“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because they’ll see you looking, and that’s suspicious. You don’t want to be suspicious at these border places. They pull you aside and do full-body cavity searches on you, and, thank you very much, I don’t need anyone rifling around my girlie bits or butt.”
“You let me rifle around,” I said, smiling when an official marched over to me and spoke in Russian. I handed him our passports, visas, and Kazakhstan documents.
“That was not a full-body search, and besides, you didn’t stray into no-man’s-land. No one goes there but my doctor, and then she’d better have a pretty good reason before I allow that!” Paulie declared.
Another official approached, this one with a dog on a leash. Two more men came up to the rear of the car, one with a long device that I realized was a mirror to see under the car.
The first official said something and opened my door, gesturing for me to get out.
“You see!” Paulie hissed. “You looked at the Uzi dude, and now you’re going to have your butt searched for contraband.”
“You come,” the man with the dog told Paulie, and opened her door.
“What? I didn’t look at him, honest. Why do I have to go be searched? Dixon!”
“It’s all right,” I said calmly. None of the guards showed signs of suspicion, so I gathered we were being pulled aside as a mere formality. “No one is going to probe your depths but me, and only then wherever you allow it.”
“I was going to say!” She marched along with me, twitching her long skirt in an irritated manner. We entered a low-ceilinged room filled with cubicles and were ushered into an office. Behind the desk sat a woman in uniform. She received the documents from the first border inspector, consulted them, then finally looked up at us. “American and British UK, yes?”
“Yes,” I answered, relieved that someone spoke English. “We are part of a transcontinental race, as you can see by our documents.”
“Race, yes. We have heard of you.”
“Really?” Paulie was all smiles now that she knew her ass was safe. “I didn’t think the local press had heard of us, because we hadn’t so much as a reporter stopping byto see what we were doing. Roger—he’s our producer—said that he tried to interest the press, but he didn’t think they understood him because no one responded. Would you like a picture with us? We’d be happy to pose with you if you’d like.”
The woman pursed her lips. “We have heard that you are carrying concealed weapons. How do you answer this charge?”
“Concealed weapons?” I was both outraged and startled. “What the hell gave you that idea— Oh. Don’t tell me—it was the Essex team, wasn’t it?”
Paulie had frozen at the woman’s words, no doubt envisioning the body cavity searches, but she twitched at the word “Essex” and clutched my arm.
“The nerve of them, trying to sabotage us this way. You can take it from me, madam, that whatever they told you about us carrying anything contraband is utterly ridiculous. They are simply attempting to hold us back so as to increase their lead.”
“Your car is being searched even now.” She lifted a hand, and a man rose from his cubicle and darted over to us. “Now you will be searched. If we find weapons, it will be very bad.”
Paulie’s fingers tightened on my arm.
“You won’t find weapons. We are part of a reality television show, not arms smugglers,” I said, patting Paulie’s hand to let her know she was hurting me.
“Um,” she said, and gave my arm a tug. “Can I speak to you a minute, Dixon?”
I turned to reassure her that her body cavities were safe when I caught sight of the fear in her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Um,” she said, glancing at the woman.
“You aren’t going to tell me...” I closed my eyes for a moment. “Where is it?”
“In one of the spare tires,” she said softly, her eyes pleading with me for something. Comfort? Reassurance? I was damned if I knew, and I couldn’t spend the time figuring it out. Not when I had a border guard to mislead. Or bribe. Whichever was effective.
“Just out of curiosity,” I asked the woman, “what is the penalty for bringing a firearm into Russia?”
She just looked at me and snapped out an order to her minion. “You will go for search now. Man to the left, woman to the right.”
“Oh god,” Paulie said, looking as miserable as she could get.
“Stiff upper lip, sweetheart,” I told her, following the man to a side room. A woman with a severe black suit had appeared to escort Paulie. “We’ll get through this. Just stay calm, and don’t borrow trouble.”
