The Loch Ness Legacy

by Boyd Morrison

  Watching the Range Rover and go-kart converge on her, Grant was consumed by an overwhelming sense of protectiveness at the danger Alexa faced. He’d lost a woman close to him before. He wasn’t going through that again.

  Grant focused his entire being on catching up with them. He stood on the gas and willed the go-kart to go faster. Alexa was weaving all over the road in an attempt to shake her pursuers, which gave Grant the slim hope that he could make up the distance.

  The man in the go-kart pulled next to Alexa and grabbed for her in a bid to take her hand off the wheel. He was only able to latch onto her purse strap instead. He pulled hard, and Alexa leaned awkwardly to the right. A parked car two hundred yards down the road had to be his target. If he steered her into it, she’d be killed, seatbelt or not.

  Alexa shrugged out of the strap as her purse was ripped away from her. She regained control but had no room to maneuver with his kart in the way. The Range Rover was now next to the yellow kart, and Dunham had the window unrolled. She waved for the man to throw her the purse.

  All of this distracted them from Grant’s pursuit. He was right behind the yellow go-kart and rammed it with his right front bumper just as the man tossed the purse up. Dunham caught it, but the action had required the man to take his hand off the wheel.

  Grant’s nudge was enough to push the man’s kart sideways under the rear wheel of the Range Rover, crushing the go-kart. Its driver screamed for an instant and went silent.

  At the last moment, Alexa was able to dodge and missed the parked car by inches.

  The Range Rover pulled up to finish the job, Dunham brandishing her own pistol through the open window, but without warning Alexa threw the go-kart into a hard right turn and Grant followed. They raced through a gate labeled The Fitzwilliam Museum. The entryway was far too narrow for the SUV to follow. The driver kept going instead of stopping, no doubt scared off by the sound of sirens now ringing throughout the town.

  Alexa circled around in the opposite direction and came to a stop next to the museum entrance. She threw off her belts and sprang wildly from her seat as if she were planning to take off at a sprint. Grant exited the go-kart and stopped her, pulling her to him.

  ‘They’re gone! They’re gone. We’re safe. Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m okay,’ she said, gulping in breaths as if she’d run a marathon. ‘I’m okay. I’m okay.’

  Grant smiled at her. ‘That was some amazing driving back there. You could be a pro.’

  ‘Tyler taught me well.’

  ‘Who knew he was good at something?’

  ‘They took my purse.’

  ‘I know. I couldn’t get to it in time. We’ll get you a new passport and phone in London.’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  Grant looked at her in confusion and then realized what she meant before she uttered it.

  ‘They’ve got the book,’ Alexa said. ‘Marlo Dunham now knows what we know.’

  THIRTY

  It was eight p.m. by the time Victor Zim and Hank Pryor filed off the P&O ferry at Dover with the other foot passengers. Using the fake passports provided by Dunham, they didn’t have any trouble getting through British customs.

  Zim’s original plan had been to drop into the Versailles estate using a helicopter, but since his only chopper pilot died over Lake Shannon in Washington, he took a page from Locke and hijacked a float plane instead. Pryor, an experienced aircraft pilot, was able to fly it without much trouble before they abandoned it at a local lake to make their final getaway.

  Leaving Norm Lonegan behind to be questioned by the French police didn’t bother Zim. He was a hired gun and didn’t know anything useful about their upcoming plans. And Lyle Ponder, bringing a bomb back into the plane without knowing it, deserved to be thrown out and blown up.

  Pryor was the big concern. The former airplane engineer from Kansas was Zim’s greatest asset. If he were killed or taken by the cops, they’d lose their electrical genius and pilot. He wasn’t going to be able to assist in any fight and was barely passable with a weapon, but his prowess with machines had made Zim’s prison escape possible. The remote-controlled helicopter and quadcopters were works of art.

  However, once this was all over, he wouldn’t mind saying goodbye to the twerp. He was an arrogant pain in the ass.

  ‘I still think we should have stayed to kill them,’ Pryor said as they walked to the pick-up area.

  ‘For such a smart guy, you’re pretty stupid sometimes,’ Zim said. ‘Locke and Cohen had already sent the message to his sister and Westfield. That’s how they found the book. If we had stayed, we would have gotten ourselves caught or killed for nothing.’

  ‘But they’re telling the police everything. I’m surprised we didn’t get nabbed on the ferry.’

  ‘I’m surprised, too. In Calais you were sweating like a pig.’

  ‘This entire mission is now in jeopardy. They’re edging closer to getting what they need for the antidote. If they find it, then months of work will go down the drain.’

  ‘Pryor, if you don’t stop your whining, I’ll kick your face in. We’ll see how well you can blubber through a set of broken teeth.’

  ‘You can’t,’ Pryor said, defiant. ‘You need me.’

  Zim stared him as they continued walking. ‘I don’t need anyone that much. You’ve known me long enough. Do I sound like I’m bluffing?’

  Pryor opened his mouth, then closed it.

  ‘Good,’ Zim said.

  The black Range Rover was in the pickup lane. Dunham nodded at them as they got in, and the driver pulled away.

  ‘Nice job in France,’ Dunham said from the front seat, her voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘Two men lost, huh?’

  ‘Yeah, you did so much better in Cambridge.’

  ‘At least I got the book.’

  ‘Do you know if they read it?’

  ‘It looks like they did and bookmarked a page about a taxidermist named John Edmonstone. I know where we have to go.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Laroche. He had me bid on two stag heads that were found in Glasgow last year. They were being sold during an estate sale. Laroche had me do some research and found that each of them was inscribed with the initials, ‘J.E.’ and were presented as gifts to the prince to be hung at Balmoral. When the Scots realized they’d once been owned by Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, they were declared important historical objects, the stags presumably shot by the prince himself. They were taken off the market by the government so they could be put on display. One of them could be the stag head referred to in this account. Once we get access to them, it’s a simple matter of destroying what we find inside. Then this is over.’

  ‘And we can all go our separate ways,’ Pryor said.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ Zim said.

  ‘Look,’ Dunham said. ‘I’m not happy about this alliance either, but we’re stuck with each other. You’ll both get your money as promised, and then I never want to see you again.’

  ‘No problem. But you better not stiff us. It’s going to take a ton of cash to live on the run.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You’ll have every cent owed to you.’

  ‘Good. How long will it take to get to these stag heads?’

  ‘We’d better stay off trains and planes. It’s an eight-hour drive, but the buildings where they’re displayed won’t open until nine thirty tomorrow morning anyway. We’ll plan how to get access to them during the drive. The rest of our men will meet us there.’

  ‘Sounds like we have time then,’ Zim said. ‘Let’s find a McDonald’s drive-through. I’m starving.’

  Two guitarists pounded out a rock ballad that Tyler didn’t recognize, the sound masking the conversation he was having with Brielle, Alexa, and Grant from potential eavesdroppers. The pub called Prince Alfred was close to their hotel in the Bayswater area of London, and they scarfed down a deli board spread, famished from a long day that was nearing ten p.m. All of them were itching to move on to the n
ext step, but without a destination, they were stuck, so they decided to grab a quick dinner while they discussed their options.

  Thanks to the chit they called in from Minister Fournier, he and Brielle were able to get out of France with a minimum of questioning by the police. Grant and Alexa had to spend more time with the Cambridge police explaining their part in the melee. According to Grant, Ashburn’s cheerful demeanor had dissipated upon learning that two of his carefully crafted go-karts had been destroyed, but a call from Miles promising two more years of research funding soothed any frayed nerves.

  Grant was trying to hide a limp now, and Tyler was worried that his condition was worsening quickly. His outward appearance was no longer something he could effectively hide: Grant’s five o’clock shadow was a grizzled gray, he moved with the stiffness of a man thirty years older, and he had to ask for things to be repeated to him in the noise. Of course, Grant had waved off any notion of returning home when Tyler took him aside privately, but he didn’t know how long his friend would be able to continue fighting off the effects of the poison. Brielle and Alexa attacked the selection of meats and cheeses with gusto, but Grant merely picked at it. On most other days, they’d have had to order a whole second board just for him.

  As they ate, Alexa recalled the information she could from the taxidermy book. Tyler agreed that there was a reason Laroche had sent them on this expedition. Finding a stag head stuffed by John Edmonstone, however, was a tall order. They couldn’t ask Laroche where it was, so Tyler did the next best thing and set Aiden MacKenna loose to use his computer skills to track it down. Now they were waiting to hear the results.

  ‘These people are crazy,’ Alexa said, munching on cheese and biscuits. ‘Attacking us in broad daylight in the middle of Versailles and Cambridge? That’s nuts.’

  ‘They don’t care if they get caught or killed,’ Tyler said. ‘I’ve seen it before with fanatics. They’ll do anything to further their cause. And Zim is the most dangerous one. I don’t see him ever giving himself up and going back to prison. He’ll go down fighting.’

  ‘Not before he kills me.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen. I’m not letting you out of my sight from now on.’

  ‘Do you really think the Loch Ness monster exists?’ Grant asked Alexa.

  ‘There’s something in that loch, and now we have a tangible link between it and John Edmonstone, who happened to be friends with Charles Darwin. The Nazis thought it was real, too, so we might be searching for a descendant of the creature Darwin discovered.’

  ‘If that’s the case,’ Grant said, ‘there could be a whole family of Nessies breeding down there.’

  ‘I suppose that’s possible. It would explain why I spotted one two hundred years later. The Nazis were always meticulous in their research, and they seemed sure Darwin was the source of the tissue sample they had.’

  Brielle nodded. ‘It’s not so hard to believe. The Nazis looked up to Darwin.’

  ‘That’s a common misconception,’ Alexa said. ‘Creationists like to trot out the falsehood that Hitler and his buddies were evolutionists to help bolster the spurious thought that evolution leads to eugenics and the justified slaughter of whole races.’

  ‘I’m not a scientist, but isn’t Darwin’s theory about survival of the fittest?’

  ‘Of course. But the Nazis abhorred the idea that people they considered inferior could possibly have originated from the bloodline that spawned the Aryan race.’

  ‘So the Nazis didn’t believe in evolution?’ Brielle asked.

  ‘I hate that phrase,’ Alexa said, slamming her hand on the table. ‘Evolution isn’t a faith, it’s a scientific theory, one of the most elegant ever created. It’s the backbone of biological study, accurately describing everything from the family trees of dinosaurs to the prediction of genetic traits in fruit flies bred in a lab. The empirical evidence is so overwhelming that only the willfully ignorant think evolution isn’t true.’ She took a breath. ‘And it’s correct to say that the Nazis rejected Darwin’s theories.’

  She was getting so heated that biscuit crumbs were spewing from her mouth. Nothing worked Alexa up more than people who tried to argue the merits of evolutionary theory using non-scientific religious dogma. Even though Brielle’s question hadn’t come from that angle, it had been enough to set Alexa off. Tyler had seen her nearly get into a fistfight with an evangelical minister who’d come to debate the subject when she was in college.

  ‘Then what’s the connection between Darwin and Germany?’ he asked to defuse the growing tension.

  Alexa sipped her cider and went on. ‘There are two I know of. Hitler’s thinking was influenced heavily by an ex-pat Brit named Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He espoused Teutonic superiority and wrote a book called The Foundations that said all of western civilization descended from the German people. In a weird coincidence, he was raised in Versailles by his grandmother and later in life moved to Dresden.’

  ‘Dresden,’ Grant repeated. ‘Maybe he gave the Nazis Darwin’s specimen.’

  ‘Possibly, but he was vehemently anti-Darwin. Still, a British-German connection might have been important. My money is on Ernst Haeckel.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘A German biologist who actually met with Darwin. If Darwin had collected something strange and unexplainable, he might have shared it with Haeckel, who took it back to Germany with him. He died long before the Nazis came along, but they might have found his notes and the specimen and done something with it.’

  ‘Altwaffe,’ Tyler said.

  ‘Is it possible that the Nazis could have developed something so sophisticated?’ Alexa asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Brielle replied, her voice weighted with the enormity of the word. ‘They had one of the most advanced chemical warfare industries in the world. Although Hitler was afraid to use chemical weapons because of his experiences with mustard gas in World War I, that didn’t stop his scientists from developing sarin nerve gas and using Zyklon B in the death camps.’

  At that the conversation abruptly stopped, as did the music. The guitarists packed up their instruments, and patrons started to file out. A TV above the bar showed explosions tearing through neighborhoods in both Gaza and Tel Aviv. The next shot featured lines of tanks barreling down a road.

  ‘A lot of Jews are going to be killed again unless we find an antidote for the poison,’ Brielle said.

  ‘What do you think the chances are that Edmonstone could have left us something useful to find the Loch Ness monster?’ Grant finally asked. ‘Even if he did see it, that was two hundred years ago.’

  ‘If we can find his journal,’ Tyler said, ‘let’s hope his record about the encounter has something to go on. If these clues are all a hoax, we have the GhostMantas ready to search the loch starting tomorrow morning. Assuming there is something below the surface, we’ll find it.’ Eventually, he didn’t add, but maybe not in time.

  His phone rang, and Aiden’s name came up on the display. The pub was empty enough now that they wouldn’t be overheard. He touched the screen and laid the phone on the table.

  ‘Aiden, I’ve got you on speaker. We’re all here.’

  ‘Hello, everyone. I’ve got some good news. I think I’ve found Edmonstone’s stag heads.’

  Tyler felt his first blush of optimism. ‘Heads?’

  ‘Yes, there are two of them. They aren’t definitively from John Edmonstone, but they’re marked by his initials. They were up for auction a few months ago, but it was put to a stop when the authorities figured out they had historical value.’

  ‘Where are they?’ Grant said eagerly.

  ‘They were taken to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh for restoration before being displayed. Good luck talking them into letting you examine them.’

  ‘There might be a way,’ Brielle said. ‘Remember, I went to the University of Edinburgh. I still have contacts up there.’

  ‘The museum doesn’t open to visitors until ten in the morning,�
�� Aiden said, ‘but I’m sure they get to work earlier than that.’

  ‘Then we know where we’re going next,’ Tyler said.

  ‘But I can’t fly,’ Alexa said. ‘Marlo Dunham has my passport. I don’t have any ID.’

  ‘I heard about your troubles,’ Aiden said, ‘so I took the liberty of booking you all on tonight’s sleeper train to Edinburgh, arriving at seven thirty tomorrow morning. It leaves from Euston station in an hour.’

  ‘You’re a lifesaver, Aiden,’ Tyler said with literal emphasis. ‘I’ll call you back when we get to the station.’ He hung up.

  Tyler dropped a fifty-pound note on the table, and they all stood. After a quick stop at the hotel to collect their belongings, they would have eight hours to figure out how to convince a museum curator to let them examine a pair of two-hundred-year-old historical relics.

  THE ROYAL MILE

  WORLD NEWS

  Ultimatum delivered to Israel at United Nations

  By CHARLES BRAVERMAN

  June 21, NEW YORK – The US State Department acknowledged yesterday that a poison was released during the Eiffel Tower incident on June 12, but it won’t comment on the type or source of the chemical used, fueling allegations that the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, was behind the attack. Officials state that researchers at labs in London, Paris, Frankfurt, and Washington are working feverishly to isolate an antidote, but they have no timetable for when it will become available.

  As more leaders fall ill in Muslim countries, with six dead already, their citizens’ thirst for war has grown exponentially. Protests in Cairo, Amman, Damascus, Tehran, and Baghdad have seen hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets demanding retribution for what they consider an act of war against their countries.

  Twelve countries joined together to propose a resolution forcing Israel to supply an antidote to a rumored chemical attack or suffer the consequences of a full-scale assault. Israel’s top diplomat at the United Nations responded by saying that the allegations are false and nothing more than a blatant attempt to justify invasion of the Jewish state.