The Austrian pilot was a very friendly man, and he was one of the men at the brigade who defended Nina and Sam when Bern accused them of having stolen the Longinus. With much difficulty they relayed the sad news to Otto and briefly filled him in about what had happened in the research facility.
“And there is no way you could have brought his body?” he finally asked.
“No, Herr Schmidt,” Nina chipped in, “we had to get out there. There was no way of knowing if and when the weapon would detonate. We still have no idea if it exploded. I suggest you refrain from sending more men in there to retrieve Bern’s body. It is far too dangerous.”
He heeded Nina’s warning, but promptly got in touch with his colleague, Bridges, to inform him of their status and the loss of the Longinus. Nina and Alexandr waited anxiously, hoping that Sam and Purdue would not run out of patience and join them before they had established a plan of action with Otto Schmidt’s assistance. Nina knew Purdue would offer to pay Schmidt for his trouble, but she reckoned it would be inappropriate after Purdue had admitted to stealing the Longinus in the first place. Alexandr and Nina made a pact to keep this fact to themselves for now.
“All right, I have called in a status report. As fellow commander I am authorized to make any arrangements I see fit,” Otto told them when he returned from outside the building where he had placed the private call. “I will have you know that losing the Longinus and still not being closer to arresting Renata, is not sitting well with me ... us. But as I trust you, and because you reported when you could have fled, I have decided to help you ...”
“Oh, thank you!” Nina sighed in relief.
“BUT ...” he continued, “I am not returning to Mönkh Saridag empty handed, so this is not getting you off the hook. Your friends, Alexandr, still have an hourglass rapidly losing sand. That has not changed. Am I clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Alexandr answered while Nina nodded gratefully.
“Now, tell me about your excursion you mentioned, Dr. Gould,” he said to Nina, shifting in his seat to listen attentively.
“I have reason to believe I have discovered ancient scriptures as old as the Dead Sea Scrolls,” she started.
“Can I see them?” Otto asked.
“I would rather show them to you in a more ... secluded location?” Nina smiled.
“Done. Where do we go?”
Less than thirty minutes later Otto’s Jet Ranger had four passengers—Purdue, Alexandr, Nina, and Sam—en route to Thurso. They would hold up at Purdue’s manor, the very same place Miss Maisy was attending to the guest of her nightmares without the knowledge of anyone other than Purdue and his so-called housekeeper. It would be the best place, Purdue suggested, because it had a laboratory in the basement where Nina could conduct radiocarbon tests on the scrolls she had found, scientifically dating the organic base of the papyri to check for authenticity.
For Otto there was the promise of taking back something from the discovery, although Purdue had been planning to rid himself of a very expensive and annoying asset sooner than later. All he wanted to do first was to see how Nina’s discovery panned out.
“So you think these are part of the Dead Sea Scrolls?” Sam asked her as she set up the machinery Purdue had made available to her, while Purdue, Alexandr, and Otto had elicited the help of a local physician to attend to their bullet wounds without asking too many questions.
37
Miss Maisy entered the basement with a tray.
“Some tea and cookies?” she smiled at Nina and Sam.
“Thank you, Miss Maisy. And please, if you need help in the kitchen, I’m your man,” Sam offered with his trademark boyish charm. Nina scoffed and chuckled as she set up the scanner.
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Cleave, but I’ll be fine on me own,” Maisy assured him, shooting Nina a look of playful terror that appeared on her face, recalling the kitchen catastrophes Sam brought on the last time he helped her make breakfast. Nina sank her face to giggle.
With hands gloved, Nina Gould handled the first papyrus scroll with immense tenderness.
“So you think these are the actual scrolls we always read about?” Sam asked.
“Aye,” Nina smiled, her face beaming with exhilaration, “and by my rusty Latin I know that these three in particular, are the fabled Atlantis Scrolls!”
“Atlantis, as in the sunken continent?” he asked, peeking over the machine to have a look at the ancient texts in a strange language, recorded in faded black ink.
“That is correct,” she replied, concentrating on setting the fragile papyrus just right for the test.
“But you know most of it is speculation, even its existence, let alone its location,” Sam mentioned, leaning on the table to watch her skilled hands work.
“There have been too many coincidences, Sam. Several cultures containing the same doctrines, not to mention the similarities between their legends and folk tales,” she said. “Turn off that light there, please.”
He walked over to the switch off the main overhead light and draped the basement in low light from the two lamps on opposite sides of the room. Sam watched her work and could not help but feel unending admiration for her. Not only did she persist through all the hazards that Purdue and his affiliations put them through, but she still maintained her professionalism when conducting herself in her capacity as protector of all historical treasures. Never once did she think of fencing the relics she handled or of taking credit for discoveries she had made while risking her life to uncover the beauty of the unknown past.
He wondered what she was feeling when she looked at him now, still torn between loving him and thinking him some sort of traitor. The latter had not gone unnoticed. Sam had realized that Nina thought he was about as trustworthy as Purdue, yet she was so close to both men that she could never really walk away.
“Sam,” her voice jolted him from his silent contemplation, “can you put this back in the leather roll, please? After you have put on gloves, that is!” He fiddled with the box of surgical gloves, took a pair and snapped them on with great ceremony, grinning at her. She passed him a scroll. “Keep your cavity searches for when you go back home,” she smiled. Sam chuckled as he carefully fitted the scroll into a leather roll and tied it neatly inside.
“Do you suppose we’ll ever get to go home without watching our backs?” he asked on a more serious note.
“I hope so. You know, in hindsight I can’t believe my biggest threat once was Matlock and his sexist condescension at the university,” she shared the memory of her academic career under the pretentious attention whore who stole her every achievement as his own for the sake of publicity when she and Sam first met.
“I miss Bruich,” Sam pouted, lamenting his absence from his beloved cat, “and getting a pint on with Paddy every Friday night. God, those days feel a lifetime away, don’t they?”
“Aye. It is almost as if we are living two lifetimes in one, don’t you think? But on the other hand, we would not have known half as much or experienced even an ounce of the amazing things we have, had we not been flung into this life, eh?” she consoled him, while in truth she would take her boring teaching life back in a blink for the comfort of a secure existence.
Sam nodded, agreeing with it 100 percent. Unlike Nina, he figured that his old life would have had him hanging by a rope from the bathroom plumbing by now. The thoughts of his near-perfect life with his late fiancé, would have caught up with him and haunted him with guilt every day if he still did freelance journalism for various publications in Great Britain, as he had once planned to do on the suggestion of his therapist.
There was no doubt that his flat, his frequent drunken escapades, and his past would have caught up to him by now, whereas now he had no time to think about things past. Now he had to watch his step, learned to judge people quickly, and stay alive at all costs. He hated to admit it, but Sam preferred being in the embrace of peril rather than sleeping in the fires of self-pity.
“We are going to nee
d a linguist, a translator. Oh, my God, here we go again having to choose strangers we can trust,” she sighed with her hand tangled in her hair. It reminded Sam of Trish suddenly; how she often twisted a loose curl around her finger, letting it spring back in place after she pulled it taut.
“And you are sure these scrolls should tell us the location of Atlantis?” he frowned. The concept was just too far-fetched for Sam to grasp. Never a firm believer in conspiracy theories, he had to concede to many a discrepancy he had not believed in until he experienced it first-hand. But Atlantis? If anything it was a historical city of sorts that was flooded, Sam reckoned.
“Not just the location, but it is said that the Atlantis Scrolls recorded the secrets of an advanced civilization so far ahead in its time that it was inhabited by what mythology now offers as gods and goddesses. The people of Atlantis were said to have such superior intellect and methodology that they are credited with the construction of the Giza pyramids, Sam,” she rambled. He could see that Nina had invested much time in the legend of Atlantis.
“So where was it supposed to be located?” he asked. “And what the hell would the Nazis have done with a submerged landmass? Weren’t they already satisfied subduing all the cultures above water?”
Nina cocked her head and sighed at his cynicism, but it made her smile.
“No, Sam. I think what they were after was written somewhere in these scrolls. Many explorers and philosophers had speculated about the position of the island, and most agreed that it was located between northern Africa and the Americas,” she lectured.
“That’s quite a big area,” he mentioned “It was. According to Plato’s writings and subsequently other more modern theories, Atlantis is the reason why so many different continents share similar building styles and animal life. It all came from the Atlantean civilization that connected the other continents, so to speak,” she explained.
Sam gave it some thought. “So what would Himmler have wanted, do you think?”
“Knowledge. Advanced knowledge. It wasn’t enough that Hitler and his dogs thought that the master race was descendant of some otherworldly breed. Perhaps they thought that was precisely what the inhabitants of Atlantis were and that they would have secrets harbored as to advanced technology and such,” she speculated.
“That would be a palpable theory,” Sam agreed.
For a while they said nothing with only the machine breaking the silence. They locked eyes. It was a rare moment alone where they were not being threatened or in mixed company. Nina could see that something was bothering Sam. No matter how she wanted to shrug it off to the recent shocking experiences they had, she could not contain her inquisitiveness.
“What is it, Sam?” she asked almost involuntarily.
“Did you think I was obsessed with Trish all over again?” he asked.
“I did,” Nina dropped her eyes to the floor, clasping her hands in front of her. “I saw those stacks of notes and fond memories and I ... I thought ...”
Sam approached her in the mild light of the otherwise depressing basement and took her in his arms. She let him. For the moment she did not care what he was involved in or how far she should believe that he had not in some deliberate way led the council to them in Wewelsburg. Now, here, he was just Sam—her Sam.
“The notes about us—Trish and I—it is not what you think,” he whispered as his fingers played in her hair, cradling the back of her head while his other arm was tightly wrapped around her petite waist. Nina did not want to spoil the moment by responding. She wanted him to continue. She wanted to know what it was about. And she wanted to hear it straight from Sam. Nina just kept quiet and let him speak, savoring every precious moment alone with him; breathing in the faint scent of his cologne and the fabric softener of his sweater, the warmth of his body against her and the faraway cadence of his heart inside him.
“It’s just a book,” he told her, and she could hear him smiling.
“What do you mean?” she asked, looking up at him with a scowl.
“I’m writing a book for a London publisher about the whole incident, from when I met Patricia until ... well, you know,” he explained. His dark brown eyes looked black now, with the only white being the slight glint of the light that made him alive to her—alive and real.
“Oh, God, I feel so stupid,” she groaned and buried her forehead firmly in the muscular dent of his chest. “I was devastated. I thought ... oh, shit, Sam, I’m sorry,” she whined in embarrassment. He sniggered at her response and lifted her face to his, planting a deep, sensual kiss on her lips. Nina could feel his heart quicken and it made her moan just a little.
Purdue cleared his throat. He stood at the top of the stairs, supported by a walking stick to keep most of his weight off his injured leg.
“We are back and patched up,” he announced with a slight smile of defeat at the sight of their romantic moment.
“Purdue!” Sam exclaimed. “That walking stick somehow gives you a sophisticated image, like a James Bond villain.”
“Thank you, Sam. I picked it out for that very reason. Inside is a concealed cutlass I’ll show you later,” Purdue winked without much humor.
Alexandr and Otto came up behind him.
“And are the documents authentic, Dr. Gould?” Otto asked Nina.
“Um, don’t know yet. The tests take a few hours before we will know definitively if they are actually ancient texts,” Nina explained. “So we should be able to tell by one scroll the approximate age of all the others written in the same ink and hand.”
“While we wait, I can give the others a read through, yes?” Otto suggested eagerly.
Nina looked at Alexandr. She did not know Otto Schmidt well enough to entrust her find to him, but, on the other hand, he was one of the heads of the Brigade Apostate and therefore could decide the fate of them all instantly. If they displeased him Nina feared he would have Katya and Sergei killed while he was playing darts with the Purdue party as if he was ordering a pizza.
Alexandr nodded his approval.
38
The stout sixty-something Otto Schmidt sat down at an antique bureau upstairs in the drawing room to examine the writings on the scrolls. Sam and Purdue engaged in a game of darts, challenging Alexandr to throw with his right arm, since the left-handed Russian was injured in his left shoulder. Always being up for a dare, the crazy Russian showed them up really well, even attempting a round with his sore arm.
Nina joined Otto a few minutes later. She was fascinated by his ability to read two of the three languages they found on the scrolls. He briefly told her about his studies and his affinity for languages and cultures, something that also intrigued Nina, before she decided on history as a specialty. Although she got on in Latin, the Austrian could also read Hebrew and Greek, which was a godsend. The last thing Nina wanted to do was risk their lives again by using some stranger to work with her relics. She was still convinced that the neo-Nazis who tried to kill them on the way to Wewelsburg were sent by the graphologist Rachel Clarke and she was grateful that they had someone within their company who could help with the legible parts of the mysterious writings.
The thought of Rachel Clarke made Nina uneasy. If she was the one behind the bloody vehicle pursuit that day, she would know by now that her lackeys had been killed. The idea of her being in the next town over unsettled Nina even more. If she ever found out where they were, just north of Halkirk, that would mean much more trouble than they needed.
“According to the Hebrew sections here,” Otto pointed out to Nina, “and here, there is tell that Atlantis is ... not was ... is a vast land under the rule of ten kings.” He lit a cigarette and breathed in the billowing smoke from his filter before continuing. “From the tense in which they write, this might well have been written at the time Atlantis is reputed to have existed. Over here it mentions the location of the continent, by which on current maps its shores would have bordered, uh, let’s see ... from Mexico down to the mouth of the Amazon River in South
America,” he groaned through another exhale, his eyes focused on the antique Hebrew scripture, “all along the west coast of Europe and northern Africa.” He raised an eyebrow, looking impressed.
Nina had a similar expression. “That is where the Atlantic Ocean gets its name, I suppose. Jesus, it’s so big, how could everyone miss it all this time?” she jested, but her thoughts were sincere.
“It would seem so,” Otto agreed. “But, my dear Dr. Gould, you have to remember that it’s not about the circumference or the size, but the depths at which this land lies below the surface.”
“I suppose. But you’d think with the technology we have to venture into space, one should think we have technology to dive to immense depths,” she scoffed.
“Preaching to the choir, lady,” Otto smiled. “I’ve been saying that for years.”
“What does this one say?” she asked him, gently unrolling another scroll that contained several entries mentioning Atlantis or some derivative thereof.
“This is Greek. Let me see,” he said, focusing on every word his scanning index finger traced. “Seems to be the reason why the damn Nazis wanted to find Atlantis ...”
“Why?”
“This text speaks of Sun worship being the religion of Atlanteans. Sun worship ... sound familiar to you?”
“Oh, God, yes,” she sighed.
“This was probably written by an Athenian. They were at war with Atlanteans, refusing to give up their land to the conquests of Atlantis, and Athenians kicked their asses. Here, this part notes that the continent lay ‘West of the Pillars of Hercules,’” he added, crushing the butt of his smoke in the ashtray.
“And that would be?” Nina asked. “Wait, Pillars of Hercules– that’s referring to the promontories that flank the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. The Strait of Gibraltar!”
“Oh, all right. I thought it would be in the Mediterranean somewhere. Close,” he replied, caressing the yellow papyrus and nodding contemplatively. He was in awe of the antiquity he was privileged to learn from. “This is Egyptian papyrus, as you probably know,” Otto told Nina in a dreamy voice, like an old grandfather telling a child a fairy tale. Nina enjoyed his wisdom and his respect for history. “The oldest civilization stemming directly from the super-advanced Atlanteans was settled in Egypt. Now, if I were a lyrical and romantic soul,” he winked at Nina, “I would love to think this very scroll was written on by an actual Atlantean descendant.”
Order of the Black Sun Box Set 3 Page 21
