Sequence 77

by Darin Preston

  Jolting back in his chair, Charles reacted as if the offer of forgiveness had hit him squarely in the chest. “I do not deserve nor desire your sympathy, young lady,” he said quickly, waving one hand to the side to brush her offering away. “I simply need to confide in someone who doesn’t see the world through the eyes of a child.” He glanced in the direction of the closed door. Although a scientist, he could not help but feel that Professor Shukla’s presence was more than an act of meaningless serendipity. The opportunity to reveal the true nature and scope of his plans to someone he felt was a kindred spirit was simply too perfect to be mere happenstance. Even if she didn’t approve of his goal, he believed she may appreciate his motivations.

  “I wish I could release you now, but you’ll soon understand why I cannot, at least not yet,” he assured her as the wrinkles of his face coalesced into a gentle grin. Leaning again in her direction, he clasped his weathered hands together as if anticipating a gift of great value. “Please, allow me to explain the true nature of my plans. To expect your full attention out of respect is a bit much to ask under the circumstances, but what I know of your character tells me that you’ll listen for reasons of scientific posterity.”

  “Scientific posterity?” she asked. “Just what are you up to, Mr. Millburg?” Manisha raised an eyebrow with rekindled concern.

  Recognizing the look of someone whose interest had been piqued, Charles began his tale. “Now that I have your full attention, I shall start by telling you who I am, or at least who I once was.” His eyes drifted slowly across the dim room as he reached into his past. “My given name is Niclas Kappel. I was born in Germany, in the town of Annaberg bordering the Czech Republic.” His voice was slow as if incanting a spell meant to resurrect someone long dead. “My father’s name was Gudrune and my mother’s was Alessandra. Father worked as a miner in the Ore Mountains while Mother raised my two older brothers and me in a one-room cottage. We had little, but we were happy.” Reminiscing, a slight smile creased the corners of his thin lips. “I always did well in my studies and quickly advanced beyond what my mother and father were capable of teaching me by the age of nine,” he said, more factually than proudly. “By that time, Hitler’s Third Reich had risen to power and he was promising to lead our country into a new age of prosperity and expansion. He was becoming a hero to the people.

  Despite being well secured, Manisha shifted uneasily in her seat. “You’re not going to tell me you’re a Nazi just hiding out in a Wisconsin basement, are you?”

  Flinching slightly at the assumption, Niclas corrected her quickly. “I was far more engrossed in learning Latin and chemistry than paying attention to politics, my dear.” Not wishing to lose his train of thought, he continued on. “My oldest brother Eldwin had answered the call of der Führer to join Hitler’s Youth Organization and was followed soon after by my brother Otto when military membership was made mandatory. I was too young to join at the time, not that it mattered—I had little interest in doing anything but my studies.” Memories continued to roll through his mind like mist over an ancient lake. “With my brothers away, my father was able to save up enough money to send me to school in Berlin. I spent only a short time in the city when it was decided that my ability merited that I be sent to Sächsisches Landesgymnasium Sankt Afra,” he said, puffing out his chest a little.

  Manisha’s eyes widened at the jumble of strange sounds that had just assaulted her ears. “They did what to you?” she asked, eyes narrowing in confused wonder.

  He chuckled, amused. “It was a school for the gifted located in the city of Meißen. There is where I was first introduced to biology, advanced chemistry, and even…precursors to modern genetic theory,” he said with dramatic pause, looking into her ever-widening eyes.

  Her jaw dropped with astonishment. “You….You’re a geneticist?”

  Tilting his head down slightly, Niclas peered over the tops of his round lenses. “Why do you find this so hard to believe, dear doctor?” he asked curiously. “It’s not as if genetic knowledge appeared from nowhere.” He wondered at why the young so rarely understood the role of the past in their own present.

  Shaking her head at the man’s assumption that she did not appreciate the long history of her primary field of study, Manisha clarified her intent. “It’s not that, Mr. Millburg—or Mr. Kaput—or whatever the hell your name is now.” Her eyes rolled in frustration. “It’s just that you’re working as a janitor. Why aren’t you still taking part in the research?” she asked bluntly, shrugging her shoulders with as much animation as she could considering her restraints.

  “Who’s to say that I’m not?” Niclas grinned as he returned the shrug.

  Her nose wrinkled as she looked at him. “I don’t think I understand. I mean…” She paused, wiggling her nose. “Uhh, I have an itch. Would you mind?”

  Without hesitation, Niclas reached out and lightly scratched the bridge of her nose. “Better?”

  “Much,” she sighed. “Ummm, where were we?”

  Surprised at how comfortable his captive had become, Niclas pressed on in fear of losing the fleeting trust he had built. “I believe you had a question, but please allow me to continue this bit of personal history, Professor, and then I think you will see things more clearly.”

  Though the reality that she was being held against her will hadn’t escaped her, Manisha found herself straining to hear every word from her soft-spoken captor.

  “My academic performance was such that by the time I was fifteen, word of my progress had reached as high as Joseph Goebbels,” he assumed that Manisha would know the name instantly; Niclas could see in her face that the young professor was not familiar with the finer points of World War Two history.

  “Goebbels was Hitler’s propaganda leader and confidant,” he explained patiently. “Don’t worry,” he added kindly, “I was so engrossed in my studies that I barely knew who he was either. However, I was assured it was an honor to be mentioned so far up the government ranks.” Releasing a sound that wavered between a grunt and a laugh, he shook his head in disgust. “If I had only known what was in store for me, I would have run away right then, but I was naive.” He admitted this with deep regret in his voice.

  Now hopelessly engaged in the story, Manisha needed to hear what happened next. “Don’t stop there! What was in store for you?”

  Closing his eyes, Niclas cleared his throat as he prepared to speak. “When I was almost sixteen, Goebbels sent a man by the name of Rudolf Brandt to the school. Brandt had us…rather…me transported to a small laboratory in Poland,” he corrected himself as unknown internal mechanisms would not allow him to reopen the deepest of old wounds. “It was located in Naklo, a small, barely noticeable town controlled by the Nazis. I was promised great opportunity as a scientist, and saw no reason to turn down the offer.” His eyes were still closed as he took a deep breath and remembered the day he and Dieter so eagerly agreed to leave with Brandt.

  “I was soon introduced to a physician by the name of Eduard Wirths.” His eyes opened and drifted to the floor. “The doctor promised me that I would be working to advance German understanding of human physiology and that there was much good work to be done in the name of humanity. He was the director of several such facilities and knew exactly what I needed to hear to motivate me.”

  His voice lowered with profound resentment. “Day after day for more than three years I was brought tissue samples, blood samples, and test tubes filled with various human elements to analyze. We were able to eradicate several virulent strains of typhoid and made many remarkable discoveries about DNA and RNA. I never took a holiday and was rarely so ill as to be forced to stay in the small military barracks provided for the nonmilitary personnel. I loved my work. It was my dream.” All movement stopped and he appeared to cease breathing as he gathered the courage to admit what he had never told another living soul outside of his mother and brother.

  Sensing his hesitation, Manisha assured him that she would remain objective. “It’s
okay, you can tell me.”

  Catching sharply in his throat, Niclas’s voice threatened to fail unless he pushed through. “It was early December 1944 when a secret file was discovered. It contained information on the purpose and cost of our research. There were detailed descriptions and photographs of human experimentation conducted by Wirths and others like him, including the Angel of Death himself, Joseph Mengele.” Watching to see if this man’s name registered with Professor Shukla, Niclas wasn’t surprised to see in her widening eyes that even the young still knew who that monster was.

  “I still remember the bile burning in my throat when I realized that all of the advancements and scientific discoveries of those years had been at the cost of innocent lives,” he said, shivering severely. “The records consisted of handwritten notes from Mengele himself which commended my work and gave credit for inspiring many of his so-called breakthroughs.” Despite being decades removed from the tragedy, he began to weep. “So many innocents… so many children,” he moaned, leaning forward and shuddering inconsolably as the emotional scars split, once again, into open wounds.

  So engrossed in the man’s tragic story, Manisha found herself choking back tears of her own. For the moment, she felt real sympathy for her captor. If released right then, she may simply have offered a soothing hand on the old man’s sagging shoulders. “That’s terrible, Mr. Kappel. I don’t know what I would have done.” Her voice filled with honest compassion while she considered the impossible situation Niclas had found himself in. She wondered if she could ever have been used in such a way, or if she already had been.

  Leaning back in his creaky metal chair, Niclas removed his glasses and wiped away tears from his eyes with his free hand. “I’ll tell you what I did,” he said in a shaken but defiant voice. “I took all of the research I could get my hands on and we...I…left during the night,” he stammered, salty droplets again falling from his eyes. Shivering away the unspeakable memory, he again brushed away his tears and looked at Manisha. “From there I went to find my parents but found only my mother. She told me that my brother Eldwin had been killed in France and that my brother Otto was believed to have been captured.” His expression was pained as he recounted those indelible moments. “The torment in my mother’s face when she told me that father had been forced into military service and she had not gotten a letter from him in several months, is etched on my heart.” Even in the darkened room, his eyes seemed to blaze. “I hid in fear deep in the Ore Mountains until the end of the war, which ironically was little more than a few months after my escape.

  Frowning, the lines of his face appeared as flooded canyons. “Otto returned safely from a prisoner of war camp, but my father never came home. I gave up my studies and went to work as a miner, like my father,” he said with honest pride.

  “The war was over. Why didn’t you stay in Germany with your mother and brother?” asked Manisha, following the drama closely.

  “Because it wasn’t long before someone came looking for me,” said Niclas coldly.

  “Why would the Nazis be looking for you after the war was over?”

  “It wasn’t the Nazis.” He put his glasses back on his salt-streaked face. “It was a man by the name of Simon Wiesenthal,” he said, sure that the professor would not recognize this man’s name. “He was working with a Jewish organization meant to track down war criminals.”

  Speaking quietly as she worked through the mystery, Manisha didn’t understand why the war hadn’t ended the Nazi’s hold over this man. “Why would he be looking for you? They must have known you were just a kid at the time.”

  “It was likely that he had gotten my name from Eduard Wirths’s captured records.” The contempt in his voice was aimed at the immoral Nazi doctor. Niclas shook his head in disgust. “I can only imagine the undue credit bestowed upon me within them.”

  “I suppose going to the authorities yourself was out of the question?” suggested Manisha. “They must know the difference between a crazy war criminal and someone just in the wrong lab at the wrong time.”

  Shaking his head, Niclas realized that some things just wouldn’t make sense to someone so far removed from such terrible times. “I had already been named as a war criminal. I would have been tried and found guilty no matter my claims.” Taking a deep breath, memories of constantly being on the run overtook him for a brief, but intense moment. “For the sins of others I am forever chased. I’ve sought peace in cellars and city alleys for years. I even spent time on a boat fishing lobsters, but I could never truly rest.” His eyes glazed slightly as he wondered if he was truly still being pursued as a war criminal or if it was his own conscience that denied him peace.

  Leaning back in her chair, Manisha forgot that she was tied to it. If not for Niclas quickly grabbing her knees, she would have assuredly tumbled backward.

  Steadying the chair, he expressed genuine concern for her safety. “Careful, my dear, I’ll not be responsible for the loss of another innocent life,” he said through a meager smile.

  “Based on what you’ve said, I don’t think you can ever really be held responsible for taking anyone’s life.” Listening to her own words, it was not lost on Manisha that she was beginning to sympathize with her captor; however, she doubted that anyone suffering from Stockholm Syndrome had ever encountered someone with such a long, sad story as his.

  Closing his eyes, Niclas solemnly whispered a verse from the Old Testament. "And if any soul should sin, and commit any of these things which are forbidden to be done by the commandments of the Lord, though he knew it not, yet he is guilty, and shall bear his iniquity.” Though an excerpt from a religious text seemed a strange self-admonishment for a man of science, its connotation was apt and unmistakable. He shook his head and ran his hand slowly down the front of his face. “No, I will find no solace in my ignorance,” he said, refusing to accept any absolution. “My crime was to be so engrossed in what made me happy, that I never bothered to lift my head to see the misery it caused for others. That, my young friend, is unforgivable. I will attempt a penance, but I know it will never suffice.” With stony conviction, he gazed into Manisha’s eyes.

  Something in his words broke the enchantment of the heartbreaking story and gave way to current reality. Determination behind Niclas’s steely blue eyes compelled Manisha to dive deeper into the abyss. “I understand why you changed your name and went into hiding, but what were you doing in the lab this evening? Also, why in God’s name am I still tied to this chair?”

  “I’m afraid it is Wednesday morning, Professor. I’m sorry I did make you aware sooner,” he informed her.

  “What!?” yelled Manisha, shifting the chair beneath her a few inches across the floor with a loud squeak. “I’ve got a meeting at ten o’clock, a dog that hasn’t been let out in almost a full day and I really have to use the bathroom!” Suddenly manic, she could only imagine what was happening in her apartment. Willing herself to stop, she lifted a loose finger on her otherwise restrained right hand. With a deep breath, she tilted her head to one side and regained her composure. “Wait…wait, don’t change the subject. What were you doing in that lab and why did you feel it necessary to drug me and drag me down here?”

  With the history lesson over, Niclas stood up, walked past the tied-up professor, and moved to the far side of the room. He opened the small refrigerator and took out a small package wrapped tightly in plastic. “As I told you, I have indeed continued my research. I have in my hand something very special,” he said happily, a broad smile on his face. “I believe you refer to it as, ‘the anomaly at genetic sequence seventy-seven alpha of cases UWGT–0032 through UWGT–0035,’ ” he read verbatim off a page from the analysis Manisha had been compiling the evening before.

  “Wait…What? You’re responsible for the anomaly?” Even if she hadn’t been tied up, it’s doubtful she could have moved after such a shocking revelation.

  Nodding his admission, Niclas wasn’t about to let nearly forty-years of work be summed up in one w
ord. “I prefer to think of it as a perfectly targeted genetic mutation, but ‘anomaly’ will suffice for now.”

  Black hair fell loosely in front of her face as Manisha craned her neck forward. “But the patients in that study were perfectly healthy. What are you attempting to do?” A familiar feeling of uneasiness crept back into her throat.

  With both hands, Niclas held the small wrapped bundle as if it were a fragile newborn. “My dear professor, I’ve engineered a cure for the most deadly disease mankind has ever known.” His expression hardened with determination as he considered his own words.

  One eyebrow raised in doubt, she made an obvious guess. “Why do I have the feeling you’re not holding the cure for cancer?”

  His voice becoming hoarse from talking, Niclas let out an abrasive laugh. “Heavens no! You’ll find it far more intriguing than that.” Holding his prize close to his chest, his voice rose in jubilation. “I’ve found a cure for the only sickness that’s been responsible for the death of millions, perhaps billions throughout all of history!” Manisha had never heard anyone say anything with as much certainty.

  He spoke triumphantly into the blackness of the room as if directly addressing everyone on the planet. “For my crimes, and to spite those who used my talents for evil, I will eradicate hate itself!”

  Perceiving a significant change in the elderly man didn’t end with his demeanor. Indeed he seemed to transform physically as well. No longer did he present as a gentle, frail old man worn down by the ravages of time, worry and guilt. Appearing to harness power directly from the mysterious item he held tightly in his bony hands, Niclas straightened his stance. He stood noticeably taller and his shoulders appeared to broaden. It became clear that this was not a man bent on glory, riches, or even the pure quest for knowledge. He was someone obsessed by his past and the immeasurable need to right a terrible wrong. Niclas was a fanatic.