“David Purdue must never get his hands on those pictures, do you understand?” George warned in a raspy quiver. “Never! I don’t care what you have to tell him, Sam. Just delete it. Corrupt the files, whatever.”
“That is all he cares about, chum,” Sam informed him. “I would go as far as saying that he is obsessed with it.”
“I am aware of that, pal,” George hissed back at Sam. “That is precisely the goddamn problem. He is being used by a puppet master much, much bigger than him.”
“They?” Sam asked sarcastically, referring to George’s paranoid theory.
The man with the molten skin had had it with Sam Cleave’s juvenile display and he lunged out, grasping Sam by the collar and shaking him with terrifying power. For a moment, Sam felt like a small child being flung around by a St. Bernard, forcing him to remember that George’s physical strength was almost inhuman.
“Now you listen and you listen well, mate,” he hissed in Sam’s face, his breath smelling like tobacco and mint. “If David Purdue gets hold of that equation, the Order of the Black Sun will triumph!”
Sam tried in vain to pry the burned man’s hands apart, only pissing him off eve more. George shook him again, and then let him go so abruptly that he staggered backwards. As Sam struggled to find his footing, George stepped closer. “Do you even realize what you are causing? Purdue must not work on the Dire Serpent. He is the genius they have been waiting for to solve that fucking math problem since their previous golden boy designed it. Unfortunately, said golden boy grew a conscience and destroyed his paper, but not before a chambermaid copied it down while cleaning his room. Needless to tell you that she was an operative, working for the Gestapo.”
“Who was their golden boy, then?” Sam asked.
Astonished, George looked at Sam. “You don’t know? Ever heard of a bloke called Einstein, my friend? Einstein, the ‘Theory of Relativity’-guy, worked on something a little more destructive than the atom bomb, but with similar traits. Look, I am a scientist, but I am no genius. Nobody could complete that equation, thank God, and that is why the late Dr. Kenneth Wilhelm jotted it down inside the Lost City. Nobody was supposed to survive that fucking snake pit.”
Sam recalled Dr. Wilhelm, who owned the farm in New Zealand where the Lost City was located. He was a Nazi scientist, unbeknownst to most, having gone by the name of Williams for many years.
“Alright, alright. Suppose I bought all this,” Sam implored with his hands raised again. “What are the repercussions of this equation? I will need a really concrete excuse to deliver to Purdue, who, by the way, must be planning my demise about now. Your mad pursuit cost me a meeting with him. Christ, he must be livid.”
George shrugged. “You shouldn’t have run.”
Sam knew he was right. Had Sam simply confronted George at his front door and asked, it would have saved him a lot of trouble. Above all, he would still have had a car. Then again, grieving over shit that already transpired was of no benefit to Sam.
“I am not clear on the fine details, Sam, but between me and Aidan Glaston, the general consensus is that this equation will facilitate a monumental shift in the current paradigm of physics,” George conceded. “From what Aidan managed to find out from his sources, this calculation will cause havoc on a global scale. It will enable an object to punch through a veil between dimensions, causing our own physics to clash with what is on the other side. The Nazi’s were experimenting with it, similar to the Unified Field Theory claims that could not be proven.”
“And how would the Black Sun benefit from this, Masters?” Sam asked, putting to use his journalistic talent for sifting through bullshit. “They live in the same time and space as the rest of the world. It is ludicrous to think they would experiment with shit that would destroy them with everything else.”
“Maybe so, but have you tapped in on even half the weird, twisted shit they actually enforced during the Second World War?” George retorted. “Most of what they tried to do had absolutely no use in general, yet they still carried out atrocious experiments just to cross that barrier, believing it would advance their knowledge of the working of other sciences — those sciences we cannot grasp yet. Who is to say that this is not another preposterous attempt at perpetuating their insanity and control?”
“I get what you say, George, but I sincerely do not think even they are this insane. If anything, there has to be some tangible reason for them to wish to achieve this, but what could it be?” Sam argued. He wanted to believe George Masters, but his theories had too many holes. On the other hand, by the man’s desperation, his story was worth checking out, at least.
“Listen, Sam, whether you believe me or not, just do me a favor, and look into it before you allow David Purdue to get his hands on this equation,” George begged.
Sam nodded in agreement. “He is a good man. If these claims have any gravity, he would destroy it himself, trust me.”
“I know he is a philanthropist. I know how he fucked the Black Sun six ways to Sunday when he realized what they were planning for the world, Sam,” the slurring scientist explained impatiently. “But what I cannot seem to get through to you, is that Purdue is unaware of his role in the destruction. He is blissfully oblivious to the fact that they are using his genius and his innate curiosity to steer him right into the abyss. It is not about whether he agrees or not. He is better off having no idea where the equation is, otherwise they will kill him… and you and the lady from Oban.”
Finally, Sam caught the hint. He decided to stall a bit before giving the footage to Purdue, if only to give George Masters the benefit of the doubt. It would be difficult to get clarity on the suspicion without leaking vital information to random sources. Apart from Purdue, there were few people who could advise him on the danger held within this calculation, and even those who could… he would never know if they could be trusted.
“Take me home, please,” Sam requested of his abductor. “I will look into it before I do anything, alright?”
“I am trusting you, Sam,” George said. It sounded more like an ultimatum than an oath of confidence. “If you do not destroy that footage, you will regret it for the short stretch of what would be left of your life.”
12
Olga
At the end of his wit, Kasper Jacobs ran his fingers through his sandy hair, leaving it standing erect on his head like an Eighties pop star. His eyes were bloodshot from reading all night, the opposite of what he had hoped for the night — to relax and sleep in. Instead, the news of the Dire Serpent’s discovery had him frantic. Desperately, he was hoping that Zelda Bessler or her lapdogs would still be oblivious to the news.
Someone outside made an awful noise, a din he tried to ignore at first, but with his concerns for the sinister world looming and his lack of sleep, he could not bear much today. It sounded like a breaking plate and some subsequent crash out in front of his door, followed by the whine of his car alarm.
“Oh, for God’s sake, what now?” he shouted aloud. He rushed at the front door, ready to take out his frustration on whomever disturbed him. Jarring the door aside, Kasper bellowed, “What in God’s name is going on here?” What he saw at the bottom of the stairs leading down to his driveway, disarmed him instantly. The most ravishing blond woman was crouched next to his car, looking mortified. On the paving in front of her was a mess of cake and globs of icing, previously belonging to a large wedding cake.
When she looked up pleadingly, her pristine green eyes stunned Kasper. “Please, sir, please do not be angry! I can wipe all of it right off. Look, the smear on your car is just icing.”