Nazi Gold

Chapter 4 — Déjà Vu

Nina waited for the doctor in his office. Her skin still hurt from the pricks of needles and the unpleasant bruising that came from over-hasty hospital staff who could not give two shit about their patients, because they never got into the private health care facilities. Sure Nina had the money to go to private clinics and such, now that she was the object of her boyfriend’s financial doting, but she did not care for the exuberant charges to get the same procedures done. It had always been a festering boil on her logic and sense of justice that these medical professionals employed their capitalist gluttony on the needy and the terminal. There was no way she was going to be part of their fat pay checks or their spoiled undeserved riches. Instead she supported the local clinics in Edinburgh who were decent enough to run an efficient ship, yet catered to the working class people of the city.

The office was unusually cold where she sat looking at all the wall mounted pictures of pregnancy, the effects of smoking on a bona fide lung and some displays of hideous skin disorders. This was not altogether a fun place to sit with nothing to do while your skin burned from awkward attempts to draw blood and your body shivered from the cold atmosphere in the old building with its pale walls and exterior plumbing, painted in the same leaded paint from the 60’s. Nina blew her breath out hard through her pursed lips and sounded oddly like a horse just as the doctor entered.

“Dr. Gould,” he jested, “shall I refer you to a good veterinarian?”

Nina laughed and the doctor, a lean and attractive Pakistani man of her age, smiled as he rounded the desk to sit down. He was always absurdly calm and Nina often hoped he would be around if she ever had a heart attack. Not only did he know his stuff, but his mellow demeanor, she imagined, would be a psychosomatic blessing on anyone panicking in the throes of impending death.

He sat down with his folder and had a look at the details presented by the lab. Nina hated this part. The foreboding silence while the professional came to a verdict in the company of the buzzing luminescent tubes fixed to the ceiling. She imagined this was what a corpse felt like — if it could feel — on the cold steel slab of the morgue just before they switched on that bone saw.

He let out a scoff, but kept his eyes glued to the paper.

“What?” she asked quickly. It was a natural response to the sound, after all. He looked up.

“Oh that was not a bad news grunt, Dr Gould, don’t fret,” he reassured her before returning to his scrutiny. “It’s just that, for one thing, we still cannot identify this strain and secondly, we cannot seem to figure out how your body is combating it.”

Oh god, here we go again, Nina thought. Now she would have to act dumb and be vigilant about her words.

“Were you born one of twins?” he asked unexpectedly. Nina almost swallowed her tongue at the uncanny question which proved the man’s expertise. But she could never tell what the blood platelets in her veins meant. Not only would it open a whole trunk of rattlesnakes, but it would become the focus of a worldwide medical spill and she would no doubt end up a captive test subject.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so,” she chuckled in amusement, acting uncharacteristically indifferent.

“Hmm,” he replied as he read further, “that is strange. But nevertheless, your treatment is helping, I see. The unknown arsenic based strain seems to be regressing, disappearing rapidly now. Have you been having spells of dizziness, confusion, hallucinations?” He looked her dead in the eye, so certain of what he wanted to know that the unshakable Dr Gould oddly found herself slightly intimidated by another human being for a change.

“Now and then I get a little light headed, but then, I have been working on a dissertation and had some late nights,” she replied, trying to sound as un-crazy as possible. She dared not tell him about the foul nightmares, because that would certainly force her current treatment into a psychological direction. And that was a dangerous path for any unstable adventurer to be found on. It would be the shortest path to ending her much loved freedom for good.

While he was explaining the effects of the treatment on the poison in her system, Nina found her mind dwelling towards this morning at the mansion. It was difficult to remember what had happened, but she recalled waking from a particularly wicked dream the details of which eluded her now. In fact, the entire morning was a blur, apart from the good cigarette she had after walking through the dark house at a desperately early hour.

Finally the doctor sighed from the last part of the report he had read and gave her a concerned, but composed look.

“Nina…” he started in an earnest tone of voice, and Nina felt her heart drop to the floor. It sounded typically like the speech TV medical professionals gave terminal patients, while the somber score played its piano melody in the background.

Oh my god, please don’t tell me I’m dying. I have too much to do, still, Nina begged behind her poker face.

“… your charts are looking good…” he continued.

“But?” she chipped in quickly, more because she needed to interrupt him to not have to hear the news yet, but he lifted his open hand to silence her.

“… but, I am afraid a part of this compound had made its way to your brain and you might find yourself being very confused, perhaps, maybe you will forget what you did or where you parked your car, things like that. This compound has caused what we call a mild form of delirium tremens.”

“Delirium?” she snarled, but her anxiety trumped her intolerance with their ineptitude at telling her like it was. This he could see. His petite patient was terrified of the repercussions, as anyone would be.

“Well, either it is surfacing now because it has progressed into your sensory receptors, or….the good part is that your mind might be pestered by confusion or time mix-ups only now, because it is the tail-end of the malady,” he explained. His calm tone did not fool Nina. She was the sharp kind of patient, the one whose common sense could not be impaired by reverse psychology or a smooth delivery. His voice was his method of lightening the blow, she was certain.

“Bullshit,” she said under her breath, looking down at her badly bruised forearm where the damned circular scar mocked her. The Black Sun’s medical freaks wanted her to see that emblem every day for the rest of her life, what was left of it, because she dared defy them. But if she had voiced this, she might have been seen as paranoid or delusional.

“You think I’m lying to you?” he smiled.

“Yes, doctor,” she said with a measure of gloom in her reply. “I think you are sugar coating a turd and asking me to lick it like an ice cream cone, frankly. Just tell me the truth.”

“I am. Do you want to hear bad news?” he asked.

“How can you not know if this thing is killing me or withering away? It is a pretty important thing to know, doc!” she exclaimed, trying not to shout.

“We don’t know, because we have never seen the likes of it before. I mean,” he sighed, his hands stretched open in defeat, “we know that it is arsenic, but that means nothing if we don’t know what the rest of the chemical consists of, Nina.” He sighed again, thinking of a better way to make it clear to her. “Look, what we have here is yellow. But that is all we know. We don’t know if it is yellow because it is fire or if it is yellow because it is a sunflower. Am I making sense here? We don’t know if it can be contained or if it is absolutely destructive, just because we know one of its components. Do you understand our predicament?”

Nina nodded. It made sense what he said. His comparison was quite effective and she felt defeated all over again.

“Dr. Gould,” he said gently, almost whispering. “If you know what this is, you have to tell us.”

“What makes you think I know? I am a historian, not a micro-biologist,” she frowned, but inside her she could feel the truth probing.

“You have to know where you got this,” he argued, “because it was a surgical procedure that put it there. It is not some accidental ingestion, it is not a prick from an exotic plant during a hike… it was done deliberately by people you have seen, people you had firsthand contact with. Now who is sugar-coating the turd, hey?” The doctor gave her that piercing stare of imploring. His words were not mockery or retort to her earlier remark, but genuine interest.

‘Tell him. It could save your life,’ she thought to herself. ‘Yeah, but what if you are recovering already? What if the arsenic is almost gone and now you tell them that it was put there by Nazi scientists to kill you? You’d screw yourself royally and get locked up.’

“I don’t know when it happened. They must’ve roofied me, doc,” she replied casually.

“Where did you wake up, then?” he asked.

“I woke up in my car in the parking lot,” Nina lied. Her doctor nodded, but she could see that he was not buying it. “I have another appointment soon. I have to go. Is that all, doc?” she asked.

“Yes, just make an appointment with Jackie in front and come see us in a month, alright?” he said as Nina opened the door. “Oh, and Nina,” he called after her just before she left, “I don’t care what you are hiding. If things get bad I want you to call me. Call me, no matter how trivial you might think.”

“Thanks, doc,” she said and pulled the door shut before he read her mind any further.

Another nightmare had Nina yelping like a pup as she was jerked from its dark realm into the uncertain security of her bedroom. The last image of her dream, an old woman with pearly eyes and no jaw under the roof of her bleeding mouth, fell in perfect sequence with a particularly shattering crash of thunder. It rattled her windows as she sat up in the dark, grateful that she had left her curtains drawn wide open to let in the outside street lights to clarify her surroundings. In black shadows and blue light the hues danced against her walls and ceiling, over her covered legs under her bedding and on her drenched face.

Nina looked around for remnants of her dream, but fortunately it was an entirely different world she had escaped from and not a single item in her bedroom resembled the evil atmosphere of the striped tent or the witch inside who read her palm. Only the stripes in the shape of her window’s burglar bars fell askew across her room while the hard rain clattered against the glass. The melting shadows of splattered droplets that ran down the outside of her window gilled the parts in between the stripes in rippling movement that Nina found quite pretty. It reminded her of those old toys, made of cut paper into a merry-go-round, the pictures inside animated by the movement of shadow and light as it twirled.

Her clock said 5.45am, but the weather and the season bought the darkness more time in Edinburgh. Nina had never been afraid of thunder, having grown up in Scotland and lived briefly in Ireland and England. It had always been part of life, but this morning in particular, the thunder made her uneasy. It felt as if the rumble in the heavens above her was the portending of something hideous to come. She lit a cigarette and took a long drag on the filter, watching the darkness momentarily illuminate from the glow of the burning tobacco.

Nina sat down in the quiet that played host to the roaring clouds and the patter of the water against the window and switched on her laptop.

Suddenly the intercom buzzed and jolted her body backward in a start.

“Jesus!” she exclaimed.

She took the last part if the cigarette and shoved the butt hard into the soil of the potted plant. With heavy feet she limped over to the device on the wall. She knew it would be Security. Somehow Nina knew that she had a female visitor.

“Dr Gould, so sorry to wake you,” the security guard said over the hissing signal, “but there is someone here to see you.”

“Is it a woman, perhaps?” Nina said sarcastically, wondering if she was dreaming again or if this was what her doctor was talking about — an episode of temporal disorientation? “Yes, Dr Gould. The lady says it is very urgent. She needs to see you before…”

“She leaves for an Amazonian expedition?” Nina finished his sentence.

He reacted with a moment’s pause. “Yes, madam….precisely.”

Nina could not believe what was happening, but she intended on riding it out nonetheless until she started being wrong. So far she was spooking Security quite a bit.

“Does she have a title, like Doctor or Professor? Um… with….with with a… wait….like an Eastern European name?” Nina asked in a shaky voice. Now she was beginning to scare herself. ‘Déjà vu,’ she heard from her inner voice, and with it came a crash of thunder as if to emphasize her observation.

“I am Professor Petra Kulich, Dr. Gould,” she heard a strong woman’s voice over the speaker and Nina collapsed to her knees.

“Dr. Gould?” the voice of the woman spoke again over the radio connection. “Are you there?”

From the deep blackness three voices echoed loudly through Nina’s skull. A deep scowl crossed the historian’s face from the sharpness of their words in her still waking mind.

“Easy! Easy,” she moaned before even opening her eyes. Nina inadvertently held her hands over her ears and curled up like a fetus. “Keep your voices down, for God’s sake!”

“Shhh…” she heard a man hush the others. Then a scuffling and the feeling of hands hooked under her arms and a cold washcloth on her face. All the while she could hear the woman with the heavy accent direct the two security men to place Nina on the couch.

“Professor, I’m afraid I am going to have to stay here with you. I can obviously not allow you to be alone with Dr. Gould as long as she is unfit to permit you herself,” Nina could hear the security guard explain in a whisper.

“Of course. I understand,” Professor Kulich agreed softly.

After a cup of tea and another steeping on the counter of the open plan kitchen on the second floor, Nina was feeling more focused. Her eyes had become clear again and her mind crisp while she poured the second cup for her and the middle aged blond woman with the staring grey eyes who sat across from her.

“I am so sorry to bother you this time of the morning, but…” Professor Kulich started, but Nina interrupted her.

“Let me guess,” she said calmly as she lifted her cup, “you are on your way to the Amazon?”

“How did you know?” the guest asked, but Nina figured she already knew, because her facial expression was a mix of curiosity and affirmation.

“Déjà vu,” Nina replied casually, and sank her nose into the cup to slurp the hot tea, her gaze dropped.

The professor nodded slowly. She sipped her tea and looked at her hostess with a look of sincere interest.

“Dr. Gould, tell me, what is your experience with the occult?” she asked, straight and clear.

Nina raised her big dark eyes at the woman with a slight frown. It was a gesture of two thoughts. Did she not know about Nina’s constant clashes with the Nazi-affiliated Black Sun Order — the very organization that spent its time and funds to locate and procure religious and historical relics important mostly as objects of occult practices?

“I know a little more than the average person, professor. As you might know, because why else would you show up at my home, asking for help? I am mainly a historian, but I have had first-hand experience with some strange practices, yes. Why?” Nina asked. She would not admit it, but she was somewhat excited by the inquiry and intended to do a full background search on her esteemed female guest.

But she did not have to. The tall thin woman with the ash blond hair leaned slightly forward and locked her fingers in front of her on the counter. Her voice was thick and low, but for some reason, soothing. She sounded as wise as she looked and by the way she conducted herself Nina could tell that Professor Kulich was a refined woman, a lady. She imagined the professor to have a title one day, like ‘Dame.’

“Dr. Gould… Nina… I am currently involved in a covert project on ancient magical artefacts.” She sighed and rolled her eyes, “God, I hate the word ‘magic’, but it is just so much more convenient than ‘scientifically plausible once we have the physics to prove it’.”

Nina laughed. The professor smiled and shook her head in serene amusement.

“I know. I know all too well. I have also come to that conclusion, Professor,” Nina chuckled.

“Petra. Please call me Petra,” Professor Kulich nudged.

“Petra. My own conclusions came to that very opinion, you know. These ancient cultures and their miracles, their shamanic magic and rites all worked because, not only were they psychic, but they seemed to have known things about the earth and its elements to such an extent that they could employ natural laws of science to produce these miraculous things,” Nina said in a low tone. In the rage of the thunder and rain outside the soft lamp light just on the other side of the kitchen counter and the smell of fresh muffins she was warming up gave the place a suited atmosphere of quiet philosophy on obscure subjects.

“This is true, my dear Nina. And it is exactly that working logic, that open-mindedness of yours that I need. I have approached two other historians, but they were very set in their ways, older people who were far more rigid in their beliefs than to be swayed by the evidence they might find while with me on my chase, you see?” Petra coaxed, accepting her fresh warm blue berry muffin from the historian.

“On your chase?” Nina asked. Her tummy tingled as she said it… in the good way.

“Yes, after my week in the Amazon, where I will be gathering up my final records and talking to one more tribal chief, I am off to my home in the Czech Republic to collect some documents left to me by my brother,” she explained as she took a hearty bite out of the moist baked goods the cooking staff of Wrichtishousis offered. “You see,” she continued with a mouth full of muffin through which she attempted to speak as properly as possible. Nina found it quite endearing. “I am a professor of Anthropology. Much as I know about cultures and religious practices, superstitions and such, I am not quite up to date with the history of these places I visit. That is where I need someone with the know-how of where and how all the tribes or nationalities came to be where they are today, how the progression through wars and legislation had brought them to the areas they now occupy.”

“How would that help you with the magic of their relics?” Nina asked. She had not eaten any of her muffin. It was too early to eat, but she did not want to seem un-social. Her dainty fingertips played with the domed crust of the muffin instead.

“I just need to know what happened in certain places so that I would know why I find there what I find there,” Petra explained with a strained voice, uncertain if her weak command of proper English was getting her actual point across. “Ugh, I don’t know if I say this right.”

“Oh, no worries,” Nina smiled, “I get it. You need a historical advisor to fill in the blanks of the documents you are to peruse, right?”

Petra Kulich nodded eagerly. She had only understood about half of that sentence properly, but she knew Nina was willing to help her for more reasons than the money. The latter was never a problem. With Professor Kulich’s family history, money was never an issue, yet she knew most of the historians she had considered employing before choosing Dr. Nina Gould would have asked too many questions or would have leaked her family’s identity before long. This little energetic woman was her choice of advisor. Decision made.

“Alright, so tell me what the documents are about and when you would like me to commence my involvement,” Nina urged. She picked off little pieces of the muffin and nibbled on them. It was clear to Professor Kulich that she had found her assistant. The petite pretty woman in her thirties struck her as a credible professional, but also as a logical and emotional judge of character which could come in handy once they were in Eastern Europe. The petite Scottish historian would keep her grounded, no doubt ask questions to make sure Petra did not get lost in the myth and magic of whatever she would discover. She did not want to tell Nina too much about the excursion, but she had to tell her enough to prepare her for the kind of historical line they would have to keep keenly in their focus.

“I shall contact you at the end of the week,” Petra Kulich replied as she dabbed up the remaining crumbs of the delicious muffin on her plate with her fingertip. “It pertains to the World War II secret SS occupation of Chateau Zbiroh. Are you familiar with it?” Professor Kulich asked. She knew that Nina, an expert on recent history of Germany would be familiar with the tales of Nazi doings during the Second World War, but she was not one for assumptions, so she asked.

“I have heard of the SS operation where they evicted the owners of the Czech castle to hide treasures and, from what I recall, they used the natural stone deposits under the chateau to distort radio signals… or something like that?” Nina reported. She had in fact learned about the small part of Nazi history a long time ago, but as any professional, she was not an encyclopedia on legs and even doctors and professors needed to touch up on their knowledge every now and then — something this professor took into account.

Unlike Nina’s old nemesis and superior at the University, Professor Matlock, Professor Kulich too into account that academics were forever scholars, supposed to learn continuously instead of attaining tenure or reputation and then stagnate in their knowledge until they keeled over and dropped dead as white grey old fools rigid in their ways and teachings.

“I see you have heard of it. Good. While I am in South America I trust you will reacquaint yourself with the details of the castle so that you would be well prepared once we make our journey to the Czech Republic,” she stated as she rose from her seat. She looked out the window where the daylight had now been born from the black of night to the grey paleness of morning light.

“I trust you have your passport in order?” she asked Nina with an inquisitive look.

“Always, Professor,” Nina reassured her with a smile and a pat on the arm as she walked her to the security guard who was waiting at the end of the hallway to accompany her out.

The two women shook hands.

“Thank you so much for agreeing to accompany me on this very important journey, Dr. Gould. You will be duly compensated… financially and culturally,” Professor Kulich smiled at the door.

“Oh I am really looking forward to it. I hear the goulash and beer is legendary!” Nina jested, and they both laughed heartily before the professor left.

When the door closed and the cordial chattering grew quiet on the other side of it, Nina experienced the oddest feeling. She was so alone — so utterly alone, yet she was excited for the coming adventure. For once she would not have her life in peril. She did not need the money, but for a change she would be earning her own again as opposed to using the monthly funds she received from Dave Purdue’s accountants. Not that she complained, but it was nice to earn her own money, giving her some elusive sense of worth.

Nina sat down at the kitchen counter. Suddenly the muffin looked really good to her and she took it into her hand. Taking a big bite into the warm soft crumbs she groaned in ecstasy from the robust taste of cinnamon, berries and the slightly over baked hardness of the crust. Chewing, deep in thought, Nina imagined herself looking like a chewing camel with its swiveling jaws and she laughed out loud in the loneliness of her kitchen. Even while missing Sam, even with not knowing the whereabouts of her billionaire boyfriend or even whether Dave was alive or dead, she felt good. Dr. Nina Gould felt a warm and gleeful feeling of hope crawl through her system.

“The Czech Republic,” she said to herself as he typed the country’s name into her search engine. “Prague, the capital of old Bohemia.” She read the words on the screen, enthralled by the beauty of the antique city and its rich history and culture. She had never given Eastern Europe much thought. Images of bombed villages destroyed by wars and third world management always went along with her opinion of places like this… erroneously so. Nina had never been to this part of Europe, where images of women with head cloths and socks halfway up their pale white legs jumped into her mind. She knew full well not to judge a country by the stereotypes presented by the media, yet this was — she hated to admit — all she knew about places like Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania or the Ukraine.

Nina thought of all the times she thought of the Bohemian culture as engaging and beautiful, while in the same context she saw images of slavery and gang rapes, prostitution and really sick pornography. Now she was about to find out what it was really like. Fortunately she would be in the company of an educated academic; therefore Nina knew that she would not be subjected to the lower, more dangerous types of Eastern Europe’s third world hierarchy. Little did she know that sometimes the lower sorts of any nationality are pitched right at the top of the food chain.