The Man From Taured (4 page)

gone, like smoke. I have no idea how he did it. Where did his fucking luggage go?

NR: I'm going to try and find that out.

DS: I hope you do.

END OF INTERVIEW

***

Someone was lying, of that Noble was certain. Someone was covering for someone else and trying to save their job or possible criminal prosecution. The question was, who? Shultz had come across as believable. There was Whitlock, but the guy seemed confused more than villainous. It was making Noble’s head spin and he didn’t like that feeling. There were too many questions and each step in one direction just led him to more doors and behind those doors were just more questions.

Noble was back at the office half-an-hour later. He told his assistant that he was not to be disturbed. He had several computer monitors set up and his computer was loaded with CCTV footage from the interview room, from the airport and the hotel.

So far it had been a lot of nothing. Noble had been sitting there for several hours now. He had removed his watch so that he did not sit there and stare at it again and again and he had managed to lose all concept of what time it was.

On the footage there was the endless line of people coming off planes and standing in line to enter the country. They all looked tired, anxious, nervous, ready to get where they were going. A lot of nothing.

Noble had asked for video for the hours leading up to the incident. He had hoped that maybe someone would stand out to him. Maybe he could detect someone that was working with Duveen. Maybe there was some kind of organization at work here. Maybe there had been a coordinated effort to get people into the country. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe…

Nothing.

Then, the hour of Flight 190 arrived. There was a small gap in the line at the check-in counters. The people began to stream off. Noble watched them walk out of a kind of tunnel or hallway and into the area where those going through customs gathered. The flight had over 200 people on it, so it was a bit of a wait. From the angle of the camera Noble could just barely see down that small tunnel, see the people coming around a corner. Just around that corner was the actual terminal where the plane was parked.

Noble leaned forward, trying to see the faces on the grainy black and white footage.

There he was.

He was just under six feet. Francis Duveen had dark hair, cut short and combed over to the right. He also had a neatly trimmed beard that outlined his jaw and up his sideburns. Noble could tell, even with the grainy footage, that the man was wearing wire-rimmed glasses of the kind John Lennon had made famous. Duveen was in a neatly pressed suit and held a brown briefcase that looked black in the video (Noble knew the color from reports). In his right hand he held his ticket and his passport.

Noble hit the rewind button. The people walked backwards and Francis Duveen walked backward and around the corner. Then he hit play and the passengers came around the corner again, little fuzzy images at the top of the frame. Then there was Francis Duveen. He walked with his head down, the way many of this fellow passengers did. Noble took note of the woman in the light colored pants suit that walked in front of Duveen and the man in the Bermuda shorts walking beside him. Duveen stared at his shoes and then came to a halt behind the woman in the light colored pants suit before finally looking up.

There was nothing suspicious about his demeanor. He looked around, but then went back to staring down at his passport and some other papers he had in his hand.

Noble watched as Duveen progressed through the line. There was no sound on the video so he could hear no talking. Duveen stepped up to
Eveline Paulson and handed over his papers. There was an exchange of words. Eveline looked down at the passport. Then back up at Duveen. Even with the grainy video, Noble could tell that a puzzled look spread across Eveline's face. The conversation continued and the people standing in line behind this exchange began to shift on their feet, looking at their watches, sighing, their chests heaving in frustration. Noble could see a woman struggling with two young children who had, apparently, both decided that entering America was just not something they were too keen about.

Eveline picked up the phone and called her supervisor. A moment later Whitlock showed up and there was a further exchange. Noble focused his gaze on Duveen's face.

The man looked puzzled.

The man looked scared.

It wasn't guilt or righteous anger that he was looking at on the man's face. It was fear. Duveen's eyes were wide, his lower lip trembled. All of it big enough and noticeable enough that Noble could see it clearly on the bad CCTV footage.

"Hm," Noble said to himself.

He hit rewind again. The entire exchange happened in reverse and Francis Duveen and his companions in pants suit and Bermuda shorts walked backward. Then they were around the corner again.

Noble walked the footage forward slowly this time, his eyes now so close to the monitor that his nose was practically touching it. Slowly, the passengers came around the corner. The woman in the white pants suit came first.

Then there was a strange blip in the footage.

Noble stopped the playback.

He rewound the footage and moved forward again a frame at a time. Just one frame, quickly, there was a strange glitch in the image. For just a fraction of a second the entire screen was white and the image distorted.

Then it resumed its normal pace and Francis Duveen walked around the corner.

Noble frowned.

This was not an actual tape. The CCTV recorded digital files. There was no way that someone could have edited this, was there? Even if someone had managed to tamper with the footage, using Photoshop or something, that wouldn't leave such a blatant mark, would it? Noble made a note to ask someone better versed in doctoring photos and video footage.

The question that arose was if that footage was tampered with was: why? What would be the point? Unless, of course, Noble's initial assumption that Duveen was working with someone in the airport was correct.

Noble decided to switch to a different video for the moment. Now he was looking at the interior of the interrogation room. Francis Duveen stood near the door and Charles Whitlock was seated at the table opposite. The door had been locked. Duveen looked nervous, holding his passport and papers in both hands in front of him. This time there was sound, so he turned up the volume to listen closely.

"Please, Mr. Duveen," Whitlock said, "have a seat."

"I do not understand what is happening here," Duveen said. He had a soft accent, but it was not one that Noble could place. In a movie it would be a generic European accent that an actor would use to show he was foreign without giving an exact location. "I have been here many times and this kind of thing has never happened before."

"Please, sit," Whitlock repeated.

Duveen sighed and then nervously, with a shaking hand, pulled the chair back and sat down. He folded his hands in front of himself and his eyes darted around the room. For a second Noble had a perfect view of his face head-on.

Noble froze the image.

Oval face. Dark hair, eyebrows and beard. The lights shone across the circles of his glasses, making his eyes impossible to see and somehow conveying a sinister look to his face. Noble hit PRINT on his computer and printed an image of that face.

Noble moved the footage forward. Duveen turned his attention back to Whitlock.

"We're just trying to figure out your country of origin, Mr. Duveen," Whitlock said.

"Why is this such a problem?" Duveen asked. "I am from Taured. That should not be a problem. Taured is a very large, prosperous country."

Whitlock sighed and he studied the passport again. "Yeah, see, that's the problem, Mr. Duveen. There is no country called Taured."

Duveen opened his mouth to speak. He sputtered. "This is a joke, yes?"

"I'm afraid not, Mr. Duveen," Whitlock said. "There is no country called Taured. From what we can tell, there never has been, although we are looking into that. Is it a new country? You say it's prosperous, but is it a former Russian territory that has recently gained independence?"

"Russia?" Duveen asked, incredulous. "How could Taured be a part of Russia? Russia is nothing but a bunch of backward barbarians! This is ridiculous. This is some kind of joke and I do not find it funny."

"We don't find people who try to enter our country with false papers to be very funny either, Mr. Duveen," Whitlock said. "Not since September 11, 2001, anyway."

Duveen was silent for a long time, looking confused and chewing on his lower lip.

"Get me a map," Duveen said. "Get me a map and I will show you how ridiculous this is."

This was when Roy West was called in. Whitlock called on the phone and a moment later the supervisor was there. Whitlock and West had a brief and inaudible conversation in the corner for a bit. Then West left for a moment and came back with a world map. West and Whitlock spread that map on the table.

"This is the latest world map that we have," Whitlock said. "Look at it and point out where Taured is, Mr. Duveen."

Duveen stood up and peered at the map. He stood up eagerly and then he put a finger to his lips. He studied the map, his brow furrowing in confusion. Then he reached down, his fingers shaking vividly on the video, and pointed to a spot on the map.

"It should be right here," Duveen said in a voice that was little more than a whisper. "I don't understand this. What is this province? What is this Spain? Spain is not shaped like this. Where did this map come from?"

"Please, stay calm, Mr. Duveen," West said. "This is the latest map. This is the most accurate stuff that we have."

Duveen shook his head. A look passed over his face and it was a look that Noble could only have described as terror. Duveen stood up and backed away slowly, looking first at Whitlock and then at West. He started shaking his head.

"This is impossible," Duveen said, his voice filled with emotion and fear, his entire body convulsing with terror. He looked ready to throw up. "I do not know what games you are playing, but this is not funny. I am going to write letters and emails to your supervisors. If I have to, I am going to write to the press and tell them what you did to me. I have been here so many times. I do business in Chicago and this is insulting. Playing jokes on me like this is - is – is…
inhumane
."

"Please," said Whitlock, standing up and extending his hand, "please, sit back down. There has to be a reason for this misunderstanding. We can work this out and we are not playing a joke on you. We're just as confused about all of this as you are. However, I can assure you that no one, and I mean no one, has ever heard of a country called Taured. It has never existed. It does not, from what we can tell, exist now."

Duveen sat back down and West and Whitlock asked him more questions. At some point they got back to the same questions. Duveen's story did not change. The hours ticked by and they brought in food and beverages. West and Whitlock took turns leaving the room, supposedly to talk to other people. There was one time, for about twenty minutes, when Duveen was in the room alone.

Noble looked at the man. Francis Duveen had his head in his hands and then he moved t hem back to the table. Very softy Noble could hear the man weeping and muttering to himself, but in a language that Noble did not understand. This was not a man planning some kind of terrorist attack. This was a man who, for all intents and purposes, had been broken by the questioning and the fear. He might have been crazy or he might have been delusional, but Noble did not think that this man was someone that he should have been afraid of.

As Noble watched the man weeping, there was another strange glitch in the video feed. A line stretching across the screen went from the bottom to the top and the picture distorted. The screen went white for less than half a second and then it became clear. Just before it became clear, Noble thought he saw a shape in the corner of the room.

The shape of a man wearing a long jacket and a wide-brimmed hat.

Then the image was gone.

Noble froze the footage. He rewound it. He watched again, this time in slow motion. He watched the small burst of static, the strange line go from bottom to top, the distortion and the image going entirely white. Then, just as the image started to come back, at the very corner of the room, where the shadows were the heaviest, he saw the shape. It was tough to make out on the CCTV footage, but one thing stood out.

Red eyes.

Then, in the very next frame, they were gone. The shape was gone. A moment later, West and Whitlock came back in.

Noble swallowed and it felt like he had a cue ball in his throat. He rubbed his eyes and then he watched it again. Slowly. Frame by frame. Distortion, white, shape and red eyes. Then gone.

"What the hell?" Noble whispered.

What was going on here? Was he seeing things at work now? Was he so spooked that he was seeing shapes in shadows on video?

Noble shook his head and forced himself to watch the rest of the footage. It went on for a long time. West and Whitlock were now getting tired. Duveen was a wreck at this point. His clothes were wrinkled and his voice was hoarse. The conversation had dried up. They had been over the same questions again and again.