Whatever was tickling at her about 3A, Mr. Now-They’re-Hazel-Now-They’re-Blue, kept right on tickling. Something about him was not right.

Something.

CHAPTER 3

Contact and Landing

1

Eddie was awakened by an announcement from the co-pilot that they should be landing at Kennedy International, where the visibility was unlimited, the winds out of the west at ten miles an hour, and the temperature a jolly seventy degrees, in forty-five minutes or so. He told them that, if he didn’t get another chance, he wanted to thank them one and all for choosing Delta.

He looked around and saw people checking their duty declaration cards and their proofs of citizenship—coming in from Nassau your driver’s licence and a credit card with a stateside bank listed on it was supposed to be enough, but most still carried passports—and Eddie felt a steel wire start to tighten inside him. He still couldn’t believe he had gone to sleep, and so soundly.

He got up and went to the restroom. The bags of coke under his arms felt as if they were resting easily and firmly, fitting as nicely to the contours of his sides as they had in the hotel room where a soft-spoken American named William Wilson had strapped them on. Following the strapping operation, the man whose name Poe had made famous (Wilson had only looked blankly at Eddie when Eddie made some allusion to this) handed over the shirt. Just an ordinary paisley shirt, a little faded, the sort of thing any frat-boy might wear back on the plane following a short pre-exams holiday . . . except this one was specially tailored to hide unsightly bulges.

“You check everything once before you set down just to be sure,” Wilson said, “but you’re gonna be fine.”

Eddie didn’t know if he was going to be fine or not, but he had another reason for wanting to use the john before the FASTEN SEAT BELTS light came on. In spite of all temptation—and most of last night it hadn’t been temptation but raging need—he had managed to hold onto the last little bit of what the sallow thing had had the temerity to call China White.

Clearing customs from Nassau wasn’t like clearing customs from Haiti or Quincon or Bogota, but there were still people watching. Trained people. He needed any and every edge he could get. If he could go in there a little cooled out, just a little, it might be the one thing that put him over the top.

He snorted the powder, flushed the little twist of paper it had been in down the john, then washed his hands.

Of course, if you make it, you’ll never know, will you? he thought. No. He wouldn’t. And wouldn’t care.

On his way back to his seat he saw the stewardess who had brought him the drink he hadn’t finished. She smiled at him. He smiled back, sat down, buckled his seat-belt, took out the flight magazine, turned the pages, and looked at pictures and words. Neither made any impression on them. That steel wire continued to tighten around his gut, and when the FASTEN SEAT BELTS light did come on, it took a double turn and cinched tight.