by P. W. Child
“Yes. You have been out for over a day. Why do you think you are so hungry, dear?” he chuckled, heartily, as if kidnapping the two women were a favor.
On the table, there was the usual fare of what Mr. Fidikos called normal food.
“We did not know if you were meat eaters or vegetarians or those silly people who live on oxygen and water alone,” he jested as he examined the dishes on the antique table. “Please sit.”
There was a combination of foods, eclectically selected for what Helen and Claire imagined was the indecision of an old man. Pork cutlets, onion rings, Caesar salad, roast beef and chicken with gravy, potato wedges, basmati rice and an assortment of roasted vegetables.
“There is also pudding if you want,” he bragged.
Both women protested instantly, vehemently declining politely.
“You Europeans,” he said and shook his head, “are not like Mediterranean women. Our food is a pleasure, an occasion. Here women are beautiful because they are sensual and healthy, not emaciated and sick looking creatures. Forget about your skeletal frames and enjoy life, ladies. Enjoy the good food, good wine, good sex. The latter lacks sorely in the British Isles.” He leaned forward with a naughty glint in his eye, “I speak from experience.”
“I bet you do,” Helen flirted back, to Claire’s astonishment. True, Soula’s husband was exceptionally charming, but she had never seen her boss react that way to an older man – not since David Purdue.
Deon Fidikos smiled warmly as they dished up for themselves, whatever they wished.
“I should not eat too fast after such a long fast, but boy, this all looks so good,” Helen remarked.
“May I pour you some wine, ladies?” he asked, lifting an unmarked bottle in a woven bamboo cover from his portable wine container.
“Thank you,” both women smiled as they started to wolf down their food.
“Will you not be eating, Deon?” Claire asked with a mouth full of at least three different meats.
“Me? Oh no, thank you, my dear. I have already dined at my own home,” he replied, filling their crystal glasses with delectable red liquid.
“You are not poisoning us, are you?” she asked without thinking. Helen’s mouth was full, but she slammed on the table, staring in disbelief at her assistant’s uttering.
Deon laughed and shook his head. He motioned for Helen not to be angry at Claire, maintaining an amused expression.
“I am, actually,” he revealed. His words were directly opposed to his calm and sweet demeanor, confusing his two captives even more. They stopped chewing while trying to figure out if he was joking or not. Deon slapped his knee in jovial response to their reaction.
“Not to kill you! God, no! I’m not a monster! The food does contain a sedative. After all, you are my prisoners until I get what I want. Come now, you know that I cannot have you running around by your full positives, ladies.”
“You are serious,” Helen remarked with genuine fear in her eyes.
“For what it is worth, the wine is perfectly safe. Go on, eat. You have already consumed enough to keep you nice and docile for the next two days. Look,” he smiled as he poured a third glass, “I’ll be delighted to join you in drink!”
When their glasses were filled the large, well-built Greek stood up and said, “A toast! To Claire, without whom my men would not have retrieved what she had kept in her locker at the museum!”
A brief uncomfortable pause followed. Helen looked very confused and Claire just looked terrified. They raised their glasses nonetheless, feeling very lethargic from whatever the food held.
“What was it that you had in your locker, Claire?” Helen asked just as they had drunk the first sip of wine. Claire was hesitant, unable to explain as she did not know what the purpose of the relic was.
“Something I kept for Dr. Heidmann,” she told her boss.
Deon looked down on the two women, his smile now void of any kindness or humor. In fact, he looked villainous and sadistic for a moment as he filled Helen in.
“In her locker, your assistant kept a very valuable ancient stone that I had been seeking for decades, Professor Barry,” he admitted. His voice was now softer, deprived of its flamboyant charm. Now he just spoke, delivering the exposition Helen craved from him. Claire nurtured a thousand thoughts all at once, wondering what Heidmann was going to do to her when he found out that the item he had entrusted to her care had been taken.
“What stone? Claire? You’ve been keeping relics in your locker?” Helen scowled.
“No, it’s not like that, Prof. Barry,” Claire defended.
“No it is not,” Deon concurred. “She was asked to hold on to it for the man who had been a festering boil on the ass of the Order of the Black Sun with his delusions of grandeur and severe misjudgment. Overestimating himself around every turn. I mean, the boy actually considered himself of the same thread as the most powerful of men in this world…of which I am one.”
Helen’s heart sank when she heard mention of that insidious organization, but she was relieved that the symbol she left under her desk was in fact the correct assumption.
“But then what do you want with me?” she asked in bewilderment. “If Claire gave your men the stone, why not let us go?”
“Because there are three stones, each named after one of the three Gorgons from Greek Mythology, my dear Helen. I now have one. The other,” he sighed laboriously, seeming truly burdened by the thought, “my beloved wife thought good to give to her lover after taking it from my collection. The poor clueless woman! For all the knowledge she held on relics and Greek Art History, she did not know what she had done, the magnitude of loss I suffered when she gave Professor Megalos that stone.”
“Professor Megalos!” Claire gasped. “Dr. Heidmann referred him to Mr. Purdue. I was the one who invited him, but I had no idea who he was! Professor Barry, I was only following orders, I swear to God!”
Helen just patted the young woman’s hand in consolation.
“Now, Megalos has the Stheno stone. Thanks to you, Claire, I am now in possession of the Euryale stone, and I must say, it has served me well,” Deon declared. “Now we must just find the last one, the Medusa stone.”
He walked over to one of the covered statues against the wall. “And that is why I cannot let you ladies go yet. I need Mr. Purdue to locate and bring me the Medusa stone, and you are my leverage,” Deon explained.
“You don’t know Dave Purdue, Mr. Fidikos,” Helen replied, withholding all threat in her voice. “He will never let the Black Sun get their way with him again.”
“You know, that is just what my wife told me,” Deon smirked. He tugged the silken cover from the tall, shapely shape of detailed stone.
“Oh, Jesus!” Helen screamed hysterically. “Oh, sweet Jesus! Soula! Soula!”
Claire was speechless, so spellbound by the grotesque remnant of Soula Fidikos, still in her long flowing black dress, that she could not move. Next to her, Helen Barry was screaming like a trussed sacrificial animal, unable to control her horror.
Her shrieks of madness only hushed when she passed out from shock, but Claire hushed once and for all. The trauma of what had befallen Soula Fidikos twisted her mind so that she remained quiet. She would never speak again.
Chapter 27
At the lodge, Purdue elicited the help of a local paramedic to remedy Don’s minor wounds, three bullets having grazed his upper arm and right oblique. Nina was quick to cover up their illegal doings as being victims of a failed hijacking while sightseeing. Her story was delivered so well that there was no doubt the visitors from Scotland were just shit out of luck while touring the small towns of Eastern Europe.
As soon as the young Ostrava inhabitant medic left, the three of them gathered in Don’s room this time, since he was resting and on his way to being high as a kite in a few minutes.
“Was it all for nothing? So we found the place, but did we find anything concrete?” Don asked, instantly bursting into a fit of laughter.
“Excuse the pun!”
Purdue and Nina smiled at the word play Don probably genuinely employed by accident. Purdue looked exhausted, as they all were, but it weighed heavily on him that Nina was almost killed point blank today. She would never believe that her welfare was the most important thing to him, what with her always accusing him of dragging her into life-threatening circumstances. Her face and clothing was dirty, but she was unscathed.
“We did not leave empty handed,” Nina consoled Don and relished Purdue’s pleasantly surprised reaction.
“What do you mean?” he asked her.
She stuck her hand in her corduroy jacket pocket and brought out a handful of crumpled paper. “I have not had a look at these yet, but I am pretty sure they must be important,” she said, unfolding them and flattening each on top of the other on the corner of Don’s bed. With the rubbing of a flat hand, she smoothed them out, minding the writing so that she would not wipe the already fragile lettering on it.
“What are they?” Don asked.
“I got them off what looked like an SS officer, Don,” she revealed. “Just before the shit struck the fan too, so at least we may have gotten some clue as to the workings of this anomaly.”
“Or why we have determined how we think it works,” Purdue agreed. “ But I hope that will shed some light on what causes it.”
“Let me put this on the desk,” she decided and walked over to Don’s room desk. It had a study lamp, hotel stationery of the lodge and a pen. Purdue leaned over her to see the words on the paper.
“Oh, it is in German. Nina, you’re up,” he surrendered.
Carefully she read what she could make out in the disorganized and scratchy writing of the writer, which she guessed was the unfortunate proud Nazi himself. One line at a time she copied what she learned on the old document over onto the stationary pad in English.
When she had completed the first page, she tucked it under those she had not translated yet, snatching it from Purdue’s curious hand.
“No! You lads don’t get to read this until I am done. I want to be involved too!”
Purdue frowned, “But you already know what it says, madam! You translated it into English, after all. How can we have the information before you?”
Don snickered in the background.
“Aye, but if I am sitting here translating while you two are already speculating on the contents, I will miss out on the outcome, don’t you see?” she defended. “Now just give me a few minutes and I will deliver all the information at once.”
Purdue exchanged looks with Don, both men shaking their heads in defeat.
They bantered on in a low enough tone to enable the historian to do her thing. Outside, the rain died down a bit for the first time, allowing the earth to breathe a little as the night wore on to the early hours of the next day.
There was a knock at Don’s door; a weary, but insistent rapping so irritating that Purdue felt compelled to open it. Nina was unable to concentrate on the almost illegible wording and released a string of cuss words under her breath. She cradled her head in her hands, sinking her fingers into her hair in frustration.
“Costa!” Purdue exclaimed.
Nina almost gasped out loud, literally kicking back her chair to see past Purdue’s body. Peeping through the space between Purdue’s left arm and his body from the desk she saw someone move.
Don saw him too, shouting, “Hey! Zorba! You made it out alive!”
Purdue caught the soaking wet and wounded professor and helped him inside.
“Looks like I’d have to call that paramedic back,” Purdue said.
“No, no, I am really fine. I just look like shit,” Costa stated firmly. “Please, no paramedics or hospitals or that stuff, okay?” As Purdue set Costa down slowly to seat himself on the floor, he went to collect a dry towel from Don’s en suite bathroom.
Costa smiled gratefully for the towel and started drying his wild black locks, peeking from under the towel at Nina. She looked elated to see him, but she only said, “Welcome back stray cat.”
“How are you feeling, Dr. Graham?” he asked Don.
“Man, I feel fantastic!” Don grinned, slurring his words.
Costa looked up at Purdue, motioning to Don with his head. “Drugs?”
“Legal ones, but yes,” Purdue smiled. “What the hell are you wearing?”
He was referring to Costa’s overcoat, one he had not worn before. It looked disturbingly like the coats of security men at the warehouse. Because of Costa’s height, the long coat was not long enough to reach his ankles, leaving his legs sticking out bare. He was also wearing an over-sized pair of boots looted from the same guard, from the looks of it.
Nina was only three pages into the total of six she estimated would be filled after translation, but she was dying to point her attention to her crush, especially after having thought he had died in the crossfire. Especially after he answered Purdue with, “I lost my clothes. I was practically naked…”
‘Don’t, Nina! Don’t picture that, because you will be moaning out loud!’ Nina’s inner voice warned.
“…from the dog attack. But I managed to kill the animal,” Costa lied.
“My God!” Don caught his breath. “Dogs hate me. I am deathly fucking scared of canines! How big was it?”
“Huge, like Cerberus without all the heads,” Costa replied believably. “Ripped my bloody clothes to bits when I tried to get away… and the fence shredded the rest! So I borrowed these to get back here.”
“Poor thing!” Nina said sympathetically. “You should jump in a hot shower immediately, Costa, or you’ll catch your death.”
“Good idea, Nina,” Don agreed. “Nina’s found some documents that might shed some light on the process of this stone working.”
“You have?” Costa asked with a gleam in his eye. “Do share with me, Dr. Gould. I’m afraid I was absent during class.”
Nina laughed. “My lecture is only due once I have translated and checked the names on these documents, Prof. Megalos. Now be a good boy and go warm your bones.”
Fighting the dirty double entendres her choice of words evoked, Nina did her best to speed up her deciphering of the handwriting and language.
Costa obliged and promptly left for his room for a shower and a change of clothing.
“Hurry up, Zorba!” Don cried. “You don’t want to miss class, eh?” He sank back in his bed. “Christ, I’d kill for a stiff one right now.”
Nina’s eyes flashed up from the page, pushing more images from her head before continuing.
“You!” Purdue smiled. “I know you are the type to marry double vodkas with painkillers, but not on my watch. My worries are already full up with trying not to get my expedition party killed, especially after today. I don’t want to worry about your drinking habits killing you too, old boy.”
“I really thought Costa was done for,” Nina remarked, looking at Don in the mirror.
“Funny,” Don remarked, “he did not ask what happened to Heidmann.”
Chapter 28
When Costa entered the room, he looked much better. Not usually one to blow-dry his hair, the frigid weather did not permit him to let it dry as usual, and he used the hotel hair dryer. It gave his hair a fuller look, almost challenging Nina’s tresses in the process, and obviously spurring Don to make fun of him.
“Hey Zorba, you smell great! Tell me, how does one say L’Oréal in Greek?” Don snorted as he laughed. “You need some relaxer, girlfriend?”
Costa laughed along, mumbling something in Greek and giving Don the finger. Nina and Purdue shared a giggle, too but did not add insult.
“I think your hair is gorgeous, Costa. Don’t listen to him. He wears a kilt on weekends,” Nina winked.
“Aye, and I have the legs for it too!” Don babbled loudly. “I wonder if Zorba can hook me up with some hair removal cream or stockings from his vanity case.”
Costa honestly found it incredibly funny, not because of what the stoned archeol
ogist said, but because of that broad Scottish accent. He always found everything funnier when a Scotsman said it, but he kept that to himself. After all, the pretty historian liked his long locks, and that outweighed out all criticism.
By now, Purdue had voiced his reasonable presumption that Heidmann was not coming back. They had heard nothing from him, and regrettably assumed him dead.
“Am I too late for the lecture, Dr. Nina?” Costa smiled, his voice low and fraught with mesmerizing charm. Purdue was astute enough to see what was going on. Although he had all the patience in the world with bagging Nina for himself, he did not want her to get involved with men he did not know. Right now, though, there was no time for juvenile interventions.
“Nope. Finished the pages a minute ago,” she replied amicably, aware that Purdue was paying attention. She did not want to jeopardize the excursion, however. Whether Purdue believed it or not, she was invested in the investigation for her own reasons, for the sheer thrill of trailing something so mysterious and unprecedented.
Costa sat on the floor, pulling up his legs and wrapping his arms around his shins. Purdue sat down on other chair matching Nina’s while Don was fighting to stay awake. The light of dawn crept out from behind the horizon, gradually coloring the heavens from a dark grey to a lighter hue from the still overcast sky. The group was not in a hurry to further their search that day. Purdue had instructed everyone to take the day off to recuperate from the nerve wrecking close call they suffered the day before.
Nina turned her chair to face her companions. Having arranged the new pages in successive order, she started reading the information. Much of it was perfectly clear, void of any scientific gibberish she feared to have to learn.
“The originals actually resemble a logbook or a diary of sorts,” she started. “I suppose this man kept record of what he was instructed to do by order of his superior officer. What makes this so juicy is that what is written here is directly pertinent to what we have been dealing with!”