Very impressed with himself, Purdue had to turn and give her a self-assured look first, just to make sure that she acknowledged his ingenuity. Agatha gestured a slow applause and a shaking head, giving him his moment. Purdue smiled and turned his attention to the cavernous entrance under the silt he had wiped away. With flashlights brightly showing the way they proceeded into the wormhole of stone and geo-deposits that had been dug so many decades before by desperate men. Against the rock walls next to them the deep gash marks of heavy hand tools could still be seen where the tunnel was broken away bit by bit to go deeper into the sub-alluvial stone.
Venice and its surrounding geology did not actually possess rock matter as such, but there seemed to be the occasional protrusion from tectonic plates that bore up through the loose ocean floor. Besides, with a history spanning several centuries, Venice could very well have had rock under it, lying closer to the surface. There was no way to know what was truly under such antediluvian structures.
Agatha tried her best to ignore the narrowing throat of rock and filthy water bringing her down, but her instincts threatened to send her into a panic. The corridor seemed to go on forever and she was running out of composure, even knowing full well that a tantrum would profit her nothing, along with killing her in the process. Purdue slowed, vexing his sister once again by acting like a stopper obstructing a drain. He pointed to the wall just before the mouth of the junction they had reached.
Etched in the stone with those same tools was the word ARC. They exchanged looks of perplexity and shrugged, wondering what this place had to do with the ARK that was planned during approximately the same time frame as when the tunnel was dug. It was an interesting development for the Purdues. They were both harboring the same notion. Perhaps this had been planned as the original ARK?
From the junction the only way was upward, still worming through the rock tunnel. At first the mouth of their current tunnel looked like a dead end of stone, but on closer inspection it was just a chimney that they had to enter and from there climb up. Agatha hated the small space that she was not even certain would lead them anywhere before they ran out of oxygen, but she had to complete the journey. There was no use in turning back now. The only consolation was that the entry of the stone chimney rose above the water level, therefore rescuing Agatha from another minute in the hazardous brown muck.
They removed their masks in the confined space of the tubular conduit, their faces showing the exertion of the swim in the grotesque shadows that the flashlights shifted across their faces every time they moved.
“See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Purdue grinned.
“No, I agree. It was positively fabulous. We should do it again soon,” she snapped, huffing and puffing from relief rather than fatigue. Her brother chuckled at her sarcastic response and checked his tablet again, expanding it somewhat with a sweep of his thumb. Agatha’s big blue eyes ogled the process in silence as the dimensions and markers reflected on her wet face. “I’m no expert, David, but I would guess that the next move should be up this tunnel. Seems like the only logical direction, does it not?”
He just smirked at her childish remark and continued to check the screen for their next possible route. “You’d be elated to know that just up this chimney we should be on the red dot.”
She knew what that meant. The red dot, as they designed the diagram after entering all the information, was ground zero—the library itself. Finally their laborious coding and deciphering, calculating, recalculating, and formulation during days of frustration would pay off. Expert climbers, the both of them made quick work of the narrow tunnel by just wedging their bodies between the two opposing sides of the stone chimney and bearing upward bit by bit. They shared a snigger at the effort, since both recalled how they used to get lashed by their mother when they soiled the door frames with dirty bare feet, climbing up in the same fashion.
At the top of the snug vertical channel, the Purdues rolled out over the rim and when they sat up to look around, their jaws dropped in disbelief.
34
“Hold still, Sam. This is the last of the bandaging,” Nina said. Sam moaned more than he hoped to if only to look tough, but by now he had abandoned the need to be manly. He was sore, very sore, and he was too tired to put in the effort anymore.
“How is it we never have alcohol when we need it?” he complained through gritted teeth.
“Aye, story of my life,” Nina agreed as she finished wrapping the rapidly deteriorating bullet wound on Sam’s leg. “Dr. Philips, you are more fascinated by those books than I am, and that’s saying something. Have you found anything of value to us there yet? Where do these books fit in with the Library of Forbidden Books?”
He looked dazed at first, as he realized he was being addressed. Surrounded by Nina’s collection of old books, his eyes glanced upward to formulate a proper response. With a bit of an uncertain stutter, he replied, “Well, from what I see here, most of these books have one thing in common. They have no print company, ISBN, or similar identification on them. Of course, I am not referring to the obvious journals and such.” Nina and Sam nodded, eager to hear the rest of his findings.
“By what I see throughout the writings, apart from the subject matter . . . ”
“God, Pasty really takes his time to get to the point, doesn’t he?” Sam remarked to Nina through pursed lips. Her shoulders shook from her subdued giggle.
“Is that several chapters of these books stop in midsentence every time, every single one,” Richard Philips frowned. “It is rather odd, but then, this interesting codex tells us that the half sentences are complete . . . if one knows where to look.”
“Library of Forbidden Books,” Nina nodded.
“Precisely. The hidden library holds the rest of the information set forth in these chapters, these books. Each one, their own subject, has a mate somewhere in the library that completes the information. And once every two mates are united the full code is revealed.”
“In the wrong hands that shit would be the end of the world, you know,” Sam said. His voice was growing a bit weaker, but he pulled his blanket up to his ears and sank into its warm protective folds with a sigh. Nina looked worried, but somewhere under her concern another emotion haunted her. Sam deciphered it as some sort of sadness, perhaps even melancholy. It made him feel so sorry for her, because he knew she missed her house and the life of obscurity she so desired, once more obliterated by him and Purdue.
“What is that hideous thing about, Dr. Philips?” Sam asked.
Nina pulled up her nose and turned her head with an almost inaudible, “Christ.”
“I see it freaks you out just as much as me, aye?” Sam told her.
Dr. Richard Philips agreed, yet unlike his companions he was unafraid to handle the so-called spider book of Nina and Gretchen’s nightmares. “Yes, it is quite ghastly, right?”
“Quite,” Nina scoffed, amazed at his calm scrutiny of the grotesque human skin and hair that covered the book.
“It looks disturbingly much like my 11th grade science teacher, Mr. Innsworth,” the pasty-faced academic attempted a joke in his dry manner. It caught on with Sam, but Nina was still stuck on “it looks.” Richard had the book open and paged rapidly through it as he scanned the contents throughout. “It is a book of worship to one of the primary old gods the SS had attempted to cross here, mainly Argathule. I am not familiar with this one, but by the writings in every chapter by different authors, it appears to be aquatic, no matter which tongue or hand they have been written in,”
“Please don’t say ‘tongue or hand’ when you discuss that cadaverous book, Richard,” Nina sighed, to his amusement.
“We would want to stop this one from coming to visit, trust me,” Richard shivered wildly to convey what he was reading about Argathule, his eyes glued to the page he was on. He looked up at Nina, “But, my God, would it not be a magnificent sight to see!”
Sam raised his brow. Nina looked disgusted. It made the wan-skinned
lecturer recoil back into his reading and he kept quiet again.
“I’m going to see if I can find some canned food that won’t kill us,” Nina said, and headed for the galley.
Two hours later, Sam was breathing heavily, curled up on the corner bunk, drifting in and out of sleep while the clanking hull sounds and bubbling vents played a lullaby.
In the bunk farther down, Dr. Richard Philips kept busy by reading an old log he found in one of the drawers, while Gretchen was handling the pilot duties, thanks to her late husband’s insistence that she savvy herself in maritime machinery. She never knew why he was so adamant, but lately, with all the new revelations about the Nazis and the dumb luck of an aquatic military vessel as their only escape, she was beginning to understand why he told her that such skill would benefit her when “the shit struck the fan.” That was another thing she only came to realize the true meaning of in the past few days.
It was clear to her now that her beloved husband knew more than the construction and design of buildings. There was something he had worked on in Italy—that thing he could never tell her about—that had him instruct his wife thusly, for her to only do it out of love and blind faith that her husband was not prone to lunacy. Now Gretchen Mueller knew that his death was probably not an accident after all. The provisions he made for her were just too coincidental.
There were the other odd coincidences pertaining to the lecturer, the estate agent, and the surreal discovery of a Second World War submarine under her old friend’s new house. Gretchen frowned to herself as she checked the battery and hydrogen levels. For the first time since she became infatuated with Dr. Philips and his doctrines, and since she was reunited with Nina Gould, she had become aware of some form of pattern. It was as if they were all pawns on someone’s chessboard. Why else were they each in the professions they were and happened to be in certain places at certain times to join up by force of necessity.
“Gretch, where are we going with this thing?” Nina asked her friend when the two women sat down for a breather.
“We are supposed to head to Venice, but the diesel would never hold out. And we are too far from the nearest garage to fill up,” Gretchen sighed seriously, hiding her jest just long enough for Nina to realize and slap her on the arm with a chuckle.
“Do you have any idea how honored we should be?” Gretchen beamed.
“I’m feeling a little flat on honor right now. Why?” Nina asked.
“Do you have any idea what submarine this is, Nina? Oh my God, you are going to love this . . . we are currently traversing the North Sea in the legendary HMS Trident, doll!” Gretchen shrieked excitedly.
“Trident,” Nina repeated, trying to register the name in her historical archives. “Was it not the U-boat that had a baby doe onboard during the Second World War?”
Gretchen looked at Nina with an uncertain amusement, “Eh, what?”
“Yes, the HMS Trident was given a reindeer doe as a gift by the Russians. I shit you not,” Nina smiled. “It was some diplomatic gesture to celebrate the Russian and British alliance during the war. They kept the little doe as a pet on this very submarine, if it is indeed this one. Most of them were decommissioned, sold for scrap, or destroyed by now, though. Are you sure?”
“Hell yes! See? N52, the Trident’s number,” Gretch giggled, and tossed her the logs of the navigator in charge of bearing and attack strategy. “And . . . ” Gretchen grinned, “in there it says Commander James Gordon Gould was CO of this machine when it departed from Oban for its first patrol on 27 October 1939!”
“What? Really?” Nina marveled. “Imagine if he was related to me. I’d have to look into that, Gretch! That is just fucking awesome!”
“Precisely! How is that for coincidence? It’s a surreal synchronicity across decades, I think. The very submarine he commanded happened to be secretly hidden under the very house you happened to buy without even knowing anything about it!” Gretchen exclaimed with a whimsical smile.
Nina was dumbstruck, and intrigued in a good way, for a change.
On the outside of the beastly steel vessel, eerie clanking sounds constantly startled the occupants, testing their nerves with unfamiliar habits. They had no food and very little to drink, thanks to Nina’s quick thinking to grab the six pack of Purely Scottish Natural Mineral Water she had on the kitchen table before they went to retrieve the books in her attic.
“Our own fuel is running very low. Where are we now?” she asked Gretchen.
“By what the instruments indicate . . . and I don’t know how effective they are . . . we should be just past the north point of Kirkwall now and then I’ll take her south toward the mainland,” Gretchen explained in all sincerity.
Nina thought about the route. It would be futile to carry on to Tórshavn just to fly to Amsterdam, where they were first headed before realizing the distance was simply too great. It would be better to stay out of the icier waters and stay in the familiar currents of the North Sea. She blinked rapidly as her mind map worked out their best route.
“If we can make it to Aberdeen, we can make a plan to get diesel to get to Amsterdam, right?” she asked.
“It’s a reach, doll,” Gretchen replied. “With Sam’s injury and no food, not to mention cabin fever and nightmarish noises we can’t investigate, I’d advise against it. I suggest we dock at Aberdeen and charter a Cessna to fly to Italy. No hassles with connection points.”
Nina took her words to heart. Gretchen supported her argument with some good facts.
“They will see us on the radar anyway. You do realize that we’re not in international waters, plus, we are in an aquatic assault vessel, complete with torpedoes I bet!” she told Nina in a nonchalant announcement that reminded both women in what level of trouble they really were.
“Jesus, they’ll bombard us if we don’t answer their radio contact. Do we have functional communication?” Nina asked. “I don’t know how much longer I can stand being in this tin can, you know? God, I’d kill for a fag.”
“You and me both,” Sam said from behind her. He was limping and his face was a moist pallid mess of pain, but he was optimistic. “I second Gretchen’s plan. I’ll take care of the charter. I have contacts,” he flashed the self-assured boyish face, although he was visibly deteriorating.
35
“Where is Richard?” Nina asked.
“Sleeping. I have never seen anyone so immersed in a log book before, but ultimately I think it took its toll and he clocked out,” Sam said. “He is hoarding your books like a madman, Nina. Maybe you should sell them to him. You’d make a fortune.”
“Ha! Those books are all I have left of my dream house,” Nina replied, but she suddenly realized that her infamous house had now become a crime scene and there was no doubt that it would be off limits to her. Most of the money she had saved up through the years was sunk into that property and apart from the financial catastrophe it had dumped her in, she was now homeless.
“This was going to be my clean start, you know,” she lamented to nobody in particular. Nina almost became utterly melancholy, now that there was time for what happened to really sink in. Maybe she was so used to running for her life that she did not realize the true loss she had suffered until now. “I was going to renovate it, make it mine, and live in my old town. I was going to be insignificant and invisible.” Her voice cracked a little at the sudden flood of emotions. Gretchen hugged her, facing Nina toward Sam.
“You can never be insignificant, Dr. Gould,” he told her firmly in a soft voice that teemed with admiration and affection. Nina forced a smile as Sam winked at her. His body was shaking terribly under the reeking blanket he had around his shoulders.
“Sam, are you all right?” Nina asked. Her expression changed into one of serious concern as the tremors took to Sam and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. “Oh God, Gretch, help me!” she shouted as Sam’s knees gave way under him and he sank to the ground in a quivering heap.
“His fever is sky high, doll! L
et’s get him up on the bunk!” Gretchen cried. “Richard! Richard, some help over here, please!”
“Fuck! We’re down to one bottle of water to make everything worse!” Nina seethed as she flew into the space where Richard had just woken. He rushed to help Gretchen with Sam while Nina got the last bottle of water they had.
“He is in shock,” Richard remarked, as he laid Sam’s strained and shaking frame on the bunk almost entirely by himself, alleviating Gretchen’s burden. “Get more blankets, Nina.” The gaunt lecturer looked up at Gretchen. His countenance was unnerving.
“Is he going to be okay?” Gretchen asked Richard, just as Nina returned with blankets stacked in her arms.
“If we don’t get him to a hospital soon, he will die. The infection has not subsided, and the medi-kit has no more ointment or dressings, as if it even helped in the first place. Everything in here is simply too old to be of any use anymore, I fear. Sam might not make it this time,” he bemoaned his helplessness.
“Hey! Hey!” Nina hissed as she briskly wrapped Sam in another layer of smelly blankets. “Fuck that! He will be fine, you hear me? I don’t want to hear any of that shit from anyone!” she shouted defensively at her companions. “Sam just needs some rest,” she uttered softly, stroking his wet hair and his brow gently. “Just needs rest, that’s all.”
The other two exchanged worried looks. Suddenly the U-boat was struck by something massive and immovable, sending Richard and Gretchen sprawling on the floor and Nina fell off the bunk. Sam’s body jerked against the wall beside the bunk, but he was out cold. The electrical current was interrupted, the lights flashing, and it was followed by a bone-chilling sound that reverberated through the very metal of the vessel.
Sam opened his eyes weakly. He listened intently, but only heard the other three people scuffling, gradually getting back up with befuddled looks. Nina held her ankle, Gretchen nursed her shoulder, and Richard ignored his bloody nose to concentrate on the sounds that pulsed about the outer hull, just short of the bilge keels. The four terrified occupants of the HMS Trident sat stunned, listening to the ghastly scratching noises, as if metal hooks of impressive size were challenging the tactile strength of the submarine.
Order of the Black Sun Box Set 3 Page 42