Chapter 3
Present Day – Old City
Helen grasped the thick binder and pulled it from its place on the shelf. The action required some muscle. Time had secured the thick folder to the wood and she hadn't been in the room, much less considered dusting it, in over a year. Turning precariously on the ladder she had to tip the binder a bit to hand it down to Will. When she did he was bombarded by a collection of dead bug carcasses. He managed to shield his eyes in time, but she winced at the large bee that landed in his hair.
"You know I'm not surprised that there are still rooms in this Sanctuary that I've never been in." Will said, brushing his hair clean of corpses. "I'm also not so surprised that those rooms would have to be dedicated to the storage of all the stuff you've collected over the years."
Helen grit her teeth grimly, working on freeing another binder while she waited for the punch line. She had turned to hand it down to Will when he said, "I am surprised that you have whole binders of stuff dedicated to Tesla."
Helen gave a short laugh. "You should see James' collection…"
"Yes but, these aren't damage reports, or a list of complaints."
Helen agreed with him by shaking her head, reaching for the third binder. There were about forty-two of them but she only needed that period of time. She kept the last one in hand, slowly climbing back down the ladder.
The room had been one of many guest rooms until she had moved a dozen shelving units into it, setting them up with aisles no wider than four feet. Enough room to get between them with a ladder if need be. Shelf space was necessary before the age of computers. She had made some effort at the turn of the 21st century to scan and catalogue as much of the Sanctuary's daily paper load digitally, thus reducing the need for storage space and doing what she could to preserve the planet for the sake of the abnormals she was also preserving.
Some things, however, had neither the necessity of scanning, nor the lack of value that would allow them to be thrown away.
"So what are they?" Will asked, carrying the first two binders toward the door. There was no space amongst the shelves to set anything down, much less sit. Helen had expected to do the reading alone in her bed room, thinking that by now Will would have lost interest and gone on to other Sanctuary activities. She supposed it was the profiling aspect of their investigation that attracted him.
She followed Will out of the room, leading the way down the hall, back to the library.
"Check stubs?" Will guessed.
Helen smirked but kept walking.
"A list of wines that he's stolen?"
She shook her head, smiling again, brushing at the dust on the cover of the binder in her arms as she closed the distance to the library doors.
"Oh..I know. Letters to Edison, right? Angry ones?"
"Close." She said, pulling the doors open and walking into the giant room.
"Letters…to…" Will set the binders down on the table they had been working at. He was mere seconds from opening the top binder when his eyes widened and his mouth formed a perfect 'o'. "Letters to you. Forty-two binders full of letters written to you." He emphasized.
Helen shrugged, blushing despite herself and set her own burden down as well. "He has always been a talented writer, Will."
"Uh…yeah. On that topic, I read his autobiography.."
Helen giggled, and then desperately sobered.
"Yeah…that was me, the whole way through." Will said, pointing a finger at her, looking briefly astounded. "You were right; he did write it in third person."
"Remind me to show you his diary."
"Alright…so we have binders full of letters from Mr. Sanguine Vampiris Alone-iss. What now?"
"Start with February of 1943 and skim." Helen said, opening her own binder. She had the years 1948 to 1950. Each letter, postcard or cable had been carefully laminated in thick plastic before it was placed on the three rings, guarding against the ravages of time as well as the possibility of fire or flood. If it was possible to save the things that she cherished, instead of needed, she would and had put forth the effort.
"I always figured he'd have messy handwriting." Will said, flipping through the pages, pausing from time to time.
"Working out a problem on a chalkboard yes, but…when it came to his letters, Nikola was fastidious. He loved language."
"Okay…here's February 3rd. My Dear Helen, How I wish you had decided to join me on my long overdue pre-reg-grin-ation. Uh…As I boarded the train I marveled at the sleek design so cleverly resembling that of the rocket to the moon in Jule's finest work…Jules? As in..Jules Verne?" Will asked, looking up.
Helen nodded, her eyebrows lifting a little before she waited expectantly.
"Uh…I like the train, I really like the train…" Will said, clearly paraphrasing. "I shall not be mailing this letter to you myself. I have found the fellow on board that works primarily in the baggage car and he has agreed to slip my missive into the bag with no exorbitant cost. I find the current cost of mailing to be appalling. It is with regret that I leave my fair America…his fair America?"
Helen smiled, and then shrugged, her head bent to the binder in front of her again.
"…that I leave my fair America behind to thieves and butchers, but ahead I see the familiar dawning of the sun of Serbia…then some stuff about his travel plans and…ah yes. With endearing fondness, Nikola Tesla."
Belgian Resistance Head Quarters
Breskens, Netherlands
February 1943
Nikola finished the letter, daubing the wet tip of his pen on the napkin at his knee before laying a sheet of paper over his words and carefully pressing down. Thanks to his vampiric, and thus steady hand, each of the characters were perfectly formed, the lines straighter than a razor's edge. His vampirism had been such a boon to his need for consistency and perfection. But the only place he could really show it was through his letters to Helen.
In the cool of the dank tavern cellar there had been nothing to do but drink for hours and even with his fondness for French wine, despite the curious Belgian twist, his mind had grown stagnate. He'd written three letters before crafting this one. Once the ink had dried he folded it perfectly into thirds with the beginning of his missive showing on the outside instead of being folded inward. He slipped the precise and crisp rectangle into the envelope, pre-addressed. No return address or it wouldn't make it out of occupied Belgium, and there really was no point in addressing it.
Helen thought he was in Denmark, avoiding the crush of the German invasion and going around them to his place of birth. Croatia, and even Serbia, might have been an enjoyable destination after all, if it hadn't been for his other plans.
"How many times do you write ze letter before you send it?" The heavily accented voice whispered from the shadows.
Tesla's mouth quirked upward. He'd already answered the questions about his slight accent, about his ability to speak French, the Belgian variant (Though his Flemish was deplorable) and Dutch, as well as German. He'd explained how it was that he could see well enough to write endless letters in the near pitch black of their hidey hole and once more confirmed for the collection of ten freedom fighters that he was a vampire. And that it was his vampirism that ultimately landed him this deal.
A new question was a blessing.
"This one will go out." He replied, speaking in English at Dane's insistence. He wanted to go to America when Belgium was free, Dane had said, and needed help with the language. Tesla thought about telling him that the Queen's English disappeared in that fabled country of milk and honey but he knew he would be the only one to appreciate the humor and decided against it.
"To your amour, oui?" Dane asked, bright brown eyes twinkling drunkenly in the dark. The fact that Dane was drunk at all was a testament to how long they had been hiding. Raised in a country where children began drinking wine at the dinner table at the age of five, it took quite a bit to slur Dane's speech, but it was necessary to cut the cheese and course artisan bread with something.
Tesla sighed, grinning brightly. The memory of Helen always brought that grin to his face. Of course her memory was slightly tainted with the realization that he was yet again deceiving her. But this time it was for a good cause. It was, in part, for his lady science. Death hadn't been nearly as lucrative as he had hoped, and while preparing for it, this mildly mercenary opportunity cropped up.
The Belgian army had always been small and desperate, willing to take anyone from anywhere so long as they wore the uniform and faced the enemy. Most often the cold blooded killers were good for the Belgian cause. In this case, however they had wanted what they felt was impossible.
An indestructible, deceptive, powerful and intelligent spy to infiltrate, take pictures, memorize information and schematics and return it all, intact, to the resistance fighters sequestered everywhere; in this case the group of thirty women and ten men using a sea side tavern as headquarters.
Tesla was convinced that the envelope that had been slid under his door at The New Yorker in September of 1942 had been placed there in error. It was not addressed to him, but to the Hotel, nor was there was a room number. The letter inside it was not addressed specifically either. It was a communique, heavily disguised and coded, from one branch of the underground resistance to the other. Declaring a list of proposed missions. Most of them pertained to slowing workers in the factories; delaying feeding the Nazi war machine by getting every mechanic to turn his wrench at half the speed, or to put a faulty washer on the occasional nut. The one mission that stood out had a hefty reward attached to it.
The numbers had been what drew Nikola to the musty room. Given his current location he found it laughable that he would ever see the money. He might have been willing to admit that there was a more altruistic attraction to the job. He might have called it a sight-seeing trip.
As he set his writing utensils to the side and slid the sealed envelope into a sheath of treated leather he decided it didn't matter what he called it. He was, for now, dedicated to that which he had promised to do.
Above their heads the rumble of conversation, drunken revelry and bawdy music continued. Around him darkly clad men ranging in age from (despite their denials and insistence that they were of age)fifteen to twenty-two slept fitfully or sat sniffling in the quiet. Some were drinking, others gnawing at hardened day old bread. One of them, Johannes, sat in the corner with an oil cloth, endlessly polishing a Luger that he claimed to have pilfered from a German officer without being caught.
His obsession with the weapon had already earned him the nickname "Tueur" which translated rather coarsely and literally from the French as 'killer'.
The men around him were ultimately meant only to act as guides. Their destination was the Liege region in southern Belgium. Their mission had been, curiously, named Badger. Nikola knew of another group attempting the same fete, departing from Givet, France and heading for the Huy region. Huy and Liege were a mere 36 kilometers apart but the mission was vital. The information important to the freedom of the tiny country.
That, Nikola reasoned, was why they were paying him so much money to be their spy.