Preston Child - The Babylonian Mask

“Fuck! Where are Sam and Purdue when I need them? How do I always end up in this shit?” she whined half between vexation and fear as she went, feeling her way to relieving herself of the tubes in her arms and navigating past the heap of woman next to her uncertain feet. The police action had drawn the attention of most night staff and Nina noticed that the Third Floor was eerily quiet, save for the distant echo of a television weather report and two patients whispering in the next room. Clear . It prompted her to find her clothing and get dressed as best as she could in the gaining darkness of her diminishing vision that would soon abandon her. After she was dressed, her boots in her hands to avert arousing suspicion when she walked out, she snuck back to Sam’s bedside table and opened his drawer. His charred wallet was still inside. She removed the license card inside, slipping it into the back pocket of her jeans.

She was beginning to worry about her roommate’s whereabouts, his condition, and most of all — if his desperate petitioning had not perhaps been real. Thus far she had only considered it a dream, but with him missing she was starting to think twice about his visit earlier that night. Either way, she now had to escape the impostor. The police could offer no protection against a threat with no face. Already they had ran after suspects without any one of them having actually seen the man responsible. The only way Nina knew who was responsible was by his reprehensible manner with her and Sister Barken.

“Oh shit!” she said, stopping in her tracks, almost at the end of the white hallway. “Sister Barken. I have to warn her.” But Nina knew that asking for the stout nursing sister would alert staff that she was sneaking out. There was no doubt they would not allow that. Think, think, think! Nina urged herself as she stood still, wavering. She knew what she had to do. It was unsavory, but it was the only way.

Back in her dark room, using only the hallway light shining in on the glimmering floor, Nina began undressing the night nurse. Fortunately for the small historian, the nurse was two sizes larger than she was.

“I’m so sorry. Really, I am,” Nina whispered as she stripped the woman of her scrubs and put them on over her clothing. Feeling rather awful for what she was doing to the poor woman, Nina’s clumsy morality drove her to drape her bedclothes over the nurse. After all, the lady was in her underwear on a cold floor. Give her a roll there, Nina, she thought on a second look. No, that’s stupid. Just get the fuck out of here! But the nurse’s motionless body seemed to call to her. Perhaps it was the blood that came from her nose, blood that had formed a sticky, dark puddle on the floor under her face, that provoked Nina’s pity. We don’t have time! the forceful reasoning reprimanded her pondering. “Fuck it,” Nina decided out loud, and gave the unconscious lady a roll over once so that the bedding would wrap her body and keep her insulated from the hardness of the floor.

As a nurse, Nina would be able to foil police officers and get out, as long as they did not notice that she was having trouble finding steps and doorknobs. When she finally made it down to the Ground Floor, she overheard two officers talking about the murder victim.

“Wish I was here,” one said. “I’d have caught that son of a bitch.”

“Of course all the action happens before our shift. Now we’re stuck babysitting what’s left,” the other bemoaned.

“This time the victim was a doctor — on night duty,” the first one whispered. Dr. Hilt, perhaps? she thought as she headed for the exit.

“They discovered this doctor with a piece of his facial skin peeled off, just like the one security guard of the night before,” she heard him add.

“Shift over early?” one of the officers asked Nina as she passed. She caught her breath and formulated her German as best she could.

“Yes, my nerves did not handle the murder well. Passed out and hit my face,” she replied in a quick mumble as she tried to find the door handle.

“Let me get that for you,” someone said, and opened the door amidst their expressions of sympathy.

“Have a good night, nurse,” the police officer told Nina.

“Danke schön,” she smiled as she felt the cool night air on her face, fighting her headache and trying not to tumble over the steps.

“And you have a good night too, doctor… Hilt , is it?” the cop asked behind Nina at the door. Her blood froze in her veins, but she kept true.

“That is correct. Good night, gentlemen,” the man said cheerfully. “Stay safe!”

“Sam Cleave is the just the man for this, sir. I’ll get in touch with him.”

“We cannot afford Sam Cleave,” Duncan Gradwell answered quickly. He was dying for a cigarette, but when the news of the fighter plane crash in Germany came over the wire on his computer screen, it demanded instant and urgent attention.

“He is an old friend of mine. I’ll…twist his arm,” he heard Margaret. “Like I said, I’ll get in touch with him. We worked together years ago when I assisted his fiancée, Patricia, with her first piece as a professional.”

“Is that the girl who was shot dead in front of him by that arms ring whose operation they busted open?” Gradwell asked in a rather insensitive way. Margaret sank her head and replied with a slow nod. “No wonder he took to the bottle so strongly in the years after that,” Gradwell sighed.

Margaret had to chuckle at that. “Well, sir, Sam Cleave did not need much coaxing to suck on a bottle neck. Not before Patricia, nor after the — incident. ”

“Ah! So tell me, is he too unstable to cover this story for us?” Gradwell asked.

“Aye, Mr. Gradwell. Sam Cleave is not only reckless, he’s infamous for a bit of a bent mind,” she said with a fond smile. “Which is precisely the caliber of journalist you want to blow open the covert operations of the command of the German Luftwaffe. I’m sure their Chancellor will be thrilled to know about it, especially now.”

“I agree,” Margaret affirmed, locking her hands in front of her while she stood at attention in front of her editor’s desk. “I will get hold of him immediately and see if he’ll be willing to knock some off his fee for an old friend.”

“I should hope so!” Gradwell’s double chin shivered as his voice escalated. “The man is a celebrated author now, so I am sure these insane excursions he embarks on with that rich idiot are not a feat of necessity.”

The ‘rich idiot’ Gradwell so fondly referred to was David Purdue. Gradwell had cultivated an increasing disrespect for Purdue through the recent years, due to the billionaire’s snubbing of a personal friend of Gradwell’s. The friend in question, Professor Frank Matlock of Edinburgh University, had been forced to resign as Department Head in the much clamored over Brixton Tower after Purdue had ceased his generous endowments towards the department. Naturally, a furor ensued over Purdue’s subsequent romantic involvement with Matlock’s favorite chew toy, the object of his misogynistic by-laws and reservations, Dr. Nina Gould.

The fact that this was all ancient history worthy of a decade and a half of water under the bridge made no difference to a bitter Gradwell. Now he was running the Edinburgh Post, a position he had attained with hard work and fair play, years after Sam Cleave had deserted the dusty halls of the newspaper.

“Yes, Mr. Gradwell,” Margaret replied politely. “I’ll get a hold of him, but what if I’m not successful in reeling him in?”

“In two weeks of world history will be made, Margaret,” Gradwell smirked like a Halloween rapist. “In just over a week the world will watch a live broadcast from the Hague, where the Middle East and Europe will sign a peace treaty to ensure the cessation of all military hostilities between the two worlds. A sure threat to that happening is the recent suicide flight of Dutch pilot Ben Grijsman, remember?”