Detour

FIFTEEN

Retardo.

One of the eight million Spanish words he still didn’t know. Sometimes Spanish words sounded like English words. The trick was to consider their context.

The context here was the huge black departure board in El Dorado Airport. And the words and symbols that preceded it.

Flt#345 a JFK. Nueva York.

That gave him some useful and solid clues.

Only Paul was attempting to ignore those clues. He was being willfully ignorant, a detective on the take who has no intention of putting two and two together.

He’d swallowed the thirty-six condoms two hours ago in a house outside Bogotá.

He’d been driven to the airport by Pablo, the very man who’d greeted him here just over a week ago.

He’d made it through security and customs.

The flight was retardo .

Okay, boys and girls, his Spanish teacher, Mr. Schulman, used to say. Any guesses?

There was another clue here—one that was practically impossible to ignore. His gate companions. They were groaning, muttering, shaking their heads at each other with that same-old, same-old look of resignation.

Paul got up from his chair. He walked over to the check-in desk. He could feel the condoms sitting inside him with every step. It felt as if he’d swallowed a basketball. A lethal jump shot from Kobe, ready to drop through the net and kill off a possible rally in its tracks.

“Excuse me,” Paul said to the winsome-looking Colombian woman behind the airline counter.

“Yes, sir?” she said. She had that look —the one you saw at return counters on the day after Christmas. Defensive fortifications being readied for the coming onslaught.

“Is everything okay with the flight?”

He knew that everything wasn’t okay with the flight, of course.

If everything was okay with the flight, the word retardo wouldn’t be up there on the departure board. His fellow travelers wouldn’t be uttering collective groans of frustration. But until the woman confirmed this, he’d stay dumb. He’d stick to the timetable in his head—the one that had him arriving in JFK approximately four and a half hours from now, and arriving at that house in Jersey City two hours later.

“The flight’s delayed, sir.”

Suddenly, the only thing that felt heavier than his stomach was his heart. It sank like a stone.

There was still one more question to ask.

“How long ?”

“We don’t know. We’ll make an announcement when we know more, sir.”

Paul felt like making an announcement himself. I’m carrying thirty-six condoms filled with cocaine inside my stomach, and if I don’t get them out of me soon, they’ll dissolve and kill me.

Then Arias will kill my wife and daughter.

A Colombian policeman was standing between gates. He was smoking and watching the legs and asses of every passing female—an equal opportunity leerer.

If you decide to tell someone, do it, Joanna had said. I’ll understand .

What an easy thing to do. To talk. To tell.

He would unburden himself to the policeman, who’d stop scoping out the passing women and bring Paul to the nearest hospital, where they’d flush the drugs from his stomach. They’d take a report from him, including a full description of the kidnappers. They’d arrest Pablo and Galina.

How easy was that?

Only this was a Latin American country with an inflationary economy. Where everything was nominally expensive, but in actuality, cheap. Life, for instance. Life was cheap here. Joanna’s was dirt cheap. If he opened his mouth, he was pretty sure he’d be closing hers forever.

The policeman threw the glowing butt of his cigarette onto the floor, where he ground it out with an impressive black boot.

And then walked away.

Paul sat.

Every fifteen minutes or so he got up and approached the check-in desk, where the Colombian woman he’d already talked to scattered for cover. She always seemed to find something to do, check the flight manifest or align the tickets into a neat little pile. He was getting on her nerves, an annoying suitor who refused to take no for an answer.

“We don’t know anything yet,” she answered the second time he inquired when the plane would leave. He noticed she’d pretty much dropped the sir .

“I have to get to New York for an important meeting. I can’t be late. Do you understand?”

Yes, she understood. But she didn’t know anything, so if he would please take a seat again and wait for an announcement?

Fifteen minutes after waiting for an announcement that didn’t come, he was back again. Then fifteen minutes after that.

“Look,” she said, “I’ve already told you. We don’t have a report yet.”

“Well, is the plane here? You can tell me if the plane’s here, can’t you?”

“If you’ll just have a seat, I’ll make an announcement when they tell us something.”

He didn’t want a seat. He wanted answers. “Who’s they ?”

“Excuse me?”

“Who’s this mysterious they ? The they that’s going to tell you something?”

“Please sit down.”

“I’m just asking you a question. I’m trying to find out how long I’m going to be sitting here. I’d like a clue, a guess, something . Is that too much to ask?”

Paul realized that his voice was louder than normal. He sensed this because several tired passengers in the waiting room had looked up from their crossword puzzles and newspapers and magazines to stare at him. They looked half alarmed and half supportive. Maybe because he was only doing what they themselves wished they were—venting a growing anger—even if he was doing it in a way that offended decorum. They’d keep their distance and silently root him on. He remembered another passenger who’d once upon a time harangued a different airline employee for information. Long ago and far away.

The woman behind this counter— Rosa, her name tag said—offered no such support.

“I told you. When they tell me something, I’ll make an announcement. Now, I have to ask you to—”

“Fine, I’ll sit down. If you tell me who they are.”

She decided to simply ignore him. She went back to her busywork as if he’d already turned around and gone back to his seat.

Paul felt something rise up his esophagus. For just a moment, he thought that a condom must have burst inside his gut, that in one moment he’d be down on the floor, drowning in his own vomit. But it wasn’t cocaine. It was rage —all the poison he’d built up over the last five days of captivity. Rage at Galina and Pablo and Arias and the man with the cigar—it all focused on this woman who was refusing to tell him if he’d get out of Colombia in time to save his wife and daughter.

“I asked you a fucking question,” Paul said. Or shouted. “I’d like a fucking answer.”

Everyone pretty much lost the supportive look. Their faces registered pure alarm. Rosa’s included. She stepped back, as if he’d physically assaulted her.

“There is no reason to use that language,” she said sharply. “You’re being abusive, and I’ll call the authorities if you don’t . . .” Paul lost track of what she was saying. Mostly because he could see several people in blue uniforms hurrying to the scene of the commotion. He wasn’t sure if they were airline employees or a Colombian SWAT team.

If the police arrest me, I won’t make the flight. This is what immediately went through his brain. The flight might be delayed and it might be taking off God knows when, but if they arrest me, I won’t be on it.

“I’m sorry,” Paul said. “Forgive me. I’m just under pressure because of this meeting. I’m sorry. Really.”

The blue uniforms were airline people. Three men and one woman who’d surrounded the counter in an impressive display of support. Airline people tended to stick together these days, now that they were operating on the front lines.

“Is there a problem here?” one of the men addressed Rosa.

She hesitated, then shook her head. “No, it’s all right,” she said. “Mr. Breidbart’s going back to his seat.”

Mr. Breidbart went back to his seat.

The plane was already one hour late.

He had seventeen hours left.