“First, I’d like to have a look at what you have in that suitcase, sir,” the redhead said.
She snatched the cell phone from her belt, spoke into it, and in a very short time another uniformed, armed, female officer, this one a wiry black whose hands didn’t look large enough to handle her .357, appeared. She was pushing a small cart.
“Sir, if you will put your luggage on the cart and come with me, please?” the wiry woman said.
“I have one more bag,” Castillo said. “What about that?”
Castillo’s second bag had somehow become lost deep in the Airbus’s baggage compartment and it was ten minutes before it finally appeared on the carousel and he could load it on the cart.
“Right this way, sir,” the wiry female said, pointing to a door with an AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY sign hanging above it.
Castillo resisted the temptation to wave good-bye to his fellow passengers.
There was a low counter in the room.
“Place your bag on the counter, please, sir,” the wiry woman said.
“May I ask that you call your supervisor?”
“Sir, it is a violation of federal law to bring fresh bakery products, meat, fruit, or vegetables into the United States. If you have any such products in your luggage and declare them now, they will be confiscated. If you do not make such a declaration and I am forced to search your luggage . . .”
“Please call your supervisor,” Castillo said.
The wiry woman snatched her telephone from her uniform belt and ninety seconds later a very large, uniformed, armed black man with captain’s bars on his collar points appeared.
“Probably bakery products,” the wiry woman said.
“Sir,” the captain said, “would you please open your luggage? ”
“That one,” the wiry woman said, pointing.
“That one,” the captain parroted.
Castillo worked the combination and opened the suitcase.
It was almost concealed beneath Hotel Bristol toweling, but there it was, a box nine inches deep and about a foot square. It was wrapped in white paper, sealed with silver tape, with a gold label reading DEMEL stuck in the middle.
“What’s that, sir?” the captain said.
“It’s a cake. What they call a Sacher torte,” Castillo said. “My boss asked me to bring him one from Vienna.”
“Your boss should have known better,” the captain said, not unkindly. “And what you should have not done was bring it onto the airplane in the first place. And then you should have declared it. We’d have confiscated it and you would be out the cost of the cake and that would have been the end of this. But now . . .”
“I understand,” Castillo said.
“May I see your passport, sir?”
Castillo handed him instead his Secret Service credentials. In the leather folder was the business card identifying him as the executive assistant to the secretary of Homeland Security.
The captain handed both back to Castillo, looked at him without expression, and said nothing.
“Either way, I will tell him—and he always asks—that the security procedures at BW seemed to be working just fine,” Castillo said. “Your call, Captain.”
The captain looked at Castillo for a long moment.
“I’ve heard tell he’s a pretty good guy,” the captain said, finally.
“What did he show you?” the wiry woman asked.