"No, the president is meeting me at the Hay-Adams."
"Yes, sir."
Keith got in, and the car pulled away. This town was nuts, he thought. "Nuts."
"Sir?"
"Mr. Adair would like you to go back for him at five."
"Yes, sir."
Keith sat back and watched the windshield wipers. Charlie, of course, was trying some reverse psychology on him. The thing was that Charlie was so convincing with the dragon and rat analogy that Keith was firmly convinced he was making the right decision for the right reasons. "Right."
This town had seduced him like the world's greatest whore, and every time he saw her, touched her, smelled her, he got tingly. She had made him take off his uniform and screwed him until he had nothing left, and he enjoyed every minute of it. She screwed other men, too, and this excited him even more. He knew she was corrupt to the core, heartless, and cold. But she was beautiful, so well dressed and made-up and clever, and she smiled at him, and he loved her in the flesh but hated her in his soul.
Chapter Twenty-six
At six P.M., Keith checked out of the Hay-Adams and carried his own bag to the front door.
"Taxi, sir?"
"Please."
Keith waited with the doorman under the marquee. The doorman said, "Taxis are scarce with this rain."
"I see that."
"Airport?"
"Right."
"Flights are delayed. Jack's coming through Virginia Beach."
"Excuse me?"
"Hurricane Jack. Tracking up the coast. It'll miss us, but we'll have gale-force winds and heavy rain all night. Did you check your flight, sir?"
"No."
"National or Dulles?"
"National."
The doorman shook his head. "Long delays. You might want to try Dulles, if you can."
A taxi pulled up, and the doorman opened the door. Keith got in and said to the driver, "How's National?"
"Down."
"Dulles?"
"Still open."
"Dulles."
The ride to Dulles, normally forty-five minutes via the Dulles access highway, took over an hour, and the weather didn't look much better inland. As they approached the airport, Keith saw no aircraft landing or taking off.
The driver said, "Don't look good, Chief. You want to go back?"
"No."
The driver shrugged and continued on into the airport.
Keith said, "USAir."
They arrived at USAir departures, and Keith noticed lines of people waiting for taxis. He went into the terminal and scanned the display monitors. Nearly every departing flight was delayed or canceled.
He tried the ticket agents at several airlines, looking for a flight to any city within a few hundred miles of Spencerville, but no one was hopeful.
At seven-thirty, Dulles Airport was officially closed until further notice.
Keith saw that the crowds were thinning out as people left the terminal. Other people were settling in for a wait.
He went to a bar in the terminal concourse. It was crowded with stranded travelers, but he got a beer and stood with a few other men and watched the TV mounted over the bar. Jack had made landfall at Ocean City, Maryland, and was stalled there, and the effects of the hurricane could be felt over a hundred miles from the eye. The general consensus seemed to be that nothing would be flying until dawn. But you never knew.
This was not the first time in his life he'd been unable to catch a flight, and he knew it was no use worrying or getting angry about it. In other times and places, the situation had sometimes been critical, sometimes life-threatening. This time, it was important.
It was now eight-fifteen P.M., and he had a rendezvous at ten A.M. the next day in western Ohio. He considered his options. It was about three hundred air miles, less than a two-hour flight to Columbus, slightly longer to Toledo, longer yet to Dayton or Fort Wayne, Indiana. In any case, if he could get on a flight anytime around five A.M., he'd be in Spencerville in a rental car about ten A.M., but, with a stop at his farm, he wouldn't be at his rendezvous until a few hours later. Still, he could call Annie's sister Terry's house from a public phone, at some point, and say he'd be delayed.
But there was the likely possibility that air traffic would be stacked up in the morning and it might be much later before he could actually fly out of Dulles. Also, he wasn't ticketed out of Dulles.
He left the bar and went to the car rental counters, where there were long lines of people. He stood on the Avis line and eventually got to the counter. The young man behind the counter asked him, "Reservation, sir?"
"No, but I need a car. Anything will do."
"Sorry, we have absolutely nothing here and nothing coming in tonight."
Keith had already figured that out. He asked, "How about your car? I'm going to Ohio. It's a ten-hour drive. I'll give you a thousand dollars, and you can sleep in the backseat."
The young man smiled. "Tempting, but..."
"Think it over. Ask around. I'll be at the pub in the concourse."
"I'll ask around."
Keith went back to the bar and had another beer. The place was half-empty now as people gave up on the possibility of the airport reopening and as the airlines bused ticket holders to nearby motels.
At ten P.M., the young man from Avis walked in and spotted him. He said, "I asked around, but there aren't any takers." He added, "I called our other locations around the area, but there's nothing available. Probably the same all over. You might try Amtrak."
"Thanks." Keith offered him a twenty-dollar bill, which he wouldn't take. Keith went back to his beer. In most parts of the world, greenbacks could buy you the prime minister and his car. In America, money still talked, but not as loudly. Most people actually did their jobs without being bribed or bought and sometimes wouldn't even take a tip. Still, there had to be an inventive and enterprising solution to the problem of getting from point A to point B.
He thought awhile. There were many ways to get out of a city, as Keith had learned over the years. But when the airport was closed because of weather, artillery fire, or rebels on the tarmac, it put a strain on ground and sea transportation.
He considered calling Terry and explaining the situation, but that would be premature and an admission of defeat — or worse, a failure of the imagination. "Think." He thought. "Got it."
He left the bar and went to the public telephones. There were lines there, too, and he waited.
At ten-thirty, he got to a phone and called Charlie Adair's home number but got the answering machine. He said, "Charlie, I'm stranded at the airport. There's a hurricane outside, in case you haven't noticed. Send a car to take me back to the hotel. Page me here. I'm at Dulles, not National."
Keith read a newspaper in the waiting area so he could hear his name paged. He knew that Adair would get the message, because in that business you checked your answering machine by remote from wherever you were at least once an hour. The free world depended on it. Or once did.
At ten fifty-five, the public address system informed Mr. Landry to pick up a courtesy telephone. He'd already located the closest one and picked it up. A man's voice said, "Mr. Landry, this is Stewart, your driver from this morning. I got a call from Mr. Adair to..."
"Where are you now?"
"I'm here, at Dulles. I can meet you right outside of the USAir departures area."
"Five minutes." Keith walked quickly to the USAir departures doors. He saw Stewart, a gray-haired man in his fifties, standing beside the Lincoln and went over to him. Stewart put Keith's bag in the trunk, and Keith got in the front seat. Stewart asked, "Wouldn't you be more comfortable in the back, sir?"
"No."
Stewart got in, and they pulled away from the curb and down the ramp.
Keith said, "Thanks."
"My job, sir."
"Are you married, Stewart?"