by P. W. Child
Nina gathered up all the old books she could and made for the trapdoor. “Come on, Cleave! Bring your books!”
Gunshots rang from behind Nina, and she could only see flashes of fire making lightning streaks in the reflection of her windows. She stopped abruptly, her face contorted in horror.
“SAM!”
Chapter 24
Under the faint green light stood Dr. Alfred Meiner, his black circular goggles snugly on his face. His apron was black and rubbery, as were his gloves. Grotesque and intimidating, he moved with a strange crab-walk limp across the mosaic white tiles of the slaughterhouse. He called it a slaughterhouse, only because of its similarities to the killing floor of an abattoir. Gumboots at the bottom of his white pants kept him from slipping on the wet tiling as he pushed aside the steel tables and gurneys. Clattering from the wheeled beds, his excess instruments came crashing onto the floor too quickly for his old reflexes to stop them.
He released a mess of mumbling curses as he sank to his knees to pick up all the scalpels, kidney dishes, forceps, and plungers. It was strange to hear him swear, thought Purdue, watching the old Nazi doctor from the entrance of the laboratory. As all those familiar with the scientist knew, the man hardly ever made a sound, so much so that most people mistook him for a mute. Purdue had come in his capacity as Renatus to see what Meiner had available for him to implement Final Solution 2 with.
With Meiner’s expertise in genetics and anthropometry among others, he was essential to the efficacy of the Longinus. What Purdue needed was to understand its workings to effectively rig it for mass release when the time came to cleanse the Earth of undesirable human strains. He was the technological genius who would design the catalyst by which Meiner’s terrible genetic witchery would eventually be executed.
I wonder how he will explain this mutative science to me if the man never utters a damn sound, Purdue smirked. He almost felt like his old giddy and self-conscious self now that his own plot was put into motion while he led the Order of the Black Sun. Agatha had furnished him with the location and details of the Longinus, so he was no longer in a compromising position with the council. It was safely in his possession now, courtesy of his sister who stole it from him in the first place. What she was going to do with it, she would not tell, but he had a fair idea that she would either sell it for an obscene amount of money or take the moral high ground and bury it in a desert or toss it in the deepest ocean.
That aside, Purdue now had the deadly little menace and he planned to put it to full use. Watching the old man feel about over the sharp objects elicited a wince from Purdue’s face, yet he did nothing to help. The goggles obviously deterred the doctor from seeing properly, but he did not take the dark glasses off, nor did he turn on the ceiling lights. Purdue flicked the switch to help the doctor see where his sharp instruments were.
Instantly Alfred Meiner began to scream. A deeply disturbing keening escaped his scrawny throat, reminding Purdue of a caterwauling cat with a tinge of mechanical siren in there. His skin crawled at the chilling screech and he quickly flicked the lights back off.
The old man gradually ceased his wailing, running out of breath until his throat closed around his voice like a vice grip, ending in a rattle of hoarseness so grisly that Purdue almost turned on his heel to leave. What manner of human being could produce such sounds? He frowned at the contorted stance of the doctor, sneering at the shocked visitor.
“Renatus,” Alfred Meiner whispered with a dip of his forehead in honor.
“Dr. Meiner,” Purdue replied, trying to look as sincere as his guile would allow. “My apologies. I had no idea.”
The doctor shook his head with a wave of his black rubber gloves, “You did not know, sir. It is my weakness, not your mistake.”
His odd whisper sounded painful every time he spoke, and Purdue could not help but stare at his Adam’s apple, wondering how it felt.
“It hurts like hot poker sodomy, sir.”
Purdue wanted to laugh, but not yet being familiar with Dr. Alfred Meiner’s disposition, elected to swallow his outburst and nodded contemplatively. He held one hand in front of his itching mouth, smothering the insistent smile that would not go away.
“Now tell me, doctor, how would you explain your work to me?”
“I could write it down for you, Renatus,” the old man whispered. “Or I can speak through the harpalphone, if you wish.”
“The what?” Purdue frowned.
“It is a device I have been using since 1986. Designed by my late colleague, Hagar Rasmussen. He was a sound engineer in Helsinki during the 1960s. The harpalphone amplifies the minute vibrations of my voice and enhances my vocal chords, so that I do not have to speak loudly,” Alfred Meiner explained patiently. He held out a ghastly green PVC contraption that looked like a gasmask. He removed his goggles to put it on, and Purdue had to stifle a cry of fright at the sight of the man’s eyes.
His irises are . . . broken? Purdue pondered as he discreetly examined the split coloring of Dr. Meiner’s eyes. Like cracks in asphalt his blue eyes were fractured in shards of different hues of the color, the whites so bloodshot that they appeared pink. His eyelashes were bleached and his skin powdery. It was only then that Purdue realized that Meiner was some sort of an albino.
With the peculiar device on his head and face, the doctor could speak to Purdue with a voice as normal as his own. It was a relief. Not only did he not have to listen to the ghastly sounds that possessed the whispers, but the mask covered those unsettling eyes. Purdue found it fascinating that someone with Alfred Meiner’s knowledge could not engineer something to heal his maladies.
“So, doctor, tell me how we will be mobilizing the Longinus,” he said in his most professional tone.
“Have you brought it?” Meiner asked.
“I have not. First, I need to know how you plan to execute the whole planet’s imbeciles,” Purdue replied. Inside him he felt sick. Never did he ever think he would have to say such things, let alone be responsible for such atrocity. “What is locked inside the Longinus?”
The doctor froze in his place and took a moment to stare into space before lending Purdue a look of true amazement. “You don’t know, Renatus? They have not told you what you stole from the fortress in Mönkh Saridag?” He chuckled dryly, “There was a good reason why they kept it from us.”
Chapter 25
In the laboratory under the abandoned twelfth-century black cathedral near Piazza San Marco, Dave Purdue was taking a crash course in molecular genocide from a professional. Yet, he had no idea what the Longinus was really for, even though he had stolen it from the Brigade Apostate on the border of Mongolia and Russia a few months before.
“No, my sister and I only procured it as a bargaining chip against the highest bidder,” Purdue shrugged innocently. It was well-known that he was once one of the best thieves in the world, prestigious and sought after by the more elite of criminal operators.
“As if Renata was not enough?” the doctor mentioned inadvertently. Immediately he realized his insolence and started apologizing profusely. “Oh, gott, mein herr, I am such a fool. I don’t know what came over me . . . ”
“Enough,” Purdue replied slightly impatiently. “Just tell me what it does. And Dr. Meiner, I am a man of technology and archeology. Please don’t bombard me with endless long biological terms and scientific reactions. My attention span cannot tolerate such gibberish.”
“Very well, sir,” Meiner agreed. He drew a diagram on a piece of white paper so adeptly and seemingly without thinking that Purdue had to admit to feeling quite a measure of admiration for the doctor, even if he was a twisted old bastard who used medicine and science to murder the innocent and resurrect the wicked. Purdue leaned on the table, shifting his glasses on the bridge of his nose to see better in the low light of the laboratory.
“In short, and omitting quite a bit of information for your comfort, the compounds we need to assemble will set in action the active particle within the Lo
nginus, the XT8 virus. I just call it a virus, using the term loosely, of course,” he told Purdue. Still it was all too vague, but Purdue nodded in earnest. He did not want to press the doctor too much just yet.
“What it does, when we give it the missing information we need from the library you will supposedly be garnering for us . . . ?” he looked quizzically at Purdue, who nodded in response, “when we add that code to that of the Longinus’ contents, this new strain will release an airborne agent into the Earth’s atmosphere, mimicking oxygen—and, like oxygen, it would latch onto the iron in the blood of every human being that breathes it in.”
“So it is a chemical agent that will wipe out the human race,” Purdue concluded matter-of-factly. But Dr. Meiner merely gave him a long, patriarchal look of cheerful negation. He could not help but smile at Renatus and his naïve aims for the New World Order. Seeing that Purdue looked confounded at his misunderstanding, Dr. Meiner continued.
“It does not, in fact, Renatus. On a cellular level it infects DNA strands that do not contain the chromosomes that produce Aryan properties,” he presented with no small amount of enthusiasm. The doctor was clearly impressed with his unprecedented achievement and waited for a response from Purdue.
“That is genius. So, will you be eliminating non-Aryan genetics entirely, leaving only Germanic bloodlines to populate the earth?” Purdue asked. Only halfway through his question did he realize that this sick genius he was almost impressed by was in fact unequivocally abhorrent. “Jesus Christ, Dr. Meiner, how long did it take you to engineer
this . . . this . . . ultimate solution?” Purdue gasped, to the doctor’s elation.
“All my life, Renatus. Do you know how many specimens I had to go through before I finally observed indubitable success? Hundreds of thousands, I assure you,” Meiner marveled. Purdue knew that, even at the doctor’s ripe age he could not have been a scientist during the Holocaust. He had to ask.
“Where did you manage to get test subjects, Dr. Meiner? This is amazing research,” he flattered. But what Meiner told him next punched Purdue in the gut.
“Africa and Romania, mostly. Croats and gypsies, African orphans whose aimless existence in famine and hopelessness was of no use to the world, so I gave them a purpose. They were not supposed to be born anyway. They were begotten in nothing more than lust and tribal tradition without a thought for their function in the future. What is the use, Renatus, of a creature with innate regressed intellect doing no more for humankind than to soil it with pointless subsistence?” Dr. Meiner asked genuinely.
He spoke of selective racial slaughter as if he were delivering a sermon on the grace of forgiveness, complete with papal gestures and modesty as he explained his depravity. Purdue felt his soul wither in the presence of unadulterated evil, but he had to maintain his ruse, not only for himself but also to get as much information on the weapon as he could. In this instance, knowledge really was power.
“Unfortunately, I had to sacrifice many children I thought were of Aryan descent too. Lovely young, intelligent creatures with the bluest eyes, fairest skin, lightest hair . . . ” he lamented, “of which many proved to be Jewish and Slavic, and unfortunately died as a result of the present compound of XT8 in its infancy stage.”
Purdue could not imagine that someone as intelligent as Meiner could not add up the very irony in his last sentence. If these so-called, mock-Aryan children could fool someone like him, did that not prove that racial genetics did not dictate the intellect of an individual? Or his function in civilization? But he was not about to start a debate about it now that he was so close.
“On that subject, doctor, what is it I am supposed to find in the Library of Forbidden Books for you to employ? How can you still improve on XT8 if it is already killing undesirables?” Purdue fished some more, taking down all the information on his palm tablet to help him remember. In truth he was making more than notes.
“I need a handwritten book of Mein Kampf, Renatus. Within it is the first code of three sequences for the assembly of the relative compounds I need for the second stage. Regrettably, I do not know which books hold the other two codes, but I venture to guess the first one should point us there.”
“What is the second stage?” Purdue inquired.
“Once the chromosomes are under attack, the compound exterminates the subject within eight seconds,” Meiner revealed. “That is what XT8 stands for—exterminated in eight seconds.”
“Good God!” Purdue gawked. “And how does it do that?”
“I am busy with trials on engineering it so that it would dissolve all iron in the subject’s blood instantly. This will naturally deplete the body of oxygen, in short, leaving the subject oxygen deprived. The rest is common sense,” Meiner explained. He started to look suspicious at all the detail Purdue needed for only research purposes to retrieve the relative literature. But Purdue had a keen sense of behavioral exhibition and picked up that he had just about overstayed his welcome. In fact, he reckoned that had he not been Renatus, he might well have been lying on that very gurney right now.
“Well,” he concluded, typing furiously into his tablet, “now I have all the information to get the Longinus cooking.” The doctor nodded in agreement, but just before he removed his mask, Purdue turned at the door with a perplexed expression, “Dr. Meiner, why did you call it the Longinus?”
The doctor removed the mask and placed it neatly next to the other instruments and smirked like a satisfied cannibal, while his hoarse hiss replied, “Oh, because the Longinus was the spear that killed the King of the Jews. Of course.”
Chapter 26
Nina did not care that her life was in danger while she was left blind in her new nightmare house. The muzzle flashes of the firearm ceased after four shots, and she could hear the casings clink onto the floor where she had been curled up cozy with wine just a few hours before. The shots echoed through the silent street where half the town and all local authorities could hear it. A furor of panic ensued as soon as the gunshots stopped. People scattered out of what they thought was the line of fire, hiding behind vehicles, and racing for the shelter of fences and trees in the surrounding area of the legendary old Nazi house on Dunuaran Road.
“Sam!”Nina screamed in the pitch dark of the lobby.
“I’m all right,” she heard him groan somewhere near the couch.
“Where are you?” she panted, crawling on all fours with one arm extended in the black oblivion. She found his arm and then felt his hair. He was sitting on the floor with his gun in his hand.
“Well, that was a fuckup,” he noted casually. “Now everyone knows we’re in here and they are about to send in the cavalry.”
“Aye, I see three coppers rolling up the pathway now. Come, Sam. The door is wide open for anyone. If we stay here, we are fucked,” she said, laboriously helping Sam to his feet. She could hear that he was injured. Gretchen came flying up the steps of the basement and rushed into the hallway to collect the books.
“Hurry up, for God’s sake!” she shouted to Sam and Nina. “The police have their bloody guns toting!”
“I’m trying to carry a whole man here, Gretchen. Give me a fucking break, will you?” Nina moaned as Sam leaned heavily on her. His knee was blown out and bleeding profusely, so that he kept losing consciousness every few seconds, fighting to keep upright. “Get Richard to help us!”
They staggered into the kitchen just before the cops reached the front door.
“Police! We’re coming in!” they heard in the lobby as Sam and Nina slipped behind the kitchen table. Gretchen was discovered in the powerful beam of the officer’s torch, but she refused to put her hands up,
“I don’t want to drop the books, officer,” she explained. The officers did not see Sam and Nina to Gretchen’s left.
“You will have to, lady. I’d say books are less important than your life, wouldn’t you?” he argued with the black eye of his barrel staring her in the face. Gretchen’s eyes darted briefly to her two friends in
the corner. The other officer, more aggressive, approached rapidly and shouted, “To hell with your bloody books, miss! Raise your hands above your head where we can see them. Your books are of no importance here!”
His head exploded in a warm mess of brain matter and blood right in front of her as a bullet tore through his cranium.
“You clearly don’t mean these books, laddie,” a woman said in the darkness.
Not a second later the other two officers suffered the same dead-aimed fate and dropped to the floor with lifeless weight. The rays from their flashlights flickered wildly, spotlighting random things in the kitchen until they rolled along the floor and became still. From her dark vantage, Nina saw McLaughlin towering over her, every hair still in a perfect bun and make-up unscathed. In her left fist she had Gretchen by the hair, gun to her temple. The beam of the last fallen officer came to a stop exactly in front of Nina, where she sat cowering in the corner behind the door. Like a machine, the prim princess locked onto her target to shoot as quickly as she dealt with the police.
Nina’s eyes pinched shut, denying her the pleasure of watching Sam bring an obliterating right hook down on the pretty face of the Grace Kelly killer. Her legs buckled under her as she jolted sideways onto the table top and cupboard doors, slipping downward in a very unflattering pose to sleep it off. Sam stood on one leg, his face showing evidence of excessive agony. Nina rose to her feet. Both of them could not believe that Gretchen had remained standing after her captor had gone down like a bad boxer. The German professor stood dumbstruck at the recent events, books still snugly in her embrace.
“You know, if we had time, I’d find that extremely funny,” Sam mentioned.
Out in front of the house, helicopters were shining their blinding troopers into the house, splitting the darkness, and sending the shadows sliding in under furniture and into corners. Some inaudible ultimatum was made over a public announcement speaker from one of the Jet Rangers, but the three of them did not merit the invitation feasible. After Gretch briskly packed her sports bag with all the odd, old, antique codexes, they scooted for the trapdoor. With immense difficulty maneuvering Sam, they finally shut and locked the door above them.