The Diaries - 01

by Chuck Driskell

  “It’s been, God, two years, am I right? Thomas, the guy you dated from Idar-Oberstein…the chef?” Hanna turned, speaking into her friend’s ear. “Am I right?”

  Monika placed the curling iron on the counter, jerking the 220-volt plug from the wall. She turned to her friend, taking her wine and sipping it. “Yes, that was the last time, and it was awful. And, unlike you, I don’t feel the need to try out every man I speak to.” She offered a tight smile and walked into the bedroom.

  Hanna followed her, playfully arguing the way best friends—friends who know everything there is to know about each other—are prone to do. “It’s not that I need to try them out. It’s just, well…I get attached extremely quickly.”

  Monika pulled her jeans on and cut her eyes at her friend. “Yeah, literally attached, like in the first hour after you meet them at the club.”

  Hanna turned and stalked back to the kitchen, refilling her wine. Her voice was a distant yell. “Well maybe you should try it sometime!”

  Monika fastened her bra and dropped back onto the edge of the bed. Though she would never admit it, she did want to feel Gage on top of her. But it wasn’t about the sex. Sure, that part would be wunderbar, but she wanted to feel his chest against hers. To feel his heartbeat. She wanted his breath on her neck, his fingers in her hair. To lie there together and chat, the way lovers do, and tell each other the things that only a truly intimate couple can. She pressed her lips together, feeling the flush on her cheeks.

  “Look at you,” Hanna said knowingly, as she reentered the room. “I’ve got twenty euro you were daydreaming about him…and it.”

  “It?”

  “Hell yes, it. Big? Small? Thick? Thin?” Hanna smirked, hand gesturing to her midsection. “They’re circumcised, you know…Americans.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Trust me, darling, I know. Believe me I know.”

  “That’s all you think about,” Monika managed through a fit of laughter.

  Two and a half hours later, as she neared Frankfurt on Autobahn-5, Monika cracked the window and smoked her last cigarette. She’d just spoken with Gage; their dinner was set. He’d been excited and nervous on the phone, making her pulse race, hoping. Hoping.

  Light snowflakes whizzed past her car as she moved into the right lane, not wanting the stress of the left lanes with the Porsches and Audis and all the blinkers and flashing lights. No, she wanted to enjoy her last cigarette of the next few days as she did daydream about Gage, Hanna’s perverted mind be damned.

  She’d been attracted to Gage from day one. But there was something about a man who didn’t try to get in her pants right away, and it had thrown her. He wanted to know her: Monika the person. And on their weekends together, they would share everything: movies, books, thoughts, food. But upon reflection over the past weeks, after the big kiss, Monika realized that Gage spoke to her all the time, but never really told her anything. She knew he was from New York; she knew his parents had died in an accident. That was all. There was nothing else. Other than his tastes in food and the arts, she had no clue who the hell Gage Hartline really was.

  After a long drag on the cigarette, Monika pitched it out the window. She cracked both windows, allowing the frigid, swirling wind to fumigate the cabin. As she eased the car to the right onto the Frankfurter Kreuz, it was readily apparent to her that her lack of knowledge—the sheer mystery—of who Gage Hartline really was, had done one singular thing: it had made her desire for him grow.

  Monika retrieved a finger toothbrush from her purse, preloaded with peppermint toothpaste. As she slowed, driving the small car into the city, she brushed her teeth frantically, doing all she could to remove the cigarette taste.

  Because she planned to kiss Gage tonight, and more than once.

  ***

  The area around the Alte Oper, or old opera, in Frankfurt, is one of the most celebrated, undisturbed areas of the city. Much of the center-city was leveled by Allied bombs during World War II, making the preserved plaza around the Opera unique. Predictably, the historic quarter attracts many people, locals and tourists alike. While typically teeming with people, the cold must have been keeping the crowds at bay. Flurries buzzed about, threatening a full-scale November snowstorm—a rarity, even in Germany.

  Gage sat on a stone wall under a large, leafless linden tree, watching the square from behind his dark glasses. He glanced around casually, trying to determine if the money was under surveillance. Jean was a professional, and there were certainly hundreds of vantage points the dead drop could be watched from.

  After an hour of bone-chilling cold—never spotting any measure of reconnaissance—Gage stood, feeling his knees creak. He crossed the broad plaza, still scanning the area, looking at faces, windows, ledges on rooftops. He approached the bike rack, littered with bicycles that no one would dare use on such a day. Gage pretended to struggle with a cold chain lock on the bike at the end, glancing into the inch-wide space behind the sign displaying the universal symbol of a mother walking with her child, marking the area as a pedestrian-only zone. Just as he had done many times before, Gage slid a lightning-fast hand into the space, liberating the thin envelope from the crevice. It went into his interior jacket pocket as Gage turned and hurried away from the area.

  He hustled across the square and into the Alte Oper U-bahn station, stopping at the base of the stairs and looking up the stairs behind him, waiting. His eyes were wide behind the glasses, shooting lasers up the flight of steps. Heartbeat…in his chest…his neck…ears.

  Did Jean hear something on the Nikkei bugs? Something that roused his curiosity?

  Gage waited. Ten seconds. Twenty. This was a critical moment, with Gage knowing that if Jean intended to reacquire him, he would have had some sort of well-concealed surveillance waiting at the—

  There!

  A man had been about to come down the stairs. He saw Gage awaiting him, making his eyes widen in surprise. Wearing a black leather jacket, hands in his pockets, the man froze for a second before glancing at his watch. Then, as if he’d forgotten to do something, he turned and hurried away. It was an amateur move, indeed, but one of the toughest to avoid. Tailing someone to find them turn and stare at you, especially around a blind corner (or down a flight of stairs), and not reacting at all is one of the toughest moves in the business. Gage’s tail had just failed miserably.

  He quickly assessed the long station. There were twenty or so people awaiting the next train. One track led away from the city, the other to the Hauptbahnhof. Gage stood at the stairs, waiting for the man to reappear. The only other people to come down the stairs before Gage boarded the train were a young father and his son. They never glanced at Gage and waited on the subway leading to the northwest.

  He boarded.

  As the quiet German train buzzed to the next station, Gage ripped the envelope open looking for a small, hair-like transmitter—a tracking bug. There was none. After several stops, Gage exited the subway and ran up the escalator into the Hauptbahnhof for the second time that day. As it remained nearly twenty-four hours a day, the Bahnhof was a collision of humanity. Trains departed every few minutes for such exotic destinations as Paris, Rome, Moscow and London. People of all sizes, all colors, and all economic classes scurried about like ants on their own specific mission. It was the perfect place to lose a tail.

  Rushing through the crowd, doubling back twice, Gage ducked into the Starbucks near the east entrance, taking a table in the back and watching the crowd coming and going.

  He saw nothing of interest.

  A man at the adjacent table spoke to Gage, an American, working on his laptop, asking him in horrific German if he knew where he could buy a flash drive. Gage answered him quickly, telling him of an electronics store two subway stops to the north. The man thanked him, packing his bag and exiting the coffee shop.

  Gage turned back to the entrance, narrowing his eyes. It had to have been Jean’s man at the Opera. As he suspected, Jean knew Gage had found so
mething. But could he have known what? Did he have a camera at his disposal in the building? Doubtful, but he could’ve used one from outside. He would have seen Gage carrying the overloaded pack away. Doing it twice.

  He nodded. That’s what happened.

  Gage moved back into the train station, negotiating the main walkway at the head of the platforms. It was doubtful Jean would have called all his dogs on Gage. Probably just a grunt giving cursory surveillance, seeing what Gage was up to. Jean probably knew he could reacquire Gage back at his flat.

  His flat.

  Shit.

  Gage couldn’t go back there. Not now.

  Added to his inability to go to his home, Gage had a fleeting worry about the diaries. But Jean wouldn’t know about the urban storage space Gage kept, would he? It was located in an old neighborhood, well-hidden underneath an apartment building, under heavy lock and key. Gage barely had enough money to keep the damned thing, but his entire emergency contingency was in that storage unit and, if something ever went bad, it would be his only ticket out.

  The American ex-pat burst from the train station’s north exit, jumping into a Mercedes taxi at the head of the line. “Hauptwache,” he sputtered. The driver looked annoyed at such a short fare, but put the car in drive and headed east.

  After paying the driver ten euro, double the fare, he stepped from the cab and crossed the street. He’d watched out the rear window of the taxi the entire way, seeing no one. Following twenty minutes of standing in a blustery alley, watching the remaining gray light slip from the sky, Gage emerged, satisfied that the tail was successfully lost.

  A restaurant across the street, Italian, looked warm and inviting. Gage’s stomach rumbled and he realized he hadn’t eaten in nearly six hours, and nothing of substance in days. He opened his cell phone and gave Monika instructions on how to get there. She was fifteen minutes away.

  The maître d’ welcomed him, showing him to a darkened corner table. Gage shed his sunglasses and, as a final precaution, turned off his cellphone and removed the battery, depositing both into his jacket pocket. Finally able to relax, he settled back into his chair with an ice water. He closed his eyes, taking deep breaths as his mind dueled over thoughts of Monika and the diaries.

  ***

  “He knew he was being tailed. Bastard grabbed the money, ran, then stood there waiting on me down at the platform,” said the man on the other end of the line.

  Jean leaned back on his sofa, swirling the Latour in the Bordeaux glass, ruefully shaking his head. Without even having seen what happened, he could picture it perfectly. “Did you just fall off the ass end of the Idiot Truck? You’re telling me you got burned by the oldest damn trick in the book?” He chuckled loudly without a trace of true good humor. “Had you kept your eyes down and just entered the station, you’d be watching him right now.”

  “Easier said than done, Jean. You and I both know it’s startling as hell when you’re trying to catch up to a man, only to find him turn and put the evil eye on you.”

  “So says the loser, Fredi. So says the loser. I knew a boxer once…he was terrible. And after every loss he would always be upbeat, looking for a scrap of sunshine, saying he could’ve easily won had he not gotten caught by the right hook…or the uppercut…or the left cross.” Jean rubbed the long bare leg next to him. He held a finger to his mouth as she began to say something.

  “Do you want me to call out a grid search on him? Maybe get commerce on it? We could grab him using his cell phone or a credit card?”

  Jean shook his head. “Did you not hear me earlier, Fredi? This is my own op. It’s personal. Just go to his flat and don’t be seen. He’ll resurface. Gage Hartline can’t afford not to.” He clicked off the phone, dropped it onto the couch and buried his head between the woman’s ample breasts, making a motorboat sound into her flesh.

  On the other end of the line, Fredi Hutier displayed his middle finger into the phone before he started the Opel and made his way toward Hartline’s flat. The flurries had changed to full-on snow.

  ***

  The restaurant seemed warmer and cozier due to the large flakes falling outside of the honey colored glass. There were only a few patrons, and the server kept his distance, discreetly making sure they had full glasses but taking care not to bother the couple.

  Gage pushed his lasagna away, placing the remainder of the bread into the oval-shaped dish. The conversation had been sparse; Monika measured him, giving him a look loaded with uncertainty.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “You’re very tense,” she answered without hesitation. “What’s going on? Work okay?”

  “I was just hungry,” he replied with a smile. “I get quiet when I get hungry.”

  She seemed to accept the answer, matching his grin. God if she wasn’t beautiful. Monika Brink had shoulder length black hair, olive skin and chocolate eyes. She lived in Saarbrücken, on the French border, tracing her family’s heritage to the Moors and southern France. A product of a working-class German family, she hadn’t had the money to attend university out of school. A hard worker, she underwent a brief apprenticeship and was now a popular hairstylist with a solid book of clients. Determined to get her degree, Monika attended school at night and was only one semester from finishing with a degree in human resources. She often mentioned to Gage that she probably made more money now than she would ever make in the professional world (unless she climbed to the highest of human resources positions); it was simply the accomplishment of finishing she wanted to attain.

  Gage had not been in a relationship with anyone, not even a one-night fling, since before the business at Crete. He had met Monika in a Frankfurt book store. It was one of the Barnes & Noble types that had spread to Europe from the U.S. She had been there visiting relatives, happy to escape for an afternoon of quiet study. Gage first laid eyes on Monika when she was on her way to a comfortable seat, her arms laden with heavy books. She stumbled on someone’s feet, spilling her frothy latte on Gage’s legs and shoes. He politely waved her off, grabbing some napkins from the café and mopping up the mess. Monika had tried to engage him in conversation but, as he did with most everyone, he politely deflected her.

  They both read for a bit. The seat next to him opened up. She crossed the sitting area, plopping down, touching his arm. “I’m sorry I spilled my latte on you.”

  “It was nothing,” he’d answered, only cutting his eyes up for a moment.

  Monika had cocked her head, studying him for a moment. “You have very kind eyes,” she’d said in her native German. “But there is something else in them. Something you don’t let other people know about.”

  That made him look up.

  “I’m not trying to be rude,” Monika had said.

  “I can tell,” he replied, putting a finger in his book and closing it.

  “I don’t feel like studying today.” She’d turned in her seat, tucking one foot underneath her body. “Tell me all about your favorite book.”

  “My favorite book?”

  “Well, I assume you read,” she laughed, gesturing to the small pile in front of him. They were military history books. Her laugh made him display a rare smile. They began to talk, the chat morphing into a three hour talk across the street in a bar. She drank beer; he had water. When darkness fell, they said their goodbyes with Monika scrawling her mobile number for him. Since that time, beginning gradually, they would meet to go to a movie or a football match. The relationship, while platonic, had deepened. Gage suspected she dated men in Saarbrücken and, while he felt sharp pangs of jealousy, he hadn’t said anything about it. And what could he say? More recently, though, Monika’s feelings (and actions) toward him had been more overt. She would hold his hand, pat his knee, hand lingering; she looked at him differently, sometimes adjusting his hair, scratching the back of his head with her nails. Even still, when they spent nights together, Gage would sleep on his couch, Monika in the bed. It’s just how things had progressed. But two weeks before, the
last time he had seen her, she had kissed him, full on the lips as she left his flat after a lazy weekend of reading books, watching mindless American movies and eating good food.

  It had been his finest moment since Crete, sending him soaring through the heavens. The kiss had gone on for what seemed like an eternity, and he hadn’t stopped thinking about it until she walked through the door an hour earlier.

  The tension from their previous encounter hung in the air; they both felt it. Monika Brink, hairstylist and student, ten years his junior, would catch Gage’s eye and curl her mouth as they talked about mundane items. Finally, she downed the rest of her red wine and looked for the waiter.

  “Ready to go?”

  A heavy thought fell on Gage as he thought about Jean and his goons. He and Monika couldn’t go to his flat, and he couldn’t tell her why. She had no earthly idea how he made his living. Like the few other civilians who knew him, she thought he was a contract project manager in Germany on a work visa—his listed profession through Peter Ernst, his “employer”. Whenever asked, he gave her bland, rote answers about his past, deftly turning the conversation to something more appealing. But now his mind was focused on not getting picked up by Jean’s surveillance, at least not until he’d given the diaries to the right people. Once they were out of his possession, he would call Jean and simply tell him the entire story. But for Jean to find out now would be a problem. Though he knew nothing about their value, Gage estimated, to the right person, the diaries were probably worth a fortune. And Jean would want them for himself.

  “Why don’t we jump in your car and go to your house until Tuesday?” Gage asked, sounding forced and feeling it the second it left his lips.

  She wrinkled her nose, puzzled. “But I just drove almost three hours to see you, and now it’s snowing.” Monika twisted her head, staring out of the amber glass. “Snowing hard.”

  Gage placed thirty euro on the counter for the server, waiting until the Italian man had made change and moved away. He stammered and stuttered, unused to dating on the fly, finally blurting a question that shocked his date. “Then do you want to get a hotel room?”