Entombed

39

Shortly before 9P.M. we were in Mercer's car, at the intersection of Sixty-seventh and Park Avenue.

"Which way, Alex? JFK or Newark?" he asked.

I had called my travel agent's office in hopes she was working late, but got her voice mail. "Just go south. If our best bet is Kennedy, we can take the Thirty-fourth Street tunnel, and if it's Newark, we get the Lincoln at Thirty-ninth Street."

I dialed Information for American Airlines. We had crossed Fifty-seventh Street by the time I got through the recorded menu prompts and was put on hold for a live human being.

"The night we went to the airport to get Annika Jelt's parents into the country," I said to Mercer, "there was that guy at Kennedy who finally helped us work it out. Did you keep his name?"

He pulled the leather case that held his gold shield out of his pocket. "The newer business cards I've picked up are behind the badge."

I found the one for the Port Authority supervisor and tried his cell phone. He answered on the second ring and I gave Mercer a thumbs-up.

After I reminded him who I was and the urgency of our purpose, I asked him to find out what airlines had late-night European flights to cities that would connect to something that flew near Dahlakia, like the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa.

Mercer steered up the ramp that encircled Grand Central Terminal and pulled over while we waited for an answer.

"Most of your European flights departed between six and eight o'clock. We've only got a few going out between now and midnight."

"Where to?"

"London, Paris, Rome with American. Stockholm on SAS. Moscow via Aeroflot. And it looks like Rome has been canceled because of a mechanical problem."

"Newark. Can you get us a fix on Newark?"

"London and Paris. Both on Continental. They go out around eleven, too."

"This is a police emergency. There's a felon-possibly a murderer-that we have to stop before he leaves the country. If I give you his name, can you check the manifests?"

The supervisor was silent. "Will you cover me in writing? You know it's forbidden for us to give out passenger information."

"You have my word, you'll get whatever you need."

"Just the flights that haven't left yet?"

"Start with those," I said. "Then you can work backwards."

There was always the possibility that if the older Maswana son was actually our man, and was warned by his father in midafternoon to get out of town, he had done it by train to another city or by shuttle to other airports that also serviced Europe. I crossed my fingers that the array of available flights was so much broader from New York than any other Northeastern port that he would have taken his chances by staying local.

"Who am I looking for?"

"The surname is Maswana. Hugo Maswana."

Mercer corrected me. "What if he's been using his younger brothers' passports? What if he's taken off as one of them to screw up the computer records? Tell your guy to check for all three names-Hugo, David, and Sofi."

For five more minutes we idled at the top of the ramp until our contact got back on the line. "Skip Newark. How fast can you make it out here?"

"Half an hour," I said, turning to Mercer. "It's JFK. You got a bubble?"

He reached under the front seat of the department car and pulled out a red plastic dome. He opened his window and extended his arm to stick the magnetized light on the roof of the car, accelerating to high speed and whelping his siren to move cars out of our way.

"Miss Cooper? Give me your phone number. Your party's been playing games with us. He first booked on the tenP.M. Paris, then switched to Rome, and when that canceled he put himself back on the midnight to Paris. He's not ticketed yet. London leaves at eleven and it's wide open. He hasn't checked in anywhere as of this moment. I'll get the Port Authority police on the gates and security checkpoints. He may be waiting to make a last-minute dash for the flight so he doesn't raise a flag once he's formally ticketed and checked in."

The tunnel was practically empty and Mercer sailed out on the Belt Parkway, making time I wouldn't have dreamed possible if I had to make a plane on a tight schedule.

"No wonder the ambassador came into the station house like such a lamb," I said. "He must have had Hugo banned from the household for a few years, thinking he'd outgrow his penchant for raping women. Wife and children back home in Dahlakia would settle him down."

"I'm sure you're right. That's why the cases went cold four years ago. Maswana probably called Hugo at his office today and told him not to pass Go, not to collect his two hundred dollars, but hightail it to the airport and head for home."

"And the father was smart enough to bring us a decoy-the middle son, who looks enough like Hugo-and the sketch-to make us salivate. It whet our appetite, it stalled us from looking anywhere else, and Maswana knew there'd be no risk because even if we held David overnight, the DNA results would exclude him tomorrow."

By nine-forty, Mercer parked the car in a no-standing zone in front of the sprawling American Airlines buildings. I called my Port Authority contact, who told us he was inside Terminal A. The flights to London and Paris both departed from Concourse C, at gates only fifty yards apart.

We walked inside slowly and separately, in case Hugo Maswana was looking for a pair of investigators that his father may have described to him.

I walked past Mercer and whispered under my breath, "I'll check the Admirals Club to see if he's waiting up there."

Mercer turned off to the concourse, in the direction of the security screening.

I took the staircase to the club, and smiled at the hostess who tried to stop me to show my identification. I scanned both sides of the room and saw only a handful of bedraggled business passengers waiting for their late-night departures.

My phone rang at the same time I heard the PA system: "Announcing the last boarding call for American flight 605, nonstop to Paris Charles de Gaulle. Final boarding, please."

I flipped open the cell and it was our Port Authority contact, telling us Maswana just bought an e-ticket at a kiosk in the terminal and was confirmed on AA 605.

I ran back down the steps and up the incline to the security gate.

As I approached, I could see Hugo Maswana seated in a plastic chair just beyond the screening machine. He was dressed in a suit, but had removed his shoes to put them through the system. He reached into the basket to lift out a brogue and replace it on his foot.

At that very moment, Mercer got the attention of one of the Transportation Safety Administration screeners. He must have been trying to explain that he was a cop and had a gun that would set off the metal detector when I saw the man put the palm of his outstretched hand against Mercer's chest.

Hugo looked up at the commotion and seemed to realize that Mercer was there to intercept him. He stood up and dropped the pair of shoes before he bolted toward the gate.

Where the hell were the Port Authority cops? There was no one in sight, and I could only hope they were waiting for us at the boarding gate.

I caught up with Mercer, who had his badge in his hand. "It's the damn gun, Alex. He won't let me in with it."

I looked at the TSA agent, paralyzed by the bureaucratic necessities of his job, and trying to figure out whom to call to help him. I turned away from Mercer and made a dash through the frame of the metal detector. It screamed its alarm-maybe my gold watch, my belt hook, or my underwire bra had set it off-and I kept on running past the newsstand and fast food concessions after Maswana.

I was glad for the ringing bells, sure they would bring someone to capture me as well as my fleeing target.

The only advantage I had over Hugo Maswana's greater speed was the slipperiness of the flooring under his socks. Twice I saw him slide and fall to one knee as I gained on him, running in my rubber-soled loafers.

Now people were screaming and guards were charging from both directions-some coming at both of us from the departure gate and others overtaking us from behind.

Two of them lunged at Maswana first and wrestled him to the ground. Another one grabbed at my shoulder and tried to twist me around. I shook him off as he pushed me down and I fell on top of the suspect's back.

Maswana writhed on the ground and shoved me away, still kicking at the guards. As I grabbed his hand to keep it from striking me, I scratched at it with my nails and a thin line of blood trickled out on the surface of his knuckles. I wiped at it with my jacket.

Mercer Wallace and the PAPD supervisor jogged into sight, confirming to the men who had brought Maswana down that he was, in fact, the suspect we were after.

"Is he under arrest, Detective?" one of them asked Mercer. "You taking him in?"

"Not exactly," Mercer said, motioning the agent to step to the side, explaining-I was sure-that we might just be detaining him here for questioning until we could establish probable cause for his arrest.

I stood up and joined their conversation. The agent was nonplussed. "I mean, we can hold him for a security breach at the airport. It may only keep him a day or two."

"That's all we need," I said to Mercer. "Between the blood on my sleeve and the skin cells under my nail, we'll know this time tomorrow if we've got a case."