The commander’s wall mounted intercom speaker clicked and a sharp, agonizing tone of feedback ripped through the airtight bunker. Both men plugged their ears instinctively, wincing until the noise subsided.
“Captain Schmidt, this is Base Guard Kilo. There is a woman here to see you, along with her associate. Credentials say she is Miriam Inkley, British legal liaison of the W.U.O. branch in Germany,” said the voice of the gate guard.
“Now? Without an appointment?” Schmidt shouted. “Tell her to get lost. I’m busy!”
“Oh, I would not do that, sir,” Werner urged convincingly enough that Schmidt believed he was dead serious. Under his breath he advised the captain, “I heard she works for Lieutenant-General Meier. It’s probably about the murders Löwenhagen committed and the press trying to make us look bad.”
“God knows, I don’t have time for this!” he replied. “Bring them to my office!”
“Should I accompany you, sir? Or do you want me to make myself invisible?” asked Werner, scheming.
“No, you have to come with me, of course,” Schmidt snapped. He was annoyed with the interruption, but Werner remembered the name of the woman who’d helped them divert attention when they needed the police off their backs. Sam Cleave and Marduk must be here then. I must find Marlene, but how? As Werner trudged along with his commander on their way up to the office, he wracked his brain to figure out where Marlene could be held and how he could get away from Schmidt undetected.
“Hurry, Lieutenant,” Schmidt ordered. Every sign of his previous pride and cheerful anticipation had now vanished and he was back in full tyrant mode. “We don’t have time to waste.”Werner wondered if he should not just overpower the captain and raid the chamber. It would be so easy right now. They were between the bunker and the base, underground, where nobody would hear the captain’s cry for help. On the other hand, he knew by their arrival at the base that Sam Cleave’s friend was upstairs and that Marduk probably knew by now that Werner was in trouble.
However, if he overwhelmed the chief they might all be exposed. It was a difficult decision. In the past, Werner had often found himself indecisive because the options were too few, but this time there were too many, each with equally difficult outcomes. Not knowing which of the pieces was the actual Babylonian Mask posed a genuine problem, too, and time was running out — for the whole world.
Too soon, before Werner could make up his mind between the pros and cons of the situation, the two of them had reached the stairs of the lightly-manned office building. Werner ascended the stairs by Schmidt’s side, with the occasional airman or administration staff member greeting or saluting.It would be stupid to pull a coup now. Bide your time. See what opportunities present themselves first, Werner told himself. But Marlene! How will we find her? His emotions wrestled with his reasoning while he kept a blank face in front of Schmidt.
“Just play along with whatever I say, Werner,” Schmidt said through clenched teeth as they neared the office where Werner saw the reporter woman and Marduk waiting in their disguises. For a split second he felt free again, like there was hope to cry out and subdue his keeper, but Werner knew he had to wait.
Glances between Marduk, Margaret and Werner were brisk, hidden acknowledgements away from the keen senses of Captain Schmidt. Margaret introduced herself and Marduk as two aviation lawyers with extensive experience in political sciences.
“Please sit down,” Schmidt offered, pretending to be pleasant. He tried not to stare at the strange, old man who accompanied the stern, extroverted female.
“Thank you,” Margaret said. “We wished, actually, to speak to the real commander of the Luftwaffe, but your guard said that Lieutenant-General Meier was out of the country.”
She struck that offensive nerve elegantly and with a deliberate intent to rile the captain up just a bit. To the side of the desk Werner stood stoically, trying not to laugh.
Chapter 27 — Susa or War
Nina’s eyes were frozen on Sam’s as she heard the last of the recording. He was afraid at one point that she had ceased her breathing as she listened, frowned, concentrated, gasped and cocked her head throughout the entire soundtrack. When it had finished, she just kept staring at him. In the background, Nina’s TV was on the news channel, but mute.
“Fucking hell!” she exclaimed suddenly. Her hands were riddled with needles and tubes from the day’s treatment, otherwise she would have buried them in her hair in astonishment. “You mean to tell me, the guy I thought was Jack the Ripper is actually Gandalf the Grey and my pal who slept in the same room as me and traveled miles with me was a coldblooded killer?”
“Aye.”
“Why didn’t he kill me as well, then?” Nina wondered out loud.
“Your blindness saved your life,” Sam told her. “The fact that you were the only person who couldn’t see that his face belonged to someone else must have been your saving grace. You were no threat to him.”
“I never thought I’d be happy to be blind. Jesus! Can you imagine what could have happened to me? So where are they all now?”
Sam cleared his throat, a trait Nina had by now learned meant that he was uncomfortable with something he was struggling to formulate, something that would otherwise sound insane.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” she exclaimed again.
“Look, this is all a long shot. Purdue is busy rounding up a group of hackers in every major city to interfere with satellite broadcasts and radio signals. He wants to prevent the news of Sloane’s death from spreading too fast,” Sam explained, not having much hope in Purdue’s plan of stalling the global media. He was hoping, however, that it would considerably impeded, at least, by the vast network of cyber spies and technicians Purdue had at his fingertips. “Margaret, the woman’s voice you heard, is still in Germany right now. Werner was supposed to notify Marduk when he managed to get the mask back from Schmidt without Schmidt’s knowledge, but they had not heard from him by the deadline.”
“So then he’s dead,” Nina shrugged.
“Not necessarily. It just means he hasn’t been successful in getting the mask,” Sam said. “I don’t know if Kohl can help him get it, but he looks like a bit of a flake to me. But because Marduk had not heard from Werner, he went with Margaret to the Büchel base to see what is happening.”
“Tell Purdue to speed up his work with the broadcast systems,” Nina told Sam.
“I’m sure they are moving as fast as they can.”
“Not fast enough,” she contested, nudging her head at the television. Sam turned to find that the first major broadcaster had obtained the report Purdue’s people had been trying to stop.
“Oh my God!” Sam exclaimed.
“This is not going to work, Sam,” Nina admitted. “No news agent will care if they unleash another world war by spreading the news of Professor Sloane’s death. You know how they are! Careless, greedy humans. Typical. They would rather scramble to get the credit for tattling than to consider the consequences.”
“I wish I could get some of the big newspapers and social media posters to cry hoax,” said Sam, frustrated. “It would be a ‘he said- she said’ for long enough to hold off actual calls to war.
The image on the television disappeared suddenly and some 80s music videos came on. Sam and Nina wondered if it was the work of the hackers, taking what they could get in the meantime to procrastinate more reports.
“Sam,” she said at once in a gentler, sincere tone. “What Marduk told you all about the skin thing that can remove the mask — does he have it?”
He had no answer. He had not thought to ask Marduk more about it at the time.