THE OVERTON WINDOW (31 page)

“Is something wrong?” Kyle asked, frowning.

“Excuse us for a minute,” Noah said. “I just remembered, we need to make a quick phone call.”

He walked Molly over to the telephone kiosk near the door they’d come in, well out of earshot of Kyle and the others.

“Damn it,” he whispered.

“What is it?” Molly asked. “They’re all over there looking at us.”

“Pretend you’re calling someone on the phone. I’ve got to think for a minute.”

Molly picked up the receiver, put it to her ear, punched a few buttons, and pulled him a little closer. “Now tell me what’s going on.”

“Check out the guy in the TSA outfit.”

She did. “So?”

“Are you kidding me? That’s a
Star Wars
geek if I ever saw one.”

Maybe it was the Luke Skywalker blow-cut, his mismatched socks below the nerdish cut of his high-riding uniform trousers, or the soul patch and horn-rimmed glasses, but everything about this man was screaming
king of the fanboys,
and that was really bad news.

“I don’t understand—”

Noah lowered his voice even more. “Natalie Portman is in all three of the
Star Wars
prequels.”

“You’re remembering this now?”

“I guess I hated those movies so much I’d blocked them out of my mind. But I’d bet my last dollar that dweeb knows Portman’s face like the back of his hand. You don’t understand these guys; he’s probably got a candlelit altar in front of her picture down in his mother’s basement.”

Molly leaned around him to take another stealthy look, and swallowed hard. “What do we do?”

“I vote we get out of here and think of something else.”

“No,” she said, and it sounded like the word was final. “We don’t have time. This is it. We’re here, let’s just do it.”

After a last few seconds to find his nerve, he nodded, fixed her hood and eased the brim of Molly’s baseball cap down a little lower, hung up the phone for her, and then turned around to face the music.

Noah went first, and he passed through the arch of the metal detector without a single blip. Kyle had stationed himself next to the X-ray tech at the luggage conveyor, no doubt ready to smoothly rationalize any oddities that might show up in his clients’ carry-on. Their one item, her duffel bag, went into the long machine and came out the other side with no objection raised.

But the TSA man gave Noah a careful, steady look, as if he were
toying with the idea of a wand-sweep and a pat-down, just for good measure.

Along with the recent change in alert status, an official DHS directive would have come around to remind all stations, even this special-purpose one, of the key markers for suspicious activity—last-minute ticket purchases for one-way travel, no checked luggage, nervous or flustered behavior, identification papers not in order—and this little party matched every warning sign.

Kyle cleared his throat meaningfully from where he was standing. This subtle, perfectly pitched intervention was sent to remind the room that this trip had already been preapproved from positions much higher than their own, and these two very important people weren’t to be unnecessarily troubled by the rigors of the standard inquisition.

With some visible reluctance, the stern young officer nodded and gave a jut of his chin to let the first subject know he’d been provisionally cleared for boarding.

So far, so good.

Noah retrieved his belt and his pocket items from the gray utility tub, and prepared to put on his shoes. He’d just begun to let himself believe that they were soon to be home free when the piercing tweet of the metal detector sounded off behind him.

CHAPTER 37
 

“Could you remove any metallic items and step back through for me, ma’am.”

Polite and professional though it sounded, it was a command and not a request.

Kyle hurried over to escort Molly back to the far side of the electronic gauntlet again, then he looked her up and down in search of whatever offending metal might have set off the alert. In all the rush she’d forgotten about the cell phone in her pocket. Kyle took that and then delicately helped her remove her necklace, bracelet, and the ring on her finger. He placed those items in a tray held out by the officer, and then nodded to her to indicate that all was ready for another try.

Molly walked slowly through the arch again. The vertical line of indicator lights twitched upward from dark green to barely yellow—maybe in reaction to the tiny hinges in her sunglasses—but this time there was no audible alarm.

Noah was the only one in a position to notice a touch of private relief on Molly’s face. She was nearly to the end of the exit track of the detector when she was stopped by the officer’s voice.

“Miss … Portman?”

When Molly turned around she must have seen exactly what Noah was seeing. The TSA man wasn’t focused on her at all. He was staring down at her possessions in his plastic tray.

“Yes?” she said softly.

Now he looked up at her, and raised his hand slowly above the tray. Molly’s silver necklace with its little silver cross was dangling from the knuckle of his thumb.

“I thought,” the officer said, “that you were Jewish.”

It felt like the temperature in the room suddenly dropped by fifty degrees. Noah’s mouth went totally dry, his skin tingling as though all the moisture had flash-frozen out of the atmosphere, settling into a thin layer of frost on everything exposed, suspending those six words on the air.

Cops know liars like plumbers know leaks. They encounter them every day, all day; they know all the little signs and symptoms, and they’re trained to understand that where there’s even a little whiff of smoke, one should always assume there’s a fire. As they challenge a person they study their reactions, pick apart the little telltale movements, listen to the timbre of the voice, and more than anything else, they watch the eyes. Most suspects have already made a full confession by the time they begin their denial.

This was one of the topics of light conversation in the wee hours of that first night when he and Molly had met. Noah had been so fascinated by the woman that he hadn’t stopped to wonder why she seemed to know so much about the art of deception.

Don’t be afraid, she’d said; that’s the key, no matter how bad it gets. If locked in a car that’s speeding toward a gap in the bridge and it’s clearly too late to stop, most people would still waste their last mortal seconds stepping on the brakes. But what you really want to do is say a little prayer, and then floor it. If you’re going down anyway, go all in, go down with courage—because hey, there’s always that one slim chance that you’ll make it to the other side.

From behind her Noah saw Molly’s head tilt slightly, and this movement was accompanied by a subtle hip shift. There was a convex security mirror on a bracket above the metal detector, and in that reflection he saw a patient but serious expression on her face that meant,
You didn’t really just say what I think I heard, did you?

The officer appeared unfazed.

“Would you take off your sunglasses for me, please,” he said.

That’s all, folks. Curtains, checkmate, game over.

Noah hoped only that his upcoming visit to prison would be more enjoyable than his first. He’d already begun to gauge the running distance to the door when Molly looked back at him. She appeared to be perfectly serene, and she mouthed something to him. He wasn’t much of a lip reader and it took his panic-stricken mind a few seconds to recognize her message. It had been the short phrase that’s always at the top of any good list of famous last words.

Watch this.

She turned to the officer, pulled back her hood and let it settle onto her shoulders, removed the baseball cap and let it fall to the floor at her feet, and then slow and sure, began to walk toward him.

“The Force is strong with this one,” Molly said, as calm and smooth as a Jedi master. Her accent was gone, and her voice was just breathy enough to obscure any other identifying qualities of the real McCoy.

The TSA man’s cheeks began to redden slightly. A power shift was under way, and as Noah had learned firsthand, when this girl turned it on you never knew what was about to hit you.

She continued nearer, put a finger to the frames and lowered her sunglasses partway down her nose, tipping her chin so she could look at the officer directly, eye to eye, just over the top of the darkened lenses. As she stopped barely a foot away she subtly passed an open hand between their faces, and spoke again.

“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for,” Molly said. After waiting
a moment she gave him a little nod, as though it had come time in their close-up scene for his own line of dialogue.

There was an eternal pause, and then before his eyes Noah saw this big, intimidating young man begin his grinning transformation from the TSA’s most vigilant watchdog into Natalie Portman’s biggest fan.

“These aren’t the droids we’re looking for.” The officer repeated her words, just as that spellbound storm trooper had said them at the Imperial checkpoint in Episode 4.

After holding his rapt gaze for a few more seconds Molly pulled out the secret weapon more fearsome than any light-saber—that sweet, wicked smile that made your knees feel like they could bend in all directions. She slipped the pen from his pocket protector, clicked it, took the hand that still held her necklace, and autographed his palm with an artful flourish.

“Bravo!” Kyle said, and his light applause was picked up by all the other employees who had turned their attention that way. That put a button at the end of the crisis; before any further delay could threaten his schedule he bustled around and retrieved her duffel bag, along with her cap, phone, and jewelry. Then with a cheerful, over-the-shoulder “Thank you, everyone,” he gathered his clients back under his wing and hurried them to the exit door.

They were to board the plane from the flight crew’s side stairway out on the tarmac. When they got outside Noah motioned to Kyle that he needed just a minute with his girl. Their escort nodded and moved off to a discreet distance, pausing only to tap the face of his watch as a reminder to be quick before he turned away to wait.

“How did I do?” Molly asked, obviously fully aware of exactly how she’d done.

“You quoted two different male characters from the wrong trilogy, but other than that, you nailed it.”

“I wrote a midterm paper on the first two movies in college. Never saw any of the others.”

“Film class?”

“Political science.”

He had to wait for a noisy vehicle to pass before he could speak again.

“I need to ask you something,” Noah said.

“Sure.” It seemed she could see that he’d become more somber.

“When we were there in Times Square, when we kissed that time …”

She took off the sunglasses and hooked them on her pocket, moved a little closer to him, brushed a windblown lock of hair from his eyes. “I remember.”

“Is that when you pickpocketed my BlackBerry?”

Molly smiled, and pulled him willingly into her embrace. It was no real surprise, but this kiss was every bit as stirring as that first one had been, and as he realized then for certain, as good as every single one would be thereafter.

She stood back a step, her face as innocent as a newborn lamb, and held up his wallet between them.

“I love you,” Noah said.

Molly looked up at him with all the courageous resolve of the doomed Han Solo at the end of
The Empire Strikes Back.

“I know,” she replied.

By the time the jet reached its cruising altitude Molly had fallen sound asleep in his arms. They had the entire row to themselves and the crew had taken excellent care of them so far. Now it was quiet, and in the remains of this day a little peace and stillness were more than welcome.

Molly had taken only one thing from her bag to keep with her during the four-hour flight. He recognized the book as the hand-bound journal she’d shown him back in her apartment downtown.

It would be nice to have something to read, he thought, and after a brief consideration he decided that she wouldn’t be likely to object if he took a look through her little book as she slept.

Folded just inside the front cover he found the pencil drawing that had been pinned to her bedroom wall, that idyllic sketch of her someday cabin in the woods.

On the next page was the beginning of the texts she’d been given by the Founders’ Keepers, that portion of the writings from early American history she was meant to preserve and memorize on their behalf.

Thomas Jefferson

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

What followed didn’t really seem to comprise the most famous or succinct of Jefferson’s writings. Rather, it was as though a great deal of his written legacy, maybe all of it, had been distributed among quite a number of people, and Molly’s was only a small, random part placed in her care. Accordingly, the first section consisted of Jefferson’s Second Inaugural Address. Noah read through a portion of it.