John rolled his eyes. “It’s almost a pity to waste my time dying to rid the earth of a prick like you, you know that?”
“You don't want to do this, pal,” Guido warned, but his voice quivered as he retreated.
“Ran out of little girls to hide behind, you pussy?” John asked as he thundered toward the coward.
Nina and Sam had gathered all the girls and managed to revive most of them. The youngest, a seven-year-old, could not wake. Sam swooped her up in his arms. Nina grabbed Sam's camera and her own gear, looking back once more to pay her respects to Purdue, lamenting the fact that his body would forever lie under the magnificent mountains of Greece. “Come, we have to go,” Sam said.
“The Cosa Nostra is outside, Sam. I don’t think he was bluffing,” she urged.
Before they could discuss the matter they heard Guido let out an unearthly scream. On turning, Sam and Nina saw that John Armstrong had lifted one of the sacrificial slabs and dropped it on Guido's legs to nail him down. The water was rising rapidly, and the duct with Ambrosia had been immersed in the lake. The glory of the relic was finally impotent and worthless. Nina sobbed for the fate of her acquaintance as she watched John Arthur Armstrong stake his place by the pillars, like a Biblical Samson. He looked up at her and winked, “Give my best to the lads at Masterton's, alright?”
“I shall,” she choked.
With that, John started pushing at the ancient columns that held up the Vault of Hercules. Guido went mad with terror as the roof began to crack and stalactites plunged into the water as they broke off from above. Guido Bruno tried to reason for his life, but he was imploring deaf ears and a solid will. As he screamed the ascending tide marred his pleas, until he had exhausted his lungs, unable to fend off the hungry waters. He watched his former henchman lean into the pillars with red-faced effort, his lean muscles shivering at the exertion as one of the supportive columns exploded into flying shards of rock, marble, and calcite.
“We have to go, Nina!” Sam shouted while he shoved the children gently in the opposite direction.
The cavern started to crack in a din of ungodly thunder so loud it would have been the pride of Zeus himself. When the second pillar snapped in half, the roof of the cave collapsed, bringing the entire layer of rock above it down on Guido's dire screams. Strong as the demigod Hercules himself, the venerable John Arthur Armstrong could not withstand the weight of a thousand boulders, and with eyes closed and a smile on his face he received his redemption. His labors were concluded as the mountain crushed his body in the divine chamber of a god.
As the entire cave system collapsed under the unnamed mountain, Nina and Sam were trying to console the terrified children they were trying to evacuate from the crumbling tunnel. It was pitch dark. They’d lost their flashlights inside the cavern when the roof caved.
“Sam! Look!” Nina exclaimed.
Ahead of them the faint flashing of multi-colored lights danced in the darkness, marking their way to salvation. Roaring all around them, the tremors of the geographical collapse deafened them, but the lights soon led them to the entrance of the natural structure that resembled the Temple of Hercules.
“Sam, the mob is going to drop us like flies,” Nina warned as she clutched two little ones under her left arm, holding Amber Smith's hand to her right. Sam seemed very sure of himself as he stopped to let all the girls pass him. When Nina got to him, just short of the entrance, he kissed her quickly and peered into her eyes with his own. “Remember, Purdue is dead. Left at the bottom of the lake. Right?”
“Aye,” she frowned, “and you put him there...”
“Nina,” he insisted. “Just...just go with it.”
The tunnel crumbled behind them and the journalist and the historian lunged forward to avert being crushed by the rocks. Outside, Nina's sensitive eyes could barely distinguish the figures all about them, but soon she heard Patrick Smith's voice, crying his daughter's name as they were reunited. Holding her hand over her narrowed eyes, she asked Paddy, “Is everyone alright?”
“Aye, Nina,” Paddy said. “Well done. I owe you a great debt of gratitude; you and Sam.”
“The true hero is buried in that mountain,” Nina said. “Hercules put to flesh, he was.”
“We just apprehended thirteen Mafia members in wait out here, so there’s a bonus. All these bastards who’ve been trafficking people are going to rot in the cages they belong in,” Paddy reported. “Oh, Sam, where is Dave Purdue? That was part of our deal.”
Sam looked at Nina. Her eyes were still red mourning Purdue and the way she looked at him was one of disappointment and scorn. “I shot him. He is dead. You will see that on the footage. Cleaned the slate.”
“You killed him?” Paddy asked. “Christ, Sam. You could have just delivered him to us.”
“I know. But things got heated in there and...things happened. I will be available for questioning, if you want to arrest me for his murder,” Sam offered.
Nina could not believe it. “You really are Prometheus. Giving up your freedom to atone.”
“It’s a pity you decided to go that far, Sam,” Paddy said, shaking his head. “But the live stream’s been sent to my office and recorded on our servers. I’ll make sure that justice is done. Go get some rest.”
34
Three days later a still devastated Nina arrived at her house in Oban. She’d received the details of Prof. Medley's funeral the day before. It was drizzling lightly over Oban, draping the small town in a gray blanket of cold, wet fog. She wondered what would become of Sam. And she still could not believe that Purdue was dead. It was so surreal to imagine her life without his flamboyant personality and his passion.
Even more shocking was that Sam had become so unhinged. She still loved him, somewhere deep inside, but could not bear to see him like that anymore.
With a weekend's worth of sherry and popcorn, Nina decided to just do nothing for a while. Her hoodie was swept back by the strong wind, exposing her hair to the frigid air of Scotland. “God, I love the cold,” she muttered, as she closed the car's passenger door, lugging her groceries up the walkway. Fumbling for her house keys she caught sight of something eerie that briefly appeared in her peripheral vision, an orange blur that shot in under her porch.
Nina put her stuff down and knelt to duck her head under the porch. “Bruich?”
The cat sat there, grooming himself in his usual, indifferent way. Nina smiled. She came back up and turned to unlock her door.
“Oh my God!” she shouted in elation. “Purdue!”
She ran into his embrace. “Easy, my tits are killing me,” he joked. Next to him stood Sam, having a good chuckle as his cat leapt into his arms. Nina held Purdue tightly, looking at Sam over his shoulder. The dark handsomeness of the journalist was a far cry from the brute she’d seen fighting Valdi, but he proved that he could go the distance.
“What?” he shrugged. “You didn’t really think I would shoot the old cock, did you?”
“After this week, there is very little I wouldn’t believe,” she sighed happily, still thinking about John Arthur Armstrong and his nameless grave.
Nina was relieved to hear that Paddy had only presented the parts of the footage that implicated Guido Bruno, Giuseppe Valdi, and Igor Heller as the architects of the recent human trafficking crimes. Nothing else came to light, not even the fact that Sam had arranged with Purdue to stage his death so that he could escape apprehension.
Purdue's butler, Charles, had contacted friends of his brother's from different covert government departments and arranged for Adjo and Donkor Kira to be liberated from Guido Bruno's holding cells in Fagal, Djibouti. Still, he too, had to be kept in the dark about Purdue's status.
Special Agent Patrick Smith did not know that Purdue was alive and that was good enough for now, because above all, Nina and Purdue had irrefutable proof that Sam was a loyal friend who did the right thing, even in the throes of hell, even under deadly threat in the Vault of Hercules.
END<
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The Hunt for the Lost Treasure
Prologue
Labrador, Canada – 1981
Screeching tires caterwauled behind Leslie as she scampered violently to escape the chase. Above her the cement bridge felt like a tombstone of gray silence, sealing her doom by allowing the Cadillac access to her hiding place. Broken slabs of concrete jutted up towards the sky, having been shed by the structure the last time the rain had stayed long to eat away at the edges of the parapets. Veering to evade them, she failed thanks to the soggy mud that held the tall grass and weeds of the moor-like terrain.
Leslie screamed out loud as a protruding steel rod sank into her calf and dragged itself along the length of her leg until her knee joint expelled its tip with a sickening lapping sound. It happened so swiftly that Leslie hardly noticed her fresh wound spitting blood all over the leaves and stems surrounding her. Writhing in agony, she fell into the cold, wet grass, grasping her leg between her palms.
“Shut up, shut up,” she mouthed, barely uttering a breath for fear of having been heard. Holding her burning leg, she curled up and waited, listening. She had to determine the position and distance of the big V8 on her track if she was to successfully avert capture. Her heart thundered in her chest as she heard the engine stall a few meters away, but when she heard two doors slamming shut instead of one, she couldn’t stop the tears.
Deep in her heart she believed that she was going to be alright, but common sense threatened to debunk her faith. There was very little chance that she could escape these people, especially in a barren area where only weeds grew. Along with her inaudible weeping, the frigid wind harmonized in a morbid aria while caressing her raven hair like a cruel mother filled with malice. Her long, straight hair impaired her vision, adding further to the obscure sight her tears had already caused, leaving Leslie practically incapable of surveying her environment.
“She’s here. I can smell her,” she heard a man say. His voice gave her the chills because of her unfortunate familiarity with it since the morning before when she had met him apparently by chance.
Two doors slammed, she thought, waiting for the awful truth to affirm itself. There were two people in the Caddy. He has someone helping him. He has someone helping him kill me!
Afraid to breathe, the fleeing young woman from Quebec shivered under her thin pink cardigan. She was by no means prepared for the cold in this region. Losing her coat while sneaking out of the bathroom window of her attacker's apartment had been a serious error, leaving her exposed to elements her body was not capable of fighting. The second voice interrupted her thoughts – a voice she did not know. By the revelation of its tone Leslie Michaud was introduced to her diabolical second hunter – a woman.
“Well, find the little bitch, Erich. I’m not spending the night out here again. This is not the first time I’ve had to save your ass by apprehending people who got away from your inept keep.” Leslie perked her ears. The woman sounded older than Erich, perhaps in her forties? Her accent was heavy. Leslie guessed that she was German, perhaps Austrian, a supposition based only on a previous encounter with an Austrian roommate at her university.
Leslie’s foot had grown ice cold, but not from the harsh autumn weather. Blood loss had effectively put her in peril of bleeding out entirely, and if she didn’t do something to stop the bleeding soon she faced a grim end. Another dreadful result of it was her impending unconsciousness. Perhaps her adrenaline rush was playing a smaller part in her concentration at the moment, with the wind chill forcing her into an uncomfortable state of survival. The freezing whip of the gale reminded Leslie of the potency of a cold shower to remedy the fatigue of a hangover. It kept her awake, even while her racing heart was making work of pumping out every drop of blood that still kept her alive.
Dizzy and nauseated, she listened to their trampling steps crunching into the marshland as the dropping temperature warned of the coming night. When she dared open her eyes she could see the tops of their heads bobbing up and down over the tips of the long grass as they searched the savage tract for her. The light was rapidly dimming, which left Leslie wondering whether the arrival of night was a curse or a blessing. If they discovered her she was done for, no doubt. However, against the hellish cold night she had but similar chances. The darkness might dissuade her hunters and hide her, but she would not survive till morning.
“I can smell you, Liebchen!” the woman suddenly sang out, jolting a bolt of panic through the wounded young woman. The wicked song persisted as far as the female pursuer advanced toward her. Leslie's body started shaking uncontrollably. “I want my pound of flesh, along with that little treasure you’re keeping from us, little kitten!”
Low pitched and elegant, the guttural voice of the Austrian woman sawed through Leslie's ears. To her dismay, the bobbing head emerged farther above the top of the grass and with every step closer, the woman's face pieced itself together more and more. Leslie Michaud could not look away from the terrifying, tall female as her face grew bigger the closer she got. Around her head she wore a fancy head scarf and a thick shawl made of some animal pelt adorned her neck and shoulders, keeping her warm and allowing her to seek out her prey in comfort. Before she laid eyes on the girl in the grass, Leslie quickly let go of her leg and, with her bloody hand, she pulled something from her pocket and promptly swallowed it.
“Hello, Liebchen,” the elegant witch smiled. The young woman's movement had drawn her eye and she shouted for Erich to join her. “Give me that trinket, will you,” she ordered Leslie. “Give it to me and I might consider leaving you here for the bears.”
“If I don't?” Leslie asked in a quivering voice, fighting the urge to regurgitate the unnatural morsel she’d just swallowed. The last thing she remembered was the 9x19 mm Parabellum the woman produced from her coat pocket. “Then Herr Luger will save you from the bears.”
1
Libation on the Isle of Mull
The television was an old one, mounted in the old way against the pub wall: rickety nails fixed it to an old iron kitchen cupboard door that was being used as a make-shift shelf.
“Oh, Lenny, when are you going to get a flat screen and join Scotland A.D.?” Nina asked when the owner and bartender planted her whiskey in front of her. “This is a sports bar, right? You’re supposed to feature a big flat screen monitor with HD specs so that your patrons can hear – and see – the matches.”
The plump sixty-year-old man ran his hands over his bald head and pinned the petite brown-eyed beauty with his glassy green eyes. “My bonny lass,” he started eagerly, but slowly, setting his weight on the left elbow he elected to lean on the counter with. “The only specs they'll need to see the game are the ones on their noses.”
Nina laughed. She found his indifference toward his technological ignorance both refreshing and highly amusing, and she enjoyed the unique rhythmic speech he used when explaining something in his defense. Second to that, Lenny was her hero for violating public law and allowing, no, insisting on smoking in his bar. It gave the joint a feel of rebellious freedom, derived only from old values and an older defiance. She didn’t even mind that the smoky atmosphere made whatever happened on the telly even more difficult to discern.
It was her favorite new haunt, simply labeled Lenny's Tavern, aptly bland for a man who found no appeal in glamour. Frequenting the place allowed her to imbibe her liquor in peace away from her hometown of Oban on the other side of the water. It had become her sanctuary – one of very few in this world. The little primitive pub & grub had been born twenty years before, yet showed no sign of progress with the times, and the locals on the Isle of Mull had no problem with that. Behind her, at one of the two pool tables, three sauced blokes were playing pool. In particular, the largest lard-ass of them all was constantly yelling 'sink the pink!' at the top of his lungs.
“Why are you so late?” Lenny bellowed as his son entered the establishment. His sudden roar made Nina jump. “I'm sorry, my dear Dr. Gould,” the rowdy fat man apolog
ized with a gentle hand tapping Nina's on the surface of the bar. “The little bastard is over half an hour late, but I did not mean to jab at your skeleton there. Sorry, sorry.”
“No, it's alright, Lenny,” she replied with a relieved sigh, her sense of order still annoyed by the old television and its snowy delivery of the old Telefunken. Her slim fingertips played on the smooth, worn wood of the bar as she watched the owner scold his son from behind the bar, taking in the reprimand as entertainment while she sipped the neat alcohol slowly warming her innards.
“Where have you been? Christ, I’ve been struggling to keep up here by myself!” Lenny ranted at the nonchalant bugger, whose skinny frame danced around inside his over-sized clothing.
“Dad, I told you we went ghost hunting. I said I might be late,” the young man protested, but his father would not look a fool in front of the bustling crowd of people in his keep.
“You said no such thing! You get behind this bar right now, dammit. I can't keep up all alone here and you know it.” Nina tried not to laugh as Lenny's son secretly counted the patrons in the pub. As he appeased his father by taking his place behind the bar, he met eyes with the lady historian and nodded courteously.
“You should know better than to give your father such sorrows, young man,” Nina jested, feeling wonderfully relaxed as she crossed the threshold a bit tipsy.
Lenny's son leaned slightly forward to keep his father from hearing as he replied, “There are, like, seven people in here, for God's sake. What’s he on about? I should’ve taken him ghost hunting with me, it seems.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Um, well, clearly he sees a crowd of people in here, right? The man must be clairvoyant or something, seeing people who are invisible and such in here,” he ribbed playfully, evoking a hearty chuckle from the merry Dr. Nina Gould. He had served her before, but they had never engaged in a conversation as such. She made sure Lenny was not looking before she asked the question she was dying to ask.
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