Metaxas nodded glumly and reached for the fuel-ejection handle. He began to pump, keeping a close eye on the gauge. Five minutes later they were in the fog, wrapped in a soft white cotton that wiped out everything but the dimly lit cockpit they sat in. It was an eerie sensation, cut off from time and space and the rest of the world. The last time Larry had been through this was in the Link Trainer. But that was a game where there were no risks. Here the stakes were life and death. He wondered what it was doing to his passenger. He hoped it gave her a heart attack. The Amsterdam control tower came on again.
"Amsterdam control tower to Special Flight one-oh-nine. I am going to bring you in on A.L.S. You will please follow my instructions exactly. We have you on our radar. Turn three degrees west and maintain present altitude until further instructions. At your present airspeed, you should be landing in eighteen minutes."
The voice coming over the radio sounded tense. With good reason, thought Larry grimly. One slight mistake and the plane would plough into the sea. Larry made the correction and shut out everything from his mind but the disembodied voice that was his sole link to survival. He flew the plane as though it were a part of himself, flying it with his heart, his soul and his mind. He was dimly aware of Paul Metaxas sweating beside him, calling out a constant instrument check in a low, strained voice, but if they came out of this alive, it would be Larry Douglas who did it. Larry had never seen fog like this. It was a ghostly enemy, charging at him from every side, blinding him, seducing him, trying to lure him into making one fatal mistake. He was hurtling through the sky at two hundred and fifty miles an hour, unable to see beyond the windshield of the cockpit. Pilots hated fog, and the first rule was: Climb over it or dive under it, but get out of it! Now there was no way, because he was locked into an impossible destination by the whim of a spoiled tart. He was helpless, at the mercy of instruments that could go wrong and men on the ground who could make mistakes. The disembodied voice came over the speaker again, and it seemed to Larry that it had a new, nervous quality.
"Amsterdam Tower to Special Flight one-oh-nine. You are coming into the first leg of your landing pattern: Lower your flaps and begin your descent. Descend to two thousand feet...fifteen hundred feet...one thousand feet..."
Still no sign of the airport below. They could have been in the middle of nowhere. He could feel the ground rushing up to meet the plane.
"Decrease your airspeed to one hundred twenty...lower your wheels...you're at six hundred feet...airspeed one hundred...you're at four hundred feet..." And still no sign of the goddamn airport! The blanket of smothering cotton seemed thicker now.
Metaxas' forehead gleamed with perspiration. "Where in the hell is it?" he whispered.
Larry stole a swift glance at the altimeter. The needle was edging down toward three hundred feet. Then it was below three hundred feet. The ground was rushing up to meet them at one hundred miles per hour. The altimeter showed only one hundred fifty feet. Something was wrong. He should have been able to see the airport lights by now. He strained to see ahead of the plane, but there was only the treacherous, blinding fog whipping across the windshield.
Larry heard Metaxas' voice,
tense and hoarse. "We're down to sixty feet." And still nothing.
"Forty feet."
And the ground racing up to meet them in the darkness.
"Twenty feet."
It was no good. In another two seconds, the margin of safety would be gone and they would crash. He had to make an instant decision.
"I'm going to take it back up," Larry said. His hand tightened on the wheel and started to pull back and at that instant, a row of electric arrows blazed out on the ground ahead of them, lighting up the runway below. Ten seconds later, they were on the ground, taxiing toward the Schiphol terminal.
When they had come to a stop, Larry switched off the engines with numb fingers and sat motionless for a long time. Finally he pushed himself to his feet and was surprised to find that his knees were trembling. He noticed a strange odor in the air and turned to Metaxas. Metaxas grinned sheepishly.
"Sorry," he said. "I shat."
Larry looked down at him and nodded. "For both of us," he said. He turned and walked back into the cabin. The bitch was in there, calmly thumbing through a magazine. Larry stood there studying her, aching to tell her off, wishing desperately that he could find the key to what made her tick. Noelle Page must have known how close she had come to death in the past few minutes, and yet she sat there looking serene and undisturbed, not a hair out of place.
"Amsterdam," Larry announced.
They drove into Amsterdam in a heavy silence, Noelle in the back seat of the Mercedes 300 and Larry in front with the chauffeur. Metaxas had stayed at the airport to have the plane serviced. The fog was still thick and they drove slowly until suddenly, when they reached the Lindenplatz, it began to lift.
They rode through the City Square, crossed the Eider Bridge over the Amstel River and stopped in front of the Amstel Hotel. When they reached the lobby, Noelle said to Larry, "You will pick me up at ten sharp tonight," then turned away and walked toward the elevator, the manager of the hotel bowing and scraping at her heels. A bellboy led Larry to a small, uncomfortable single room at the back of the hotel on the first floor. The room was next to the kitchen, and through the wall Larry could hear the clatter of dishes and smell the mixed aromas from the steaming kettles.
Larry took one look at the tiny room and snapped, "I wouldn't put my dog in here."
"I'm sorry," the bellboy said apologetically. "Miss Page requested the cheapest room we had for you."
Okay, Larry thought, I'll find a way to beat her. Constantin Demiris isn't the only man in the world who uses a private pilot. I'll start checking tomorrow. I've met a lot of his rich friends. There are half a dozen of them who would be damned glad to hire me. But then, he thought: Not if Demiris fires me. If that happens, none of them will touch me. I have to hang in there. The bathroom was down the hall, and Larry unpacked and took out a robe so that he could go take a bath, then thought: To hell with it, why should I bathe for her? I hope I smell like a pig. He went to the hotel bar to have a badly needed drink. He was on his third martini when he looked up at the clock over the bar and saw that it was 10:15. Ten o'clock sharp, she had said. Larry was filled with a sudden panic. He hastily slapped some bills on the bar and headed toward the elevator. Noelle was in the Emperor Suite on the fifth floor. He found himself running down the long corridor and cursing himself for letting her do this to him. He knocked at the door to her suite, his mind forming excuses for his tardiness. No one answered his knock and when Larry turned the knob, it was off the latch. He walked into the large, luxuriously furnished living room and stood there a moment, uncertainly, then called out, "Miss Page." There was no answer. So that was her plan.
I'm sorry, Costa darling, but I warned you that he was unreliable. I asked him to pick me up at ten o'clock, but he was down in the bar getting drunk. I had to leave without him.
Larry heard a sound from the bathroom and went toward it. The bathroom door was open. He walked inside just as Noelle Page stepped out of the shower. She wore nothing but a turkish towel turbanned around her head.
Noelle turned and saw him standing there. An apology sprang to Larry's lips, trying to head off her indignation, but before he could speak, Noelle said indifferently, "Hand me that towel," as though he were a maid. Or a eunuch. Larry could have coped with her indignation or anger, but her arrogant indifference made something explode inside him.
He moved toward her and grabbed her, knowing as he did it that he was throwing away everything he wanted for the cheap satisfaction of a petty revenge, but there was no way he could have stopped himself. The rage inside him had been building up for months, fed by the indignities he had received from her, the gratuitous insults, the humiliation, the risking of his life. All these things were burning in him as he reached for her naked body. If Noelle had screamed, Larry would have knocked her senseless. But she saw the wild look on his face and made no sound as he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.
Somewhere in Larry's mind a voice was shouting to him to stop, to apologize, to say that he was drunk, to get out before it was too late to save himself, but he knew it was already too late. There was no going back. He threw her savagely down on the bed and moved toward her.
He concentrated on her body, refusing to let his mind think of what his punishment was going to be for what he was doing. He had no illusions as to what Demiris would do to him for this, for the Greek's honor would not be satisfied with merely firing him. Larry knew enough about the tycoon to know that his vengeance would be far more terrible, and yet knowing this Larry could not stop himself. She lay on the bed looking up at him, her eyes blazing. He moved down on top of her and was entering her, never realizing until that instant how much he had been wanting to do this all along, and somehow the need was all mixed up with the hate, and he felt her arms wrap around his neck, holding him close, as though she would never let him go, and she said, "Welcome back," and it flashed through Larry's mind that she was crazy or she was confusing him with someone else, but he didn't care because her body was twisting and writhing beneath him, and he forgot everything else in the sensation of what was happening to him, and the sudden blinding wonderful knowledge that now everything was going to be all right.