Survival Instinct (The Adventures of Eric and Ursula Book 2)

by A. D. Winch

  “You are lucky that you have your family asleep in the car, or we would take this further. Good night, Doctor.”

  The two policeman walked off, and Alexander could hear them laughing as they got into their car. He was still standing there as they drove past him, and he waved a little too enthusiastically.

  “It is time to go. We will be late,” reminded Andrea, out of the window.

  Alexander got into the car, took a long, deep breath and drove away. He was halfway down the road before he realised he had forgotten to turn the headlights on.

  “You can stop pretending to be asleep now,” said Andrea to the children.

  Eric threw the sheet back and sat up again in a shot. Ursula reluctantly got up. She was starting to feel quite sleepy. She put her head against the window and looked outside. Within a few minutes, she saw a sign for Le Bourget airport.

  The car slowed down to a halt as it approached the airport’s gate and a small hut beside it. A bored looking security guard left the hut and approached the car. Alexander showed him something and the man walked back to where he had come from. A moment later, the gate opened. The car continued into the airport and after a short distance Alexander stopped by an old hanger. It had only a small, circular window under the curved roof. A faint light radiated out from within.

  Andrea got out of the car and entered the building. She was not gone for long and when she reappeared she motioned the others to join her. They all collected their bags from the boot and then followed her inside.

  The hangar was dimly lit and sparse. It contained five aircraft, and they were spread out along its length. Ursula marvelled at the different types of aeroplane. She had never been in a hangar before and looked at the planes with wide eyes. Eric, on the other hand, ignored all of them except for a bronze Lear jet.

  As they followed Andrea, the smell of aviation fuel became more and more noticeable. Ursula looked down at the floor to see if any fuel had been spilled, but there was nothing.

  “It’s the engines,” said Eric, reading her thoughts. “I didn’t think that you would recognise it with your background. I don’t mind the smell personally. It reminds me of flights with…,” he stopped and did not finish his sentence.

  At the far end of the hangar two very large doors, leading outside, had been slid open. A single floodlight was positioned above a plane that both Eric and Ursula knew. It was the same white N262 Frégate that they had flown in before. A large wing drooped across the fuselage as if weighed down by its two propellers. Walking around the wing was a grey-haired man dressed in brown and cream; who was holding a clipboard. He heard the footsteps approaching and turned around. Instantly, they recognised Captain Hudson and his bushy grey moustache.

  “Greetings,” he called. “Just doing my final checks and then we’ll be up, up and away.”

  They returned his greetings as they approached, and Captain Hudson insisted they go straight into his aircraft. Alexander, Ursula and Eric did just this, but Andrea stayed outside to talk to him in hushed tones.

  Inside the plane, some of the chairs were missing but near the cockpit there were still four rows, each with three blue chairs. Eric put his bag on one of the rear seats and went to sit on another in the front row. Ursula wasn’t sure what she should do as she entered, so she did the same. She was feeling very tired. After sitting down next to the window, she put her seat belt on, rested her head against the plane wall and closed her eyes. When Captain Hudson and Andrea entered the plane, she was already asleep.

  “It’s good to see you all again,” said Captain Hudson as he walked down the aisle to the cockpit. “We’ll have time to talk later but right now we need to go as soon as possible. I have to get back quickly, or my Cécile will be thinking I’ve got a girlfriend.”

  He winked and sat down in the pilot’s chair.

  The engines coughed and spluttered into life, and the plane taxied out of the hangar. At the end of the runway, Captain Hudson reminded them all to put their seatbelts on.

  “We are going to have to fly through the storm. Please stay in your seats until I say otherwise. It’s going to be quite bumpy I’m afraid, so I took the liberty of putting sick bags under the chairs for when you need them.”

  “I think you’ll find that should be ‘if’ we need them,” corrected Eric.

  “Unless you’ve been conditioned against this kind of turbulence, or you’re superhuman, I’ll stand by what I said. It will be ‘when’ you need them, and there will be no shame when you vomit.”

  “If I vomit,” stated Eric firmly.

  Captain Hudson smiled, and the sides of his moustache curled upwards. Just like your father, he thought and pushed the throttle forward.

  Back to Contents

  ***

  Chapter 9 – Martin Meyer

  The plane sped down the runway, bouncing over the tarmac before the wheels left the ground, and they were airborne. Alexander looked out of the window and saw two police cars driving around the perimeter of the airport. Even though he believed their appearance may well have been another coincidence, he still breathed a sigh of relief.

  It wasn’t long before the plane began to be buffeted in the air. At first it was a gentle push from side to side but it gradually grew stronger. The windows were soon streaked with water, and bolts of lightning sporadically lit the darkness around them. Claps of thunder seemed to shake the plane and the pitter patter of rain on the fuselage grew to be as loud as the engines.

  “Sorry everyone. Until I get over the storm, this is going to get a lot worse,” Captain Hudson shouted as he kept a tight grip of the controls.

  The plane was thrown to the left and right. It seemed to drop in the sky and then be pushed up again in a second. Eric’s stomach was left in his throat. This gradually got worse but apart from the thrill of the ride Eric felt little else. Even he was surprised that he did not feel sick. He had other things on his mind anyway; he wanted to talk to Captain Hudson about his father. This was the reason that he was still awake. Beside him, Ursula had barely stirred from her slumber despite being thrown around like a rag doll in her seat.

  Eric looked across at Alexander, who had turned green and was busy vomiting. He was holding a paper bag to his mouth that was rapidly filling up. Thankfully the sound of the rain and engines drowned out the noise of him retching.

  Unlike Eric, who was enjoying the flight, and Alexander who was hating it, Andrea looked completely unmoved. She neither looked excited nor sick. In fact, she looked as calm as she always did.

  Eric continued to enjoy the thrills until they eventually broke through the storm. By this stage, Alexander was onto his second bag, and he was trying desperately to hold this one to his mouth without spilling the first. He was not in a good way.

  “We’re through,” announced Captain Hudson. “Over the last few years these storms have got worse, but you can release your seatbelts now if you wish. It will be pretty smooth from here on in.”

  Andrea stood up and took the sick bags from Alexander, who collapsed on the floor. His face was still green; his eyes were closed, and he was quietly groaning. Eric looked down at him and then joined Captain Hudson in the cockpit.

  “I wasn’t sick,” Eric announced happily.

  “Good for you,” replied Captain Hudson. “We’ll make a pilot out of you yet.”

  “No, thanks. I’m not really interested.”

  “Then what do you want to be, young Mister Meyer?” asked Captain Hudson while flicking a switch on the control panel in front of him. “A poker player?”

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it” replied Eric. “But I don’t really want to talk about me. I want to talk about my father.”

  “Of course. Take a seat,” and Captain Hudson beckoned Eric to sit in the co-pilot’s chair.

  As Eric sat down he looked out of the plane’s windscreen. It was now a calm and peaceful night. The moon was bright and shone on the storm clouds below like a torch.

  “What do y
ou want to know, Eric? We have some time. I’m all yours.”

  Eric looked at the moon and wondered what to ask first.

  “I sort of want to know everything, like how you knew him and why and what you did and when…”

  “…and where,” laughed Captain Hudson. “Of course,” and he twisted the hairs in his moustache.

  “I suppose I had better start right at the beginning. Let me just gather my thoughts for a second.” He paused and said nothing for a minute or so. “I first met your father in nineteen eighty-four. It was in an airport hotel bar in Los Angeles, a few months after the Olympics. During that time, I had been flying long haul between Europe and LA quite regularly. I had planned to have a holiday, stay a few days in LA and then hire a car to drive down to Las Vegas. This was before I had met my beautiful Cécile, you understand.

  “I was sitting at a table, planning my route, when this tall and scrawny young man walked past me. He looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders and sat down heavily at the table opposite. For a while, he just sat there with a small suitcase on his lap. He didn’t order a drink or move or do anything. Just sat there and stared somewhere into the distance. Then he opened the case, took out a pack of playing cards and put the case on the floor.

  “From the way he handled the cards, it was obvious that he was skilled. He fanned them, shuffled them, cut them and dealt them with great dexterity. And when he was dealing, I noticed that every card landed exactly on top of the other one. It was amazing. I had never seen anything like it. I was transfixed. After he dealt, he began to play poker against himself. Now there are many card games you can play against yourself but poker is simply not one of them. After all, you can’t pretend that you don’t know the other cards unless you have a memory like a goldfish. Plus you certainly cannot bluff yourself. I can’t deny that I was intrigued, and I imagine this is why the memories are still so clear.

  “I put down my map and approached your father. I asked if I could join him and if he would like to play. He took a while to reply but finally nodded, and I sat down. He said nothing apart from poker words and phrases for the duration of our game. It struck me as off that he wouldn’t talk, but I didn’t know him very well at that point, so I went along with it.

  “In a public place, especially in America, betting in public is not the done thing, so we literally played for peanuts that I took from the bar. Your father cleared me out! He thrashed me! As he collected the last of my peanuts I laughed, stood up and for reasons that I still don’t understand I ruffled his hair with my hand. I said, ‘you did well kid. Would you like a drink?’ He told me that he wasn’t a kid; that he was seventeen and asked for a cola.

  “I don’t know how he managed to get to America and I never found out. However, on many occasions during our friendship I witnessed how tenacious or single-minded he could be. Once he had set his mind to do something, he wouldn’t give up until he had achieved it. That is one thing I can certainly say about your father.

  “Over our drinks, we spoke in pigeon English and I found out that this was possibly the one occasion when his tenacity had failed him. He reluctantly told me that he had arrived in America to make his fortune playing poker. However, he had taken a flight to Los Angeles and not Las Vegas, as was his plan. He probably told me this many years later to be fair, but I’m just filling in the blanks. He had less than one hundred dollars to his name, and he wanted to use it solely for poker. However, the cost of the journey to Las Vegas and then the price of a hotel would have left him penniless in a day. Rather instinctively, I said that he could drive down with me and stay in my hotel. He viewed my offer with scepticism, which I could understand, but I could also see a spark in his eyes.

  “Next day, we drove the five hours to Las Vegas through the baked landscape. When we arrived in the city, your father was aghast at the size of the buildings, the fountains, the bright lights and the garish nature of it all. He sat in the passenger seat with eyes like saucers not knowing which way to look.

  “Our hotel was slightly less ostentatious than the others but the sofa was big so Martin was satisfied that he had somewhere to sleep.” Captain Hudson paused. “I’m not boring you, am I, Eric?”

  “Oh, no. My father never told me any of this.” Sadly he added, “He never told me much at all.”

  “Don’t take it personally, young man. Your father was always better with cards than with people. He got better as he got older, but he still struggled with conversations and both understanding and showing emotion. I think this is partly what made him so good at poker.”

  Captain Hudson flicked the altimeter with his thumb and said mischievously, “I really must get that fixed. Anyway, do you want me to continue?”

  “Yes, please,” replied Eric.

  “The evening we arrived, we went to one of the casinos and Martin sunk like a stone. There was nothing wrong with his card playing, but he just didn’t have enough money to compete. If he had ten dollars worth of chips in front of him one of the other players would raise the stake to eleven. This was beyond Martin’s means. If he had twenty dollars, the stake was raised to twenty-five and so on. He just couldn’t raise the stake and dominate the table like the other players. By the end of the first evening, he had about ten dollars left which was quite an achievement in itself. I, on the other hand, had started with five hundred dollars and had won another five hundred.

  “Martin wasn’t sad nor angry. He was only confused. He couldn’t understand how he hadn’t won. He sat on the sofa in our hotel room playing poker by himself and trying to work out what had happened and how he could beat it. His dream had evaporated in one night and, what I found heartbreaking, was that your father had done nothing wrong. To the players in Las Vegas, he was small fry, someone to be gobbled up and spat out. I hated it! I hated seeing the dreams of someone so young just vanish right in front of my eyes. So the next day, when Martin came to me and said, ‘I need more money,’ I gave him my five hundred dollar winnings. And do you know what he said to me?”

  “Thank you?” suggested Eric.

  “No, he never did,” laughed Captain Hudson, “but that’s just Martin. Instead, he told me that he would return it before the end of the day.

  “We went back to the casinos and, rather than playing myself, I watched your father. The five hundred dollars became six hundred, then eight hundred and then two thousand and finally almost three thousand. We celebrated with a burger, fries and a cola in a fast food place. Your father wasn’t excited about his winnings. It must have been more money than he had ever owned, at least I presumed, but he was simply content. Like a man who had got exactly what he expected. There was something quite zen about it. When we got back to the hotel room guess what your father did?”

  Eric shook his head, “I don’t know. Play more poker?”

  Captain Hudson laughed, “For once, he didn’t. Actually he gave me all the money he had won. Every single dollar. Then he lay down on the sofa, closed his eyes and smiled.”

  “And you gave it straight back to him?” Eric asked expectantly.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “But it was his money, he won it,” stated Eric.

  “Or was it mine because I had given it to him in the first place?” asked Captain Hudson.

  “But that’s not fair!”

  “Woo, hold on there partner. You don’t know what happened next. I’m not a bad guy.”

  “Sorry,” said Eric sheepishly.

  “While your father had been playing I had noticed a poster for the Grand Prix of Poker at the Golden Nugget hotel. The entrance fee was two thousand dollars with an additional thousand needed for chips. I made a phone call and signed up your father while he slept.

  “The next day, I told him what I had done as we walked to the Golden Nugget hotel. I think we were probably the only players to do so. Flash cars, limos, even helicopters, dropped off the other competitors – a mix of serious poker players, rich businessmen, bankers and playboys who played fo
r fun. This was a big event, but your father just didn’t seem to comprehend. For him, it was no different to our game for peanuts. He didn’t notice the players chain smoking expensive cigars, those wearing designer suits or the desirable women who hung around. The only thing that Martin Meyer ever noticed, with the possible exception of your mother, was the cards.”

  Eric didn’t say anything but this stung him. He knew it to be true. Despite all the things he had achieved, he had always struggled to get his father’s attention.

  “At the start of the day, no one gave Martin a second look. By the end of the day, with ten thousand dollars in his kitty, people started to take notice. I won’t bore you with details but your father beat them all and kept winning – the bankers, businessmen, playboys and the players, including two of the biggest in Kev Davidson and Mel Stephens. Do you know how much he had won altogether when the Grand Prix had finished?”

  “No,” replied Eric, but he was eager to find out.

  Captain Hudson said slowly, “Sixty-five thousand. In today’s money that would probably be worth double that. Everyone started talking about Martin Meyer or ‘the Kid’ as they had named him.

  “Your father was happy. I honestly believe the money was just numbers to him. He had done what he had dreamed of and what he had expected to do. He had come to Vegas and won.”

  A voice came over the radio, asking for their plane to respond. Captain Hudson put on his headset and had a brief conversation. When he had finished, he turned to Eric.

  “We are going to run into the outskirts of that storm again before we reach Prague. You had better go back to your seat. Please put on your seat belt and tell the others to do the same. Thank you.”

  Eric did as he was told. He had found out more about his father than he had hoped for, and he had enough to digest for the time being.

  The plane bumped and shook as it approached Prague. Alexander’s stomach was empty, and he didn’t vomit again despite the sick bag clamped to his mouth. They landed in the rain and Captain Hudson taxied to a private hangar. Once the plane had stopped, Andrea jumped out, and ten minutes later she returned driving a silver Range Rover.