The Cavalry
Dieter Schwarz
Business meeting.
Dieter hurried out of the Le Montreux Palace Hotel onto the busy street in the heart of Montreux. Shops lined the street on both sides, and of course, concert halls, auditoriums, and bars with stages were behind every third door. Montreux hosts jazz and classical music festivals. One year, when the Montreux Casino burned down during the jazz festival, Deep Purple wrote the song “Smoke on the Water” about the black plume roiling across Lake Geneva in the aftermath.
But today was another beautiful summer morning with a cool breeze skimming over the blue water and winding down the narrow streets where tourists shopped between sunning themselves and eating in the restaurants.
Dieter walked quickly, picking up a morning-after pill in a pharmacy and some women’s tourist clothes at gift shops. Flicka had nothing to wear but the ruined evening gown, gilded sandals, and a diamond tiara or else his tee shirt and boxers which flowed around her, both of which were a little conspicuous for what he intended.
When he returned to his suite, Magnus let him in. “Not a whisper from anyone. Entirely uneventful.”
“Good. I need to convene a business meeting in fifteen minutes. Get the captains. It shouldn’t be long, but we have an emergency to contend with.”
As Magnus walked out the door, he shot back, “I’ll get them.”
After Dieter bolted the door behind Magnus, he rapped his knuckles on the bedroom door. “Flicka?”
For just a moment, a wisp of paranoia threaded behind his eyes that he shouldn’t have trusted Magnus Jensen, that he would find blood and Flicka’s lifeless body in the bedroom.
Flicka looked up from where she sat in the middle of the bed, her eyes and nose red. “I didn’t make a sound while you were gone.”
“You were perfect,Durchlauchtig.I need you to dress and do anything you can to disguise yourself. I bought some makeup at the pharmacy, but I didn’t know what I was looking for. I bought clothes, and I got the morning-after pill and your regular pills from your suite. I couldn’t find your passport, though. It wasn’t in the safe. Nothing was in the safe.”
Flicka’s eyes scrunched up. “I thought it would be there. He must have taken everything out. How am I going to fly to Paris without a passport?”
“Trains,” Dieter said. “They don’t check passports on trains.”
Flicka’s eyes opened wide. “They don’t?”
He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Have you ever ridden a train?”
“Of course not. Don’t be gauche.”
He chuckled at her haughty pout. “Then it’ll be an adventure, right? You were always looking to have adventures like ‘normal’ people.”
“Yeah.” She smiled just a little, but her brilliant green eyes were still so sad that they hurt him.
“We’ll leave in a few hours. I need to meet with some of the guys to arrange things now, so you’ll have to be quiet again.”
“Okay.” She picked up the plastic bag and started toward the bathroom. “I’ll just see what I can do with this.”
“And Flicka?”
She stopped and looked back.
“Nice work on Pierre’s face,” he told her.
She smiled a little more.
He watched her walk in and shut the door, smiling all the time in case she looked back. His oversized clothes flowed around her slim thighs and arms.
She did peek as she closed the door, looking into his eyes as the gap narrowed.
He couldn’t look away from her brilliant green eyes.
When he heard the door lock, Dieter opened his carry-on suitcase and felt along the top edge with his fingertips. Part of the seam that held the fabric to the suitcase was a little rougher than the rest, and he slid a long thread out of the cloth, unraveling the closure. He peeled apart the thin strip of Velcro and felt inside, finding two scarlet-covered Swiss passports. Pressing the Velcro back together to hide the compartment, Dieter slipped the passports into the breast pocket inside his suit jacket.
