by J C Ryan
“Am I allowed to go in and see? Is that it?”
Carter was well aware that this was hallowed ground at present, and maybe Keeva would not be pleased to see him. He hesitated but once again Loki invited him in, so he proceeded with caution.
As his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, he could see Keeva lying stretched out on the ground and then he saw the pups.
He went down on his knees, “Oh Keeva, you clever lass; you smart, clever lass.” He whispered.
Her tail moved, wagging slowly. Carefully he sat down near her and patted her head; she licked his hand. Loki crouched next to him staring at him and then at the pups.
“Four pups. Oh, my word. Oh just wait until Mackie sees these, she’ll be over the moon; indeed, she will. As for Liam, well what can I say? You know how he feels about small animals.” He reached out a hand and tentatively ran his fingers over the tiny bodies, then just sat back and smiled.
Keeva stood and stretched, resting her chin on Carter’s shoulder before she stepped forward, picked up one of the pups and put it in his hands. Tears started in Carter’s eyes; this was more special than he could ever share with anyone. He turned the tiny pup over, and he cupped it in his large hands and noted it was a little girl.
“Keeva, you have a daughter.” He paused, “May I name her?” Keeva licked his cheek, “May I call her Winona for first born?” He held her to his cheek feeling the soft fur. “May I see the others?”
Keeva pushed his hand away, and he accepted her law, replacing Winona among her siblings.
“Oh, how often do you guys give me something more to hang on to, to believe in, to know one day Mackie and Liam will be back here with me. If I didn’t know any different, I would say you are miracle workers. As it is, you might not yet be that, but by God, you come pretty damned close.”
Carter spent the rest of the afternoon in and near the cave. He and Loki went down to the river where he shed his clothes and swam before racing up and down the banks as he used to when he was first getting his strength back after recovering from his injuries. Loki watched him and seemed to be mildly amused – that is if wolves could be mildly amused.
Later they returned to the cave to find Keeva had left the pups for a little while and was watching them from a vantage point above the cave entrance. She joined Carter as he sat on a log and watched the beginning shades of an evening sky before he bade them goodnight and returned to the homestead, his heart full of peace.
Somehow, once again, the wolves had imparted some internal knowledge that told him Mackenzie and Liam were okay.
Chapter 35 -
There was no lifeboat
Mathias Fisher was a retired police officer from the German Federal Police, Bundespolizei. He retired at age 65, and at 68 was still in good physical and mental condition when he started his own private investigating business to supplement his pension. Between his experience and the contacts, he’d developed over the years, his business quickly built up, producing an income that allowed him and his wife to take six-week holidays in exotic locations around the world twice a year and still have money left to add to his savings.
Today Mathias was traveling alone on business for a rather unusual request. He boarded the train in Berlin and spent the hour and a half trip to Brunswick pondering the request and watching the landscape pass by the window. It was a rather pleasant way to pass the time.
A collector of rare books in California had contacted him for assistance in locating a unique book titled The Sirralnnudam. The client hadn’t been able to give him much information, other than that the book was discovered by a German archeologist, Karsten Rischmüller, about 50 years ago at a dig site, Çatalhöyük, not far from Konya, Turkey. Rischmüller apparently gave the book to the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts in Yerevan, Armenia. The book had been lost, and Mathias was hired to find it. It wasn’t the easiest commission he’d ever accepted, but it was certainly going to be the most lucrative if he was successful.
Mathias was under very strict orders from his client to veil his investigation in complete secrecy. At no point was Mathias to reveal his own or his client’s identity to anyone. Mathias was almost 100% sure that his client was not who he said he was, but he couldn’t see anything illegal in his client’s request; collectors of rare artifacts seldom wanted their identities known. Moreover, the contract price offered by his client was enough encouragement to keep Mathias as tightlipped as required.
With his contacts in the police and a bit of research, it took him less than a day to track down the retired Doctor Karsten Rischmüller at an address in Brunswick.
He’d phoned the number one of his contacts had given him and spoke to Mitzi Scheider, Rischmüller’s daughter, introducing himself as Jurgen Ruschin, a freelance archeology journalist, and blogger from Düsseldorf. Mitzi was very kind and helpful, explaining that although her dad was 85 and suffering from Parkinson’s disease, he still had bright moments especially if he could talk about his favorite subject – Turkish history and archeology.
For Mathias, finding Rischmüller and managing to arrange a meeting was an excellent start in his quest to find the book and earn the $35,000 on offer from his client.
Upon arrival at the residence, Mathias rang the bell, and the door was opened by a woman with silver-gray hair who looked to be in her early fifties. Mathias guessed, correctly, that she was Mitzi Scheider. He introduced himself, and she invited him inside taking him through to the lounge. “Please make yourself comfortable,” she said indicating where he could sit. “I will get my father in a minute. I told him about your visit, and he is quite excited to talk to you. What can I get you to drink Herr Ruschin? Coffee, tea?”
Mathias told her that a cup of coffee was just what he needed after the early morning train ride.
She left to fetch her father and then vanished again to return with a tray set for coffee. “My father won’t have coffee Herr Ruschin, so do help yourself.”
Karsten Rischmüller was in a wheelchair; it was clear the Parkinson’s was in an advanced stage. Mathias stood and went over to gently shake the old man’s hand “Thank you for seeing me Doctor Rischmüller, I am honored you agreed to meet.”
There was a spark in the old man’s eyes when Mathias explained the reason for his visit
The first part of the conversation proceeded well; Mathias could follow most of what Karsten was saying but after half an hour the quality of his voice and the audibility started to drop off. Mitzi joined them, sitting beside her father and repeating some of the questions and answers. This helped immensely, but she finally suggested they take a short break so she could give her father some tea while Mathias read some of her father’s field journals.
Mathias made notes as they were talking, and two hours later he and Mitzi agreed that it was time for Karsten to get some rest.
“Do feel free to stay Herr Ruschin and continue to read my father’s journals, I will be getting some lunch in a little while, you are very welcome to join me.”
Mathias accepted with pleasure; there was so much here he still wanted to read; Karsten’s journal entries talked about the discovery of the Sirralnnudam, and there were also a few black and white photos of the book.
Close to twenty pages of neatly handwritten notes explained what the Sirralnnudam was. Karsten was able to read proto-Arabic, the language in which the book was written, and had even included a few translated paragraphs from the first pages of the book, which he’d translated into German.
According to Karsten’s notes, no one could say how old the Sirralnnudam was and who the original author or authors were. At some stage, it had been kept in the legendary Library of Alexandria somewhere between 300 B.C. and the time before the library was destroyed by Julius Caesar’s legions in 48 B.C.
Some scholars believed that it was one of the many thousands of books placed in the library by general Ptolemy I Soter, Alexander the Great’s successor, and the person who built the Library of Alexandria.
Karsten’s notes also included a brief summary of the contents of the book. The exciting news was Karsten’s remark that one of his co-explorers at the time had a theory that there was possibly a second copy of the Sirralnnudam. This he believed, had also existed in the Library of Alexandria and both copies had somehow survived the fire in 48 B.C. that destroyed the Library. Karsten had made note of this but didn’t go into any details except to say that he was of the opinion that if it did exist, the second copy was probably somewhere in private hands.
When Mitzi returned after making sure her father was comfortable she agreed Mathias could take photos of the pages and images in the journal. This occupied his time until Mitzi announced lunch.
It was a pleasant interlude in which he learned more about Karsten Rischmüller and the work he’d done in his heyday. “It’s a subject dear to his heart, Herr Ruschin and I know just how much he has appreciated your visit today. Not a lot happens in his life anymore that has real value, but today was, for him, special.”
“It has been that for me as well, a very special day, and I want to thank you for your hospitality.”
When lunch was over, and Mathias had gathered his notes and camera, she saw him to the door and bid him good-bye.
***
When Matthias got back at his apartment in Berlin, he logged onto the dead letter email account, which his client provided, and left a message in the drafts folder explaining that he had found Rischmüller and met with him. He gave a summary of the meeting and what he had in his possession. Informing his client that as soon as the first payment was in his account the documents would be uploaded to the client’s secure cloud account, he signed off.
Three hours later Mathias got confirmation that the $5,000 had been paid into his international Credit Card account. He copied the information to the cloud account and left a message for the client in the draft folder of the dead letter email box.
Mathias was a happy man; it was the easiest $5,000 he had ever earned in his PI business. The next thing on the agenda was planning what to do next to locate that second book. Retrieving a beer from the fridge, he decided it would be worth the trouble to return to Karsten Rischmüller’s house early in the morning in the hope of catching him at a time when his mind was still bright enough to give out more information about the potential second copy.
He called to confirm this was acceptable with Mitzi
****
Mathias’ client used compression and encryption software to secure the information and dropped it off at a dead letter box in Los Angeles. He didn’t know who the recipient was and into whose hands the information on the flash drive would eventually end up.
It took another two days before Dwayne Miller the CEO of CRS had the decrypted information from the flash drive in his hands. Initially, the information he was reading caused a bit of excitement but disappointment set in quickly as he read to the end of the report.
They certainly knew a lot more about the Sirralnnudam than they did before, but there was nothing that could help them find it - if it still existed. Dwayne decided that the next step would be to seek out and persuade a reputable archeologist to publish an article in various archeological journals and magazines regarding the book and see if something emerged from the woodwork.
A week later Matthias went back to Brunswick but left disappointed an hour later. Rischmüller remembered the speculations of his colleague but admitted he’d not paid much attention to his theories at the time, as he believed that the man’s ideas were a bit flimsy and unfounded. Matthias suggested he would like to speak with the colleague, but was disappointed when Rischmüller told him that unfortunately, it wouldn’t be possible as the man had passed away a few years ago.
Mathias kept his client up to date with his progress on the case. Not that there was much progress to report; he had hit a dead end by the time he finished his last meeting with Karsten Rischmüller.
The business relationship came to an abrupt and tragic end when both Mathias Fisher and his wife drowned one night after jumping overboard to escape a fire on board their yacht while vacationing in the Bahamas. Investigator’s indicated that a leaking gas stove caused the fire, but were at a loss to explain why there was no lifeboat on board.
Chapter 36 -
Step up the surveillance
At the end of the seventh week of Carter’s training, he, Kevin and John flew out to Quebec City from where they caught a commercial flight to DC. Of the three, only Carter knew they were due to depart for Egypt within the next two weeks. Kevin and John, like Roy and Andre before them, were nice, level-headed guys; Carter liked them, as did Ahote, Bly, and Jeha. The wolves of Freydis had also accepted them.
Kevin and John turned out to be tough taskmasters when it came down to Carter’s training. They were every bit as tough, if not more so, than their predecessors, Andre, and Roy. Carter was now up to a seven-mile run every morning, half of which he and his trainers did while shouldering a backpack stuffed with 20-pound sandbags.
Carter’s body had substituted twenty pounds of fat for twenty pounds of muscle and the strength training, which included hundreds of sit-ups, push-ups, and chin-ups on a cross bar every day, was showing on his shoulders, arms, and stomach.
He had progressed to laser-gun shooting and was able to hit the target with his left hand 75% of the time, and 90% with his right. Every three days they would do a 3-hour hike of 15 miles carrying a 40-pound backpack and rifle. On these hikes, Carter had to keep a lookout for hidden silhouettes and shoot them with the laser. With a gun in each hand, he could hit two different targets in less than a second more than 80% of the times.
In the hand-to-hand combat sessions, he could take on either of them and beat them; it wouldn’t be long before he’d be able to take on both of them at the same time with a better than 50% chance of beating them.
They had started his close quarter combat training the week before, showing him how to work with a team of operators to clear a house, room by room and to know the positions and tasks of everyone in the team.
In the evenings after dinner, training continued with memory improvement and observation exercises. They showed Carter a video or a picture, and he would recount what he saw. Sometimes they put various items on a tray, let him look at it for three seconds, then covered it with a cloth and required him to tell them what he saw and the position of each item.
Because of his eidetic memory, Carter excelled at this. Within a week, he was able to recite what he saw with one hundred percent accuracy almost every time. Carter’s memory skills had Kevin and John shaking their heads in wonder. This was the type of challenge that most people improved with over time but never mastered; very few people ever got full marks. Carter was reaching those extraordinary levels after the first week.
The plan was for Carter’s training to continue while he was in DC; Irene and Dylan had pulled a few strings with some of their CIA contacts who would allow Carter to fire his first live rounds at their secret training facility on a farm in Virginia.
***
Since the Saudi client had upped the contract price on Carter’s head, Dwayne Miller had stepped up the surveillance efforts. He instructed a team to move closer and obtain better information about Carter’s plans and movements. Two drones had been deployed over Freydis. It raised both Miller’s and Gordon’s eyebrows when they learned that Carter was going through some type of special training. Why? Was it part of a plan? Was it just to prepare himself better for his future work on the nuclear research project? They had to find out.
When Miller received word that Carter and his bodyguards had left Freydis, he instructed the drone team to visit the Freydis homestead and collect more information.
A surveillance team was placed on alert to be on the lookout for Carter in DC.
The next day they reported spotting Carter as he entered the Smithsonian. They immediately activated their IMSI – International Mobile Subscriber Identity – equipment, which would lock onto a mobile sig
nal and siphon data from it. It would not only collect data from the device, but it would also track location and movements.
***
Back in DC, Roy and Andre took over Carter’s protection and training again for the duration of his time there giving John and Kevin a break.
The first morning when Carter arrived at A-Echelon’s offices, he and Irene met with James and gave him an update on their progress and plan to return to Egypt and the City of Lights.
“Carter, didn’t you forget something?” James had a little smile playing on his face.
“What?”
“You made me a promise that I could accompany you on the next trip to the City of Lights. Didn’t you?”
Carter smiled. “Yeah Jim, now I remember, but I also distinctly remember that we agreed you’d be the cook.”
“Jim, you’re not seriously considering going out there?” Irene looked a bit worried. She wasn’t always sure when Carter and James were just having fun and when they were being serious.
James and Carter shared a quick look and continued the wile. “Of course, I’m serious; a promise is a promise, and I’m going.”
“Jim! You are not going to drop this place in my lap while you go and play desert rat.”
“Well Irene we need a cook, and if Jim can’t go then, you’ll have to go.” Carter joined in.
Irene stood and took a step back. She looked at them in turn and said. “If you fancy suffering from food poisoning I’ll go and cook for you. But Jim is staying here, or I go and book myself into the hospital right now for a major operation or something.”
Carter and James shook their heads and held their hands up in surrender. None of Irene’s options sounded good.