Preston Child - The Babylonian Mask

In the meantime Sam helped Nina prepare for the trip to Susa, Iraq. They were due there the next day, and Purdue had already arranged the flight after getting the very furtive green light from the W.U.O. second in command, Dr. Lisa Gordon.

“Are you nervous?” Sam asked as Nina emerged from the room, splendidly clothed and groomed just like the late Prof. Sloane. “My God, you look just like her…if I didn’t know you.”

“I’m very nervous, but I just keep telling myself two things. It’s for the good of the world and it will take all but fifteen minutes before I am done,” she admitted. “I hear they’ve been playing the sick card with her absence. Well, they have that one spot-on.”

“You know you don’t have to do this, love,” he told her one last time.

“Oh Sam,” she sighed. “You are relentless, even when you lose.”

“I see you are not in the least perturbed in your competitive nature, even by common sense,” he remarked as he took her bag. “Come, the car is waiting to take us to the airport. In a few hours you will make history.”

“Do we meet up with her people in London or in Iraq?” she asked.

“Purdue said they will meet us at the C.I.T.E. rendezvous in Susa. There you will spend some time with the actual successor of the W.U.O. reins, Dr. Lisa Gordon. Now remember, Nina, Lisa Gordon is the only one who knows who you are and what we are doing, okay? Don’t slip up,” he said, while they slowly walked out into the white fog that drifted through the cold air.

“Got it. You worry too much,” she sniffed, adjusting her scarf. “By the way, where is the great architect?”

Sam frowned.

“Purdue, Sam, where is Purdue?” she repeated as they started driving.

“Last I spoke to him he was home, but he is Purdue, always up to something.” He smiled and shrugged. “How are you feeling?”

“My eyes are almost completely healed. You know, when I listened to the recording and Mr. Marduk said that the mask wearers go blind, I wondered if that was not something he must have thought that night he visited me by my hospital bed. Maybe he thought I was Sa…Löwenhagen…masquerading as a chick.”

It was not as far-fetched as it sounded, Sam figured. In fact, it could have been just so. Nina did tell him that Marduk asked her if she’d been hiding her roommate, so it may very well have been a real assumption on the part of Peter Marduk. Nina laid her head on Sam’s shoulder and he bent his body uncomfortably to the side to be low enough for her to reach.

“What would you do?” she asked suddenly in the subdued hum of the car. “What would you do if you could wear anyone’s face?”

“I had not even thought of that,” he conceded. “I suppose it depends.”

“On?”

“On how long I get to keep that person’s face on,” Sam teased.

“Only a day, but you don’t have to kill them or die at the end of the week. You just get their face for a day and at the end of twenty-four hours it comes off and you have your own again,” she whispered softly.

“I suppose I’m supposed to say that I would assume the face of some important person and that I would do good,” Sam started, wondering just how honest he should be. “I should be Purdue, I think.”

“Why the hell would you want to be Purdue?” Nina asked, sitting up. Oh great. Now you’ve done it, Sam thought. He thought of the genuine reasons he’d chosen Purdue, but they were all reasons he did not want to reveal to Nina.

“Sam! Why Purdue?” she insisted.

“He has everything,” he replied at first, but she kept quiet and paid attention, so Sam elaborated. “Purdue can do anything. He is too notorious to be famous as a generous saint, but too ambitious to be a nobody. He is smart enough to devise miraculous machines and gadgets that can alter medical science and technology, but he is too modest to patent them and make a profit that way. Between his mind, his reputation, his contacts and his money, he can literally attain anything. I would use his face to progress to higher aims that my simpler mind, meager finances and insignificance could obtain.”

He waited for a scathing review of his twisted priorities and misplaced goals, but instead Nina leaned in and kissed him deeply. Sam’s heart jolted at the unpredictable gesture, but it went positively wild at her words.

“Keep your own face, Sam. You possess the one thing Purdue desires, the one thing for which all his genius, money and influence will profit him nothing.”

Peter Marduk didn’t care about the developments happening all around him. He was used to people acting like maniacs, storming around like derailed locomotives whenever something beyond their control reminded them just how little power they had. With his hands in his coat pockets and his eyes alert from under his fedora, he passed through the panic stricken strangers at the airport. A lot of them were heading to their respective homes in case of a national shutdown of all services and transport.Having lived through many eras, Marduk had seen it all before. He’d survived three wars. Everything had always straightened out and rippled to another part of the world in the end. War would never stop, he knew. It would only move to another neighborhood. In his opinion, peace was a fallacy designed by those weary of fighting for what they had or jousting to win arguments. Harmony was just a myth written by cowards and religious fanatics, hoping that sowing the belief would earn them the monikers of heroes.

“Your flight has been postponed, Mr. Marduk,” the check-in clerk told him. “We expect all flights to be delayed due to the latest situation . There will only be flights available tomorrow morning.”

“No problem. I can wait,” he said, ignoring her scrutiny of his odd facial features, or rather lack thereof. Peter Marduk decided to take rest in a hotel room in the meantime. He was too old and his frame too skeletal for long periods of sitting. There would be enough of that on the flight back home. He checked into the Cologne Bonn Hotel and ordered dinner via room service. Looking forward to a well-deserved night’s sleep without worry over the mask or having to curl up on a basement floor while waiting for a murderous thief was a delightful change of pace for his tired old bones.

As the electronic door locked behind him, Marduk’s potent eyes saw the silhouette sitting in the chair. He had no need for much light, but his right hand slowly gripped the skull face inside his coat. It was not a difficult guess that the intruder was there for the relic.

“You will have to kill me first,” Marduk said calmly, and he meant every word.

“That wish is within my reach, Mr. Marduk. I am inclined to grant that wish in an instant if you do not accede to my demands,” the figure said.

“Let me hear your demands, for God’s sake, so I can get some sleep. I’ve had no peace since yet another insidious breed of man stole it from my home,” Marduk complained.

“Sit down, please. Rest. I can leave here without incident and allow you to sleep, or I can alleviate your burdens for good and still leave here with what I came for,” said the intruder.

“Oh, do you think so?” The old man chuckled.

“I assure it,” the other told him categorically.

“My friend, you know as much as all the others who come for the Babylonian Mask. And that is nothing . So blinded by your greed, you pursuits, your vengeance…whatever else you crave with the use of another’s face. Blind! All of you!” He sighed as he plopped down comfortably onto the bed in the dark.

“Is that why the mask blinds the Masker?” came the stranger’s question.