Final Winter

The keys were now out of his pocket and in his hand. He moved up to the door.

Imad had disappeared. Where had the little shit gone?

Vladimir’s throat was dry. This could not be happening, could not be happening. He looked over to the woman again, to see if he could once more appeal to her. But there was no possibility of appeal there, not with that anger.

He went up to the lock, the key in his hand, and—

‘Tanya!’

Vladimir turned, as did the woman. An older Customs officer stood there, clipboard under his arm.

The woman’s tone changed instantly. ‘Sir?’

‘What’s the problem?’

‘No problem, sir,’ she said. ‘Just pulling this one out for a random check.’

The older man came over, looked at Vladimir, the truck, and then eyed the square black box under the lock. From his own coat pocket, the older Customs officer pulled out a scanning device, ran it over the black box, and said to Tanya, ‘Cut them loose.’

Her mouth was agape. ‘Sir?’

‘You heard me, cut them loose.’

Vladimir could hardly believe what he was hearing. The older Customs officer said, ‘You haven’t kept up with your circulars, Tanya. Recognize the box?’

‘Sir, I know it’s a SmartSeal, it’s just that—’

‘Right, a SmartSeal. Which means one of your brother or sister officers overseas, either in Tokyo or Singapore or Shanghai, cleared and verified what’s in the container. The scan I just did shows that nothing’s been disturbed since it was loaded last month. So Customs has already taken a look inside. Don’t waste your time or my time. Let ’em go.’

‘Sir, I just wanted to do a random-’

The older man said, ‘You’ve already surpassed your quota today for randoms, Tanya. Now let’s get a move on, before the fucking Chamber of Commerce people start howling again at how we’re strangling international trade, all right? So they go south and you get back to work.’

The male Customs officer walked away and the younger, female Customs officer stared at him with such contempt and hate. Vladimir knew that he should feel triumphant, but all he felt was cowed. This had been, as the Duke of Wellington had said about Waterloo, a close-run thing.

And where in hell was Imad? He walked over to the driver’s side, saw Imad standing there, grinning, arms crossed, the door to the cab still open.

‘Come along,’ Imad said. ‘Didn’t you hear the man? We’re free to go.’

Vladimir shook his head, still not believing what had happened.

~ * ~

Tanya Mead stood there silently, still furious at what had happened, as the truck containing the young boy and the man with the Eastern European accent drove away. The young snot looked triumphant, the older guy looked like the two of them had just gotten away with murder.

Sure, she had gone over quota, but so what? Something was still hinky about those two and she hadn’t liked their attitude, even before the little dark-skinned one had called her a nigger. And then there was her supervisor, Herbert Corner, known to everyone — except himself, of course — as Captain Commerce. He was a regional office hack who had been demoted and sent down because of some indiscretion — the latest rumor had him surfing for Internet porn during his lunch hour — and his single goal was to keep the wait times down, the searches to the minimum, and the business concerns in Washington State and elsewhere happy.

Some damn attitude, Tanya thought.

She also thought about her heroine, Diana Dean, a Customs officer on duty years ago, back on- December 14, 1999. Dean had stopped a guy coming in on the Vancouver ferry, to Port Angeles. Something about the guy had made her look twice at him and his car, and when Dean went to talk to the character — later found to be a member of al-Qaeda — the little fuck had fled, before being tackled to the ground. And in his rental car? In the trunk, they found 130 pounds of plastic explosives, two 22-ounce plastic bottles full of nitro-glycol, and a map of LAX, Los Angeles International Airport. That had been going to be al-Qaeda’s contribution to the millennium festivities on December 31 — blowing up the airport at Los Angeles. And that plot had been stopped dead in its tracks. Not because of the FBI or CIA or NSA. Not because of some whizbang satellite in orbit, snooping on cellphone conversations and e-mail messages. And not because of some multibillion-dollar agency.

No, the airport had been saved from destruction and people who would’ve been killed had lived because some sharp Customs officer had been doing her job.

Just like me, Tanya thought. Just like me.

Except for goddamn Captain Commerce.

She watched as the suspect truck made its way to the clear area, on its way into the United States. She took out a small memo pad and wrote down a description of the truck, its two occupants, and the British Columbia license plate number.

Tanya Mead had an idea that she would hear about this truck again.

~ * ~