The lights in the room dimmed, and the reflected Fiona vanished as the glass became transparent, revealing a room of similar dimensions on the other side. There was no examination table in the observation room, just an old man sitting in a wheelchair.
Not just old, Fiona thought. Ancient.
His wispy white hair could not hide a map of veins and liver spots on the papery-thin skin that clung to the skull. His eyes were sagging with age, but were still sharp enough that she could tell they were different shades of blue. One almost slate gray, the other a pale cornflower shade, like the eye described in Poe’s classic The Tell Tale Heart—the eye that had driven the narrator to madness. Yet, despite the man’s age and those weird, disconcerting eyes, Fiona saw something familiar in the face. It was the same man that had appeared in the pictures in the trophy case.
The thought sent a shiver down her spine, but as she stared back at him, she resolved that she would never beg for her life. Not from this man.
“Hey. I recognize you,” she said, pointing at him like he was the one on display behind the glass and not her. “You’re Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, right?”
The cadaverous face split in what she could only assume was meant to be a smile, and then an electronically amplified voice — the same wheezy voice that had taunted her earlier in her room — filled her little cell. “What are you, child?”
She stared at him in consternation. “What am I? What the hell kind of question is that?”
“Your appearance is somewhat mongoloid, but the facial structure is all wrong. Are you an American aboriginal? A red Indian? Yes, that must be it. But not pure-blooded. You’re what my friends in Sao Paulo would call a mestizo.”
The halting manner of his speech — he could only get a few syllables out between gasping breaths — and the almost clinical detachment in his voice did not make the obsolete terminology any less offensive. “What I am,” she countered, mustering all the bravado she could, “is a human being. And an American citizen, I might add, with some very powerful and dangerous relatives. You really don’t want them to show up on your doorstep, but if you don’t let me go, that’s what’s going to happen.”
The death’s head grin did not slip. “Aside from your diabetes, and of course that little bump on your head, are you in good health? I understand that red Indians are often drunkards. How is your liver function?”
Fiona was tempted to make an obscene reply but restrained herself. It seemed unlikely that she would be able to talk her way out of this fix, but insults would definitely not improve her chances.
“Listen, I’m sorry about the Mr. Burns crack. Would you prefer me to call you by your real name?” She paused a beat and then added, “Dr. Mengele?”
Although her studies were focused mainly in Antiquity, Fiona was not unaware of modern history. She had studied World War II and the Holocaust; she knew who the major players were in that terrible chapter of history. And while his role in the rise of the Third Reich had been incidental, Josef Mengele had come to symbolize the worst sort of perversion of science and medicine. Viewing the Nazis’ intention to exterminate the Jews, Romani and other so-called inferior races as an opportunity to conduct research on living human subjects, he had requested an assignment at the Auschwitz death camp, where he subjected thousands of people to unspeakable experiments, earning the nickname Todesengel—the Angel of Death.
After the war, Mengele had escaped to South America, and despite the best efforts of Nazi hunters, he had eluded capture until his death in 1979. That was the official version at least, but by all accounts, Mengele’s remains had been positively identified through DNA testing.
Fiona had recognized Mengele’s name on the various citations and diplomas displayed in the trophy case, but it was the lovingly preserved photographic record of atrocities in the gallery that had brought her knowledge of the man to the surface.
Although there was not a doubt in her mind that the man in the wheelchair behind the glass was the same man in the pictures, his reaction confirmed her accusation. His gap-toothed smile grew bigger. “You know of me? Why, that is outstanding. I would have thought people of your generation would have forgotten about me. Especially those of your particular….” He sniffed disdainfully. “Caste.”
“What can I say? You’re famous. I should say ‘infamous.’” Instead of succumbing to despair, Fiona was feeling bolder with each passing second. Mengele might be able to torture and kill her, but she would not give him the satisfaction of breaking her spirit. “Can you clear something up for me? You’re supposed to be dead.”
The old man waved a gnarled hand. “It was not my intention to indulge you in conversation, child. I have work to do. Do you have any other medical conditions that I should know about?”
“Oh, come on. You’re going to kill me anyway, right? Use me as a lab rat in some experiment? That’s what you do, isn’t it? The least you could do is answer a couple of questions. Besides, you’re like the original mad scientist. Dr. Mengele, the Angel of Death. They made movies about you, you know. Don’t you want to brag a little?”
“Mengele is dead,” the man said. “I am Tyndareus now.”
“Tyndareus.” That name was more familiar to Fiona than even Mengele. “King of the Spartans, father of Castor and Clymenestra… Oh, of course. Twins.”
The old man’s smile slipped, but his strange eyes seemed to grow sharper. “You are remarkably well-informed.”
“Because I know who Tyndareus was? Or because I know that you’re obsessed with twins?” She was not exaggerating the latter point. During his time at Auschwitz, Mengele had fanatically tracked down twins for his experiments. Yet, something about the alias nagged at her.
In Greek mythology, Tyndareus’s wife, the beautiful queen Leda, had been seduced by the god Zeus, who appeared to her in the unlikely form of a swan. The offspring of that union had been a pair of eggs, each one containing a set of twins — Castor and Pollux, the famed Gemini twins, and Helen of Troy and Clymenestra. But only one twin in each set — Pollux and Helen — were sired by Zeus. Castor and Clymenestra were the natural children of Tyndareus.
The twins angle seemed the likeliest reason for Mengele to choose his new name, but it did not explain his other connection to Greek mythology.
She peered at him through the glass. “Tyndareus. Cerberus. And you’ve got Kenner chasing after Hercules. That can’t be a coincidence. What are you really after?”
Tyndareus brought his fingertips together in front of his face, which made him look exactly like the cartoon villain from The Simpsons. Fiona had to fight to stifle a laugh, but there was nothing amusing about the old man’s next utterance. “As diverting as explaining this to you might be, it would be a waste of time for both of us. If you will not answer my questions, I will simply proceed with the experiment.”
“Hey, wait—”
Tyndareus lowered his hands to the tablet computer resting on his lap and tapped the screen. Fiona heard the hiss of pressurized air, and glimpsed movement in the corner of her eye. She turned in the direction of the sound and saw that a section of the wall to her left had opened. It was not an exit however, only a small recess, like a cupboard at floor level.
Several small beige shapes darted out, the suddenness of their movement startling Fiona. She let out a yelp and drew her legs up onto the examination table, even as the rational part of her brain realized there was no threat, or more precisely, no obvious threat. The little shapes were mice, and not nasty mutant killer mice either. Just regular little mice, like Stuart Little. There were at least half a dozen of them still in the recess. Three or four had scurried out when the door opened, scouting the room, but showing no signs of hostility.