lights off. Beyond, suspended from the ceiling were
signs in German, French and English directing
passengers to the main terminal and the downstairs
baggage claim. There was no time for his luggage; he
had to run, to get away from the
140 ROBERT LUDLUM
airport as fast as possible, get away without being
seen. Then the obvious struck him, and he felt sick.
He had been seen; they knew he was on the Hight
from Hamburg whoever they were. The instant he
walked into the terminal he would be spotted, and
there was nothing he could do about it. They had
found him in Copenhagen; the woman had found
him and she had been ordered on board to make
certain he did not stay in Hamburg, or switch planes
to another destination.
Howe How did they do it?
There was no time to think about it; he would
think about it later if there was a later. He passed
the arches of the closed-down metal detectors and
the black conveyor belts where hand luggage was
X-rayed. Ahead, no more than seventy-five feet
were the doors to the terminal. What was he going
to do, what should he do?
NUR FUR HIER BESCHAFTIGTE
MANNER
Joel stopped at a door. The sign on it was
emphatic, the German forbidding. Yet he had seen
those words before. Where? What was it? . . .
Zurich! He had been in a department store in
Zurich when a stomach attack had descended to his
bowels. He had pleaded with a sympathetic clerk
who had taken him to a nearby employees’ men’s
room. In one of those odd moments of gratitude
and relief, he had focused on the strange words as
they had drawn nearer. Nur fur trier Beschaftigte.
Manner.
No further memory was required. He pushed the
door open and went inside, not sure what he would
do other than collect his thoughts. A man in green
overalls was at the far end of the line of sinks
against the wall; he was combing his hair while
inspecting a blemish on his face in the mirror. Con-
verse walked to the row of urinals beyond the sinks,
his demeanor that of an airlines executive. The
affectation was accepted; the man mumbled
something courteously and left The door swung shut
and he was alone.
Joel stepped back from the urinal and studied
the tiled enclosure, hearing for the first time the
sound of several voices . . . outside, somewhere
outside, beyond . . . the windows. Three-quarters up
from the floor and recessed in the far wall were
three frosted-glass windows, the painted white
frames melting into the whiteness of the room. He
was con
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 141
fused. In these security-conscious days of airline
travel with the constant emphasis on guarding
against smuggled arms and narcotics, a room inside
a gate area that had a means of getting outside
before entering customs did not make sense. Then
the obvious fact occurred to him. It could be his way
out! The flight from Hamburg was a domestic flight,
this part of the Cologne-Bonn airport a domestic
terminal; there were no customs! Of course there
were exterior windows in an enclosure like this.
What difference did it make? Passengers still had to
pass through the electronic arches and, conversely,
authorities wanting to pick up a passenger flying
domestically would simply wait by a specific gate.
But no one waited for him. He had been the
last the second to last passenger off the late night
flight. The roped-off gate had been deserted; anyone
sitting in one of the plastic chairs or standing beyond
the counter would be obvious. Therefore, those who
were keeping him in their sights did not want to be
seen themselves. Whoever they were, they were
waiting, watching for him from some remote spot
inside the terminal. They could wait.
He approached the far-right window and lowered
his attache case to the floor. When he stood erect,
the sill was only inches above his head. He reached
for the two white handles and pushed; the window
slid easily up several inches. He poked his fingers
through the space; there was no screen. Once the
window was raised to its full height, there would be
enough room for him to crawl outside.
There was a clattering behind him, rapid slaps of
metal against wood. He spun around as the door
opened, revealing a hunched-over old man in a white
maintenance uniform carrying a mop and a pail.
Slowly, with deliberation, the old man took out a
pocket watch, squinted at it, said something in Ger-
man, and waited for an answer. Not only was Joel
aware that he was expected to speak, but he assumed
that he had been told the employees’ men’s room
was being closed until moming. He had to think; he
could not leave; the only way out of the airport was
through the terminal. If there was another he did not
know where, and it was no time to be running
around a section of an airport shut down for the
remainder of the night. Patrolling guards might
compound his problems.
His eyes dropped, centering on the metal pail,
and in desperation he knew what he had to do, but
not whether he could do it. With a sudden grimace
of pain, he moaned and grabbed
142 ROBERT LUDLUM
his chest, falling to his knees. His face contorted, he
sank to the floor.
“Doctor, doctor . . . doctor!” he shouted over
and over again.
The old man dropped the mop and the pail; a
guttural stream of panicked phrases accompanied
several cautious steps forward. Converse rolled to
his right against the wall he gasped for breath as he
watched the German with wide, blank eyes.
“Doctor. . . !” he whispered.
The old man trembled and backed away toward
the door; he turned, opened it and ran out, his frail
voice raised for help.
There would be only seconds! The gate was no
more than two hundred feet to the left, the entrance
to the terminal perhaps a hundred to the right. Joel
got up quickly, raced to the pail, turned it upside
down, and brought it back to the window. He
placed it on the floor and stepped up with one foot,
his palms making contact with the base of the
window; he shoved. The glass rose about four inches
and stopped, the frame lodged against the sash. He
pushed again with all the strength he could manage
in his awkward positron. The window would not
budge; breathing hard he studied it, his intense gaze
zeroing in on two small steel objects he wished to
God were not in place, but they were. Two
protective braces were screwed into the opposing
sashes, preventing the window from being opened
more than six inches. Cologne-Bonn might not be
an international airport with a panoply of sophis-
bcated security devices, but it was not without its
own safeguards.
There were distant shouts from beyond the
door; the old man had reached someone. The sweat
rolled down Converse’s face as he stepped off the
pail and reached for his attache case on the floor.
Action and decision were simultaneous, only instinct
unconsciously governing both. Joel picked up the
leather case, stepped forward and crashed it
repeatedly into the window, shattering the glass and
finally breaking away the lower wooden frame. He
stepped back up on the pail and looked out.
Beyond below was a cement path bordered by a
guardrail, floodlights in the distance, no one in
sight. He threw the attache case out the window,
and pulled himself up, his left knee kicking
fragments of glass and what was left of the frame to
the concrete below. Awkwardly, he hunched his
whole body, pressing his head into his shoulder
blades, and
THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION 143
plunged through the opening. As he fell to the
ground he heard the shouts from inside: they grew in
volume, all in counterpoint, a mixture of
bewilderment and anger. He ran.
Minutes later, at a sudden curve in the cement
path, he saw the floodlit entrance of the terminal
and the line of taxis waiting for the passengers of
Flight 817 from Hamburg to pick up their luggage
before the drivers collected their inHated night
prices to Bonn and Cologne. There were entrance
and exit roads leading to the platform, broken by
pedestrian crosswalks, and beyond these an immense
parking lot with several lighted booths still operating
for those driving their own cars. Converse slipped
over the guardrail and ran across an intersecting
lawn until he reached the first road, racing into the
shadows at the first blinding glare of a floodlight. He
had to reach a taxi, a taxi with a driver who spoke
English; he could not remain on foot…. He had been
captured on foot once, years ago. On a jungle trail,
where if he had only been able to commandeer a
jeep an enemy jeep he might have . . . Stop it!