Preston Child - The Babylonian Mask

Then he lifted the knife and tried to cut off his own face.

“So, you finally made contact.” A voice ripped through Löwenhagen’s body from behind his left shoulder. He instantly pictured the Devil, and he was not far off.

“Captain Schmidt,” he acknowledged, but did not rise nor salute, for obvious reasons. “You will excuse me for not responding in proper fashion. I am, after all, wearing another man’s face, you see.”

“Absolutely. Jack Daniels, please,” Schmidt told the waiter before he’d even reached the table with Löwenhagen’s food.

“Put the plate down first, pal!” Löwenhagen shouted, prompting the confused man to obey. The manager of the restaurant was standing nearby, waiting for just one more transgression before asking the abusive man to leave.

“Now, I see you have found out what the mask does,” murmured Schmidt under his breath and dropping his head to check for eavesdroppers.

“I saw what it did the night your little bitch Neumand used it to make away with it .,” Löwenhagen said in a low tone, barely breathing in between bites as he wolfed down the first half of his meat like an animal.

“So what do you propose to do now? Blackmail me for money like Neumand was doing?” asked Schmidt, playing for time. He was very aware of what the relic took from those who used it.

“Blackmail you?” Löwenhagen shrieked with a mouthful of pink meat minced between his teeth. “Are you fucking kidding me? I want it off, Captain. You are going to get a surgeon to take it off.”

“Why? I recently heard you were burned pretty badly. I would have thought that you would want to keep the face of a dashing doctor instead of a melted mess of flesh where your face once was,” the commander replied evilly. He watched amusedly as Löwenhagen struggled to cut his steak, straining his failing eyes to find the edges.

“Fuck you!” cursed Löwenhagen. He could not see Schmidt’s face very well, but he felt an overwhelming urge to plunge the steak knife into the general vicinity of his eyes and hope for the best. “I want it off before I turn into a bat shit crazy…r-rabid…fucking…”

“Is that what happened to Neumand?” interrupted Schmidt, helping with the sentence structure of the toiling young man. “What exactly happened, Löwenhagen? By the gambling fetish that imbecile had I can understand his motive for keeping what is rightfully mine. What perplexes me, though, is why you would want to keep it from me this long before contacting me.”

“I was going to give it to you the day after I took it from Neumand, but I found myself on fire that very same night, my dear captain.” Löwenhagen was now stuffing chunks of meat in his mouth by hand. Horrified, the people directly around them began staring and whispering.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” the manager said tactfully in a hushed tone.

But Löwenhagen was too intolerant to listen. He tossed a black American Express card on the table and said, “Listen, bring us a bottle of tequila and I’ll buy all these curious assholes a round if they stop looking at me like that!”

Some of his sympathizers at the pool table cheered. The rest of the people went back to their business.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be leaving soon. Just get everyone their drinks and let my friend here finish his food, okay?” Schmidt excused their present state with his holier than thou , civilized manner. It won the manager’s disinterest for a few more minutes.

“Now tell me how it was that you ended up with my mask in a goddamn public institution where anyone could have taken it,” Schmidt whispered. The bottle of tequila arrived and he poured two shot glasses.

Löwenhagen swallowed with great difficulty. The alcohol had obviously not doused the agony of his internal injuries effectively, but he was ravenous. He told the commander what had happened mostly to save face, not to make excuses. The entire scenario that he’d been fuming about earlier replayed itself as he told Schmidt everything that had led up to where he’d found Neumand speaking in tongues in the biker’s guise.

“Arabic? That is unsettling,” admitted Schmidt. “What you heard was actually Akkadian ? Amazing!”

“Who gives a shit?” Löwenhagen barked.

“Then? How did you get the mask from him?” Schmidt asked, almost smiling at the interesting facts of the story.

“I had no idea how to get the mask back. I mean, here he was with a fully developed face and no trace of the mask that was hiding under it. My God, listen to what I’m saying! This is all nightmarish and surreal!”

“Carry on,” Schmidt urged.

“I asked him straight up how I can help him get the mask off, you know? But he…he…” Löwenhagen laughed like a rowdy drunk at the absurdity of his own words. “Captain, he bit me! Like a fucking stray dog the bastard growled as I came nearer and while I was still talking the fucker bit me on my shoulder. He took a whole chunk out! Christ! What was I supposed to think? I just starting beating him with the first piece of metal pipe I could find lying around.”

“So, what did he do? Was he still speaking in Akkadian?” asked the commander, pouring another round for the two of them.

“He took off running, so I chased after him, of course. We ended up going through the east side of Schleswig, there where only we know to get in?” he told Schmidt, who nodded in turn, “Yes, I know the place, behind the auxiliary building hangar.”

“That’s right. We ran through there, Captain, like bats out of hell. I mean, I was ready to kill him. I was hurting badly, bleeding, fed-up with him eluding me for so long. I swear I was ready to just break his fucking head into pieces to get that mask back, you know?” growled Löwenhagen softly, sounding delightfully psychotic.

“Yes, yes. Carry on.” Schmidt was pushing to hear the end of the story before his subordinate finally succumbed to the pressing insanity.

As his plate grew messier and emptier Löwenhagen spoke faster, his consonants more pronounced. “I did not know what he was trying to do, but maybe he knew how to get the mask off or something. I pursued him right into the hangar and then we were alone. I could hear the guards shouting outside the hangar. I doubt they recognized Neumand now that he had someone else’s face, right?”

“Is that when he took the fighter plane?” Schmidt asked. “Was that why the plane crashed?”

Löwenhagen’s eyes were almost completely blind by now, but he could still tell where shadows and solids were. A yellow tinge stained his irises, the color of a lion’s eyes, but he recounted on, pinning Schmidt with his blind eyes as he lowered his voice and dipped his head a little. “My God, Captain Schmidt, how he hated you .”

Narcissism prevented Schmidt from caring about the sentiment of Löwenhagen’s declaration, but common sense had him feeling a bit tarnished — right where his soul was supposed to jitter. “Of course he did,” he told his blind underling. “I’m the one who introduced him to the mask. But he was never supposed to know what it did, let alone use it for himself. The fool brought this on himself. Just like you did.”

“I…” Löwenhagen lunged forward wrathfully amongst clanging utensils and toppling glasses, “only used it to get your precious bloody relic out of the hospital and to you, you ungrateful subspecies!”

Schmidt knew Löwenhagen had served his purpose and his insubordination was of little concern anymore. He would soon expire nonetheless, so Schmidt allowed him his tantrum. “He hated you like I hate you! Neumand regretted ever getting involved with your evil plan to send a suicide squad into Baghdad and The Hague.”