If Mulcahy wasn't quite the sort of man you'd actually trust, he was at least the sort whose efficiency you could have confidence in.
Bogus went to the Hawelka and sat around with his few thousand dollars for three nights running, but the 'Gra! Gra!' man never showed up.
'He'll show,' said Arnold Mulcahy. His overpowering confidence was chilling.
On the fifth night, the man came into the Hawelka. He didn't pay any attention to Bogus, though; he sat far away and never looked at him once. When he paid the waiter - who of course was actually Herr Doktor Inspektor Denzel - and then put on his coat and headed for the door, Bogus thought he should make his move. Walking right up to the man as if he'd suddenly recognized an old friend, he called, 'Gra! Gra!' and grabbed the man's hand and pumped it. But the man looked petrified; he was trying so hard to get away from Bogus that he didn't even utter one little 'Gra!'
Bogus went right after him out the door and down the sidewalk, where the man tried to break into a jog to get free. 'Gra!' Bogus screamed at him again, and spinning the man around to face him, he took the envelope with all the money in it and crammed it into his trembling hand. But the man threw the envelope away and ran off as fast as he could.
Herr Doktor Inspektor Denzel came out of the Hawelka and picked the envelope up off the street. 'You should have let him come to you,' he told Trumper. 'I think you scared him off.' Herr Doktor Inspektor Denzel was a genius at understatement.
In the cab to Schwecat Airport, Arnold Mulcahy said, 'Suffering shit! Boy, did you ever blow it!'
Merrill Overturf was not in the cab.
'It's not my fault,' Bogus told Mulcahy. 'You never told me how I was supposed to give the money to him.'
'Well, I didn't think you'd try to cram it down his throat.'
'Where's Merrill Overturf?' Trumper asked. 'You said he'd be here.'
'He's not in Vienna any more,' Mulcahy said.
'Where is he?' Trumper asked, but Mulcahy wouldn't tell him.
'I'll let you know in New York,' he said.
They were late getting to New York; there'd been a delay on their Lufthansa flight. The runway in Frankfurt, their first stop, was stacked up, so they missed their first connection to New York, a TWA flight, and ended up on a big Pan Am 747. Their luggage, however, had gone through earlier on the TWA flight. No one could explain how this happened, and Mulcahy was nervous about it. 'Where'd you put the stuff?' he asked Trumper.
'In my suitcase,' Trumper said, 'with everything else.'
'When they find it in New York,' Mulcahy said, 'it would be good if you pretended to run away - you know. Not too far, of course; let them catch you. They won't hurt you or anything,' he added.
Then Kennedy was stacked up, so they circled New York for an hour. It was late afternoon when they landed, and it took them an hour to locate their bags. Mulcahy left Bogus before he went through the customs declaration gate.
'Anything to declare?' the man said, winking at Bogus. He was a big, warm-faced Negro with hands like a black bear's feet, and he started pawing through Bogus's suitcase.
There was a pretty girl in line behind him and Trumper turned around and smiled at her. Won't she be surprised when they arrest me?
The customs man had taken out the typewriter, the recorder, all the tapes, and half of Trumper's clothes, but he hadn't found the hashish yet.
Bogus looked around nervously, the way he thought a potential smuggler would look around. By now the customs man had the suitcase completely emptied on the counter and was pawing back over all the stuff. He looked up at Bogus, worried, and whispered to him, 'Where is it?'
Then Bogus started pawing through all the stuff with him; they went through it twice more, with the line behind them growing and grumbling, but they couldn't find the hashish.
'All right,' the customs man s
aid to him. 'What did you do with it?'
'Nothing,' Bogus said. 'I packed it, I know I did, honest.'
'Don't let him get away!' the customs man yelled suddenly, apparently figuring he'd better go ahead with the plan. Bogus did what Mulcahy had told him to and started to make a run for it. He ran out through the gate with the customs man yelling at him and pointing and setting off a horn that had a jarring shriek to it.
Trumper got all the way through the exit ramp and up to where the taxis were waiting before he realized that he'd probably escaped, so he ran back. As he neared the customs gate, a policeman caught up with him. 'Christ, at last!' Trumper said to the cop, who looked puzzled and handed Bogus the envelope containing the few thousand dollars. Trumper hadn't given it back to Mulcahy, who hadn't asked for it; it must have fallen out of his pocket when he'd run through the terminal.
'Thank you,' Bogus said. Then he ran back down the exit ramp, where he was finally captured by the Negro customs man who hadn't found the hashish.
'Now I've got you!' the man yelled, holding Bogus gently around the waist.