Georg stood by the red ropes outside the arrivals area and looked up. Through a small atrium he could see the bays of a glass dome. The upper level rests on thick columns. A dome, columns-Georg smiled and thought, I see I can’t get away from cathedrals. His smile was one of resignation. The professor would enjoy the “ifs” and “thens” of what I’ve set up here. If Joe wants to kill me, it’s because I could be dangerous for him with Gorgefield Aircraft and perhaps even with the Russians. But if he sees that the cat is out of the bag, he’ll have his hands full trying to deal with both the cat and the bag, and won’t have time to focus on me. Then I’ll come out of all this unscathed. Joe will be angry, but he won’t kill me because he’s angry.
That was Georg’s plan: he would show himself with the professor upstairs so that Joe would see both of them when he came through the arrivals hall. Then Georg and the professor would proceed to the escalator leading to the lower level. And when Joe came out of the arrivals hall and saw Buchanan, Georg would throw from the escalator the fourteen film cans at their feet. He would let the professor continue down the stairs, while he would sprint back up the escalator and disappear. Joe, the professor, Buchanan, and the police could then deal with one another as they pleased.
Buchanan arrived at ten to ten. He arrived with two men who had the powerful build and expressionless faces typical of policemen and gangsters. Georg saw them from the top of the escalator. Buchanan said something to the two men and they disappeared behind the columns, while he went to stand by the red rope with all the people waiting for arriving passengers. From time to time he looked about discreetly.
The professor arrived at five to ten. He had the same careful tread, the same blue suit and striped shirt, but no tie. He was holding a briefcase in his hand.
“Are you taking the ten-twenty Pan Am flight to London?” he asked.
Georg shrugged his shoulders. “Come with me, I want to show you something,” he said, nodding his head toward the glass wall above the customs area.
“Where are the goods?”
As he walked, Georg put his hands in his jacket pockets and pulled out some of the cans. He was walking fast. The monitor showed that the Pan Am flight had arrived.
Joe had the redhead with him. That’s not surprising, Georg thought; after all, he knows me quite well. The redhead was carrying two bags. Joe was talking and gesticulating-a corpulent mass of affability.
“Do you know him?” Georg asked, nudging the professor and pointing at Joe. He didn’t wait for an answer. He beat his fists against the glass wall. That action in itself might not have caught Joe’s attention and made him look up, but the glass was secured, and a grating alarm went off. All heads in the area below looked up. Georg saw the surprise in Joe’s face.
“What are you doing?” the professor asked, grabbing Georg’s arm.
“Come on!” Georg shouted and, seizing the professor by the hand, began running, pushing, dodging people, and jumping over luggage, dragging the professor behind him. They reached the escalator and began to descend. He let go of the professor, who was gasping and cursing, and reached for the cans of film in his pockets. Buchanan came into sight, as did the door to the hall.
Georg’s actions had not aroused any suspicions. A man bangs his hand against the glass wall, setting off a false alarm, and then runs with another man to the escalator. The two men running could be father and son, late and frantically making their way through the crowd. Nothing unusual in that.
It all happened in a flash. The glass door slid open, Joe came out of the arrivals area, Georg threw the cans. His aim was good: a few of them hit Joe, the others landed close by him. Joe looked at the cans, and then in the direction from which they had been flung.
The bullet hit Joe in the forehead. Georg saw him fall, saw Buchanan turn and aim again. So it’s with both hands, Georg thought, you shoot with both hands. He saw Buchanan’s face, his eyes, his tight lips, the gun’s muzzle. He wanted to duck, but the shot rang out.
People screamed and ran for cover. Buchanan shouted something, Georg couldn’t hear what. The professor, who had been standing above him on the escalator, fell onto him and slid down, collapsing onto a woman who was cowering next to Georg. Georg heard the rasping horror of her shrieks close to his ear.
Then he saw the briefcase, which had slipped out of the professor’s hand. The escalator came to a halt. Georg automatically reached for the briefcase and scurried doggedly, hunched forward, up the escalator. He stepped on hands, pushed people out of the way, and at the top of the escalator elbowed his way through the crowd that had gathered to see what was going on downstairs. All these people had been near the atrium and heard the shots and screams. Those who were farther back hadn’t noticed anything, and Georg casually walked past them and out of the building.
He drove back to San Francisco. He parked at the end of Twenty-fourth Street, took the briefcase out of the car, and slowly walked to a bench near the waterfront. He sat down and put the briefcase at his feet. It was low tide, and rocks, car tires, and a refrigerator were looming out of the water.
He sat there for a long time, watching the sun’s rays dancing on the waves. His mind was empty. Of course, he finally looked into the briefcase. And later, as Jill was asleep next to him, he turned on a table lamp and opened the briefcase again. It didn’t contain two million. It didn’t even contain one. He counted $382,460. There was a disarray of hundred-dollar bills mixed in with fifties and twenties, and between them the tie with the garden gnomes, tied and ready to be slipped on.
The following day all the newspapers featured the shooting at the airport. Georg read that Townsend Enterprises had been involved in industrial espionage for the Russians at Gorgefield Aircraft, and that Benton and a Russian agent had fallen into a trap set by Gorgefield Aircraft. Benton had attempted to shoot his way out, and had been shot dead by Buchanan. The Russian agent had been hospitalized, critically wounded. There was a picture of Richard D. Buchanan Jr., security adviser at Gorgefield, looking grim.
Georg read the newspaper the following morning at the airport. He was wearing sunglasses, and Jill was in the carrier sling. Nobody was paying particular attention. It was shortly before ten. The Pan Am flight from New York was scheduled to land soon. Fran had said that she would pick up Jill and take the one-thirty flight back to New York.
“Come and stay forever,” Georg had told her.
She had laughed, but then had asked him what the weather was like. “Does it get cool there in the evenings?”
Epilogue
THEY DROVE SOUTH AND TOOK A FLIGHT from Mexico to Madrid, and from Madrid to Lisbon. Today they live in a house by the sea. Jill is five, and Fran sometimes tells her a bedtime story about a crazy guy who once upon a time ran off to San Francisco with her when she was a baby. They have two more children. Georg is translating again, because he couldn’t go on doing nothing.
“Why didn’t you write your story yourself?” I asked Georg, as we were sitting beneath the stars on his terrace above the sea. He had read my manuscript and was quibbling over this or that detail.
“Fran didn’t want me to. This might sound strange, but since San Francisco we never talk about any of this. Fran won’t have it.” Georg laughed. “Whenever I bring up the subject she dismisses it as water under the bridge, and says she doesn’t want me to spend weeks on end at my desk mulling over the past.”