Short story: No Fly List
No-Fly List
NY December 2028
There is an awkward moment on my arrival when a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent insists on me unpacking my case, his words snapping out from under his bristle moustache like a machine press turning out die-stamped, low-tolerance accessories.
He tells me there is a similar name to mine on their no-fly list. I’m aghast—my nom du jour is James Smith. What are the chances, eh?
I realise I can’t remember my lock-code, so I put my hand in my suit pocket to get my phone, and he reaches for his sidearm. Plinius, back in London, would be steaming. I imagine him pacing his Canary Wharf glass and chrome kingdom like a caged lion. Not standing out is basic in my line of business, and a few curious glances from my fellow travellers serve as a reminder of this.
“Phone,” I say, a weak grin on my face. I withdraw it slowly with two fingers. I can smell the heat of my sweat rising and try to suppress a tremble in my hand, but I only succeed in dropping the phone. It clatters on the hard, black surface of the inspection desk, and more people stop to look.
“Can I pick it up, sir?” I choke out the words in guilty syllables. He nods but doesn’t relinquish his gun’s black, cross-hatched plastic grip, although his index finger remains outside the holster.
“Why can’t you remember the lock code?” he counters. There’s no curiosity on his face to match the suspicion in his voice. He has one of those flat American faces in which the forehead lines up with his cheeks, and his nose barely protrudes beyond the line of his full lips.
There is a dictum in international trade relations which says you should always assume your rival can inflict optimum inconvenience at the most inopportune time. I try to apply this to all my human interactions, and it has served me well, but dealing with overweening border guards has a marked degree of difficulty exacerbated by the lop-sided power balance that will always frustrate any attempts to get the upper hand. That leaves me wary of these situations, and I am not responding well to the challenge.
“It’s a new case, and I used a different code,” I say. It sounds weak. He looks at me through his mirrored lenses as I fumble with the thumbprint on my phone and retrieve the code.
“Let me look at the phone,” he demands, finally releasing his weapon and stretching out a gloved hand. Perhaps he thinks he has beaten me into submission, and I make a mental note to develop this into a strategy.
I hand it to him shakily. He seizes it and determines it is a new, untainted phone with no incriminating documents or messages; even the clear plastic protective case is pristine and un-yellowed.
“Why have you brought a new phone?” he asks; the suspicion is back. Perhaps he hopes to find disparaging memes of reckless people wearing stupid hats and doing inane things. I am happy to disappoint.
“My contract ended, so I got a new one,” I reply. I can hear the defensive tones in my voice, unwittingly condemning me.
“Is it a burner?” He flips it over and examines the back, rubbing his thumb on the logo.
“No, it’s a two-thousand-dollar iPhone,” I reply, my defensiveness turning abruptly to irritation.
He throws my half a month’s salary on the desk with contempt. “Open the case.”
I fidget with the stubbornly intractable numbered wheels, eventually flicking the tabs and lifting the lid.
He points at the neat pile of clothes inside. “Empty it.”
I take everything out and pile it neatly to one side in small, carefully categorised units: socks and underwear, shirts, trousers, a bomber jacket, my spectacles, and a small jar of Marmite.
“What’s that?” He asks, pointing at the jar.
“Marmite. It’s a fermented yeast product I spread on toast. I’m aware it isn’t readily available in New York, and I really can’t face the day without it.” My voice is stronger now I’m on familiar ground: Americans always question me about Marmite.
“Open it,” he commands, so I twist the lid off and the pungent odour of the delicious, brown goo escapes. He picks up a small wand and waves it over the open pot. I tense with misplaced guilt again, but the device remains silent.
“You eat this?” He queries, sniffing the jar. “You Brits are weird.”
After marvelling at how poor British gustatory delights seem to be, the CBP agent makes only a cursory examination of my laptop bag and even nods with approval at my expensive taste in tech. He fans the briefing notes for my meeting, sees nothing to excite his palate for detention, and hands them back to me.
And that was that. He let me go with, “Enjoy your stay in New York”, and was already on to his next quarry before I could thank him for his forbearance at my ineptitude.
I hold in a sigh of relief until I’m outside the sliding doors to the arrival hall. Even then, I continue plodding towards the exit without pausing, giving the cameras no time to pick out my expression. How long, I wonder, will it be before remote heart rate monitors track us across the first few yards of foreign soil? Given the helter-skelter pace of scrutinising technology, I expect it will be sometime before Christmas.
Thankfully, the taxi rank is full, and soon, I am seated in a sweet-smelling yellow box as it whisks me towards Manhattan. Perhaps whisked is overstating it. John F. Kennedy is the furthest of New York’s three international airports from Manhattan, and it is also the busiest. Despite the concomitantly enhanced staffing complements, it is the one any traveller wanting a swift departure from immigration should take. The throughput of people is testimony to the efficiency of the JFK mincer.
The last time I was here, the fare was seventy dollars, plus tips and congestion pricing; now, it is not far south of two hundred. The buck, far from stopping here, is sliding into the toilet, and the signs are it is ready to be flushed.
My driver looks at me in his mirror and says in a Middle Eastern accent, “Is this your first visit to New York, sir?”
“It is,” I lie, wondering if he is the last Arab on the Eastern Seaboard. I notice he is wearing a silver wedding ring, so perhaps there are one or two more. My appearance is mitigated by light skin and carefully tinted hair, which disguises my antecedents, which I partially share with my host. However, several decades of integration have watered down my genes to the point I am all but indistinguishable from a European, but having family scattered across Europe and the Gulf has left me with an aptitude for languages a professional translator would envy.
“Business or pleasure?” He asks, gamely trying to initiate a conversation.
“Business,” I grunt. I pull some papers from the zipper pocket of my laptop bag and pretend to examine them closely. They are all nonsense, a complete fiction, but make a good prop to ward off dialogue, and he falls silent until he drops me off outside the kitsch fascia of my hotel just off 79th street, near the Natural History Museum.
Paying him with a nearly but not quite generous tip, he lifts my bag from his trunk, drops it casually on the sidewalk, and slams the hatchback shut. He smiles unconvincingly and waves a bony hand before pulling off with a shout and an expletive at another driver. I watch as he slides into the honking traffic and about turn to find a bellhop picking up my case.
“St Pauls Grand,” I enquire of him. He is young, perhaps nineteen, skinny and angular; his clean-shaven face, cropped blonde hair, and lightning neck tattoo mark him as American Youth. I would have to be careful around him. He grins a flash of yellow pegs set in a wet mouth.
“Is there anywhere else?”
I grin back; conscious I must look overfed to him. “Thanks.”
Carrying the case up the steps, he too inquires if it is my first visit. I lie again. Consistency is paramount.
At the top of the steps, he waits for the doors to slide and leads me into the lobby, where I peel a twenty from my wallet and hand it to him. It disappears without comment, and he is gone, his maroon-clad legs carrying him swiftly to wherever he and his colleagues hide between visits to the residential ATMs.
Registration is fast, efficient, and as impersonal as ever. The empty-eyed receptionist fills in my details, spirits my passport into the photocopier, and hands me a door card.
“Enjoy your stay,” she chimes unconvincingly before returning to her socials.
Nazi Bellhop doesn’t surface for another bite of the cherry, so I carry my bags to the elevator and make my way to my room on the fifth floor.
In my room, I sit on the bed with the Marmite gripped in my hands, conscious of the weight of the jar and the pull of history, magnitude, and providence. Waiting for the footfall of new residents to pass by without knocking on my door, I start breathing again and turn the lid. A small drop of Marmite coats my index finger, and I’m tempted to lick it clean, only my caution waylays my instinct, and instead, I push a finger into the brown gunge and probe about. Then I find and fish it out.
“It” is a small plastic sack of neurotoxin. After cleaning it and my fingers with a wet wipe, I load it into the syringe hidden in my spectacles case and watch the bedside clock tick down the minutes to my appointed hour. Soon, I would be onstage with a show that would outshine even the finest of Broadway productions.