The day trip with Kurt began inauspiciously south of Plon. Hamburg gave way to the gentle farmland of Schleswig-Holstein. Cows grazed in idyllic pastures and the world seemed at peace, until south of Plon Leopard tanks blockaded the roads and Apache helicopters flitted across the sky. The military exercise was a grim reminders of the armies poised on either side of the border. Kurt told her about the American's dreams about the Fourth World War.
"Total destruction?"
"Yes, but no one wants to destroy the BDR. Not on a day like this. Not to us."
He detoured around the war games to the Baltic beach of Weissenhauser Strand. The summer sun shone through fleecy clouds and they set a blanket and picnic hamper on the sand. Vanessa stripped down to her bathing suit, while Kurt took off his shirt. They lay together and listened to the music on the radio. Every song seemed to be a love song written for them.
The roar of engines broke this trance and Kurt looked out to the sea.
A small armada was steaming to shore.
When the landing crafts beached, their ramps splashed into the water. Hundreds of conscripts exploded from the amphibious vehicles. They stopped dead in their tracks upon seeing Vanessa in a bathing suit.
The shouts of their officers whipped the young soldiers back into action. The conscripts double-timed up the beach and avoided the platinum blonde, as if she were an atomic mine capable of killing all of them. Calling her his 'secret weapon', Kurt suggested they retreat to the hotel on the sandy bluff. Vanessa replied with a nod.
The woman manager smiled at their urgency and wished them a nice nap. It was more than. Her life had become a romance novel and she did not care how bad the writing was.
"Before my marriage married, I thought you wed for life."
"And now?"
"Now I am a sinner breaking the Seventh Commandment." All she desired was to lie with this man who was not her husband. "But I welcome burning in Hell."
"I don't think it will come to that."
"Or a nuclear holocaust."
"No, I think we will live forever. Together, especially if we move to Paris."
"Paris?"
"Yes, I am closing all my businesses in Germany. I have a house in Paris. You will love the city and it will love you. You don't have to say 'yes' now." He expected no answer, but Vanessa said, "I would love to go to Paris. I speak French too, but I will have to tell Lukas."
"Not yet. Not until I am in the car and you only have to walk out the door. Any other way might be dangerous to me, but to you as well. You'll have to trust me a little longer."
"I am ready now."
"And so am I, but there is more than you and I involved." Kurt cautioned, but Vanessa was beyond discretion. She let Kurt bury himself in her, until they had to leave.
The ride back to Hamburg that seemed to last only minutes and she dreaded having to go back to Lukas. When they stopped by her car in the Reeperbahn's underground parking lot, Kurt asked her, "What's wrong? Didn't you have a nice day?"
"Yes, but I feel like Cinderella leaving Prince Charming at the stroke of twelve."
"I'm sorry, but soon you will never have to leave me. I promise you that." Kurt was falling for her as hard as she had for him and there was only one cure for this. "Vanessa, I will come for you and soon. Just be patient. It is just as hard for you as it is for me."
The two kissed and Vanessa watched the T-bird disappear before she got into her own car. The moon was setting below the tall pines by the time Vanessa Von Hausen drove through the estate's open gates. The large house loomed as a bleak shadow against the woods. A single attic window glowed blue, signifying Lukas was home.
She had not expected him to be so, since he spent most of his time with his deformed mistress.
At first she had been crushed that Lukas could want such a creature, especially considering the prostitute's apathy to her disfigurement. Now his affair with this sordid woman was a diversion allowing her the freedom to pursue her heart's desire.
Joy Diversion's LOVE WILL TEAR US APART came on the car stereo. Kurt and she had made love to it more than once and her womb tingled with the memory of the hours spent in bed.
Getting out of the BMW, Vanessa heard Pagliacci's VESTA LA GUIBBA being played so loud that scratches in the record popped like breaking bones. Her body and soul told her to get back in the car and drive to Kurt Oster's apartment in Uhlenhorst. Instead Vanessa remembered Kurt's words and entered the empty house, turning on the lights, as she went. She hated the dark and all the eyes staring at her from the ancient paintings on the wall. When first married, Lukas had explained at length who all these ancestors were and that they were her family. In the last weeks they had reverted to being dead strangers, who stared down disapprovingly on her indiscretions for the woes of their antecedent.
Footsteps reverberated down the stairs and Lukas appeared as the mirror image of the portraits' faces. Her husband observed the disheveled state of his wife and asked pleasantly, "Well, did you have a good day?"
"I went to a concert with Kurt."
"Ah, Kid Creole and the Coconuts. It must have been fun." Lukas was amused by her naive deceit and touched her hair before asking, "Then what did you do?"
"We went to dinner at Cuneo." Vanessa blushed with embarrassment, sensing she had been caught in her lie.
"Then what? The concert was in the afternoon, dinner must have been over by eight. It's now Twelve O'clock." Lukas descended to where Vanessa stood. "Where did you go afterwards? Maybe you went to the nightclub. Or maybe for drinks at a hotel or gambling. Did you see anyone? No, because you didn't go to the concert. You went someplace to fuck him like a slut. How many women do you think he has fucked? Ten, twenty, a hundred?"
"Stop it." Vanessa begged. "You told me to go with him."
"So you admit you fucked him." Lukas lifted Vanessa's lowered head, then whispered in her ear, "Was it good?"
The loud crack of her palm against his cheek caught him off guard, though he savored the hurt nearly as much as humiliating her.
"I am so sorry for upsetting you. I just don't want you to get hurt, that's all." Lukas had been rehearsing this part all evening after watching Joseph Cotton in NIAGARA. "I wish I could say we could work it out, but it is too late for that. If you want to leave, by all means, go ahead. You have my blessing as long as I get back my mother's ring. It has sentimental value."
"You will let me go?" Vanessa asked, stunned that Lukas was giving her escape from this sham marriage.
"Of course, this is not Beauty and the Beast."
"And I can go now?"
"I won't stand in the way." Lukas stepped aside to dramatize his offer.
Vanessa was elated by this unforeseen change in her destiny. Even without Lukas loving her, she had foreseen a drawn-out battle to cut the bonds of matrimony. She tugged at her engagement ring without taking it off. "If I give you the ring, I can go?"
"That is what I said." Lukas raised his hand to swear on his honor. "You pack your bags and go."
Vanessa took off the ring and handed it to Lukas. The baron pocketed the ring and kissed her on the forehead. Vanessa cringed inside, as he caressed her cheek, then recomposed herself fearing any affront might make him change his mind. Fortunately he let her go and simply said, "Have a nice life, my dear."
Her heart skipped for joy, as Vanessa ran up to her room. She was leaving the man who had once been her 'Prince Charming'. Maybe her fairy tale had a happy ending after all. She hurriedly sifted through her clothes, jewelry, make-up, records, and books, taking only what was hers.
Within ten minutes she packed one small bag and was ready to go. Vanessa went to the door and tried to turn the knob. It didn't move. She jiggled the door, until she realized Lukas had locked her inside this room. Dropping the bag she pounded on the door and called out her husband's name.
"Yes, my dear, what can I do for you?" Lukas asked from the other side.
"You said you were letting me go." Vanessa pulled on the doorknob with both hands.
"I am afraid you will have to stay in that room for a while." Lukas laughed, for her voice sounded as pitiful as a little rabbit caught in a trap. "The Von Hausens are not left by their wives. My great-great-granduncle, Otto, I think was his name, kept his wife locked up for years. Had a special cell built with a little slit for food to be passed in and out. Seems I have forgotten that innovation, but maybe I came up with another. As you see, I have stripped the room of any dangerous objects for your own protection. The windows are bulletproof, so any attempt to break them is a waste of your energy. We have my father to thank for that improvement. The telephone is disconnected. People once lived without phones. Think of yourself as being in the early part of the century. That was when my grandfather built this house. But they did not have electricity in those days."
Lukas threw an outside switch and kill the power to Vanessa's bedroom. This was working out better than he imagined.
"Lukas, let me out." his wife pleaded, her voice strained by this new terror of her plight. no one could hear her and no one was coming to rescue her.
"No, my dear, just think of this as a personal study of the Rapunzel tale. maybe if you let your hair down, someone will come and rescue you." Lukas walked away from her curses. Water she could drink from the bathroom tap, but getting her food was a problem he could attend to another day, preferably when she was so weak that she would pose no threat at all.
Entering his video room, Lukas surveyed the photos taken by Officer Brucken as well as all the names involved with Kurt Oster's little scheme; Cali, the American, the two bankers, and the Yugoslav. His wife's disappearance would distract Kurt from his scheme and of course Petra would be his prize should everything go as he planned.
He held up the five-carat diamond ring and admired the sparkle of the prisms of light. It might be the last of the Von Hausen fortune, but pawning this bauble would finance its rebirth. Everyone had to start somewhere, even if that point was from the beginning.
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