat 12-A.

If the plane should lose cabin pressure during flight, these oxygen masks will drop down. .

One of the most useful talents in an agent, some friend in the department had told her once, is the ability not to sweat. Taking her seat, she mentally tagged the possibles, the ones to watch out for: the guy in the green T-shirt with the computer, maybe. Not your typical businessman. Or maybe one of the businessmen with laptops? Clones of one another, easy disguise. The old dude with the cane, maybe. Had she seen that woman with the backpack before?

Follow the rules and be ready , she thought. Be ready for anything .

Takeoff. Square brown fields with the green circles of center-fed automatic watering equipment. Gray-white roads and cars like hurrying bugs. Coffee service.

At least lifting off from Basra or Beirut you could exhale and lean back and think, safe . (Well, if you weren’t flying Aeroflot anyway.) Could these people get her at Dulles? On the taxi into D.C.? McKay said he’d send someone to pick her up if she wanted, and she’d told him what she’d wear, but she had no intention of doing so. Not after what she’d seen at the Source.

She angled her foot so her toe was always in contact with her purse under the seat ahead of her and tried to look interested in the copy of People she’d bought, while the men in suits read their reports or worked on their laptop computers and the guy in the green T-shirt got out his Powerbook and started to play hearts.

For all his reputation as an idealist, Stuart McKay was a President who worked well with Congress, who knew the shortcuts and could get things done in a hurry. Bilmer had heard him described as a mixer, a pourer of oil on troubled waters, or, if you listened to his enemies, a compromiser. And he’ll need it , thought Bilmer. He’ll need to pull all the strings, to call in all the favors, he can, if he’s going to cut off Sanrio’s power before. .

Before what?

It scared her, that she didn’t quite know. Nor had she any clear idea of what McKay might be able to do against the little group of physicists in their South Dakota fastness. Call them back to Washington on a pretext and arrest them at the airport? Cut off the electricity to the installation in the Black Hills? Nuke the place before they got their field, or whatever they called it, into place?

She settled back in her seat and turned pages, pretending to read.

The old dude with the cane fell asleep, or pretended to. The broad with the backpack read a book. What else was in the backpack? The Mississippi River below, then the Ohio, then the Appalachians. Stroller Mom in the seat behind Bilmer read The Velveteen Rabbit to one child- the more you love and are loved, the more real you become -while another squalled endlessly, peevishly. A man two rows in front of Bilmer kept up a loud-voiced catalogue of the Hollywood celebrities with whom he’d worked, to the intermittent gasped punctuation of a sweet female voice.

Nothing.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the captain’s voice from the cockpit, “we’re starting our descent into Dulles International Airport. The time in Washington is approximately 9:17, eastern daylight time. Your flight crew will be coming by to collect cups and napkins. Please bring your seats and your tray tables back to full upright and locked position.”

The plane tilted, banked. Below, the green-dotted sprawl of streets, brick houses, parks, baseball diamonds. The glitter of water of the Chesapeake country. To the west the low green ripple of the Alleghenies, and beyond them. .

“Hey,” said Bilmer’s seat mate, sitting up and looking past her at the windows. “What’s that light in the sky?”

NEW YORK-9:13 A.M. EDT

“He’s breathing fire,” Janice Fishman warned from her desk as Cal Griffin pushed through the double doors into the lobby of Stern, Ledding and Bowen.

The secretaries and mailroom boys and paralegals were chattering on their headsets, scribbling notes, rushing about under herniating weights of paper. Cal dodged them, slid up to the closed conference room doors, gleaming like twin coffin lids. Through the glass on either side he could see the meeting well under way; Ed Ledding and Peter Chomsky and Anita La Bonte were there, as well as the other associates- with one notable exception-silent as stone heads around the big table. The familiar black-suited figure strode up and down like the predator he was, holding forth, his words cloaked to silence by the glass, his back momentarily to Cal.

Cal’s fingertips brushed the heavy wooden doors and paused. He wanted to be calm, but his heart was jackhammering; his brow and upper lip glistened with sweat. Curiously, a phrase drifted into his mind, one that at first he couldn’t place. Then the memory came of their mother reading by Tina’s bedside; he heard it, muffled and musical, through the walls of their wind-whipped home.

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else. .

Cal steadied himself, eased the doors open and stepped through.

“-cells working in harmony, you get a hummingbird, an orchid, a humpback whale.” Stern was speaking quietly, as he always did when most dangerous. “In mutiny and rebellion, all you get is cancer.”

The others had spied Cal and tensed. Sensing this, Stern turned to face him. “Ah, Mr. Griffin. Word of your morning’s handiwork hath preceded you. Should we give you a ticker-tape parade? Perhaps a party with clowns?”