by P. W. Child
Yet he had to fulfill his duties as Renatus and attend each burial ceremony in the sunken chambers of the Black Sun house in Belgium. The lavish catacombs had been constructed especially for this purpose and featured niches for plaques and urns on the north side and inside the southern wall, tombs for coffins. It was still maintained in an old world way, with a healthy mix of technology and laser scanning for motion detection just to remind visitors that it was the twenty-first century after all.
“Much as I love the romantic Gothic setting of this city, I have to admit that it is a tad beyond my boundary for eccentricity with the water streets,” Agatha whispered as she walk-jogged to keep up with her determined brother’s strides. He was surprised at her plain eloquence of the complaint, but he found her timidity refreshing for a change. It made her seem almost . . . human.
“I think it is beautiful, old girl. You should forget about the water and take in the antiquity, the art of the city. Look at the gondolas, smell the cuisine, listen to the intricate classical sound of the music, my dear. Nowhere else in the world would you find this exact combination of sensations. It is something to be relished,” he smiled. She looked at Purdue. He almost looked like himself just then. That naughty countenance and the attitude of carefree invincibility simmered under his skin and much as she detested his mischievous flamboyancy sometimes, it was good to see him like this.
They passed along Rio dei Tolentini a few minutes later, using a small boat Purdue had secured from Thomas Carlos, a tour operator and gondola owner he had befriended a few days before. In the serene midnight air it was almost magical to see the fire-lit lamps swinging lazily over the gondolas and the soft lights illuminating the old stone courtyards where cheerful voices echoed between the three- and four-story buildings that flanked the water. The scent of jasmine and freshly baked bread permeated all around as Agatha and Dave Purdue neared their entry point on the tablet’s marker map.
“Look!” Agatha said, pointing at a building on their left. “It’s the Biblioteca. Would it not be ironic if the Library of Forbidden Books was located just there, under the actual library,” she marveled. Purdue nodded in agreement. It would have been some kind of fluke had it been so, but his mapping system was almost a 100 percent correct and it did not direct them to the actual library at all. In fact, they were to pass it by quite a distance yet.
Eventually the Ca’Foscari University main seat entrance came into view. By way of the last astronomical mapping diagram, Purdue’s tablet had calculated they were to go below just off the Sestiere of Dorsoduro, an architecturally beautiful structure in white stone, mirroring the white university building in its close proximity.
“Just look out for prying eyes. This is the darkest part of the bridge I can find, but we have to slowly submerge and try not to make any noise,” Purdue whispered. His sister nodded, casting a look toward the still blackness of the channel that would soon engulf her. “Agatha,” his voice pierced her fears and she shot a fearful gaze at her brother.
“David, do you realize that in the near future Venice might be the modern Atlantis?” she asked in a robotic tone that hinted at her rising apprehension about the dive. “It is as if the Adriatic is just waiting for the opportune moment to swallow it up and hide it forever. And people like you and Nina and Sam will be looking for it in a few thousand years.”
He placed a gentle hand on his sister’s shaking shoulders, “There is nothing that is going to confront you down there, all right? Trust me, I have seen the channels under water. It is just murk and muck and ancient bulks of petrified wood lodged in the clay to hold up the buildings,” he smiled, keeping his tone as tranquil and nonchalant as possible. “Now, we have to find the Library of Forbidden Books, my dear sibling, or else the entire world as we know it will be destroyed.”
Under cover of the bridge she stood unmoved, her eyes frozen in contemplation. In the faint light of the buildings nearby, Agatha looked like a death omen, her tall and skinny frame streamlined by black PVC and rubber and her blonde hair radiating wildly like a halo of insanity around her pallid face. Doom-like, her words came to Purdue as he started into the channel, breaking the surface with his feet.
“What a queer notion you have, David. In fact, if we do not go ahead with this plan the world would be perfectly safe. Yet you think it the other way round? If we leave the library where it is in its watery grave, unknown and lost in myth, Meiner will never have his compound to kill the world,” she recited evenly. Her eyes suddenly darted to him, “Why do you always have to amass power just because it is within your reach, David? All your quests for dangerous things and the power they promised, things you had eventually claimed, where did they bring you?”
“Now is hardly the time, Agatha,” he urged with a deepening scowl, anxious to disappear from the surface, yet he knew that she had to be convinced, at least answered. He knew his sister. She would stay put, indifferent to the idea of being arrested or seized, until she had received a satisfactory reason. And he was at the receiving end of her tenacity at the worst time. “We have to go. I shall explain later.”
“You will explain now.”
“Christ, Agatha!”
“Now, David.”
“If I have the formula Meiner needs, I will have leverage,” he admitted, uncharacteristically frantic at being possibly discovered.
“Leverage for what?” she asked.
“Anything that might befall us that we need to get out of, of course. Nothing specific,” he hissed impatiently. “Now come, let’s go!”
“If you had not set off to unearth evil things that needed to remain entombed, David, you would not be needing leverage for the lives of your associates, do you realize?” she contested.
“I am aware of that! But arguing about damage already done during a few years of bad judgment is redundant. We have to deal with our situation in the here and now, first and foremost. Let the blaming and “I told you so” come later, after I have gotten us all out of the trouble my excursions had dumped us into!” he implored, looking around for any sign of detection. “In effect, I need to retrieve something evil to destroy the ultimate evil, and I cannot do it without you.”
It was the truth. He could not gain access to the hidden knowledge of centuries without the help of the woman he had rescued from the claws of the council and its sick, twisted old brotherhood. His research had exposed much to him since he had spoken to Meiner, much as it pained him. The lore about the Library of Forbidden Books told of a custodian who had to be ever-present, a guardian who would not allow the knowledge to be perused by threat of death.
Not two days before did he learn why the sister he had liberated from Izaak Geldenhuys was not herself. Genetically and biologically she was, but the Agatha Purdue he had spent his infancy and early childhood was gone. Brainwashed by the Order of the Black Sun on the order of the council, she was resuscitated from brain death in the cellar of Bloem’s chamber of horrors. Barely alive, she was immediately introduced to the same vaccine that Dr. Alfred Meiner had been administering to the members of the council for decades.
It was a wondrous substance, all medical and molecular details aside, that managed to maintain synapse function even after cellular deterioration would normally shut down neural activity. The comatose woman was treated with Meiner’s mock immortality juice, but with an added ingredient—psychological alteration. By means of subliminal programming she was subjected to Nazi doctrine twenty-four hours per day, apart from her behavioral adjustment training. The latter had induced a nifty byproduct of the SS and its charm.
Agatha Purdue was ultimately stripped of her homicidal inhibitions.
Chapter 33
Agatha just stared at Purdue with her big bulging eyes, her mind calculating the risks, the rewards, the timing, the outcomes. He was begging her with his eyes to trust him just one last time and she could discern his sincerity. Suddenly her legs moved. Purdue sighed in sheer relief as she joined him on the mossy ledge while he slowly dipped his
body into the cold dark water. His body coursed with adrenaline as they prepared to go under. It seemed that he had not lost his old affinity for adventure after all, but he was not about to share this information with Agatha. She was still too reluctant to join in his pursuit to know that he was not doing it entirely out of necessity.
“Just hold on to the rope. The water is not deep enough for our light not to be seen, so as soon as we submerge, I will be moving in under the building,” he told her. Agatha listened, wide-eyed, and truthfully Purdue had no idea if her attention was on him or on the nightmarish thoughts she harbored about the dive.
“David, the bloody water doesn’t get deeper than five meters,” she reminded him with quite a load of annoyance in her hard whisper. “How the hell can the forbidden library be under the water? Look at this! I could probably see the channel’s floor if I shone my light straight down.”
“Just follow me, Agatha. I know what to do,” Purdue sighed. With reluctance, once more, Agatha dragged her shivering carcass after her brother, always the sidekick to his odd explorations. Hoping for the best and expecting the absolute worst, she followed the ripples where his head had just disappeared under the surface of the grimy water. Clutching the guide rope Purdue had latched to them both, Agatha started paddling through the dark, cold liquid. Like a ghastly womb it enfolded her and introduced her to the oblivion she suffered before birth, only this time she had a consciousness of it, and it was deeply unpleasant to her imagination and its suggestions.
Just like the day in that wretched lagoon, she felt nearly compelled to switch on her flashlight to see what lay beneath her, but a few feet below. Only her brother’s light illuminated their way through the obscured water, not reaching much farther than a radius of one meter on each side. She could think of no palpable reason why she had to endure this. Her brother annoyed her more than ever. No matter how she tried to enjoy his company again, he somehow vexed her. When in his company she constantly found her mind flashing back to her youth, how she was betrayed by him. Visions of Africa and her abandonment resurfaced time and time again without provocation, leaving her furious with him and the fact that he had allowed her uncle to leave her behind at such a tender age. When she did think about it, she reckoned that her brother was in on it all back then. Obviously, as the weaker sibling with the less-articulate mind, he felt intimidated by her and ultimately he wished to get rid of her so that he would have all the attention and the money. Now he was playing the lord and savior of her fate once more and she hated it.
They glided toward the right. Agatha took care to keep her eyes on Purdue, just not to see the enormous posts made from elm and larch that looked like lone floors, rafts of wood that carried the structures above. By the position they were in, she noted that they were now swimming under the Ca’Foscari University. Now it was safe for her to switch on her light, although she was uncertain of what she wanted to behold down here.
Almost disappointed at the revelation, Agatha saw no more than dirty water filled with floating particles that whipped up in the movement of Purdue’s kicking legs. There was only a milky brown darkness ahead of them for now. Her mind raced with mixed emotions and a very faint hint of exhilaration at what they would find. By the map they had deciphered the Library of Forbidden Books would be accessible via a tunnel dug by citizens of Dorsoduro during the Second World War. It was during this escape from Nazi oppression above, while Mussolini was in league with Hitler, that Giuseppe Tavici and his fellow Venetians discovered what he called “a hall of cursed magic” in his memoirs, later hoarded by the SS and subsequently, the Order of the Black Sun.
From there it leaked out to the descendants of the murdered Tavici in 1949 by means of his notes and this was how the sources of MI6 gathered intelligence on its former existence, whether myth or not. Previously perceived as a possible threat to the European Alliance with its clandestine keepers and erratic characters being involved in the search for the place, the information and hype surrounding the forbidden library eventually faded into historical obscurity.
Only the most tenacious of both factions of the Second World War remained aware of the existence of the hall of cursed magic, therefore Patrick Smith and the council carried knowledge of it. Purdue was beyond intrigued by what could be held by the library and he could not propel himself forward fast enough, eager to find the tunnel under the university. Under the pressing, polluted water he lifted his palm-sized tablet in front of him and gestured for Agatha to stop while he determined the next marker.
In the brown mix of light and night, they floated like specters. A blue spot pulsed on the small screen, coloring an azure halo around Purdue’s hand in the water. He nodded to his sister and gave her a thumbs-up. She nodded. They proceeded along a row of grimy black support posts, deeper under the building, and Agatha gradually began to understand Nina Gould’s aversion for enclosed spaces. The thought of an entire building hovering less than two meters above her, held there only by the mercy of age-old lumps of rotten wood embedded in nothing more than silt and sediment, unsettled her more and more as they advanced. What if the thing just fell on them? Her heart jumped and she sped up to get closer to her brother, the reason for which eluded her. There was nothing his proximity could save her from, let alone a collapsing building.
He stopped and she almost swam into him. Under his knee that was now planted firmly in the slippery clay and mud, the ocean floor lifted in retarded motions of curling sand particles and kelp. For a moment it looked as if Purdue was going to be enveloped by the ground like a cloak, but then Agatha noticed he was leaning forward into the dark. She frowned at the sight. In between the rotten old posts, there was nothing but the spaces they were moving through, but now her brother was touching something, something that was not there.
Purdue reached in between the two posts where there was supposed to be space, but his careful palms pressed flatly against an invisible wall. Agatha, absolutely captivated by the strangeness, approached slowly in her reluctance at what could dart out from where her brother was probing. At closer glance, she was astonished to see that there was a solid wall between the posts, camouflaged in muddy residue that gave it the appearance of plain water mass.
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.