The Tombs (A Fargo Adventure) (22 page)

F
ERIHEGY
A
IRPORT
, B
UDAPEST

S
AM AND
R
EMI WERE AT
B
UDAPEST
A
IRPORT, WALKING
toward the boarding tunnel for their flight to Moscow.

“Astana is supposed to be all shiny and new,” said Remi. “That should be interesting. The whole place was rebuilt in the past fifteen years.”

“We’ll probably have to spend some time in the capital seeing the people who have authority over antiquities,” said Sam. “This time, I’d like to get them in on everything before we start digging.”

“Do you think Bako will beat us there?”

“I can’t predict,” said Sam. “At times, he seems to begin ahead of us. He’s already thinking about every site where Attila ever was and he picks the one he thinks fits. Other times, he seems to turn things over to people who don’t know what they’re doing.”

“We’re getting back in time to when Attila was young and to the part of Asia where the Huns came from.”

“We’ll see,” he said.

The flight from Ferihegy to Sheremetyevo Airport took just an hour and forty-five minutes. From there, the fastest available flight from Moscow to Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, would take eight hours and five minutes. As they taxied to the end of the runway, Remi gently put her hand on Sam’s as she always did until the plane had taken off. When the plane leveled, she took her hand off his and began to read the book about Kazakhstan she had bought.

They sat together in near silence for the remainder of the short flight. Since they couldn’t tell whether they were being watched by people Bako had placed on the plane, they communicated mostly by touch and whisper. When they got off the plane, they looked up at the electronic boards to find their flight to Astana.

They saw that their plane was expected to leave on time in three hours. They went to sit in a waiting area not far from their gate, and Sam took out his phone to look at a map of their route. After a few minutes of watching Sam, Remi said, “You seem a little jumpy. What’s up?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” He watched a small group of men across the cavernous room, talking quietly among themselves. “I’ve noticed over the years that when you feel uneasy, there’s often a good reason.”

“That sounds a little too much like ESP,” she said.

“You know, I’m not a believer in things that don’t have causes. I just think that we’re picking up tiny clues in large numbers all the time, and, once in a while, they add up to trouble that you haven’t quite understood yet.”

“I can believe that. But here we are in an airport designed and built by . . . let’s say a very controlling government at the height of the Cold War. It’s practically a machine for keeping an eye on people. You’re probably just picking up on features of that design.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But please do me a favor and be just a little bit paranoid.”

“If it helps, I’ve been observant,” she said. “And I haven’t seen any suspicious-looking men. I’m off to the ladies’ room.”

Remi walked across the open floor to the concourse and went toward the sign with the international symbol of the little cookie-cutter lady in a dress. As she walked, she heard the sound of high heels on the hard floor and noticed that a couple other women were converging on the restroom behind her. She glanced subtly to each side as she went, reassuring herself, just a couple young women with carry-on bags. She pushed on the door to enter and saw two large, middle-aged women in uniforms and aprons in front of her. One was at the row of sinks, handing out towels. The other, with a mop stuck in a bucket on wheels, was moving closer to the door. As Remi stepped in, the mop woman let the next couple of women in and then pushed a sign on a plastic cone in front of the door and turned a knob to lock it. She went to work, mopping the floor.

Remi went into an empty stall. When she came out, things seemed to happen all at once. As she opened the door, the two uniformed women stepped to her from both sides. The mop woman threw her arms around Remi and held her in a crushing embrace and the other one reached between two of her hand towels, pulled out a hypodermic needle, and injected Remi in the arm.

Remi drew in a shallow breath and prepared to scream, but the woman held a towel over her face. The sound began as a muffled yell but quickly died in a fight for breath. By then, Remi had begun to feel weak and helpless from the drug, and in a moment she lost consciousness.

Sam sat in his seat in the waiting area. He had been watching people go by for some time and now he picked up the book Remi had been reading about Kazakhstan, read a few pages but couldn’t keep his mind on it. He went back to watching passersby. Moscow’s airport was an open place, where any number of travelers from every continent were always visible. He picked up her book again, but after a time he realized he had been posing as a reader rather than reading. His book was merely a mute explanation of how he was passing his time and an assurance to others that he was harmless. Where was Remi? Too much time had passed. He pulled out his cell phone and called her, but her phone was turned off, probably since they’d boarded the plane in Budapest.

Sam knew that women’s restrooms in public places often required waiting, but this felt wrong. Sam got up and, shouldering Remi’s bag along with his, walked in the direction he’d seen her go. Down the concourse were restrooms. He walked directly there, but kept scanning the nearby shops and crowds for Remi.

He saw a large, heavy woman, dressed like a cleaning lady, come out of the restroom, pushing a wheeled cart with a couple of large barrels on it. She picked up the sign on the cone that had been blocking the door. Another woman in a janitorial dress came out and helped her push the cart. They went off down the concourse and turned into an alcove that, he supposed, led to some of the innumerable doorways where passengers couldn’t go.

The fact that the cleaning ladies had closed the restroom for a few minutes reassured Sam, but not entirely. He stood across from the door and waited but kept looking up and down to see if Remi might have chosen another restroom and would be returning.

He had a memory of a restroom at O’Hare Airport in Chicago that had two sets of doors, one opening onto the concourse, where he’d entered, and the other, on the opposite wall, opening onto a different concourse. Could this ladies’ room have two entrances? He saw a woman coming out, speaking on a cell phone. He said, “Excuse me.”

She stopped walking, the phone still to her ear.

He said, “Does that restroom have two exits?”

The woman looked back at it and then at him, as though she were wondering what he could possibly mean.

He answered for her. “I guess not.” He hurried on. He had wasted too much time. He called Remi’s cell phone again, but it was still off. He listened to part of the message and hung up. He came to a gate where there were two women in airline uniforms, talking in Russian as they stood at a counter.

“Hello,” he said. “Do you speak English?”

“Yes, sir,” said one. “How can I help you?”

“My wife went to a restroom but didn’t return. And it’s not like her. She would call me on her cell phone if she went anywhere else. I’ve been calling her, but her phone is turned off. I’m very worried about her. She would never do this.”

“Is she . . . perhaps ill?”

“She wasn’t a while ago when we arrived from Budapest. Can you get in touch with airport police?”

The two women looked at each other uncomfortably. “Yes, I can,” said one. “How long has she been gone?”

He glanced at his watch. “About a half hour. I know it doesn’t sound long, but, I swear to you, she would never do this without telling me.”

“It’s a big airport. Could she be lost?”

“Anyone could get lost. But if she were, she would be even more likely to call me.”

“Let me page her.”

“Sure. But please call the police too.”

The woman picked up a telephone, pressed a button, then held the receiver against her arm. “What’s her name?”

“Remi Fargo.”

“Would Mrs. Remi Fargo please pick up a white courtesy telephone or go to any Aeroflot desk. Mrs. Remi Fargo, please pick up a white courtesy telephone.” She hung up the phone and smiled reassuringly. “She should be calling us in a moment.”

“Please call the police.”

“We should wait a few minutes to give her time to call.”

“She’s had plenty of time to use her own cell phone to call,” Sam said, getting agitated. “Please call the police.” He spotted two uniformed police officers walking along the concourse. “Excuse me.” He turned and ran after them.

As he came up on the two cops, he saw them look quickly over their shoulders at him, their bodies tensed for an attack. He smiled as well as he could. “Do you speak English?”

They looked confused, so he began to walk back toward the airline desk, beckoning them to follow. When they arrived, he said to the airline woman, “Please, tell them my problem.”

The woman spoke to them in rapid Russian, a quick exchange during which she gestured at Sam, at the telephone, and at the concourse and which included shrugs, head shaking, and apologies. Both cops spoke with the monotone formality of cops all over the world.

The woman said to Sam, “Do you have a picture of Mrs. Fargo?”

Sam brought one up on his cell phone and held it up for the others to study. The cop who did most of the talking used the radio on his belt, then put it back. Through the airline woman he said, “We’d like you to come with us. We’ll try to help.”

Sam thanked the women and hurried off with the police officers. They went into another of the nondescript, unmarked doors off the concourse. They took Sam into an office with several police officers at desks and others watching television monitors. One of the cops, a young man with blond hair and a scholarly demeanor, said, “Sir? Please sit here and I’ll take your report.”

Sam was relieved to see a police officer who spoke English. “I’m not filing an insurance claim or something. My wife has disappeared and that means something has happened to her.”

“We have to start with the report and then the help.” The next ten minutes were taken up by Sam recounting what had happened, describing Remi and then showing the cop and others the picture on his phone.

“I took that picture only a few hours ago, before we got on the plane in Budapest.”

The young man asked Sam to e-mail him the picture, then downloaded it. He explained what he was doing as he sent it to various police substations in the airport, then to the cell phones of patrolmen and plainclothes officers around it.

Sam felt his hopes rise. They knew what they were doing. They knew how to find someone. They had a good chance of spotting her. He felt a little foolish for feeling so pessimistic about them at first.

The cop asked more questions—about his flight to Moscow, what gate he and Remi had used to deplane, and when exactly she had gone off to the restroom. He was transmitting this information to someone. He seemed to read Sam’s mind. “There are investigators looking at the surveillance tapes of those areas to pick out your wife and see where she went.”

For the next half hour Sam sat in the office, waiting. The cops came in and out, answered phones, and conferred with one another. Nobody spoke to him, but he occasionally caught one of them looking at him surreptitiously. He was painfully, fearfully aware that in this kind of emergency, seconds counted. He didn’t want conversation, he wanted them to find Remi, so he remained silent and watched. Then the half hour was an hour, then two hours. He called the house in La Jolla and left a message, explaining what was happening.

When two and a half hours had passed, several cops came in who had different uniforms—outdoor uniforms. The fabric, boots, belts, and hats were black. These men were also more heavily armed than the airport police.

When Sam had first come in, officers had smiled at him. “Don’t worry. This is the most important Russian airport. It’s like a bank vault. Nobody can steal a woman from here.” Later on, another had said, “This place is more heavily guarded than anything in your country. Even if a woman were kidnapped, they’d never get her out of the building.” Still later, it became, “They could never get her past the airport gates.”