“Sorry,” Milton said. “Of course.”

He opened the bag, took out his copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude and his AirPods, and sat back down. The man in the leather jacket put his head around the back of his seat and glanced down the aisle as Milton sat back down again. Milton ignored him and intended to maintain his apparent obliviousness for the duration of the flight. As far as López knew, John Smith was an ambitious criminal, making up in determination and ruthlessness what he lacked in sophistication. Smith was not the sort of man who would have made a potential tail before the tail had even noticed him getting out of a cab.

By the time López knew that, of course, it would already be too late. Milton would delay that revelation until later. John Smith still had plenty of work to do.

40

Milton had a short two-hour hop to Barcelona before a two-and-a-half-hour layover. The guy in the leather jacket ambled behind him into the terminal. Milton took a seat at the bar and watched the replay of El Clásico from the night before. There was a mirrored wall behind the shelves of bottles, and Milton could see the man’s reflection passing between the gins and vodkas and whiskeys as he found his own seat and made as if he were reading a newspaper. The barman gave the bar an exultant slap as Messi rolled in a penalty, and when Milton looked up, he saw that the man was on his phone, his eyes on Milton, no doubt reporting back to whoever had given him the assignment.

Milton ignored him.

* * *

The second leg, from Barcelona to Bogotá, was eleven and a half hours. Milton asked for his bed to be made up and managed a little sleep. They landed at two thirty local time and had another ninety-minute layover. He went through into the lounge and grabbed a plate of chilaquiles from a counter service restaurant, more to flush out any fresh tails than because he was particularly hungry. He ate the tortilla chips and watched for repeats—faces that he saw for a second time—or for people who were lurking where they weren’t supposed to lurk. It was a large airport, and busy, but Milton was good. He identified two potential suspects: a woman in her late thirties who followed him into the terminal and then ordered huevos rancheros from the counter, and an older man, late forties with salt-and-pepper hair, who sat down to have his shoes shined at a spot that afforded a good view of Milton’s table.