“Where are we?” she whispered.

“It’s a VIP lounge,” he said in a low voice. “You know what that is? When important people are flying out, or in, they come through here. No press allowed.”

“Are we allowed?”

“No. But we’re not doing any harm. Just quietly watching, waiting. That’s all.”

He drew her to one side, behind a tall potted palm. Mina felt a thrill of excitement, an illicit tingling of the nerves. There were other people waiting, she saw, quite a few of them, and beyond, at some distance, there was a group of airport personnel. No one seemed to have noticed them. The airport people were fussing over papers and forms, and telephoning; the others, several men, a couple of women, all elegantly dressed, were facing the window beyond. Mina craned her neck: the window was glass, floor to ceiling. It overlooked a runway. She could just see an airplane taxiing in, a small private plane, she thought, with a logo she did not recognize on its side. Star saw it too, and as soon as he saw it, Mina felt his body go rigid.

“Don’t move,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “Watch. Don’t move.”

So Mina watched. She felt a sense of gathering disappointment. After this mysterious buildup, very little occurred. The plane outside taxied to a halt. She could just see its forward door being opened, then the men and women waiting moved toward the window, obscuring her view. She caught scraps and murmurs of reaction from them, but they were all speaking French, and Mina’s French was poor.

She could sense a certain tension, and an excitement, in the watching group, as if they were expecting the unpredictable, but nothing special happened at all. Whoever was on the plane must have descended from it and made their way up to this lounge from an entrance below, because suddenly the group by the windows began a flurry of new movement toward the far entrance doors.

One man, drawing aside, began speaking rapidly into a mobile telephone. Another opened a black attaché case and quickly extracted some files. They assembled themselves on either side of the entrance doors in a formal greeting party. An immaculately coiffed older woman in an exquisite suit stood to the immediate right of the doors. Next to her, one step back, stood the man Mina thought seemed the most senior. He was wearing a black overcoat, tortoiseshell-framed tinted eyeglasses, and a dark suit with the finest, narrowest pinstripes. The rest of the group, deferring to these two, stood a little behind them and to the side.

Then the doors beyond opened, and the arrival began. Mina had a clear view now: she could see that the awaited party consisted of a man and a woman. The man was about fifty, she thought, and even at this distance he radiated pace and power. His hair gleamed, black as a bird’s wing. She could see that he was relatively short, formally dressed. His skin was tanned, and Mina thought that he might be Italian, or Spanish, and that he moved like a king.