She really should be working on the next Dighton & Forrest chapter of her erotica serial, which was to take place atop Mount Rushmore. She knew her readers were looking forward to it with baited breath…but at the moment her creative juices were flowing more toward her Australia Assassination scenario than her North by Northwest re-enaction scenario.
For now, she watched Ice Age on TNT. This is what she always did when she needed to think creatively: watch some movie or TV show that she’d seen dozens of times before and knew by heart. She could then pay attention to it with only part of her brain, leaving the rest of it free to go roaming into her own creative universe, where the ideas lay dormant until quietly nudged away by a thought, an aroma, a sound. Tonight, on the plane, when she watched Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint, not to mention the delectable James Mason, the ideas would be flying thick and fast…but now she was more in the mood to give some thought to her Australian Assassination scenario.
The problem with watching Ice Age on TNT, Michelle soon thought, was that one also had to watch seemingly a gazillion commercials, every five minutes. Yes, she muted them immediately, but they still took one directly out of the movie.
One of the commercials was a trailer for the movie Scott Pilgrim Vs the World. She didn’t have the sound on, so she really couldn’t tell what it was about, but it looked like it was about the usual. Some twenty-ish geek was suddenly thrust into a life or death situation and despite the fact that he had no training whatsoever, he was able to prevail against the professionals.
Those types of movies annoyed her no end. Even the new series Covert Affairs, featuring a female heroine, had done the same thing. The character Annie Walker had been in CIA training – training – and all of a sudden because of her linguistic skills she was taken out of training and thrust into a real life job, with lives depending on her. How stupid was that? (Especially since the SCD had done the same thing with Keller, as her Spindrift Security agent Gil McAdoo had found out for her.)
And that was the problem. Real world professionals saw these movies and TV shows, though to themselves, “Well, heck, if can turn out all right in fiction it’s sure to turn out all right in real life. Let’s make this Gus Keller guy, a total novice who just happens to speak German and know about the Entartete Kunst, pretend to be a cold blooded professional assassin in order to trap a real cold-blooded professional assassin, Taran Tula. She’s a woman, she’ll fall for him if nothing else.”
“Hah!” said Michele aloud. “Hah!”
They were damn lucky she hadn’t killed their false Mr. Largo when she’d had the chance.
And now what was happening?
This Gus Keller guy had somehow ferreted out her identity because she’d left behind a fingerprint (and that had been rather careless of her, to be sure). Instead of getting as much help as possible from his agency, he was going after her alone. He, a rookie with no experience, was going after her, and thought he could capture her without help?
Michele laughed.
On the other hand…now they were showing a trailer for The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Now, she’d seen that movie and liked it, for all that the young lead, Jay Baruchel, was way to young and wimpy for her, and his nasal voice had gotten on her nerves. Whereas Nicolas Cage…whew baby. Nice long black leather coat, stylish clothes and shoes...whereas Baruchel's character was the typical sloppy three layers of over-size shirts all hanging out over ill-fitting pants.
But that was the way she was, Michele thought. When she’d seen him in Raising Arizona and Moonstruck she hadn’t been impressed at all. Too young, too callow. But when she’d seen him in the Rock, whew baby. Both him and Sean Connery.
Michele laughed at her own inconsistency. Okay, so the plot of The Rock should have annoyed her, with a desk-jockey like Cage’s character going out into the real world and being able to defeat the baddies, but hey, at least he’d had Sean Connery with him to help.
It was too bad, really, that Cage didn’t visit William Shatner and learn some tips on how to find and wear a toupee that was not only undetectable but also made you look good…
Back to the matter at hand.
She was going to take Gus Keller for the ride of his life, teach him a lesson about messing with professionals. And then…well…she she still had to decide what the …and then was to be.
She had killed people, it was true. A couple of rapists, a murderer..people who’d deserved to die. She’d never had to kill to keep her multiple identities safe before…
She'd worked hard to set up the Taran Tula identity as a cold-blooded assassin, taking money from the highest bidder to kill anyone whom someone else wanted dead. That had only been her cover. The bodies that “rumor” had said she’d killed…most of them weren’t hers. But nobody knew that. For all Gus Keller knew, she’d toss a little old lady off a bridge without compunction.
And he thought he could trap her on his own?
That was downright insulting.
Michele powered off the Stairmaster and drank down the rest of her water.
She was going to enjoy the next week or two.
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