hundred feet. Then it was below three hundred feet. The ground was rushing up to meet them at one hundred miles per hour. The altimeter showed only one hundred fifty feet. Something was wrong. He should have been able to see the airport lights by now. He strained to see ahead of the plane, but there was only the treacherous, blinding fog whipping across the windshield.
Larry heard Metaxas’ voice, tense and hoarse.“ We’ re down to sixty feet.” And still nothing.
“ Forty feet.” And the ground racing up to meet them in the darkness.“ Twenty feet.”
It was no good. In another two seconds, the margin of safety would be gone and they would crash. He had to make an instant decision.
“ I’ m going to take it back up,” Larry said. His hand tightened on the wheel and started to pull back and at that instant, a row of electric arrows blazed out on the ground ahead of them, lighting up the runway below. Ten seconds later, they were on the ground, taxiing toward the Schiphol terminal.
When they had come to a stop, Larry switched off the engines with numb fingers and sat motionless for a long time. Finally he pushed himself to his feet and was surprised to find that his knees were trembling. He noticed a strange odor in the air and turned to Metaxas. Metaxas grinned sheepishly.
“ Sorry,” he said.“ I shat.”
Larry looked down at him and nodded.“ For both of us,” he said. He turned and walked back into the cabin. The bitch was in there, calmly thumbing through a magazine. Larry stood there studying her, aching to tell her off, wishing desperately that he could find the key to what made her tick. Noelle Page must have known how close she had come to death in the past few minutes, and yet she sat there looking serene and undisturbed, not a hair out of place.
“ Amsterdam,” Larry announced.
They drove into Amsterdam in a heavy silence, Noelle in the back seat of the Mercedes 300 and Larry in front with the chauffeur. Metaxas had stayed at the airport to have the plane serviced. The fog was still thick and they drove slowly until suddenly, when they reached the Lindenplatz, it began to lift.
They rode through the City Square, crossed the Eider Bridge over the Amstel River and stopped in front of the Amstel Hotel. When they reached the lobby, Noelle said to Larry,“ You will pick me up at ten sharp tonight,” then turned away and walked toward the elevator, the manager of the hotel bowing and scraping at her heels. A bellboy led Larry to a small, uncomfortable single room at the back of the hotel on the first floor. The room was next to the kitchen, and through the wall Larry could hear the clatter of dishes and