"Brian Engle," he said. "I'm pleased to meet you, although the circumstances are - " He shrugged helplessly. What were the circumstances, exactly? He could not think of an adjective which would adequately describe them.
"Bit bizarre, aren't they?" Hopewell agreed. "Best not to think of them right now, I suppose. Does the crew answer?"
"No," Brian said, and abruptly struck his fist against the door in frustration.
"Easy, easy," Hopewell soothed. - "Tell me about the cap, Mr Engle. You have no idea what satisfaction and relief it would give me to address you as Captain Engle."
Brian grinned in spite of himself. "I am Captain Engle," he said, "but under the circumstances, I guess you can call me Brian."
Nick Hopewell seized Brian's left hand and kissed it heartily. "I believe I'll call you Savior instead," he said. "Do you mind awfully?"
Brian threw his head back and began to laugh. Nick joined him. They were standing there in front of the locked door in the nearly empty plane, laughing wildly, when the man in the red shirt and the man in the crew-necked jersey arrived, looking at them as if they had both gone crazy.
3
Albert Kaussner held the hair in his right hand for several moments, looking at it thoughtfully. It was black and glossy in the overhead lights, a right proper pelt, and he wasn't at all surprised it had scared the hell out of the little girl. It would have scared Albert, too, if he hadn't been able to see it.
He tossed the wig back into the seat, glanced at the purse lying in the next seat, then looked more closely at what was lying next to the purse. It was a plain gold wedding ring. He picked it up, examined it, then put it back where it had been. He began walking slowly toward the back of the airplane. In less than a minute, Albert was so struck with wonder that he had forgotten all about who was flying the plane, or how the hell they were going to get down from here if it was the automatic pilot.
Flight 29's passengers were gone, but they had left a fabulous - and sometimes perplexing - treasure trove behind. Albert found jewelry on almost every seat: wedding rings, mostly, but there were also diamonds, emeralds, and rubies. There were earrings, most of them five-and-dime stuff but some which looked pretty expensive to Albert's eye. His mom had a few good pieces, and some of this stuff made her best jewelry look like rummage-sale buys. There were studs, necklaces, cufflinks, ID bracelets. And watches, watches, watches. From Timex to Rolex, there seemed to be at least two hundred of them, lying on seats, lying on the floor between seats, lying in the aisles. They twinkled in the lights.
There were at least sixty pairs of spectacles. Wire-rimmed, horn-rimmed, gold-rimmed. There were prim glasses, punky glasses, and glasses with rhinestones set in the bows. There were Ray-Bans, Polaroids, and Foster Grants.
There were belt buckles and service pins and piles of pocket-change. No bills, but easily four hundred dollars in quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. There were wallets - not as many wallets as purses, but still a good dozen of them, from fine leather to plastic. There were pocket knives. There were at least a dozen hand-held calculators.
And odder things as well. He picked up a flesh-colored plastic cylinder and examined it for almost thirty seconds before deciding it really was a dildo and putting it down again in a hurry. There was a small gold spoon on a fine gold chain. There were bright speckles of metal here and there on the seats and on the floor, mostly silver but some gold. He picked up a couple of these to verify the judgment of his own wondering mind: some were dental caps, but most were fillings from human teeth. And, in one of the back rows, he picked up two tiny steel rods. He looked at these for several moments before realizing they were surgical pins, and that they belonged not on the floor of a nearly deserted airliner but in some passenger's knee or shoulder.
He discovered one more passenger, a young bearded man who was sprawled over two seats in the very last row, snoring loudly and smelling like a brewery.
Two seats away, he found a gadget that looked like a pacemaker implant.