Inside the terminal building, he had fifty meters of automated inspectors to walk through before he could get into the ground car that would take him to the Kerak embassy. If there was going to be trouble, it would be here.
Two of his escorts got into the inspection line ahead of him, two behind.
Odal walked slowly between the two full-length X-ray screens and then stopped before the radiation detector. He inserted his passport and embassy identification cards into the correct slot in the computer’s registration processor.
Then he heard someone in the next line, a woman’s voice, saying, “It is him! I recognize the uniform from the tri-di news.”
“Couldn’t be,” a man’s voice answered. “They wouldn’t dare send him back here,”
Odal purposely turned their way and smiled gravely at them. The woman said, “I told you it was him!” Her husband glared at Odal.
Kor had arranged for a few newsmen to be on handAs Odal collected his cards and travel kit at the end of the inspection line, a small knot of cameramen began grinding their tapers at him. He walked briskly toward the nearest doors, and the ground car that he could see waiting outside. His four escorts kept the newsmen at arm’s length.
“Major Odal, don’t you consider it risky to return to Acquatainia?”
“Do you think diplomatic immunity covers assassination?”
“Aren’t you afraid someone might take a shot at you?”
The newsmen yelped after him like a pack of puppies following a man with an armful of bones. But Odal could feel the hatred now. Not so much from the newsmen, ut from the rest of the people in the crowded terminal lobby. They stared at him, hating him. Before, when he was Kerak’s invincible warrior, they feared him, even envied him. But now there was nothing in the crowd but hatred for the Kerak major, Odal knew.