The King of Fear: A Garrett Reilly Thriller by Drew Chapman Page B

and as the captain’s voice crackled over the public address system, Delacourt jerked back to consciousness. The young man was sitting up in his seat, smiling.
    “Damn,” Delacourt muttered. “I passed out.”
    “Yeah, me too,” the young man lied with an easy grin. “I guess we drank too much, huh?”
    “Yeah.” Delacourt blinked woozily. “You’re a devil, buying me all that vodka.” He looked over at the young man. “You really Russian?”
    “I was born there. But I’m not sure what I am anymore.”
    Delacourt nodded, still trying to rouse himself from his stupor. “Yeah, that’s the modern world, right? Nobody knows where they really belong anymore.” Delacourt laughed. “I like you,” he said, then hesitated, as if having trouble remembering the young man’s name.
    The young man helped him out. “Ilya.”
    “Ilya, right. I like you, Ilya. You’re my kind of people. I think we share a lot of the same, you know, stuff.” Delacourt grinned. “You know what I mean?”
    The young man—Ilya, for the time being—nodded and smiled in return. “I do. I think we share a lot of the same stuff.”

A LEXANDRIA , V IRGINIA , J UNE 15, 8:15 P.M.
    A lexis Truffant’s cell phone rang the moment she walked back into her apartment.
    “Truffant here,” she said, trying to mask the exhaustion in her voice. From the moment Kline had stepped into her office with the news of the Fed president’s shooting, Alexis’s mind had been on overdrive, trying to make sense of what had happened—and how it connected to Garrett. Now, her brain needed a respite. She opened her fridge to reach for an open bottle of chardonnay, phone cradled between her chin and shoulder.
    “This is Mac Gunderson at TSA.” The voice on the other end of the line was clipped and businesslike. “I’m regional operations director for MIA.”
    “MIA?” Alexis asked, confused.
    “Miami International Airport.”
    “Okay,” Alexis said warily. She had only just delivered a watch bulletin to the Transportation Security Administration that afternoon, trying to carefully distill what Garrett had given her into a document that a bureaucracy such as the TSA could act on: Russian, student visa, engineer, distant mob ties. She had done it carefully, discreetly, without alerting Kline, and she hadn’t expected a response this quickly. Perhaps they were trying to make sense of her person-of-interest brief. Or perhaps . . .
    “You probably should fly down here ASAP,” Gunderson said.
    She shoved the bottle of wine back into the fridge.
    • • •
    Gunderson’s office at Miami International was a tiny, windowless room at the north end of terminal two. Gunderson was big, with a gleaming shaved head and a salt-and-pepper goatee. His suit jacket hung on the back of his chair and his tie was loosened around his neck. Alexis thought he was probably on the last few hours of a long shift. He pulled up a US Customs mug shot on his computer.
    “Ilya Markov. Traveling under a Russian passport. Landed five fourteen p.m., Lufthansa flight 462 from Frankfurt.”
    Gunderson tilted the computer screen so Alexis could see the photograph, a pale face against a white background. The young man looked handsome, with dark hair and genial blue eyes. His thin lips were compressed into a neutral scowl. He seemed weary—to be expected after a long flight—but his look also had a flatness. An emotionless quality. Maybe, Alexis thought, I’m just not used to seeing passenger mug shots.
    “Born 1986 in Moscow, according to his passport records.”
    “Does he match the profile we sent in other ways?” Alexis looked for some hint of personality in the man’s face, some twinkle in the corner of his eye. A sense of humor? A bit of flirtation with the camera? There was none of that.
    “No. He doesn’t.”
    “Then why am I here?”
    “Because this guy does.” Another photograph appeared on-screen, time-stamped December 11, 2009. The young man in the photo bore