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“I’m not sure, actually.”
He looked up, thumb pausing in its journey through the document. “Not terribly long,” she said quickly. “Probably only a day or two.”
“And where will you be staying?” He glanced at his screen, then at her, flipped to the front where her picture was, and studied it.
“I haven’t found a hotel yet. I’m sorry, it’s just a bit of a last-minute trip, not terribly well planned out. I don’t—oh, shit.” Rosemary’s stomach sank. “I mean, pardon me, I’m terribly sorry, but I haven’t done the visa. The last time I flew to New York it was on the program they have, on the computer, where you put in your travel plans?” She was completely buggered. She’d have to get right back on a plane and fly home without seeing Rosemary or saying goodbye to Kal. “I’d forgotten about it, you see, because it was so easy the last time, I’d forgotten I need a visa. Is there some way I might apply, now? For some sort of exception?”
A tiny knot appeared between the agent’s eyebrows. “With a British passport, all you need is ESTA clearance with the Department of Homeland Security, which you have.”
“I do?”
“You wouldn’t have been allowed to board the plane without it.”
“Does it—? I mean, I don’t think I did that.” As she spoke, she remembered the woman in the airport lounge in Abu Dhabi who’d asked her if she was a British national and said sweetly, Let’s just get you into the system before asking Rosemary a series of questions about her home address, passport number, the names of her children, her occupation. “I might have done, actually. What are the questions like?”
“Just a moment.”
The agent stepped away from his station, turned his back on Rosemary, and walked fifteen feet away to talk to a uniformed woman.
Bugger. Could she possibly have made herself look less reputable if she’d tried? She hadn’t even thought about her bloody visa.
The people who’d been just in front of and behind her in the queue finished up their processing and made their way through the chute to claim their baggage. Rosemary watched them go, jealous.
Her agent returned with the woman he’d been speaking to, who said, “Would you please come with me, ma’am?”
She led Rosemary pas
t an area where travelers sat across from agents at desks, each desk partitioned from the next by a low wall. Rosemary had been taken to those sorts of desks before, back when mad cow disease made travel into and out of England a tedious exercise. Have you spent time in the countryside? Did you use the boot-washing stations? Do you eat beef? Where did the beef come from?
The woman didn’t stop at any of the desks. She took Rosemary to a small, windowless room, flipped on the light, and said, “Please take a seat.”
“Of course. I’m very sorry.”
The woman had dark skin. She wore her hair in thick braids laced over the top of her head, and her uniform tag read, PATIENCE.
Rosemary sat down on one side of the table. Patience took the chair opposite. The male officer stood by the door, his hands clasped in front of him. Patience opened a laptop computer, tapped at the keys, and asked, “What was your city of origin?”
“Kathmandu.”
“Did you travel anywhere inside Nepal?”
“I flew to Lukla and went on foot from there into the Khumbu.”
“Did you leave the country at any point during your stay?”
“No.”
“When did you purchase your ticket?”
“Just before I got on the plane.”
“Which was?”
Rosemary looked for a clock on the wall, needing a point of reference to count the hours since she’d boarded her flight. She didn’t find one. “Yesterday, I think.” She checked Patience’s face. “I’m a little jet-lagged. I’ve been on four planes and a helicopter in the past few days.”
“Mm-hmm. What was the purpose of your visit to Kathmandu?”
Heavens, did this woman suspect she was trafficking in something illicit? “I was there to climb Mount Everest.”
