The arrow buried its heavy steel head deep in the center of the ceiling. The flanges popped open to anchor it securely. The thin nylon rope angled down from it to the coil in the hallway.
Ballard grabbed the end of the rope and swung, legs out straight ahead of him like Tarzan going through the jungle, his butt clearing the floor by inches. At the far end of his swing, he jammed his feet down on the floor just in front of the observation window where there were no pressure plates. He grabbed the sill to keep from stepping back and causing the alarm to sound. Seconds were precious.
He faded the mirroring, tapped on the glass. In the next room, Freddie swung himself off his cot. The Baron had assured them that the orangutan knew this trick from Hong Kong. Ballard very slowly spelled out the unfamiliar signs for USE STICK TO GET KEY.
Freddie signed something, Larry didn’t know what, picked up his play stick and thrust it through the bars toward the ring of keys hanging on the wall flanking the cage.
R.K. got gingerly to his feet and held several ball bearings in one hand while rubbing his hip with the other. It had all been a feint! He hurled the ball bearings across the room and yelled into his cell phone.
“Check the ape.”
Rose Bush brought up Freddie’s room on the monitor. He gaped in astonishment. “The ape is gone!”
Rose Bush leaped to his feet, ripping off his headpiece. When he did, he heard the unmistakable whup-whup-whup of helicopter blades! He dithered for a moment, flung open the door and rushed into Freddie’s room. The empty cage’s door gaped.
Freddie waddled out from his hiding place behind the opened Security Center door and beneath the scanning camera. He shoved. The duty officer stumbled forward. Freddie, playing the game as he played it so often in Hong Kong, slammed the cage door shut.
On the floor below, in Computer Room One, R.K. yelled into his cell phone, “Rose Bush, Rose Bush, this is Faded Rose Petal. Come in, Rose Bush.” No response. “Come in, goddam you!”
Still no response. He hurled the cell phone to the floor, jerked out his .45 and rushed from the room.
Freddie lumbered into the Security Control Center to stare at the glowing lights, pushed the black button. The panel slid back, Kearny and Knottnerus-Meyer came clattering down the stairs from the third-floor barracks as Ballard, Heslip, and O’B burst in from the Observation Room. Freddie grabbed the Baron’s hand.
“Everybody here?” demanded Kearny.
“We haven’t seen Trin since he took out the gate.”
“Ve can’t vait,” said the Baron. “Ve must get Freddie to der roof and into der chopper.”
The hall door burst open and R.K. Robinson came through in a headfirst dive. He tucked and rolled, came up to his feet with the only gun in the room in his right hand.
“Hold it right there, wiseguys!” he yelled.“Dis exercise iss finished,” said the Baron frostily.
R.K.’s .45 didn’t waver. And then Freddie punched him in the chops. His eyes went vague, his legs went rubbery, his gun sagged. They all ran for the stairs as R.K.’s troopers came charging up the hall, too late as usual.
The DKA men were already in the big chopper. Knottnerus-Meyer shoehorned Freddie into one of the rear seats and got in beside him. Everyone was excited and talking at once.
“Take it up, Jacques. Vunce around der meadow, den ve bring Herr Freddie back home again safe and sound.”
The rotors roared as the chopper lifted off. Xanadu fell away below them. The open meadow below was a pale blue by soft moonlight, pretty and peaceful. But then the pilot tapped the instrument panel, switched on his glaring landing lights, and started down.
“Vut iss der matter?” shouted the Baron.
The pilot yelled back over his shoulder, “Oil gauge acting up. I’ll have to do a manual check.”
He set it down just at the far edge of the meadow, opened his door, and yelled over the diminished noise of the rotors.
“Everybody out except the ape.”
They trotted well away from the chopper in that peculiar bent-over primate stance almost everyone adopts even though it is seldom necessary. Knottnerus-Meyer was last out. None of them noticed him turn around and climb back in after the pilot.
The engine roared, the rotors screamed, the chopper leaped into the air as if shot from a cannon. The four DKA men turned and ran after it instinctively. There was a very long, astounded, chagrined silence.
Dan Kearny started for the top of the road down the mountain without a word, too enraged to speak to anyone.
“Twenty miles down to Sycamore Flats,” said O’B hollowly.
“Ve haff vays uff making you valk,” said Larry.
“Vehicle coming,” warned Bart.
Headlights were rushing toward them along the uneven dirt track. The driver was pushing it hard; the vehicle was leaping into the air and crashing down, its lights jumping around crazily. They stood there, dispirited, as R.K. Robinson’s open Jeep skidded to a stop in their midst.
Beaming out at them from behind the windshield was the round moon face of Trin Morales.
“Need a lift, gents?” he asked.
Forty-six
Staley’s whole kumpania, all fifty of them, was shoehorned cheek by jowl into the spacious front room of Rudolph’s purloined Point Richmond house. The janitor from the Masquers Theatre down in the flats arrived with a truckload of folding chairs liberated from the playhouse. Kids with brown faces and shoe-button eyes ran from room to room, in and out between the adults’ legs, loud and noisy and joyous underfoot. The Gypsy flag was on one wall to make them feel proud of the occasion. At its center was a red sixteen-spoke chakra; the flag was halved horizontally, the blue above representing the sky, the green below representing the earth.
Staley was in fine form. Tonight he would distribute the tickets and tomorrow groups would begin to depart for Milan, then on to Rome. And he had a surprise visitor for his people that made his mustaches bristle and his eyes shine.
Voices rose and fell in English and Romani and several Eastern European tongues; there were laughter, jokes, and snatches of song. Musicians were setting up their tombouritsa, their bosh and bugaija, their prim and their tamboura. Three of them, dressed in bright colors, played Gypsy music at an Andalusian restaurant in the Sunset District. Others, who could have been Latino or gadje, day laborers or salesmen, had brought their own instruments and would drop in and out during the night.
Josef Adamo, just returned from a night in jail for intoxication, stepped into their midst to toast them with a tall glass of ouzo. The musicians struck up the lively Grastoro, and Adamo, keeping time to the music with his glass, sang in a fine comic vein:
The aroma from Lulu’s sastra dominated the kitchen. Six rabbits (snared by Nanoosh Tsatshimo and his sons atop Mount Bruno), carrots, onions, potatoes, and field herbs simmered on the back burner of Rudolph’s stove in the big iron pot. Thank the God-Bearer, the heavy sastra didn’t need to be suspended on a tripod over a wood fire this festive night.