"This operation isn't directed against anyone the law would rush to defend," Tucker said.
Norton raised his eyebrows, picked up his beer and took another third of it in one swallow.
"That's the last factor you have to consider. We're going up against a man named Baglio, against his entire machine."
"Organized?"
"Let's call him an entrepreneur."
"Successful?"
"Very."
Norton considered the angles for a moment, scratching unconsciously at the three long white marks on his right cheek. "Three thousand sound all right to you?"
Tucker paid without any argument, closed his briefcase again. It was a fair enough price for everything that he was going to ask of Norton and his machine.
The big man put the money in the lockbox in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet behind his desk, locked both the box and the drawer, pocketed the keys and came back to his desk.
"Someone could carry the whole cabinet away," Tucker said.
"It's bolted to the floor."
They drank the remainder of their beer in silence, and when they were finished Norton said, "You ready?"
"Yes."
They left the office and walked to the third berth in the same building, where a gray helicopter sat on a wheeled towing platform. It was the same four-seater quadra-prop that Norton had used twice before when Tucker had required his services, though its own markings had been expertly masked with colored tape. New numbers, also formed with tape, decorated the proper plates on the nose and both sides. The Pennsylvania state seal, with its two rearing horses, was firmly attached to both doors of the craft; below the seal, in white letters, were the words pennsylvania state police. It all looked very genuine. It should have, since the insignia were exact copies of those in use by the authorities, rendered by a friend of Norton's who worked in an ad agency during the day and moonlighted however he could. He had drawn Norton nine sets of state seals so far, though Tucker had not had the opportunity, thus far, to operate in so many different colonies. Norton had other customers.
"Good?" Norton asked.
"Fine," Tucker said.
A golf cart was already hooked up to the platform on which the copter stood, and Norton hopped into this. He started it and drove slowly outside. Out of the hangar, he stopped, detached the cart from the platform, drove it back inside and parked it. They boarded the helicopter.
"You've got a change of clothes?" Tucker asked.
"I packed as soon as you called."
"Good."
"Even before I went out to doctor the copter."
"Fine."
A few minutes later, they drifted onto the cracked macadam runway. Both Tucker and Norton sat in the forward seats; behind them was a pair of seats that folded down to form a large cargo area. Most of Paulnik Air's freight work was handled with one of the two twin-engine Apaches that they maintained, though the dense, built-up New York area often required a helicopter to land where there was no runway. Besides, the copter was the most lucrative of the three Paulnik craft, thanks to Tucker and to others like him.
As they lifted into the early-afternoon sky, Tucker wondered where Simonsen would be hiding. Simonsen professed to know absolutely nothing about Norton's willingness to bend the law for a buck. He handled none of the illegitimate work, though Norton knew his partner always stood at a window and watched proceedings such as these, as if he secretly envied what he supposed was a glamorous mission. He would be down there now, watching and a little jealous, a little frightened.
Then the airfield and the hangars were out of sight as they banked west toward the city.
The time was 2:12 as the copter, laden with auxiliary fuel tanks, began the longest leg of the journey.
Tucker wondered if Baglio had had an opportunity to question Merle Bachman. The driver had been in the mansion more than a full day. If he was not badly injured, that was plenty of time for Baglio to break him, enough time for Bachman to spill everything he knew about Tucker and the others.
Norton had said something which Tucker, lost in the reverie, had not heard.
"What?" Tucker asked.
"I said, 'The pollution sure is nice today, isn't it?' "
Norton waved one burly arm at the vista of yellow-white mist that rose up from all quarters of the city, meshed high overhead and roiled like a ball of snakes, smoke snakes. He indicated the awful scenery much as a legitimate guide might gesture grandly at the undeniable splendor of Niagara Falls.
"Beautiful."
"It'll make a grand sunset."
"Lovely."
"Too bad we can't see it."
"Too bad."
But Tucker could not bring himself to think very long about sunsets and atmospheric pollution.
Perhaps Baglio's people wouldn't be able to trace the Tucker name any farther than the downtown mail drop. They had contacts, yes, of course they had, but they were not omniscient.
Yet, even if they got that far and no farther, he would have to forget the Tucker identity altogether, assume a new name, purchase all new credentials in that name, and strictly avoid everyone who had, to date, known him only as Tucker.
That would require an outlay of cash and a period of relative inactivity, and it would be, in the vulgate, a pain in the ass.
And he could not expect an identity change to provide safety for very long. Sooner or later, when one of them was using a new name himself, he would encounter an old acquaintance who'd remember the Tucker identity. Then a second name change would be necessary-and after that, a third and a fourth.
He could see no end to it.
Much better to think the driver had not talked yet. If Baglio didn't get through to Bachman in the next twelve hours, they were all home safe.
Tucker looked at the map spread out on his knees, glanced through the front window of the copter as Norton flew at an angle to the roadway below them, and shouted, "There! That's the highway that runs past the turn-off for Baglio's estate-and I think the house is over that way, in those slopes. If I'm right, the turn-off should be just ahead."
It was.
"Good work!" he shouted at Norton, grinning.
Perhaps he wouldn't have had to shout quite so loudly, for the cabin was fairly well insulated against the roar of the overhead rotors. But after several hours in the air, listening to that thumping racket, his ears buzzed like the core of a beehive on a busy spring morning, and he shouted mostly to hear himself.
Norton nodded and said, "Is that a likely place to put down?" He pointed across the highway, almost directly opposite the entrance to the Baglio drive. A thousand yards from the road's edge, the woodlands broke for several hundred feet, providing a clean, grassy, somewhat sloped expanse of land between arms of the forest.
"Good enough," Tucker said.
They went that way and, five minutes later, were on the ground. Norton cut the engines, let the blades stutter down. The bees began to fly out of Tucker's ears, until the numbed ringing was gone and he could hear once more.
"Now what?" Norton asked.
"Now, you'll wait here while I go telephone a colleague," Tucker said, working loose of the seat belt and the shoulder harness which had bitten deep into his flesh.
Norton stretched his long legs as well as he could in the recess below the control dash and looked around at the pine trees. "I know you're clever at organizing operations, Mike. God knows, I've been in the thick of two of them, and I could tell as much about your expertise without knowing just what in the hell was going on. But I can't believe that you've had a branch line run into these woods just on the off chance that you might have to telephone someone from here."