by P. W. Child
“That would explain the snakes,” Nina remarked. Her face fell into sadness again. “Sam.”
Joanne embraced her. “Don't worry, honey. We'll get those slimy bastards.”
“Oh!” Purdue exclaimed. “On that note…”
He limped away to the open cabin door and excused himself before disappearing below deck.
“Where is he going?” Nina asked.
Virgil smiled and dusted his hands as he sat down. “Only an hour before we reach Martin Bay. Mr. Purdue asked me to bring a few electronic wares so that he could fashion a device he jovially calls a Snake Charmer,” Virgil announced proudly.
“What does it do?” Joanne asked.
“Does it matter? If Purdue names anything it usually has a good reason,” Nina smiled as she tilted her beer.
Chapter 32 – The Unearthing
“With the right attitude, self imposed limitations vanish.”
Although Purdue was moving with great labor, he insisted on coming along to retrieve the Olympias Letter – if it was still there – and secure a few of the serpents that attacked Sam for medical use. He had been filled in on the kind of snake it was and Purdue took a minute to learn about the Ohia snake and its origins.
“I am no expert on snakes, but when you told me this specific breed is found only in Greece, I could not help but see some kind of supernatural connotation, which is odd, for a scientist like myself,” Purdue groaned as he helped Virgil lift the Snake Charmer over the rocks from where the Scarlet was moored.
“What kind of contraption is this?” Nina asked, astonished. “I know what you named it, Purdue, but did you have to make it look like a fucking snake too?”
“That part was unintentional,” Purdue smiled. “I cannot help that the construction resembles a constrictor,” he attempted some form of loose homonym that had Nina rolling her eyes. “I know. I know it is an adder!”
Virgil chuckled as the women went ahead with the tool box and Sam's gear. Nina was greatly worried about Sam's deterioration and Purdue picked upon it. He made a point of watching her keenly to offer support because he knew her well enough to see that her skin only served as a casing for the collapse going on inside her. Having not slept for over a day, the three previous explorers were dangerously fatigued and Purdue had more physical trouble than he would ever admit.
It was the afternoon after the night they had spent rushing Sam out of the septic tank and they could all feel the fickle, lazy sun tempt them to slumber. But knowing that Sam's time was running out and that his recovery depended on their success inside a full blown snake pit, impelled them beyond their limitations. The only consolation was that they had already located the site and had a good idea of the threats and distances inside.
“This time is far more difficult than the last time,” Joanne puffed as she lugged Sam's gear with hers. “But it isn't dark and it is much warmer, so I am better for it.”
“I feel like collapsing, I won't bullshit you there,” Nina groaned as they approached Weather Station Kurt once again. Pinching one eye shut, Nina remarked, “It looks much friendlier in the day,”
“But underneath it is still night,” Virgil burst her bubble, and with a wide-eyed stare added, “and still unfriendly.”
“Ta, Captain,” Nina nodded. “Good thing we have this monstrosity here, hey? Whatever it does.”
Purdue just smiled.
“Where is the perimeter?” Purdue asked Virgil. Nina gave him the blueprint on the document issued by Karl Wolff to better effect the accuracy of his mission.
“So that is where the tablet is supposed to be,” Nina pointed on the diagram. “That is where the snakes got Sam. Purdue, please be careful.”
“I thought we're all going in,” Joanne frowned.
“Aye, we are. But he has not been down there yet, that's all,” Nina shrugged.
“Well, I’m braving my fear of snakes and you are braving, for the second time, your fear of confined spaces,” Joanne smiled reassuringly from under her beanie, looking like a lovable nerd.
“That's the spirit, Miss Earle,” Purdue smiled as he and Virgil sank the long, insulated snake of copper wiring and rubber down the shaft. At the front end the device actually sported two large steel spikes made of the same material as roof antennas, coincidentally mimicking the fangs of a viper. At the other end, though, it was connected to a machine Purdue had converted from a generator engine and a high voltage transformer. He briefly explained to the laymen, “Think of it as a small scale Tesla coil. I’m using this transformer to essentially cause a deliberately erroneous conversion to generate a pulse or a discharge through this conductor,” he ran his finger along the body of his snake charmer device.
“Ooh, I get it!” Joanne smiled. “Like a Taser for snakes.”
“Purdue, is this safe for us?” Nina asked.
“The voltage is not powerful enough to hurt us, mostly because we’re wearing rubber boots and are insulated from the actual current,” he assured the worried historian. “Don't worry, as long as we’re not rolling inside their muddy walls where the prongs will be inserted, we should be fine.”
Virgil chuckled heartily at Purdue's sense of humor. “This is the most fun I’ve had since I started my fishing charter business, believe me!”
With the generator started, the party descended one by one down the tunnel. Virgil went first to feed the head of the snake charmer into the tunnel. Then Nina and Joanne followed with the gear bags, and finally Purdue struggled down the slippery dark duct of muck with his leg far from healed. He was not supposed to put any weight on it for several weeks, but with his considerably less weighty frame he saw it fit to take the chance.
Fresh batteries in their flashlights were a blessing this time round and made it easier for Nina to navigate the enclosed darkness without succumbing to terror. However, Joanne's fear was to remain real for longer. She helped Purdue to his feet when he slipped into the septic tank. Then she switched on Sam's handheld camera just as he had instructed her and started filming the journey.
Purdue chose to remain absent, staying out of the frame at all times, just until the media was updated with news of his discovery. As a matter of fact, being abducted and left virtually walled in to die was the perfect screen for David Purdue to resurface without being blamed for any dishonesty about his demise. For all the world knew, the poor man was shot, then seized and imprisoned by his kidnappers and presumed dead, not of his own doing. Karsten and Beck did him a favor, absolving him of any fraudulent practice by essentially making him a victim of attempted murder. It was a perfect alibi; one the authorities could not now refute.
Perhaps this was why Special Agent Patrick Smith had been so forthcoming when Purdue called him to make the deal that allowed him his passage to Nina. It seemed, Purdue figured, that all bad things do happen for a reason. Sometimes when terrible things befall people it seems unfair - until later, when that very unsavory incident is proved to have resolved issues that would have otherwise been left in a Gordian knot. And Purdue's flight from the Black Sun while creeping about like a cockroach for the rest of his life presented just such a Gordian knot.
If there were one thing Purdue had learned from Alexander the Great, it was indeed that fortune favored the bold; simply going ahead and severing the whole thing recklessly was sometimes the only way to solve the Gordian knot.
“Okay, stop!” Virgil called from the front of the group, holding the head of the device up until Purdue could instruct him on its positioning.
“Shall we put on our gloves, Jo?” Nina asked rhetorically and gave Joanne her pair. The two women had the atrocious task of retrieving the three or four specimens for Sam's antivenin after Purdue had electrocuted the serpents. Purdue and Virgil steadied the prongs and stabbed into the wet, muddy wall.
They could all hear the snakes come alive with aggression instantly, and Purdue rushed to flick the switch that regulated the current. Nina and Joanne ran for the front of the head as the jolt turned from a
hum to a clap that stunned the animals, killing some from the overwhelming surge of electricity that pumped through their tiny hearts, erupting inside their pericardia.
“Go, go, go!” Nina screamed, pulling Joanne along. With their gloves and flashlights they collected three living specimens, still writhing weakly in their grasp. Joanne understandably cringed, wailing like a banshee as the pulled the scaly monsters from the mud. “Oh God! Oh my God, I can't deal with this!” she kept moaning in a low volume murmur until they had all they needed.
“Right,” Nina said, “take my container, please. I am going in.”
“In where?” Joanne shrieked.
But Nina's petite body was already hastily progressing down the tunnel as her voice faintly echoed, “No time like the present! Before the live ones realize we killed their friends!”
Joanne stood dumbfounded, holding the two jars of motionless adders while Purdue passed her to follow Nina. Virgil waited, holding the buzzing electrical device above the floor surface, just in case.
Purdue was closely behind Nina.
“Do you see the letterbox yet?” he wheezed, hardly noticing the grimy sludge covering his white crown. After his time in the oubliette he was no longer bothered with such things.
“On the right, but I can’t reach it, Purdue. You’re taller than me,” she grunted, rolling away from him to pass. With their bodies in the mud, close together, Purdue was tempted to remind her of a time when they’d slept this closely, but it was hardly the time and he proceeded up the tunnel. There was a slit at the top, a letterbox, aptly named so, for behind it is where the blueprint showed the Olympias Letter to be.
He slid his fingers through the slit, feeling the torment of his still weak and injured body as he stretched. Trying it every way he could, he found that it served as a handle, not an entrance.
“Nina, it’s like a car door handle. Be prepared for what lies behind it,” he warned in rapid exhales before pulling it downward. Purdue fell back as the wall caved in like the flap of a cardboard box. As it moved, a tremendous tremor ensued throughout the ground, shaking the muddy deposits from the massive rusted panels. In turn, the horde of snakes fell from the walls, thankfully static, and collected on the floor of the tunnel.
“Oh Jesus, don't let them wake up!” Nina screamed over the chaos as the panel opened completely. “Guys! You alright?”
“I'm coming to see!” Joanne shouted over the din. The boat captain said nothing as he squirmed into the bed of snakes, but he was grinning like a shark. Purdue took off his backpack and pulled out industrial grade glow sticks to light up the chamber under the Place of No Happening. He stood in awe, smiling, apparently having forgotten about the serpent problem.
Chapter 33 – The Way of Alexander the Great
Upon the opposite wall, engraved in the solid gold it was made from, Nina filmed the seal of the great conqueror in high definition, gasping as she traced every detail of the engraved face and the script around the edges.
“Linear-B,” Nina smiled.
“What?” Purdue asked.
“It is etched in Linear-B: the ancient script of the Mycenaean Greek…the original Greek. My God, Purdue, do you realize that this form of writing predates the Greek alphabet by hundreds of years!” she reported, and her information fell to the ear of the recording camera, which only added to the genuine feel of the footage Sam could produce for his documentary.
“Do you know what it says?” Joanne asked, glowing in awe.
“I'm a historian, Jo, not a linguist,” Nina smiled. “Purdue knows a few renowned linguists who can decipher it for us, though.”
“Absolutely,” Purdue agreed, laying his hand on Virgil's shoulder as the boat captain wept in reverence. Against the wall where the massive seal was flawlessly carved, three roughshod tablets were displayed. Nina stepped inside, traversing knee-deep mounds of gold, silver, gems, and weapons of antiquity. She lifted the malachite stones on which Olympias had carved her message to Alexander, revealing to him what would make him an incomparable warrior and undefeated general.
“But we won't know what it was,” Joanne sulked.
“Only until my associates have deciphered it, my dear Jo,” Purdue consoled her cordially. “In the meantime, we can enjoy the spoils of the so-called normal treasure we are wading through.”
“Aye,” Nina smiled.
“I would like that medallion now, please Miss Earle?” Virgil asked modestly. “For services rendered.”
“Ha!” Purdue exclaimed. “My friend, where I lead expeditions,” he looked at the ladies, “if I may take the lead here, everyone involved gets a handsome helping for their risk and their loyalty. I don't deal with snakes, unless they are the reptilian kind.”
“Holy shit! Purdue!” Nina shouted. “Sam! We have to get the snakes to the hospital!”
Virgil and Nina ran to the boat to radio for an emergency services chopper to pick up the snakes for the hospital laboratory on Baffin Island. Purdue was exhausted, relying on Joanne to help him back to the septic tank.
“Shall we switch off the snake charmer, Dave?” Joanne smiled.
“No, let's keep it alive for now, for good measure. I’m not sure how dead those adders are,” he coughed, chuckling in between.
“Something really bad happened to you, didn't it?” she said softly. Weary, he just nodded to affirm her assumption.
“They'll get what is coming to them. You know, the first big empire Alexander toppled and claimed was Persia,” she relayed in her teacher-storyteller manner. “And there is a beautiful Persian proverb, perfect for this situation and perfect for the people who did this to you.”
Purdue was pleasantly surprised at Nina's friend's company. “What is the proverb, Miss Earle?”
She leaned forward and winked. “Use your enemy's hand to catch a snake.”
Purdue's blue eyes sparkled. He was content right now and he reveled in Joanne's wisdom while admiring her beauty. With the discovery of the hidden treasure of Alexander the Great, he would now be able to pay restitution to the Archaeological Crime Unit in order for them to drop his charges. The relic he’d taken illegally from Ethiopia could be returned to them to hopefully reach an accord with the government and its archaeological organizations.
Still, he had to deal with MI6.
***
“Purdue's Greek linguist figured out most of the script on the Olympias Letter,” Nina smiled as she joined Sam in the hospital. “I sent a copy of the report to Joanne. She is going to flip.”
“What does it say?” Sam asked.
“Other than the words to her son, Olympias had chiseled an ancient incantation on the malachite,” she explained. “The stone was Egyptian, holding the power of the spell like a geological Faraday cage, but with some of the script being corroded and some of the tablet fragments having been affected by weather and time, the missing words remain unknown. And that, fortunately, makes the spell incomplete. Useless.”
“And was it worth hiding from the world after his death? Was it worth killing for?” he asked. “What was so dangerous about an incantation made by a bunch of wine-drinking hedonists?”
“From the rest of the words, the linguist reported that it was a summoning of celestial power that would infuse the one invoking it with the power of Ares, the Greek god of war. Whoever knew this chant would be imbued with unsurpassed martial supremacy and the power to conquer the world,” she told Sam. “Kind of cool, right? If you believe in this stuff. It’s a remarkable coincidence that he ended up doing just that. If he had not been poisoned, which is my take on his death, he may well have held all the kingdoms of the world in his palm.”
“No wonder the fucking SS and the Black Sun were looking for it. Imagine if Hitler had what Alexander had possessed. And they couldn’t even get as far as you did, pretty woman. I wish I could have been there,” Sam lamented, looking much more colorful than the last time he gazed at her through dark eyes on a wan skin. “Even just to see something happen in the
Place of No Happening!”
Nina laughed. “With what was under it I am not surprised it was cursed.” She took Sam's hand in hers. “You were there, love,” she said. “Remember, had it not been for you, the rest of us would have all been attacked by those things. You got us all the way there, just short of ground zero, Sam. You scouted ahead and took a few for the team,” she teased.
“I almost took too many for the team. Do you know that I have a bite right next to my…?”
“It’s time for your shot, Mr. Cleave,” the nurse interrupted before Sam could get lewd.
“Okay, I have some business to attend to regarding a few stone tablets for redistribution,” she winked at Sam. “Be a good boy, alright Mr. Cleave?”
She pecked him on the forehead, breathing his scent in and whispered, “Miss you.”
Nina was hoping to get Purdue to throw a small get-together for the members of the Olympias expedition, as well as for the heroes who’d saved Purdue's life, Nina's new friends in Oban, but she had to wait for Purdue to finalize his affairs now that he was publicly alive again.
Father Harper and Dr. Beach never spoke about what had happened after they’d left the concealed house in Fallin with Purdue in dire straits. It would be their collective secret, just like the previous vocation of Father Harper.
Purdue had to keep to the deal he had struck with Special Agent Patrick Smith and appear in front of a military tribunal for his alleged involvement in international espionage, masquerading as relic hunting or historical research. First, though, he had agreed to accept a summons to an informal hearing in Glasgow. Thereafter, Purdue's own team of attorneys would investigate the illegal annexation of Purdue's residential property, Wrichtishousis in Edinburgh.
“Something does not sit right about that,” Purdue told Patrick.
“I know. It is unprecedented, which is why the seizure of your mansion had to have been authorized by someone very powerful,” Paddy agreed, speaking very softly. “But we'll sort that out as soon as you are off the hook with the archaeological spy thing.”
