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Smith couldn't resist giving her the briefest of hugs when he saw her whole face light up. "You win," he whispered into her ear. "It's my head on the block. Where can we meet up when I get through Customs? If I get through Customs."
"There's a little place that sells coffee and cakes. A sort of booth. You'll see it straight ahead of you when you get through the barrier. There are a few tables. I'll wait for you there."
"Fine." He gave her another little hug because he had rather enjoyed the first one.
"Wish me luck."
He stood up and walked purposefully through the plastic swinging doors, holding one of his bags in each hand. He looked at the green "Nothing to Declare" channel for a moment, then changed his mind and walked to the red one. He placed his hold-all on the desk, and the young uniformed officer came over to meet him.
"Good evening," Smith began cheerfully.
"Good day, Sir," said the young Asian in perfect English. "Do you have something to declare?"
Smith casually unzipped the hold-all and started to take things out, beginning with the Chinese sweet-box. "Well, yes," he said in a matter-of-fact tone, "I thought I should talk to you because I bought this cam-corder in Hong Kong, and I'll be taking it back to England when I leave. I have the purchase receipt..." He fished around in his breast pocket, "Ah yes. Here we are!" He handed the document to the young official. "I thought it was better to let you see it than to take it through the green channel," he added.
The man took the receipt and looked at it. "Yes, Mr. ....Smith. You are very conscientious. This is what we call a temporary import. There is no problem whatever. I shall give you a note of authorization..." he started to fill-out a small docket, "you must show this to the customs officer as you leave the country, together with your Certificate of Purchase. There will be no problem whatever." He smiled and handed the docket to Smith. Then he started re-packing the hold-all, beginning with the cam-corder, then the sweet-box. "You know," he said in a confidential tone, "you could probably have bought that for even less here."
"Really? Well thanks for telling me. I'll remember that the next time."
So saying, Smith stepped through the channel with his two items of luggage and strolled innocently across the main concourse. He whistled tunelessly as he went, mainly to calm his nerves. If he still smoked, he thought to himself, he would light one up right now.
The coffee booth was directly ahead of him, just as she had said. But she hadn't got there yet.
He sat down and pushed his bags in between his chair and the wall. He watched the stream of people go by. He glanced at the little TV screens giving details of arrivals and departures. Time passed. He ordered a coffee for himself and he drank it.
This was getting alarming. He could think of no reason why it should take her this long to get through Customs. He hadn't looked at his watch when he came through but he was certain it was at least fifteen minutes ago. Could there be another coffee booth? Could he be at the wrong place? He looked around carefully. There was a bar on this floor and some shops, but the only other cafes were up on a higher level - he could see them on a sort of balcony to his left. She couldn't have meant up there. No, it had to be this place. It was straight in front of the door out of the customs channels, exactly where she had said it would be. Could she have come out first but not waited for him? No, that was ridiculous. He had the drugs, and he had seen how terrified she had been at the prospect of losing them. Could she have had an attack of panic because he had gone through the red channel? Could she have assumed that he was going to hand-in the drugs and report her? No, he couldn't believe that she would be so foolish. There could really be only one explanation.
He collected up his two bags and walked back towards the Customs barrier. There was a continuous stream of people through the green channel, but not very many coming through the red. That was pretty well what he would have expected. He tried to look into the green channel, at the little row of tables and the duty officers, stopping people at random, asking for the occasional bag to be opened. What was happening in there looked ordinary enough. Then he noticed something a little out of the ordinary. One of the officers had a little device resembling a vacuum cleaner and he was moving it around somebody's luggage, as if to clean it. Smith knew exactly what this was from his airline training. It was a drug-sniffer. A little device allegedly as sensitive as a bloodhound's nose for certain specific substances. Now he knew with a near-certainty where Suavarose was. She must have had a tiny trace of the drug somewhere - on her hands or on her clothing: perhaps even sitting on Smith's hold-all would have transferred enough to trigger the machine. The latest ones were supposed to be an absolute marvel. He was rather pleased now that he hadn't tried to come through the green channel.
Well, in the long run she should be all right. She would be interrogated, searched, perhaps even given an internal search - it might not be very pleasant, but assuming she wasn't carrying anything else that he didn't know about she would have to be released. The evidence of a drug-sniffer wasn't any use by itself. You also had to find the drugs. For a moment it crossed his mind that he could simply ask the customs men if somebody off the Orion Air Hong Kong flight had been detained. Then he decided that, carrying what he was in his hold-all this might not be such a good idea. Especially as he had been in front of her on the aircraft. It wouldn't take a genius to wonder why he wanted to know and what the connection was between them!
But he remembered that he did have another option. There was a way he could make his inquiries completely officially and impersonally. First, he needed to find the Left Luggage lockers.
O
Smith went up to the Orion Air check-in and smiled at the young Asian woman behind the desk. "Hello. I'm Leonard Smith from the London office. Customer Relations. I'm not really due to start until tomorrow morning, but I just thought I would ask you. Was that girl they took away off our Hong Kong flight?"
She looked puzzled. "Took away, Mr. Smith? How do you mean?"
"Some Customs violation, it looked like. They caught her with one of those drug-sniffers. If she was off our plane it could mean trouble. They may want to search it before it flies out."
"We haven't heard anything but I'll check up. That's the one that came in half an hour ago from Hong Kong?"
"That's the one."
The girl lifted one of her telephones and dialed a short number. She spoke for a moment in her own language. "You're right, Mr. Smith," she said, obviously quite impressed at his powers of observation, "they were about to phone us. A Miss Suavarose Cran. That's funny, we had a Prime Minister named Cran a few years back. Anyway it is hard drugs and they're holding her. They didn't say anything about searching the aircraft, so we may be okay."
"Oh. That's something, I suppose." He tried to think of an excuse to ask how long they would be holding her, but he couldn't come up with one. The girl probably wouldn't know the answer anyway. Still, no harm to do a little bit of fishing.
"I'm supposed to be familiarizing myself with all the procedures that affect Orion at all its airports," he said by way of explanation, "this Customs thing is quite interesting. Is it unusual?"
"Well, yes it is actually. The penalties are very high now. Not so many people try it any more."
"And what will actually happen to her. The girl, I mean?"
"Depends what she's carrying."
"Well, just as a hypothetical case, suppose she wasn't carrying anything? Suppose the sniffer had gone off incorrectly?"
The girl considered the question. "You would have to ask Customs things like that. I don't really know. Would you like to talk to them yourself?"
"No. It doesn't matter. I was just curious."
He thanked her and left.
He wasn't sure what he should do next. He could guess that it wouldn't be very pleasant for Suavarose. Aggressive questioning, body-searches, internal searches, all kinds of indignities. Maybe, and this was the bit that worried him most, they would insist on informing her father. Even if it didn't actually happen the fear that it might would be agony for her. And of course she did have things to hide. If they put her under enough pressure she might even let something slip. It was so ironic that they should let him through and stop the one who wasn't carrying anything! He wondered if there was anything he could do for her, any way to rescue her.
He went back to the little coffee booth, ordered another cup, together with a cream bun, and sat down at the same place as before. He sipped his coffee and thought hard. Nothing came to him.
After a while, when he had finished his coffee and his bun, he got up again and started to walk around. He didn't really feel that he could leave, because she would be in a terrible state when she got out and if he wasn't waiting for her it might be the last straw. He realized that he cared about her, quite a lot. But for all he knew they might keep her in overnight. His spirits sank at the thought of spending the entire night wandering around the terminal building, drinking cups of coffee and eating cream buns.
The evening seemed to wear pointlessly on. Outside the terminal building the sun set quite abruptly, as it always does in tropical latitudes. The stream of people coming through from the customs channels slowed down. At this airport, as at practically all others, night arrivals were a lot less frequent than day arrivals. The airport was going into semi-hibernation for the hours of darkness.
Smith found a little newspaper stand and bought an English Language edition of the one of the large daily papers. He took up his customary seat at the coffee booth and started to read it. The lead article was about the country's image abroad, and how important tourism had become to the economy. Smith's face suddenly brightened. Here was the germ of an idea. He took a mental note of the paper's name: The English Language Post. Then he found an ordinary telephone booth and dialed the main airport number. He had suddenly realized that if there was one issue the Customs people would be sensitive about it would be their press image.
"Hello," he said in a loud, fake American accent when the call was answered, "Clark Kent of the English Language Post here. Can you put me through to someone from the Customs section, please?" There was a pause while he was put through. "Hi there! I'm Clark Kent of the English Language Post. I handle the articles on tourism and travel... yeah, right! Who am I talking to?... Yeah? How do you spell that?...Okay, got it. Say, bud, we just heard about this business involving Mr. Cran's daughter. Can you please tell me how long she's been under arrest?..... Oh, I see. Not arrested yet. Would it be okay if we photographed the arrest? ..... Sorry Bud, I don't get it. How long did you say you've held her? Three hours! Naw, you're kidding me! If you'd held her three hours she'd have to be under arrest. Can I talk to her lawyer? No lawyer? You haven't offered her a chance to talk to her lawyer? Say, this is great, Bud. Has she complained about her treatment yet?... Naw, you don't want to release her! Wait till we can get somebody over there. This is big news, man! How much was she carrying? Can't say, eh? Bet it was a big haul if you've held her for three hours without a lawyer and without charges. How are you going to explain that when it comes to court?"
Abruptly, Smith stopped talking. The line had gone dead. He replaced the phone and went back to his customary chair. Within five minutes, Suavarose emerged from the green channel, pushing her little trolley in front of her.
She was pale and shaking, but her face still lit up when she saw Smith, exactly where she had asked him to wait. They almost ran to meet one another.
"You don't have to explain anything to me," he said before she could speak," I know exactly what's been going on. Would you like a coffee before we go?"
Her voice was hoarse when she spoke. Smith could tell that the questioning had been intense and unrelenting. "No. I don't think I have time. I've got to meet Miller at midnight, a long way from here, and I've got to have that package with me, or I'm likely to be starring in one of those movies of his. Where is it?"
"Safe. In Left Luggage. Come on, we'll pick it up together." He took her trolley and pushed it for her, down to the far end of the terminal building where the wall was lined with little coin-operated luggage lockers. He produced his key, opened the appropriate locker and removed the two bags.
Immediately, from close behind him, a man's voice spoke.
"Are those your bags, Sir?", the voice asked politely.
"My bags?" said Smith, turning around, "of course they're my bags. I wouldn't be taking them if they weren't my bags, would I?"
The man who had addressed him was a small uniformed Asian man. He wore thick glasses and carried a small shoulder-bag of his own. From the shoulder-bag he produced a little piece of equipment that looked like a miniature vacuum cleaner. "Do you know what this is, Sir?" he asked in the same polite monotone.
Smith froze and his jaw dropped. From all around, uniformed men seemed to appear, closing-in on Smith and Suavarose.
"We performed a random search of the left luggage this evening," the man continued as though nothing were happening, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask both of you to accompany me to the interview rooms at the Customs and Excise Section."
AN END
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