The Diaries - 01 (2 page)

“How do you know?”
the captain asked.

“I’m pretty
certain.”
 
Gage placed his hand on the
pilot’s shoulder and led him into the galley, his voice lowering.
 
“I suppose you will be radioing ahead to the Frankfurt
authorities.”

The German
nodded.
 
“Yes, of course.
 
They have already been called.”

Gage made a pained
face.
 
“I need a favor, then.
 
I need you to inform your crew that my name
isn’t to be relayed to the polizei, or involved in any incident report.
 
Give your flight attendants the credit
instead.”

Puzzlement appeared
on the captain’s face.
 
“But you are a
hero.
 
They will want to thank you for
helping.
 
From what I hear from my chief
attendant, you obviously have some sort of specialized training.”

“That’s just
it.
 
Yes, I have training, but it’s the
type of thing that doesn’t need to appear in the
Frankfurt
Allgemeine
, understand?
 
I work undercover, oftentimes for the German
government.
 
If you were to include my
name, I would have to tell them,” Gage lifted the laminated badge, reading the
man’s name, “that Captain Thomas
Börse
didn’t do as I
asked, even after I explained why.
 
I’m
certain they wouldn’t be very happy with you.”

Captain
Börse’s
eyes widened a bit. “Is this a threat?”

Gage’s tone stayed
even and businesslike.
 
“
Mein Herr
, I’ve seen it before.
 
Someone like you ignores my reasonable
instructions and your government, in order to punish you, goes and starts doing
the little things that can make your life miserable.
 
Things like scrutinizing your previous tax
returns, or watching
who
you spend your
time with on long overnights, you know?”

The pilot’s lips
parted and he flushed before nodding quickly. “Ah, yes…no one wants to make an
enemy over what was a heroic action.
 
I
will tell my crew to take credit for his being subdued.”

“And I will need
to be off the aircraft
first
.”

“I will radio
ahead and tell them there was a mistake.
 
Then I will not report the man until after the front of the aircraft has
disembarked.
 
Good enough?”

Gage nodded.

He gestured toward
the front of the aircraft.
 
“You can move
in front of business class to the jump seat.
 
As soon as we land in Frankfurt, we can have you off the aircraft first.”
 
The pilot gave Gage a good-natured clap on
his shoulder.

Gage shook the
man’s hand, hitching his head aft.
 
“Just
in case, you might go ahead and zip-tie the man’s hands, but I seriously doubt
he’ll give you any more trouble.
 
And if
he does, just come get me.”

The German captain
spoke to his flight attendants before one of them led Gage to the jump
seat.
 
Gage accepted a bottle of mineral
water from the beaming lady before calming himself with deep breaths, donning
his sunglasses, and eventually taking a thirty minute nap.

After
apologizing to anyone who would listen, the man in 29B sat forward with his
hands zip-tied tightly behind his back.
 
Other than a few sniffles, he didn’t utter another sound the rest of the
flight.

***

Frankfurt, Germany

Three hours later,
Gage walked into his small flat, depression smacking him in the face like an
abusive roommate.
 
He stared at the darkened
domicile, curling his lip and calculating the number of minutes before Monika’s
visit.
 
Unable to stomach sitting idle,
he unpacked and left again, braving the cold wind for a quick walk to the
neighborhood
supermarkt
.
 
He lived north of Frankfurt in the town of
Bad Homburg, in the lowest rent area available.
 
At the grocery, Gage purchased just enough items for a few days, knowing
he was scheduled to discuss a possible job in the morning.
 
In his line of work, it was best to keep
stable food or only a day or two’s worth of perishable goods.
 
Long trips, if one hoped to pay his bills,
were inevitable.

The sun was now
behind the horizon, highlighting the Taunus Mountains to the west in amber
coronas rimmed by a chilly, purple sky.
 
The icy wind bit at Gage as he walked.
 
Friday night.
 
He studied the
faces of the people on the street as he made his way back toward his flat.
 
Fathers had an extra bounce in their step, on
their way home to spend a toasty weekend with wife and kids, making cocoa and
playing games and perhaps a
Fussball
match on television.
 
Young couples walked hand in hand, warm with
the anticipation of a sumptuous meal and a long night of adventurous
lovemaking.
 
Watching each of them, with
their light gait and cheery eyes, made Gage feel all the more colder, all the
more alone.

He arrived back at
his flat, glancing around with disdain at the lack of anything that made him
feel truly at home.
 
Since he had transitioned
back into civilian life—at least, his version of it—he had not felt any desire,
any need to celebrate life in any way.
 
There were no pictures, no favorite books, no espresso machines; his
flat was
spartan
, outfitted with only the items he
needed to subsist.

After stowing his purchases,
still restless from the incident and again not feeling like staring at the
dingy walls, Gage walked down
Wiesenstrasse
, using
the ATM at the corner bank.
 
He held the
receipt under the street light, frowning as he looked at how much (or how
little) money he had to his name.
 
His
only other money was a stack of contingency bills, five-thousand euro, hidden
downtown in the storage space near the
Leipziger
Strasse
U-
bahn
stop.
 
But that was only for emergencies—dire
emergencies.
 
Locked in the safe, with
the money, were his outs: a fresh passport in another name, a pistol, and a
folder with detailed intelligence about the German border’s weakest points in
the time of a manhunt.

There actually was
a crisis at the moment—Gage was nearly broke; certainly not the type of
emergency he had planned for when setting up his crisis escape fund.
 
As he stared at the ATM receipt, he
determined that he had only enough money to make the rent and buy groceries for
two more weeks.
 
And even to do that
would require a frugal effort, making him wonder what Monika’s visit would cost
him.
 
She was always willing to pay; but
up until this point he’d managed to avoid that.
 

Gage pulled at
both ends of the receipt, squeezing his eyes shut.
 
Damn it
,
things were not going at all like he had hoped.
 
An unwelcome thought bloomed from a dark corner of his mind.
 
Gage knew, if he became desperate, if he
truly ever reached the end of his rope, he could put the word out that he was
willing to do wet work.
 

Because violence
pays well.
 

It pays well in
the United States.
 
In the Middle
East.
 
And even in Liechtenstein.

No
, he thought as he headed back to the
flat,
even if I run broke I’m not ever going
to do that again.
 
I’d rather dig ditches
than have to hurt someone.

Gage ended his evening
by building a small fire and reading a few collected articles about his friends
in the British SAS.
 
As the fire danced
and crackled, it provided him with the slightest amount of joy and warmth, bringing
back warm memories of childhood before his mind eventually turned to Monika.
 
She would be coming to visit on Sunday.
 
And whenever she was near all problems seemed
to evaporate, especially the horrid memory that had gnawed at him for the last
three years.

Even with the
relaxing fire, the reading, and the thoughts of the one he loved, Gage had trouble
falling asleep.
 
He always did.
 
The headache gripped his optical nerves like
a rusty vise, clamping down further with each passing minute.
 
On this night it eventually resulted in flash
blindness for Gage.
 
All he could do was
extinguish all sources of light and clench his eyes shut in the blackness,
praying for sleep.
 

When he finally
managed to doze off for four hours, the sleep was fitful.

***

Paris, France

The trees lining
the streets of Paris’s 16
^th
Arrondissement rustled as the cold
autumn breeze whispered through their remaining leaves, pushing in from the
east, rushing over the Seine and past
Chaillot
Palace
before dissipating in the upscale urban landscape.
 
The occasional tourist wandered back into the
depths of the 16
^th
; however, most of the pedestrians beyond the
palace consisted of the wealthy residents.
 
Smug, self-satisfied men with thick beards, carrying their pipe and classic
literary novel, headed to the brasserie for wine, banter, and perhaps a chapter
of reading.
 
During the day, an abundance
of foreign au pairs pushed baby strollers, some containing as many as three
young children—their mother off shopping or having tea.
 
It was a neighborhood where numerous
international celebrities owned apartments, able to recharge creative juices in
Paris without having to be mobbed every time they stepped out the door—because
everyone in this area of the 16
^th
felt they were some sort of icon,
so why should they (and why
would
they?) stop and fawn over another?

The dark night was
punctured by the purplish halogen headlamps of the long black Mercedes S65.
 
It turned onto Rue
Nicolo
,
its low profile tires gliding over the damp leaves of the street.
 
The windows were darkened, the Benz oozing
exclusivity as it turned into the curved driveway of the two-story
mansion.
 
The house had been recently
purchased, formerly owned by an aging, once-famous French movie director who
had hung himself from the balustrade in what turned out to be a gripping final
scene.
 
The home sat empty for the better
part of a year, until Aristide
Fersen
and his wife
Marie moved to Paris, their faces bronzed from the years spent in Brazil.
 
The real estate broker was duly impressed as
Aristide wired in the full amount, never even bothering to negotiate—something
the broker had been authorized to do in an effort to get the sizeable balance
off of the bank’s books.

The front door
opened and closed; the two residents stepped into the home and went their
separate ways, the way husbands and wives often do.
 
Marie kicked off her high-heels before she
padded up the stairs, removing the pearl earrings one by one, then unzipping
the back of the cocktail dress and disappearing into the bedroom at the rear of
the second floor.

Aristide turned
left, crossing the sitting room before moving into his new study.
 
He was a slight man with a small, surgically
altered nose and slicked-back salt and pepper hair.
 
From the table next to his desk, he poured
two fingers of
Macallen
25-year and turned the
tumbler up, draining every drop before repeating the process twice more.
 

Gulp.
 
Slam.
 
Pour.
 
Gulp.
 
Slam.
 
Pour.
 

With his third
double-shot in hand, Aristide began to feel himself again, the stress of the
social event he’d just attended dissipating from his mind like fog on a windy
morning.
 
There were so many made up
facts for him to memorize, and society people were just so damned nosy.
 
Couldn’t they simply accept an attractive
couple at face value?
 
Did they have to
know the many minutiae of someone’s past?
 
Aristide exhaled loudly and slid his loafers off, enjoying the feel of
the tightly-woven carpet under his thin stockings.
 
He stared at the ghastly paintings on the
wall, most of them purchased by the overfed decorator Marie had employed during
the move.
 
Nearly a million euro to decorate this place and pay that dreadful woman
her fee.
 
Marie is too damned
trusting.
 
But, he reminded himself,
if he hoped to blend in with the inbred bourgeoisie he shared company with
earlier in the evening, a home like this was an absolute necessity.

It was then that
Aristide heard the sound.
 

He frowned,
turning his head.