by P. W. Child
“Joseph Karsten, Patrick. Order of the Black Sun, First Level and traitor the likes of which Iscariot himself could not match.”
Karsten pointed his service firearm straight at Purdue, his hand shaking profusely. “I should have ended you in Mother’s house, you over-privileged termite!” he hissed through his fat, maroon cheeks.
“But you were too busy running away to save Mother, weren’t you, you despicable coward,” Purdue stated calmly.
“Shut your mouth, traitor! You were Renatus, leader of the Black Sun…!” he shrieked.
“By default, not choice,” Purdue corrected for Patrick’s sake.
“…and you chose to abandon all that power to instead make it your life’s work to kill us off. Us! The great Aryan bloodline cultivated by gods, chosen to rule the world! You are the traitor!” Karsten roared.
“So what do you aim to do, Karsten?” Purdue asked as Patrick was pushed to his side by the Austrian madman. “Are you going to shoot me in front of your own agents?”
“No, of course not,” Karsten sneered. He promptly turned and planted two bullets in each of Patrick’s MI6 support staff. “There will be no witnesses left. This rancor stops right here, for good.”
Patrick felt sick. Watching his men lying dead on the floor of a cavern in a foreign country infuriated him. He was responsible for everyone! He was supposed to know who the enemy was. But Patrick would soon realize that men in his position could never know for certain how matters would come out. One thing he knew for sure was that he was as good as dead now.
“Yimenu will be back soon,” Karsten announced. “And I will be back in the United Kingdom to claim your estates. After all, you will not be presumed dead this time.”
“Just remember one thing, Karsten,” Purdue retorted, “you have something to lose. I don’t. You have estates too.”
Karsten pulled back the hammer of his weapon. “What are you playing at?”
Purdue shrugged. For once he had shed all fear of consequence for what he was about to say, because he accepted whatever fate he would be dealt. “You,” Purdue smiled, “have a wife and daughters. Aren’t they arriving home in Salzkammergut in, oh,” Purdue sang, checking his watch, “about four hours?”
Karsten’s eyes grew wild, his nostrils flared and he emitted a smothered cry of utter exasperation. Regrettably, he could not shoot Purdue, because it had to look like an accident in order for Karsten to be absolved, to be believed by Yimenu and the locals. Only then could Karsten play the victim of circumstance, to keep the attention off him.
Purdue quite enjoyed Karsten’s stunned look of horror, but he could hear Patrick breathing hard next to him. He felt sorry for Sam’s best friend, again at the bad end of a death wish because of his involvement with Purdue.
“If anything happens to my family, I will send Clive to give your girlfriend, that bitch Gould, the time of her life…before he takes it!” Karsten warned, spitting through his fat lips as his eyes blazed with hate and defeat. “Come, Adjo.”
31
Flight from Wereta
Karsten started toward the exit of the mountain, leaving Purdue and Patrick completely dumbfounded. Adjo followed Karsten, but he stopped at the mouth of the tunnel to engage Purdue’s fate.
“What the fuck!” Patrick growled, at the end of his tether with all the traitors. “You? Why you, Adjo? How? We saved you from the goddamn Black Sun and now you’re their pet?”
“Don’t take it personally, Smith Effendi,” Adjo cautioned, his slender dark hand resting just short of a stone key the size of his palm. “You, Purdue Effendi, you may take this very personally. Because of you, my brother Donkor was killed. I was almost killed to help you steal this relic and then?” he wailed angrily, his chest heaving in rage. “Then you left me for dead, before your associates kidnapped me and tortured me to find out where you were! All this is what I suffered for you, Effendi, while you were happily chasing whatever you found in this Holy Box! You have every reason to take my betrayal personally and I hope you perish slowly under a heavy rock tonight.” He looked around inside the chamber. “This is where I was cursed to meet you, and this is where I will curse you to be entombed.”
“Christ, you certainly know how to make friends, David,” Patrick muttered next to him.
“You built this trap for him, didn’t you?” Purdue guessed, and Adjo nodded, confirming his fears.
From outside they could hear Karsten shouting to Col. Yimenu’s men to get away. It was Adjo’s cue, and he pressed the dial under his hand, birthing an awful rumble above them in the crusts of the mountain. The supporting rocks Adjo had carefully constructed in the days leading up to the meeting in Edinburgh, gave way. He disappeared into the tunnel, racing out past the cracking walls of the corridor. Into the night air he stumbled, already covered with some debris and dust from the collapse.
“They’re still inside!” he screamed. “The other men will be crushed! You have to help them!” Adjo grabbed the colonel by his shirt, pretending to desperately urge him. But Col. Yimenu pushed him off, shoving him to the ground. “My country is under water, threatening the lives of my children and growing more destructive as we speak, and you keep me here over a cave-in?” Yimenu reprimanded Adjo and Karsten, suddenly not feeling diplomatic anymore.
“I understand, sir,” Karsten said dryly. “Let us consider this accident the end of the relic debacle for now. After all, as you say, you have children to see to. I completely understand the urgency to save one’s family.”
With that, Karsten and Adjo watched Col. Yimenu and his driver take off into the pinkish hint of dawn on the horizon. It was almost the time when the Holy Box was originally meant to be returned. Soon, the local site laborers would rise to what they thought would be Purdue’s arrival, planning a good beating for the white haired intruder who had pillaged their country’s treasure.
“Go and see if they are properly caved in, Adjo,” Karsten ordered. “Hurry, we have to go.”
Adjo Kira made haste to what had been the entrance to Mount Yeha to make sure its collapse was dense and final. He did not see Karsten follow in his tracks, and unfortunately bending over to examine the success of his work cost him his life. Karsten lifted one of the heavy rocks above his head and brought it down on the back of Adjo’s skull, crushing it instantly.
“No witnesses,” Karsten whispered as he dusted off his hands and walked towards Purdue’s truck. Behind him, the corpse of Adjo Kira covered the loose rock and stone debris in front of the disintegrated entrance. With his shattered skull painting a grotesque mark upon the desert grit, there was no doubt that he would look like just another casualty of the rock fall. Karsten spun away with Purdue’s ‘Deuce and a half’ military truck to race back to his home in Austria before the rising waters of Ethiopia could trap him.
Further south, Nina and Sam were not as fortunate. The entire region around Lake Tana was under water. People were frantic, panicking not only for the flood, but for the inexplicable manner in which the waters came. Rivers and wells ran over without any current from a feeding source. No rain had fallen, yet the dry riverbeds had sprung fountains from nowhere.
All around the world, power outages, earthquakes, and floods tormented cities, destroying important buildings. The UN headquarters, the Pentagon, the World Court in The Hague, and a myriad of other institutions responsible for order and progress were being decimated. By now they feared that the airstrip at Dansha could be compromised, but Sam was hopeful, since that community was far enough for Lake Tana not to be directly influenced by it. It was also resting far enough inland, so that it would still be some time before the ocean could reach it.
In the ghostly haze of early dawn, Sam saw the night’s destruction in its full horrible reality. He was filming the remnants of the entire tragedy as often as he could manage, taking care to preserve battery power on his compact video camera while he waited anxiously for Nina to make it back to him. Somewhere off in the distance, he kept hearing a strange buzzing
noise he could not place, but he chalked it up to some sort of aural hallucination. He hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours and he could feel the effects of fatigue, but he had to stay awake for Nina to find him. Besides, she’d been doing the hard work and he owed it to her to be there when, not if, she returned. He refused to entertain the negative thoughts tormenting him concerning her safety on a lake full of treacherous creatures.
Through his lens, he sympathized with the citizens of Ethiopia who now had to leave their homes and their lives behind to survive. Some were weeping bitterly from the roofs of their houses, others were dressing injuries. Every now and then Sam was confronted with floating bodies.
“Jesus Christ,” he murmured, “it really is the end of the world.”
He filmed the immense body of water that seemed to go on forever in front of his eyes. With the eastern sky painting the horizon in pink and yellow, he could not help but notice the beauty of the background to which this gruesome play was set. The smooth water had ceased to rush and fill out the lake, for now, and it decorated the landscape, bird life populating the liquid mirror. Many were still on their tankwa, fishing for food or just floating. But among them, only one little boat was moving – really moving. It appeared to be the only vessel headed somewhere, to the entertainment of onlookers from other boats.
“Nina,” Sam smiled. “I just know it is you, wee lassie!”
To the annoying whine of the unknown sound, he zoomed in on the rapidly gliding boat, but as the lens adjusted to better his vision, Sam’s smile vanished. “Oh my God, Nina, what did you do?”
Behind her came five equally hasty boats, only moving slower because of Nina’s head start. Her face said it all. Panic and painful effort twisted her pretty face as she rowed away from the pursuing monks at her heel. Sam jumped down from his perch at the Town Hall and spotted the source of the peculiar sound that had been baffling him.
Military helicopters were coming in from the north to pick up the citizens and carry them to dry land farther southeast. Sam counted about seven choppers, landing sporadically to pick people up from their temporary holds. One, a CH-47F Chinook, was stationary a few blocks away while the pilot was rounding up a few people for airlift.
Nina had almost reached the edge of town, her face pallid and wet from exhaustion and injury. Sam waded through the difficult waters to get to her before the monks on her trail could. She had slowed down considerably as her arm started to fail her. With all his strength, Sam used his arms to move faster and braved potholes, sharp objects and other obstacles under the water he could not see.
“Nina!” he shouted.
“Help me, Sam! I dislocated my shoulder!” she moaned. “I have nothing left in me. Pl-please, just he—,” she stammered. When she got to Sam he swept her up in his arms and doubled back, slipping into the cluster of buildings to the south of the Town Hall to find a place to hide. Behind them, the monks were shouting for people to help them seize the thieves.
“Oh shit, we are in seriously deep shit now,” he wheezed. “Can you still run, Nina?”
Her dark eyes fluttered and she groaned, holding her arm. “If you could put this back in the socket, I could make a genuine effort.”
From all his years in the field, filming and reporting on war zones, Sam had picked up valuable skills from EMTs he had worked with. “I’m not going to lie, love,” he warned. “This is going to hurt like fuck.”
With willing citizens striding through the narrow alleyways to find Nina and Sam, they had to be quiet while performing the replacement of Nina’s shoulder. Sam gave her his satchel, so that she could bite down on the strap, and, while their pursuers shouted below them in the water, Sam stepped against her rib cage with one foot, holding her trembling arm with both hands.
“Ready?” he whispered, but Nina only pinched her eyes shut and nodded. Sam pulled hard at her arm, inching it away from her body. Nina screeched in agony under the canvas bit, tears rolling from between her eyelids.
“I hear them!” someone exclaimed in their native tongue. Sam and Nina need not know the language to understand the statement and he carefully rotated her arm until it felt aligned with the rotator cuff before relenting. Nina’s muffled scream was not loud enough to be heard by the monks seeking them out, but there were already two men coming up the staircase protruding from the water’s surface to discover them.
One was armed with a short spear and he came straight for Nina’s weak body, lunging at her chest with the weapon, but Sam intercepted the stick. He punched him full in the face, rendering him temporarily unconscious while the other assailant sprang from the windowsill. With the spear Sam swung like a baseball hero, smashing the man’s cheek bone on impact. The one he had punched, came to. He grabbed the spear from Sam and stabbed him in the side.
“Sam!” Nina wailed. “Heads up!” She tried to get up, but she was too weak, so she flung his Beretta at him. The journalist caught the firearm and with one movement thrust the attacker’s head under water, planting a bullet in the back of his neck.
“They will have heard the shot,” he told her, pushing down on his stab wound. A row ensued outside in the flooded streets amidst the military helicopters’ deafening flight. Sam peered down from the elevated hiding place and saw the chopper still standing.
“Nina, can you walk?” he asked again.
Laboriously she sat up. “I can walk. What’s the plan?”
“By your infamy I take it you managed to get King Solomon’s diamonds?”
“Aye, in the skull in my backpack,” she answered.
Sam didn’t have time to ask about the skull reference, but he was relieved that she’d obtained the prize. They moved to the adjacent building and waited for the pilot to return to the Chinook before quietly staggering towards it while the rescued people were being seated. In their trail, no less than fifteen monks from the island and six men from Wetera were in pursuit through the marring waters. As the co-pilot prepared to close the door, Sam shoved the barrel of his gun against his temple.
“I really don’t want to do this, my friend, but we have to go north and we have to do it now!” Sam grunted, holding Nina’s hand and keeping her behind him.
“No! You can’t do this!” the co-pilot protested harshly. The shouts of the furious monks drew nearer. “You stay behind!”
Sam could not allow anything from keeping them off the helicopter and he had to prove he was serious. Nina looked back at the angry mob, hurling stones at them as they came closer. A rock struck Nina on the temple, but she did not fall.
“Jesus!” she screamed, finding blood on her fingers where she touched her head. “Stoning women every chance you get, you fucking primitive…”
A gunshot silenced her. Sam had shot the co-pilot in the leg, to the horror of the passengers. He aimed at the monks, stopping them in their tracks. Nina could not see the monk she’d saved among them, but while she sought his face, Sam grabbed her and pulled her into the helicopter full of terrified passengers. Next to her on the floor was the groaning co-pilot, and she removed her belt to tie down his leg. In the cockpit, Sam was shouting orders at the pilot at gunpoint, commanding the man to head north to Dansha, to the rendezvous point.
32
Flight from Aksum
Around the base of Mount Yeha several locals had gathered, horrified by the sight of the dead Egyptian guide they all knew from the dig sites. Another astonishing shock to them was the colossal rock fall that had closed up the bowels of the mountain. Unsure of what to do, the group of diggers, archaeological assistants, and vengeful locals examined the unexpected event, muttering amongst them to try and figure out what exactly had happened.
“There are deep tire tracks here, so there was a heavy truck here,” one laborer surmised, pointing to the impressions in the ground. “There were two, maybe three vehicles here.”
“Could just be the Land Rover that Dr. Hessian uses every few days,” another guessed.
“No, there it is, over there, just w
here he left it before he went to get more tools in Mek’ele yesterday,” the first laborer argued, pointing to the guest archaeologist’s Land Rover parked under a canvas tent roof a few meters away.
“Then how do we know if the box was returned? This is Adjo Kira. Dead. Purdue killed him and took the box!” one man shouted. “That is why they destroyed the chamber!”
His aggressive deduction effectively started a furor among the local residents in the neighboring villages and the tents near the dig site. Some of the men tried to reason, but the majority wanted nothing more than pure vengeance.
“Do you hear that?” Purdue asked Patrick, where they emerged from under the east face of the mountain. “They want to skin us alive, old boy. Can you run on that leg?”
“Fuck no,” Patrick winced. “My ankle is broken. Look.”
The cave-in brought on by Adjo had not killed the two men because Purdue had remembered an important feature of all of Adjo’s constructions – the postbox exit concealed under a false wall face. Thankfully, the Egyptian had taught Purdue about the old ways used to create traps in Egypt, notably inside old tombs and pyramids. It was how Purdue, Adjo, and Adjo’s brother, Donkor, had escaped with the Holy Box in the first place.
Covered in scratches, gouges, and dust, Purdue and Patrick crawled out behind some of the larger boulders at the foot of the mountain, Careful not to be detected. Patrick cringed as the stabbing pain in his right ankle shot through him with every dragging motion forward.
“Can…c-can we just take a quick breather?” he asked Purdue. The white-haired explorer looked back at him.
“Look, mate, I know that hurts like hell, but if we don’t hurry, they’re going to find us. I don’t have to tell you what weapons these people are brandishing, do I? Shovels, spikes, hammers…,” Purdue reminded his companion.
“I know. That Landy is way too far away for me. They’ll catch up to me before my second step,” he admitted. “My leg is rubbish. Go on ahead, draw their attention, or get out and get help.”
