The Baron's Thriller Novel : Part 9

430 AM, Somewhere over an extremely pompous part of central Europe:

Ally sat staring out the tiny window of a chartered business aircraft as it cruised towards Switzerland, the land of gold, the land of secrets and the land of pretending that a lot of the gold wasn't ripped out of the heads of Jews for fear of a massive multinational reprisal.

The sun had just peaked above the curvature of the Earth although it would be hours before it was visible on the ground. Ally's entire body ached from the confrontation with whom she could only speculate was Vasili Duvonoski.

She replayed the encounter over and over again in her sleep deprived mind, troubled not by the fact that he had tried to kill her, but by the fact that he had failed to kill her. The man had had ample time to stab her through the heart or cut her throat and still escape before the police arrived so why then had he relented and fled when his triumph seemed guaranteed?

One thing was for certain. Agent Rivera was far too exhausted to ponder the details now. She closed her eyes and the perfectly highlighted lashes batted seductively at the seat-back in front of her. If chairs were male, and had weiners, it would be 110% erect at that moment.

After a few seconds Ally's eyes snapped open violently as her attempts at rest failed. Every time she tried to drift off, she saw Mostac, or rather what had been Mostac on the bathroom floor.

He had been killed with great savagery. Not merely stabbed, but flayed. How the killer had managed such a feat of barbarity without Ally or the other bar patrons hearing so much as a squeak was beyond her.

That same curved knife the Duvonoski had attacked Ally with must have been used to kill the detective. There was blood everywhere of course, but the paths of the cuts and the pattern of the cast-off on the walls belied a certain artistry to this killing.

There were no hesitation marks, only the flowing beziers of confident slashes made with pinpoint precision. In a minimum of strokes, the killer had managed to inflict dozens of fatal wounds. Mostac was probably dead before he hit the floor, hopefully unaware that his life had ended.

Then there was the post-mortem mutilation. Ally had been to some horrific crime scenes in her life and had seen terrible savagery inflicted upon bodies both living and dead and so she could say that this desecration was fairly restrained.

The detective's shirt had been cut away and a neat triangle of skin had been expertly removed. Evidently Duvonoski had taken a souvenir from Mostac just as he had stolen a lock of her hair.

Even so, that wound disturbed her the most. There was something sinister, something hidden in that final act and Ally felt cold chills when she reviewed it in her mind.

Ally had been the first to see Mostac's remains. The local police had quickly deferred to her authority when she produced her identification. Of course that was after they had tackled her to the pavement and began to cuff her. Of course, it wasn't their fault. All they knew was that a bar fight was in progress and that she was holding a gun.

Ally had directed the men to take samples of the purplish blood on the snow bank. She didn't tell them it was blood, because they wouldn't have believed her. What was she supposed to say? That she had fatally wounded a man with purple blood who had fled so rapidly that an 8 block cordon did not apprehend him?

It was better to keep that information under her bra for the time being.

Upon first entering the men's room she had felt a curious lack of emotion. Ally had known what to expect following her struggle with that vicious man so it came as less of a shock when Mostac's broken body came into view.

Ally had ordered the others to remain outside while she conducted an initial survey. The fluid cuts, the copious blood, Mostac's staring eyes. Her training dictated that she take his pulse at the neck and wrists and then failing at these points to feel the central abdomen for the descending aorta.

Of course there had been no signs of life, Mostac was already becoming cold.

It was while Ally was palpating the dead man's abdomen that she remembered the scrolls he had mentioned. Was it possible that they were still concealed beneath his skin? After all Vasili Duvonoski had prevented the detective from reporting back to his agency and revealing his startling intelligence.

Ally roughly massaged the man's stomach, pinching great rolls of skin, trying to feel the tiny scrolls. Alarmingly quickly she discovered three small cylinder stored side by side, just beneath Mostac's navel.

Quickly checking over her shoulder lest anyone observe what she was about to do, Ally roughly kinked the man's skin and pushed on the ends of the scrolls until the sharpened lower ends pierced through and she was able to pull them free.

They were constructed of some gleaming, silvery metal, roughly the diameter of a pencil lead and 3 inches in length. She could see the the blunt end had tiny knurls about it indicating a screw on top. There was no time for further investigation so Ally pocketed the tiny devices and exited the bathroom, taking one last look and Mostac's shocked face as she left.

Now, sitting in the bright glare of the rising sun, Ally fished one of the cylinders from her purse and placed it on the tray before her. She gripped the textured end cap and twisted. With a surprisingly smooth movement, the cap rotated three times and then came free. A thin tether attached the cap to the main body and it dangled in air like a small jewel.

Ally peered inside the open cavity and saw a tightly rolled object made from thin greenish plastic. She tapped the end of the cylinder on her open palm and the scroll fell free.

Carefully, she unrolled the document and was surprised that it spread to nearly 8 inches in length, the minimum weiner size of the men she slept with.

The sheet was covered with an excessively neat scrawl and at first Ally was excited. But her optimism soon turned to disappointment. The writing was some sort of unintelligible cipher. Ally tried to not to scowl. What was the likelihood that a deeply embedded agent would keep un-encrytped information on his person? It had been too much to hope for.

Ally re-rolled the plastic sheet and placed it back in the protective cylinder, sliding it into her purse (Ha! bet you thought there was going to be a vagina analogy there huh?).

Ally closed her eyes and finally drifted off to sleep as the jet screamed towards Zurich and her target, Roy Gimbel.