Chapter Twenty-Three
As gray traces of dawn pushed the darkness over the western horizon, Kelly Ingersol stepped from the warmth of her car. She paused next to the dented, rusting subcompact for a long moment before stretching like a waking cat, her sore muscles aching.
She crossed the frozen street, taking care not to slip on the ice beneath her garish platform shoes.
I won’t miss this place. She thought grimly, looking at the window of her apartment three floors above.
The dilapidated red brick building, pollution staining its façade with liquid trails of black and grey, stood reaching into the overcast sky. Once an affluent section of Frankfurt, Germany, the shift of post-war economics and growing government apathy had left only a blight of urban poverty to replace the thriving residential area.
Taken over by the wraiths of the night, the neighborhood was now so dangerous only hookers, addicts and transients dared trod the streets after dark. Kelly saw their pitiful forms still filled the sidewalks and stalked the shadows on this cold, early morning.
She sidestepped the filthy man passed out in the entry alcove, empty bourbon bottle at his side, and made her way up to the landing. As she approached, the heavy wooden doors suddenly burst open and a tall, heavy-set man shouldered her out of his way as he rushed toward the parking lot. Face covered against the cold wind by a white Cashmere scarf, he looked up and down the empty street several times before crossing.
Alarm chirping, he folded himself into a bright red Mercedes hidden at the back of the lot. The expensive convertible, tucked out of casual sight among a long row of scrap yard refugees, roared to life. Putting the car in gear, the unidentified man sped away, darting down the street in an explosion of flying ice and snow.
Feeling a little guilty, are we?
She chided him as he fled past, shaking her head in evident disgust.
Better get home to the wife…wouldn’t want her to know you’ve been out playing with the naughty girls…or boys.
Climbing the stairs, she unlocked the door to her tiny room in the rundown pension and dropped her purse on a three-legged table standing in the corner.
First order of business, one long hot shower.
The water’s heat penetrated her naked body like a soothing balm, easing her restless thoughts as it unwound her tight muscles.
It’s almost over. After all this time, it’s over. I can finally relax…almost.
She turned off the shower and began to towel herself dry. Looking at her reflection in a cracked mirror on the back of the bathroom door, she eyed the bruises on her shapely body. The ugly purple spots covered her lithe form in a dappled trail from her firm breasts, down the soft curves of thighs, before ending in wide discolored rings around her ankles.
“That asshole!” She muttered incredulously to the otherwise empty room. “Just look at me!”
She was still sore from the beating she’d suffered at the hands of her ‘client’. A former East German Army Major- turned arms dealer, he liked to treat his women rough and she had to play along, enduring his foul brutality on several revolting occasions. Despite the man's vulgar sexual appetites, she found him useful. She didn't feel the least bit guilty about duping him into arranging a shipment of weapons to a group of Columbian rebels, then absconding with the three million dollar payoff.
The rebels would use the weapons to fight the drug cartels, clearly a good thing, and I get rich in the process.
Seeing her reflection again, she emitted a small mordant chuckle, realizing the small contusions made it appear as if her entire body had been dusted for fingerprints.
Returning to the only other room of her cramped accommodations, she heaved a heavy sigh. God, I can’t wait to get out of this dump and go home!
As she began to dress, she noticed how good it felt to wear panties again. Her realistic disguise as a high-priced call girl had been very effective in snaring her perverted target. She was glad to be rid of both it and him.
I can’t believe it’s been three months already.
She smiled inwardly as she remembered the way they parted company the previous day; her with a fortune in a numbered account, and him unconscious, tied to his bed.
The housekeeper will find him in a few hours, but by then I’ll be long gone.
She dropped a small leather suitcase on the threadbare floral bedspread. She turned on an obsolete T.V. sitting on a makeshift stand and half-listened to the English-language news broadcast as she packed her few remaining possessions.
Her eyes settled on a cheap painting hanging next to the wall heater. Hardly fine art, the two-foot square canvass depicted a rolling field, the hills of green grass broken by small multi-colored flowers. She stared at it for several seconds, the scene so typical of the countryside of Central Germany as to be cliché.
Lifting the ugly painting off the wall, she reached into the ragged hole in the plaster it disguised and removed a small plastic box. She lifted the lid and dumped the contents on the bed.
Her American Passport and several hundred dollars in U.S. currency joined the cosmetics already in her clutch-style purse.
Thinking about how she was going to spend her new fortune, she erased every trace of her existence from the tiny hovel. The cable news reports flowed in one ear and out the other as she decided which items she would take home and which she would throw out along the way to the Frankfurt airport. Anything even remotely connected to her false identity, including her alter-ego’s hooker-esque wardrobe, would disappear completely, right down to the spare sets of false eyelashes.
It’s finally over. I’m going home. I get to be me again…instead of Bianca the French whore.
As Bianca, Kelly had met, then seduced, Major Franz Koblenzic and her performance had been Oscar-worthy. In her Bianca persona, she could do and be things without remorse…without conscience. She had enjoyed the fancy cocktail parties and restaurant dinners Koblenzic provided, but still cringed at the things she’d done, or been forced to do, after the lights went out.
She swept her eyes around the room one last time, searching the small space for any items she might have overlooked and found none.
She closed the street door behind her for the last time, breathing a deep sigh of relief. She stopped for a moment to drape a thick blanket over the homeless man sleeping on the steps. She tucked a few left-over euros into his hand and moved toward her car.
Sitting on the tarmac at Frankfurt International Airport, the comforting whine of the 747's idling engines lulled her into a sense of relative safety and she decided to celebrate.
In a few hours I’ll be back home, very safe and very rich.
“Excuse me, miss!” she called toward a flight attendant standing sentinel near the cockpit door.
The perky blond answered the summons in a split-second. “Hello. What can I do for you?”
Kelly guessed her to be about 25, tall and slender. She scanned the attractive woman with just a twinge of feminine jealousy and read her nametag.
“Well for starters Tina, you can open a bottle of your best champagne.”
The attendant cocked one sculpted eyebrow. “Right away.”
Kelly watched her flared hips swing as she moved back toward the galley. She smiled. She always enjoyed the service in first class. Her muscles began to unknot as she relaxed in her comfortable leather seat and thought about all the money waiting for her in New York.
When the pretty flight attendant returned with the drink, she raised the glass in salute. “God bless America.” she said and drained the glass in a single draw.
She handed the delicate flute back to the wide-eyed woman. “Don't stop now girl, you're on a roll!”
The glass was quickly refilled for a second time. She took the glass from the blond and thought aloud, “It's going to be a long flight, and after three months in that upholstered cesspool, I deserve a little me-time.”
The attendant replied, confusion evident on
her angelic face. “Yes, Miss. Is there anything else before we takeoff?”
She drained a second glass of champagne before answering Tina’s inquiry.
“Some cheese and crackers…maybe some fruit.” she said. “And the rest of the champagne.”
Several minutes later the wide-bodied jet flashed down the runway with a deafening roar and lifted gracefully into the air.
"Chain Reaction" Power Failure Book I Page 30