Preston Child - The Fountain of Youth

Look at them, all gathered at my table. Three widows, Christa thought . The billionaire genius who donates towards Daniel’s beloved academy, oblivious to the betrayal of his own medical staff who sent the woman he loves straight into the claws of the Black Sun organization to be used as an incubator.

Purdue looked a bit tense, not the usual flamboyant extrovert his reputation dictated. Christa figured he was just feeling out among all the strangers. Probably worried about his stubborn little bitch, she sneered. Then her eyes fell on some of the others. Oh, sweet, tenacious Mrs. Cotswald, the idiot who can’t tell when she’s unwanted. Probably the reason she got the shit beat out of her by Raymond all those years before she married the corpse in the archive room.

“Happy, deary?” Mrs. Patterson asked loudly, her remark drawing all eyes towards the smiling Christa. She hadn’t realized that her self-perceived superiority was showing on her face.

“Oh, um, yes, thank you, Anna,” Christa said amicably, successfully fooling all the others that she was smiling with affection. As soon as they’d all returned to their conversations she continued taking stock. And let us not forget the matriarch, Anna Patterson, bred by SS and turned traitor. Adoptive daughter of Prof. Ebner’s good graces, having been raised by one of the Order’s finest scientists and now? You’ve chosen to turn your back on us and you’re now only alive because I need your son to manage your estate when I kill you.’

Christa’s black heart throbbed eagerly as her victorious disdain escalated. In fact, had she not been so desperate to tap Nina Gould’s precious blood over three days or more, she could have wiped the slate clean of the smaller vermin she was beholding. Purdue’s nosy prying to find Nina and Mrs. Cotswald’s annoying recurrence blighting Christa’s harvesting of Gould’s powerful sanguine elixir made them both intolerable obstacles she had to bear with. Daniel seemed ignorant of his wife’s doings. To him, her meetings and clandestine projects were much like a book club, a hobby to keep her busy when she wasn’t working — something to help her forge alliances with other women. He was almost correct in that assumption, barring the murderous tendencies when she did not get her way.

Now and then she would exchange looks with Clara, both hoping to maintain the charade until the others retreated to their respective corners and they could check on the progress of Nina’s exsanguination. Christa wondered what Daniel would do if he knew that Clara was in fact her child. How would he react if he knew that St. Vincent’s administration manager was, in reality, the product of Christa’s involvement with one SS-Oberstrumbannführer Martin Hertz for the Lebensborn project?

He knew about her fetish for the antique font in the garden. She’d had an obsession with the moss-covered stone ornament that used to tap the underground river that had now run dry, but Daniel would never believe such nonsense as that of it being a Fountain of Youth. All he knew was that the water spring was one of the reasons he hadn’t sold the property before, because his wife loved it so much. Nowadays she didn’t even look at it, and yet she still fought to keep the fortress. Why, he did not know.

“Mrs. Cotswald, you told me you’ve been looking for your daughters all your life. May I ask how you lost them?” Dean Patterson asked.

She gracefully wiped her mouth and she took a hefty helping of wine before she replied. “Many years ago, I was a young dancer in Latvia. I belonged to a Ballet Company that toured throughout Europe during…” she stopped. She could hardly share her true age with the people around the table, and mentioning that her tale was set during World War II would have been absurd.

“During?” Purdue asked, eager to hear her story.

“Um, during dark times in Poland, where I come from,” she recovered. “As I said, I was a dancer, but a terrible injury sustained on stage one night caused me my career.”

“That’s terrible,” Mrs. Patterson frowned.

Mrs. Cotswald shrugged and sighed sadly, “I was young and I got involved with a… military man …with whom I had two children.” She told her tale as nonchalantly as she could, trying not to make too much of an impression. “But, of course, he left and I could not care for my girls. Having been dismissed from the ballet company, I’d had to rely on the charity of art lovers and friends to get by. Eventually, I had to give up my baby girls for adoption or see them starve. The adoptive parents kept in touch with me about my children, as long as I never visited them.”

“You weren’t allowed to let your children know you?” Daniel gasped. “That’s barbaric.”

“Perfect word, my boy,” she replied with a crack in her voice, “Perfect word.” Holding out her glass to Daniel for more wine, she cleared her throat and tried not to weep. He obliged gladly and sat down to hear the rest.

“As long as I remained a ghost, they would send me pictures and tell me where the girls were schooled, and so on. But somewhere around 1966 I lost touch. At the time my then husband sent me to a boarding house in Steinhöring. From there I was admitted to a secret mental asylum in Graz, Austria. From then on I couldn’t find my daughters again, until I followed the adoption trail to Hampshire,” she smiled such hope that Daniel wished he could embrace her. “But the trail ran cold again when Prof. Ebner died.”

Clara and Christa looked at one another knowingly. Purdue was touched by Mrs. Cotswald’s story, but he could feel that she had omitted the core truth. He planned to extract the actual, although unbelievable, truth from her before the night was over. If she was familiar with these people at St. Vincent’s, she would be able to provide him with a little more insight on which of them, if not all of them, could have abducted Nina.

One thing was plain to Purdue. He did not buy the Wolverhampton excuse for a minute and something told him that, if he left here, he would never see Nina alive again.

“So, Mr. Purdue, how do you know Dr. Gould?” Daniel asked.

Christa looked especially interested. Purdue was very well known, both as philanthropist and as explorer and inventor, but Nina Gould did not particularly stand out in academic conversation.

“I’ve hired her as an historical advisor on several expeditions before,” Purdue said. “After so many years of working together we’ve become firm friends.”

“Apparently you’ve had quite the tiff with some competitors for those relics you love to acquire,” Christa mentioned with her mouth full. She washed down her food with some wine and a deadly leer.

“The Order of the Black Sun?” he mentioned deliberately, hoping to start shaking the cage a little. “It’s no secret that I’ve a tendency to get under their skins. But you know, it’s all about who is better and faster, I suppose.” He laughed, and quickly Daniel laughed with him.

“I thought they were a myth,” Daniel told Purdue.

“Oh no, Dean Patterson, they are very much active. In fact, they remind me of a cult of bored college students. Too much money and no productive way to spend their time.” Purdue chuckled, intentionally mocking the Order. It worked to his advantage. By using his ability to read faces he could clearly see that Christa Smith was immensely agitated. Regardless, he paid her no attention. Purdue had established where the head of the snake was. All that was left now was finding the sharpest machete to sever that head.

“Maybe they could do more with those relics than to leave them gathering dust in museums,” Clara remarked. Purdue marked her too. Christa’s shoving foot against hers was too late.