Chasing the Wind

5. Connor

5

CONNOR

“Have you ever been here before?” Lynne asked as we stood in line in Customs at the Cairo International Airport.

It was late afternoon and the terminal was crowded. I wondered how long we'd be kept there. I shook my head. “Never. How far is the excavation site?” I asked, handing my passport to the customs agent.

“A little over two hundred kilometers—on the eastern side of the Sinai peninsula,” she said. “We’re just south of the Jebel Hashem al-Tarif.”

I opened my carry-on, waiting while the agent inspected the contents. My passport was stamped and I was allowed to move on. Lynne took out her passport and presented it, automatically unzipping her small carry-on for inspection.

“We’re not going to be living in tents, are we?” I asked, in an attempt at humor.

Lynne shook her head. “Nothing that luxurious,” she deadpanned.

I looked at her, not sure if she was joking or not.

Once we were finished, we made our way to the baggage carousel to retrieve our checked luggage. Again, there was a large crowd. It was at least fifteen minutes before the bags from our flight started to appear. “That one’s mine,” Lynne told me, pointing to a large bag coming our way on the conveyor.

As I reached for it, my hand collided with that of another traveler, a young woman who appeared to be in her mid-twenties, attractive, casually dressed. I recoiled, my eyes meeting hers. What I saw there unnerved me. My pulse was racing.

“Sorry,” I said uneasily.

“I am sorry also,” she responded in heavily accented English.

Lynne saw the look on my face. “What’s wrong?” she asked as I passed her bag to her and scanned the carousel for my own.

I shook my head. “Nothing.” I retrieved my bags. “Which way to the taxi stand?”

I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell anyone what I had just discovered…or how. I couldn’t call attention to myself, couldn’t risk exposure….

We checked into a small, seedy hotel in the heart of the city for the night. It was deplorable. I took one look at the yellowed, peeling wallpaper and stained carpet and said, “You should have let me make the hotel reservations.”

“I’ve been on a nonexistent budget,” she reminded me.

“Not anymore.”

When she suggested we have dinner at a pizza parlor on Tahir Square, I thought she was joking at first. “Pizza—in Egypt?” I asked.

“Egyptian pizza,” she said. “Much better than the American knock-offs you might find here.” She looked at her watch. “I have some calls to make. We can meet in the lobby in an hour.”

“Sure.”

I went to my own room, not bothering to unpack. Normally, I would have made sure everything was on hangers in the closet or neatly folded in the drawers before I’d even go to dinner—but here I didn’t want to remove anything from my luggage unless it was absolutely necessary. I wondered if we might be better off with sleeping bags out in the square.

The bugs I killed in the tiny, antiquated bathroom were bigger than any I’d ever seen before. The bed linens were threadbare, and the wallpaper splotched with brown stains. Room service was nonexistent. It was a far cry from the accommodations to which I was accustomed.

Things were getting off to a questionable start. I shook dust from a battered pillow, one of two on the bed that were nearly flattened and smelled of sweat. I was nearly choked by the stench. I didn't care to imagine who might have previously slept there.

I rang up Edward and told him about the incident at the airport. “You have to alert the authorities,” I insisted.

“And tell them what?” Edward asked impatiently. “That I know there’s a bomb on that plane but I can’t tell them how I know? Do you have any idea how they’ll respond?”

“If that plane takes off, two hundred people will die when it begins its descent to JFK,” I reminded him.

“There’s nothing we can do,” my stepfather, always the isolationist, maintained.

“You think I’m having seizures again, don’t you?” I asked, frustrated.

“How else would you explain it?”

“And if I’m right?” I demanded.

“Let’s hope you’re not.”