Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

7

“Purpose of your visit, business or pleasure?” the customs agent, a broad-faced, chesty Midwestern man, asked.

“Vacation and sightseeing,” answered Waddy Dwyer, who stood in the hall for arriving international passengers at O’Hare Airport. Despite his answer, he was thinking about his business, which consisted of nipping a loose thread and finishing the Kolodnik job before it could be pulled at and unravel the whole bit of knitting. “Since the wife isn’t along, it might actually be pleasure.”

The customs agent looked up with bored, heavy-lidded eyes from the mostly blank pages of Dwyer’s dummy passport. If the man had been looking at a real document, and Dwyer had made a habit of going in legally, he’d be thumbing through page after page of entry stamps from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bosnia, Russia, Congo, Tanzania and three quarters of the rest of Africa, Java, Pakistan, the Middle East, and basically anywhere else there’d been a shitstorm of trouble. And the Maldives, too, but that was just for the scuba diving.

“Have you been to a farm or agriculture site? Are you carrying any food, specifically fresh fruit or vegetables?” the agent asked in a bureaucratic monotone that could only lull an absolute imbecile into divulging anything important.

“No,” Dwyer said.

“Are you carrying more than ten thousand dollars’ worth of any currency?”

“I wish,” Dwyer answered, although he was carrying twenty-five grand in four different packets that he’d taped to his abdomen and thighs in the lavatory during the last hour of the flight. Buying the clean weapons he’d need didn’t come cheap, and the sellers didn’t take Visa.

The customs agent roused himself into a moment’s vigorous action as he abused Dwyer’s passport with a rubber entry stamp. The sound reminded Dwyer of the fishermen braining mackerel with wooden billy clubs down by the docks of Trefor. “Enjoy your trip,” the agent said, handing back the passport.

Duly welcomed, Dwyer walked out of the customs hall and into the Chicago afternoon.