Deep Sea One (14 page)

Sam woke up from the crunching of twigs and shifting of gravel under someone's weight and immediately he perked up to listen. After what Calisto had told him about the two suspicious men he hardly managed to sleep as it was, his ears alert for any intrusion or threat. The wind wailed wildly over the campsite, but he could distinctly hear someone walking to the fringe of trees not ten meters from them. He quietly grasped his new walking stick and progressed on his knees toward the exit of his tent to investigate the source of the sound. As Sam opened the tent, wincing with every sound it made, his heart raced insanely at the prospect of the stalking hikers. Because Calisto urged him to keep her theory to himself, he dared not wake Jodh, for fear that he could be the one working with them.

Outside he felt free, even in his wariness. He breathed deeply and looked around the area before emerging from the safety of his tent. In the violent gale he tightened his grip on the cane, piquing his ears. From the trees came another rustle, dipping the branches as something emerged from the darkness. Sam sucked in his breath, his numb legs refusing to move until he knew what he was dealing with.

A yak appeared from the huddle of trees, clomping about slowly across the pathway. It was enormous and gave Sam quite the fright, but he was relieved that it was not human, branding a pistol or something. Sam sighed with relief and chuckled quietly at his ridiculous terror. The fire was now reduced to embers and flitting ash, but the ground in close proximity of where it had burned was still warm where he sat down to take a moment.

"What the fuck are you looking at?" he said to the animal that stared at him in the dark with its empty expression and shaggy hair. Sam realized how badly he needed a cigarette, but patting his chest pocket out of habit, yielded no rewards and he quickly regretted giving them to the village elder.

Calisto's head jutted out from the tent and looked around. She looked at Sam with the same perplexity as the yak did, which provoked him to shrug. He had no explanation for his sitting by the side of an extinguished fire in the middle of the stormy night. Calisto seemed to search for something as she approached him with a hunched-over frame, trying to escape the brunt of the wind as she moved.

"Hey. Where is Nina?" she asked him in a loud whisper.

"I don't know. Isn't she supposed to be sharing your tent?" Sam asked. He was astonished, a streak of forbidding tearing through his unwilling mind. How could she not know where Nina was?

"Yes, she went outside to take a leak, but then I noticed that she had not returned. And I heard the heavy steps outside. Was that you?" she asked. Sam pointed to the large herbivore tearing off some leaves in the underbrush to their right.

"Okay, so . . . Nina has not made an appearance?" she mouthed her words slowly as if she was afraid of his answer. Sam shook his head and immediately Calisto jumped up, "Well, then, let us go find her, damn it!"

Sam agreed. In this environment, dealing with a coveted artifact chased by countless generations, there was no place for reckless assumptions that steered toward ignorance. The two stepped into the dark bending tree line, away from the chewing yak, to look for their colleague. Behind them the unguarded campsite rattled in the onslaught of the wind, its occupants blissfully unaware of the missing historian.

Suddenly a cold barrel pressed against Sam's temple from the oblivion of the dark, stopping him in his tracks.

"Don't move," a man said, in a heavy accent. Sam flicked his eyes to find Calisto, but she was no longer behind him. He was alone, held up by a stranger with what felt like a rather large firearm.

"Oh, shit," Sam snapped. He could not ascertain the gravity of his situation and it frustrated him no end. "What do you want?" He spoke unusually loud, hoping to draw attention from his sleeping colleagues.

"Keep quiet or I will shoot you," the man said bluntly, cocking his gun. The eye of the barrel dug into the journalist's skin and drove his mind to retrieve the worst day of his life when his prying nature cost the love of his life hers.
Not again
, he thought. He swung his right arm violently and quickly to knock the man's arm away. Sam lunged to grab the gun from his extended arm, but a blinding blow fell against his cheek from the other side, knocking him to the ground with such force that he passed out.

His fading thoughts dwelled on the betrayal of Calisto, how she led him into the bushes to be ambushed while she went after Nina. The limp body of the journalist was tied and gagged while the older man with the ponytail pushed Nina's body back onto the rock where he had placed her. She looked at Sam through burning wet eyes, trying to see if he was still alive. Her only solace was his gagging, which implied that he would again wake up. She kicked at the old man who kept giving the tall blond man orders in what she construed as Norwegian. He ignored her efforts until he had Sam subdued and then turned to Nina with a brutal facial expression she had only seen in bloodthirsty hounds behind the fences of dog-fighting rings.

She knew there would be no negotiating with them.

☼

Chapter 18

"Where is the grimoire?" he asked Nina. The old man's grey locks thrashed about on his collar, his sunken eyes inquisitive and harboring an ancient strength. She shook her head, playing dumb so that he would think her just a tourist. He dealt her a devastating clout for her attempted deceit and repeated, "Where is the grimoire . . . Dr. Gould?"

Nina felt her heart jump and panic filled her, a fear for her very life. In her skull her brain burned and her ears hissed, but she maintained her composure. They knew who she was, probably who they all were. There was no margin for games and subterfuge.

"Gr-grimoire?" she stuttered.

"My associate is on his way to your campsite, doctor, and I cannot tell you what is in store for your friends if you do not cooperate. Now, please, for the last time, tell me where the book of secrets is or we will dispatch each and every one of you duly," he rasped. His breath smelled like pipe tobacco and brandy and his grasp on her wrist was immensely powerful, so that she felt her hand numbing.

"Purdue, Mr. Purdue has it with him. He has charted the entire route. I only served as his translator, I swear!" Nina sobbed. Most of what she said was untrue, but her fear was very real. Her hands shook in their restraints as the old man looked up over her head and nodded, as if giving a signal to his accomplice. For a few minutes, which felt like infinity, they waited in the restless weather. Nina was silently thankful that she had taken a piss, or else she was certain she would have wet herself. Suddenly the older man grabbed a fistful of Nina's hair and hissed, "Purdue is not there, bitch. Where is he?"

"I don't know! I swear! I swear to God I thought he was sleeping in his tent!" her voice shivered through tears and snot drying in the cold. She wished Sam would wake up. If Purdue was gone, he planned all this. He used them to get this far and then would have them killed.

"Oh, my God, what a fool I was!" she sobbed with her head hung, but her captor jerked her head back.

"Now you're a dead fool," he grunted in her face. "Björn! Look in her tent. Kill all the others!"

"No! No, please!" she screamed in desperation. "I'll help you find him. Don't kill anyone, please. I can help you get to the shrine . . ."

He stared at her with a look of interest. "I will. I know the way to the shrine, by recollection," Nina wagered her fate.

The old man gestured for his associate to get Nina to her feet. They led her to the campsite, where Jodh and Gary were trussed up in the same way as Sam. Calisto and Purdue had vanished, but Nina's mind was racing, having no resolution for the mystery. The tall blond man was ransacking the tents for the book. Nina knew it was in her backpack's side pocket, but by morning light, after every item was peeled from every container and bag, she realized that Calisto must have stolen it from her bag while she was outside peeing.

"Bitch," she said softly, and her eyes met the slowly waking eyes of Sam Cleave. His cheek was swollen and bruised from the blow he had received and he looked deeply worried. He looked around the camp and quickly deduced what was transpiring. Jodh was not the leak in the cauldron. He was as trapped as Gary and Nina with him. Purdue had betrayed them and Calisto, of course, had his back.

"It is not here, Herr Eickhart," Björn said, running his hands hopelessly through his blond hair. "I have checked everything. The woman is right. Dave Purdue must have it."

"Then we should find him, yes?" Eickhart said harshly. Sam knew that name. It was Purdue's contact to facilitate their travel to the forbidden parts of the country. Of course, he would know all about the expedition! Sam looked at his company. They were all as stunned as he was at the shocking developments, shivering profusely at the low temperature they had been exposed to for the past few hours and poor Nina, sporting a black eye. This infuriated Sam, but he bided his time to avenge the petite beauty he cared so much for.

Eickhart pulled out his satellite phone and spoke Norwegian. Nobody in the Purdue party knew the language, so they had no idea what fate awaited them. All they could do was pass glances from one to the other. There were obviously more men out here that he was now sending to pursue the billionaire.

"We will stay here until my men have retrieved the grimoire," Eickhart announced. "Björn, let us get a fire going. Our friends must be hungry." With that he loosened each of their gags and personally served them water from his canteen. Jodh and Sam refused, making no secret that they did not trust the contents, but Nina was parched and quite frankly she did not care, for she was solidly convinced that they were about to be killed anyway. Gary only shook his head in protest for the water. Of all of them, he looked the most distraught and Nina felt sorry for him. He was such a polite person, she remembered from her first helicopter trip with him.

"Excuse me," Jodh said to Eickhart, "why do you call it a grimoire? It is just a notebook, is it not?"

"What is a grimoire?" Gary asked.

Nina lolled her head back and sideways, "It implies that the book holds incantations or contains some form of magical power rites," she looked straight at Eickhart, "which is bullshit!"

He narrowed his eyes at her and Björn lifted a smoldering stump from the fresh fire, but Eickhart motioned for him to put it down.

"Bullshit? The power of the Christ is bullshit? The unmistakable might of the führer is bullshit?" Eickhart roared, "You call yourself an authority on history, on men of renown throughout the halls of centuries—kings, gods, emperors and pharaohs—but you think the book that holds the secrets of the Heilige Lanze does not contain natural or practical magic?
That
is bullshit!"

Nina raised her eyebrow at the man's passionate retort. Sam slowly moved his head from side to side, conveying his warning not to provoke Eickhart's rage, and Nina took it to heart. She did not mean to excite his anger to this extent. Then she took a moment to think about it. Perhaps he was correct, perhaps the illegible jabber in Latin, faded into obscurity, was not all about the Spear, but in fact held occult scripture on an array of other power-inducing relics. It scared her that such a thing existed. No matter how profound its content, by the conduct of men it would be a most dangerous weapon. Humans were simply too mentally regressed, reduced to the mentality of base predators and the natural and destructive needs to impose hierarchy.

She decided that the discovery of the Spear would be more alarming to the state of the world, more important than her petty academic reputation and Nina wept for the outcome of the expedition. It frightened her to see the extent to which people could turn on others for its possession and she wondered if it was at all still worth it to be involved in this anymore. Even showing up Matlock, even getting tenure, spending the rest of her days as a renowned expert in her field was not a certain victory anymore. And Sam. She watched the man who had attained a great and grand level of honor in his own field shake in the cold of the mountains, his face battered and his eyes empty.

Most of the morning was spent with the two captors conversing in Norwegian, as they were aware that Dr. Gould and Jodh both understood German. Björn disappeared into the sloping woodland away from the camp with his rifle in hand. Eickhart sat down with a coffeepot by the fire and offered some to his captives. This time they all decided that quenching their thirst and maintaining their hydration was more important than the possible poisoning in the liquid.

"Mr. Eickhart, are you going to kill us?" Gary asked. The others gasped in disbelief, thinking him an idiot to bring up the subject.

"That depends, "Eickhart said, as he collected cups from their belongings that Björn had thrown in a pile. "If I find the book we will have what we want. As long as you stay out of our way, we will not shoot you in the face."

Sam chuckled at his choice of words. "Sir, I have to butt in here. If it is taking your people this long to find Purdue, chances are that he is long gone."

"How? I have his pilot," the old German said.

"We are of the opinion, and I think I speak for all of us, that he had been planning this move all along. So he had to have made provision for his flight so that he could use us to keep you occupied while he got to the shrine," Sam mentioned.

"He is not that smart, Mr. Cleave. Have you forgotten that I was the one taking care of his safe passage and permit laws? Do you not think he would need me to accommodate any escape from this region?" Eickhart boasted. He seemed completely unfazed by it all and his voice was calm. Sam nodded. He had to admit that the German had Purdue at a disadvantage, even if the latter had thought it through.

"Wait, so you are not after the Spear of Destiny as much as you are after its address book?" Nina asked, minding her tone this time.

"Oh, I am of course interested in the Spear. But with what is in that book, it is but one of the elements of world domination and historical power to be unlocked, discovered, and owned!" Eickhart smiled for the first time.