Yes, I sure could see he was beautifully busy. "Please tell Mr. Bury," I sneezed, "that both the Signal Corps and Miss Agnes have snake detectors. Good-bye."

I hung up. Well, that was out of the road. Did I need to call the Security Chief at Octopus and tell him I would not be around? Then I remembered that anything connected with me came up blank on the computer and they couldn't tell whether I was working or not. And Miss Pinch might have a bug on that line. Also, IRS might trace the call. In fact, they might be tracing me right now....

SCRAPE!

The door of the phone kiosk flew open.

I cowered back, but not in time!

It was the owner of the hat and coat!

He loomed like a mountain!

A huge paw seized me!

I was yanked ferociously out of the kiosk.

I saw a fist cocked in midair.

WHAM!

An anvil seemed to hit me in the eye!

Down I went on the floor. THUD went my head against the edge of the phone booth!

PLOWIE!

Into the air around me went a cloud of stars.

The sound wasn't from the stars. It was from a boot in my side.

He tore the mackinaw off of me. He grabbed the hat.

THUNK!

He kicked me again in the side.

I shut my eyes tight. I was waiting for the next kick. It didn't come. I opened my eyes.

TWO PAIRS OF HEAVY BOOTS! Right by my face!

The two tough men had caught up with me!

I was done for!

I looked up. One bent over and yanked me to my feet.

The other was reaching into his pocket. Gun? Handcuffs?

The first one said, "Are you Achmed Ben Nutti?"

Oh, my Gods. At Pan Am I had asked for reservations in the name of Inkswitch. Achmed Ben Nutti was the United Arab League name I had been travelling under and had passports for.

I was too weak to fight. Chinning was in order. "Yes, I am Achmed Ben Nutti and I have diplomatic status! You can't arrest me!"

"Arrest you?" he said. "No, no, Comrade. We are from the Bolshoi Travel Agency. We have been trying hard to catch you and give you your ticket!"

He was dusting me off and it made a cloud of mustard-pepper-Tabasco odors fly into the air. We both sneezed.

"Here are all your flight papers," said the other tough-looking man. "We have already found and checked your baggage aboard. You had better hurry, Comrade. That's your flight they're calling now."

"He doesn't seem to be able to walk," said the other, sneezing again. "Let's carry him over to the first-class gate and get them to let us through. We can dump him aboard."

We went through the rat maze of detectors, past the cooperative attendants, down a gangway and into the side of a ship. We were the last ones aboard. I had almost missed the plane! It evidently was an earlier one!

They dumped me in a first-class seat.

Utanc! She was caped and hooded and veiled, sitting right there!

"Darling!" I cried.

Utanc grabbed a passing blue sleeve. "Purser," she said, "I see you have a lot of empty seats at the back. Could you please dump my owner into one of them? He is making me feel like I'm going to sneeze!"

He gave a snappy salute. "Pan Am service, ma'am."

The purser snapped his fingers for a stewardess and in no time the two of them had me clear at the back of the first-class compartment and were covering my clothes with a plastic sheet and buckling me in.

I sank back. Surrounded with the posh luxury of a first-class superjet, complete with classic Greek temples in the murals, I sighed a sigh, somewhat interrupted with a sneeze, as anxiety ebbed out.

And so, gratefully, I saw the landing strip race by and presently, bending sideways without too much pain, watched the smoggy skyline of New York grow small and fade away.

Thank Gods, I had made it.

Later, the dinner being served from carts on the aisle was delicious. But a glass of wine, no matter if served with great ceremony in first class, aloft, does not substitute for a good crystal ball.

With its usual evil grin, fiendish Fate had been busy, just ahead, sorting out available disasters. The one it chose to first serve up for me was horrible. The very memory of it makes me wince.

The THY (Turkish Airlines) plane slid down toward Afyon. The snow-capped peaks lined up to point at Afyonkarahisar's wintry finger. It was a striking view of a bleak terrain: how could any human beings possibly survive in the villages which dotted the hostile mountains and the plain? A scene of utter desolation, it had one saving grace: I was home! The optical illusion, which made a mountaintop and marked the Voltar base, was still in place—suitably wintry now—so I was not only home, I was still connected to Voltar, my real native land.

And I was still alive!

What a relief!

We landed and while we waited for the landing stage to roll up and the door to open, Utanc stepped close to me. She put her dainty hand upon my sleeve, a favor I so seldom enjoyed. She looked at me, her eyes large and dark and pleading above her veil.

"O my master," she whispered, "we still have a little money left." She was holding her purse open now. It was absolutely stuffed with money. "May I keep it?"

"Oh, dear Utanc, what a manager you are! Of course you may keep it." I was quite touched. Imagine doing that whole trip on much less than a hundred thousand dollars! Besides, I still had millions in the gold I had brought from Voltar.

She closed the purse with a snap and was first down the plane steps.

Some people were at the airport gate. The taxi driver, Karagoz and, ah yes, Utanc's two little servant boys!

Cloak pressed against her by the wintry wind, Utanc raced toward the gate!

The two little boys burst through and, crowing with delight, sped across the tarmac to meet her!

She gathered them up, hugging them.

Both of them had their arms around her neck and she was kissing their cheeks through her veil. What a bundle of welcome! They were trying to tell her everything that had happened since she had been gone and trying to find out what she had brought for them all at the same time.

They ignored me as I limped painfully by them.

Karagoz ignored me. The taxi driver ignored me. I went through the terminal to the parking area. Karagoz had evidently brought the boys in Utanc's BMW for there it sat alongside the taxi driver's taxi.

The wind was very dry and cold and a bit gritty. I was getting chilled and it wasn't doing my unhealed wounds any good.

Finally they came through the parking lot door, the two small boys chattering and excited, eyes glowing. They did look somewhat like Rudolph Valentino and James Cagney as they must have looked as children. That surely had been a successful present!

Utanc was saying to the taxi driver, "Now, here are the shipping manifests for the trunks. They couldn't come on this plane but when they do, you be sure to hire a truck to pick them up. Now we will go home."

Karagoz stepped close to her and whispered something in her ear.

Utanc said, "Ice cream! How would you two dear little boys like some ice cream over in town?"

They shrieked their approval of the plan.

Karagoz, Utanc and the two little boys got in her BMW, and with veiled Utanc behind the wheel, it rocketed out of the parking lot, screeched its tires as it turned into the road to Afyon and was gone.

The taxi driver loaded his taxi with the bags we had checked through on this plane and shortly we were headed for the villa.

"Well, how is she working out?" he flung back at me as he dodged through the camels and donkey carts.

"She is absolutely amazing," I said. "Not only is she a great slave but she also happens to be the best (bleeped) money manager you ever saw! She handled all our funds on that very expensive trip and just now when we got off the plane she must have had nearly all of the original money left. Amazing! I don't know how she did it!"