Ice Station Wolfenstein

Chapter 22

"Sam, Sam…" Purdue chuckled. "What do you take me for? Some kind of evil genius? I'm afraid the truth is less well-organized than that. I'm just interested, that's all. In everything. And everyone. Tell me the truth, if you had the resources to have all of these very interesting people thoroughly investigated, then throw them together in a remote place and see how they interacted — wouldn't you? Wouldn't anyone? I am sorry if it's a little insensitive."

"A little?" Sam stared at Purdue, incredulous. "That's one way of putting it. Using my life as a soap opera would be another."

"Then I apologize. Sincerely. Understanding how other people will react to things has never been a strong point of mine. If truth be told, that's why I find these little experiments so interesting."

Sam scrutinized Purdue's face, searching for any hint of insincerity, anything that would tell him if he was still being toyed with. What is he up to? Sam wondered. He had no idea what to do with the anger that was knotting his stomach. Part of him wanted to lash out, to knock Purdue to the ground and punch him over and over until his face was a bloody pulp for dragging everyone here and putting them in danger, as well as for treating Sam's private life as some kind of entertainment or experiment. Yet at the same time, he couldn't help but see Purdue's point. Perhaps I've just been a journalist too long, he thought, but if I had access to all that information, then… yeah. I probably would use it.

"I've been wondering about a few things," Sam said. "There's a lot about this expedition that doesn't make sense."

"Then ask questions, Sam," Purdue admonished him. "Surely you know that that's how you find things out. Or have you been getting sucked into the vortex of unnecessary mystery?"

Sam let the gibe pass, knowing that he had. "Ok. How did you know about this ice station in the first place? You've never explained that."

"Professional rivalry led me to this place," said Purdue. "I was working on a design for a new type of solar cell that could be used to replace jet and rocket fuel and redefine the way we think about air and space travel. I am still working on it, if truth be told, and when I am done with it you will see space travel become as common as commercial air flights."

"Really?" Sam tried to hide the note of skepticism in his voice but failed.

"Yes," Purdue chose to ignore the disbelieving tone. "My research led me to consider the work of Wernher von Braun. It would have been immensely useful for me to have conferred with him, but since he was already dead I decided to track down those who had worked with him instead. This led me to Dr. Lehmann, who first mentioned the existence of this place quite by accident. He tried to pass it off as the ramblings of a senile old man, but I knew I was onto something interesting and that if this was a place where Wernher von Braun continued his work, it was a place I wanted to find. I knew about his work in America, of course, but so little of his truly interesting work is ever discussed! I had some investigations carried out, which led me to Harald Kruger and brought those notebooks into my possession."

"And you genuinely didn't have them stolen from Nina's flat?"

Purdue looked wounded. "If I had known that it was Nina who had them, I would simply have asked her to show them to me. She would probably have refused, and I would have found a way to bribe her. She is ambitious. I would have found something she wanted."

"And if they'd still been with me?"

"Oh, in that case they would have been spirited out of your home, copied and returned before you were aware that they had gone. My people are very good. Messy break-ins are simply distasteful. That's how I had planned to get copies of the notebooks from Mr. Kruger, until someone with a much less delicate touch got there first. No, Sam, I did not have the notebooks stolen. They were offered to me as a particularly shady private purchase."

"Who by?"

"An anonymous individual who approached me via the shadow web. The entire transaction was carried out via intermediaries, and the notebooks were part of a package of materials concerning this place."

Sam let out a long, low whistle. "The shadow web? Wow."

Purdue shook his head. "It sounds good, but it is less impressive than you think." He reached into his inside pocket. "Perhaps I should have been more open with you," he said. "Not with the rest of the group — one has to preserve some sense of drama, after all — but with you, and possibly with Nina. Keeping things entirely to myself, usually in order to play games with people, is a failing of mine. So, in the interests of correcting that…" He pulled out a small leather document wallet and dropped it in front of Sam. "Here. Perhaps this will be of interest to you. Show it to Nina — if I gave it to her she would assume I had ulterior motives, and she would be correct. Don't show it to Matlock, though. Let this be Nina's to catalogue, write about, or ignore as she pleases."

With that, Purdue stood up and strolled out of the room, leaving Sam with a head full of questions and an overwhelming sense that he had had all the answers he was going to get. He fumbled with the document wallet until the cords tying it shut were undone. Inside were two items; a letter and a slightly tattered old photograph of a woman in a floral sundress, laughing and holding her hat in place as the wind tried to take it from her head. She was holding the hand of a smiling toddler. On the back of the photograph someone had written "Sabine," which Sam assumed to be the woman's name, and beneath that, "Friedrich." Sam turned his attention to the letter.

The letter seemed to end abruptly there. Beneath those paragraphs, it looked as though a new, separate letter began. The handwriting was the same but the color of the ink had changed and the writing was wilder, shakier, as if the letter had been dashed off in a great hurry.

When he had finished reading the letters, Sam stared at them for some time without blinking or seeing. In his mind's eye he pictured Karl Witzinger, perhaps occupying this very room, lying on the bunk and wishing for nothing more than to be home with the woman he loved.

They had a life planned, Karl and Sabine, he thought. They were building something together, and then… I know the end of the story, for him at least. He didn't make it home. She got a letter saying he was dead. I wonder how he died. How she coped. Fuck, I wonder what they were asking him to do here that was so bad he needed to escape. What did he think was worse than working in a concentration camp — was he working on biological weapons? God… I wonder what they were trying to do in this place. Will we ever even begin to figure it out?