by P. W. Child
“Mr. Purdue,” Campbell nodded.
“Lieutenant Campbell,” Purdue acknowledged. “You have come far to see me, I presume?”
“Can I see you…in private?” the cop asked, looking hard at the poor butler who was unable to move from between the two men in the confines of the narrow passage.
“Step into my laboratory. We can talk here,” Purdue offered and ushered the cop inside. Realizing that the butler would have left them if he hadn’t been trapped, a bit of the old Purdue came out as he winked at Charles in amusement and whispered, “You’re welcome.”
Charles almost smiled as he walked away from the uncomfortable situation.
In Purdue’s lab, Lieutenant Campbell had time to look around as his host tidied up a stray chair for him to sit on. The place was packed with machines, lights, and monitors the likes of which the police officer had only ever seen at MI5 before. The billionaire smelled of fresh Aloe Vera shower gel, but his shirt was clammy from his still moist body and his white hair was unkempt and wet. Even his glasses seemed to sit a little skew on his face and he was barefoot.
“This place…uh,” Campbell started. “it looks like you’ve been busy since we last saw each other.”
“Yes, yes, I have. I’ve been busy with some very important experiments,” Purdue said hastily, as he rushed to create some order around the officer. He found two glasses and poured them both some fruit juice he kept in the bar fridge.
“That sounds like Frankenstein stuff. Experiments. Laboratories always gave me the creeps,” Campbell admitted as he took the drink from Purdue. “Thanks.”
“Oh, don’t worry. There’s nothing like that going on here. Just quantum physics and some technological gadgets, but you won’t find corpses hooked up to lightning conductors,” Purdue soothed him. “That stuff is scheduled for next year.”
The lieutenant, a sharp judge of character, instantly knew that Purdue was joking. Yet by his background check on the world-renowned explorer and scientist, Campbell knew that Purdue was perfectly capable of such atrocious science.
“I have some new information from a reliable source,” Campbell started. Purdue sat down and leaned with his elbows on his thighs to listen as Campbell continued. “Your hit at Sinclair was facilitated by an inside job. Reusch, the impostor, was working under one Walter Guterman, a criminal kingpin we suspect is in alliance with the Order of the Black Sun. It was Guterman who had him killed after he was arrested.”
“My God, the Order is like a cancer, tainting cells everywhere,” Purdue theorized as his mind’s eye ran over the biological crash course in lung cancer he’d been undergoing to help Nina. “And where you cut them out, they just infest another part and grow all over again.”
Campbell agreed. “Funny you should say that, Mr. Purdue, because they’ve spread to another part of your life.”
Alarmed, Purdue sat up. “What do you mean?”
“Your holding company, Scorpio Majorus,” Campbell read from his notes, “owns the Orkney Institute of Science. Am I correct?”
Purdue nodded, but he felt the pit of his stomach fill with a tempest of bile. He had known something was amiss there, and he was about to find out why.
“My source tells me that someone at your clinic has been leaking information to Guterman, and that this information may have jeopardized the safety of a former patient of your clinic…and a friend,” Campbell said. “Dr. Nina Gould.”
“Nina? How?” Purdue shrieked.
“Listen, we will locate Dr. Gould and warn her about a possible attempt to abduct her. We have reason to believe that Guterman wants her alive and that he may set a trap via his operatives in England, where she was invited to teach for a few months,” Campbell shared.
“Her number is discontinued, at least to me,” Purdue lamented, looking dreadfully sad.
“To us as well, but we can locate her from other ways. Don’t worry,” Campbell said. “Just alert her should she contact you first.”
“What does this Guterman want with my clinic? And with Nina? What are we to him?” Purdue inquired.
“Well, I’m not sure how to put this. It sounds quite ridiculous when said out loud,” Campbell groaned. “It appears that Guterman and a few other people involved here, are desperately trying to locate…” the cop looked hesitant to say it, “…the Fountain of Youth.”
“Excuse me?” Purdue said quickly.
“True story. During the Second World War there was a Nazi project called Lebensborn – meaning ‘the Fount of Life.’ Long story short, there are a few people still pursuing this project and they seem to think Dr. Gould’s blood has some sort of resilience,” Lieutenant Campbell revealed. “Aside from gathering the information from your mental control, Mr. Purdue, the bogus therapist was supposed to use you to get to Dr. Gould. Guterman believes, apparently, that Nina Gould holds the Fountain of Youth.”
Purdue’s face went ashen. “How do you know all this? Who told you?” he shouted in panic. “Who helped them get Reusch in to me?”
Campbell did not have to divulge the information, but he felt that Purdue needed to know.
“Melissa Argyle, aged forty-nine, and a subject of Guterman’s Lebensborn project since she was nineteen years old in 1966.”
Purdue dropped his glass.
Chapter 23
Three large eyes blinded Nina as Christa switched on the operation lights. The beams were so sharp that even her deteriorated sight was violated. Through her skull behind her eyes the light stung into her brain.
“Did you clean that up?” Christa asked Clara, who nodded.
Nina couldn’t see what they were talking about because her head was strapped too tightly to the headrest, impairing her ability to move. From the tray next to her Christa lifted a large, long needle and the fine silver tube flashed with a sheen in the lights above them.
Oh Jesus, no! Nina thought, having great apprehension about the intended entry point of the monstrous instrument. She felt Christa’s cold latex touch on her thigh and she tried to kick, but her legs were restrained, both at the knees as well as the ankles, leaving her helpless. Clara had gagged her and waited for Christa’s instruction before she’d applied a swab of iodine to the inside of Nina’s thigh. Yet, despite all her terror and livid protest, Nina was relieved that the devilish implement was meant to penetrate her skin and tissue alone.
“Sorry if this is a little cold,” Clara said as she swabbed the yellow liquid onto a small patch of Nina’s skin. She could see in Nina’s eyes that what she said was ludicrous to their victim, but she was grateful that she didn’t have to hear the verbal abuse Nina would no doubt have flung at her for it.
“This is going to hurt. I’m not going to lie,” Christa told Nina as she prepared to sink the needle in. Everyone present knew that the remark was a subliminal mocking towards her nemesis to rub in, if the pun could be excused, the fact that Christa was victorious over Nina.
The historian narrowed her eyes derisively at her tormentor, but it did nothing to avert what Christa was doing. Unceremoniously the department head of the Academy pushed the shaft of the needle into Nina’s thigh, slowly plunging it deeper until it had reached the desired depth. Nina’s already sensitive skin took the procedure far worse than it normally would have, had it not been inflamed by damaged nerve endings.
With all the breath she had left Nina screamed from the painful stab of the needle, her sick, slight body writhing in agony. Her tears came easily from the anguish of the slow sinking surgical steel that split her skin as it explored her flesh for that important vein. Clara stepped back as if Nina’s muffled wails could harm her.
“Get back here, you little coward. Hold down her leg, for Christ’s sake!” Christa growled at her daughter. “If she moves too much I could rupture the vein and then she’ll bleed out. Is that what you want? Do you want to get old, Clara?”
“No, Christa,” Clara replied softly and stepped closer to Nina. She couldn’t stand the way in which Dr. Gould’s big dark
eyes beckoned through pools of tears, but she had to suck it up and deal with it. After all, she was the spawn of an SS officer from Nuremburg, not to mention the other side of her bloodline that was Dr. Christa Smith.
“Now watch closely. This is where we have to keep the femoral artery catheter in place. Are you paying attention?” Christa asked, making sure her assistant was watching. Clara nodded, trying with all her might not to look at the begging eyes of the frail historian and the streaks of tears that wet the temples of her tilted head. All Nina could do to remain calm was to look into the lights, the three huge round suns that would have blinded anyone who had decent eye sight.
With the needle deep enough, Nina’s blood began to show in the tubing as the catheter tapped her vein. “Now see, it has to run fast enough to maintain the consistency without bleeding her out too quickly, understand?” Christa lectured while Clara nodded. “Tape down the shaft here, please.”
“Isn’t she already a bit too pale?” Clara frowned as she caught sight of Nina after securing the draining device.
“Don’t fret about that. It’s just the shock of what’s happening. She’ll regain her color for a while and then, when her exsanguination reaches critical level, she will once again get pallid,” Christa explained. She looked at Nina with a sickening satisfaction, continuing to jog through the expected regression as if she were sharing it with Nina. “After that she’ll lose consciousness and her skin will begin to turn a bluish tint, but don’t worry about that. It’s just a sign that the oxygen has been depleted.”
“Then death,” Clara affirmed as her mother removed her surgical gloves.
“Remove the gag. We’re not monsters.” Christa smiled coldly at her victim as she gave the order to Clara.
Nina would have no reason or benefit in screaming for help. She was very deep and hidden behind enemy lines, probably being left for dead. Serves me right for cutting ties with Purdue. Serves me right for cutting communication with him and Sam while taking this contract, she chastised herself. The very same inner voice that had spitefully kept smoking after she’d been diagnosed with lung cancer now punished her for needing to distance herself from Sam and Purdue for a bit to process the illness.
“Why do you want my blood?” Nina muttered wearily.
“Because your blood is special, Dr. Gould,” Christa answered. “Since the well dried up here a few years ago we’ve been looking for something that was as potent as the subterranean water in the cave river under this town.”
“Potent? As what?” Nina frowned.
“The Fountain of Youth, my darling. You know that old font in the garden my mother-in-law so readily told you about? That used to be one of the arcane springs on this planet that yielded water that could slow aging – by decades,” Christa explained as Clara looked on.
“So…first of all, you believe that this water – which is probably just high in preservative minerals – can make you forever young,” Nina asked.
“Take a good look at my daughter and me, Dr. Gould,” Christa chipped in. “We look about the same age, don’t we? About, say, forty-five, maybe forty-eight?”
Clara smiled. “I’m fifty-two and my mum is sixty-eight! And why? Because we’ve been following the springs since the sixties. In 1962 I started drinking from the vials stored in the vaults by the SS during the 1943 Lebensborn project. My mother shared this wonderful secret with me.”
“Well, I had to. It would be silly to cover up why a daughter would look older than her mother by years, right?” Christa laughed. Clara chuckled with her, slapping her on the hand again as they did that first day in the main building’s kitchen.
“So when the vials ran dry, we naturally started eliminating the competition and keeping most of the containers for our own preservation,” Christa revealed. “But…then we found out about this fountain in the old Norman fortress occupied by Prof. Ebner, also former Waffen-SS and excellent scientist. He’d also been a part of the Lebensborn project, but not paternally. He was helping the program by adopting one of the children born from the project.
“Mrs. Patterson,” Nina said.
“Correct. I had to find a way to own this building and all its…benefits,” she smiled, “so I married the heir, my beloved hubby you so love to impress and wrap around that little Scottish finger of yours.”
“So we used the fountain in the courtyard,” Clara said. “Until our hold on it was threatened by a potential buyer for the property, one Mrs. Cotswald.”
“Oh my God!” Christa agreed with her daughter’s eye-rolling recollection. “Mrs. Cotswald! What a clingy, thick-skinned cow that was!” The two women flanked Nina’s suffering body as they chatted on like a bunch of scone-eating hens at a luncheon, having no regard for her pain or the reprehensible nature of the current circumstances.
“She would just not take ‘no’ for an answer, would she?” Clara said to Christa as they raved about the annoying woman they’d encountered. Nina could not believe how nonchalant they were about everything, but then again, such was the very essence of a psychopathic nature.
“We found out that she, too, was the result of a Lebensborn pact and that she was looking for her daughters. But we knew what she was looking for, because she was decades younger than her identity document said. So we obstructed the sale by intercepting the mail, among other things, until finally Daniel decided to keep the academy.” Christa sighed happily.
“What happened to her?” Nina asked.
“After she finally left Daniel alone, she went to some island somewhere reputed to have an underground river like the one we had here,” Clara said.
“While she was there, I was kind enough to invite her husband to teach here on retainer,” Christa grinned proudly. “Without him she would have no reason to try again. After she returned from her island getaway she found that she was a widow.”
“Pity. Pity,” Clara’s meanness seeped through, proving beyond a doubt what fabric she was cut from. “She came back without having found her fountain…or her daughters! Talk about shitty luck, eh?”
“This is fucking twisted,” Nina murmured, wiping the grins from their aging faces in an instant. “But how is my blood going to help you? I’ve never even been to a hot spa, let alone bathed in a fountain of youth!”
“Ha!” Christa exclaimed. “My sweetheart! You are the ultimate vial of youth, a human container of the most precious Nazi blood ever engineered for longevity, resilience, and regeneration!”
“Really?” Nina scowled, raising her voice. “Then how the fuck could I contract lung cancer, ladies? Maybe you should do a blood test before you decide to steal the merchandise next time.”
“You don’t have cancer,” Clara denied, looking shocked.
“Clara,” Christa seethed, her flaming eyes demanding an explanation very quickly.
“No! No, she’s bullshitting us. Naturally. She would say anything to get us to stop draining her fucking blood out! Can’t you see what she’s trying to do?” Clara defended frantically. Her face was visibly paler after Nina’s exposition, even under the overpowering white lights.
“You said she had Lita Røderick’s blood from a transfusion four years ago, Clara!” Christa screamed, red in the face.
“She does! It was on her chart when the Order intercepted her blood work after she came back from Chernobyl. Everyone in the Order knew that she’d received Lita’s blood just before Lita disappeared. Dr. Cait swore that Dr. Gould was a carrier of Lita’s DNA, the exact same composition as Himmler had originally engineered Lita with as Wunderwaffe!”
“Jesus Christ!” Nina gasped. “That is what this is all about? That red-haired harlot the Black Sun put their hopes on before we watched her get her ass kicked?”
Christa walloped Nina right across the face. Her hand burned into Nina’s jaw and cheek, but Nina didn’t care. Dr. Cait had betrayed her! She’d believed all along that he was treating her for radiation poisoning, when all the while he’d had some nefarious agenda!
Now that she knew their secrets, she knew how to get under their skins. Nina had always hated the thought of knowing that the blood of Lita Røderick – the monstrous genius genetically produced by Himmler’s scientists during World War II – was running through her veins. The evil redhead had almost destroyed her and her friends when they’d raced to find the historical Hall of Valhalla.
“She was not a wonder weapon,” Nina laughed coarsely. “Lita Røderick was nothing more than a deformed product of SS-buggery with a tail like a lizard. She was killed by a motorcycle gang inside the meeting hall of Odin, you imbeciles!”
“Shut up!” Christa grunted. She quickly gagged Nina and hushed Clara. “Someone is coming!”
Chapter 24
“I’ll find her,” Purdue said urgently.
“You’re still under suspicion for Reusch’s murder, Mr. Purdue,” Campbell said. “I’d advise you to give me her location so that I can send the local police in her area out to pick her up.”
“Fine, fine,” Purdue replied as he rummaged through his drawers for a thin, rectangular wooden box which he promptly pulled out from under a crow’s nest of wiring and switches. Fascinated, Campbell sat watching the frantic genius. It would appear that Dr. Gould was very important to him.
“What the hell is that?” Campbell asked as Purdue unlocked the box and set down the contents on the desk next to his tablet. “It looks like something out of a Sci-Fi movie.”
Purdue smiled. “It is. This is a tracking device based on biometrics, the application of recognition analysis based on biological data.”
“Facial recognition?” the officer asked, shifting closer with his chair. His curiosity and interest pleased Purdue. Most people just naïvely shook their heads at his remarkable creations, but Campbell asked questions and looked impressed with the intimidating technology.
