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“No, thanks. I don’t smoke. Do you suppose you could figure out what’s going on? I really have to get going.”
“You go when we tell you to go. Right now, you stay in the chair.” He too gave her every reason to shudder in fright.
It wasn’t but a few minutes later that the dark-haired guard emerged from the inner office and finally motioned the two to follow him.
“Can you tell me what’s going on? I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“This way, Ms. Ryan.” She was pushed along a long corridor, through a door and down a hall to a dimly lit cell-like space that was as creepy as it was cold. The chill draft made her quake. Here it was the middle of summer and she felt like she’d descended into the darkest hours of winter.
“You can wait here. Director Raich will be with you shortly,” she was told.
Then the door closed and she was alone in the room with a sick greenish-yellow glow and the faint smell of disinfectant. Wait? What did they mean by wait? Why was she here? What was on that damn disk that could threaten her
like this? Her head spun, a little jet-lag making it throb and her mind oddly sleepy.
Suddenly, the sound of the door opening jerked her back upright. “Ms. Ryan,” the curt voice leapt out of the space behind her. She turned around.
“I scare you?” The man wore a shirt, tie and a dark grey suit, an officious and peculiar fellow, who kept fingering his mustache. He zeroed in on Shelby with single-minded concentration, then pulling out a chair he sat, resting his arm on the table in a casual and familiar pose intended to put her at ease. Following him into the room were two burly men in t-shirts and jeans who moved around behind the frightened Shelby, standing guard as if they figured she might bolt any second. She took no note of them. How could she, with this swarthy creature in the dark suit claiming every bit of her attention?
“Yes, you scared me,” she finally answered the question, “this whole business scares me. Why are you keeping me here?”
“Well, yes, of course, you have a right to wonder why you’re here. First, I should introduce myself: Director Raich.” He held out his hand, which she refused to shake. Then a perfunctory smile followed before he resumed his ardent attention on his prisoner. “I take care of irregular situations here at the airport, so that any unpleasantness in our city can be avoided. But back to your question. I honestly think the reason you’ve been detained should be obvious to you, considering what you carry in your bag.”
“You mean the disk?”
“I mean the disk. Who was it meant for, Ms. Ryan?”
“For me. It’s mine.”
“Really now.” His lip curled oddly as he spoke. “You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? I want to know who you are and why you’re here. And why you would bring such sensitive material with you from the United States.”
“I’m Shelby Ryan, I’m here on vacation. I don’t know anything about sensitive material. The disk was given to me by a friend. In fact, he was not much of a friend. Just someone I met at a party who thought I’d like the music. That’s all I can tell you.”
“You have any idea what’s on that disk?”
“I told you, music.”
“Music, that’s it?” He raised his eyebrows skeptically.
“That’s all I know.”
“So, if I said that it was some kind of coded message, that wouldn’t loosen your memory?”
“No, no it wouldn’t. There must be some mistake.”
The man had a very unpleasant face, but it was not one that was particularly distinguishable from a thousand other faces you might see every day. Bland but very disagreeable. Gritty, hard when he was playing the heavy, which he was now.
“A mistake? I think not. You’ve been caught with sensitive intelligence information on your person, and unless you are willing to cooperate with us now, I’m afraid that you will be detained for further questioning.”
“What do you mean, detained for further questioning? I’ve told you all I know.”
“You’ve told me nothing, Ms. Ryan. Nothing truthful. Perhaps you could wrack your brain a bit and maybe find the truth rattling around somewhere.”
He pulled the offending disk from his suit pocket and pushed it across the table toward her. She’d never seen the disk before, not without the envelope. Not a mark on it. Nothing to distinguish it from any other standard DVD.
“I swear, I know nothing about it. A casual friend of mine gave it to me. Said there was a lot of good music. That’s it.” As her frustration grew, tears began to well in her eyes, and her body began to shake, overcome by the cold in the room and the coldness of the man’s frozen heart.
It took a long while for Raich to answer. Until he did, the other men in the room shifted a bit on their feet, getting restless with the process. Shelby was restless too, more fearful every minute.
