A phone call on the way back had Madeleine arranging seats for the three of us on the first available return flight to New York, but it didn’t leave until the following morning so there was nothing we could do except sit tight overnight. I called ahead to warn my mother of the schedule. The conversation was brief and when I rang off she was fretting about canceling the milk and the newspaper delivery at such short notice. For the rest of the journey, we speculated about Blondie’s and Don’s purpose, employer, and identity—mostly fruitlessly. The only thing that was obvious was that they were both Americans. Accents aside, their clothing was all U.S. chainstore brands. No need to cut out the labels, because hundreds of thousands of each item were sold every year. Sean and I had been through their belongings meticulously, but they were real pros and they’d carried nothing incriminating. No passports, no ID, no personal mementos or convenient books of matches, no credit cards. Just a stack of cash in a plastic envelope from an airport exchange bureau, and a pay-as-you-go mobile phone with the call register purged.
