Cam nodded, remembering the conference from a few weeks ago. “I know the type. So why’s he letting us come over?”
“Because he owes me one. I’m the guy who hooked him up with the giant skeleton. But like I said, he’s paranoid. I had to give him your names on the phone—I’m sure he spent the last hour checking you out online.” He pointed. “Turn right here. Second house on the left.”
Unlike Herm’s neighborhood of ranches and Capes, brick Tudor-style homes dominated this area of town. “You know some of these things are selling for two million?” Herm said. “Who can afford that?”
Cam pulled into the driveway. “The same guy who can afford to own an ancient giant skeleton.” He smiled. “People buy a lot of staplers and paper clips.”
Herm snorted. “You got me there.”
A thin, bookish, middle-aged man in a gray cardigan sweater met them at the door; Herm introduced him as Maxwell. The smell of cat urine greeted them as Maxwell guided them furtively down a dusty, dimly lit hallway to a set of stairs running down to the basement. “Please hurry, and be quiet,” he explained. “My wife does not know you’re here. She does not like it when I show my collection to strangers.” He glanced over his shoulder and wiped sweat off his upper lift with the back of his hand. “She is the anxious type. She worries someone will rob us.”
“Like I said, I can vouch for these guys,” Herm said.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Maxwell handed them a canvas bag. “I must insist on no pictures. Please put your cell phones and cameras in here and I will return them when you leave.”
The basement had been refinished at one point but was even dingier and darker and urine-scented than the upstairs hallway; most of the space was filled with file cabinets and stacked storage bins. Cam wondered how much of what was in the bins and cabinets actually belonged to Boston College. In the middle of the room a pool table had been covered with various wooden and iron tools and implements. Herm said, “Maxwell has one of the most complete collections of Inquisition torture devices in the world.” Cam stepped closer and noticed what looked like a thumb screw. Herm pointed to a second object, a brass metal orb that resembled a corkscrew. “That’s a pear of anguish,” he whispered. “It was inserted inside the anus or vagina and then expanded like flower pedals opening to tear the internal tissue.”
“How barbaric,” Amanda said.
Herm nodded. “The Church agreed. They liked to think of themselves as pious and holy. So they decreed no blood could be spilled during questioning. Instead they did things like hoisting heretics up to the rafters with their wrists tied and then dropping them, dislocating their shoulders.” He raised an eyebrow. “But no blood.”
Astarte took Cam’s hand. “It looks like the Addams Family’s house,” she whispered, pointing to a wooden chair with scores of nails protruding up from the seat and seatback.
Cam pulled her closer. “Stay with me, honey.” He smiled. “And don’t sit down.”
A pathway between the bins led to a gray steel door recessed into the back wall; Maxwell pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked it. He pushed open the door, moved aside and motioned for the others to enter some kind of storage closet tucked into the corner of the basement. Cam stepped forward first, Astarte in tow, followed by Amanda and Herm. The room was warm, the air thick, the room illuminated only by a streetlight shining through a single rectangular window atop the room’s back wall. Cam glanced around, his eyes adjusting to the dark—more display cases and storage bins along with a few filing cabinets. Amanda wandered over to examine a large skull mounted in some kind of Plexiglas display case. “Cam, look at this. It’s huge,” she exhaled. “And it has a double row of teeth.”
Cam spotted a chain for an overhead light bulb, pulled it and moved to join Amanda. As he peered to examine the skull the steel door echoed closed.
“What the hell you doing, Maxwell?” Herm bellowed, pounding on the door. Cam froze and turned. What was going on?
“I’m sorry, Herm,” came the muffled reply from beyond the closed door. “But I can’t have government agents confiscating my collection.” His voice rose in pitch. “They’re everywhere, you know. Just waiting to come in and steal our property, steal our freedoms. It’s only a matter of time.”
Herm exhaled. “Maxwell, these people are my friends. They’re not government agents. They don’t want to take your stuff. Now let us out of here.”
“I checked them out, Herm. They have friends at the CIA. They have friends who are Freemasons. They can’t be trusted.” He paused. “You should not have brought them here. Even if they don’t work for the government, they will tell people about my collection, about my skeleton—Thorne gives lectures, that’s what he does. They’ll take my things, Herm.” His voice was almost a shriek now. “I won’t let them take my things!”
“Maxwell, calm down. Just listen to me.” Herm placed his ear against the door. “Damn it, he’s leaving.” He pounded the door again. “Maxwell, come back!”
Nothing.
Astarte leaned into Cam. “It smells funny in here.”
“And it’s warm,” Amanda added.
Cam sniffed. It smelled like a basement, sort of musty and furnace-like. He glanced around, searching for some kind of escape route. He rejected the window as too narrow, even for Astarte. Behind one of the walls, the furnace hummed. “Basements are often hot,” he said.
“What does he mean to do to us?” Amanda asked.
Herm kicked at the rug. “Like I said, the guy’s crazy. Paranoid.” He looked at Astarte and shifted his speech pattern. “I have been privy to certain allegations regarding the subject in question, in which same subject was purported to have engaged in nefarious activities and experimentation with certain implements of the Inquisition.” Herm paused. He was a tough guy, a city kid—not one to be easily frightened. “Substantial financial consideration was conveyed in order to resolve these allegations.”
Great. The guy tortured somebody and then paid them off to stay out of jail. “Well, I’m not planning to wait around to find out what happens next,” Cam said. Especially with a room full of torture devices on the other side of this wall. He hoisted himself atop a filing cabinet and began to probe at the ceiling. “I think this is a drop ceiling. Above these tiles are the pipes and electrical wires.” He pushed a tile aside. “There’s about a ten-inch gap between the real ceiling and the drop ceiling.”
“Maybe I can fit,” Amanda said. Cam jumped down and Amanda, an ex-gymnast, removed her jacket and vaulted her way up. “Cam, come closer. Let me stand on your shoulders.”
One leg on his shoulder, she pushed herself up so her head was in the crawl space. Cam said, “You’ll need to crawl on top of the wooden framing. The ceiling tiles won’t hold you.”
Herm laughed. “Careful about the weight comments, buddy.” But the levity was forced—Herm was apparently still thinking about Maxwell and the torture devices.
Amanda wriggled herself upward, her entire body above her thighs disappearing into the gap. Ten seconds passed, the sound of Amanda’s movements filling the storage room. The wooden framing bowed a little and creaked, but it held her. Finally she scooched backward and dropped down, landing atop the file cabinet. She wiped her face with her sleeve. “I can fit, but then I get blocked by a pipe running across in front of me. I can’t squeeze beneath it.”
“Can you push it out of the way?”
“No. It’s cast iron. Probably a drain pipe.”
“I could fit,” Astarte said. “I’m smaller than Mum is.”
Cam looked down at the cobalt eyes staring up at him. The front of his head had begun to pound; he massaged it and tried to blink the pain away. “What do you think, Amanda?”
She swayed a bit atop the cabinet, caught herself and blinked before answering. “It might work. But then what? I don’t want Astarte out there dealing with Maxwell by herself.”
“I can sneak out and get help,” Astarte said, her jaw out. “I’ll j
ust run to neighbors and bang on their door.”
Cam looked up at Amanda. “I don’t know if we have a choice. Who knows how long we could be stuck in here?”
She bit her lip. “Okay.”
Amanda moved over as Cam lifted Astarte atop the file cabinet, from where Amanda hoisted her into the ceiling gap. “You need to stay on top of the piece of wood, just like a balance beam,” Amanda said.
Astarte pushed off, squirming ahead, only her purple rubber boots visible. “Okay,” the girl called, “I’m up to the pipe.”
“Can you squeeze under it?” Amanda asked.
“I think so.” Five seconds passed. “Okay, I’m past it.”
“Stop there,” Amanda said. Then to Cam: “The drain pipe was right above the wall between the storage room and the rest of the basement.”
“Good,” Cam said. “I think there’s bookcase right beneath her. Tell her to move a ceiling tile aside and see if there’s something she can drop herself onto.”
While they waited for Amanda to give instructions to Astarte, Herm spoke. “Sorry about this.” He yawned and sat on the floor, his back against a wall. “I’m going to kill Maxwell when we get out of here.” He yawned again. “Must be getting past my bedtime.”
Cam was about to reply when Amanda screamed. Not a shriek or a screech, but a full-fledged, terror-in-the-heart scream.
“What?!?” Cam said.
At the same time, Astarte called, “Mum, are you okay?”
“A bat! I saw a bat!” She flailed at her hair and leapt from the cabinet.
“Okay, calm down,” Cam said. “I didn’t see anything. It must have been in the ceiling. It’s winter—he was hibernating.” And to Astarte: “It’s okay, Astarte. Something scared Mum.”
“But now it’s up there with Astarte!” Amanda said in a stage whisper.
“Shh, keep your voice down. The bat is more afraid of us than we are of him. And we don’t want Astarte flailing around.”
“What if it’s rabid?”
“If it were rabid it wouldn’t be hibernating,” Cam said.
Astarte called down, “I don’t like bats.”
Herm ended the conversation. With a shaking hand, he pointed up toward the giant skull. “Forget the freaking bat. I just saw the skull moving.” His face had turned gaunt, his eyes wide. “I’m not shitting you, Cam, I saw it moving. He shook his head at me, back and forth.” He pushed himself back to the corner. “It was as if he was saying, no way are you getting out of here.”
Stefan Antonopoulos’ entire body recoiled as the chemical engulfed his face. Eyes on fire, he tried to scream, but when he opened his mouth it was like breathing in flames. He fell to his knees, his hands clawing at his eyes, his face bubbling and boiling. “I … can’t … breathe,” he gasped.
Evgenia pulled him to his feet and guided him, surprisingly gently, into the darkened doorway from which she had appeared. “Just breath normally,” she said. “And don’t rub at your eyes; you’ll only make it worse.”
“Why?” he stammered, swaying as he dropped back to his knees. Coughing violently, he fought for oxygen as the chemical filled his airways.
“You mean why did I pepper spray a man stalking me on the streets?”
He had no good response to that, even if he could talk.
She pulled his hands behind his back and tied his wrists together. “You’ll be able to see again in about fifteen minutes,” she said. “Crying will help wash the spray from your eyes. In the meantime we’re going to have a little talk.” She rubbed snow on his face, cooling the burning a bit. “First of all, why are you following me?”
He was in no position to lie. “Gut feeling,” he said as another coughing fit overcame him.
“Don’t gasp; just breathe normally,” she said. “What do you mean by gut feeling?”
In fits and starts he described how the grooves in the carving were too weathered, too smooth, too pristine.
“Doesn’t that just mean the thing is old?” she asked. “Isn’t that what you’re looking for?”
He nodded.
“So you think somehow Rachel is trying to set you up? For God’s sake, why?”
He shrugged. He tried to explain his other suspicions. As he verbalized them, he realized how flimsy they sounded.
Evgenia stared at him with disdain, like he was some kind of idiot. “Look, Rachel has an unlisted number because some ex-boyfriend has been stalking her. And if you got the sense she was holding something back last night, it’s probably because she was going to ask you if you could sell the artifact for her; her mother really needs the money. But she felt … I guess the word is cheap … asking you to help her cash in on a piece of history. Frankly, she was embarrassed.” She exhaled. “Like you should be.”
What an idiot he had been. He should have been home now, the worst of his worries being a bit too much pepper on his dinner.
She continued. “So why didn’t you just come talk to me in the bar? Why did you stalk me?”
Good question. He forced out a response. “I was just trying to get more information.” His eyes still simmered and it felt like he was swallowing fire every time he breathed, but at least the excruciating pain had begun to fade. He spat. “Where you lived, where you worked, how to track down Rachel.”
“Look, dude, you’ve been watching too many movies. You want to give Rachel her rock back, I’m sure she’ll take it. And if you want to fly back to Maine and look at it in your lab, I’m sure that’s fine with her also. But this James Bond stuff is bullshit.”
Before he knew what was happening she untied his wrists. He heard her footsteps as she jogged off into the night. It hurt to talk, but the words tumbled from his mouth. “What a fucking idiot I am.”
Astarte listened to the conversation on the other side of the wall from her. She had dropped from the ceiling onto a bookcase, then from there onto the floor. She must have banged her head while squeezing through, because the area above her eyes was throbbing. She blinked and took a deep breath.
But she knew there was no such thing as ghosts. Mr. Herm must have just been seeing things.
She tried the door to the storage room. Locked.
She put her mouth close to the keyhole. “It’s locked. What should I do?” She glanced over her shoulder, ready to scurry under the display tables if anyone came after her.
Cameron replied after a few seconds. “Is that bag with our cell phones out there?”
She looked around. It was dark, and she didn’t dare put a light on. “I don’t see it.”
“Okay, listen carefully to me Astarte. I remember there was a phone on the wall at the bottom of the stairs. It was on the right hand side as we came down. I want you to go find it and call 911.” He gave her the address. “Tell the police we are being held prisoners in the basement. Then come right back here.”
“Right,” she said. There was more light near the staircase and she edged her way toward the landing. She scanned the wall, the right-hand side as Cameron said. There was nothing there—no phone, nothing. Not even a light switch. Just a flat wall. She checked the other wall, and even crept halfway up the stairs. No phone. Which was weird, because Cameron usually had a good memory for things like that.
Not knowing what else to do, she scampered back to the locked door. “Dad-Cam, I didn’t see any phone.” She waited. No response. “Dad-Cam? Mum?”
Finally, after what seemed like an hour, he replied. “Are you sure?”
His voice sounded funny, like he had just woken up. Her heart thudded. “Is Mum there?”
Another few seconds. “Yes, honey, I’m here.”
She remembered something she read in a Nancy Drew mystery book about haunted houses. “Mum, have you seen the bat again?”
“Yes, honey, I’ve seen him twice more. But he’s in here with us, so no need for you to be frightened.”
“And Dad-Cam, have you seen the skeleton move his head again?”
“No. But Mr. Herm said he saw it again.
”
Skeletons heads did not move. She took a deep breath. This was very important. “You need to break the window. Now. Break the window.”
Cameron’s tired voice replied. “It’s too small. We can’t climb through. We’ll wait for you to get help, Astarte. Go.”
“No!” she barked. “Listen to me. You need to break the window. The room is filling up with…” What was that word? “Filling up with carbon oxide. That’s what’s making you tired. And making you see ghosts and bats.” Hallucinate, it was called. “I read it in a Nancy Drew book. People thought they saw ghosts but it was just the carbon oxide making them hallucinate.”
No response.
“Dad-Cam! Wake up!”
“We can talk about it in the morning, honey.”
“Break the window,” she sobbed. “Break the window!”
Cam dreamt.
A strange, disjointed dream about Astarte and Amanda and ghosts and bats and broken windows. There was something he needed to remember to do, but he was too tired. Maybe open the window. Or was he supposed to close the window? But so what if the window stayed open? He was too damn tired. Window open, window closed, whatever—it could wait until morning.
Suddenly Astarte knew what she had to do. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she retraced her steps back to where she had dropped through the ceiling. On her way she saw a long metal bar on the table with the other creepy Addams Family tools and grabbed it.
Climbing the bookshelf like a ladder, she pulled herself upward and slid the metal bar into the ceiling crawl area. Then, using all her strength, she pulled herself up through the hole, swung her leg up and rolled herself atop the wooden beam. Fearing the bat, but fearing what was happening to her parents more, she wriggled her way back under the black pipe and returned to her starting spot atop the storage room file cabinet.
She looked down. Three adults, sleeping on the floor. Her heart pounded. She wished there was a way to do this without making noise, but there was no time. Holding the metal bar like a sword, and covering her eyes with her free hand, she jabbed the bar at the window.
The Oath of Nimrod: Giants, MK-Ultra and the Smithsonian Coverup (Book #4 in Templars in America Series) Page 17
