The Twisted Turbine
Chapter Three - The House in Lorraine
Summary: It's the Jazz Age and someone's trying to use an artifact to kill the president. Former GI Pete Lattimer takes the case and soon finds himself caught up in a web of lies, deception and things not being entirely what they seem. Hitting the ground running, Pete, his sometimes-nemesis-sometimes-friend, and young reporter M. Bering are off to save the president.
Notes: 1920s AU set in New York City. In the true spirit of a period piece, the language and the times have to be respected, let's not flame me for use of slang and expressions considered derogatory in the present day. We cool? Cool.
Chapter Notes:
- The Lorraine Région of France is one that is historically noted as being strongly mixed German and French. The area in question was part of the territory that Germany ceded to France in the Treaty at Versailles. Despite the strong presence of German heritage and culture in the region, French was instituted as the administrative language and the language used in schools. A lot of those with connections in Germany left the region for Germany proper at this time.
- The way that I have written Myka in this particular story is that of a young woman who is aware of her options. This is a bit unique as a woman of Myka's upbringing would probably not realize the options that Helena was presenting to her. This is part of the reason that I wrote Myka as having been educated at a woman's college, because such activity was more ... prevalent in such institutions, still is.
- Again, sheik/sheba is slang for boyfriend/girlfriend.
- The Cathedral that Myka mentions is in Metz. It's quite lovely.
-Trains, at this point in time, were still the fastest way to travel from place to place within a country. The train lines were rebuilt soon after the war - cutting across the devastation of the countryside to bring infrastructure back to the country.
- Telegraph abbreviations were used for common expressions in order to save on the cost per letter of sending a telegraph. In telegraph style, the phrase 'Nalezing' means 'Do only what is absolutely necessary'; and 'Empanel' means 'This is a matter of great importance.' Telegraphs were the fastest and most efficient way of getting information across major oceans during the early 1920s.
Story talks about PTSD, the effects of it, Trench Warfare, chain smoking, alcoholism, and well, it was the 20s, errybody had issues and it was all glamor and glory and hidden lives. Also lesbian sexual tension abounds.
Beta'ed (and egged on) by spockette, this is all her fault.
France was not what Myka had expected or read about when she was a child. It was a bleak and desolate place. The countryside marred by the marks of being a battlefield for a war not over its territory, but for the free world.
The train rumbled through the countryside, past farmland just beginning to be reclaimed from battlefields, mud still marring the terrain everywhere and long trenches cut across fields of grain. She was sitting on the opposite of the compartment from Helena and Pete, pretending very hard to be lost in staring out the window.
She couldn't look at Helena. Not after what she had done.
And it was not that Myka did not like the idea of such advances, but to do so in such a public place, and without preamble was unacceptable. Such games were meant to be played out behind closed parlor doors and half-hidden behind shared books or even newspapers. It was not the place to do such a thing in a steamer compartment that you had to share with another individual for a week. Not when Myka was not entirely sure that she wanted to play the game in the first place.
No time for a sheik, she'd told Peter Lattimer, certainly no time for a sheba. She was far too busy to entertain a lover of any sort, and he'd respected that fact when she'd told him that while nice, she had no intention of taking him up on his very nice offer.
Now, if only she could find a way to tell Helena the same thing.
Myka chewed on her lip, gloved fingers resting against her chin as she leaned forward to get a better look as the train sped past a burnt-out building. There was a small crater in the ground next to it – it must have been from a shelling.
A man standing just by the building turned and watched the train fly past – much how Myka felt the past weeks had gone since she'd obtained Pete's – and he insisted she call him that – services. The world was passing her by and she seemed stuck in doing things how she'd always done them. She was trapped, full of fear and terrified of what she knew, of what faced them all.
She knew the fantastical. It was intimately familiar to her, much like the words that Helena Wells had once upon a time put to paper. She had read Helena's books, had lived them. She had been drawn into fantastic worlds by so many great authors that it was hard to imagine that such fantasy could exist in the real and physical world.
Myka Bering played the part of a skeptic well, she thought. The evidence was all there, wrapped up in a neat little package and delivered to her father's bookshop when Myka pretended to not be looking. She'd recognized the name Weisfelt and Frederic almost instantly, and she wondered what all this had to do with her. With Peter Lattimer or Helena Wells.
She felt as though they were all pawns in a much larger game of chess, being moved by unseen forces towards an endgame that Myka could not yet see.
She was content to play that game, at least.
The train was beginning to slow as they pulled closer to their destination. Somewhere in Lorraine there was a man who lived in a house by the countryside. A man who did not belong there, apparently. He was the soldier who had stolen the information about the turbine from Helena during the war, the man who had left her in the middle of no man's land to die.
It had been easy to talk about that, at least, when crammed in a compartment full of awkward tension and an underlying sexual current that Myka found to be incredibly distracting, not to mention wholly enticing. She shook her head ever so slightly and glanced across the cabin to where Helena was pretending to read and Pete was going over his notes. Things were about to get very, very interesting.
The train stopped at a small village just three stops past Reims proper – fully into the province of Lorraine. Myka had seen photographs of this countryside before, had seen depictions of the cathedral in the city there in books. They were not like this. Not a burnt-out hull of a countryside full of hatred and wounds that would only heal with time.
She swallowed, drumming her fingers on the doorway until they were cleared by the soldiers who greeted them to get off, watching as Helena spoke in terse French and German – accented and muddled together, almost impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. This place was deeply seeded in both, there was no middle ground, despite the fact that they'd expelled all the Germans back across the border.
"Ouais, take the north road out of the village," the soldier explained in heavily accented English, having understood who exactly it was that they were looking for. "After about half a league, there should be a house. Go there. There you will find the one you seek."
"Merci," Helena thanked him, and clapped him on the shoulder, saying something else, something low and unintelligible to Myka. He smiled at her sadly, and shook his head. "They have not been seen here in many years," he said in quiet and forlorn-sounding French. "It would be nice to have peace like that."
She did not ask, it wasn't her place, but took Pete Lattimer's hand as he helped her down from the train. They would not be here long. Myka hoped beyond all hope that they would find the man they were looking for, find the turbine, and be able to go home triumphant.
Such things never worked out all ducky like that though, but it was nice to hope.
x
It was strange to be back. Pete had never thought that he would come back to France. He'd thought the ordeal done and over when they'd been discharged and sent home. He sometimes felt as though he'd never really come home, but that was something else entirely.
They were on a case, on a job. He could do this. They were traveling light, having left their things at the village in, where he'd rented a room. He figured that he'd find a chair to sleep in and that HG and Ms. Bering could share the bed. They weren't going to be staying long; just long enough to ascertain if the turbine was even still here, and if it wasn't, where it had gotten to.
Pete lit a cigarette and stared off across the countryside. The war had been bad here, this entire area had been occupied by the Germans for a large part of the war and people were just starting to come back. He could see the signs everywhere, those with German heritage were being expelled, forced back across a heavily guarded border to their homeland. Good riddance, Pete thought. Germans were nothing but trouble, it seemed.
"Is that it, there?" Ms. Bering wanted to know, pulling on his arm and pointing to a house just over the next rise. It was strange to see her in trousers and well-worn walking boots, but she had insisted that she not wear a dress out across the muddy terrain that they were now traversing. It was a wise decision, and when she'd come down looking every bit as practical as all the other women in Pete's life, Pete could not help but shake his head.
Women.
He understood their need for liberation, because it was foolish to have a man make the woman's every decision, but at the same time, some things were pushing it a little bit too far. Ms. Bering had a man's job, and a man's way of doing things. She was brisk and businesslike and got things done correctly the first time. Pete liked that about her.
He squinted at the house, cigarette half hanging form his lips and turned to HG, who was watching their backs as they walked. He didn't know why he was so paranoid just to be back here, but he could hear the tat-tat-tat of the machine guns even now. He hated it, he kept flashing back to that moment in the war when HG was gone and stuck in between the trenches and he thought he'd never see her again.
She was his best and closest friend.
"That should be it, the shop boy's directions were good," HG nodded her agreement and pulled the brim of her hat down just a little bit further over her eyes. Pete didn't like it when she did that, it made it nearly impossible to know what HG was thinking and that was a terrifying thought in and of itself.
He clenched his fist and sucked hard on his cigarette. This was going to be unpleasant.
"You need to wait here," Pete said to Ms. Bering, watching the house closely as they drew level with it. They were still a good distance away, close enough to see it clearly and to see lights in the window and smoke coming from the chimney – but not close enough to be seen. "I don't want you getting hurt."
Ms. Bering gave Pete a look of utter disgust and reached into the long and thin pack that she'd slung across her back before they'd departed the inn. He'd wondered what had been in there, and when she pulled out a short-barreled shotgun, he was just a little bit impressed. Ms. Bering tilted the pack over and pulled out two shells, which she quickly loaded into the gun and snapped it back into the ready position. "I will be just fine, thank you, Mister Lattimer."
HG snorted. "So that's what that was," she said leaning in close over Ms. Bering's shoulder (Pete was suddenly very aware of Ms. Bering's body language, and how she seemed completely and utterly conflicted in that moment). It was strange to see HG get so close to another person, she usually kept her distance with the marked grace of a lioness stalking her prey – but now she was up close and personal and far too interested in how Myka Bering handled a shotgun.
"Well," Pete said, looking away and back towards the worn shingles and peeling paint of the house just over the hill. "Just be sure not to shoot me."
He knew that it was pejorative, that he should not imply that Ms. Bering would shoot him just because she was a woman with a gun, but he could not help himself. There was something off-putting about seeing such a weapon in such a pretty woman's hands. The words came tumbling out of his mouth and he regretted them instantly.
"Pincer?" He asked, pulling out his gun and turning to HG. In terms of strategy, that was probably their best move. If he were to take the front and they were to go around back.
HG was loading bullets into her revolver, her side-arm from the war. Pete had lost his after his first battle, and hand taken the gun that now rested in his hands off of a dead German soldier. It was a good weapon, well made, and reliable. It didn't jam like his previous side-arm had. Pete watched as she spun the chamber and flipped it closed, wondering how many times he'd seen her do that since they'd first met. Hundreds of times, the same precise and practiced movements. It took a fella back that was for sure.
"Really, Peter, I was just thinking of knocking on the door," HG cocked her gun and smiled wickedly at Pete, before winking at Ms. Bering, who flushed and looked away. "You two wait here."
His face fell, "Why do you get to go?" Pete demanded.
"Because," HG said, tucking her revolver back into her jacket and straightening her collar. "You do not speak German."
Oh yes, that would be a very good point.
Pete watched as HG picked her way down the road, kicking at a stone, taking a wide turn around the building so as to not draw too much attention to herself. She was smart, her approach was standard. Pete leaned back on his heels and turned to see Ms. Bering's face pulling up into a knot of worry.
"It'll be ducky," He said, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She flinched a little when he touched her but soon relaxed. It was nice, to know that he could still calm people down, even if he could never stay calm himself in such a situation. Up and over, they said, and then they all died.
"I…" Ms. Bering began. She was fidgeting, shifting her weight from booted foot to booted foot, her face pulled downwards into a tight frown. Pete wondered what exactly had happened between them on the steamer. He'd never seen two women so uncomfortable around each other and yet so desperate to be near each other. It was such a strange combination.
He wanted a cigarette.
"Yeah, doll," Pete asked, trying to prompt her to speak. He reached into his pocket and found the last of his cigarettes. He'd have to buy more before they left. They were the only things keeping him steady right now.
The sights and smells of this particular region of France were just too much. His senses were completely overloaded with memories that he did not want to have. People had died here, just over that ridge. Hundreds of people, entire companies and regiments. Brutal battles over the barest scraps of territory. It was attrition, the scholars that were just barely beginning to study the patterns of the war said now. The weaponry had advanced beyond the field of military tactics and nothing had prepared them for the sheer loss of life that all sides would experience. There was a whole generation of people just… gone.
It sickened him.
He struck a match and turned himself so that the misty rain would not hit the end of his cigarette, sucking hard to get it lit. He'd mastered this art while trapped over here, fighting for something he wasn't entirely sure he believed in.
It was just the right thing to do.
"I don't want to see her get hurt," Ms. Bering whispered and Pete let out a barking laugh, exhaling smoke upwards into the sky.
"HG? HG is way too good to let a hun take her out," Pete couldn't help but grin at the end of that statement, thinking about how easy it would be to forget how easily people died in a place like this.
Helena could handle herself, Pete was sure of it.
x
Helena knew what to expect when she kicked down the door. She'd spent a long and frostbitten night wearing a gas mask next to this man after all. They had talked, just a little, because there was nothing else to do and they were both under the impression that death awaited them at every passing moment.
He was younger than her, but he'd aged in the few years since that night they'd spent together. He looked different clean, a full mustache but he still kept the reedy look that he'd had even then. He couldn't have been more than seventeen then. Helena hated him even then.
It was easy to get in; the door was weak, on old hinges. Her gun was level when she held it at the ready; he was unarmed, sitting at his kitchen table, spoon half-raised to his lips. He set it down, and said in broken English, "Lieutenant Wells… I had not expected to ever see you again."
She held her ground, swallowing whatever fear that lingered from the act of breaking in, of facing this man who had so singlehandedly ruined her life. He was there, the same as he had been – a comrade in arms, an enemy combatant who have no thought to the honorable act of her saving his sorry life. Her eyes narrowed and she whispered in German learned in school and perfected on the battlefield during the war, "The sentiment is entirely mutual."
"Then why are you here? You are a long way from home, little pretend soldier." She had never learned his name, she realized then. It was strange to think that she had spent years hating a man and she did not have so much as a name attached to him.
The war had made her a fool it seemed.
She didn't relax her finger on the trigger as leaned against the doorway. He was unarmed, she could tell that now. And unless the man could kill her with a spoon, she did not worry for her safety. A German living in France while they were active purges – she believed the polite term was deportation - of all those with German heritage back across the border into their homeland; he would not want to attract unwanted attention. "There are questions I have to ask," Helena took a step forward, and then another, her confidence growing with every step. "About what you stole from me."
This was no longer about Ms. Bering and the plot to kill the American president. Her flirtation with Myka Bering was just that, in this moment, a passing interest. Something that could not be afforded, a distraction. She would find her answer if it was the last thing she did.
He took a bite of soup and Helena pulled the hammer back on her gun. "Put down your spoon," she hissed, "Or I will shoot it out of your hand."
She had no doubt that her aim would be true. She was good – too good – at this for it to not be true. He would pay for trying to continue his meal, oh yes.
Her stomach growled and she winced in annoyance. They hadn't eaten much by way of lunch, being on a train and all.
He laughed at her then, easily switching back into his mother tongue. Helena was glad, his English was an abomination. "Oh that?" He flicked at a crumb on the table dismissively. "Sold it. To one of your countrymen. Horrible fellow, left about a week ago now." He laughed, "Said he had plans for it."
The Welby's hammer was easy to draw back, to cock and hold it ready. Helena held it level, her hand didn't shake. It had never shaken, not during the war, not during her training, not when duck hunting with her brother. She had good hands, steady hands. A writer's hands. "Give me one good reason to not shoot you where you stand," it came out in a low growl – German always sounded menacing and threatening. Helena liked it that way.
"Because, my lady, I know what he plans to do with it."
Helena's eyes narrowed and she released her thumb from the catch of the revolver, face pulling downwards into a frown. "You have two minutes before I reevaluate my will to let you live, Hun."
The German clucked his tongue and reached for his spoon again. Helena gave him a dirty look but let him. If it would make him talk, she was alright. It was still impossibly rude, but one could not expect civilized behavior out of a hun. "James MacPherson used to work for the English – an agent of sorts, and then he vanished, yes?"
"We know all this."
He held up a finger, giving Helena pause. "But do you know why he vanished?"
"Haven't the foggiest." Helena said airily.
"It is because he was recruited for something bigger than yourself, Lieutenant Wells." The German pushed his now finished bowl of soup away and frowned, as if he was reaching far back into his memory, prying information out of the dark recesses there. "That turbine I took from you, the Kaiser wanted it for the same reason MacPherson plans to use it."
"To kill the American President…" Helena said quickly, trying to keep him talking. She had never been much for interrogation. Beating answers out of people was more aligned with her skill set. Pete was better at talking and she was sure that Ms. Bering would be aces at getting this man to tell her whatever it was that she wanted to know.
Still, Helena was going to get her answers, one way or another.
"No, to send a message, something your pitiful female brain would not understand." Ah, one of those. Helena pulled the hammer back on her gun. Cocked and ready, her lips quirking upwards, daring him to push her just a little bit further.
"Do not make me pull this trigger."
He looked from the gun to her face and back again, spitting the words, "You haven't the courage, du dumme fotze."
She laughed then, it was so easy. To drop the gun quickly and shoot him through the kneecap as though it meant nothing. She didn't feel anything in that moment, just the thrill of inflicting pain, of being in control once again.
"You bitch," He hissed.
She shrugged. "Never dare a lady to do anything you wouldn't do yourself."
His hand was shaking on his kneecap, and Helena's lip curled upwards, watching as he struggled to bandage it. She'd missed the major tendons, he'd be able to recover if he found a doctor. She didn't much care to help him though, and when he began to speak in quick, frenzied German, she could barely follow his words. "It won't matter, he's gone and he's taken it with him. You are powerless to stop him, he has the force of the whole wa-"
As he trailed off, Helena lowered her gun again, this time pointing it at his other knee. She had no compunction with shooting him again, just for good measure. "The whole what?"
There was something about the way that he'd begun his statement that reminded Helena of something that she'd heard whispered about in London when she was younger. A shadowy organization that collected things for the good of mankind, and locked them away in a place where they would not be seen or heard from ever again; they were much discussed among the scientific community in London. Always tampering with things, and ruining perfectly good ideas. No one ever saw them though, no one knew where they came from or where they went.
She frowned, glaring at the German and willing him to spill as many of the details as she could make him without shooting him again.
He placed his hand on his heart and resolutely stuck his chin out. "I would sooner die than tell you."
"Then die you shall." She cocked her revolver, holding it level and stepping forward, leaning in close to rest it between his eyes.
She was not afraid.
"Wait! No, please!" He was crying, his breath reeked of garlic and of stale cigarettes. "He works for a group that wants to send a message that America is not the power that people thing it is, that the power is still in the Empire."
Now that organization, Helena knew quite well. "The Order…" she whispered, thinking of the woman who had found her before Henrietta had gone mad, the woman who had warned her then what was being told to her again now. "Frederic…" she whispered, stepping away. "I do so wish I could shoot you." She commented airily, she had to get back to Pete and to Ms. Bering. They had to get back to the states and fast, she knew what MacPherson was going to do.
The butt of her gun collided with the side of his face and she smiled wickedly at the German's unconscious form. "This isn't war any more. Murder is still a crime."
She did not think anyone would miss him, however.
x
When HG came back up over the ridge, a sheaf of papers tucked under her arm and a wild expression on her face, Pete threw his cigarette onto the wet ground and narrowed his eyes, wondering if this was about to turn into a very bad situation. "Did you kill him?" he asked, exhaling the last of the cigarette smoke through his nose.
Pete watched as she pulled her gun out the shoulder holster where she kept it and opened the revolver's chamber. She removed an empty casing and replaced it with a fresh bullet. Pete didn't blame her, she was usually prepared.
And yet he worried, if she'd actually killed him they would have to answer to the local authorities. Pete was sure that they'd respect HG's need to do what she had done, but as his best friend shook her head dismissively, Pete could not help but exhale quietly. "No, but we must send a telegram to someone in America straight away. The plan is to use the device during a speech in New York. I do not know when President Harding's next address is." She turned to their young client, her face softening, "Ms. Bering?"
She gave a small shrug, "As far as I know he isn't slated to come back until November." Her overcoat had come loose and the sleeve of her pale blue shirt was showing. Pete had been amazed to see her wearing practical trousers that morning, but now that he stared at her, he realized that she was every bit as practical as he was.
Only she looked better in a dress.
HG's brow furrowed and she bit her finger pensively. Pete started on his final cigarette as HG announced, "Then we must have someone there keeping their eyes and ears open for tell of any further attacks."
"Claudia?" He asked, exhaling smoke and staring up at the grey sky. He hated it here. Rainy miserable place that it was.
"I was thinking that Mister Jinks and Ms. Donovan would potentially be good choices."
Pete slung an arm over HG's shoulder, "We can catch the evening train and be on a boat back to New York by morning, come on!"
He had already composed the telegraph he would send from the Western Union office in village's train station. Claudia would know what it meant.
Plan still in motion nalezing to find man in question STOP Empanel Jinks ready to fly at moments notice STOP All the best from France STOP PMH STOP