The Hot Rock

5

The girl at the Air France counter had a French accent. "Mister Dortmun-dair?" she said. "Yes, I have a message for you." She handed over a small envelope.

"Thank you," Dortmunder said, and he and Greenwood moved away from the counter. Murch was out parking the car. Dortmunder opened the envelope and inside was a small piece of paper containing the scrawled words "Golden Door."

Dortmunder turned the paper over, and the other side was blank. He turned it back and it still said "Golden Door." That's all, just "Golden Door." "I needed this," Dortmunder said.

"Just a minute," Greenwood said and walked over to the nearest passing stewardess, a pretty short-haired blonde in a dark blue uniform. "Excuse me," Greenwood said, "will you marry me?"

"I'd love to," she said, "but my plane leaves in twenty minutes."

"When you come back," Greenwood said. "In the meantime, could you tell me what and where is the Golden Door?"

"Oh, that's the restaurant in the International Arrivals Building."

"Lovely. When can we have dinner there?"

"Oh, the next time you're in town," she said.

"Wonderful," he said. "When will that be?"

"Don't you know?"

"Not yet. When do you get back?"

"Monday," she said, smiling. "We come in at three-thirty in the afternoon."

"A perfect time for dinner. Shall we make it four?"

"Make it four-thirty."

"Four-thirty Monday, at the Golden Door. I'll reserve the table immediately. Under the name of Grofield," he said, giving his most recent name.

"I'll be there," she said. She had a lovely smile and lovely teeth.

"See you then," Greenwood said and went back over to Dortmunder. "It's a restaurant, in the International Arrivals Building."

"Come on."

They went outside, and met Murch on his way in. They brought him up to date, asked a luggage handler to point out the International Arrivals Building, and took the bus over.

The Golden Door is upstairs, at the head of a long broad escalator. At the foot of it stood Kelp. Dortmunder and the other two went over, and Kelp said, "They're up there feeding their faces."

"They're taking the seven-fifteen Air France flight to Paris," Dortmunder said.

Kelp blinked at him. "How'd you do that?"

"Telepathy," Greenwood said. "My stunt is, I guess your weight."

"Let's go up," Dortmunder said.

"I'm not dressed to go up to a place like that," Murch said. He was in a leather jacket and work pants, while the other three were all in suits or sport jackets and ties.

Dortmunder said to Kelp, "Any other way down out of there?"

"Probably. This is the only public way."

"Okay. Murch, you stay down here in case they get through us. If they do, follow them but don't try anything on your own. Kelp, is Chefwick still in the phone booth?"

"No, he said he was going to the O. J. We can leave messages there now."

"Fine. Murch, if somebody comes down and you follow him, leave us a message at the O. J. as soon as you can."

"Right."

The other three rode the escalator upstairs, emerging on a dark carpet in a dark open area. The maitre d's lectern, some doweling, and a lot of artificial plants separated this area from the main dining room. The maitre d' himself, armed with a French accent less charming than the young lady's at Air France, approached and asked them how many they were. Dortmunder said, "We'll wait for the rest of our party before going in."

"Certainly, sir." The maitre d' bowed himself away.

Kelp said, "There they are."

Dortmunder looked through the plastic leaves. The dining room was large, and very nearly empty. At a table in the middle distance, beside a window, sat Major Iko and Prosker and three sturdy young black men. They were having a leisurely dinner, the time now being just a little past five, with over two hours left before their flight.

Kelp said, "I don't like bracing them here. Too public, and too boxed in."

"I agree," Dortmunder said. "All right, we'll wait for them downstairs." He turned and started away.

Greenwood said, "I'll be with you in a minute. Private business."

Dortmunder and Kelp went on ahead, and a minute later Greenwood caught up with them. They filled Murch in, and then the four of them spread out around the waiting room, all keeping their eyes on the escalator to the Golden Door.

It was nearly six o'clock, and afternoon had turned to night outside the terminal's windows when the Major and Prosker and the other three finally came down from dinner. Dortmunder immediately got to his feet and walked toward them. When they saw him, and were still staring in astonishment, he put a big smile on his face, stuck his hand out, and advanced quickly, crying, "Major! What a surprise! It's great to see you again!"

He had reached the group by now, and he grasped the Major's limp hand and started to pump it. Keeping the big smile on his face, he said softly, "The others are all around. If you don't want shooting, just stand still."

Prosker had already been looking around, and now he said, "By God, there they are!"

"Dortmunder," the Major said, "I'm sure we can talk this over."

"You're damn right we can," Dortmunder said. "Just the two of us. No lawyers, no bodyguards."

"You wouldn't get - violent."

"Not me, Major," Dortmunder said. "But I don't know about the others. Greenwood would shoot down Prosker first, that's only natural, but I think Kelp would go first for you."

Prosker said, "You wouldn't dare start anything like that in a crowded place like this."

"Perfect place for it," Dortmunder said. "Shooting. Panic. We mix in with everybody else. Easiest place in the world to hide is in a crowd."

The Major said, "Prosker, don't try to make him prove himself, it has the ring of truth."

"So it does, damn it," said Prosker. "All right, Dortmunder, what do you want? More money?"

"We can't afford a hundred seventy-five thousand," the Major said. "It just wouldn't be possible."

"Two hundred thousand," Dortmunder reminded him. "The price went up back at caper number three. But I don't want to talk in front of all these other people. Come on."

"Come on? Come on where?"

"We're just going to talk," Dortmunder said. "These people can stand here, and my people will stay where they are, and you and me are going over there and talk. Come on."

The Major was very reluctant, but Dortmunder was insistent, and finally the Major started to move. Dortmunder said to the others over his shoulder, "Just stay right here, and you won't start any posthumous panics."

Dortmunder and the Major strolled away down the long corridor overlooking customs, with the duty-free shops on one side of the corridor and on the other side the railing where people can stand and look down at their returning relatives and visiting foreign friends being degraded.

The Major said, "Dortmunder, Talabwo is a poor country. I can get you some more money, but not two hundred thousand dollars. Perhaps fifty thousand, another ten thousand per man. But we just couldn't afford any more."

"So you figured this doublecross from the beginning," Dortmunder said.

"I won't lie to you," the Major said.

Back in the main waiting room, Prosker was saying to the three black men, "If we take off in four different directions, they won't dare shoot."

"We don't want to die," one of the black men said, and the others nodded agreement.

"They won't shoot, damn it!" Prosker insisted. "Don't you know what Dortmunder's up to? He's going to take the emerald away from the Major!"

The black men looked at one another.

"If you don't go help the Major," Prosker said, "and Dortmunder gets that emerald away from him, you'll get worse than shot and you know it."

The black men looked worried.

"I'll count three," Prosker said, "and on three we'll take off in different directions, then all circle around and go down that way after Dortmunder and the Major. I'll go back and to the left, you go straight ahead, you go at an angle to the left that way, and you go right. You all ready?"

They hated it, but the thought of the Major in a bad mood was even worse. Reluctantly they nodded.

"One," Prosker said. He could see Greenwood sitting behind a copy of the Daily News way over there. "Two," he said. In another direction he could see Kelp. "Three," he said, and started to run. The black men went on standing there a second or two longer, and then they began to run.

Running people in an airline terminal tend not to be noticed very much, but these four had started so abruptly that a dozen people looked after them in astonishment. Kelp and Greenwood and Murch looked after them too, and then all of a sudden they started running, toward one another, for a quick conference.

In the meantime, Dortmunder and the Major were still walking down the corridor, Dortmunder trying to find an unpopulated corner in which to relieve the Major of the emerald and the Major talking on at great length about the poverty of Talabwo, his regret at trying to dupe Dortmunder, and his desire to make amends to the best of his ability.

A distant voice cried, "Dortmunder!" Recognizing it as Kelp's voice, Dortmunder turned and saw two of the black men pelting his way, bouncing customs-oglers left and right.

The Major thought he was going to join the track team, but Dortmunder closed a hand on his elbow and locked it there. He looked around, and just ahead was a closed golden door marked "No Admittance" in black letters. Dortmunder pulled, the door opened, he shoved the Major through and followed him, and there they were at the top of a grimy gray staircase.

The Major said, "Dortmunder, I give you my word-"

"I don't want your word, I want that stone."

"Do you think I'd carry it?"

"That's exactly what you'd do with it, you wouldn't let it out of your sight till you were home free." Dortmunder pulled out Greenwood's revolver and shoved it into the Major's stomach. "It'll take longer if I have to search your body."

"Dortmunder-"

"Shut up and give me the emerald! I don't have time for lies!"

The Major looked in Dortmunder's face, inches from his own, and said, "I'll pay you all the money, I'll-"

"You'll die, damn you! Give me the emerald!"

"All right, all right!" The Major was babbling now, caught up in Dortmunder's urgency. "You hold on to it," he said, pulling the black plush box from his jacket pocket. "There won't be any other buyers. Hold on to it, I'll get in touch with you, I'll find the money to pay you."

Dortmunder snatched the box from his hand, stepped back, opened it and took a quick look inside. The emerald was there. He looked up, and the Major was jumping at him. The Major jumped into the barrel of the gun, and fell backward dazed.

The door opened, and one of the black men started in. Dortmunder hit him in the stomach, remembering that they'd just eaten, and the black man said, "Phooff!" and bent over.

But the other black man was behind him, and the third wouldn't be far away. Dortmunder turned, emerald in one hand and revolver in the other, and raced away down the stairs.

He heard them following him, heard the Major shouting. The first door he came to was locked, and the second one led him outside into the chill darkness of an October evening.

But outside where? Dortmunder stumbled through darkness, rounded a corner, and the night was full of airplanes.

He had gone through the looking glass, past that invisible barrier that closes half the world to unauthorized personnel. He was back where the planes are, in pockets of bright light, surrounded by darkness punctuated by strips of blue lights or amber lights, taxiways, runways, loading zones.

And the black men were still after him. Dortmunder looked to his right, and passengers were disembarking from an SAS plane over there. Join them? Except that he would look a little strange at customs, with no passport, no ticket, no luggage. He turned the other way and there was darkness, and he ran into it.

The next fifteen minutes were hectic ones for Dortmunder. He kept running, and the three black men kept running in his wake. He was all over the territory reserved for airplanes, running now on grass, now on a taxiway, now on gravel, jumping over marker lights, trying not to silhouette himself too clearly against the brightly lit areas and also trying not to get himself run down by a passing 707.

From time to time he saw the civilian part of the airport, his part, the other side of a fence, or around the corner of a building, with people walking and taxis driving along, but every time he headed that way the black men angled to head him off and keep him in the flat open exposed area.

And now he was getting farther and farther away from buildings, bright lights, all connection with the passengers' part of the terminal. The runways were dead ahead, with the long lines of planes waiting their turns to take off. An Olympia jet would take off, followed by a Mohawk twin-engine prop plane, followed by a pop singer's Lear jet, followed by an ancient two-seater Ercoupe, followed by a Lufthansa 707, the monsters and the midgets one after another, obediently taking their turns, the big guys never shouldering the little guys out of the way, that being done for them in the control tower.

One of the planes waiting to take off was a Waco Vela, an Italian-built, American-assembled single-engine five-seater with an American-made Franklin engine. At the controls was a computer salesman named Firgus, with his friend Bullock asleep across the back seat. Ahead of him was a TWA jet, which trundled into place at the head of the runway, roared and vibrated a few seconds, and then began galumphing away like Sidney Greenstreet playing basketball. Till it became airborne, at which point it also became graceful and beautiful.

Firgus drove his little plane forward, out onto the runway, and turned right. Now the runway stretched ahead of him. Firgus sat there looking at his controls, waiting for the tower to give him the go-ahead, and regretting the chop suey he'd had for dinner, and all at once the right-hand door opened and a man with a gun got in.

Firgus stared at him in astonishment. "Havana?" he said.

"Just up in the sky will do," Dortmunder told him and looked out the side window at the three black men running his way.

"Okay, N733W," the tower said in Firgus's earphones. "Cleared for takeoff."

"Uh," said Firgus.

Dortmunder looked at him. "Don't do anything stupid," he said. "Just take off."

"Yes," Firgus said. Luckily he was an old hand with this plane and could fly it while his mind was doing flip-flops. He set the Vela going, they skeetered away down the runway, the black men came to a panting stop way back there, and the Vela climbed abruptly into the air.

"Good," Dortmunder said.

Firgus looked at him. "If you shoot me," he said, "we'll crash and you'll die too."

"I won't shoot anybody," Dortmunder said.

"But we can't make it to Cuba," Firgus said. "With the gas I've got, we wouldn't make it much past Washington."

"I don't want to go to Cuba," Dortmunder said. "I don't want to go to Washington either."

"Then where do you want to go? Not over the ocean, that's even longer."

"Where were you going?"

Firgus couldn't figure any of this out. "Well," he said, "Pittsburgh, actually."

"Head that way," Dortmunder said.

"You want to go to Pittsburgh?"

"Just do what you were going to do," Dortmunder said. "Don't mind me."

"Well," Firgus said. "All right."

Dortmunder looked at the sleeping man in back, then out the window at the lights going by in the darkness below. They were away from the airport already. The Balabomo Emerald was in Dortmunder's jacket pocket. Things were more or less under control.

It took fifteen minutes to fly over New York and reach New Jersey, and Firgus was silent all that time. But he seemed to relax a little more when they were over the darker, quieter New Jersey swamp, and he said, "Boy, I don't know what your problem is, but you sure scared the dickens out of me."

"Sorry," Dortmunder said. "I was in a hurry."

"I guess you must have been." Firgus glanced around at Bullock, who was still asleep. "Does he have a surprise coining," he said.

But Bullock kept on sleeping, and another quarter hour went by, and then Dortmunder said, "What's that down there?"

"What's what?"

"That sort of pale strip."

Firgus looked down and said, "Oh, that's Route Eighty. You know, one of the new superhighways they're building. That part isn't done yet. And they're obsolete, you know. This is the coming thing, the small private plane. Why, do you know-"

"It looks done," Dortmunder said.

"What?"

"That road down there. It looks done."

"Well, it isn't open yet." Firgus was irritated. He wanted to tell Dortmunder the wonderful statistics of private plane ownership in the United States.

"Land there," Dortmunder said.

Firgus stared at him. "Do what?"

"It's wide enough for a plane like this," Dortmunder said. "Land there."

"Why?"

"So I can get out. Don't worry, I'm still not going to shoot you."

Firgus banked the plane and circled back over the pale strip on the dark ground below. "I don't know," he said dubiously. "There's no lights or anything."

"You can do it," Dortmunder told him. "You're a good pilot, I can tell you are." He didn't know anything about flying at all.

Firgus preened. "Well, I suppose I could bring her in down there," he said. "Be a little tricky, but not impossible."

"Good."

Firgus circled twice more before making the attempt. He was clearly nervous, and his nervousness communicated itself to Dortmunder, who almost told him to fly on, they'd find someplace better farther on. But there wouldn't be anyplace better. Dortmunder couldn't have Firgus land at a regular airport anywhere, so it had to be something irregular, and at least that was a straight ribbon of concrete down there, and wide enough to land the plane on.

Which Firgus did, very well, once he'd built his nerve up to it. He landed as light as a feather, brought the Vela to a stop in seven hundred feet, and turned a huge smile at Dortmunder. "That's what I call flying," he said.

"Me too," Dortmunder said.

Firgus looked at Bullock again and said testily, "I wish to hell he'd wake up." He poked Bullock's shoulder. "Wake up!"

"Let him alone," Dortmunder said.

"If he doesn't see you," Firgus said, "he won't believe any of this. Hey, Bullock! God damn it, man, you're missing an adventure!" He punched Bullock's shoulder again, a little harder than before.

"Thanks for the lift," Dortmunder said and got out of the plane.

"Bullock!" shouted Firgus, pummeling and punching his friend. "Will you for Christ's sake wake up!"

Dortmunder walked away into the darkness.

Bullock came up to consciousness amid a rain of blows, sat up, yawned, rubbed his face, looked around, blinked, frowned, and said, "Where the hell are we?"

"Route Eighty in Jersey," Firgus told him. "Look, do you see that guy? Look quick, will you, before he's out of sight!"

"Route Eighty? We're in an airplane, Firgus!"

"Will you look!"

"What the hell you doin' on the ground? You want to cause an accident? What are you doin' on Route Eighty?"

"He's out of sight," Firgus said, throwing up his hands in disgust. "I asked you to look, but no."

"You must be drunk, or somethin'," Bullock said. "You're driving an airplane down Route Eighty!"

"I'm not driving an airplane down Route Eighty!"

"Well, what the hell do you call it then?"

"We were hijacked, God damn it! A guy jumped on the plane with a gun and-"

"You should of been in the air, it wouldn't of happened."

"Back at Kennedy! Just before we took off, he jumped in with a gun and hijacked us."

"Oh, sure he did," Bullock said. "And here we are in lovely Havana."

"He didn't want to go to Havana."

"No. He wanted to go to New Jersey. He hijacked an airplane to take him to New Jersey."

"Can I help it?" yelled Firgus. "It's what happened!"

"One of us is having a bad dream," Bullock said, "and since you're at the wheel I hope it's me."

"If you'd woke up in time-"

"Yeah, well, wake me when we get to the Delaware Water Gap. I don't want to miss the expression on their faces when an airplane drives up to the tollbooth." Bullock shook his head and lay down again.

Firgus stayed half turned in the seat, glowering at him. "A guy hijacked us," he said, voice dangerously soft. "It did happen."

"If you're gonna fly this low," Bullock said, with his eyes closed, "why not stop at a diner and get us a couple coffees and Danish to go."

"When we get to Pittsburgh," Firgus said, "I am going to punch you in the mouth." And he faced front, turned the Vela around, took off, and flew in a bright fury all the way to Pittsburgh.