The Tesla Experiment

Chapter 25

As the 2nd Panzer Division — Das Reich moved along through the countryside of Southern France, Purdue found himself in the leading Tiger S33 in the company of Sturmbannführer Diekmann and his men.

The metal monsters tanked along the low hills, over the tall grass, decimating the smaller trees and brushed in their way. Under the sunny morning sky the convoy of the Waffen-SS roared slowly through the Haute-Vienne region. The night before was catastrophic for one of the commanders of the regiment, the very cause for the urgent advance toward Oradour-sur-Glane this day. Led by the blood thirsty commander of the ‘Der Führer’ unit the war machines slithered to the sleepy little village where Purdue told them their commander was being held captive.

“I am not going to lie to you, Herr Purdue,” Diekmann told his new advisor, “I am not at all thrilled to bring you with me to the front. I do not trust you and I aim to kill you the moment you even smell of deceit.”

Purdue expected this hostility, but he hoped that Diekmann would have changed his mind by now. “I understand, Sturmbannführer. I really do. But I assure you that I am not here to mar your duties and I will stay out of your way until you have accomplished your goal.”

“Good. I have no time to play nursemaid to some Allied traitor who cannot decide which side he is on. There is little as evident of cowardice as a man who defends nothing for fear of severing unfruitful alliances,” Sturmbannführer Diekmann clarified. “Now, I need to know where the French Resistance is keeping Sturmbannführer Kämpfe. You had better pray that we find him alive in the hands of your faction, or you will suffer a fate worse than death.”

“I assure you, on my honor, that I am not affiliated with the French Resistance,” Purdue maintained. “I have this information because I have a special gift for foreseeing the immediate future.”

“That is well to say, but you are wasting that rubbish on a man who believes in science and logic and reason. There is no such thing as psychic ability and energy manipulation by means of thought!” he exclaimed.

“Yet your Führer has unquestionable faith in such a possibility,” Purdue retorted mildly.

“Look, for what I think is that the Führer has been advised on many subjects by many people. Unfortunately the demonesses of the Vril Society have made full use of this sorcery to influence the already fertile admiration that our esteemed leader has for the occult and things like psychic power. That does not mean that we all blindly fall for those claims… and that includes yours.”

“But how do you explain that I knew this about your colleague, Sturmbannführer Kämpfe?” Purdue asked, while the crew in the hull listened without saying a word between them.

“That is very simple. You are a spy,” Diekmann answered casually. “But since I do not trust you I have put in place some security measures, just in case you are indeed leading us into a compromising position.”

“You have me in your grasp, Sturmbannführer Diekmann. Why on earth would I send you into an ambush? Not only would I be killed in the process with you, but you would obviously cut my throat the moment you catch wind of my betrayal. I would have to be an imbecile to lure you into battle,” Purdue marveled. “It makes no sense why I would even have told you of the kidnapping or where your man is being held if I did not have good intentions toward the Waffen-SS and the Nazi Party. My work with Nazi sympathizers should prove that to you.”

From one of the units behind them someone shouted.

“Hold on,” Diekmann told Purdue. “Let me see what that is about.”

From the hatch the thin commander emerged. He called halt to the others and climbed out of the tank to investigate. Purdue felt terribly uncomfortable among the men left in the hull with him. They were obviously talking about him, but he could only tell what they must be saying about him by the derisive way they looked at him.

‘Talk about cabin fever,’ he thought. ‘I hope this goddamn day gives me a chance to be alone long enough to call Lydia. I have to find Helmut and get away. I have had more than enough culture here.’

Purdue was especially nervous about his looming deadline. It was the third day of his inadvertent excursion and according to Lydia Jenner’s calculations, the final day before his energy locked in permanently with the point in the ether where he was sent. He would not be able to return after a certain amount of cellular latching had been done to the tapestry in which he was caught. It was what most referred to as time, but Purdue understood by now, that time was merely a relative term. He had no way of telling how long three days in his world were in relation to what it was in this world. For all he knew he could already have forfeited his way back by measuring in the wrong units.

“One of the tanks has met with a technical problem,” Diekmann told Purdue when he peeked from the hatch and asked the commander if there was something he could do to help. “But not the kind your engineering or esoteric could remedy,” he added.

The tall, gaunt Diekmann stood with his hands lodged in his sides, waiting to hear if the last tank in line has any spare parts for the one that suffered a break in its track. It was not a terrible blow to their time, but enough to call a break while the mechanics tended to the problem.

“How far are we from the village, Sturmbannführer?” he asked Diekmann.

“About an hour away. Why?” he asked.

“Just curious. Knowing how peasants deal with a prisoner, I hope they do not remove him to another location during the night,” Purdue said, trying to press the commander into hastening the repair. His time was running out and he needed every moment to recover the schematics and make it back to Lyon in 2015.

Diekmann laughed. It was a cold, vindictive chuckle that was in no way comforting to Purdue. “My dear Herr Purdue, you do not have much faith in your own abilities, do you?”

“How do you mean?” Purdue asked.

“With a clairvoyant in our midst it would surely not be a problem to find out where Kämpfe is being held if we should find out he was transferred, would we?” he mocked. Purdue smiled and nodded. He had to admit it was not exactly the best thought through suggestion on his part, at least not one that served his ruse of being psychic.

“All done, Sturmbannführer!” a soldier reported.

“Good!” Diekmann smiled. With the back of his hand he slapped Purdue playfully in the stomach. “Come on, man. We have a brother to liberate and a town to destroy!”

Purdue felt sick to his stomach. In the smoke and pandemonium he tried to hide the overwhelming shock and sorrow he felt for the inhabitants of Oradour-sur-Glane. Absolute chaos had ensued since the Panzer Unit cordoned off all entry and exit points to the town and insisted on the villagers reporting to the commanders to have their papers checked. It was a common smokescreen the Nazi’s used to pick a fight with the people they intended to slaughter. Somehow they figured that it justified a lawful execution of civilians under the pretense of smoking out illegals.

Purdue was of the opinion that the Nazi’s were sincere in their insistence on documents while their men spread out through the peaceful little town to search for Sturmbannführer Kämpfe. They could not find him, to Purdue’s dread. But it only antagonized the Panzer Division more to be unsuccessful in their task. At first he thought that Diekmann would immediately call for his execution, that he would be deemed a liar, but the commander used the excuse of Kämpfe’s absence as a reason to unleash his hellish brutality on the town.

Subsequently, he ordered the town to be ravaged and the people killed. Purdue could do nothing to avert what he had caused. It devastated him that his information brought Diekmann’s terrible wrath to this town, this town that he, Purdue, brought to their attention. As the violence showed its hideous face the billionaire scuttled for the safety of the empty tank that stood a distance from the Oradour church. All the soldiers from the S33 were on foot, mowing down men and women with machine gun fire.

Inside the steel belly of the war machine the normally cheerful and resourceful Dave Purdue sat weeping like a child while he listened to the children crying in the arms of fleeing mothers who would see no mercy from the evil of the German troops. The men had been shot dead in the middle of town, executed for hiding a captive of the French Resistance, even after they repeatedly assured Diekmann that they had nobody in their keep, especially not a German officer.

After growing tired of hearing the incessant pleas for mercy from the people who insisted that they had no affiliation with Kämpfe’s kidnappers, Diekmann and his other commanders ordered that the women and children who were left to be shut into the church. Purdue clenched his fists over his eyes as the horrid screams and desperate begging from the women echoed in his ears. He could hear babies crying and young children calling for their mothers, some voices silenced in the thundering claps of gunshots.

“You did this!” Purdue wept in the solitude of the deserted armored vehicle. “You brought them here!” But his guilt would become even more horrific as the time passed with the rumbling crackle of the fire that engulfed the church and drowned out the screams inside. He pulled out the note on which he scribbled down Lydia’s information. When he read the details his heart stopped. “Oh my God! Oh my God! No!”

On the paper he had scribbled the name of the town as Oradour-sur-Vayres, but misinformed Diekmann by telling them that the German officer, Helmut Kämpfe, was held at Oradour-sur-Glane.

“Oh Jesus, no. I made a mistake! I made a mistake that cost hundreds of civilians their lives!” Purdue wailed in the deafening clamor of the town’s destruction. Buildings of stone that were once proud homes, stores and meeting places were now razed and crumbling under the fury of the Waffen-SS and its demonic commanders. Purdue could hear a German man outside, nearer than the others, laughing.

Purdue was done with cowering, and in the knowledge that this atrocity was befalling innocent people because of his wrongful information, he decided to do something about it. As terrified as he was, he exited the tank and crouched under a clump of trees nearby, watching the laughing soldier saunter over to a barn. Next to the yet untouched barn was a horse cart the German was heading for. Purdue’s blood ran cold when he saw what the knife wielding soldier was stalking.

Under the horse cart sat a young girl in a blood stained dress, holding onto a goat for dear life. She had no idea that the German soldier had seen her, and Purdue saw how her bloodshot eyes stared at the burning bodies on the pile a slight distance from her. There was no way he was going to sit idly by and watch anymore. It was time for him to escape, and he hoped that the girl could read English.

The night was here and the flames only illuminated the terror of the town even more. Fallen buildings smoldered while the Germans laughed and bragged about their ransacking. Purdue caught his breath when he saw that the girl was watching him. He did not want her to associate him with the evil men he came with. He gestured for her to be quiet before he slipped up behind the soldier, the very man who was chuckling about him to his colleagues earlier that day. As the man reached the horse cart Purdue leapt. As he fell on the soldier he grabbed the hunting knife, hoping that the element of surprise would be to his advantage.

Purdue had never been one for violence, something he always left up to his bodyguards, but this called for a fight. The knife slipped from the soldier’s hand into his and, without sparing a moment, Purdue drew the blade deep through the skin across his opponent’s throat. He dropped his little note for the girl to find. As the soldier fell, Purdue dropped the little note for the girl to find.

With one last glance to the appalling result of his misinformation, Purdue fled with a heavy heart, hoping that the god he did not believe in would forgive him… because he himself never would.