They obliged. When they were gone Nina and Rita's eyes met. For a moment they considered the scenario, and then burst out laughing. “You know I can take you, right?” Nina warned with a chuckle.
“You can try, my darling. It would be a good effort, I'm sure,” Rita jested back. “But seriously, between you and me, I just want the contents of this relic, Nina. True, I loathe David Purdue, but I have no desire to kill him. It took all of my influence to get my husband to keep Purdue's Egyptian associate hostage instead of killing him. My desire to find the Vault of Hercules is strictly business. I’m not willing to kill people for its riches.”
“Good to know,” Nina sighed, learning about an Egyptian associate of Purdue's she’d had no knowledge of. “I had not chalked you up as a killer, Rita. But you do seem to be playing with high stakes just for an archaeological find.”
“I never meant to marry into the Cosa Nostra, you know?” Rita explained matter-of-factly, thinking Nina already knew her business through Purdue. “I merely thought I was marrying a rich Sicilian businessman so that he would fund my digs and my research,” Rita whispered. “Too late did I realize what kind of family I’d gotten involved with. But if I find the Vault, I could give Guido his treasures and he would leave me and my son alone.”
“Your son?” Nina asked in surprise.
“Ladies, we’re about to have dinner and we’re discussing the quest details,” Guido announced, peeking around the corner. His statement sounded exactly like an order and did not leave much in the way of a suggestion.
“Bit early for dinner. You're in Scotland now,” Nina snapped.
“We'll be up in ten minutes, Guido,” Rita said with a tone of finality he had to accept. He left reluctantly and only after glaring at the feisty, dark-eyed historian.
“How do you put up with th...oh, yeah, I forgot,” she told Rita, who just shook her head.
“Come, let's see what's on the gross papyrus. You first,” Rita nudged Nina to check the writings on the yellowed pages stained with aged rot and brown liquid.
“Gee. Thanks,” Nina winced as she snapped on a fresh pair of gloves.
Carefully she handled the frail material to best expand it and flatten the surface without rupturing it. Once she had placed a special press on top of the two pages to even out most of the folds, she gently pinched the corners between her thumbs and index fingers and took it to another station in the lab. Upon the white desk there Nina secured the antique documents under four clasps and pulled closer the aluminum arm to which the large magnifier lamp was fixed.
She switched on the bright lamp inside the tubing of the magnifying glass, hovering it over the paper to better read what was scribbled on it. Frowning, Nina leaned forward to decipher the words.
“It's in English,” she reported.
“What does it say? Does it talk about the vault?” Rita asked, almost frantic with anticipation.
“Aye,” Nina revealed.
Rita smiled, “Let me see. Let me see!”
Nina stepped aside, still memorizing what the Allied soldier had noted on the first part.
“Holy shit!” Rita gasped as she reached the last piece at the bottom. “Did you see this?”
“No,” Nina moaned, “because you pushed in.”
“Nina, the Allied soldier was sent to infiltrate and thwart the SS on this expedition, but they discovered his identity, right?” Rita relayed as she read.
“Aye, we know that,” Nina affirmed.
“Here is the sore part, love,” Rita said, breathing unevenly. “When they discovered that he was a spy, they used his own child as a sacrifice to gain entry into the Vault of Hercules!”
“Geezuss!” Nina shrieked, holding her mouth in astonishment. “That is barbaric!”
“They're Nazis, love. Still, from what he says here, his daughter, aged four, was supposed to be endowed with strength—the strength of Hercules. But instead she perished,” Rita recounted.
“Wait, they put the snake with her, thinking...?” Nina asked, but Rita knew what she was on to.
“Thinking she would crush the snake like Hercules reputedly did when Hera sent the snake into his crib to kill him,” she confirmed Nina's speculation.
“Christ,” Nina murmured to herself. She looked up. “Rita, does he say where the vault is?”
“They never got inside,” Rita read slowly, seeking her way through the words of a grieving father.
“They were perturbed by something and all proof of this experiment went into this relic to be retrieved later. The soldier, I suppose, was killed and left behind while they sent someone to hide the evidence in Ethiopia until they could try again. Naturally, by adorning the chest like the Ark of the Covenant, they knew that the locals in Aksum and the surrounding counties would never let anyone remove what they thought was holy.”
“Evil and devious, in true fashion,” Nina sighed. Her phone rang suddenly, starting both women. Nina didn’t recognize the number, but she took the call anyway, if only to calm her nerves. She knew Rita was listening, so she dared not make any plans to escape or tell anyone what was going on in Wrichtishousis.
“Hello,” she said confidently. Nina figured, whoever it was, that she should at least drop a few hints as to where they will be, just in case matters went sour. “Oh, hi Derek! Listen, I can’t make my training session tonight. There is a wedding I have to attend and we’re on the road. But I'll see you again in a few days for coffee at the Kalavryta?”
The voice on the other side sounded like a radio transmission, and there was only one man Nina knew of who had a voice like that—the exceedingly strong bald man at the gym. “Noted. I'll see what I can do to meet you there. ETA?”
Nina looked in Rita's direction, where the archaeologist stood with folded arms, listening. The historian shook her head as if the person on the other side was babbling too much.
“No, the wedding is the day after tomorrow, so I really cannot make it, honey. Sorry, but I'll catch up when I get back,” she smiled.
The radio-voice man replied, “I'll be there.”
Nina hung up the phone and sighed, “Personal trainers always think they own you. If I want a gay boyfriend I'll hang out in the Theology Department, you know?”
She promptly deleted the number and switched off her phone. Too many times before she’d learned the hard way that numbers could be retrieved by the wrong people, and now that she had learned what manner of people they were dealing with, she could not afford to take any chances. Even though she had no idea who the man at the gym really was—apart from what her lackey had found out—she had a feeling that bringing him in would help her odds.
In a situation where opponents worked together the volatility would always be at hair-trigger sensitivity. As much as they all desired to locate the vault and benefit from the discovery, Nina knew there was no chance of it ending in them all shaking hands and exchanging e-mails. The only questions were how long it would take to go wrong and who would be the first to die.
“Come on, let's go and tell the men what to do,” Rita winked at Nina.
“My favorite part,” Nina replied, dissembling her cell phone in her pocket where her right hand was resting. Rita closed the laboratory door and made sure it clicked shut, the small bubble of green light jumping to the red on the opposite side. “There, now nobody can tamper with our antiques.”
Nina ignored Rita's patronizing tone and pretended not to care. She normally would not entertain such childish mannerisms, but now that she knew that these people were part of the Sicilian Mafia there was reason to keep her cool. She doubted that her friends were aware of the stakes and the danger involved here, but she hoped to get the message across as soon as she could find a way to let Purdue and Sam know. It would be exceedingly difficult with Rita orbiting her like a satellite.
23
Under a bright ceiling light in his apartment in Newington, the bald man from Nina's gym was packing his sports bag. This time, however, it was not filled with pr
otein powder, towels, and fresh socks. Right at the bottom, under a folded golf shirt, an unlicensed firearm slumbered. Nina's nameless powerhouse walked over to his bookshelf lined with novels by Tom Clancy and John Grisham, biographies like that of Winston Churchill and Oliver Cromwell, the odd Sean Hudson horror, and a stack of Encyclopedia Britannica. Behind the larger books a thick metal box held up a statue of the god Atlas, bearing the world upon his shoulders.
An old cigar tin balanced on top of some smaller notebooks he had shoved in behind the large hardbacks. Inside the tin he kept the key to the metal box, which served as a low-key money box or makeshift safe. The sparsely furnished apartment was evident of the man's long incarceration up until a few months ago. In fact, apart from the obligatory trip to the grocery store and his personal time at the gym in Quartermile, he was a recluse. Nobody knew how he made a living since his release and nobody dared ask. He was the kind of man who did not have to do or say a single thing to attain an intimidating presence, even as skinny as he was.
Perhaps it was his black eyes full of wisdom and confidence that only came standard with hell and attitude. Even his car was an insignificant model, over twenty years old. Ex-SAS captain John Arthur Armstrong was by no means a flashy person and his business was his own. All he wanted was to be left alone. After the life he’d had, the biggest treasure in life was peace and solitude.
Unlike his perceived personality in public, Mr. Armstrong enjoyed talking as long as the audience was his own. Living alone before incarceration, being locked mostly in solitary confinement during his stretch at Wakefield, and preferring his own company in every aspect of his life had him talking to himself a lot.
From the metal box he took all his cash, a hefty sum that couldn’t possibly have been the remnants of responsible saving. Piles of bound notes occupied the metal box, but this was only his home stash. He had more and he would never tell where it was. There was only one thing he desired more than to be left alone, and that was to destroy the pigs who’d turned on him and left him behind for the cops after he’d done a job for them. Just before being released from the Supermax unit at the HM Prison at Wakefield, he’d obtained priceless information.
The same bastard who’d betrayed him was orchestrating the kidnapping of an MI6 agent's child, and it would occur in Quarter mile. Although the kidnapping at the gym had been foiled by the petite brunette he’d seen training there, it was meant to be the decoy while another abduction, the real target, was to be at Falkirk. Unfortunately, even John's sharp mind had been fooled. It was only after he’d heard about Sam Cleave's hunt for Valdi from Bad Norris that he picked up the trail that led him to Nina Gould. Initially he was unable to locate Sam, so with a bit of wording on the underground front he got her number and took a chance.
“It’s a small world, is it not, Dr. Gould?” he said as he packed the money in strategic places in his clothing and on his person. Surprised as he was about her response to his call, he could tell by her tone of voice that she was in trouble, desperate to drop bread crumbs to anyone with the wherewithal to catch on. He checked the location of Kalavryta on the map and proceeded to purchase his flight ticket to Greece.
John smiled as he reminisced about the phone call. “Still can’t fathom the coincidence you brought across my road, Dr. Gould. It’s done nothing short of invite me to the man I have vowed to kill.” He shook his head, “It's Kismet.”
He had met Valdi in prison a few years ago, just before the monster had been transferred to Broadmoor, a cage in London for criminally insane animals where he fit in perfectly. It was during this brief time that Valdi had told him about the international racketeer Igor Heller slicing a deal with Guido Bruno, acting head of the Cosa Nostra in Ireland. When Bad Norris leaked that Guido Bruno was responsible for Valdi's premature and illegal release from Broadmoor, John was infuriated for a plethora of reasons, most of which bore on the fact that Bruno had the audacity to sink even lower. Instead of keeping to gunrunning, drug smuggling, counterfeiting and arson, the Sicilian swine had now graduated to human trafficking—of children!
“I don't know what this MI6 agent did to fuck you over, sonny-Jim, but I’d be elated to assist in annihilating your cannibalistic ball-biter while I peel the goddamn skin off ya.” John grinned vindictively as he unpinned a newspaper article from his wall. It featured an article on Igor Heller's arrest in Romania a few years ago and mentioned his affiliation with a so-called Nazi myth and his ties to Bruno's previous cartel in Rome.
It was a fine testament to the evil that had occurred when Heller's Black Sun organization worked with Bruno's Sicilian Mafia, and he would be damned if Valdi or Bruno would get away with this heinousness. In his right fist the article crumpled under the strain of his rage as he imagined the paper being Bruno's scrotum.
John Arthur Armstrong had never claimed to be a saint. In fact, his stint in the SAS was initiated only to attain a higher level of training in the art of war. He’d always loved violence and never held any respect for authority, but he hoped that enlisting in military ranks would remedy his uncontrollable penchant for destruction. The SAS supplied him with all the necessary training in hand-to-hand combat and armament, as well as a wealth of opportunity to employ his knowledge.
All went smoothly until the day he’d maimed his commanding officer in what was still an unconfirmed directive for a midnight drill in the Lossie Forest. From that incident onward his criminal career had escalated rapidly. Due to the lack of conclusive evidence he was subsequently discharged, but it was too late. John Arthur Armstrong was already highly trained in military offensives for almost all terrains and had trained his body equally as intensively as his marksmanship.
Little as the young trainers and staff at Masteron's Gym & Fitness knew about him, they certainly had a good eye for a dangerous individual. They had no idea that the villainous character they conjured up for him just to keep their jobs interesting was actually spot-on. The bald man who could bench a Chieftain armored tank and had the glare of Satan, was indeed that strong and that mean. Much as he would have relished proving this to the puny boys at the fitness club, he prized his privacy much more. After all, his privacy would be pivotal to complete the murderous mission he had planned. For now, he had to keep to being a grumpy loner with a potent protein shake in his water bottle.
24
After Nina had packed—she was the last one to leave Wrichtishousis—she passed the butler in the hallway on her way to the lobby. As was tradition, he followed her to the front door where Purdue was waiting with Bruno. Charles and Nina had another of those exchanges that made Purdue ache with curiosity, but once again he was not in a position to ask. In turn, Purdue gave his butler a lingering stare which accurately conveyed his inquiry, yet all Charles could do in response was to drop his gaze to the floor in humility.
“My boys will be outside twenty-four-seven, capiche?” Bruno told Charles. “You just make sure they are fed and have fresh linen to sleep on and they won't shoot you, alright!”
“Jesus! If he whips out the wannabe Tony Soprano again I'm going to drown him in cement,” Nina mumbled to Purdue, who couldn’t help but smirk at her annoyance with the mafia toddler.
“Let's just get out of here first so that we can find the Vault of Hercules. Then we can send out the Secret Service to arrest these mooks before Nina lets him sleep with the fishes,” Sam whispered from behind them as he joined them at the small luxury minibus. The three of them had a rare chuckle before giving their luggage to the driver of the vehicle.
“Oh, I have a feeling that ol' Charles will be just fine in charge here,” Nina said.
“Why?” Purdue asked as they inched in one by one on the back section seats.
“I'll tell you when we get to Greece,” she sighed nervously, watching Rita intently as the archaeologist rounded the exterior of the vehicle to get into the front seat.
“Tell me now,” he insisted.
Nina motioned to him that she could not talk within earshot of the
ir coercive colleagues. Sam was equally curious, but he had other aspects to weigh up on the coming trip that he too, could not share yet. On their way to the airstrip at North Berwick, Sam decided to lay his head back and relax. Nina was relieved that he seemed almost back to his old self. Purdue had arranged with Larsen and his crew to fly his jet to the closer airstrip at North Berwick and pick up their travel party there. There was no way he would reveal the location of his actual flight base at Milltown to the likes of Prof. Rita Medley and her mafia mutts.
It would be a five-hour flight to Athens, Greece. Soon Purdue, Sam and Nina knew that the trip would feel like a week's worth with a noisy, thankless brat. After they boarded Purdue's jet to hopefully cut the journey shorter, the fiasco began. From the food served to the turbines of the craft, Guido Bruno knew better, owned better, did not approve of and apparently outdid. Even Rita, who hated Purdue's guts, defended his classy fleets and posh dishes in flight and was looking terribly embarrassed by her husband's behavior. This particular bitch-fit was for having to take Purdue's jet instead of one from Bruno's uncle's fleet. He could not handle the fact that he had to be a mere passenger on the opponent's aircraft, which somehow implied some form of weakness to his status.
Nina managed to use the continuous raving and bitching to her advantage.
“Purdue, did you have an Egyptian assistant on your less than legal exploit in Ethiopia?” she whispered, while Rita and Guido were arguing profusely in the background.
“I did, why?” he replied.
“Where is he?” she asked.
Purdue looked uncomfortable and a bit upset. “He is dead, Nina. His name was Adjo Kira. Team Medley came at us in a hail of bullets just before my chopper showed up to pluck us up with the relic. I believe he got shot several times because he was completely unresponsive when I checked his condition. Whatever they did to his brother, I shudder to think.”
“He’s alive,” she whispered.
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