Redeye to hell (with connections)

I caught the first flight to Chicago that I could get a business class seat on. It was a red-eye at 12:20 in the morning. I swung by the office on the way to the airport to grab a few last minute things and write a note for Riley. The brief respite from the rain this morning had ended and I was pelted as I left the cab and moved as quickly as I could into the office.

She had found the information that I needed to follow up on, though even she didn’t know yet what I was looking for. Far East Exchange was located, not in Seattle, but in Chicago. It had an address of Wacker Drive near the River. I programmed my television so that I could broadcast and record my position constantly by way of the GPS transmitter that I was carrying. Of course, I couldn’t legally broadcast from a commercial flight, but I figured that I would entertain Riley by showing her where I was at any given time.

Frankly, I just didn’t want to disappear and never be heard of again like Simon. I wanted someone to know where I was at all times. Riley knew how to “call in the cavalry” as she liked to say if there was an emergency. If I was going into a front for organized crime, the possibility of an emergency was present in my mind.

She would be pissed that I took this trip without her. Hell, she’d be pissed that I took the trip at all. But I’m not going to play sick just because I’m a little sick.

The flight was comfortable and not too full. I stretched out my legs and considered sleeping. In fact, the vibration of the engines, the movement of take-off, and my general exhaustion lulled me right off to sleep. We’d barely reached cruising altitude, however, before I snapped back wide awake. I tried for half and hour to convince my body that it should still be sleeping, but the vibrations worked against me now. No matter how big, I couldn’t get comfortable in the seat.

Damn.

I finally gave up and pulled my laptop out of my carry-on and decided to try to crack the code once again. What did the names mean? Allison, Barry, Chantal, Dean, Erin, Felix, Gabrielle, Humberto, Iris, Jerry, Karen, Lorenzo, Michele, Noel, Olga, Pablo, Rebekah, Sebastien, Tanya, Van, Wendy. Business class on this flight was one of the few remaining with in-air WiFi service, so I powered up my browser, paid the fee, and started searching out the names.

Allison. Allison Transmission division of General Motors. Did Simon have something going with GM? Allison Munn, Co-star of “What I Like About…” Allison Janney, played C.J. Cregg on “The West Wing.” Allison Mack, Chloe Sullivan on “Smallville.” Actresses?

Barry. Dave Barry, American Humorist. Barry Gibb, Singer/songwriter. Barry Lyndon, novel by William Makepeace made into a movie by Stanley Kubrick. A truly beautiful two hour postcard as I remembered it. Barry Manilow, American singer/songwriter. No actors or actresses here.

Chantal. Classically trained pianist. Fine French Lingerie. Miss Hawaiin Tropics finalist. Professional Makeup artist.

This wasn’t getting me anywhere. I entered the next three names all at one time in the search window.

Dean, Erin, Felix. Dean—August 28, Final image near Newfoundland… Hurricane Erin—September 10 near Bermuda. Hurricane Felix—September 15 open Atlantic. Hurricane names 01-07. Andrea, Barry, Chantal, Dean, Erin, Felix, Gabrielle, Humberto, Ingrid, Jerry, Karen, Lorenzo, Melissa, Noel, Olga, Pablo, Rebekah, Sebastien, Tanya, Van, Wendy.

Hurricane names. I clicked on the link and discovered that these are the intended names for Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes for the ’07 season. Hurricanes.

Damn.

Why would Simon have coupled the names of next year’s hurricanes with bank accounts in 21 banks around the world? It didn’t make sense. Then another anomaly hit me. Allison in the list was Andrea. Iris was Ingrid. Michelle was Melissa. I kept up the search and discovered that the names are recycled every six years, but the names of particularly bad storms are retired. That’s why we won’t have another Katrina or Irene. These were the storm names of 2001, not 2007.

Now what was there about the names of hurricanes that would make sense when combined with a bank account number? There didn’t seem to be any logical explanation. Hurricanes had no other designation. Whatever was involved would have to be obvious enough that Simon could interpret it and find it if he needed it. Otherwise he would not have put the information in files at all.

I hit my desktop search button and entered Allison. Instantly several dozen files popped up in the search window in which Allison was used in the file somewhere. They were all e-mail messages. The first several I opened were addressed to someone named Allison MacKey at BKL. Apparently she was working on an acquisition and Simon was coaching her. In two or three other messages, Allison was mentioned in the text of e-mail messages, all referring to the same Allison. Then I opened an e-mail, sent to Simon by himself. Subject: Flight conditions. Text: Allison Adams 4178311. A phone number?

Damn.

My head was splitting and I detected there had been a change of air pressure and I was getting a little woozy. I closed the laptop, slid it into my bag, and then I closed my eyes. I faded off to sleep in an instant.

The next thing I knew, the flight attendant was standing over me shaking me by the shoulder and calling my name.

“Mr. Håmar? Mr. Håmar?” I pried my eyes open to look at her. “Sir, we’ve landed. You need to deplane now.”

Damn. I must have been hit by a ton of bricks. I needed to remember that the change of air pressure was going to effect me more radically than I remembered. I gathered up my bag and realized that the plane was empty except for the flight crew, who were preparing to deplane, and the service crew who had moved on to clean the aircraft. I shook my head to clear it and left for the terminal. I had to pee so badly I was about to wet myself.

As I was leaving the plane the lead flight attendant smiled pleasantly at me and said, “Welcome to Houston, Mr. Håmar.”

I was on the jetway when that hit me. Houston? What the hell was I doing in Houston? There was no sense getting back on the plane. It obviously wasn’t going anyplace. It was 6:30 in the morning. First things first. I had to get to a bathroom or I’d burst right there.

It took longer than I expected.

When I dragged myself out of the restroom, I’d washed my face and brushed my teeth and run a comb through my hair. I looked almost human. Time to locate a service counter and find out why I was in Houston.

“Oh, Mr. Håmar,” the nice woman said. “You were supposed to connect here to a flight on to Chicago. I’m afraid you’ve missed that connection.” I looked at the ticket that I’d bought on-line as the first available flight to Chicago. Seattle to Chicago, connecting in Houston. Too bad I wasn’t collecting frequent flyer miles for this.

“When is the next flight you can get me on?” I asked. She consulted her timetable, tapped on her keys, and said “Hmmm” a lot.

“The first flight that I can get you on in business class is at 2:25 this afternoon,” she said. “If you want to change to coach I could get you out at 11:45.” She smiled at me waiting for an answer. I calculated the stress of waiting versus the stress of flying in a sardine can.

“I’ll take the 2:30 flight, please,” I said. I looked around at the terminal trying to figure out where I was going to hang out for six hours.

“Here you are,” she said handing me a boarding pass. “Gate C33 boarding at 1:45. If you’d like to relax, feel free to use our President’s Club lounge. It’s between gates C22 and C23. Just show your boarding pass.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I headed off down the concourse toward the distant lounge and discovered I had already passed it. I had to turn around and by the time I got there, I had to stop twice to rest. When I got there, however, it was a pleasant place with soft furniture and a continental breakfast spread out. It included a self-serve espresso machine. I looked around as if someone might stop me if I had a shot and then pulled it and went to sit down.

The last cup of coffee I had I’d spit out my nose. What a waste. This cup was not near the quality of either Eye of Dawn or Tovoni’s. But the aroma brought me further awake before I’d determined that the flavor was not worth suffering for. I had breakfast and then went back to the reception desk. A young man greeted me as if he’d had to get up at 4:00 a.m. after a hard drunk the night before to open the lounge. Nonetheless, he promised to wake me in adequate time to make my flight if I fell asleep. I found a carousel desk and plugged my laptop in to recharge the battery.

I was sure it was still too early to check in with Riley, so I decided to keep searching the desktop for the names that had encountered. I had to wade through a lot of different files as Simon had not conveniently sent an e-mail message for each name. Sometimes it was buried in a business report. And when I reached Gabrielle and found no match at all was puzzled.

I checked my own e-mail for messages without much interesting. Half a dozen had been routed to junk mail and the rest should have been. I scanned through the titles in the junk mail and noted one advertising a popular male dysfunction drug. My junk filter had caught it, but the way it was written caught my eye: v i g o r m a l e. There were spaces between the characters. Of course the routines in the junk mail catch variations on keywords as well. I switched to my search program and entered G a b r i e l l e. There she was, complete with last name and number. Finding the rest of the files if Simon had decided to mask the names was going to be a pain. But, if junk mail could find them, so could I.

I spent the next two hours writing an addition to the search algorithm that would include common variants, substituting numbers for letters, inserting asterisks and spaces, and generally looking for patterns instead of words. When I looked up, the male receptionist was looking down the row of carousels at me.

“Your flight is boarding, Mr. Håmar,” he said calmly.

“Boarding?” I said. “How much time do I have?”

“Oh if you hurry, you shouldn’t have any trouble.”

Damn.

I don’t do hurry all that well.

I shoved my computer in my bag and headed out the door. It was already almost 2:00. There was no way I was going to make this. I reached Gate C27 on my way to C33 with plenty of time. But that gate proved to be a dead end. Gate C33 was the opposite direction.

But that was where I got my first big break of the day. An electric cart was just leaving C27 and I flagged it down. It took me only a minute to explain to a competent man who was apparently used to dealing with everyone else’s emergencies that I was about to miss my plane because I couldn’t walk fast enough because of a heart condition, etc. etc. He looked at me, took my flight number and gate information and told me to hang on tight.

I’m sure there are speed limits for electric carts in airports, but when they heard the constant beep, beep, beep of the oncoming cart, people scattered and we reached the gate as the attendant was announcing my name and asking for immediate boarding. I slid into my seat and fastened my seatbelt as the door closed. I flagged the flight attendant.

“This plane is going to Chicago, isn’t it?” I asked.

“That’s right, sir. We’ll have you there in three hours.” I relaxed and when the plane taxied out onto the runway, I fell immediately asleep.