“Elsewhere? Where to?” Purdue chipped in.
She shrugged. “How should I know? My husband was the linguist and historian, not me. All I am telling you here are things he told me as matters transpired in his own work, based on the unmarked twin ships of the Kriegsmarine-Zwei – that is what he called it. I don’t know what that is so do not ask me,” she told the two astonished men. “Mind if I smoke?” she asked suddenly.
“No, it is your house,” Purdue smiled, scoffing amicably at her courtesy.
“Would you mind terribly if I joined you?” Sam asked her. “After all this I could do with a fag.”
“Certainly, care for a cigarillo?” she asked, holding out an immaculate looking cigar container that looked like an antique in its own right.
“Don’t mind if I do,” Sam smiled. He placed his handheld on the desk, slanting it at such an angle that Mrs. Williams’ face was perfectly framed by the lens. Purdue’s sense of propriety prevented him from slamming his hand on the desk and demanding she tell them more. While the widow Williams and Sam Cleave had a social puffing break, he was dying to know more.
“You see,” she continued through her impaired drags, “that location, those names of the covert operations? That exact information is hidden in what I suppose you got your hands on, Mr. Purdue, and can only be interpreted by means of the correct cipher.” Mrs. Williams took her time to smoke the small, brown cigarillo, while her memory and emotion ran with her to a time when her beloved husband was still alive and well.
“All I know is that my Kenneth was killed shortly after returning from the Southern Hemisphere, where he was trying to uncover the second operation that the Nazi’s were executing before the ships went under. When he left here, he told me that he could not tell me much, for fear that it would put me in danger, you see,” she explained.
“That is understandable,” Sam concurred. “I used to cut communications with my late fiancé when I went undercover to infiltrate dangerous corporations.”
“Precisely,” she said, pointing her cigarillo-pinching index finger at Sam.
Purdue still had questions. “Do you know where he went to do his research down there?”
“An old farm he bought in the late 1970’s. It was a worthless piece of ground, but he thought it would be a good place to conduct his clandestine investigations of documents by deciphering the codes of the SS.” She chuckled sweetly and added, “He said he liked it because it was abandoned, solitary and strategically placed. Oh, Kenneth, my eccentric.”
“Does the farm now belong to you, Mrs. Williams?” Sam asked.
She yelped in amusement. “God no! Ha! Kenneth knew I would never travel there, so he left it to a nephew or something in his will. If you ask me, he deserves the place. He’s had a hard life, you know?”
Sam and Purdue could not believe the treasure trove of information they were obtaining from Mrs. Williams. Between them, they were so excited they could burst. Finally, Sam asked her what he knew Purdue was aching to ask.
“And this nephew…do you have a name for us?” he asked the lady.
“Of course,” she smiled through a billow of smoke. “His name is Lewis Harding.”
22
Operation Eden
After leaving Mrs. Williams in the care of her scary gardener and a reference to one of Purdue’s private security contacts, Sam and Purdue hurried back to Wrichtishousis. It was getting dark soon, and Sam still had to set up his gear for the next morning’s meeting with the Australian Wildlife people to interview Miss Palumbo before cutting and presenting them with the minor documentary about the lawsuit and what Wildlife was planning to do once the court dates have been set.
“And this material, Sam, has to be copied and distributed to several covert media servers,” Purdue reminded his colleague. “If anything happens to us, God forbid, I don’t want them to be able to destroy the truth. There will be too many clips to locate before my automated e-mail network sends it out to the major channels.”
“Good idea,” Sam agreed. “I will first leave this footage with you, personally, while I finish the assignment your Australian friends hired me for.”
“It feels rather strange to know my ally is working for my opponents, even for a minor slot on an insignificant TV station down under,” Purdue admitted.
“Aw, don’t fret, Purdue. It is good to have a double agent at your service, don’t you think?” Sam smiled. “Especially with the level of shit you always end up in.”
“I suppose. It just shows how much I trust you,” Purdue said. “Good to know you won’t pull a Judas on me.”
“Judas was a cheap hooker. I am a high-class whore. Only the richest can afford me,” Sam jested, nudging at Purdue with his elbow.
“I’m not so sure, my friend,” Purdue laughed. “In my eyes, a whore is a whore. On that note, how uncanny did you find Miss Palumbo’s resemblance to that Maria character from our last close call?”
“You noticed that too?” Sam asked. “When I saw her at first, I thought I was suffering some sort of post trauma that made me see her in other women.”
“No, no, she is a dead ringer for her. It is actually very interesting. I wonder if they have any remote familial relation,” Purdue said.
Sam looked at him as if he was crazy. “Are you mad? Focus, Purdue. Jesus, don’t you have enough on your plate to deal with now than to go on a genealogical hunt for Palumbo’s heritage?”
“I was not going to lodge a large scale investigation into it, Sam” Purdue defended. “I just think it would do us good to know who exactly we are dealing with here. Have you noticed how the worst ambush always comes from enemies who know each other?”
“I get it,” Sam replied. “I’m just saying we should get this lawsuit business out of the way first, and secondly, we have to find out why the Black Sun is trying to destroy what we are uncovering here.”
“And we will,” Purdue assured Sam. “Let’s hope she is not related to that Nazi heifer in some way. My God, they are practically identical twins.”
“Of which one is Australian,” Sam remarked as they reached the gates of Wrichtishousis.
“They both have Italian names, they have the same face, and coincidentally she happens to be on the opposite side of my camp, Sam, antagonizing me. It is a little too close for comfort,” Purdue explained. Sam was silent while he stopped for security to check.
“Mr. Purdue,” the guard said attentively. “Welcome back.”
“Thank you,” Purdue answered. “I trust you lot are not turning away people at my gate without calling in to the house first?”
“No, sir, we send nobody away. Our training specifically dictates that we follow that protocol. That guard was definitely not one of ours,” the guard defended his company, while the other one, standing on Sam’s side of the vehicle, nodded in agreement.
“How did he get the shift then?” Purdue asked, and he quickly gave Sam a bewildered look.
“We don’t know, sir. He was on the register, and we have so many branches and personnel, I guess HR did not pick up on him until we got the police complaint from your assistant,” the guard revealed. “But all is well now, Mr. Purdue. They only use us now, your usual personnel, as before.”
“Good to know. Good to know,” Purdue smiled as Sam pulled away up the drive.
“Wonder what Nina has been able to put together,” Sam sighed. “Whatever it is, she cannot beat the plethora of details we gathered from Widow Williams today, right?”
Purdue smiled. “Bet you she could not unravel anything even remotely as juicy.”
When they entered the well-lit lobby of Purdue’s mansion, they could smell pizza.
“She’s still working,” Sam affirmed. “When Dr. Gould orders pizza, she is so invested in something that she cannot even break her concentration for a sandwich.”
“I know, right?” Purdue chuckled.
“Let’s go see what she has found,” Sam suggested. “Then I have to get home to prepare for
tomorrow’s interview with Miss Palumbo.”
Purdue cringed.
“Don’t worry, Purdue, I am 100% on your side. You know that, don’t you?” Sam asked.
“I do,” he said to Sam. “Just…lately…”
Purdue was very reluctant to share his vulnerability with someone, but Sam knew what he was trying to say. Of course he did. Sam was one of the most perceptive people Purdue had ever met. “I know the world seem to be out to get you, but we’ve had worse, right?” Sam consoled him. This was one of those times that Purdue did not have to say anything, nor did he have to feel stupid for feeling like this.
“Dr. Gould! Have you any joy with the Heike letter?” Purdue cried cheerfully as the two of them came down the steps to Storage 4. The smell of pizza was growing stronger and when they rounded the doorway and they did not know whether to laugh or panic.
With her hair tied back roughly, Nina propped up her face with her hand, leaning with her elbow on the desk. She had AC/DC playing at top volume from her iPod, and her black trousers were battered with white, powdery handprints from wiping her pizza hands. In front of her was a stack of books that were scattered, of which two were open next to the documents Purdue had retrieved from the last hoard.
“High time you two show up,” she said in a bossy jest. “How long does it take to drop off a fucking folder?”
The two men glanced happily at one another. “Oh, we lingered a bit,” Sam told her, “on account of some new found information and such. What about you?”
Over the top of her glasses, Nina ogled the gloating men and immediately read their minds. She turned down the music. “Let me guess,” she groaned in a sexy husky voice, “you think yours is bigger than mine.”
They nodded jovially.
“Think again,” she advised with cordial condescension.
“What do you have?” Purdue asked.
“No, no, by all means, you first,” she smiled, licking her bottom lip boastfully.
As swiftly as they could, Purdue and Sam shared the details of Mrs. Williams’ account, but as they bombarded Nina with the new details, she only smiled, tapping the end of her Biro against her lips.
“What?” Sam finally asked, having had enough of her delightful teasing. “What? Do you know something about this, esteemed Dr. Gould?”
“Aye,” she smiled coyly. “I have been busting my ass all day to figure out how this cipher works, boys, but once I did, this letter to Heike opened up like…well, I shall refrain from my uncle Dougal’s well-known maxim.”
“And?” Purdue pressed.
At last, Nina put on her serious face. “Well, there is a shit load of information in these pages that may, or may not, pertain to the covert assignment these soldiers were on.”
“Alright, but fire away so we can compare notes,” Purdue egged her on, while Sam was pouring them some coffee from the cappuccino machine Charles had brought in here for her.
“You said that Mrs. Williams told you that we misinterpreted the Inca prophecy and how it was actually two separate operations?” she started. “That is why they called it Kriegsmarine-Zwei. These twin ships were unregistered, although they belonged to the German Navy. They were a secret, even to the actual Kriegsmarine. In true Order of the Black Sun fashion, not even the navy knew of their own sub-fleet. The second operation was called Operation Eden.”
“Aye?” Sam urged, placing a mug of coffee in front of Nina’s work mess. “So there were two covert operations.”
“Ta,” she said. “That is true. Our soldier, Feldwebel Dieter Manns from Wolfsburg, distinctly marks here that their ship was to meet the Peruvian-based vessel in Argentina. But from there, they had two operations in effect. One was to go back up to Peru to deliver the child to the priests in Machu Picchu to exact the prophecy, while its sister ship would sail west, remember?”
“Yes, that is the part that did not make sense. The direction he jotted down,” Purdue confirmed.
“But it does make sense in the letter, because he wrote vergiss mich nicht,” she explained. “Forget me not, he says to Heike in here, but he refers to a flower blooming over their Lost City. It is not El Dorado, as we and others, may have thought. This Lost City allegedly lies under the protection of ‘guardians’.”
“What kind of guardians?” Sam asked.
She shrugged. “It does not say. Maybe I missed some detail, but that is what this part relates to, according to this method of decoding, Sam. However, it ends with him calling Heike ‘goldene Frau’, thanking her for holding his salvation in her heart.”
“The Golden Woman statue?” Purdue asked, looking as amazed as Sam at the mention of the full size statue they had salvaged from the Nazi ship along with the soldiers’ remains. Nina nodded. “I think so. What else could it mean?” she hypothesized. “We already know that something is hidden inside the chest of the statue, so he is probably referring to that.”
“Simply fascinating, my dear!” Purdue exclaimed happily. “My God, Sam, did you hear that? Our ‘golden girl’ is called Heike. It is all falling into place. No wonder these artifacts were unsuited for the Inca excursion!”
Nina smiled, as did Sam. She exhaled and threw her head back to close her eyes for a moment. “I’m exhausted.”
“You certainly should be, after all this,” Sam concurred. “I still have to meet up with Miss Palumbo in the morning for the second part of that interview. Once we have those people out of our hair, Purdue, you would probably want to go and find this “Lost City”, wouldn’t you?”
Purdue grinned mischievously. “You know me too well, old cock. Far be it from me to allow the Black Sun’s swine to successfully cover up something sinister their grandfathers had wrought and hidden. People, many innocent people, have died over this Operation Eden and its Inca counterpart. Naturally, the onus is on us to thwart the architects of these missions.”
“I like that. Cock-blocking the Nazi’s,” Sam agreed with a cheerful nod. Nina laughed at Sam’s expression as she grabbed the last, wrecked pizza slice to ravage.
23
Abandonment
Only an hour into the search for Lewis Harding, the weather took an unpredictable turn. From the sweltering heat of the midday, the area surrounding Nekenhalle suddenly came under the onslaught of gales that bent the slender trunks of young trees as if they were the stems of weeds.
“Fuck me! What is happening?” one of Sgt. Anaru’s men shouted over the howling gust.
Someone started yelling, “Must be the curse. They don’t want us here!” His words were met with a chorus of approval and agreement.
“Don’t be stupid!” the sergeant thundered over their collective speculation. “This is not the time for superstition, for Christ’s sake! Carry on searching. The longer we take, the less likely Mr. Harding is to survive.”
“What if he is dead already?” another man cried, holding on to his hat. “He has been missing on this godforsaken patch of land for over a week, mate. Not likely that he is still alive anyway!”
“Too right, mate!” another young man hollered. “We are looking for a corpse and corpses have a way of disappearing into the ground.”
Nobody, including Sgt. Anaru, wanted to admit that they were all of the same mind, but this was his job and he had to execute the search to adhere to police protocol. Inside his heart, he agreed with the volunteers and other officers, but he could not voice his opinion. Most of all, Anaru knew that Mr. Harding would never be found on the grounds of the farm. In fact, he would bet a year’s salary that the farmer was somewhere inside that mountain, inside that yawning blackness.
To justify his own minor cowardice, Anaru told himself that they were combing the open fields and mild woodlands of the farm first, to be thorough. Above them, the wind had brought a few fleece clouds together that soon clumped together to form thicker clouds.
“This is fucked up, mate,” one of the volunteers told the sergeant. “Look at that. That is not normal. This kind of weather doesn’t bloody exi
st on this island and you know it. I’m out.”
“Me too!” another called out.
From around the west ridge a group of men emerged, spooked by the unnatural gathering clouds, only to find that a lot of the men were busy packing up to leave. No matter how the sergeant tried to change their minds, the weather antagonized him successfully. Eventually only nine people were left of all those who joined the search party, but those leaving vowed to return once the weather was less hostile. They claimed that the black dirt was very dangerous when wet and, along with the lightning, was too perilous for them.
“Now what?” Const. Ballin asked.
The other members of the search party formed a cluster around Anaru and Ballin just as the thunder clapped.
“Orders?” asked one of the men, an old Maori from Moana. “We cannot stop now. What if the man is on the brink of death? What if he is nearby and we abandon the rescue? Tomorrow, he is dead and then we are to blame for leaving him.”
Another elder Samoan man nodded. “Tāwhirimātea is angry and he only gets angry when something is wrong in nature. We must go, Sergeant. We can come back when the wind has gone to sleep, hey? No use injuring or killing people to save one.”
Heather Ballin was quietly regarding her fiancé. He knew she desperately wanted to leave, as did he, but it was a difficult decision. “There is nothing eerie about the weather. We are suffering a heatwave. We all know what happens after a very hot day with little wind. Thunderstorms are formed.”
“Call it what you will, Sergeant, but fact is that this is dangerous for us. Mud slides and lightning on terrain none of us know well,” the old Maori man argued. He had a valid point, in Anaru’s opinion, but he felt as if he was letting down someone in need.
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