Pain exploded in his ear, roared across his head, and momentarily puffed a red cloud across his vision. He fell clumsily over the open purse, struck the sand, and looked up at the pale man in the cut-down boots. This was no nodder. The blue eyes blazing from that dying face were the eyes of all truth.

“Admire it later, prisoner,” the gunslinger said. “For now just use it.”

He could feel his ear throbbing, swelling.

“Why do you keep calling me that?”

“Cut the tape,” the gunslinger said grimly. “If they break into yon privy while you’re still over here, I’ve got a feeling you’re going to be here for a very long time. And with a corpse for company before long.”

Eddie pulled the knife out of the scabbard. Not old; more than old, more than ancient. The blade, honed almost to the point of invisibility, seemed to be all age caught in metal.

“Yeah, it looks sharp,” he said, and his voice wasn’t steady.

16

The last passengers were filing out into the jetway. One of them, a lady of some seventy summers with that exquisite look of confusion which only first-time fliers with too many years or too little English seem capable of wearing, stopped to show Jane Dorning her tickets. “How will I ever find my plane to Montreal?” she asked. “And what about my bags? Do they do my Customs here or there?”

“There will be a gate agent at the top of the jetway who can give you all the information you need, ma’am,” Jane said.

“Well, I don’t see why you can’t give me the information I need,” the old woman said. “That jetway thing is still full of people.”

“Move on, please, madam,” Captain McDonald said. “We have a problem.”

“Well, pardon me for living,” the old woman said huffily, “I guess I just fell off the hearse!”

And strode past them, nose tilted like the nose of a dog scenting a fire still some distance away, tote-bag clutched in one hand, ticket-folder (with so many boarding-pass stubs sticking out of it that one might have been tempted to believe the lady had come most of the way around the globe, changing planes at every stop along the way) in the other.

“There’s a lady who may never fly Delta’s big jets again,” Susy murmured.

“I don’t give a fuck if she flies stuffed down the front of Superman’s Jockies,” McDonald said. “She the last?”

Jane darted past them, glanced at the seats in business class, then poked her head into the main cabin. It was deserted.

She came back and reported the plane empty.

McDonald turned to the jetway and saw two uniformed Customs agents fighting their way through the crowd, excusing themselves but not bothering to look back at the people they jostled aside. The last of these was the old lady, who dropped her ticket-folder. Papers flew and fluttered everywhere and she shrilled after them like an angry crow.