“Aye, I must say I agree that this house feels like a giant experiment and we are the mice,” Sam agreed, having another smoke. Nina’s big dark eyes pierced his with a look of frustration Sam knew all too well.
“Thank you, Sam. That fright I gave you just then? I’d say we’re even now.”
“I’m just stating the obvious,” he shrugged.
“But again, you brought me here. Don’t start with shit like how we are mice in a maze bound to get hunted by some fucking cancerous Minotaur and her pet butler, after you promised my life was not going to be in danger,” she whispered frantically in reprimand of him.
“I believe I said this is not a treasure hunt. We’d not be on expeditions with U-boats and caverns and huge Ubermensch bastards chasing us,” he explained.
Suddenly they heard a tremendous clap. Both Nina and Sam jumped. By reflex Sam clicked on his video camera as they both sat spellbound, trying to see or hear the cause of the sound again.
“Was that… Purdue?” she whispered.
“Don’t know. Listen. Do you hear that?” Sam asked. Nina nodded. They both heard a soft hum that fluctuated almost imperceptibly in tone every two or three seconds. Gradually, in the eternity it felt like to Sam and Nina, it grew louder into a deafening shudder of electrical current.
“Purdue?” Nina cried out.
“No use. I think we can only hear him, right?” Sam told her.
A crackle enveloped a faint sound that did not resemble the overlaying buzz. T came softly, grew exceedingly loud for about a second, and waned instantly afterward, yet the hum remained as if still in contact.
“—am, Lyd… Wilhelmstra— no Helmut…” and then came the last words that devastated Sam and Nina.
“So — hungry…”
The hum fizzled into a mere sporadic sputter and then the silence smothered them, feeling a hundred fold deader than before. Nina wept.
“Was that him? Was that a message? Did we successfully make contact?” they heard Lydia’s thick voice approaching among the squeak of her wheelchair. “I heard that clap up in my room. By God, it takes forever to get down here without Healy!”
“Where is Healy?” Sam asked.
“Gone out for a few hours to meet a friend. I rather don’t ask. He is probably gay,” she shrugged nonchalantly. “Sam! Did you get that on video?”
“I did, aye.”
“Please let me see. Let me hear him,” she smiled. Nina was sobbing. Lydia put her stick-like arm protectively around the small slouching historian. “I don’t mean to sound cold, Nina. I am very worried about our friend. But he is resourceful and nothing short of brilliant. He will get back to us. I know it.”
“Lydia,” Nina snapped, “he had better come back or I am pushing your skinny ass into that precious fucking chamber of yours and sending you straight to hell!”
Sam winced at the expected chick fight he would have to break up, but to his surprise Lydia accepted Nina’s threat and just removed her arm from the furious woman. Black smudges stained Nina’s lower lids and her angry eyes were reddened with upset. Lydia did not want to push Sam for the footage, giving Nina a minute. She hoped the historian could appreciate that the professor did not hasten to see the testament to her genius for her sensitivity to Purdue’s plight.
“I love him too, Nina. This is not half as selfish as you might think. But I am too fatigued to lock horns with you right now. Do not mistake my equable demeanor as acceptance of your hostility,” she warned with gritty confidence, “even less as recoil.”
Nina ignored the reprimand for now. She was too distraught.
“Now, Sam, please let me see the footage,” Lydia asked politely, wheeling her way to the journalist’s side. Nina grabbed another of Sam’s cigarettes, but he did not mind this once, given how dismayed she was.
As he replayed the transmission to Lydia, Nina could not bear hearing Purdue’s voice again. To her he sounded like an EVP from a ghost hunting show. Her former lover, her close friend and protector, Dave Purdue, was now reduced to a distant electronic voice phenomenon.
“Nina, do you not understand what we have achieved here?” she asked sincerely.
“I get it, Lydia. I fucking get it! But do you understand that Purdue might be trapped in a violent world alone, without any help, while you sing hymns to your precious fucking Tesla?” Nina shrieked, gesturing with her cigarette between her fingers.
Lydia had no retort. Dr. Gould was right. Lydia’s efforts were all in honor of Nikola Tesla and his legacy, as well as her own. Nina could see this fact in the professor’s formless eyes and with a flick of the cigarette she stormed off.
Chapter 20
After the terrifying night had passed for Purdue he had only a nightmare to look forward to. Within two hours after the SS officers had hurled him into the reeking cell with the decomposing corpse of the Allied pilot Purdue made an active effort to contact Lydia. In all his delirium and fear, the anguish of his scalded skin was far from dulled, yet he persisted in his slow moving crawl toward the largest space in the small cell. Where he could find an open piece of floor without debris or soiled linen strewn upon it, he placed the BAT.
Purdue had never been a religious man, but if he prayed for success in contacting his old friend there had to be some god looking out for him. In fact, as he mentally prepared the right words for his maiden broadcast with his finger tip on the button, he absolutely doubted the efficiency of the device. With no hope and only disappointment for causing his own misery in pursuit of grandeur, Purdue closed his eyes and whispered, “If You exist, whatever You are, I beg for your grace.”
By no means did it mean he would believe in God if it worked, but in some curious way he needed to ask some invisible force for courage. In the empty dungeon of cells and rot and mold under the godforsaken boots of the most evil men history had ever known, Purdue systematically did what he recalled Lydia telling him to do. It took him two hours to remember what the BAT box was for, and he also finally recovered the memory of what the dental plate was doing in his mouth. Relieved about the solving of the latter confusion, he pressed the covered button and virtually dropped the BAT in fear of holding the dangerous gadget in his grasp for too long.
The burns he had already suffered were intense enough. Purdue was not eager to find out what the sun’s core heat felt like in the palm of one’s hands! What baffled him was that the blinding light, reminiscent of the excessive thermal quality of the BAT left absolutely no residue on the floor or affected its surroundings whatsoever. He had merely spoken near the device, carefully choosing words that could constitute a briefing of significant information, but in truth Purdue had no idea if his message was ever received by Lydia — by anyone.
Of all things besides food, of course, Purdue wished for a hot bath. He was certainly too wary to ask the Nazi’s for a shower, especially with their twisted forms of disregard for the lives of others. No sooner had he thought about the cruelty of the SS when the steel bolted door opened and let in the sharp beam of light. Purdue covered his face as the light stung his eyes, but the troops who came to collect him were worse off. Unaware of the state of the cells the two new soldiers were unfortunate to be confronted with a rush of sickening smells.
They coughed. One gagged and bent over to the side to throw up, but only delivered bile. Exclamations of disbelief and curses escaped them as they stumbled deeper into the dark passage to locate the Allied soldier they were sent to bring back to Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann. The men covered their mouths and noses with their sleeves to prevent the vile odor of decomposition from overwhelming them. To make things worse there was an underlying smell of electrical wiring gone faulty, but there was no electricity down here.