Owl and the City of Angels by Kristi Charish Page A

watch and swore in Russian. “Now, Alix!”
    I jumped back up, closed the door on the unconscious agent, and raced after Nadya towards the docks.
    It wasn’t until we reached the street across from the cruise terminal that she came to a halt. We were so close I could taste the oil in the air. . . .
    But Nadya just kept watching the road. Over the radio, the IAA was reorganizing. It wouldn’t be long before they drifted this way. “Let’s get going while the going is good—”
    “Shhh.” She covered my mouth and pointed towards the docks. “Be quiet, they’re watching for you.”
    “I don’t see anything except vendors and tourists . . .” I trailed off as I picked out two vendors who weren’t quite belligerent or desperate enough as they hounded the stream of tourists filtering by. I watched as one of them answered a cell phone, then nodded to the other.
    Son of a bitch. Plainclothes agents.
    A cold pit formed in my stomach as I realized the cruise-ship dock wasn’t completely off course of my escape-plan repertoire. Hostels, crowded train and subway stations, even blending in with the other grad students on digs—hiding in plain sight was one of my talents. God knows that’s how I’ve made my way around more cities and dig sites than I care to count. They’d guessed correctly that once I was this close to a crowded escape route, I’d be inclined to bolt for it. If it hadn’t been for Nadya, I would have. In fact, come to think of the whole sting operation, they’d bet a lot that I’d play to my strengths to get lost in the crowd.
    Meaning someone in the IAA had bothered to do their homework. Worse, they apparently knew my habits better than I did.
    “Nadya, someone at the IAA is changing the game,” I said, and related to her my guess on how they were tracking me, including what Benji had related about changed protocols, particularly since Bali. Nadya cursed under her breath.
    “What?”
    “Maybe nothing, Alix. I just heard something about changes from people I used to know in Russia—new security clamping down on students and PIs, but I thought it was just chatter, complaining about regulations like they always do.”
    “Yeah, well, we can worry about it once we’re the hell out of here.” I nodded at the plainclothesmen. “We’ve got those two to worry about, and we can assume they’re looking for me trying to blend in.”
    Nadya chewed her lip in thought, then shook her head. “Maybe not. I have an idea that will make my plan work. They are looking for you to blend in, no?”
    I nodded.
    A slow smile spread across Nadya’s face as she pulled out her pocket laptop and began to type. “I came up with a backup plan in Algiers in case you got caught. It’s risky, but I think it will help us and throw them off.”
    “How?”
    Nadya’s smile spread. “Easy. We do what any good Tokyo hostess would do. Give the client exactly what they want.”
    We watched as six tour busses pulled up to the terminal and a couple hundred people piled out and milled around the vendors.
    Instead of making a run to slip in, we waited until Nadya’s phone chimed with a new message. “Now,” she said, and under the cover of a seventh tour bus we bolted across the road and into the throng of tourists.
    I swore as I lost my footing on a badly tended pothole; I was more concerned with watching out for IAA than where I was going. “What about the plainclothesmen?”
    “Not a problem. My backup plan is taking care of them,” she said as we reached the now crowded cruise terminal courtyard, with more tourists than common sense dictated packed into a tight space; probably because of the riots. The cruise companies didn’t want to risk losing passengers out in the wild city.
    No one paid us any mind as we raced for the customs house—hopefully that went for the plainclothesmen too. But instead of getting in line, Nadya veered us to a service door. She kicked open the door to what had to be a janitor’s