The Babylonian Mask

Chapter 13 — Three Strangers and a Missing Historian

“What do they say, Sam?” Purdue asked quietly as Sam joined him.

“They say two patients are missing since the early hours of this morning,” Sam replied just as discreetly as the two walked away from the crowd to discuss their plans.

“We have to break Nina out before she becomes another target for this animal,” Purdue insisted, his thumbnail placed askew between his front teeth as he mulled it over.

“Too late, Purdue,” Sam announced with a sullen expression. He stopped walking and examined the skies above as if he were seeking help from some superior power. Purdue’s light blue eyes stabbed at him in question, but Sam felt as if a stone had lodged itself in his stomach. Finally he gave a deep sigh and said, “Nina is missing.”

Purdue did not process this immediately, maybe because it was the last thing he wanted to hear…next to tidings of her death, of course. Snapping at once out of his moment of thought, Purdue stared at Sam with a look of utmost intent. “Use your mind control to get us some information. Come on, you used it to get me out of Sinclair.” he urged Sam, But his friend only shook his head. “Sam? This is for the lady we both,” he was reluctant to use the word he had in mind and tactfully replaced it with, “adore.”

“I can’t,” Sam lamented. He looked distraught at this admittance, but there was no point in him perpetuating a fallacy. It would not benefit his ego or help anyone around him. “I l-lost…the…ability,” he struggled.

For the first time since the Scottish festivities Sam said it out loud and it sucked. “I lost it, Purdue. When I fell over my own bloody feet running away from Giant Greta, or whatever her name was, my head struck a rock and, well,” he shrugged and cast Purdue a look of terrible guilt. “I’m sorry, man. But I lost that thing I could do. Christ, when I had it I thought it was a spiteful curse — something to make my life miserable. Now that I don’t have it…now that I truly need it, I wish it had not gone away.”

“Splendid,” Purdue moaned, his hand slipping over his brow and past his hairline to settle under the thick white of his hair. “Alright, let’s think about this. Think. We’ve survived far worse than this instance without the help of some psychic trickery, right?”

“Aye,” Sam agreed, still feeling like he’d let his side down.

“So we just have to employ old-fashioned tracking to find Nina,” Purdue offered, trying hard to project his usual never-say-die attitude.

“What if she’s still in there?” Sam shattered all illusions. “They say there is no way she could have walked out of here, so they reckon she might still be inside the building.”

Sam had not been informed by the police officer he spoke to that a nurse had complained about being attacked the night before — a nurse who’d been robbed of her scrubs before she woke on the floor of the room wrapped in blankets.

“Then we have to get in. There’s no point in looking for her all over Germany when we haven’t properly covered the initial area and its vicinity,” Purdue contemplated. His eyes recorded the proximity of the deployed officers and security people in plain clothes. With his tablet he covertly chronicled the scene, the floor access from outside the brown building, and the basic structure of its entrances and exits.

“Nice,” Sam said, keeping a straight face and acting innocent. He whipped out a packet of smokes to help him think. Lighting his first one was like shaking hands with an old friend. Sam drew in the smoke and felt instantly at peace, focused, as if he had stepped back from it all to see the big picture. What he also saw, coincidentally, was the SKY International News van and three suspicious looking men loitering close to it. They seemed out of place somehow, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

Glancing at Purdue, Sam noticed that the white haired inventor was panning with his tablet, slowly moving it from right to left to capture the panorama.

“Purdue,” Sam said through pursed lips, “go far left quickly. By the van. By the van there are three suspicious looking bastards. You see them?”

Purdue did as Sam suggested and filmed the three men in their early thirties, as far as he could tell. Sam was correct. It was clear they were not there to see what the commotion was about. Instead, they checked their watches all at once, hands on the buttons. One spoke as they waited.

“They’re synchronizing their watches,” Purdue remarked through barely moving lips.

“Aye,” Sam concurred through a long stream of smoke that helped him observe without looking obvious. “What do you reckon — bomb?”

“Unlikely,” Purdue replied evenly, his voice trailing like a distracted lecturer as he kept his tablet frame on the men. “They wouldn’t remain in such close proximity.”

“Unless they’re suicidal,” Sam retorted. Purdue peeked over the golden frame of his glasses, still keeping his tablet in place.

“Then they wouldn’t have to synch their watches, would they?” he said impatiently. Sam had to concede. Purdue was right. They had to be there as observers, but of what? He pulled out another cigarette before even finishing the first.

“Gluttony is a deadly sin, you realize,” Purdue teased, but Sam ignored him. He put out the butt of the exhausted fag and started walking in the direction of the three men before Purdue could react.He strolled casually across the flat grassland of untended land so as not to spook his targets. His German was appalling, so he decided to play himself this time. Perhaps if they thought him to be a dumb tourist they would be less reluctant to share.

“Hello, gents,” Sam greeted cheerfully, placing his fag between his lips. “Don’t suppose you have a light?”

They did not expect this. They peered with stunned expressions at the stranger who stood there grinning, looking stupid with his unlit cigarette.

“My wife went to have lunch with some other women on the tour and took my lighter with her.” Sam plastered the excuse while taking special care to note their features and clothing. It was a journalist’s prerogative, after all.

The red haired loiterer spoke to his friends in German. “Give him a light, for fuck’s sake. Look how pathetic he looks.” The other two chuckled in agreement and one stepped forward, flicking a flame for Sam. Now Sam realized that his distraction was ineffective, because all three still watched the hospital intently. “Da, Werner!” one exclaimed suddenly.

From the exit guarded by police, a small nurse stepped out and motioned for one of them to come. She had a brief word with the two guards at the door and they nodded satisfactorily.

“Kohl,” the dark-haired one slapped the back of his hand against the arm of the red haired one.

“Warum nicht Himmelfarb?” Kohl protested, after which a quick fire argument ensued that was briskly settled between the three.

“Kohl! Sofort!” the dominant, dark-haired man reiterated forcefully.

In Sam’s head the words struggled to find their way to his dictionary, but he presumed the first word was the lad’s surname. The next word, he guessed, was along the lines of making it quick, but he was unsure.

“Oh, his wife is also giving the orders,” Sam played dumb as he smoked lazily. “Mine is not as sweet…”

Franz Himmelfarb, with a nod from his associate, Dieter Werner, interrupted Sam instantly. “Listen, friend, do you mind? We are on-duty officers trying to blend in and you are making things difficult for us. Our job is to make sure the killer inside the hospital does not escape unnoticed and for that, well, we need to not be bothered while doing our job.”

“I understand. I’m sorry. I thought you were just a bunch of assholes waiting to steal petrol from the news van here. You looked the type,” Sam replied with a somewhat deliberately snide attitude. He turned and walked away, ignoring the sound of one restraining the other. Sam glanced back to see them peering at him, which spurred him forward a bit more quickly toward Purdue’s vicinity. He did not join his friend, however, and avoided visual association with him just in case the three hyenas were looking for a black sheep to single out. Purdue knew what Sam was doing. Sam’s dark eyes widened slightly as their gazes met through the morning fog, furtively gesturing to Purdue that he should not engage him in conversation.

Purdue elected to return to the rental car with a few others who left the scene to get back to their day, while Sam stayed behind. He, on the other hand, joined up with a group of locals who had volunteered to help the police keep an eye out for any suspicious activity. It was merely his cover to keep his eye on the three underhanded boy scouts in their flannel shirts and windbreaker jackets. Sam called Purdue from his vantage point.

“Yes?” Purdue’s voice came clearly over the phone.

“Military grade watches, all the exact same issue. These lads are from the armed forces,” he reported as his eyes strayed all over the place to remain inconspicuous. “Also, names. Kohl, Werner and…uh…,” he could not remember the third.

“Yes?” Purdue pressed as he entered the names into a German military personnel folder in the Defense Archives of the W.U.O.

“Shit,” Sam frowned, wincing at his slacking faculty for memorizing details. “It’s a longer surname.”

“That, my friend, will not help me,” Purdue mocked.

“I know! I know, for Christ’s sake!” Sam seethed. He felt unusually impotent now that his once sharp abilities were challenged and found wanting. It was not the loss of his psychic ability that caused his new found self-loathing, but the frustration of not being able to joust as he once had when he was younger. “Heaven. It had something to do with heaven, I think. Jesus, I have to work on my German — and my goddamn memory.”

“Engel, perhaps?” Purdue tried to help.

“No, too short,” Sam contested. His eyes floated across the building, to the sky, dropping around the area of the three German soldiers. Sam gasped. They had vanished.

“Himmelfarb?” Purdue guessed.

“Aye, that’s the one! That’s the name!” Sam exclaimed in relief, but now he was concerned. “They’re gone. They disappeared, Purdue. Fuck! I am just losing it all over the place, aren’t I? I used to be able to tail a fart in a windstorm!”

Purdue was quiet, perusing the information he’d obtained from hacking into the off-limits covert files from the comfort of the car, while Sam stood in the cold morning air, waiting for something he did not even grasp.

“These lads are like a spider,” Sam moaned as he searched through the people with his eyes hidden under his whipping fringe. “They’re threatening while you watch them, but it’s so much worse when you don’t know where they’ve gone.”

“Sam,” Purdue spoke suddenly, starting the journalist who was convinced that he was being stalked for an ambush. “They are all airmen in the German Luftwaffe, section Leo 2.”

“And what does that mean? Are they pilots?” Sam asked. He was almost disappointed.

“Not quite. They are a bit more specialized,” Purdue clarified. “Come back to the car. You’ll want to hear this over a double rum on the rocks.”