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Of course my mind went there. I think Ciaran’s did, too, because his eyebrows rose.
From this vantage point we couldn’t see planes coming or going but I could hear the screeching of tires on asphalt and the unintelligible warble of internal communications inside the airport terminals.
I retrieved my phone and texted Filipe to let him know I’d arrived. He’d text the contact to meet me outside.
“Why are we at the airport, Matthias?” Ciaran asked.
“Like it said, it’s an errand.”
“I’m surprised,” Ciaran said.
“About?” I looked down at my phone. Filipe confirmed he’d made contact and that our informant would come outside shortly.
“That you’re such a terrible liar,” Ciaran concluded. “Picking up dry cleaning is an errand. Dropping off a medical prescription is an errand. This…” Ciaran paused, looking around the airport grounds. “Seems illicit.”
I sighed. “All right, so you’re not as dumb as you look, but you don’t need to worry about it.”
Ciaran unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to face me.
“I dare you to tell me what’s happening. Who are you texting? Who is going to meet us? What are we collecting?”
He sure said the words “we” and “us” a lot for someone who didn’t know what was going on.
Before I could respond, the informant came outside and tapped on the driver side window.
“Give me a second,” I told Ciaran. “And don’t get out of the car, no matter what. Nothing dangerous is happening. Well, nothing super dangerous.”
I stepped out of the SUV without waiting for Ciaran’s response. The ever-present pungent smell of burnt rubber hit my senses. With plane’s braking on the runways day and night, the area smelled like a tire factory.
The informant took several backward steps.
“Filipe sent me,” I said. That was the call-sign for the informant to know I was legit. Filipe was point man on the operation. I was the transport. Joan worked the back end connections when it came time to turn over the item.
“You got the cash?” the informant asked. Her voice was soft and didn’t carry beyond a foot or two. It was the same informant as last week, and it was clear she recognized me, but she refused to let down her guard.
Insider trading was lucrative when you were earning up to thirty grand in cash per transaction.
Opening the back door of the SUV, I avoided Ciaran’s searching eyes as I retrieved the black gym bag, handing it over.
The informant peeked inside and appeared confident that all the cash was tucked inside.
She had her own container. At her feet was a tan-colored duffel bag.
“Do you know what it is?” I asked.
Joan knew that it was a priceless artifact, but beyond that we were usually clueless until we got our hands on it.
“On the scanner image, it looked to be a fertility statue made of clay. Inside, I left a print-out detailing which airport it came from.”
That’s all we asked of our informants. As long as they told us where it came from, it helped us figure out what the item was and what to do next with it.
“Got it, thanks.”
The duffel bag was heavier than I thought it would be. I opened the back door of the SUV, and carefully placed it lengthways across the back bench. I texted Filipe, completing notifications for the evening.
Ciaran was suspiciously silent when I reentered the car and drove off the airport premises.
It wasn’t until we were already on the highway back to Malibu when he calmly asked, “Did you just give someone a bag of cash for contraband flown into the United States?”
