My Response to the Writer’s Prompt Submitted by Reader Magdalena

Standing at Frankfurt airport, realizing that her luggage was lost and with it, all the memories of her carefree life

I was excited to finally be leaving New York City to start my new life as a model in Paris —certainly a glamorous career with lots of cameras and fashion shows with travel to interesting places all over the world and of course, being introduced to famous actors, athletes and of course, high-ranking politicians.  And that travel would be difficult work of course, but then, as they told me at Langley, a perfect cover, or legend for my other job.

I rented a hotel room in NYC with my model colleague Christine who was born in Russia, raised in Hong Kong by a wealthy business man father and she could speak and write fluently in five languages.  And Christine’s beauty could not be resisted.   She told me it was a blessing but also a curse.  She enjoyed the company of high -ranking world politicians and sometimes athletes who wanted to date beautiful women, but do it discretely, protected by their security teams.

Christine was alone, with no family, and it seemed sex and high-class parties were as much of her life as her modeling. A while back, I was startled when she gave me a locked satchel filled with documents, or, I don’t know what else, and she told me to keep these, in case anything happened to her.  I told her no, I couldn’t do this because I didn’t want the responsibility of these documents, whatever they were, but then, over time, she convinced me that I should keep them, since I was her only friend in life. But what secrets was she hiding?

One Saturday night, she told me that she wanted to be alone, and had no plans that night, so I worked a fashion show and came back to our room later that night, and saw several muscular men in suits walking down the corridor past our room, and the man in the middle, who they seemed to be protecting, briefly glanced at me for a millisecond, and I thought the face looked familiar, but his left foot, peculiar how it turned inwards slightly.

Then they were gone

I opened the hotel door and found Christine, naked on the bed and I thought she was asleep, but when I tried to wake her up, she had no pulse and was dead.  I tried to maintain my composure as I called 911, but I couldn’t control my anguish and the operator had to ask me several times to control my voice and give her my location and what happened.

The police took me away, and put me in an interview room at the station, then, I was taken to a place at the State Department for further questioning.  They told me that the case was under investigation, and that I was not to talk to anyone except my superiors at the agency.

“We think it’s best for you to leave the country, and we’ve got you some modeling jobs in Paris. This is best for you, and we know your training will serve you well.  Please know that we will be protecting you the best we can, and we will be giving you further instructions.”

I never told anyone about the satchel entrusted to me by Christine.  Nobody.

So, I flew to Frankfurt as soon as I could, to meet my contacts, then catch another plane a few days later to Paris to start my exciting new career and put this horror behind me.

I went to pick up my suitcase in the luggage carousel, but I never found it.  I stayed for hours asking for help finding it and put a tracer on it with the airline, and they said they would deliver it to me at my address in Frankfort.   It never came.   The satchel was inside it.

That’s when I realized my life had changed forever, and all the memories of my carefree life were gone.

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