The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [94]
Fischer and Miller thought that hilariously amusing. Miss Lipp, I noticed, was keeping her attention divided between the road ahead and the cars behind.
We came to Corlu and turned right onto the main Istanbul road. Harper began to organize the change of plan.
“The first thing is to get the stuff out of the door. Hans, you’d better change places with Arthur. He can get busy now.”
“He can’t,” Fischer said. “There are seven screws on the rear door. With the door shut he cannot get at them. The door has to be open.”
“All the way open?”
“Nearly.”
Harper looked at the heavy doors. They were hinged at the rear, and would swing open against the wind. We were doing over sixty. It was obviously out of the question to take the panel off while we were on the move. He nodded. “All right. Here’s what we’ll do. As soon as we get to the airport, Elizabeth and Leo will take all the passports and get busy buying tickets and filling out passport cards and customs forms for all of us. Right?”
They nodded.
“Then I follow them inside just to check on the flight number and boarding time so that we all know what the score is. As soon as I have that, I return to the car and Arthur drives us to the parking lot. There, we open the door and get the stuff. When it’s out, Hans gets porters and we unload the baggage. We leave the car on the park. Any questions?”
“You could unload the baggage first,” said Miller; “while the car is in front.”
“Maybe. If we have plenty of time. If we don’t have too much, I’d sooner make sure of the loot first.”
“We must have some baggage for the customs,” Miss Lipp put in. “People without baggage get a personal search.”
“All right. We’ll unload just the stuff from inside the car and leave the rest until later.”
There was a murmur of agreement. Miller asked: “If there are two flights available within a short time, which do we take?”
“If one of them flies over a lot of Turkish territory—say, to Aleppo or Beirut—we take the other. Otherwise, we take the first.”
They went on discussing which city they would prefer as a destination. I was wondering what would happen if I told them about my passport. From Harper, I decided, there would be only one reaction; if they could not take me with them, yet dared not leave me because I knew too much, I would have to be eliminated from the picture altogether. There would be a corpse on the floor of the car they left behind them. On the other hand, if I waited until the passport was challenged at the airport, there wasn’t much they could do. I could yell my head off, demand to see a security official and tell him to contact Tufan. True, the three men had guns; but even if they managed to shoot their way out of the place, I would stand a better chance of coming out of it alive.
“Any more problems?” Harper asked. “No? Okay, then, let’s have the passports.”
I nearly threw up, but managed to cough instead.
Fischer asked me to get his out of his inside pocket for him. Miller passed his over and Harper flipped through the pages. I gave him Fischer’s.
Miss Lipp said: “My bag is on the floor, if you want to put them in it now.”
“Okay. Where’s yours, Arthur?” Has any boy not handed in his homework?
I handed the wretched thing to him and waited.
He lingered over my vital statistics. “Know something, Arthur? I’d have said you were a good three years older. Too much ouzo and not enough exercise, that’s your trouble.” And then, of course, his tone changed. “Wait a minute! This is over two months out of date!”
“Out of date? But it can’t be!” I know I handed in my work with the rest, sir.
“Look at it!” He leaned over and jammed it under my nose.
“But I had no trouble coming in. You see, there’s the visa!”
“What difference does that make, you stupid slob? It’s out of date!” He glowered at me and then, unexpectedly, turned to Miss Lipp. “What do you think?”
She kept her eyes on the road