“Oh that?” he answered as he plodded into the apartment, dodging the affections of his large ginger cat. “That’s just some stuff from the war I just came from, as you rightly reckoned.”
“Oi! Bruich, darling!” Nina exclaimed at Sam’s pet as it approached her for what Sam did not yield. “Let me get a cuddle in, eh?” Unceremoniously she plonked down the duffel bag right there to pick up the whiny animal. The bag fell open and a hunting knife and gas mask spilled from the neck. “Oh my God! Where the hell were you, Sam?”
“Told you. In a war,” he replied dryly, trying to get the TV on with an unwilling remote control. “I have to get new batteries for this bloody thing.”
Nina frowned at his glib report and buried her nose in Bruich’s remarkably soft fur. Dare she ask for more information? She was awfully curious, but she knew Sam better. He would have babbled on about it if it had had any significance. Therefore, bearing in mind that he was covering a story out of Scotland, she assumed that a story was all it was, regardless of the heavy artillery that slept in the bag on the floor.
“I’ll make us some tea, I suppose,” she mentioned, attempting to remind him of the warming beverage he had promised. “Sam?” He appeared to ignore her, focused entirely on the problematic remote control. “Sam!”
“Aye?” he swung around, rattled from his trance. “Oh God, yes. Sorry, I forgot. Let me make you some Irish Coffee.” Tossing the remote on the couch, he hastened past the perplexed historian.
“Are you alright, Sam?” she asked sincerely.
Sam knew Nina would pry until he came clean – and she could tell when he was bluffing or playing down the urgency of his toils. Exhaling lengthily, he confessed. “I’m just worried about my equipment…not working.”
Nina wore a stone face, not daring to comment on Sam’s equipment being alright in her opinion, but she was dying to jest. Without reading into her amusement at the pun, he carried on, “Long story short, my equipment was left in my abandoned car in Barking the other night.”
“Aye?” she nodded, waiting for the rest.
“And let’s just say I left it after a heated disagreement with a bunch of immigrants living there,” he continued. Sam lifted his perfectly intact DSLR and examined it, rotating the thing to all angles of scrutiny. “Yet, none of my cameras suffered for it. Nothing seems to be damaged, broken, or stolen, Nina. How fucking weird is that?”
Nina shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t know there was stuff in your boot?”
“They knew,” he insisted a little loudly before Nina even finished her sentence. “They knew. They took time to slash my tires and fuck up my upholstery and smash all the windows, Nina. You mean to tell me they would not have bothered with the boot?”
He leered at the dark-eyed beauty as she mulled it over in her mind. Nina looked at Sam in conclusion, the tip of her tongue playing inside the wall of her cheek. “I get what you mean. Why would they not tamper or destroy your belongings? Best be grateful and let it go, maybe? Why? What else do you think could be wrong with the gear, Sam? There it is, in your hands. No problem, right?”
“I just don’t trust it.” He sighed. “Besides, I have to transfer the footage to my MotionCap program to edit it all into a proper report. No need to fret over a lucky break, right?”
“I agree. After I’ve had my Irish Coffee, I’ll leave you to your work,” she said. “After all, I only came by to make sure you weren’t dead.” Nina smiled and winked, forcing Sam to return the gesture.
“Many thanks, Dr. Gould,” he smirked, whipping out the whisky and two dusty glasses for the promised drink. A puff of hard breath made for a cheap eradication of dust from the glasses and he set them down on the counter, feeling quite a measure lighter after discussing the matter of the video equipment with Nina. She could see that the hyperactive Sam was rushing to get to the footage like a teenager charging a cell phone after a night of rock concert selfies.
“You know,” she said, leaning against him, “I would be happy to finish making these if you are in a hurry to start working over there.”
Sam’s face swung towards her, looking decidedly cheered. “You wouldn’t mind?”
Nina smiled and shook her head. “Nah, go on. I’ll bring the drinks.”
Sam grabbed her hard and thrust her body against his. He planted a solid kiss on her thick, soft lips and let go so suddenly that it sent her reeling. Not a moment later, he had disappeared into the dark hallway and she could hear the sound of clanking equipment and jacks sliding into line-in ports.
Vaguely, as Nina carefully poured the cream over the back of a teaspoon to form the frothy crown on the black coffee, she could hear sound coming from the computer. It sounded like an address, a speech, by some important man about some important issue. Assuming Sam had engaged in an interview with one of the significant representatives of his assignment, Nina walked in with the two glasses of delectable Irish Coffee.
“I hope I got the sugar part right, since…,” she stopped talking instantly as she watched Sam’s face glaring at the screen, frozen in horror.
7
Cutting the Wrong Bait
“Sam?” Nina pressed carefully, her eyes momentarily regarding the dark-haired young man on the screen, looking nothing like some important bigwig she imagined. Softly she trod past Sam’s static frame and set his drink down on the desk without a word. Instead of throwing questions, the curious Nina elected to listen.
On the screen she saw a plainly dressed man in his thirties with hair much like Sam’s, unkempt and curly at the ends of its wild cut. But what disturbed Nina about his face was the lingering smirk that constantly threatened to emerge on his face while his black, hateful eyes pierced the camera. She disliked him immediately, but kept the fact to herself. After all, she had previously misjudged an Ethiopian military man by his look and conduct, and barely managed to remove her foot from her mouth when he turned out to prove her horribly wrong.
The man on the screen had a deep voice, his accent British, mostly, yet certain inflections on some words revealed a distinctly French flavor. The combination baffled the historian, since it was rather out of place on the image of what struck her as a Taliban rat. Sipping the strong punch of the coffee she had prepared, Nina listened to his strange monologue – not resembling at all an interview with Sam Cleave.
“…and you are quite pressed for time, Mr. Cleave. We know who you are. We know where to find you. I need not dwell on idle threats in any attempt to frighten you into cooperating, but we must impress upon you the gravity of our demand. Because I am a reasonable man, and we take into account that you were unaware during your intervention of the incident, we have decided to give you twenty-four hours to deliver the woman.”
Nina scowled heavily as her heart jumped. “What woman?”
“Shh!” Sam snapped at her, keeping his eyes firmly on the man as he concluded his message.
“I implore you to comply, Mr. Cleave. Do not force our hand. We have some footage of our own and it could be dispatched to the authorities with a raise of my right hand,” the man warned, his face still sickeningly confident as his voice remained even, dripping with cool authority. Nina held her breath and her pounding heart troubled her sense of comfort. In the shadows of the dark flat, her uncertain eyes rapidly dashed from the screen to Sam’s face with every stinging reprimand, but the journalist showed no signs of agitation, only focus.
“I urge you to deliver the woman and pretend that none of this ever happened, and we shall show the same courtesy. I am sure that we all wish for this entire matter – and its related…,” he hesitated, murmuring with his eyes to the floor for the first time, finding the right words, “misinformation, its associated misdemeanors, to be kept out of the limelight, eh?”
“Jesus,” Sam whispered, his hands forming a spire over his nose as he contemplated the man’s request.
“Do be assured, Mr. Cleave, that we have no desire to kill you, only to get back our…privacy,” he informed Sam, di
rectly contradicting what Sam thought his message conveyed. “Keep to our appeal, and you will never hear from us again. I give you my word.”
“S-Sam?” Nina stuttered, hoping not to get hushed so rudely again.
From under his hands, he spoke. “Aye?”
“Who is that? And who is the woman he is talking about?” she asked, taking great care not to sound snoopy or pushy. “Anything I can help with?”
Sam just shook his head, “No.”
On the footage, the man held up a map of London, simply saying, “By Thursday, midnight, Mr. Cleave, bring her to All Hallows by the Tower. Our agents are everywhere, out of sight. Any deviation from our demand will result in an instant distribution of our footage. I trust that we have an agreement, Mr. Cleave.”
With a rough displacement of frame, accompanied by a crackling din that startled both Sam and Nina, the recording was terminated, leaving the remnants of Sam’s own footage of the riots to play out. Now, all that juicy bullshit seemed so insignificant to Sam, the petty coverage of a local riot about wages and service delivery against a small municipality. Burying his hands in his hair, he didn’t even care about the mammoth task of editing before his almost expired deadline anymore.
Dying to pry, Nina knew that one wrong word would make her moody and wayward friend shut out everyone, so she finished her drink and got up. Playing it smooth while her mind screamed for answers, she headed for the kitchen. “Well, I’d better be off. Let me know if you need anything, alright?”
Nina waited for him to stop her as she rinsed out her glass, but the only cry for attention came from a hungry Bruich. He rubbed against her calf with a stretched out meow that broke her heart. For a moment, Nina imagined the feline conveying his master’s unspoken beckoning and she was desperate to hear him ask her to stay. To help him come to his senses and ask her to help him with this unsettling business, Nina elected to take a few minutes to dish up some kitty chow for big, bad Bruich. He had become a giant of a cat the more he aged, yet she’d never seen him fall ill or struggle with agility the way in which large, old cats sometimes did.
In the other room she could hear Sam, sliding open compartments, fumbling about in drawers. From the alert tones alone, she knew that he had switched on his trusty old Windows XP driven laptop and slipped a flash drive into his desktop computer’s USB port.
She felt the curiosity overwhelming her with every second that passed, and try as she might, she couldn’t keep it contained by focusing her attention on Bruich. In true Nina-fashion, she finally just walked into the room and planted her hands on her sides as she took a pose in front of Sam’s almost maniacal frame. “Alright,” she announced sternly, “spit it out.”
He briefly met her gaze, but otherwise carried on copying the file over onto his laptop to have a copy for his records.
“Sam!” she repeated.
“Nina, I know this might be a cliché, but it’s better that you do not know the details of this incident,” he paid her the courtesy of looking at her, “or of what brought it on. It’s for your your own safety.”
“For my own safety,” she mocked, sniffing and flipping her locks back, “like all the times I’ve been present on Purdue’s little treasure hunts with you? Like I haven’t been involved in every peril you have, if not more so?”
He rose to his feet, looking down on her petite form, but her eyes spewed fire. “I’ve a right to know when you’re in trouble,” she said in gentle reprimand.
“Is that a fact?” he asked, looking quite vexed by her confrontation. “How is that, then? Are you my keeper? Are you my goddamn mother now? What right do you have to knowing what’s up with my life?”
“Because I lo—,” she stopped, catching her breath and reshuffling her mind, “because I’m your friend, Sam. Don’t tell me that everything we’ve been through together doesn’t merit at least some trust?”
“It’s not about trust,” he frowned. “Jesus! It’s about keeping you locked out of something that can still be resolved without your involvement, knock on wood, and keeping you out of harm’s way. You have to understand that!”
Nina sighed, dropping her arms to her sides.
“Do you?” he pressed.
“Aye, Sam. But I’m not asking to be involved. I’m simply asking for some explanation, just so that I can have some peace of mind…,” she clarified.
“You’re curious, Nina,” he snapped, raising his voice. “It’s a simple case of feminine ego.”
“What?” she fumed.
“Aye, you women always have to know everything that is going on! You will press and push and pry until you get your information. It’s a byproduct of the gossip gene secretly attached to the X-chromosome. And if not to sow your opinions about everything, you use it as a weapon when you feel insecure.”
“Are you daft?” she growled. “Christ, what got into you all of a sudden?”
“Stop,” he virtually shouted now, “interfering in my business! You do not have to know everything that goes on in my life, Nina. Have some bloody sense, some respect for me, for the fucking pressure I’m under, without forcing your ear onto my door whenever you decide I need mollycoddling.”
The small brunette raised her eyebrow and folded her arms across her chest. Silence haunted the space between them before hardening into a thick substance neither could pass through. Sam did not back down at her threatening posture, but deep inside he knew he had just severed a silk thread. Which emotion that thread was connected to, though, he did not know, but he knew for sure it would be one of those he would regret tugging at before snipping it off.
By the time he thought of something to say, her hand was disappearing around the front door she was closing behind her as she marched out of his apartment. To Sam’s surprise, the feisty, quick-tempered Nina did not slam the door, as was her habit when she chose to let objects voice her discontent for her.
“Great, arsehole,” Sam muttered, surprising even himself with the outburst. But the latter was born from a genuine fear for Nina’s safety; all he had tried to do with his forcefulness was to dissuade her from trying to open him up. “This is going to cost you more than Purdue could afford, you fucking idiot.”
Bruich dodged past his frustrated human as Sam resorted to flinging a thing or two at the couch and floor. Sinking to the sofa pillows, he took a deep breath as his face rested in his palms. Sam’s fingers deformed his handsome features as he dragged his hands hard down his face in disappointment. “Ugh!” his nasal complaint sounded just before the laptop notified him that his video clip had been converted and stored on his hard drive.
As the minutes ran on Sam realized just how stupid he was for chasing Nina off. If anything, she was the best person to have bounced ideas off. She could have helped to ascertain if his reluctance to recover the nameless patient #1312 only to deliver her to her persecutors was a case of innate rebellion or indeed a true representation of logical reasoning.
Now he was alone in his decision, whatever it would be. Sam was on his own inside a clandestine chamber of doubt from which only he could facilitate his escape. It frightened him to death that he found himself dreadfully inadequate to make such a decision, but time was ticking away and he had limited time to get to the King George Hospital in London if he was going to have any leverage whatsoever.
8
Quest for Facts
Back in Upney Lane’s fancy morgue, things were looking bleak. After taking pictures of the peculiar markings on the cadavers brought into Nirvana Public the night before, Dr. Barry Hooper and his colleague, Dr. Glen Victor, sat down in the office for heavily caffeinated beverages and some discussion.
“They gone yet?” Glen Victor hummed like a dying engine over his mug of coffee.
“Yep, next shift is here, changing in the locker room,” Barry reported.
“Cup of black for ya,” Glen muttered listlessly. “My God, I’m so exhausted.”
“So, we’re off soon,” his colleague consoled, taking the cup from
Glen with a grateful nod.
Shaking his head profusely, Glen disagreed with Barry’s nonchalant reply. “No, no, no, man, not from the shift,” he moaned, his coarse hand enveloping the hot mug and slipping two fingers through the handle for no reason at all, least of all grip. His skin was remarkably immune to direct heat, something that had always made Barry flinch. “I’m tired trying to figure out what these immigrants are part of. It’s like finding a Satanic seal on a Catholic nun, Barry. Something is going on, something we should take note of.”
“Oh, big deal, mate,” Barry sniggered as he stirred his coffee. “They were obviously part of some modern gang, locally, you know? Something affiliated with their culture. My God, man, not every cross is meant as some sort of religion or cult.”
Glen looked up, his sharp eyes on Barry. “True, but the same sign on several men?” He got up and took a folder from the pile of paperwork. “Several men who just happened to buy the farm at the same time, the same day, doing something that seems extremely ritualistic to me, Barry!”
“I think you’re thinking way too much into this, but if it bothers you so much you can take it up with the boss,” Barry suggested, looking through the thick plate glass at the fresh staff members coming in, greeting each other with an exchange of nods. “He might enjoy oddities of this nature as much as you do.”
“What do you mean?” Glen asked. “Doesn’t it strike you as strange that our deceased Muslim immigrants here have no family coming to get them?”
Barry hadn’t known this. He frowned, turning in his stance to face his colleague. “How do you mean?” he asked Glen. “You couldn’t get family to pick them up?” He shrugged. “Why don’t you get a family friend to sign the off, then? I’m sure their community works as a unit with such things relating to religious funeral practices and so on.”
The Lost Crown of the Knights Templar (Order of the Black Sun Book 19) Page 4
