Russian Spring Read Online Free PDF Page B

of a reception area, where more people movers were disgorging yet more passengers from other gates into the hub of the radial terminal.
    At the far end of the reception area, barely visible through the godawful mob scene, stood a line of customs booths, a customs official in a fancy military-looking uniform in each. Signs in French and English above the line of booths designated “Common European Passports” and “All Others.” There were four of the former, where people flashed their passports and sailed right through, and only two of the latter, where long lines of people were already queued up, and where the customs guards seemed to be checking every last passport through computer terminals.
    Upon being greeted with this anti-American outrage and realizing it would be about an hour before he could clear passport control, after which he would have to play baggage-carousel roulette and then probably stand on an even slower and longer line with his baggage to clear customs, Jerry found the zone, and the sleeplessness, and the fatigue, and the babble of incomprehensible tongues finally catching up with him with a vengeance. His knees dissolved to rubber, his mouth, he realized, tasted like copper, his head was bonging, and to make matters worse, amazingly enough, half the people in the reception area seemed to be lighting up noxious cigarettes that filled the air with acrid, choking smoke.
    “Welcome to Common Europe,” he muttered miserably under his breath, and numbly elbowed his way through the mob to the end of one of the long, crawling lines.
    “Monsieur Jerry Reed, Monsieur Jerry Reed, presentez-vous à la caisse spéciale à la gauche de la salle. . . .” said a female voice overthe P.A. system, barely audible over the tumult, and in incomprehensible French at that. “Jeez, now what am I supposed to—”
    “Mr. Jerry Reed, Mr. Jerry Reed, please report to the special-handling booth at the left of the room. . . .”
    Jerry broke into a cold sweat. Good Lord, did the long arm of the Pentagon extend
this
far, just when he thought he was home free?
    Woodenly, fearfully, Jerry bulled his way through the crush toward the left side of the room, drawing angry scowls, more than one elbow in the ribs, and getting pinked on the forearm with a lit cigarette.
    “Jerry! Jerry! Over here!”
    It was André Deutcher’s voice calling out to him. Jerry swam through the crowd toward him, where he stood beside yet another customs booth that Jerry hadn’t noticed before. There was a man inside it who was not wearing a uniform, and a man standing with André who was, although this one was plain black with no insignia; but there was no line of waiting passengers.
    “Welcome to France, my friend,” André said. He looked around the reception area with a moue of aristocratic distaste. “Would you please let me have your baggage claim and your passport so we can remove ourselves from this melée?”
    Numbly, Jerry handed them over. André handed the baggage claim to the uniformed man, who disappeared with it through the customs booth. “Marcel will see to your baggage,” André said. He handed Jerry’s passport to the plainclothes customs official, who stamped it immediately, handed it to Jerry, said, “Bienvenue à Paris, Monsieur Reed,” and actually gave him a little salute.
    André whisked him along a corridor and into a little elevator which speedily deposited them in a hallway that led directly through a private exit to a curb outside the terminal, where a vaguely elliptical black Citröen limousine sat gleaming in the eye-killing bright morning sunshine, all low-slung sweeping, stylized Deco pseudo-streamlining and smoked glass, looking like a Frank R. Paul version of a Martian Mafia don’s flying saucer.
    “Super bagnole, eh?” André said, as a liveried chauffeur in a uniform matching Marcel’s emerged from the driver’s seat, and opened the back curbside door for them smartly. “Fuel cell version; we