The Babylonian Mask

Chapter 18 — Unmasked

“As you were,” Sam jested as he was given back his credentials. The flushing young nurse lifted her open hand in a grateful gesture to them as they walked away, feeling dreadfully sheepish.

“Mr. Cleave, it is an honor to meet you.” She smiled, shaking Sam’s hand.

“Call me Sam,” he flirted, deliberately looking intensely into her eyes. Besides, an ally could help his mission along; not only in obtaining Nina’s folder, but also in getting to the bottom of the recent incidents at the hospital and perhaps even the air base in Büchel.

“I am so sorry for screwing up like this. The other patient she disappeared with was also called Sam,” she explained.

“Aye, my darling, I caught that the other time. No need to apologize. It was an honest mistake.” They got an elevator to the Fifth Floor. A mistake that almost cost me my bloody life!

In the elevator with two radiology technicians and the gushing Nurse Marx, Sam pushed the awkwardness from his mind. They were silently staring at him. For a split second Sam contemplated spooking the German ladies with a remark on how he once saw a Swedish porn flick start much in the same fashion. The doors opened on the Second Floor and Sam caught a glimpse of a white sign on the hallway wall reading “X-ray 1 & 2” in red lettering. The two radiology technicians breathed out for the first time only after they’d stepped out of the lift. Sam could hear their giggling die down as the silver doors slid together again.

Nurse Marx wore a smirk and her eyes stayed glued to the floor, prompting the journalist to relieve her of her discomfiture. He breathed out hard, looking at the light above them. “So, Nurse Marx, is Dr. Fritz a radiology specialist?”

Her posture straightened up instantly like a loyal soldier. From Sam’s knowledge of body language he realized that the nurse harbored an undying reverence or desire for the doctor in question. “No, but he is a veteran physician who lectures at global medical conferences on several scientific subjects. Let me say — he knows a little about every disease, where other doctors specialize in just one and know nothing about the rest. He took very good care of Dr. Gould. You can be assured. In fact, he was the only one who picked up on th…”

Nurse Marx swallowed her words immediately, almost spilling the cancerous news she’d been stunned by just that morning.

“What?” he asked kindly.

“All I meant to say is that whatever is plaguing Dr. Gould, Dr. Fritz will figure it out,” she said, pressing her lips together. “Ah! Here we go!” she smiled, delighted at their well-timed arrival on the Fifth Floor.

She led Sam out to the Administrative wing of the Fifth Floor, past the archives office, and a staff tearoom. While they walked, Sam enjoyed periodical sights from the identical square windows that lined the off-white hall. Every time the wall gave way to a blinded window, the sun would reach through and warm Sam’s face, showing him an aerial view over the local surroundings. He wondered where Purdue was. He’d left Sam the car and had taken a taxi to the airport without much explanation. That was another matter for Sam to carry unresolved deep inside his psyche until he had time to deal with it.

“Dr. Fritz should be done with his interview by now,” Nurse Marx informed Sam as they neared the closed door. She briefly explained about the Air Force commander sending an emissary to speak to Dr. Fritz about the patient who had shared a room with Nina.Well, well. Sam pondered. How convenient is this? All the people I need to see, all under one roof. It’s like a compact information center for criminal investigation. Welcome to Corruption Mall!

As was the protocol, Nurse Marx knocked three times and opened the door. Lieutenant Werner was just getting up to leave and did not seem at all surprised to see the nurse, but he recognized Sam from the news van. A question brushed on Werner’s brow, but Nurse Marx stopped and lost all the color in her face.

“Marlene?” Werner asked with an inquisitive look. “What is it, baby?”

She stood motionless, in awe, while slowly a twinge of terror overwhelmed her. Her eyes read the nametag on Dr. Fritz’s white coat, but she shook her head in a daze. Werner came to her and cradled her face as she prepared to scream. Sam knew something was up, but as he knew none of these people, it was vague at best.

“Marlene!” Werner shouted to jerk her to her senses. Marlene Marx allowed her voice to return and she roared at the man in the coat. “You’re not Dr. Fritz! You are not Dr. Fritz!”

Before Werner could fully grasp what was happening, the imposter propelled forward and grabbed Werner’s gun from his shoulder holster. But Sam was quicker in his reaction and he lunged ahead to push Werner out of the way, thwarting the malformed attacker’s attempt to arm himself. Nurse Marx retreated from the office, hysterically crying for security to help.

Narrowing his eyes through the plate glass window in the double doors of the ward, one of the officers Nurse Marx had previously summoned tried to distinguish the shape running toward him and his colleague.

“Heads up, Klaus,” he scoffed to his colleague, “Polly Paranoid is back.”

“Good God, but she is really moving, huh?” the other officer noted.

“She is crying wolf again. Look, it’s not like we get a whole lot of action on this shift or anything, but being fucked with is not what I see as keeping busy, you know?” the first officer replied.

“Nurse Marx!” the second officer exclaimed. “Who can we threaten for you now?”

Marlene dove at speed, landing right in his arms, clawing at him.

“Dr. Fritz’s office! Go! Go, for God’s sake!” she screamed as people started to stare.

When Nurse Marx started tugging at the man’s sleeve, pulling him along with her towards the office of Dr. Fritz, the officers realized that this time it was not a hunch. Again, they raced towards the distant hallway just out of their sight as the nurse cried for them to catch what she kept calling the monster. Confused as they were, they followed the sound of the altercation ahead and soon discovered why the frantic, young nurse referred to the imposter as a monster.

Sam Cleave was busy exchanging blows with the old man, stepping in his way every time he went for the door. Werner was sitting on the floor, dazed and surrounded by shards of glass and a few kidney dishes that had gone sprawling after the impostor had knocked him out cold with a bedpan and toppled the small cabinet where Dr. Fritz kept his Petri dishes and other breakables.

“Mother of God, look at that thing!” the one officer yelled at his partner as they elected to bring the seemingly invincible culprit down by piling their bodies onto him. Sam struggled out of the way as the two officers subdued the offender in the white coat. Sam’s brow was decorated in crimson ribbons that elegantly lined the features of his cheekbone. Next to him, Werner was holding the back of his skull where the bedpan had connected painfully.

“I think I’m going to need stitches,” Werner told Nurse Marx as she carefully crept around the doorway into the office. His dark hair sported bloody clumps where the gash smiled. Sam watched how the officers restrained the odd-looking man with threats of deadly force until he had finally yielded. The other two loiterers Sam had seen with Werner outside the news van showed up too.

“Hey, what’s the tourist doing here?” Kohl asked when he saw Sam.

“He’s not a tourist,” Nurse Marx defended as she held Werner’s head. “This is a world renowned journalist!”

“Really?” Kohl asked sincerely. “Nice.” And he held out his hand to pull Sam to his feet. Himmelfarb just shook his head, standing back to give everyone room to move. The officers cuffed the man, but they’d been informed that the Air Force representatives had jurisdiction in this case.

“We must hand him over to you, I believe,” the officer conceded to Werner and his men. “Let us just finalize our paperwork so that he can be officially transferred into military custody.”

“Thank you, officer. Just sort it all out right here in the office. We do not need the public and the patients to get alarmed all over again,” Werner advised.

The police and security guards took the man aside while Nurse Marx performed her duty even against her own will, dressing the old man’s cuts and abrasions. She was certain eerie face could easily haunt the dreams of the most hardened of men. It was not that he was ugly, per se, but his lack of features made him ugly. In her gut she felt a strange sense of pity mingle with her repugnance as she dabbed his scarcely bleeding scratches with an alcohol swab.

His eyes were perfectly shaped, if not rather attractive in their exotic nature. However it appeared as though the rest of his face had been sacrificed for their quality. His skull was uneven and his nose seemed almost non-existent. But it was his mouth that struck a nerve with Marlene.

“You suffer from Microstomia,” she remarked to him.

“Systemic sclerosis in a minor form, yes, causing small mouth phenomenon,” he replied casually, as if he were there to get a blood test. His words were well pronounced, nonetheless, and his German accent was virtually flawless by now.

“Any prior treatment?” she asked. It was a stupid question, but if she did not engage in medical small talk with him he would repulse her so much more. Being in conversation with him was much the same as speaking to Sam the patient when he had been there — an intelligent conversation with a cogent monster.

“No,” was all he answered, deleting his capacity for sarcasm only because she had cared to ask. His tone was innocent, as if he were fully accepting her medical scrutiny while the men babbled in the background.

“What is your name, pal?” the one officer asked him loudly.

“Marduk. Peter Marduk,” he answered.

“You’re not German?” Werner asked. “Geez, you had me fooled.”

Marduk wished he could smile in response to the ill-formed compliment on his German, but the tightening of the tissue around his mouth refused him the privilege.

“Identity documents,” the officer snapped, still nursing his swollen lip from a stray punch during the arrest. Marduk slowly slipped his hand into his jacket pocket under Dr. Fritz’s white coat. “I need to take his statement for our records, Lieutenant.”

Werner nodded approvingly. They were authorized to track down and kill Löwenhagen, not to apprehend an old man who impersonated a doctor. Yet now that Werner had been told why Schmidt was really after Löwenhagen, they could benefit well from more information from Marduk.

“So Dr. Fritz is dead too, then?” Nurse Marx asked softly when she leaned in to cover a particularly deep cut from the steel links of Sam Cleave’s watch.

“No.”

Her heart jumped. “What do you mean? If you were pretending to be him in his office you had to have killed him first.”

“This is not the tale of the annoying little girl with the red shawl and her grandmother, my dear,” the old man sighed. “Unless it is the version where the grandmother is still alive in the wolf’s belly.”