In the gilded mirror, Reyland held his right hand over his chest like he was about to pledge allegiance.
Then he tilted up his chin and slowly drew the razor up his shaving-creamed throat.
As he clicked the steel against the rim of the full washbasin, they hit enough turbulence to make the water slosh.
As the rattling subsided, there was a change in light at the porthole window above the commode and Reyland stepped over and looked out.
The clouds they had been in had thinned out, and now seven miles down beneath the Gulfstream, he could see the bleached-salt white line of the North Florida coast.
The G550 they were on now belonged to the attorney general. Reyland had heard that the AG tried to block his use of it. Well, at least until he heard the nosebleed height from which the request had originated.
Reyland went back to the mirror and paused again with the razor as they hit some more bumpy air. He squinted at the back of Emerson’s head where he was sitting with a PowerBook on the jump seat just outside the restroom’s open door.
“Hey, you didn’t tell the pilot I was shaving, did you, Emerson?” he said.
Emerson swiveled and smiled.
Reyland kicked the door shut and finally smiled himself.
Now that they actually had something to smile about.
They had finally found the mystery man.
His name was Gannon. Michael Gannon. He was a diving instructor who lived on Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas with a boat registered in the Bahamian database called the Donegal Rambler.
Even with all the technology at their disposal, it was sheer unadulterated shoe leather that had finally broken the logjam.
They had taken screenshots of their pesky unsub off the MTA closed-circuit system in New York City and had them sent to their team of agents still down in the islands.
Their agent on Eleuthera had just lost hope when a guy in a bar said he knew the man in their picture, had fished with him. The agent had asked him where they had fished. The man had said they had gone marlin fishing in the Atlantic falloff thirty miles out north of Little Abaco.
It was this Gannon who had found the money. Reyland was sure of it. Gannon had come across the plane and had taken the money. Since he was a diving instructor, he had probably even dived down for more loot and had seen the director dead in the plane.
Which was the reason why, like Everett, he had apparently come up to NYC to talk to that puke, Wheldon, to blow the whistle about it.
Oddly, Gannon was an Irish national. Or at least he had used an Irish passport when he flew into the States from Eleuthera Island. He had flown to Tampa and then to Phoenix, of all places, and then on to New York City.
But besides that, all they knew about Gannon apparently was his name, address and boat. He had no social network presence. No credit cards at any major banks.
They had even hacked the Irish government records to see if there was any clue to his origins, but no dice. Not only was the Irish database a primitive, disorganized nightmare, there were actually thirty-seven bog-trotting Irish Michael Gannons running about in the world.
No matter, Reyland thought. He and his team were now on the way to Eleuthera right now. When they got there, they would go to Gannon’s house and hopefully find him there with his pants down. If not, they would tear his place apart and find out everything they could about him. Pick up his computers, any physical files he had.
Who knows? Reyland thought pleasantly. In their search, maybe they might even come up with the items the man had stolen.
Done shaving, Reyland let the warm water out and turned on the cold and splashed some on his face. When he glanced up, the electronic in-flight display board to the right of the mirror said that they would be arriving at Nassau in forty-seven minutes.
He patted at his face and neck with a fluffy cream-colored towel that smelled like a scented candle. As he did this, the ETA on the screen suddenly changed to forty-one minutes.
How do you like that? Reyland thought, smiling. They were making even better time now. Things were coming up rosy all fricking over.