Mats could not resist the temptation to turn in a full circle.
He’d never seen anything like it, not even on YouTube or in travel brochures. He knew that LegendAir had the world’s most luxurious first class cabins and had heard their slogan: Sky Suite: Your Private Residence in the Clouds.
Still, considering this world that had just been revealed to him, even that assertion was a modest understatement.
What they called the Sky Suite was almost as big as his apartment in the Calle Guido. It stretched over twelve windows in length on the upper deck, and in stark contrast to his plain apartment an interior designer had clearly been given free rein to indulge in the most expensive woods, carpets, and select leather upholsteries. Everything was maintained in soft, brownish cream tones. The dark mahogany grain of the wall panelling pleasantly juxtaposed with the light dining table, where four people could quite comfortably take a seat in cappuccino-toned leather chairs.
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Kaja Claussen said once she’d brought him up here.
After Mats had got louder and passengers started growing uneasy, Valentino had reluctantly given in and notified his superior. And despite the circumstances, Kaja was sincerely happy to see her former therapist again after such a long time.
It was her suggestion to discuss his incident with Valentino one on one and undisturbed. Yet Mats couldn’t have imagined her mention of a ‘safe haven’ would mean all this here.
His feet actually sank in the mossy-thick carpet of the three-room suite, which was located directly over the cockpit. To reach it, they had walked up a spiral staircase at the front of the aeroplane and had to pass through what resembled an expensive London cocktail bar. Up here at an altitude of 9,750 metres, passengers in first class actually had their own bartender offering cocktails, specialty coffees and the largest selection of gin in the skies, all from a semicircular bar polished to glossy perfection. Shielding the Sky Suite from the lounge was a thick, sound-absorbing door.
Its location in the nose made it the most dangerous place on the plane in the event of a crash or collision, but that mattered less to Mats considering the crisis he now found himself in.
‘Is that a double bed back there?’ he asked, though there could be no doubt. In a rear area, shielded by another sliding door currently open, he spotted a full bed. An armada of pillows took up nearly the whole mattress.
‘French down and Egyptian linen.’ Kaja smiled and handed Mats a fresh hand towel.
For a moment he’d actually forgotten he was still holding his nose, though it had luckily stopped bleeding.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered, looking around for a garbage can. In doing so he discovered another door between the living and sleeping areas.
She led him to what he’d assumed was a bathroom, which could easily fit four of the restroom compartments he’d just been in. It even had a glass shower, level with the floor. Mats disposed of his bloody hand towel in a garbage can, stepped up to the double sinks and washed his face and hands.
‘Why didn’t you try contacting me before the flight?’ he heard Kaja say behind him, keeping a respectful distance.
‘I didn’t want to bother you.’ The truth was, he hadn’t thought of her at all when booking. He had known that his former patient was a senior flight attendant with a large airline but had figured her for a German carrier. Only when the blackmailer mentioned her name had he put two and two together.
‘That quadruple booking of yours caused a minor sensation,’ Kaja said.
‘I can imagine.’
Mats took a second to get a better first impression of her in the mirror now that she wasn’t looking directly at him and thought no one was watching. It was amazing – Kaja Claussen had actually turned into a beauty. Her long hair with its blondish strands looked as good on her as the twenty-odd pounds she must have put on. She naturally had to cover the piercing holes on her chin and right upper lip with make-up, yet she had learned that too. Just as she had her straight and self-confident posture complete with broad shoulders, which couldn’t all be due to her form-fitting uniform.
Kaja the senior flight attendant gestured at the suite living room and invited him to sit with her at the table there. The automatic window blinds resembling real silk curtains had been lowered, and the silver lamp on the broad sill between window and table gave off a warm and soft light.
‘I would just like to apologise for the incident, Dr Krüger. Ken can sometimes lose self-control but I never thought he’d resort to violence. On you of all people. I truly am sorry.’
‘Ken?’ Mats asked, glancing at her name tag. ‘So is Valentino his last name?’
She laughed. ‘No, no. We just call him that. Because of his looks, and because his girlfriend looks a little like Barbie.’
Barbie.
It sounded enough like ‘baby’ to remind him of the pain that Nele now had to endure. If only he was the victim of some sick joke.
‘Everything okay?’ Kaja asked, his anxiety obviously not escaping her.
‘I’m not feeling so great. I suffer from a fear of flying.’
‘You?’ Kaja started to smile but immediately corrected herself.
‘Optometrists wear glasses too,’ Mats offered as justification.
The senior flight attendant didn’t say anything for a moment. She just looked at him with her large bright-blue eyes and then nodded. ‘I see, okay. That does make more sense.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, I mean, back then you were able to put yourself inside my head like no one else. Maybe a person has to know psychological problems themselves to understand them so well.’
Mats was now the one nodding, even though he didn’t believe the theory. You didn’t need to hit your shin with an axe to be able to imagine the pain.
‘What I wanted to say was: I was having a little panic attack down there in the restroom. I might have overreacted. Now I’m not even sure if Ken, if Valentino, that is, actually hit me.’
Kaja squinted in confusion. ‘How else could it happen?’
Mats was about to say something about the dry air on board and the fact that he tended to get nosebleeds when he suddenly needed to grab at his head – not for show, but because a dull pain had just hit him, this time at his temple.
Kaja stood and pointed towards the bedroom. ‘Let’s get you some rest before anything.’
‘No, no.’ Mats shook his head and only made the pain worse. He felt at his nose and was relieved to find it had stopped bleeding for good.
‘It almost looks like I’m trying to finagle an upgrade out of you.’
His former patient laughed. ‘You booked four seats, for a vast sum. You even gave away your seat in business class. No one on board thinks you’re looking to finagle anything.’
Kaja glanced at her watch. ‘I have to go check on first class. But, don’t worry about a thing. The Sky Suite is actually almost never used – the airline only keeps it running for the image. No one up here actually pays the thirty-two thousand euros per person. You could get a private jet for that.’
‘But you won’t get into trouble, Frau Claussen?’
‘My position gives me the authority to make executive decisions about transferring passengers to other seating.’
She smoothed out her skirt. ‘I had good reason to write you back then, Dr Krüger.’
Mats nodded, recalling the card with an image of the clouds that had hung on his fridge a good while until it fell off at some point and was likely discarded by the cleaning staff.
Dear Dr Krüger, I’m now a senior flight attendant. Not exactly my dream, but close. It’s thanks to you alone. Just let me know if there’s ever anything I can do for you.
Kaja had actually wanted to become a pilot, but that was no longer possible after those incidents back in school. She never went to college either.
‘I’m happy that you’re on board.’ Kaja smiled, her expression almost motherly. ‘Maybe I can still show my gratitude somehow. For everything that you’ve done for me.’
Mats waved away the notion. ‘Please. I was doing my job.’
‘No, I’m serious. Without you, I wouldn’t even be alive. I know that. I wouldn’t have this job, wouldn’t have my wonderful fiancé. We’re trying to have a child, can you believe that?’
She showed him the diamond ring on her finger.
No.
Not when he thought back to her condition. Ten years ago now. Her transformation was breathtaking – from that girl with black-dyed hair on his psychiatrist’s sofa, zombie-like, outwardly dead, her skin itself the only thing holding her together, to this practically Amazonian, curvaceous beauty. It was a true before-and-after image like those usually seen only in deceiving teleshopping promos.
‘I’m happy you’re doing so well,’ Mats said, and he spoke the truth. Kaja Claussen was probably the biggest success story of his career. A patient he even dared speak of as being healed.
And now he was supposed to destroy her again.
No. I can’t do it.
Mats took a deep breath as he watched her go.
No.
Of course he wouldn’t sacrifice her. Complying with the blackmailer’s absurd demands was simply not possible. Under no conditions would he destroy his former patient psychologically, all in order to make her his tool for mass murder.
Then he was forced to think about Nele again.
‘Frau Claussen?’ he asked right as she opened the door to leave the suite.
She turned around. Smiled. ‘Yes?’
Just what am I doing? he asked himself.
It couldn’t be coincidence he was on board the same flight as her. Someone must’ve been planning this long beforehand, and that in itself could be his starting point for coming up with some kind of plan to prevent this catastrophe after all, without anyone getting hurt. Neither here on board, nor, even more importantly, in Berlin.
But to save Nele and the baby in Berlin, he needed time and a room where he could make a phone call undisturbed. He’d already found the latter right here in the Sky Suite.
There is a solution, he told himself, to give himself the courage. And I still have over eleven hours’ time to find it.
He’d keep Kaja’s previous mental illness as his plan B, just in case.
Only if necessary.
In case his plan A fell apart, and he had to consider the unthinkable.
At the very latest, on their approach to landing in Berlin.
And so Mats felt like vomiting from disgust and self-loathing, because he knew what the words he was about to say would unleash within Kaja. His words would be long fingernails dragging across that well-healed scab of her psychological wounds, exposing those first connecting scars.
He said: ‘Fortunately, I was able to overcome any suspicions I had about your version of the story back then, Kaja.’