At 4:30 that afternoon Irene Nesser took a taxi to the airport, where she went into
the ladies’ room and cut up Monica Sholes’ passport into little pieces, flushing
them down the toilet. The credit card she also cut up and put the bits in five
different rubbish bins, and the scissors too. After September 11 it was not a good
idea to attract attention by having any sharp objects in your baggage.
Irene Nesser took Lufthansa flight GD890 to Oslo and caught the airport bus to the
Oslo train station, where she went into the ladies’ room and sorted through her
clothes. She placed all items belonging to the Monica Sholes persona—the page-
boy wig and the designer clothes—in three plastic bags and tossed them into three
different rubbish containers and wastebaskets in the train station. She put the
empty Samsonite suitcase in an unlocked locker. The gold chain and earrings were
designer jewellery that could be traced; they disappeared down a drain in the
street outside the station.
After a moment of anxious hesitation, Irene Nesser decided to keep the fake latex
breasts.
By then she did not have much time and took on some fuel in the form of a
hamburger from McDonald’s while she transferred the contents of the luxury
leather briefcase to her travel bag. When she left, the empty briefcase remained
under the table. She bought a latte to go at a kiosk and ran to catch the night train
to Stockholm. She arrived as the doors were closing. She had booked a private
sleeping berth.
When she locked the door to her compartment, she could feel that for the first time
in two days, her adrenaline levels had returned to normal. She opened the
compartment window and defied the no-smoking regulations. She stood there
sipping at her coffee as the train rolled out of Oslo.
She ran through her checklist to be sure that she had forgotten no detail. After a
moment she frowned and rummaged through her jacket pockets. She took out the
complimentary pen from the Zimmertal Hotel and studied it for several minutes
before she tossed it out of the window.
After fifteen minutes she crept into bed and fell asleep.