by P. W. Child
Sam shook his head. “I know. But they would be insane to set fire to something they already deem to be so unstable, right?” He had to fish a bit, even if it was just to obtain some background on the politics involved.
The old man grunted, chugged back his whiskey and looked at Sam though his small goggles with bloodshot eyes, “Correct! But then again, with what they know about the research we are trying to conduct, I would not be bloody surprised if they had no idea what could happen.”
“Do they belong to an organization? Or is it just a group of people with similar beliefs?” Sam asked.
“I don’t think so. Not the people who caused the fire,” he told Sam. Professor Westdijk leaned closer, “To be frank, I think the very people who worked on that section did it.”
“But why would they?” Sam whispered. “All their work down the drain, or were they just working there because they infiltrated the project just to sabotage it?”
The old man waved off Sam’s speculation with a frown and a shake of his head, “No, no, my boy. I can promise you they would not do all that just to destroy their own work. What I think is that it was two or three engineers or maybe electricians, sabotaging the working of the machine by just making a deliberate electrical mistake, hey?”
Sam gave it some thought. “Could very well be, but there must be more to it?”
“Look, from what I know in this life, I can tell you that sometimes you only need a force of morality, pressed on by fear, to do such drastic things. Whoever caused the fire caused the wires to short circuit and that takes skill, hey?” the old man argued.
“So you are saying that they just wanted to win time by setting back the construction and working of the machine?” Sam asked under his breath.
The old man tapped his hand with a crooked finger, “That is what I was thinking, Sam Cleave.”
“Who would do that?” he wondered out loud.
“Other scientists,” Prof. Westdijk answered.
“But why?” Sam asked him.
The old man shrugged, “Maybe they were busy with an experiment of their own. Maybe they were onto something bigger than just smashing particles together like a bloody toddler, hoping to see an effect.”
Sam watched the old man’s annoyance take form. He slowly peeked over the frame of his glasses. “Maybe they were upset that something as pointless as the LHC got funding while they were onto something so much bigger.”
Chapter 4
Purdue’s scrutiny was interrupted by the sound of murmuring coming from the main hallway. At the bottom of the stairs, a wheelchair crossed the landing with the stern butler chasing after it with much disgruntlement.
“Madam, please allow me to help,” he insisted, but the woman in the chair would have none of it.
“Healy, I can do this. I’m not dead yet, you know!” she barked in a low, raspy voice that struck Purdue as some German actress from the heyday of cinema or some rock singer from Woodstock. Marlene Dietrich? Marianne Faithful? He smiled.
“Now get some wine as I asked you twenty bloody times already. Please,” she grunted back at the poor butler as she wheeled herself into the drawing room.
“As feisty as ever, I see,” Purdue smiled and approached her, but she waved him away cordially.
“Please, Dave, don’t touch me. The chemo fucked me up something awful the past month. I don’t even know why I bother,” she explained.
Purdue was astonished at her resilience. By what he was told by her assistant she was in the final stages of Grade IV astrocytoma and that she could barely move or speak properly. Dismissing the information as exaggeration Purdue carried on the conversation as if he did not have any knowledge of her condition.
“I understand,” he smiled. “You are a great deal more threatening than I imagined I would find you.” Purdue glanced to the snobbish butler who stood in the door like a mannequin, holding a bottle of Dom Perignon.
“Ha!” she cried in amusement. “Healy is ex-SIS, I’ll have you know, so he is not always such a gentle old pup…” she flung her head back to address the butler, “…hey, Healy?”
He merely nodded.
“Come, pour us some of that, will you?” she requested, while pulling a long slender cigarillo from her antique cigarette case. Purdue’s eyes were glued to the artifact. It was sterling silver, hand crafted and definitely second hand. A symbol the shape of a backwards ‘N’ adorned the centre with a downward line vertically through it. While she placed it on the small lamp table he read the inscription beneath.
‘Das Reich’
Lydia was skinnier than he recalled, which was to be expected of the illness, but the other properties of her behavior with remarkably peculiar. She spoke with precision in perfectly formed words, delivering cogent arguments with the butler. There was no sign, other than the visual, that she was even sick.
But how she appeared was quite another story. In typical fashion expected of the frail suffering cancer and its painful treatment, she wore a turban-like scarf around her balding head to cover the feathery remnants on her scalp. Her once ample lips were now deflated and contorted in wrinkles of agony she must have suffered thus far and her breasts had disappeared almost completely. But those huge blue eyes under the dainty brow, falling slightly back into large eyelids were still unmistakable. Purdue remembered how deeply in love he was with her before she married Professor Graham Jenner in her late twenties and left him nursing several bottles of brandy and a broken heart.
“You fancy it, don’t you?” she winked.
Embarrassed momentarily by her apparent reading of his mind, Purdue snapped out of his nostalgia, “I fancy what, dear Lydia?” His profuse blinking betrayed his discomfort at being discovered swooning over his old feelings for her. Lydia laughed heartily. With her aged, but still elegant finger she pointed to the silver cigarette holder. “You have a penchant for German war relics, do you not? I read about that somewhere. I think in a book or article by that sexy journalist, Sam Cleave.”
‘Sexy? Sam?’ Purdue shouted in his mind. ‘Hardly.’
“Oh?” he replied. “He said that, did he?”
“Did you not read his book? I know it covered mostly his memoirs about exposing Whitsun’s arms ring and the death of his fiancé and all that, but he mentioned that he was involved in the recovery of German World War II artifacts and religious relics with renowned explorer and inventor, David Purdue. Christ, Dave, the man is apparently one of your friends and you did not even bother to read his book?”
“I haven’t had time,” Purdue stuttered, aiming for the bottom of his glass. “Besides, I am not here to talk about Sam Cleave. I came to catch up with you, my dearest. Go on, tell me what you have been up to.”
“Apart from hosting a war between God and a disease? Not much, really,” she said serenely, blowing out a straight stream of smoke.
“Madam, with respect, you should not be smoking,” Healy reminded her, offering an ashtray for her to relinquish her cigarillo.
“With respect, Healy, fuck off,” she chuckled crudely, almost malicious in her way. He looked briefly toward Purdue as if to ask for his help, and retired to the lobby to collect the dying bouquet for discarding. “Dave, take the cigarette case, darling. Soon I’ll have no use for it anymore.”
“So, you are quitting smoking,” he smiled and took the item in his hand to run his fingers over the etching.
“No, I’m quitting living, you idiot,” she bristled suddenly.
Purdue looked up at her in earnest and she quickly realized what she had done. Her tone had been utterly inappropriate, she knew. Contrite, she lowered her face, “I apologize. I really am sorry, Dave. It’s just, so unfair what has happened to me. First I am left a widow and then this, you know. I am…oh Christ, I’m so sorry…”
“No need to excuse your words, Lydia,” he said, almost placing his hand on her knee before remembering the sore skin she warned about. “It is natural to be angry.”
“I am angry. I’m fucking
furious, Purdue. And do you know why?” she said, abruptly lowering her voice.
“No?” he replied, truly intrigued. “Why?”
He knew Lydia Jenner all too well. She was always up to something, no matter what her situation. She was a hustler, a shaker, an inventor and genius who lived life only for one purpose – to seek. Incredulous to anything she could not substantiate with science, she always sought to discover the secrets of the universe or at least the possibilities of its arcane functions.
“Because I have stumbled upon something that works, my friend,” she rasped in something between a whisper and a vulgar cackle. “Something that they theorize, all of them, while I actually attained the practical working of it! Sounds like witchcraft, doesn’t it?” Her beauteous eyes addressed him with powerful terror, a sensation Purdue had only felt once before when he was in the presence of a Peruvian art dealer who was possessed by some sort of demon, some sort of psychological mishap that drove him mad.
“It does sound like witchcraft,” he agreed inadvertently. “But do tell me more, dearest.” Purdue did his best to hide his uncertainty by maintaining his flirtatious way she knew well from their days at Birmingham. It would keep her fooled long enough to share her madness with him, he reckoned.
She smiled satisfactorily and giggled. It was not a sweet sound at all, but rather a disturbing outlet of wisdom at a price, he thought. And it was. Lydia wanted something more than Purdue’s company.
“Do you know where I got that cigarette case you like – you covet – so much?” she whispered with a malignant tone. “I got it from SS-Sturmbannführer Helmut Kämpfe himself, reportedly killed while in the custody of the French Resistance on 10 June 1944, or something. Stole Tesla’s death ray notes from him, as well as this very cigarette case, right after I fucked his brains out.”
For a moment she searched Purdue’s face for a reaction, but his stunned expression at her confession was too much to bear, and Lydia burst out laughing like some uncouth whore. Purdue did not realize that her seemingly normal behavior was just the shaky shell to the severe damage inside her cranium, that she was in fact this far gone after all.
“You are kidding me!” he played along, clapping his palms together in faux-amusement. “How the hell did you achieve that?”
Lydia suddenly scowled, as if his believing her spoiled her fun. “Wait, you actually think I could do such a thing?” Her glass was shaking in her hand and Purdue took note of the clinking of cutlery in the dining room, wishing that Healy would just show up to distract her.
“Abso—….absolutely. Of course I believe it. You, of all people, would be capable of designing something that could facilitate time-space manipulation,” he explained, keeping up his charade under a ruse of nonchalance. “Besides, I would not put anything short of the Big Bang past you hand, dear Lydia.”
She stared at him, her sunken cheeks drawing attention to the way in which she was grinding her teeth. A moment of uncomfortable silence passed before her frown vanished, but she was still not smiling. Instead she took on a more concerned persona.
“Dave, I need you to do something for me. I hate to admit this, but I did not invite you here to catch up on our lives before my body fails me for the last time,” she said softly, cradling her tumbler and looking deep into the liquid. “I needed someone who was as bat shit crazy as I am...” she said, looking up at him, “...in the sense of scientific ruthlessness, of course. Someone like you would be insane enough to believe me, because you were always the one bloke who would never see obstacles, rather challenges; who would never tolerate perturbation of a theory or plan. Purdue, I need someone like you to finish my thesis and put it to practice as I could not.”
Purdue was dumbfounded. She was actually serious about employing his loyalty to prove some ludicrous theory her illness allowed he to believe could be achieved in practice. His eyes blinked rapidly behind his small framed glasses and where his chin rested on his palm, his little finger probed his lips in thought.
“Please?” she whispered, marginally sane in her desperate beseeching. “Purdue, please. If it’s the last thing you do for me.”
Purdue had to concede that the small hint at what he thought she was onto enticed him no end, and knowing her boundless genius dampened only by her reputation as a dark horse in the academic community, the thought of what she had in mind was too good to rebuke.
“What do you need from me?” he asked seriously, his eyes narrow with warmth and amity. “Will it cost me my life this time?”
His jest fell lightly on her will. “If it did, Dave, your legacy would boast a feat no other man in history would ever have achieved.” Her hoarse voice was filled with promise, gradually swallowing the madness inside it.
“Madam, do you wish to have a light meal with Mr. Purdue or shall we wait until formal dinner time?” Healy asked.
“Are you hungry, Purdue?” she asked abruptly. “It all depends on you. I don’t get hungry anymore, it seems. Besides, I have to drink my food these days.” Again came her wild cackling, harboring a furious admittance of defeat. “I’m like a fly, you see. I vomit. I consume liquid full of proteins and God knows what else they fill it with, only to grow uglier and deader by the day.”
“Can’t say that leaves me with much of an appetite, Lydia,” Purdue cringed.
“Oh come on, Dave, don’t be such a girl’s blouse. Have some bloody food while you still can. Imagine I am eating with you. Healy is a hell of a cook,” she insisted, swigging up the rest of her alcohol.
“Madam.”
“Yes, Healy, my dear nurse maid. I know I am not allowed to drink. But if you don’t tell, I won’t…kill you!” she grinned, and flung the glass at her butler. It shattered against the wall just west of his cheek and he sank to his haunches to avoid the shrapnel of shards cleaving his face.
Chapter 5
Sam unpacked his bag with savage indifference as the television behind him reported on the investigation lodged into the incident at CERN which derailed construction of the Alice detector. The latter was said to be part of the Large Hadron Collider, to record data from the mimicking of the Big Bang, taking pictures of the smashing of particles, so said the reporter. Yet, they still had no idea how the fire started and it still looked like an electrical short that could have been the cause.
Exhaustion was taking its toll on Sam, but he had to suck it up and pull himself together. To his annoyance as a freelancer, the esteemed nitpicker Penny Richards went ahead and made an appointment with a CERN engineer, Albert Tägtgren, to be interviewed by Sam.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she told Sam. “I just thought you would get on faster if I located you the right people to speak to so that you won’t waste your time trudging through the place looking for someone who could shed some light on the fire.”
“That’s fine, Penny, thank you. But how do you know which people happen to know about the incident?” he asked her, aiming that cynical journalistic radar straight at her. But she was prepared for his astute nature.
“I don’t reckon he would know who started the fire, Mr. Cleave, however as an engineer who specifically works on the Alice detector’s structural resilience and construction, he would be best versed in what kind of structure the detector is build. Therefore, he might know better than anyone else where a fault could have arisen, had it not been arson,” she rambled off, while Sam could not find one suspicious loophole in her explanation and ultimately had to respond with a simple, “Oh, alright then, Penny. I am heading out to CERN soon. I will Skype you this evening.”
“Thank you so much, Sam,” she replied cheerfully. “Have a lovely day.”
He put the phone down. “Aye, I hope your day blossoms into a fervent frenzy of misery, you little gnat.”
Sam had been imagining Penny as a gnat, specifically, since he made her acquaintance. Mentally he likened her to something seemingly insignificant and small that had an uncanny tendency to fly up one’s air passages and wreak havoc. Not a deadly ki
nd of havoc, just enough to spoil you day and make you extremely uncomfortable.
It was morning in Geneva. Breakfast was served and consumed without any enthusiasm from the Scottish journalist, and he shed all manner of cheer to prepare him for a boring day he just wanted to get behind him so that he could get Penny off his back and dive into the bottle of Scotch he had just purchased.
“Looking awfully downtrodden there, son,” a familiar old voice came from behind Sam while he was having his last coffee after emptying most of his plate in the dining hall of his hotel. The distinct Dutch accent was unmistakable. Sam turned around.
“Professor Westdijk! What a pleasant surprise,” he smiled for the first time that morning. The old man gestured for permission to join Sam at his table, his hands full of things – a mug of hot chocolate, a newspaper and a small plate with two slices of dry toast sliding about on the clean porcelain.
“I thought I would find you here, young Sam, but not this soon. I suppose you are here to probe that fire problem?” he asked as he drew his chair closer until his belly cushioned the table.
“Aye.”
“I don’t want to dissuade you, Sam, but I think you are fighting a losing battle. There are over two thousand scientists, engineers and electricians working on the construction of Alice, mostly British. There is not much chance you will get to speak to the right people before the trail goes cold,” the old man remarked while he tried in vain to get the little rock hard block of butter onto his toast.
“It’s funny you should mention that, Professor,” Sam said, “…because I happen to have an appointment with someone I was pointed towards this very morning, for that very reason.”