by P. W. Child
“No, it is doable, Miss Richards. I was just hoping not to have to resort to guile to obtain my information,” he shrugged with a smile. “Besides, it would take a great deal more time than to just find a last stay or purchase to locate him.”
“I understand. That was my thought exactly. The problem is that my hackers and investigating staff could not find any evidence of card activity or cell phone communication since Sam Cleave disappeared,” she said.
“Perhaps he was killed as well,” Christian suggested.
“That also crossed my mind, especially since he had gathered an immense amount of detail about our covert operation. Still, I need to find him, dead or alive, just to make sure what hand he is holding in this very sensitive gamble,” Penny explained.
“I see,” Christian Foster yielded finally. “Let me get my paperwork to your secretary in an hour and as soon as I received payment accordingly, I shall commence my search.”
He rose from his chair and straightened his clothing, towering over her. Penny shook his hand, always her favorite part of meeting with him, “Be in touch, Christian. You expertise is invaluable in this matter and we will be grateful for your swift and urgent attention.”
“I shall give it my utmost attention, Miss Richards. Penny,” he smiled, leaving Penny weak in the knees at the mention of her first name.
“Good bye,” she chimed as he withdrew his hand.
“God bless,” he said simply and with a gentlemanly nod he turned and left.
Penny Richards gasped, fanning her face with the folder in her hand as she watched him walk away, “Jesus Christ, that man is hot!”
Chapter 15
Purdue woke with a headache just short of a nuclear meltdown. It was so intense that his eyeballs felt swollen, pushed from their holes by a swollen, pulsing brain. In fact, his jaw throbbed with what felt to him like the aches he used to endure suffering the flu – a dull pain that ran through the substance of his facial muscle. But for all their battling to function he found his eyes to be absolutely useless. No matter how he stretched his lids, no matter where he looked about him, darkness the density of rock harbored his burning hot body.
Fever possessed Purdue’s entire physique; so much so, that he felt that his lips had gone numb and tingly. Blisters had formed on the edges of his mouth and his skin felt like the time he spent too much time in the pool during the 1982 Outback heat wave with his Australian girlfriend’s family. Barely unable to move from the muscle aches and the scalded skin, Purdue found himself moaning like a weak boy after a hernia operation. His head was spinning. In truth Purdue had no idea if he was dead or alive.
“Help!” he shouted inadvertently, expecting a hollow echo that reached through eternity, but the one word escaping his painful lips bounced back to him in the near distance. He reckoned by the travel of sound that he was in a room, one that was not small, but it was definitely not a hall or cavern.
‘Maybe you should not call out, old boy,’ his common sense told him. ‘You have no idea who is listening.’ Under him he could feel cold concrete and some loose mortar that must have fallen from a wall, but he was too afraid to reach out to his sides. Who knew what he might push his hands into! Besides, since he was convinced that this was death, specifically some hellish destination by point of his suffering, whatever sat next to him could be nothing good.
With immense ardor Purdue changed position onto his knees. It was excruciating and he moaned as quietly as he could. Under his palm tiny stones stung his sore hands. He grasped one of them and lobbed it into the dead blackness in front of him.
It landed not far from him with a blunt clap.
His heart raced at the prospect of what would transpire here in a place that could harbor anything his imagination could conjure. Things capable of unnatural acts, things of unfathomable abilities could very well come at him from the dense nothingness around him and here he was throwing rocks at it.
All these crazy things crossed Purdue’s pounding mind, but he had to find out where he was regardless. There was no use in remaining stagnant, static in fear for an eternity. Boredom and unsatisfied curiosity would present utter torment if he allowed his innate wariness to drown his courage. He had to keep moving, gathering information. The stone he flung had made a sound that resembled dropping pebbles on a cobblestone road. If his ears did not deceive him the rock had struck a stone wall or object. When he crawled forward the wrenching sting of a dislocated knee ruptured his leg at the bend. Purdue screamed blue murder from the unbearable pain, falling on his stomach and just lay there panting to find his senses. Delirious with pain, he hoped that he did not alert the wrong attention to his presence. Yet no sooner had he thought that…
“Please don’t find me,” he whispered as the footsteps approached from somewhere in the dark. Purdue tried desperately for his grinding teeth not to make a sound while the pain slowly overwhelmed his ability to contain it. But he had to be quiet. From nearby he discerned the language of the male voices as being German.
“Oh God, no,” Purdue whispered into the dust under his sheltered face as he lay with his forehead on his folded arms. He smelled moist mossy residue on the ground. Once his skin adapted to the pain as much as it could while his nerve endings screamed, Purdue looked up to see if there was any way he could tell where he was. Hearing the distinct German conversation filled his heart with gloom, but he did not know why. All he knew was that he did not speak the language apart from the well known ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ most people had a command of.
Slightly above his brow, a few meters in front of him a small white line ran horizontally from left to right. It was impossible for the bewildered billionaire to figure out what it was at first. But when darting black shadows moved behind it Purdue realized that the white line he was so fascinated by was in fact a crack under a door, letting light through.
“At least I’m not dead,” he sighed as he inched his sore body forward. The doors opened and there stood two lean figures in German uniforms. “But I am definitely in hell.”
Purdue’s head sank back into the safety of his folded arms as he heard the two men shouting for medics. That much he could translate. He expected to be severely beaten, or just shot in the head, but within a short while two young military medics brought a stretcher and lifted Purdue onto it with great care. They kept telling him to relax, to try to breathe deeply, but he did not understand their suggestions.
The two officers who discovered Purdue in the basement of the Reich Chancellery accompanied him to the infirmary. From his befuddled expression at their questions they quickly realized that he was not one of them.
“Sprechen sie Deutsch?” one asked. It was a phrase Purdue was familiar with, but he knew full well that the entire language eluded his abilities and if he attempted to feign comprehension it would take no longer than a minute to discover that he was no German.
“Nein, leider nicht,” he replied through his pained expression, doing his best to sound as educated in their tongue as he could.
“I like that,” the one officer smiled at the other. “He knows how to say in German that he does not speak German.”
The other one chuckled, lighting a cigarette and leaning hard on Purdue’s scalded body. His face came so close that Purdue could smell his foul breath.
“They probably teach the Allied soldiers that in case they get captured,” the other said, speaking to his colleague but addressing Purdue. “What is your name, soldier?”
“I am not a soldier. My name is David Purdue,” Purdue groaned, his skin burning under the pressure of the officer’s spiteful leaning.
“And what country are you from, David?” the other officer asked.
“Scotland. I’m from Scotland, but I am not a soldier,” he insisted. However, with every attempt at denying his capacity the aggressive officer would press a little harder on Purdue’s sore body, reveling in the stranger’s screams.
“Sturmbannführer Gestern, what is the protocol for Allied s
pies captured in the Führer’s bomb shelter?” the vile tormentor asked the seated, smoking officer on the other side of Purdue’s bed.
“I think…” Gestern mocked, looking up in thought, “…dismemberment? No, no, I think drowning.”
“Wait, I am in Hitler’s bunker?” Purdue asked, shocked. For his common use of their leader’s name he received a deafening clout against the head that sent his brain into a jolt of pain.
“You are in the Reichkanzlei in Wilhelmstraße, imbecile! You infiltrated the Führer’s seat without being detected and then you want to play dumb and pretend that you don’t know where you are?” Gestern shouted at Purdue, ripping from his torso what was left of his flame tattered shirt. Purdue screamed as the fabric peeled away some of the skin it had melted into during his voyage combustion.
“Gestern! Haupt!” Purdue heard a woman’s voice call to the two officers on the other side of the curtain that was drawn around his bed in the infirmary. They jumped up, erect and serious. It was obvious that the woman merited their utmost respect. A brief conversation ensued between the three of them before the curtain was drawn away and there stood the most beautiful woman Dave Purdue had ever beheld.
“Hello,” she said, surveying Purdue’s wounds without touching him. In silence she shook her head. Then she requested the two officers leave the infirmary, but they reminded her that they were responsible for the prisoner until he was interrogated and Himmler decided what to do with him. The mere fact that he entered a virtually impenetrable bunker without detection made him a special point of interest to the SS.
Maria allowed them to remain, on the condition that they keep quiet until she had dressed the prisoner’s wounds and cleaned him up. “They are waiting outside. Your name is?” she asked as she ran water into a large bowl to wash Purdue’s wounds.
“David Purdue,” he groaned, overwhelmed by the shooting pain of damaged nerve endings. In his mouth his tongue probed at something unnatural. The roof of his mouth had a plate fixed perfectly to it, molded to its unique curvature.
“I am Maria,” she smiled. He could not stop staring at the beautiful blond woman. Her hair was extremely long, tied into a horse tail that swayed on her buttocks as she moved. Full lips and large light blue eyes adorned her perfect facial features like well set gems, although he could see she was no child anymore. Purdue guessed the stunning creature in her forties, perhaps, but with the ethereal perfection of her appearance her age did not even factor.
“How did you get into the Reichkanzlei, David?” she asked, gently removing what was left of his shirt until Purdue was naked from the waist up. “It is an impossible thing to accomplish.”
“Nothing is impossible, dear Maria,” he answered, trying to utilize what charm he could to impress at least one of them here behind enemy lines. But he also needed to maintain a charade of power, so he elected to fib about his vulnerability. He knew the two officers were listening and that his subterfuge could prove helpful in distracting them while he found a way out. “I am not the only one who managed to infiltrate the bunker. Most of my unit came with me.”
She tilted her head, ceasing her gentle sponging of his chest. Her striking eyes drilled into his, evoking more than lust in him. Gradually the impending feeling of psychic violation overcame him until he closed his eyes and kept them shut. ‘Did she really just read my mind?’ Gestern and Haupt reacted to his revelation, rapidly discussing what to do about the others they had to locate, but Maria did not seem to find the information threatening.
Continuing her cleansing routine she told Purdue, “I am going to fetch you some clean pants and socks. It seems only certain parts of you burned when you…” she studied his eyes again, frowning, “…came here. Just a moment. I’ll be back soon.” Then she whispered, “I know you are here alone.”
Sturmbannführer Haupt rushed to Purdue’s side, “How many? How many in you unit?”
Purdue had to think fast. “Only five.”
“Fünf andere!” the officer shouted to his colleague, who promptly started barking orders to an unseen company in the next room. The sound of stomping boots passed the infirmary in both directions, accompanied by several order issues.
With Maria out of the room and the officers off on a wild goose chase pursuing what they would never find, Purdue tried to move. His wrists were secured to the steel rods that lined the length of the bed by cuffs, but the rest of his scalded body was free to move. There was very little room to move effectively and the sensation of his raw burned back and arms pulling free of the linen was too much to bear. Purdue felt faint from the intensity of the agony and his head fell back on the pillow. He gasped, trying to control his breathing.
Maria came back, talking to another woman in hushed tones.
“David, this is my friend, Sigrun,” Maria announced. Purdue looked up at the equally breathtaking woman to her side and his heart jolted. Shocked and ignorant of the pain Purdue sat upright and in disbelief he started at the dark haired woman.
“Nina?”
Chapter 16
Sam’s eyes flashed between all the passengers stepping off the train, trying to find Nina among them. It had been two days since she agreed to come to Lyon to help him and Lydia look for Purdue, yet she had no idea of the true absurdity that awaited her. All he wanted was to get her here first, otherwise she would never have agreed to indulge the insane actions Purdue and Sam had perpetrated.
“Are you sure she would be able to help, Mr. Cleave?” Healy asked. He was tasked to accompany the lone journalist whose footage and gear was confiscated by order of Professor Jenner. Lydia was worried that Sam would use the obscure proof of her experimental success to make himself rich and famous, among other threats she assumed would come from the award-winning journalist’s recording of her quantum mechanical voyage.
Healy had to come with Sam to prevent him from leaving the country, yet Lydia insisted that Sam Cleave was not a hostage by any means.
“If anyone can help us pinpoint where Purdue is in history, Healy, it is Dr. Nina Gould. She is an expert on German modern history, especially the Second World War,” Sam promised. They both waited at International Arrivals, scanning the crowd that had just come in from Heathrow via Quantas.
“What does she look like, sir?” Healy asked.
Sam smiled. “She is small, but passionate. Nina towers at about 5’3” with a seven foot attitude, dark shoulder length hair with big black eyes like hellfire.”
“Sounds like a handful,” Healy remarked, provoking Sam to have a laugh at the accuracy of the butler’s guess.
“You have no idea. If you think Professor Jenner is rambunctious you have not seen Nina at the height of an idea she is pursuing. Good God, there is no stopping that woman. She is stubborn, smart and articulate.”
Healy smiled in the only wry way he knew how. With a nod he added, “How long have you been in love with her, sir?” Sam glared at Healy. He kept silent, studying any sign of the butler’s jest, but the tall man was quite sincere.
“Since the moment I met her, Healy. And you will too.”
“I will not stand for this, Mr. Lamont! I don’t care if you cough up a ball of fur, you will stay here until your staff have located and brought my missing laptop. It is in a black EVA brand laptop case with strap and the zipper is fitted with a tiny, teensy combination lock about the size of your brain!”
“I hear Nina,” Sam frowned, rotating to see where her voice came from.
“Could that be the doctor over there, threatening that man?” Healy asked innocently, pointing to an information desk where three agitated employees of the airline bustled to locate a missing bag. By the desk stood the stunning, small historian. Her hair was tied back in a high ponytail and she was dressed smart casually, her shades roughly fixed on her head. Her leather jacket hugged her shapely form and her black jeans fitted her snugly right down to the slightly heeled brown boots she wore, the same color as her luggage bag.
“That’s her,” Sam grinned.
“Are you in love yet?”
He headed to Nina and Healy followed in his trail, answering him, “Yes, sir, but with some form of caution.”
Sam laughed. When Nina saw him she blessed him with a lovely smile and opened her arms to receive him in a warm reunion.
“What’s this? Old age?” she joked, grabbing Sam by his newly grown groomed beard and moustache which only gave him a more rugged handsomeness.
“Aye, the years are piling on, but I’m going down swingin’, lassie,” he winked as he gently tugged at the salt and pepper facial hair of the eternally youthful journalist. They embraced tightly, remaining so for almost a minute. Healy could see that Cleave and Dr. Gould had a history, and by the looks of it, a very close one.
“Mr. Cleave, we must make haste before the storm floods the roads home,” Healy reminded Sam.
“Oh yes, you’re right,” Sam agreed, just as the ground operator brought Nina her laptop bag with the small steel lock on the zipper.
“So sorry for the inconvenience, Dr. Gould,” she apologized. “We found in two seats down from you, among someone else’s luggage.”
The weather only grew worse out in the parking area. From all directions the rain pelted the cars and buildings, changing with the switch of the wind direction every few minutes. As Sam directed a cowering Nina by means of a soft hand on her lower back with Healy in their wake, bearing her luggage bags, they raced to get to the car. He could see that the normally stout butler was terrified of the thunder and literally dipped every time there was lightning above. As the wild eyed Healy and Nina scuttled into the vehicle Sam looked up at the terrifying blue veins that developed across the sky in a split second every time the clouds pulsed with light.
His dark eyes reflected the awesome blue-white cracks as he braved the danger to behold the super electrical charge of the majestic lightning. Deep inside Sam he knew this god-like expulsion into the atmosphere was the secret to bringing back Dave Purdue, but he was not prepared to stand there too long and run the risk of its wrath. There would be plenty of time for that, once he persuaded Lydia that the very lightning of the next two days were the key to returning Purdue to her chamber, hopefully unscathed.