Page 88 of In Shining Armor

“They’re not going to ask you to recite the passport number, but they might try to trip you up if they suspect that the passport has been altered. There is a problem with it. I handed it off to Aaron for a few hours yesterday. He sabotaged the fingerprints in the biometric chip, but we didn’t change the picture. So the fingerprints aren’t going to come up on their computers. If there is a scanner, keep pressing your finger on it like you must be doing something wrong or it’s broken.”

She nodded. “All right.”

“And I’ll be traveling as your husband, so I’ll be there to intervene.”

“Okay, good.”

“You need to know my information, too.” He handed the passport to her.

She surveyed it. The name on this one was Raphael Mirabaud, a very French-Swiss name, not a mishmash of German and French. Though she scrutinized the picture, she was quite sure that this passport bore an authentic and recent picture of Dieter, not a very close clone like hers. “This picture really is you, right?”

“Right.”

“And yours says you were born in Geneva. I could actually believe that.”

“Best to make these as believable as possible.”

“Where were you born, Dieter?”

His eyes flicked toward her, and he didn’t move for a moment. He said, slowly, “I sprang into existence at eighteen years old as a recruit for the Swiss army.”

“Fine. Don’t tell me.” She glared at the passport, memorizing it. “And your fake birthday is October twenty-sixth, which makes you a Scorpio. Scorpios are secretive, intense, and ruled by their desires. That’s you. You always seemed more like a Scorpio than a Virgo.”

“What, I don’t seem like a virgin to you? Guileless, innocent me?” he mocked.

Flicka snorted. “I don’t think you were an innocent the day you were born. Virgos are supposed to be worrywarts, modest, and shy. You’re a Scorpio.”

“You don’t believe in astrology, remember?”

She shrugged. “I read a book once.”

He leaned his elbows on the table. “At the airport, follow my lead. You’ve already shown that you’re a natural at black ops when you lured that lawyer Blanchard out of his office. Let’s see that again. This time, you’re just a bored Swiss tourist, tired from France and not looking forward to a long flight to Las Vegas, and you just want to get through passport control with your husband who is a pain in the ass.”

“Careful, Dieter,” Flicka said. “Typecasting.”