Preston Child - The Fountain of Youth

Purdue did not laugh. “You are not insane, sir. That is precisely what I was telling you. The mind, like a computer, functions on codes. We don’t know this consciously, but with the right kind of programming the human brain will follow orders to a fault when commanded with certain numerical sequences.”

The police officer gawked at Purdue as he continued to clarify. “During my apparent therapy, he removed that information from my mind and jotted down what commands were connected to which code strains. For that I am grateful to him, but those records are the Holy Grail for the Order of the Black Sun and therefore, Lieutenant Campbell, they have to be destroyed.”

“Holy Mary,” the officer said plainly, his eyes still reading Purdue’s to ascertain if the man was bullshitting him. “You’re dead serious, aren’t you?”

“I am. If you’re in possession of those medical reports, you have to make them disappear. If the people who did this to me, the people who killed their own scientist to cover this up, find this information, they can brainwash the entire world and use people like puppets to do their bidding.”

“Are you talking mass hypnosis?” Lieutenant Campbell asked in awe.

Purdue’s urgent expression convinced Campbell that he was involved in something huge. He leaned forward on his elbows and whispered, “I’m talking about the global domination by the fruit of the Nazi Party without even bothering with World War III.”

Lieutenant Campbell’s eagerness to investigate the Sinclair Facility was renewed after he’d spoken to the former patient of the institution. He even ignored the destructive and dangerous weather to go and see the security officers again.

When he walked in, he was immediately confronted with standoffish behavior from the young acting administration manager, Melissa Argyle. It was nothing he hadn’t expected; in fact, he’d been counting on it.

“Good morning, Miss Argyle,” he said as he signed in at the Reception desk.

“Oh, hello Lieutenant,” she replied. “I thought you got all you were looking for last time.”

“I did from you. Thanks,” he answered in his usual condescending way. “But I’m not here to see you, so no need to worry about my taking up too much of your time today.”

He expected her to be relieved, but Melissa looked unsettled by his revelation. “Oh? Who, may I ask, are you here to see then?”

“Respectfully, Miss Argyle,” he replied, “not you. And that makes my visit none of your business.”

Clearly furious, she smiled at him before disappearing behind the partition of the first office. She entered her office and slammed the door. On a hunch, the investigator peeped over the counter at the switchboard at the Reception desk. He smiled when he saw the red light next to her extension light up. She was making a call.

“May I help you, Lieutenant?” the receptionist asked, recognizing him from the last time he was there to investigate the attempted murder of Dave Purdue. Lieutenant Campbell smiled kindly. “Actually yes, you could. May I please see your logbook for the 22nd of January? I need to check all the sign-ins for that day.”

Melissa Argyle was on the phone in her office, hoping to get in touch with Guterman, the person she reported to. “The nosy police officer is here again.”

While at the Reception area, the investigator was also asking for the phone records of the day, so that he could trace the number Melissa had called after he’d left her office. He had an inkling that the person she’d called after he’d left had promptly orchestrated the assassination of the impostor.

In fact, the investigator deliberately made sure that Melissa saw him there. Applying the heat on her would no doubt prompt her to contact whomever was behind the hit on Dave Purdue, just as she had the day she learned that this police officer was sharp enough to recognize the sabotage of the CCTV system.

Without fail, the young administrator — who was remarkably unskilled at clandestine practices — played right into the investigator’s hands. By using the institution’s landline to call her villainous superior in London, she’d left a trail of breadcrumbs in plain sight. Lieutenant Campbell smiled when he saw the pulsing light on the PABX system, delighted that he would soon be able to move in on the perpetrator and spring Dave Purdue from the legal bear trap he’d been caught in.

“Here you go, sir,” said the general manager who perused the warrant Campbell handed him. “If you check here,” he explained the index of the log book for January, “you’ll see that this is the page for all the visitors that day. Dr. Helberg signed in…there, see?”

“Thank you very much. I will have to confiscate this logbook for evidence, as well as the phone records the warrant mentions,” Campbell said kindly. “I’ll wait. As long as I have that list of numbers when I leave here.”

Melissa grew ice cold as she stood, listening to the demands of the police officer. Realizing her mistake, she knew that she too would be killed once Guterman found out that she’d led the police right to him and his organization. Running into her temporary office, she quickly grabbed all of her personal belongings and her raincoat. Flight seemed to be the only way out now. She didn’t know what to do, and her heart was pounding under the strain of panic. And rightly so. Guterman, a German national running several assassination cells for the Anglo-Aryan Coalition, was known for his reckless extermination of friends and foes alike. He never needed much encouragement, especially once he felt that someone had screwed up.

“Are you ready to work with us, then?” Campbell asked from behind her. Melissa screamed, her legs buckling under her. The officer scooped her up just as she fell to the ground. Then he laid her shaking body on the couch.

“Oh my God, he’s going to kill me! He’s going to kill me before the weekend!” she ranted hysterically. “Please, Lieutenant, you have to help me! I needed the money, so I agreed to work for him on the side. He…h-he never said he was going to kill Mr. Purdue. I t-th-thought that Reusch was just supposed to get information during the sessions, I swear!”

Lieutenant Campbell towered over her like a judge, but she’d take that over an executioner any day. His hands rested at his sides. “Relax, Miss Argyle. If you turn state’s witness and help us bring in Reusch’s killer, you might just survive the wrath of Walter Gateman.”

“You know him?” she gasped, as tears came streaming over her cheeks.

“Let’s just say, I do my homework,” he bragged. “Walter Guterman has been on the Most Wanted list of every anti-criminal website in the known universe since 1968. A war criminal and Nazi ideology propagator, he’s pretty notorious amongst black operation commanders.”

Campbell sat down next to Melissa. “So, Miss Argyle, how did you get involved with such an unsavory character?”

Suddenly Melissa choked and abruptly ceased her crying. Her wet eyes danced with a miniature madness as she tried to give a normal answer. Slowly she started to shake her head, reaching for a tissue and wiping her nose. Looking world weary, Melissa said, “Lieutenant Campbell, if I told you, you’d never ever believe me.”

While Purdue was flying back to Edinburgh with Nina’s medical file and payment receipts, his phone rang. The number was prefixed with ‘298’, a number even the world traveling billionaire was not familiar with. Usually he did not feel comfortable answering unknown numbers, especially after learning that he was the target of a hit while admitted at the Sinclair Facility. However, on the other hand, Purdue reckoned that not many people knew his personal phone number, resident on his uniquely produced tablet, so he answered.