"Next," she called, staring vacantly at the computer screen.
A bandaged hand appeared forwarding a passport, accompanied by the gentle timbre of a voice bidding, "Good evening."
It was the voice of a quietly confident man, unruffled by the trivialities of others. With those two words, Christine's disagreeable mood left, but as she turned from the flickering images on the monitor and looked directly at him, her armour dropped.
The entire left side of his face was dreadfully scarred. From forehead to neck, spilling over to his chin, an appalling burn masked him in a cowl of blistered disfigurement. Behind the heavy tortoiseshell glasses, his left eyelid had borne the brunt of the damage, barely covering a dark, lifeless eye. His brown hair on the left side was patchy, and he had grown it to shield the full frightening impact of the injury. The nose and left ear were angrily deformed, and a latticework of discoloured scar tissue sat tight and raw across his face and neck. The whole hideous mess retreated into the collar of a beautiful camel cashmere rollneck sweater and, she presumed, because of the gauze visible on his hand, probably continued all the way down the left arm.
For an instant, Christine fell into a trance-like state.
'I'm sure you'll find that that's me on the passport," he said to her quietly. "Not likely to be two of us in the airport, is there?"
Christine's eyes watered when she realised what she had done, and her face flushed scarlet. She was overwhelmed by the distress she felt at humiliating the poor man in full view of the people around them.
"I am so very sorry, Mr. Bogle," she said, reading from his passport. ''I've had a really long day and I'm due for a break..."
He cut her off with a politely raised hand, reassuring that there was no need to apologise. Christine smiled nervously and proceeded to stamp his passport without a second glance.
As he moved off towards baggage collection, the Customs Officer felt empty and ashamed.
CHAPTER 49
Perth, Western Australia
An hour later, having left the airport and paid the taxi driver, the man locked himself into the privacy of a small townhouse in Victoria Park, on the edge of the city. In his usual fastidious manner, he minutely inspected the townhouse, unoccupied for months. He checked all the windows and the back door, then headed straight for the bathroom, closing the door.
For five minutes he stood in front of the mirror. He studied every inch of his hideous face, touching and prodding, making a thorough examination. Satisfied, he opened the cabinet. Relieved to find everything was there, he retrieved a large bottle of alcohol, some brushes and an assortment of cotton swabs and cloth. He stripped.
He reached for his eyelids and cautiously recovered dark brown contact lenses from each eye. He flushed his red eyes with drops to ease the irritation. Then, reaching for an ugly red fold of skin on his hairline and rubbing with force, the first layer raised, easing back a small rubbery flap. Next, he picked up a brush that he'd laid out beside the basin. Dipping it into alcohol, he focused his attention on the flap of skin, painting the solution on behind it. The alcohol slowly dissolved the spirit gum, allowing the latex integument to peel away, revealing his own skin beneath. It was excruciatingly slow, taking an hour to remove the entire grotesque disguise.
As a wall clock in the lounge chimed midnight, Victor Lundt looked back at himself in the mirror. His skin was reddened and sensitive to the touch, and the basin was full of discarded latex and hair.
A smile of triumph animated his aching face.
He'd done it. Disguise was nothing new for Lundt, but this time he'd been forced to take a significantly greater risk, flying 15 hours non-stop with all that plastic shit stuck to his face. He was lucky that Cheng was able to meet him in Jo'burg to apply it. The movie special effects expert had been worried that the glue wouldn't last the entire flight, exposed to air-conditioning, sweat and movement. It was nothing like the movies, where actors pulled fake faces on and off as if they were changing hats.
It was a risk Lundt had to take, with INTERPOL and the rest of the world's law enforcement agencies looking for him, expecting him to head for Europe. Desperate times called for desperate measures. He'd rightly figured no one was going to bother a guy in Bogle's condition.
Lundt showered for 20 minutes, luxuriating under the sting of hot water on his body. He thought again about his choice of customs officer. He'd watched them all at work and knew the young one would be perfect. She was screwed as soon as she looked up. Lundt laughed to himself when he remembered how easy it had been to set up the young couple, too. Dropping cash in the right pocket at Jo'burg and setting the innocent backpackers up as mules had also worked a treat. It drew the attention of the Perth airport customs twits. Lundt didn't have any idea who the other guy was. In any event, he was a bonus, too.