The Babylonian Mask

Chapter 31 — Who’s Face Would You Wear?

Lieutenant Dieter Werner was relieved, apprehensive, but nonetheless elated. He’d contacted Sam Cleave from a prepaid phone he’d acquired while on the run from the air base, marked as deserter by Schmidt. Sam had given him the coordinates of Marlene’s last call and he was hoping she was still there.

“Berlin? Thank you so much, Sam!” said Werner, standing in the cold Mannheim night, away from the earshot of the people at the gas station where he was filling up his brother’s car. He’d asked his brother to lend him his vehicle, as the military police would be looking for his issue Jeep since he’d escaped Schmidt’s clutches.

“Call me the moment you find her, Dieter,” Sam said. “I hope she is alive and well.”

“I will, I promise. And tell Purdue a million thanks for tracing her,” he told Sam just before he hung up the call.

Still, Werner could not believe Marduk’s deceit. He was upset with himself for even thinking he could trust the very man who had deceived him when he’d interviewed him at the hospital.

But for now he had to drive like hell to get to a factory called Kleinschaft Inc. on the outskirts of Berlin where his Marlene had been held. With every mile he drove, he prayed that she would be unharmed, or at the very least, alive. The holster on his hip held his private firearm, a Makarov he’d received as a gift from his brother on his twenty-fifth birthday. He was ready for Himmelfarb, if the coward still had the gall to stand and fight when he was up against a real soldier.

In the meantime Sam helped Nina prepare for the trip to Susa, Iraq. They were due there the next day, and Purdue had already arranged the flight after getting the very furtive green light from the W.U.O. second in command, Dr. Lisa Gordon.

“Are you nervous?” Sam asked as Nina emerged from the room, splendidly clothed and groomed just like the late Prof. Sloane. “My God, you look just like her…if I didn’t know you.”

“I’m very nervous, but I just keep telling myself two things. It’s for the good of the world and it will take all but fifteen minutes before I am done,” she admitted. “I hear they’ve been playing the sick card with her absence. Well, they have that one spot-on.”

“You know you don’t have to do this, love,” he told her one last time.

“Oh Sam,” she sighed. “You are relentless, even when you lose.”

“I see you are not in the least perturbed in your competitive nature, even by common sense,” he remarked as he took her bag. “Come, the car is waiting to take us to the airport. In a few hours you will make history.”

“Do we meet up with her people in London or in Iraq?” she asked.

“Purdue said they will meet us at the C.I.T.E. rendezvous in Susa. There you will spend some time with the actual successor of the W.U.O. reins, Dr. Lisa Gordon. Now remember, Nina, Lisa Gordon is the only one who knows who you are and what we are doing, okay? Don’t slip up,” he said, while they slowly walked out into the white fog that drifted through the cold air.

“Got it. You worry too much,” she sniffed, adjusting her scarf. “By the way, where is the great architect?”

Sam frowned.

“Purdue, Sam, where is Purdue?” she repeated as they started driving.

“Last I spoke to him he was home, but he is Purdue, always up to something.” He smiled and shrugged. “How are you feeling?”

“My eyes are almost completely healed. You know, when I listened to the recording and Mr. Marduk said that the mask wearers go blind, I wondered if that was not something he must have thought that night he visited me by my hospital bed. Maybe he thought I was Sa…Löwenhagen…masquerading as a chick.”

It was not as far-fetched as it sounded, Sam figured. In fact, it could have been just so. Nina did tell him that Marduk asked her if she’d been hiding her roommate, so it may very well have been a real assumption on the part of Peter Marduk. Nina laid her head on Sam’s shoulder and he bent his body uncomfortably to the side to be low enough for her to reach.

“What would you do?” she asked suddenly in the subdued hum of the car. “What would you do if you could wear anyone’s face?”

“I had not even thought of that,” he conceded. “I suppose it depends.”

“On?”

“On how long I get to keep that person’s face on,” Sam teased.

“Only a day, but you don’t have to kill them or die at the end of the week. You just get their face for a day and at the end of twenty-four hours it comes off and you have your own again,” she whispered softly.

“I suppose I’m supposed to say that I would assume the face of some important person and that I would do good,” Sam started, wondering just how honest he should be. “I should be Purdue, I think.”

“Why the hell would you want to be Purdue?” Nina asked, sitting up.Oh great. Now you’ve done it, Sam thought. He thought of the genuine reasons he’d chosen Purdue, but they were all reasons he did not want to reveal to Nina.

“Sam! Why Purdue?” she insisted.

“He has everything,” he replied at first, but she kept quiet and paid attention, so Sam elaborated. “Purdue can do anything. He is too notorious to be famous as a generous saint, but too ambitious to be a nobody. He is smart enough to devise miraculous machines and gadgets that can alter medical science and technology, but he is too modest to patent them and make a profit that way. Between his mind, his reputation, his contacts and his money, he can literally attain anything. I would use his face to progress to higher aims that my simpler mind, meager finances and insignificance could obtain.”

He waited for a scathing review of his twisted priorities and misplaced goals, but instead Nina leaned in and kissed him deeply. Sam’s heart jolted at the unpredictable gesture, but it went positively wild at her words.

“Keep your own face, Sam. You possess the one thing Purdue desires, the one thing for which all his genius, money and influence will profit him nothing.”