by P. W. Child
“Good afternoon, sir,” the security man said when Sam stopped at the gates.
“Afternoon, is the man in?” Sam asked, using his journalistic eye to absorb all the details that did not gel too well with the usual rituals he knew at Purdue's gates.
“Yes he is, sir,” the suited man affirmed. “Your name, please?”
Right, there's proof that there is a world of shit here about to strike the fan, Sam thought. Just when I thought I was out of trouble.
“Is this a joke?” Sam laughed. Guido's thugs scowled at the pompous asshole giving them a difficult time. He knew if he persisted with an obnoxious manner they would have to summon Purdue. “Come on, are you the strippers he got me for my birthday? Hurry up, then! I have a party to get to!”
“Is this mook out of his mind?” the one muttered to the other just inside the small gate office. While they contemplated the annoying idiot's fate, the screen of the intercom flashed and Purdue's face appeared on the little LED screen.
“That is Sam Cleave. Let him in,” the owner of the property commanded. Medley inched into the camera angle with him and ordered her husband's men firmly, “He is one of us. Open the gates.”
“Go right in, sir,” the confused henchman told Sam, trying to smile.
“Ta very much, my lad,” Sam cheered and screeched away up to the circular driveway in front of the main entrance. His reckless driving and absurd joviality always confused detractors long enough for him to figure things out. As long as people thought he was drunk they would not react too harshly toward him.
“That freak works with the boss and Prof. Medley?” the one gate man asked his colleague as he watched the beat up old BMW scoot and swerve. The other shrugged, “Hey, you've seen the types the boss had at the New Years' thing. Christ, sometimes I think there is meth in money, 'cause all these rich bastards are rabid as fuck!”
Chapter 21
Sam came swinging into the lobby, winking at the strangers in suits that dressed and behaved just like those at the gate. “So, you’re strippers too?” he hollered. “Let's get the party started!”
Purdue showed up, followed by Nina, another woman, and a man. “Welcome to the party, Sam,” Purdue smiled and shook Sam's hand. He pulled him into an embrace and whispered in Sam's ear, “Just play along all the way, old boy.”
Then Purdue turned and introduced Sam as a flamboyant and silly old Scot. “And he’s going to be working with us to get to the Vault of Hercules. We just waited for him to get back from...,” Purdue looked quizzically at Sam.
“London,” Sam filled in. “I rushed here from London where I was judging a dog show.”
Purdue wanted to laugh. He looked at Nina, standing behind Rita Medley, holding her mouth with her hand, shaking with laughter. Of course Medley and Guido took Sam's statement as fact, which was good, but Purdue felt he should get the attention off of Sam before they realized that he was taking the piss out of them.
“Good to meet you, Mr. Cleave,” Medley smiled as she shook Sam's hand. “This is my husband, Guido Bruno. He’s responsible for funding most of my expeditions, such as this one.”
Nina beamed at the sight of Sam being the usual whimsical asshole he liked playing when confronted by insufferable strangers. She wondered where he’d been and how he’d managed to switch from the jilted, melancholy friend to the silly, confident man she knew him to be. He even smiled at her when their eyes met just before Purdue pulled him over to take his sling bag from him.
Obligatory handshakes exchanged, the men elected to get a whiskey to fill Sam in on the nature of the upcoming expedition. Purdue could not speak casually with Guido in company, as he feared it would reveal the personal ties between him and Sam. He filled Sam in on the find, what they’d first thought it was and what he and Nina had subsequently discovered about the contents. He had to play into Guido's hand, however, which prompted his best diplomatic charade.
“And we are including Mr. Bruno here, because he approached us to help search for the Vault of Hercules,” Purdue told Sam while Guido stood there looking superior. “And since his wife is an expert archaeologist in her field, they were kind enough to assist us.”
“So we’re all working together on this Vault of Hercules?” Sam made sure, chugging neat liquor as if he were on Death Row.
“That is correct,” Purdue affirmed, passing Guido a sneer of contempt.
“What is it? The vault. Ahat does it serve?” Sam asked nonchalantly as he poured another Grouse.
He and Purdue deliberately stared at Guido for answers, putting the arrogant rich boy on the spot, calling his bluff. Being a narcissistic know-it-all, Guido had to respond with faux knowledge of something he knew nothing about.
“The Vault of Hercules is a chamber filled with riches from ages ago, where kings brought homage to the god from all over the neighboring lands so that they would win wars,” he answered glibly, threading together loose ends of what he’d heard his wife report from her passionate pursuit of the vault.
“So it’s a treasure hunt,” Sam guessed, raising his glass. “Good show. When do we go?”
“Gentlemen, we have work to do,” Nina said as she appeared in the high doorway that dwarfed her completely. Had it not been for her loud voice, Guido would not have noticed her. “Will you be joining us?”
“Aye!” Sam exclaimed in accord. Purdue agreed with a hearty nod and the two of them joined Nina at the door.
“Are you coming, Mr. Bruno?” Purdue asked. His condescension was only evident to his friends, who shared in his disdain for the spoiled Mafia wannabe. Bruno declined, electing to sit and watch television while his wife 'got on with her stuff.'
“When the three of them joined Rita in the lobby they took the stairs to the storeroom under the house. In passing the kitchen, Purdue saw his butler, housekeeper, and cook sitting by the stove. They seemed unharmed, but very upset nonetheless. It was then that Purdue saw the manner in which Nina and Charles exchanged looks. It was disturbing. He’d had no idea that they knew each other well enough to share such a personal exchange, but now was not the time to inquire.
It took Sam no time to catch up on what was going on in Wrichtishousis, that an acquaintance of Purdue's had coerced him into a collaborative effort to locate the Vault of Hercules. But what he had not yet figured out, was what the vault held that merited such a dangerous partnership in the first place. He tagged along to the storeroom with Nina, Purdue and Prof. Rita Medley, the latter an apparent old academic foe of Purdue's.
When they entered the room, Rita insisted the door remain open so that Guido's two bodyguards could keep an eye on the proceedings. “Don't worry. They’re not intelligent enough to decipher what we’re talking about anyway,” Rita snarled at the two oafs taking their places on the inside of the open door. They could not retort. They weren’t allowed to give the boss' wife lip, and so they had to suffer her open mockery.
“We have to remove the mummified child, Prof. Medley, to see if those papers underneath could be significant,” Nina told Rita. “Do you need help?”
“No thanks,” Rita said. “Just some gloves and a mask, please. We don't know what is dormant inside the cadaver and reckoning its age, I would guess anything parasitic could be very, very nasty indeed.”
“I hear that,” Nina agreed, and she handed Rita protective gear, while doing the same for herself.
While the women were busy carefully retrieving the child's body, Purdue was scrutinizing the Herculean club along with the other items they’d already removed from the trunk and placed on the corner desk. Sam watched him closely, wanting to speak to him without eavesdroppers. “How deep is the Loch, Purdue?” he asked casually.
It was a code of conversation the two men had gradually developed during the years, mostly just for fun. Still, the habit had served them in a different way several times—as it did now.
“Well, it depends on the tide, Sam,” Purdue answered, while Guido's two sharks stood by the door, having no idea that Purd
ue and Sam were discussing the amount of trouble they were in, ascertaining what their next move would be. “As far as I can tell, the waters are calm enough to carry us to the other side, as long as the boat doesn't take on water.”
“But I imagine we should get rid of the boat once we’re on the other side. I mean, coming back, the boat might cause us all to drown.” Sam was suggesting leaving Medley and her group behind somewhere on the journey.
“I absolutely concur,” Purdue answered. He looked over to Rita Medley and her cordial interactions with Nina as they chatted about historical relics over the task at the trunk. “However, we should just make sure that we bring our third oar back with us.”
“Oh, I’ll make sure of that, old man,” Sam nodded contentedly. They had to make sure Nina didn’t get too familiar with Rita, as it would ultimately impair the act of dumping Medley and her Italian crew.
Sam was still feeling sour about the thing with Paddy, and he still resented Purdue for it all.
Now he was caught between a friend who’d only caused him misery and loss, and a friend he’d known all his life, but who had recently treated him like an old pair of shoes, even though his very job entailed putting his life in danger. Either way, Sam felt reluctant to help either of them. Paddy had steered Sam's loyalty into spying for MI6, while Purdue was sought for the theft of the relic a stone's throw away from Sam. It was a rather strange situation the journalist had gotten himself into.
“This is why you wanted the Ark...this Ark...isn't it, Professor?” Nina asked outright. “The child, not the codex of Tacitus.”
Both Purdue and Sam gawked silently at her audacity, waiting with baited breath. They’d hoped to find out in a discreet and subtle way what Rita wanted with the relic, especially when they became aware of Rita's hunt for the Vault of Hercules. In truth, not one of them had known of it until Rita had come into the picture. Until then, Purdue had thought he was only in competition with Rita for the Ark—a cut-and-dried case of finder’s keepers.
Rita kept her game face on, although she’d only refrained from answering because Guido's men were listening. “Of course it was not just for the Codex Aesinas, Dr. Gould,” Rita chuckled dryly. “My husband's affiliates and family wanted the Tacitus work back in Rome, where it belonged. But as for me, I wanted to discover the Vault of Hercules. As an archaeologist it would be of tremendous significance to my career, of course!”
“But you knew that it would be in this artifact,” Purdue threw in his question while the gates were open for it. “How did you know that there was more in Aksum than the reputed resting place of the Ark of the Covenant?”
“Because I do my bloody homework, David! Unlike you, I do research further than my wallet,” she snapped at the white haired billionaire she had always been at loggerheads with. Rita directed her answer at Nina, out of spite to Purdue. “You see, I came upon the writings of an old Allied soldier from 1942, who’d been stationed in Ethiopia during the North African Campaign. He noted that while a secret party of SS representatives consisting of archaeologists and occultists were in Egypt to follow the trail to the Ark of the Covenant, he was instead contracted to accompany another cavalcade.”
“Of Allieds?” Nina asked.
“No, an occult society of the SS. A branch from the Thule Society, but more covert,” Rita replied.
Nina, Sam, and Purdue knowingly looked at one another. They knew very well who this particular branch was, because it had become the scourge of their existence. The Order of the Black Sun.
“So, an Allied soldier was asked to go with a Nazi group? Why?” Sam asked.
“According to his papers, he knew Tunisia, Egypt, and Ethiopia very well from his childhood there. His father was a historical adviser to the ministry of culture or something, so he knew the place well. So, when the word came out during World War II that this excursion was in need of a guide, the Allieds sent him in as a spy,” she explained as she gently laid the child's corpse onto the prepared fabric she’d had Nina lay down while she was busy.
“So he spied for the enemy while he was engaged in the expedition to find this artifact?” Purdue asked. Sam swallowed slowly, trying not to let the guilt of the curious similarity engulf him.
“Correct. But I never got all the details from this man's notes, not even who he was. But he did speak of this specific piece that almost identically resembled the Ark of the Covenant, apart from its obvious smaller size and a few symbols etched in. I always had my suspicions that the rest of his diary may have been left inside the relic after he was discovered,” Rita revealed.
“How do you know they discovered him?” Nina asked.
“Because he never reported back to his superiors and they never heard from him again,” Rita answered. “I'm sure the blood spatter all over these papers could well be his. Imagine that,” she sighed.
Charles appeared in the doorway, provoking a draw of guns from the two men.
“Oh please! It's just the butler!” she growled impatiently, and they lowered their weapons.
“Madam, your husband inquires as to the duration of your examination here,” Charles asked Rita. “I believe he wants to have dinner soon.”
She rolled her eyes. “Good God, that man is going to drive me to murder one of these days! Please tell him to go ahead and do what he has to. We’ll still need a bit of time to catalogue what we have here.”
“Very well, madam,” Charles said, looking deeply distraught. Purdue figured that being under arrest by the Mafia would be taxing on his staff, but he did not know the true reason of Charles' worry. Nina however, had a good idea, and she knew that she had to get Purdue out of his house urgently.
“Aye, if they stop interrupting us we could get going on this bloody expedition instead of standing here twiddling our thumbs,” she pressed.
“Exactly!” Rita agreed. “We have less than a week to find the Vault of Hercules before it is completely flooded. We’ve already wasted too much time chasing after you, Purdue! You’ve cost me over four days' delay on this and once it is gone, there’s no way of finding it again.”
Chapter 22
“David, do you have a facility for radiocarbon dating?” Medley asked.
Purdue scoffed.
“Alright then,” she reformatted her question. “Could we possibly use your laboratory for dating this specimen?”
“Of course,” Purdue replied sarcastically. “You have taken over my entire mansion, why not infest my labs as well? Get your husband's manservants to carry your test subject. I am a scientist, not a porter.”
Ten minutes later they were occupying the forensic lab under the lobby floor of the manor. Watching Professor Medley investigate the mummified remains fascinated Nina. At the same time she employed Purdue's spectrometer for faster results. Purdue said nothing. He just watched over his belongings and made sure that his old enemy did not accidentally destroy his valuable machines.
To an inventor and technological genius such as him, it felt like an obscene violation for someone to work with his instruments, but he had no choice for the moment and had to allow Medley her examinations. At least with Nina there he was more relaxed. She had used his laboratories previously to date artifacts and examine their origins, so she knew what to look for.
Finally Rita and Nina examined the results. The historian explained to Purdue that the child's body was not an ancient specimen at all. “By the results we have here, this child died in the late mid-twentieth century only.”
“So it’s not a mummy?” Sam asked, chugging back a beer he’d found in Purdue's lab bar fridge.
“No, Sam. It is not a mummy,” Rita smiled. “We figure this child died roughly during that expedition in which our Allied soldier disappeared. By the looks of the interior hinges of the chest and some of the atmospheric corrosion, that was the last time this relic was open.”
“Let's pack this up and get going then,” Nina suggested.
“Do we even know what we’re looking for?” Sam asked. He
kept his demeanor glib in order to fool the Italian group into thinking him ignorant, but it served Sam to gather intelligence on what was going on and where it was going.
“The Vault of Hercules is said to lie under a lake in Greece, Sam. The rest of the clues to get to it were reputed to be inside this relic. Which is why I was after it, you see? Now, if what Dr. Gould suspects is true, we should have more information on how to locate the lake once we’ve perused the scrolls left under this child's body,” Rita said.
Nina was already busy removing the stack of rolled paper, gently dusting them off to clarify the writing upon them. She winced. “These pages are horribly stained by what looks like fluids leaking from the body during hypostasis and putrefaction.”
“And there goes my appetite,” Sam remarked.
Purdue nodded in agreement, pulling a face. “Shall we leave the lassies to do their snooping while we go and join Mr. Bruno upstairs?” Purdue proposed. “We are of no use here anyway.”
“That’s a grand idea, David,” Rita replied. “That way you can procrastinate whatever my husband is itching to get up to. Trust me, when he gets bored enough, things go bad for the people around him and we don't need that to ensue until we’re certain of our information.”
“Cheerio then! See you later!” Purdue cried, pulling Sam along. The two bulldogs put there to watch them didn’t know whether to remain with the women or follow the men.
“Oh for Christ's sake, just go with them!” Rita sneered at her husband’s guards. “It's not like I’m in danger of being overwhelmed by a petite, little stunner like Dr. Gould, is it? Get on, then!”
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.”