A hot shower and a long yet comfortable car journey later they arrived at the bunker. Irene fussing with her earrings as the boys began to unpack the weekend bags. It wasn’t much, and it was the middle of the desert, but it was home.
Glaring, recording device in hand, sat a journalist with a soured look on her face. “Thank you for this favour” Irene glowed, kissing the cheeks of the woman continentally.
“you promise no one knows we’re here?” Klein crowed cautiously.
“You’ll be safe provided you do your half of the bargain” she confessed, clicking the industrial metal seal on this military adjacent bunker with a hefty motion.
***
“Weapons in the bin, coffee in the pot. Recorder on.” the journalist ordered matter of factly as the others followed her down an antique metal ladder to the bowels of the bunker.
It was a military build, Lots of heavy metal surfaces and stencilled paint symbols. It was bordering on soviet levels of blunt and style-less. Irene guessed she’d have to compromise on the industrial combination of metal and concrete, The smell of sweat and steel, The lifeless cold of the place.
The coffee was poured black, and between them, the Klein's spotted at least 4 recording devices, despite the promise of only one being present. They’d have to be savvy about which crimes they’d confess to, but first, Irene had her own questions.
“What is this place?” she asked, knocking on the metal to see how thick it was.
“Secret bunker. Whenever a very rich man goes missing with very angry enemies, they typically don’t list their secret bases on official documents. I simply forgot to publish about this one in the paper.” the interviewer told them, smirking like the cat who ate the canary.
The Kleins looked at each other and mouthed the words forgot to publish with a sharpened look of caution, but reluctantly put at least a few of their main weapons in the bin, next to what they imagined was a very specific person’s tools.
“I won’t do you the disservice of telling you which person it belonged to, but rest assured he won’t want it back for at least 30 years” the journalist shrugged.
The ‘official’ recorder was clicked on with a robust noise, and Ted the guard began to pour the coffee slowly, watching his employers with a puzzled expression. “Now” the interviewer added, fishing a yellow poker chip out of her purse and tapping it on the table to break through the chatter.
“For this to make sense, we’re gonna have to go back to the 80s” The couple began.
BERLIN. 1986. TWO YEARS BEFORE THE FIRE
It was a rough decade the 80s. Lots of glamour, but lots of gore. Irene was still going by her civilian name, Ashley. 22.
Her hair had been back combed and dyed, her shoulder pads could cut glass, and she was on the prowl for whatever thrills she could get her hands on.
At the time she was doing favours for the mob. Nothing exciting, nothing dangerous. Just a little bit of fraud here and there, and carrying drugs of course. It was the 80s, everyone was carrying drugs, Cocaine fuelled most major cities!
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Today she was on a business trip, and she had to admit international travel suited her. She took a deep breath of her cigarette in the airport lounge and finished scribbling through the last of her paperwork. Today is the day she’d go clubbing.
All she had to do was drop off a parcel at a nightclub, and ask for Kenny, no big deal. She’d be back home in London at no time. It was before 9/11 happened, Airport security was a polite couple of bag searches. No one searched her hair, her boots, her underwear, or her shoulder pads. She had essentially been wearing cocaine body armour at this point.
She was under strict orders to dress goth. No one questioned if a goth was covered in white powder. It was considered edgy, or passed off as makeup. She did have to admit though, she was enjoying the hair – it would later be altered later from atomic oranges and blues back to something more moderate. Auburn or a subtle ginger perhaps.
She met Kenny at the bar, he was tall, American, and equally ridiculously dressed, but almost pulling it off. His piercings and smoldering glance seemed to sell it even when his body language screamed rigor mortis. They flirted, half performatively, and as he got handsier she began to wonder if it was actually about the 99 red luftballoons of cocaine stashed on her person at all. But, they were young, and they were drunk, in the most precarious city in the world at that time, ready for life to change on a whim.
“You’re gorgeous” Klein confessed over the music. His nose nuzzling her cheeks as she smelt his beer breath. She knew she shouldn’t go with him, her brassy northern mother would have a fit. She’d need a romantic alibi when people asked how her trip went, No amount of studs on the leather jacket would justify all this.
“You’re really handsome! Quite the stud” she gulped. She almost couldn’t believe she was saying it.
“Lets go back to the hotel” he offered, brushing a hand through his Mohawk.
The next few hours were described in more incriminating, sweaty detail than Irene was comfortable with back at the bunker. But needless to say when the drug smuggler’s bodice came off in 1986 and the drugs were revealed, Kennedy Klein was eager to show his appreciation.
Three times, in three different positions, to Madonna and Blondie and Prince. He was rough. He was soft. He was everything a 22 year old wanted on her first trip out the country.
***
She drowsed awake to see him sliding on his jeans and stuffing the power sachets into a backpack. She wasn’t sure what this emotion was catching up with her. She hopped out of bed and scrambled back into her dress and heels, holding onto him before he could motor off on his sexy little motorbike.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked him.
He scrounged through his coat, and tossed out the 1980s equivalent of a few hundred pounds.
“And the rest sweet cheeks, I’ve seen the books, I’ve cooked the books” she reminded him.
He fished out another dozen notes and shoved her aside.
“Compliments to the chef” he barked, just barely resisting the temptation to flash her, or flip her off as he left.
As she watched him storm off into the busy streets, next to punks and communists and dangerous socialites alike, she realised he’d left some of his stuff here. Most of it was worthless, dirty magazines and old cassette tapes. Blondie, Madonna, Prince. But one thing caught her eye, a notebook by his bedside. Some of the scribbles she recognised from her accounting days, others were clearly going to be a problem.
She stashed the book away and copied anything important into her own notes, the margins of her novels. Her dad’s pulp fiction classics filled with sex, violence and rebellion. The one she was reading now had a dashing young pirate on it. In thick black biro she made a note of every date and time and phone number she recognised.
Would she name drop him? Was Kenny even his real name? What difference would some smokey eyeliner drug mule do in the grand scheme of things anyway?
At the bunker, the much older Irene would admit how immature and dangerous this was, but how she’d never trade it in at all.
Her 22 year old self put out the cigarette. Inside smoking was still in vogue. Not that voguing had quite become popular yet.
She’d planned to make three important phone calls as soon as she was safe and alone.
One to a journalist. One to a killer. And one to a man who smelt of liquor and cigarettes, who’d left his notebook on the bedside table. She’d never know how much trouble she’d cause in doing so, She pushed her coins into a payphone and began to dial.