After apologizing profusely for the hour of imposition, Sam was on his way to Wrichtishousis, Purdue’s historic mansion overlooking the Old Town. There he would meet with Purdue’s assistant, who would present him with the necessary indemnity documents to peruse while flying to Spain in the billionaire’s private jet. From the airstrip off the Málaga-Costa del Sol airport, Sam was to join Purdue’s pilot in chartering one of the local helicopters to fly the investigative journalist to the coordinates provided.
It sounded like a banal feat, but it proved to be a bit more time-consuming. During the flight from Edinburgh, the weather over France had taken a nasty turn, forcing Purdue’s jet crew to adhere to an unfortunate forced layover of eight hours. Only the next day, at pre-dawn hours, they were cleared to fly to the belly of Spain. By the time he met up with his contact, Sam was exhausted by the twenty-sixth hour of travel, slouching on a lounge chair in the courtesy lobby of one of the larger airlines.
His assigned helicopter pilot, Stephen, excused himself and went to the offices of the airport three floors up. Being a man much like Purdue, he did not accept that there was no earlier admission for them to leave, the news only given to him upon Sam’s arrival. It was hardly a few miles to the off-coast coordinates given by his employer, so he did not see the point in delaying Mr. Cleave’s trip even longer.
“Hurry up,” Sam cried as the pilot made for the lifts. “I don’t want to spend the entire day here. They don’t have any porn on the flight!”
Stephen hastened to get out of Sam’s vicinity as astonished stares fell on them both from first class passengers in the waiting area. The impish journalist swallowed his laughter as the poor pilot madly fingered the button inside the lift to disappear before Sam embarrassed him even more. Shaking his head, the pilot scowled at the chuckling frame of Sam Cleave as the silver sheets of the lift doors met in front of his face.
One floor up, the lift halted for two professionally-dressed women. Neither made eye contact with Stephen upon entering. In fact, they ignored his polite nod completely. The pilot thought nothing of it; he was used to the rude conduct of most snobs and affluent racketeers, the likes of which he constantly had the displeasure of escorting on David Purdue’s errand engagements. The woman on the left stretched out a slender hand, adorned by an absurd burden of golden rings and overdone manicure. She pressed the button harshly, and the circle marked 6 lit up under her fingertip.
It was part of his profession, not only to exceed at piloting some of the most sophisticated aircrafts in the world, but to practice proper etiquette, even when treated like shit by lesser minds. That last part was, in fact, the verbatim advice Purdue had given him three days into his employ.
Standing with their backs to him, the two women looked practically identical. Yet could see in the reflection of the mirrors that their faces proved them of different ages and features. Their clothing struck Stephen as peculiar as well. At first he’d thought that they wore some sort of uniform, but as the elevator ascended and the two women engaged in casual conversation, two things peaked his interest.
First, they spoke Italian. Not that it was impossible, but it was unexpected and irregular for a small airport on the edge of Spain. Had they conversed in Portuguese or French, it would not have seemed so out of place. Or maybe Stephen was just accustomed to predictability in a lifestyle where every border and airport had become the same after a while. But the other thing was that their attire was made of tweed, tapered to fit them snugly. Pencil skirts covered stockings and black court shoes, while their snug blazers sported darts and pronounced cuffs. Both sets were red in color. It was an odd choice of fabric to wear in Spain’s high temperatures, especially with stockings. He realized that their hairstyles were similar too.
One was a redhead and the other brunette, and both women wore a distinct hairstyle akin to the old Hollywood Noir chic — or Victory Roll — from the 1940’s. Stephen knew what the hairstyle was called because it was bestowed the name by World War II’s pilots. The tubular folds of satin smoothness were named for the fighter plane maneuvers executed back then. Still, seeing such an obscure and outdated look naturally prompted the man to stare.
“What is so interesting?” the older lady asked, lifting her chin and glaring at Stephen in the mirror. He guessed her to be in her late forties, although her red hair gave her a few years off what was probably printed on her passport.
Stephen jolted slightly at the sudden address, but the softer eyes of the brunette lightened the blow of the redhead’s sneer. “Oh, I was not staring, Madam,” he responded, composing himself to stand his ground. “It is just refreshing to hear someone speaking Italian for a change.”
“Do you speak Italian, sir?” the dark haired lady asked amicably.
“Regrettably, no,” he chuckled coyly. “I just like the language.”
“Your accent is also not from here,” the redhead remarked. “Scottish?”
Stephen could not take his eyes off her perfectly plastered ruby lips, but he also could not allow the ladies to discover his fascination. Professionalism was key, and Stephen was very good at it. “Scottish?”
“Aye, Madam.” He smiled as the doors to his floor opened. “If you’d excuse me.”
But the redhead alpha female elegantly blocked his way, placing a gently forceful palm on his chest to negate his path while the other woman pressed the button at the bottom to close the doors to the third floor. “I said, excuse me, ladies,” he reiterated. To no avail.
The elevator hummed from beneath their feet, pushing them up toward the sixth floor. Stephen did not know that the airport business section had this many floors, but it had changed somewhat since he had last attended a seminar on runway safety here several years before. Alarmed at the strange hijacking, Stephen decided to play it cool.
“That was not very kind.” He smiled weakly in an attempt to determine their modus operandi. The brunette chuckled like a disturbed four-year-old while the redhead simply pinned him with her perfectly painted eyes. Above her head each numerical halo bore closer to the sixth floor, to where he had a sickening feeling he was to disembark with them.
“We are not very kind people, tesoro,” she said, standing so close to Stephen that he could smell the rouge on her cheekbones. “But if you give us what we want, we might be kinder than you think.”
He stammered, “Really? How kind?” It was not the most suave uttering he’d ever thought up, but as long as he kept making small talk, he hoped to buy time to strategize. Thus far, the women had done him no harm and presented no threat. For all he knew, they may very well have been two mischievous stewardesses playing a sexy prank on him, luring him off to an abandoned floor under renovation for a bit of midday rock ‘n roll. But Stephen knew a bad gut feeling when he had one, and this one was a doozy.
The lift’s chime sliced through his ears as the sixth floor was announced. Apprehension gripped the pilot so fiercely that he never noticed the redhead’s hand in his pocket, fumbling for his cell phone. “Give it to me,” she growled softly in his ear as the doors slid open. He expected to be grabbed by Mafia thugs or apprehended by uniformed brutes, but he saw only the solitary watercolor painting on the opposite wall with no one about.
“Oh, I’ll give it to you, alright,” he replied as the brunette stepped out ahead of them. The hallway looked like a common office area, but vacant in the immediate vicinity, so Stephen took his chance. With all his force he head-butted the redhead as she took hold of his phone. To his surprise, no sound escaped her and her stagger hardly won distance between them.