ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 18

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.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 22

The rain relented its hold on Northern Germany and the sun lit up the forest, but not the gloom in Kurt Oster's heart, as he tried every door of the Von Hausen Mansion finding each one locked. He peered through the double-paned windows. The mansion's interior had been denuded of furniture and only the family portraits hanging on the wall were the only signs of occupation.

Kurt thought he heard a voice calling him, but no one appeared from the yard and the forest. He listened hard only to hear the baffling wind hauntingly speaking its indecipherable language of syllables snatched from distant conversations.

Coming out here had been a mistake, but he could not imagine Vanessa being with her husband, who was also missing. The tightness in his heart expanded across his chest, as he returned to his car and drove away in the direction of Hamburg.

A man watched the departure of his wife's lover and snickered, "A slave to love."

Lukas had said the words 'I love you' to many women and various languages without meaning it. He envied Kurt for this emotion, but with love came weakness and he had spent too many years being weak. Being cruel would be the only way he could regain a foothold in this world.

The last days editing the videos of Petra had burnt out his eyes, Lukas decided to have a break.

He pulled shut the attic curtains and went downstairs to Vanessa's bedroom. He knocked once with any response from the other side and cursed himself for not having set up a video camera in Vanessa's room to watch the last five days. The inaction of the starvation process would have bored most people, but he had been mesmerized by Yoko Ono's FLY.

While the police and papers might prosecute him for locking up his wife, no jury in this nation would convict him, once they saw the pictures of Vanessa and Kurt. It might be the Twentieth Century, buy adultery was still a mortal sin in Germany.

Lukas put an ear to the bedroom door, but heard nothing. His wife's pleas for release had stopped the first day and for food a day later. Being a light eater, Vanessa had no reservoir of fat, so four days without food must have exacted an effect on his wife that could not be called pretty. Another two days of hunger and her body would begin eating the muscles. Some of the IRA hunger strikers had lasted over fifty days before dying of starvation, so she could easily handle another two weeks, if necessary. Lukas rapped at the door and called out, "Vanessa, it is me. Your loving husband."

Nothing.

Vanessa was too Christian to kill herself, though as a safety precaution he had stripped her rooms of razors and glass bottles to slice her wrists, clothing, wires and belts with which to hang herself, plus any pills and medicine on which she could overdose.

While the police and papers might prosecute him for locking up his wife, no jury in this nation would convict him, once they saw the pictures of Vanessa and Kurt. It might be the Twentieth Century, buy adultery was still a mortal sin in Germany. He called her name twice more then opened the door.

The rooms had its curtains drawn and in the half-light a female form lay under the sheets of the bed.

Something odd about the body on the bed stopped him in the middle of the floor. A rustle of fabric warned him too late that this was a trap. An unusually hard object struck him in the head and a clarion note similar to the bell at the end of in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 OVERTURE rang in his skull. The second time it was off-tune and his vision telescoped into a tunnel.

Vanessa dropped the bag filled with soap and broke for the doorway. A hand seized her ankle and fingers dug into the flesh around her Achilles' tendon. She kicked at Lukas' head, but his forearm blocked her foot. A quick jerk of his hand swept Vanessa off her feet. She crashed to the floor and the wind whooshed from her lungs. Lukas scrambled on top of her.

"Very good, Vanessa." He straddled her arms with his knees. She was much stronger than he would have thought for several days without eating. "You must be sorry about not knocking me out."

"You bastard." Her head tossed back and forth, while her feet kicked at his head. "I wish I had killed you."

"You speaking that way to your loving husband hurts." One slap across her face stopped her wiggling effort to escape. Twice more squashed any further resistance. His tongue checked his mouth. No teeth were loose, but he would have a black eye.

"Me, a bastard. No, you are mistaken. It is your boyfriend, who is a bastard. He was here. Looking for you, but I didn't answer the door."

Vanessa turned her head. The past few days she had continually fantasized about Kurt rescuing her and his having come reassured her of that possibility. Eventually he would come again.

"You must be hungry. What about some bread? It would be a nice addition to the water."

When Vanessa chose not to respond, he slapped again.

"I asked you a question. Do you want to eat?"

Vanessa glared at him with hatred.

Denied the gratification of seeing her cry, he got off her.

"Suit yourself and starve. No one, but you, will suffer for that."

She lay on the floor, expecting the worse, but Lukas Von Hausen walked out of the room and locked the door. Almost any other man in the world would have died to have at woman like Vanessa at his mercy.

So beautiful, so fragile, so helpless, but then plenty of women had been at his mercy before.

Whimpering in tears begging for salvation.

The first time had been a turn-on, but once he had been on the other side, being dominant paled beneath the pleasure of pain and humiliation. Having explored every thrill possible, only masochism held a pleasure for him beyond all others. He had no interest in sex for the sensation of orgasm and rarely achieved an erection anymore.

Petra.

She was the answer and he had to get her back and, if that meant getting rid of the American, then so be it. The problem was that Kurt and Cali needed him to pick up the cash in Geneva and he needed them to think that was exactly what he would do. This alone was keeping the American alive.

After he stole their money this interloper was dust in the wind and Petra would be his again. He vowed this with all the hate in his heart and hell had no fury like a man unscourged by sin.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 25

Thousands of early evening commuters hurried into Hamburg's Hauptbahn station. The trains came and went on schedule. Only a few people weren't going anywhere and Willi was one of them. He wished the Turk could be as punctual as the German train system, but punctuality was too much to ask from a dealer, especially when you are desperate for what they have to sell.

Several potential customers cruised the young blonde man. Their heads motioned from him to accompany them into the Klo, but he had more pressing business than a visit to the public toilet with a family man with twenty minutes to kill till his train home. The police on the upper platform pegged the boy in the jean jacket for a hustler and an addict. They would have loved nothing better that to sent him on his way, but as a German citizen the young man had just as much right to loiter as the next person.

Willi tapped nervously.

Working for Cali earned him more money than the streets, there was no greater thrill than stealing a client's wallet and hearing his screams, as you ran out of the bushes. Everything now was all work and Willi hated work. He had a date with Hans tonight and a little heroin would help him get through the evening, because sex with a transvestite banker was too much like doing it with a woman for his tastes.

A smug smile broke across the hustler's lips, as a young boy in a flashy jogging outfit entered the station from Kirchen Allee. The teenage Palestinian might be thin as a rail, but Ali was the best kick boxer in Hamburg. Even the skinheads steered clear of the Leader of the White Snake Gang, unless they were scoring drugs.

Willi went into his pocket for the Reise he had conned off Hans this morning, saying the 1000 DM-note was for epidermal medicine. The love-lost banker was a born sucker for a lie. The two boys vectored across the platform toward each other. Willi and Ali traded the money for the heroin with a blurring sleight-of-hand exchange no one was supposed to see, unless someone was watching, of course the police had been waiting for just such a moment.

A man shouting for them to stop had the opposite effect.

The two young men darted through the passengers. The plainclothes policemen had no chance at catching either boy.

Once outside the terminal the two teenagers wordlessly split on Glockenglesser Wall.

By the corner of Spitalerstrasse Willi was in the clear and leaned against the wall, regaining his breath, then peeked around the corner. No police were in sight. Willi opened his hand and broke into a smile. Ali had given him an extremely good count. He would have loved to shoot up on the street, but that was asking for trouble, especially if you OD'd.

Short the money a taxi, he would take the U-bahn from Monckebergstrasse to the squalid safety of his Hafenstrasse squat. As he stepped away from the wall, the front end of a red Ferrari forced him back. The window rolled down. SS Tommy snarled, "Get in the car."

"No, thanks, I want to walk," Willi replied, for the blond pimp scared him and not a little either. Neo-Nazis had no use for Germans like Willi.

"I am not asking you. I am telling you." SS Tommy's voice warned running from the police was easier to get away from than him. "Cali wants to talk to you."

Willi knew that SS Tommy worked for Cali, but had a bad feeling about getting into the car that vanished when SS Tommy said, "You can shot up in my car on the way to the Reeperbahn."

Willi was too much of a junkie to refuse that offer.

He stuck the packet of drugs in his pants and sat in the low-slung sports car. SS Tommy drove slowly through the pedestrians to Steinstrasse, then accelerated onto the broader street. Willi asked, "What's Cali want me for?"

SS Tommy shrugged and said, "How am I to know. I just do what I am told."

"Just like me, handsome." Willi was comforted by knowing he was an important cog in Cali's plans. He should have kept his mouth shut, because SS Tommy backhanded his passenger with his right fist. The impact propelled Willi's head into the side window and the young hustler's unconscious body slumped down in the bucket seat.

"Next time you will watch your mouth," SS Tommy told his inert passenger. A trickle of blood formed a creek of red down Willi's chin and his eyes rolled back into his skull, signifying he would be out for the ride to Trittau.

Approaching the Von Hausen estate, SS Tommy dropped through the lower gears and the rutted driveway buffeted the sports car's underpinnings, until the Ferrari hit the paved courtyard by the edge of the woods.

Lukas Von Hausen emerged from the house. He had not been expecting the pimp and SS Tommy grinned upon seeing the annoyance on Lukas' face. He pointed to the bruises on the baron's face and asked, "Having wife problems?" "No, I ran into a door," Lukas replied, having heard the line from an American once.

"Keep your eyes open from now on." SS Tommy said, as he got out of the sports car.

Lukas looked at the unconscious boy in the front seat and asked, "Who is that?"

"The banker's boyfriend," SS Tommy answered, tugging the creases out of his leather shirt.

"What's he doing here?"

Somehow Lukas had imagined that this end of the business would stay in Hamburg. He had been wrong to assume anything.

"I remembered you saying you had a bomb shelter."

"Yes, but no one has used it for years."

"Well, all the more perfect to stash our guest for the next few days." SS Tommy effortlessly lifted the limp boy from the car. Lukas stood motionlessly, until SS Tommy said, "Show me the way."

The pimp slung the boy over his shoulder and followed the baron through the woods. Anyone unaware of where the bunker was would have walked right by its camouflaged entrance. Lukas stopped at a small mound covered with shrubs, then bent down to pull open a steel door to the shelter his father had installed in case of an atomic war or full-scale invasion by the Soviets.

"You first." SS Tommy said to Lukas.

"Why? You don't trust me?" Lukas had thought about locking the pimp inside the bunker, but that treachery was too obvious to a professional such as SS Tommy. He would have to devise something more devious or stupid to get rid of the pimp once this was over.

"I do not trust anyone. It is safer that way."

"Good, I feel the same way too." Lukas proceeded down the dusty steps into the mildewed hole. SS Tommy carried Willi down the stairs and the junkie's head scrapped against the wall.

Lukas flicked on a light. Neglect covered every surface with dust.

SS Tommy slapped Willi back to consciousness, then submitted him to an interrogation punctuated by brutal blows to the face and ribs.

Willi told them over and over again he was only following Cali's order to be the banker's lover and that they were leaving for Thailand next week. "Nothing else?"

SS Tommy scoured the young boy's memory with a series of kicks to the ribs, leaving Willi gasping for breath. Lukas joined in the fray to prove to SS Tommy he was more than a spectator.

With each punch Lukas came to really enjoy inflicting pain, but then deeper down he had always known that. He wondered how far he would have gone, if he had been in the SS. Unfortunately after a few exhausting minutes, Willi was unconscious without telling them anything new. Lukas asked, "What now?"

"We shut him in here and go. He's a big boy and can take care of himself." SS Tommy kicked the hustler in the side, eliciting a groan. Once they were above ground, SS Tommy rubbed his hands. The skin was scuffed and the tendons swollen. "I have to give it to him. The little Schwule took that like a man."

"Yes, he was a real man." Lukas would have given up after the first punch in the stomach by SS Tommy and maybe Willi would have too, if the pimp had given him a chance.

"What he say make any sense to you." The intensity of the interrogation also seconded as a warning for Lukas to think twice before double-crossing his partner.

"A few more pieces fell into the puzzle." Lukas' hunch that the banker had told his gay lover everything had paid off. The transvestite's embezzlement to pay for sex with the rent boy, the entrapment by Cali, the scheme to wire money to a Swiss account clarified what he had already suspected.

"Such as?" SS Tommy was tired of Lukas holding out on him, as if he were a lackey, instead of a partner. He would pay for that later.

"Their going to Thailand next Friday means whatever they have planned will happen then too."

"So we call the banker and tell him we have his friend. If this banker would sacrifice everything for this 'Klabfleisch', then I think we can do the same." SS Tommy brandished the hustler's tooth and leather jacket, saying, "Especially once he sees this."

"I was wondering what that was for?"

"Physical proof. You always need it in a kidnapping," SS Tommy declared to enlighten Lukas as to the gravity of their crime. "I will send this to the banker and you will call him. You know what to say?"

"I have a good idea."

"Me too."

Turning around, Lukas caught sight of his wife standing by the window.

SS Tommy also spotted the blonde wraith and asked, "Your wife will not call the police."

"Oh, no, my friend, I have locked her up with no phone," Lukas announced, sure the pimp would approve of such treatment.

"And afterwards?" Having a living witness to what had just transpired was an unnecessary worry.

"Killing her seems a waste, considering she is my wife, but I suppose I could live with myself, if she vanished forever. Is that possible?" Lukas asked, having heard about SS Tommy's side racket in white slavery to the Middle East.

"Without any trouble." SS Tommy understood exactly what Lukas intended for his unfaithful wife. An airplane from the Emirates would make a night landing in Hamburg. A body inside a carpet would be transported on board. Several hours later they would land in Arabia and she would be sold to the highest bidder for a living burial within a harem or something worse.

"One more thing." Lukas took out a photo and handed it to SS Tommy.

"The American, of course. He is the one picking up the money. Why?"

"I do not like him."

"I feel the same way too."

"Do you think you could have him beaten up?" Lukas somehow had to make the American pay for stealing Petra from him. Her absence from his life was becoming unbearable. His wounds were healing and the pain she wielded against his body was a fading memory without the scars.

"I have just the right crew for the job, vicious, but not murderous and do not worry about paying me now. I will put it on the bill." The baron's jealousy amused SS Tommy. If he had learned one thing throughout his long years on the Reeperbahn, it was to never underestimate a man's ability to fall for a woman once she was no longer his.

"What about the woman? What if she gets in the way?"

"I do not want her hurt,' Lukas said, then added, "Seriously not at all."

"Whatever you want, I sometimes forget what a monster I am."

Once Cali was out of the way, giving Petra Wessel what she had coming would be high on his priority list and another thing he would love doing himself. "Anything else?"

"I want to watch the American get it."

"You want to help?"

"Not this time."

"Your wish is my command."

He shook Lukas' hand and told him to stay in touch.

As the Ferrari drove away from the mansion, Vanessa realized that the man they had put in the bunker might be dead and that she might be next. She had to escape, except there was no way out.

The door was securely bolted, the windows bulletproof, the walls solid, and the floor solid teak. A more pressing problem was her increasing weakness after eight days of incarceration. All her baby fat had been melted off and her bones were clearly visible under her taut skin. Hearing her husband's footsteps, Vanessa tensed up, but he climbed past her to the attic, as he had for the past two days and soon the same song played on the stereo.

The same song from the same opera he had been playing for the last eight days announced his arrival upstairs. Sometimes the repetition of Pagliacci’s was as bad as the need for food, and she was beginning to understand the Italian words of the clown finding out about his wife's betrayal.

Several days ago when the Opel had come to the house, she had banged on the thick windows of her bedroom, but the longhaired man had not heard her pleas for help. It had taken several days to work out where she had seen the man from the Opel before. He had been the one taking the pictures at Sylt. Of this she was positive, which meant Lukas had hired a detective to observe her comings and goings.

The blond man in the Ferrari she had recognized as Cali's maddog henchman, further inciting her suspicion that her imprisonment was due to her involvement with Kurt Oster. He had been talking about a big project and she had told Lukas about it. Her husband intended to interfere with this plan to save his own fortune. She wept bitterly thinking she had betrayed Kurt.

She had to warn Kurt.

Vanessa went to the window again. Birds flew from tree to tree in the forest beyond the yard. Occasionally one perched on the window sash, but they did her little good. They were free and she was not. This could not go on much more. Someone had to come.

Anyone.

An excruciating stomach cramp forced her to keel over. After a few minutes the pain eased up, but an ache lingered. Drinking more water filled her stomach, but only temporarily. At least the gnawing hunger was a welcome diversion from her fears. She knelt and said the prayers she'd been taught as a child. Some god had to be listening to her prayers and she prayed it was the right one.

Several hours later Lukas toyed with the idea of giving his wife some food, but reckoned she could stand a few more days on the no-food diet without any permanent damage. Plenty of fat women in America would have paid good money for such treatment.

He picked up the phone and dialed the number he had received from Alex Brucken. SS Tommy and he had neatly divided the labor required to accomplish the task of destroying Cali and Kurt. Step one had been taken by SS Tommy's abduction of the young boy, now step two was up to him. When the banker answered the phone within three rings, he frantically asked, "Is that you, Willi?"

"No, only a friend of Willi." Lukas smiled to himself. The man on the other end was desperate.

"Where is he?"

"Safe."

"Have you received our package?"

"Yes, but what does it mean?"

"That Willi will have to put a tooth under his pillow for the tooth fairy."

"Who are you?"

"None of your business. Just listen to what I have to say and he will be fine."

Several seconds after Lukas' describing the new situation, the banker broke into tears. Lukas calmed him down, telling him his dreams could still come true as long as he did what he was told.

The banker saw it his way, mostly because he had no choice.

None of them did at this point. They were all standing on the precipice. The question wasn't who would jump first, but who would be shoved over the edge first.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 28

A cold rain cut short was the promise of a beautiful dawn. The thick mist exited from the forest and a foreboding gloom spread over the Von Hausen estate. Up in the attic video room Lukas purged any incriminating evidence from this files and stacks of videotapes. The pictures of Kurt and Vanessa along with Alex Brucken's reports blazed noxiously in the fireplace. The images furled up into ashes and black smoke crawled up the chimney.

He only saved the videos of Petra and packed them into a large carrying bag. Lukas scanned the room once for anything he might have forgotten, then shut off the lights and locked the door.

He was traveling light to the Cayman; the suit on his back, and a passport. He could buy a bathing suit at the hotel.

He whistled Verdi's FORZA DEL DESTINO and descended the stairs to Vanessa's room. He could have even given her some food, but then felt the bruises on his cheek and decided she deserved two more days without food.

"Liebschen, Ich gehe jetzt. Aren't you going to wish me 'bon voyage'?" Lukas shouted on without anticipating any response. "I will be gone a few days and, when I return, I will let you out, though only after fattening you up. I can't have you tell any lies about your loving husband. We can start all over. I hope you can feel the same way. I kiss you, my love."

Lukas put his ear to the door. No sign of life from within, so he said, "One more thing. I saw your Kurt the other day. He was down at the Fischmarkt. He took a girl to a hotel. They stayed all night. Just thought you would like to hear the news. Ciao, cara."

Lukas smiled upon hearing her cry. He had been a bad boy. Petra would take care of him for that, but his punishment would have to wait till his return as well.

Vanessa listened to her husband's footsteps fade down the hallway. She did not want to believe what he had said about Kurt, but her fairy tale had been over for some time now.

She tried the door, which was still firmly shut.

She was his prisoner and had no reserves left. Ten days of a no-food regime had wreaked tremendous changes in Vanessa's physiology. Her ribs strutted down her chest, her breasts had disappeared, and her legs were thin sticks of flesh and bones. Vanessa dropped to her knees and prayed for help with all her remaining strength.

She failed to get through 'Unser Vater in Himmel' and collapsed on the floor like Sleeping Beauty waiting a kiss to wake her up, though Vanessa feared whomever came through the door next would not be satisfied with only a kiss.

Life, unlike fairy tales, sometimes skips the happy endings.