by P. W. Child
“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!”
10 June 1944 – 6.48pm
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 th
e 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.
Chapter 26
Sam woke up in a daze. His eyes felt thick and his head throbbed, but the worst of it was the agony of a pulled muscle between his neck and shoulder where a hefty blow had rendered him unconscious before. His face distorted in pain, but he made sure that he did not make a sound. So many times before he had been in a situation like this that it had almost become normal. As his memory returned gradually he remembered the promise of a good beer and the nervous butler who, it turned out, was not anxious about the lightning after all.
“Bastard,” Sam whispered, recalling Healy’s betrayal.
In the dark of his surroundings Sam took his time to test the restraints he probably had wrapped around his ankles and wrists. But to his surprise he found that he was not bound at all. He could see nothing, but he could smell new carpets and a whiff of perfume. With a groan of effort Sam sat and tightened his abs to sit up, but his head instantly pounded with a sharp sting he could not endure and he quickly returned to his old position. The mattress he was lying on was soft, but the perfumed air had him worried about what was lying next to him.
He wondered how long he had been here, wherever here was, and then he thought of the ladies waiting for him in Lyon. It would be terrible if Healy had the same hostility planned for them that he had for Sam, for some reason. Sam shook his head to get rid of the ringing in his ears. Voices came from far off. One was male, the other female. He recognized the female voice.
“Penny?” he frowned. “What the hell…?”
They drew nearer. Sam rolled gently off the bed as not to be pummeled by the deadly headache again. On his knees on the thick carpet he inched himself closer to the sound of the muffled voices. By a few more paces on his knees, keeping his body low to the ground, Sam reached a corner that hugged his frame comfortably. From there he could hear them better.
“Please tell me you did not kill him in front of everyone,” Penny said.
“Bitch,” Sam whispered in disbelief of the woman he thought was just a professional who needed his services.
“Sam Cleave is a celebrity, you know,” she told the man. “We can never be associated with his death, Christian! Nobody should even find him, actually.”
“Who the hell is Christian?” Sam whispered.
“My dear, you are too hasty in your judgment,” Christian Foster reminded her. “I did not kill him. I do not wish to kill him until we know for sure that he is the man you are looking for.”
“I like this Christian bloke,” Sam nodded to himself, trying to remember if he had ever encountered someone by that name before, someone he could have vexed into doing this to him. He had no idea why he had been kidnapped or why Penny Richards wanted him dead. He had not done anything to justify her wrath, as far as he could tell.
“Listen to me,” she said, “he is the man we are looking for. He was the last person to see Albert Tägtgren alive. Who else would have killed him?”
Sam gasped. “Tägtgren is dead?”
“I don’t know,” Foster said. “I just think we should interrogate the journalist before we just make away with him. See what he has, what he knows. If we are satisfied that he is guilty, even by association, I will make him disappear forever.”
‘The phone call,’ Sam thought. ‘He wanted to kick my ass for something.’
“Alright, see if you can find out where he is staying at the moment so that we can confiscate his gear. Once we have checked all the footage we will know for sure if he edited out anything important before sending it to me. He cannot know about the Tesla Experiment or our competition will have us by the short and curly’s, do you understand?” Penny instructed.
Sam tried to make sense of it. Now he understood why the Cornwall Institute hired him. But he still could not figure out who made Tägtgren believe that Sam had spilled his secret to anyone. Someone had to have seen them together; someone who knew what they did. That was the person who probably killed Tägtgren for telling Sam. ‘Penny knew, from what she just said,’ he reckoned. ‘Healy also knows about the Tesla Experiment and I know how underhanded he is now.’
Perplexed, Sam sat in the dark room with his hands on his wet hair. The warmth of his palms soothed his headache as he listened to the two in the next room. When he had enough strength he stood up against the wall to feel for a light switch, but found nothing but smooth paint under his probing fingers. In the back of his mind Sam knew that he had to escape as soon as he was able. Whatever his enormous captor had in mind, he had Jenner Manor in his sights next and Healy was definitely not going to protect Lydia and Nina anymore.
“Find out from Healy if he can obtain Sam Cleave’s equipment without being discovered,” Penny told Foster. “You can use the phone in my office. It has a scrambler so that we cannot be found by any tracers.”
“Alright. I’ll be back shortly,” he agreed, leaving her alone in the adjacent room. Now was the opportune time for Sam to act. Penny by herself would be no problem to subdue, but once the big brute returned it would be virtually impossible to make an escape before Healy got to Lydia and Nina.
Sam used his entire bodyweight to thump against the wall where he was crouched before. He knew the sound would provoke Penny to investigate. Every time Sam hurled himself against the wall, he moaned from the sharp shooting pain in his head and the strain on his traps. But a little pain was nothing to bear in comparison of what would happen to him if he waited to be questioned – and likely get killed.
Now he truly realized why Lydia was so adamant on using Purdue to help her with the Tesla Experiment. It was obvious that she could not trust anyone else who knew about it. Penny was quiet, listening for the irregular bangs in the room where she told Foster to leave Sam Cleave. She could hear him whimpering in agony, and she did not want him to attempt anything stupid to keep her from finding out what he knew. Her own husband committed suicide for fear of having his secrets discovered years ago, so such measures were the first to surface in her reasoning with the sounds of pain she could hear in the next room.
“No, you don’t,” she said.
Penny’s staff did not realize her involvement in the protection of the Tesla Experiment. It was a secret only known to the few people who funded it, attempted it and designed the means to put it into practice. Penny was part of the funding side over the years leading up to its fruition.
When she came to the door of the store room she roughly converted to Sam’s holding cell she took a last look around to make sure nobody at the Cornwall Institute’s local branch saw her. That was fortunate for Sam too, because there were no witnesses to see him jerk her inside the moment she opened the door.
“What is this about, Penny? I did not kill anybody. I did not even know that Tägtgren was dead! He sent me a threatening message, that I leaked his involvement and I cost him his job.” Sam revealed, holding his hand over her mouth. He had Penny in a bear hug from behind to restrain her movement and he kicked the door s
hut. Penny said something into his hand.
“If you scream I will hurt you, I swear,” he said, and she nodded.
Slowly he lifted his hand. “Who else knows about you filming there?”
“Just Healy and a friend of mine, David Purdue, but he is…” Sam cut the rest short, since explaining Purdue’s whereabouts would take way too long.
“Then Healy could be the killer. He had no problem handing you over,” she speculated. “What did you do with the real footage, Sam?”
“I don’t have time to explain now,” Sam said. “Give me your car keys.”
“No.”
“Penny, give me your car keys,” he repeated, pulling her hair to manipulate her movement.
“I will not! You have no choice but to…”
Sam punched her lights out. Penny’s body fell limply against him.
“I’m sorry, old girl,” he whispered. “I just don’t have time to listen to you shite right now.”
He left Penny in the room and latched the door on the outside. Christian Foster would be on his way back by now, so Sam slipped through the rest room to another door that led past Penny’s office. There Foster stood, talking on the phone. Sam’s phone was probably still in Foster’s possession. Keeping an eye on the huge man in the office, Sam entered the open laboratory and scanned the place for a suitable weapon. An iron bar holding up a makeshift shelf against the wall looked ideal. Gently lowering the shelf, Sam removed the bar and stole back to the hallway.
He stood next to the doorway, waiting for Foster to come through it. Sam’s hands tightened around the bar as he sank to his haunches to be just about the height of Foster’s knees. Holding his breath, he listened for the footsteps of his target drawing nearer as his heart pounded wildly in anticipation. With all his might Sam swung the bar against the assassin’s legs, sending Foster howling in pain, writhing on the floor. With another blow to his head, Sam incapacitated him. He searched Foster and retrieved his cell phone.