“The plant’s surrounded by water for purposes of cooling the reactors. And nearby, on the James, we’re watching a barge we believe belongs to them.”
I remembered Marino telling me of barges delivering large crates to the New Zionist compound, and I said, “Can we take it?”
“No. We can’t take barges, submarines, nothing right now. Not until we can get those hostages out.” He sipped coffee, and the horizon was turning a pale gold.
“Then the best-case scenario is they will take what they want and leave without killing anybody else,” I supposed, although I did not think this could happen.
“No. The best-case scenario is we stop them there.” He looked at me. “We don’t want a barge full of highly radioactive material on Virginia’s rivers or out at sea. What are we going to do, threaten to sink it? Besides, my guess is they’ll take hostages with them.” He paused. “Eventually, they’ll shoot them all.”
I could not help but imagine those poor people now as fright shocked every nerve cell every moment they breathed. I knew about the physical and mental manifestations of fear, and the images were searing and I seethed inside. I felt a wave of hatred for these men who called themselves the New Zionists, and I clenched my fists.
Wesley looked down at my white knuckles on the armrests, and thought I was afraid of flying. “It’s only a few more minutes,” he said. “We’re starting our descent.”
We landed at Kennedy, and a shuttle waited for us on the tarmac. It was driven by two more fit men in suits, and I did not ask Wesley about them because I already knew.
One of them walked us inside the terminal to British Airways, which had been kind enough to cooperate with the Bureau, or maybe it was the Pentagon, by making two seats available on their next Concorde flight to London. At the counter, we discreetly showed our credentials and said we had not packed guns. The agent assigned to keep us safe walked with us to the lounge, and when I looked for him next, he was perusing stacks of foreign newspapers.
Wesley and I found seats before expansive windows looking out over the tarmac where the supersonic plane waited like a giant white heron being fed fuel through a thick hose attached to its side. The Concorde looked more like a rocket than any commercial craft I had seen, and it appeared that most of its passengers were no longer capable of being impressed by it or much of anything. They served themselves pastries and fruit, and some were already mixing Bloody Marys and mimosas.
Wesley and I talked little and constantly scanned the crowd as we held up newspapers like every other proverbial spy or fugitive on the run. I could tell that Middle Easterners, in particular, caught his eye, while I was more wary of people who looked like us, for I remembered Joel Hand that day I had faced him in court and had found him attractive and genteel. If he sat next to me right now and I did not know him, I would have thought he belonged in this lounge more than we.
“How are you doing?” Wesley lowered his paper.
“I don’t know.” I was agitated. “So tell me. Are we alone or is your friend still here?”
His eyes smiled.
“I don’t see what’s amusing about this.”
“So you thought the Secret Service might be nearby. Or undercover agents.”
“I see. I guess that man in the suit who walked us here is special services for British Airways.”
“Let me answer your question this way. If we’re not alone, Kay, I’m not going to tell you.”
We looked at each other a moment longer, and we had never traveled abroad together, and now did not seem like a good time to start. He was wearing a blue suit so dark it was almost black and his usual white shirt and conservative tie. I had dressed with similar somber deliberation, and both of us had our -lasses on. I thought we looked like partners in a law firm, and as I noticed other women in the room I was reminded that what I did not look like was anybody’s wife.