“Get the caption right,” he cautioned. “Remember—it isn’t ‘Wrong-Way’ any more.”
“Nope,” she smiled. “Not with me at the controls.”
* * *
Cronkite sat beside Fawz in the golf cart as the King steered them out beyond the football field. The one-eyed ancient halted as he spotted Goldfarb and Jenny walking in the distance. And he sighed wistfully.
“Something wrong?” inquired Cronkite.
The King’s eye clung to Goldfarb’s diminishing figure with a rueful fondness. “Agajanian goot coach; best dem coach in whole world. Yah Allah,” he groaned, “where can find nudder?”
“Another?” puzzled Cronkite, arching his eyebrow in what he hoped was a splendid imitation of Dean Acheson under similar circumstances.
“Tsure, you cuckoo!” exploded Fawz. “How gung stop? Fawz U. numbair one!”
They jerked their heads skyward, startled by the sudden whine of an aircraft out of control—diving, spinning, falling, falling—and they watched, wide-eyed and mesmerized, as it crumpled, twisting against dunes in the distance while sand mushroomed up in the wake of metal’s anguished cry.
Fawz did not hesitate. He jammed his foot against the accelerator and the cart leaped toward the crash in a wild burst of speed. He zoomed, flying, to within three hundred yards of the thin-winged aircraft that lay broken against a dune, flames crackling and licking at its fuselage. The cockpit canopy slid back slowly and a space-suited aviator tumbled out, falling to the sands below.
Cronkite stared oddly at the plane, and then suddenly leaped out of the cart. “I’ll stay here,” he told Fawz inexplicably.
The King eyed him without comprehension and then, grinning from scar to scar, he lurched forward to assist the pilot, who was crawling away from the burning plane.
Cronkite could hear the mischievous cackling of the King and the pulsing rhythms throbbing from his transistor as the golf cart sprayed a path through the sands. He could see the screaming, ancient eagle circling above the distressed aviator. And he had already seen the Soviet markings on the downed reconnaissance plane. He smiled. It was good to be with a winner for a change.
He took a step backward and stumbled over a wooden cross planted in the sands. Soft winds blew.
A Crest Book published by arrangement with Doubleday & Company, Inc.
Copyright © 1963 by William Peter Blatty
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof.
PRINTING HISTORY
Doubleday edition published July 5, 1963
Second printing, November 1963
First Crest printing, November 1964
All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Crest Books are published by Fawcett World Library
67 West 44th Street, New York, N. Y. 10036.
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
eISBN 9781466834743
First eBook edition: March 2015
* Mr. Preminger is left-handed.
John Goldfarb, Please Come Home Page 16