The Vault of Hercules (Order of the Black Sun Book 16)

by P. W. Child

  “Not too bad, hey?” Purdue bragged as he joined her to make sure the door had shut correctly.

  “Aye,” she agreed, almost inaudibly as if her tongue had already fallen asleep. “A bit scary, though. Like a tomb being sealed or something.”

  “Then this will unnerve you just a little more,” he smiled. Activating the current after the giant bolts locked in, Nina jumped back at the sparks along the frame of it, running from the ignition ports across to where the door was connected to its hydraulics. The electrical charge clapped and then died down into a quiet buzz that reminded her of the sound of a fridge in the middle of the night.

  She looked impressed as she folded her arms. “Unnerving indeed, but I doubt you’ll be bothered much by intruders with this beast in place,” she remarked. “Purdue, I'm exhausted. Can we pick this up tomorrow?”

  “Certainly,” he replied. He called Charles to help him carry his booty to one of the storerooms on the ground floor under his study. “You take a room, Nina. I shall pick your expert brain after you’ve had some shuteye, alright? Sweet dreams.” He pecked a light kiss on her cheek.

  Nina could not make up her mind. Purdue had already amicably dismissed her from the scene, but she was inexcusably curious about the artifact he’d been so carefully smuggling here. Reluctantly she took his offer of taking it up in the morning.

  “Alright. Good night!” she said as she shouldered her sling bag and laptop case, exiting the underground chamber. “Hi Charles,” she said as the butler came down past her.

  “Madam,” he returned, smiling in passing.

  The house was dark upstairs, save for the hallway lights mounted against the walls to illuminate the walkway and paintings. Nina knew them all in order by now, having spent much of her past decade in the grand old historical gem that overlooked ancient Edinburgh. She picked her favorite guest room and dropped her luggage unceremoniously before switching on the en suite bathroom light for some relief.

  “Dr. Gould?” she heard the night staff cook say from the doorway. Nina stopped in her tracks, trying not to show her discontent at being interrupted.

  “Yes?” she forced as she turned to find the kind, old lady with her hands locked in front of her lap.

  “Anything to eat before you retire, madam?” she asked.

  Nina felt bad for being intolerant at a woman who was staying up all night to serve. “Um, a hot beverage would be lovely. Thank you.”

  “Just something to drink, then?” the small lady asked.

  “Aye, just a mug of hot chocolate. I'll leave the munching for breakfast.” Nina smiled.

  “Very well. I'll have it up here in a jiffy, Dr. Gould,” the night cook affirmed before disappearing.

  “Take your time,” Nina called after her, closing the room door and jogging to the bathroom. “All the time you need. I have to piss like a racehorse, thank you very much,” she muttered as she headed for the head.

  After she’d finished she waited all but five minutes for the soft knock at the door to claim her drink. She sighed, relieved that soon nobody would bother her with offers and she could get some sleep. When she opened the door, Charles was the one holding her drink.

  “My apologies madam,” he said plainly. “But I need to speak to you.”

  Chapter 10

  There was much tension in Djibouti, a country on the Gulf of Aden off the horn of Africa. Rita Medley and her husband, Guido Bruno, were waiting for an order they’d placed in Ethiopia to arrive, suffering the sweltering sun and dry air in their temporary chateau on the coastline just off of Fagal.

  “Have you heard from our associates in Malta yet?” she asked her husband, who was buttering a croissant with cream cheese and cayenne pepper, as if the atmospheric heat was not torrid enough.

  “Don't you worry about them. They’ll come through. Just give them two days to locate David Purdue, that's all they need to find that mook and get back our chest,” he said in his shrill voice. He took a bite of the croissant, crust spilling onto his brown, fine-silk shirt.

  It made Rita cringe to watch the shirt exhibit dark, wet crescents of sweat. She couldn’t fathom why Guido would suffer like that just to dress upper class, as he put it. First, it was the Italian shoes at the desert dig site, and now it was a silk shirt in the fever of Djibouti's hot, sandy landscapes. Another thing that bugged her was how the snazzy dresser ate like an animal, making a mess everywhere. A self-professed perfectionist would hardly allow such a messy environment, but she knew by now not to inflame his temper with trivial points that negated his delusions of grandeur. In fact, she suspected that Guido only used the term to justify his unnecessary pedantic bullshit, which he utilized just to be difficult. To him, being an asshole was synonymous with being refined.

  Their trips to support her excursions were always like taking a two-year-old to a classical concerto. Guido's tantrums and passive aggressive control was sickening, but she needed his money to obtain what she needed for her hunts. Everything has a price, and hers was that he would accompany her on expeditions that his family funded and test her passion for archaeology and cultural anthropology to its farthest limits. She never loved him. Medley found her convenient marriage bearable, considering the benefits included for her career. Sometimes she doubted that it was a cheap price to pay, especially in times like these.

  “They're here,” his voice punished her peace. He was standing at the window, curtain carelessly drawn away in his rough hand.

  “You should stop doing that, love,” she advised. “One of these days a goddamn bullet will come ripping through directed at your skull when you flare your position like that. Curtains are there to conceal our spying...and for a good reason.”

  He sneered at her. “Like you know anything about spying. Like you know anything about bullets. Keep your dictation for the brainless mooks who dig in the ground for you on your treasure hunts, okay?”

  “Don't forget how much money your family has made from my treasure hunts, my darling,” she snapped back. Usually Prof. Medley kept her tone docile, but this time she wanted to remind him that she was not some bimbo he’d rented for a twenty-minute pleasure trip. Before he could respond there was a knock at the door. “Boss, we brought him.”

  “Bring him in,” Guido commanded, glancing back at Rita as if to assert his Alpha status in the most juvenile manner. Rita said nothing. She took up her glass of ice tea, gripping it properly so that the beads of water from the vapor would not make the smooth glass slip from her fingers. The icy water entwined with flavors of cinnamon and lemon was direly needed in the high temperature of the day for a woman like Rita, already not very tolerant of warm places.

  A bloodied, but quiet man was dragged into the room. Face down, he could hardly use his feet under the rough handling of Guido's henchmen who threw him into a chair and cuffed him. Rita cocked her head to see who he was, but under the mess of bloody black locks of hair over his face it was difficult to ascertain. What disturbed her most, oddly, was his silence. Clearly he was in terrible agony from the gunshot wound that had grazed his neck and the other that had made a big hole in his chest, yet he did not cry out or moan.

  Rita had unfortunately become accustomed to the hellish practices of her husband's family once she had wed him a few years before, but she found that unusual things bothered her more than the average beatings and threats she’d played witness to. This man's quiet suffering was one of those unsettling things, and it evoked her pity, something she’d worked very hard at repressing. In fact, that very repression was imperative to her survival in a family under the reins of Cosa Nostra.

  The man looked incredibly familiar, but she couldn’t quite place him, so she stood there, drinking her ice tea calmly until his identity was revealed. Guido cocked his gun and shoved it against the man's head. Rita was alarmed that the only reaction her brain had was to hope that any shots to the head would not spoil her floor.

  She sipped her tea more quickly. Christ, what kind of heartless bitch have I beco
me? This isn’t right. I’m not handling this right. My God, I’m not even concerned about the man's life an ounce more than I am about the mess he would make!

  With Guido's eyes constantly on her to show off how macho he was, Rita made sure that her secret moral chastisement did not show on her face. By now she could easily ace poker games, having graduated from the Sicilian Mafia Wives' Club of Indifferent Expressions. “You know where David Purdue went with the Ark. Now you will tell us and I might not kill you,” Guido grinned.

  The man only shook his head. That was unacceptable. Guido raised his hand and brought down the butt of the weapon on the base of the man's neck, finally eliciting a shriek of pain from the captive. In anguish he threw back his head, revealing his face to Rita. She would have gasped, but it would only make her look weak. At once she recognized him as the man who had helped Purdue escape with the chest.

  Adjo Kira? she thought in surprise. Didn’t we kill him on that ledge?

  Obviously they hadn’t. Here he was in the flesh and alive, although not too well. And at the rate her husband was going, Adjo would not be well enough for much longer. Regrettably, even with his pathetic traits and childish attitude, her husband was well versed in torture techniques and his forte was the intricate art of maiming. In her corner of the room Rita hoped that Adjo would not get to see that side of Guido, but thus far it appeared as if he were teetering dangerously close to that discovery.

  “The next time you don't give me an answer I will shoot you,” Guido threatened. Rita had finished her ice tea, but she dared not move now to put the glass in the sink. It would break her husband's thrall over the Egyptian, and that would spell a world of misery for her. Guido shouted, “Where did Purdue take the Ark?”

  Adjo said nothing, because he did not know. With every second that passed without an answer, the silence became pregnant with rage and apprehension. Rita's knuckles ached from the tension in her hands as she waited for a response. Her eyes quietly darted from the Egyptian's inert lips to her husband's trigger finger. The latter was white against the side of the trigger of the gun, shivering slightly as the pressure on the steel pin mounted. She held her breath as she noticed Adjo's lips still not moving. A loud click ensued from Guido's gun, sending Adjo into a jerk of terror. Rita's eyes fell shut from shock and relief. The men in the room laughed with their boss, but their laughter was nothing but the cackle of wicked bullies that were running out of patience.

  “Oh, for God's sake, just tell us where Purdue is!” she suddenly cried out. Luckily for Rita her exclamation came out as bossy and annoyed, which impressed her husband enough for him not to have an opinion, for a change. In truth, Rita had only let loose to break the momentum of the looming execution and slightly defuse the immediate trouble. It was her warning to Adjo to say something, anything, before he would die by their hands a second time.

  Rolling her eyes noticeably, she slammed the glass down and exited the room. “Let me know when we have Purdue's location. I have better things to do.”

  Guido had no problem with his wife's attitude, having no idea that, in the secret compartments of her heart, she was prating for the safety of the Egyptian guide at his mercy. Rita's heart raced as she waited for that killing shot to thunder in her trail, but it still did not come. Through the living room of the house she walked briskly, as if hearing that kill shot with more distance between her and the gun would somehow make the man's death less harsh. But she knew even at vague earshot it would affect her badly and there was nothing she could do to procrastinate the imminent murder.

  Still, there was no gunshot, only the sound of shouting and the familiar sporadic scuffling as they slapped Adjo around. Rita turned at the end of the small hallway that led to her bedroom and bit her finger between her front teeth in deep pondering. Between what she wished she could do to keep Guido from killing Adjo, and presenting a solution for the location of Dave Purdue, she did not have much hope. Even if she could find the billionaire cheat who stole what they’d come to steal first, it would only guarantee Adjo's doom. If Guido had no use for him he was as good as dead anyway.

  It was silent now. Rita felt a twinge of alarm at the silence. Again she was caught between the extremes of the situation—either she had to listen to the melody of torture and threats, or she had to worry about the devastating possibilities of peace and quiet. Her life sucked irreparably, she decided.

  But ultimately, until she reached the Vault of Hercules she had no choice but to keep on keeping on, as they say. Until then she had to tolerate the condescension and emotional abuse, the perpetual fear of rival attacks and the tiptoe care with which she had to speak when in the company of the Familia. Even brothers killed each other without flinching, calling it honor or loyalty. They would not think twice about wasting a Celtic-blooded wife of a lesser-respected son if she put one foot wrong. For now, Prof. Rita Medley had to deal with the world of bullets and blood, where rules only mattered when employed for the cause.

  A loud thump sounded from the kitchen area and more impish laughter confirmed that the captive had fallen from the chair. Rita felt sick. Ashamed for the path that she’d chosen to reach her career goal, she hated herself, questioning if it was worth all of the humiliation. To her astonishment, it was a question she could literally not answer. That was how far gone she was to reach the Vault of Hercules, how desperate she was that she would listen to a man being tortured for her endgame.

  Rita heard footsteps approach her, the sound of Italian shoes clacking on the slash stone floor.

  “Fuckin' imbecile passed out,” he mentioned nonchalantly as he whipped out his white handkerchief to dress his bleeding knuckles.

  “Did he tell you were to find Purdue?” she asked, hoping that she sounded as stern as she tried to.

  “Nah,” Guido replied. “I told the boys to take a lunch break. That Egyptian's wounds are making him weaker than I’d hoped, so he won't last long if I keep at him. As soon as he has had some recuperating time, I'll make him a proposition.”

  “A proposition. You?” she scoffed with a wry smile. “I can’t imagine you paying him.”

  “Who said anything about money?” he frowned, taking his place by her side at the window. His cold, black eyes looked over the sapphire waters of the bay of Bab al-Mandab Strait. Guido sighed, “If he does not comply, we’ll just kill his family.”

  Chapter 11

  Sam Cleave was pissed.

  He was piss-drunk and pissed off. Not a second went by that he did not torment himself about his career choices, the path that had ultimately gotten his fiancé killed and separated him from his childhood best friend, Patrick Smith. Two large, gray eyes leered at him with indifference as his leg flopped off the edge of the sofa he was sprawled over. Sam chuckled dryly and took the neck of the green glass bottle to his lips for the umpteenth time.

  “What are you looking at?” he slurred, but was met with not even an effort from his cat. The large ginger cat Sam and had Trish aptly named Bruichladdich when he’d been an overweight boy kitten, had seen Sam at his worst and best. But this relapse was louder than the previous he’d suffered, the one that had happened after he’d written his first book about that night Patricia had had her face blown off by the arms ring she and Sam had been investigating. If the cat could contemplate such issues, chances are he would have been concerned. He would’ve come to the conclusion that Paddy was just about as important to Sam as Trish had been. Only once before was he this bad off, and that was when the guilt had ridden him bareback.

  Now his oldest pal, his partner in crime throughout high school, his wingman and general tolerator of Sam's crazy personality had elected to part ways with him. It had broken Sam, but he was not the type to lie down and talk to strangers with framed papers on their wall from other idiots who’d proclaimed them sound enough to do so. No, Sam's therapist was one Dr. Glen Flagler1972 and a whole lot of football on television. He liked it that way. It allowed the chaos of countless games, fans, commentators, and sports news
to drown his mind in triviality, just like the Single Malt Whisky Purdue had gifted him after the search for the Medusa Stone had concluded.

  Initially Sam had vowed to preserve the rare bottle of whiskey from the extinct distillery, to only consume it should he plant his flag with another Pulitzer. But that was when his life had still had some meaning. Now, a bottle of alcohol, however rare and expensive, was just a dose of numbness that could help him lighten the blows to his heart whenever Paddy's words would ricochet between his soul and his brain. Faster and faster he drank to forget, but found that the pain was in a place inside him where his blood could not reach, where the soothing oblivion of alcohol could not be delivered.

  “Bruich,” he told his cat, “you’re the only relic from my history still left, you know that?”

  Bruich leapt clumsily onto his master's foot—the one that was still on the couch—and after turning once in a circle, he proceeded up Sam's body to lie down on his stomach. The cat's hefty weight felt soothing and the warmth from his fur was welcome to Sam's aching body. He had deliberately not eaten for a whole day to make sure that the whiskey would take quicker effect on an empty stomach, but his head was pounding already; the price of a premature hangover.

  “You know what he said? My old chum, Paddy?” he asked the wide-eyed feline. Sam waited for Bruich to respond. How he expected the answer only he knew, but after some low purring qualified as conversation in the ears of the drunken journalist he thought it fit to break it to Bruich.

  “He said...!” Sam shouted with wet cheeks. “He-e-e said...please Sam, don't ever come to my house again. I'm sorry, Sam, but please...” Sam's voice cracked, “...please lose my...number.”

  The cat yawned, letting out a low groan in the process that Sam construed as some form of vocal empathy. His hand closed roughly around the back of Bruich's neck as he tried to pet the poor animal, while his other hand brought the bottle to his mouth. In the background the overly loud television blared a match, but Sam did not give a shit which clubs were playing. All he heard in the din of the crowd's chants were those damning words spoken by his once best friend, his brother-in-arms from a fallen allegiance.