"What is it, Nina? What is it?" Purdue forced.
"Hang on, I have to get a look," she said, and Sam helped with lighting.
It was magnificent . . . and ancient. Nina gasped and Purdue sighed.
"I venture to guess that this is a book that dates from the Middle Ages. My God, it is exquisite!" she sighed in awe. She could see that the side of the book was fashioned with a steel and silver-wrought lock and framed with the same metals to keep the leather intact. Nina shivered.
"What is it?" Sam asked.
She looked up at him, not sure how to formulate her answer, "Uh, nothing really. I am just getting a case of the creeps."
"You? The level-headed scholar?"
"Yes, me. Sam," she whispered, while Purdue crouched to look at something near the coattails of the captain's uniform coat, "It feels as if the book had goose bumps."
"Okay, that is creepy. Can you tell me that again once we are safe and sound up top on the platform and not while we are draped in sixty-nine-year-old darkness?" Sam winced at her, noting how equally eerie her large dark eyes looked in the angle of his beam where the thick blackness around them twisted her features. It made his flesh crawl.
"I'm sorry," she said, with a hint of sarcasm, "I thought you inquired about what was creeping me out, old boy?" Then she smiled and looked down at Purdue's white grey hair in the faint light of his torch.
"Mr. Purdue?" she urged, "Shall we get out of here? I believe our oxygen is at a red factor."
"Just a moment," Purdue's voice came muffled from the confined space of the closet floor, as he fumbled with something that sounded like metal. Sam shone his beam on it. A small iron box, about the size of a toolbox, sat in Purdue's hands and he turned it from side to side as he examined the locks.
"Rusted, of course. But I can open this up later. Let's go. We can thoroughly scrutinize our finds up top. I don't mind telling you that this tomb is beginning to make me wish for the angry spray of the waves," Purdue said. "I have a feeling we are onto something huge here."
☼
Chapter 12
Nina could not wait to have a look at the contents of the book they had recovered from the Nazi submarine. The lore surrounding these objects was astounding, not just in monetary value, but intrinsic in the pursuit of historical truth. Purdue, like a man possessed, had been fiddling with the iron box since they arrived back at the surface. He finally had the thing pried open by dislodging the hinges and found inside a handful of paper rolls, in waterproof packages. He carefully opened the packages and found the rolls etched in mystery and made almost illegible by time. They appeared to be plans of an architectural nature, perhaps designs, for the measurements included specific geometry, almost as if its creations would bear mathematical significance.
Purdue was cold. His body shook from the biting frigid temperature below, but he had no time for such pain. His eyes usurped the vague details of the rolls, the numbering and lines, but still he could not determine what the diagrams depicted. The book rested next to the rolls of plans, left for last. It would certainly take time and expertise to decipher and he anxiously awaited Nina's arrival.
"Sam, did you get footage of that last room?" he asked the journalist behind him who was checking his gear, piece by piece.
"Aye! The light was not the best, but I did also capture some infrared reels, just in case our normal footage was too difficult to clear up," Sam answered. He set up his computer links to transfer it all onto the hard drive for their records and for some reason he felt a twinge of excitement possess him. This was panning out to be quite the adventure, but not in the harrowing way like his previous near-death encounter with Purdue's itchy wallet and dangerous curiosity.
Nina came into the small office where the monitors mirrored the mayhem outside. She wondered secretly why the security cameras did not focus on the oil rig or the processing plant, but given her nonexistent knowledge of the oil business she figured she would make a fool of herself asking such dumb questions.
"Tea?" Sam asked. It was music to her ears and her chilly body begged for the warmth of a cup.
"Please and thank you," she nodded. Immediately her eyes fell on the book. "May I? Or are you busy with it?" she asked Purdue who was lurched over the plans with a painful scowl of frustration.
"Certainly, Nina, go ahead, please," he answered abruptly, hoping that, at least, they could make sense of one of the recovered artifacts. Her slender fingers were dressed in cut-off gloves, leaving her painted fingertips exposed. It made her look like a high maintenance hermit, a gypsy with style.
"How beautiful is this?!" she marveled, while the kettle whistled behind them. The book with the strangely bound leather and its clasps felt heavy in her palms, as if the gravity of the topside world had given it more substance. Now that it had been unearthed, so to speak, it gained weight to convey the importance of its contents. It was cold to her touch as she placed it on the desk to choose a small, strong implement to pry it open with. Purdue had already laid out his steel tools and she knew this was not something she could wriggle into with a ballpoint pen or a hairpin. The edge of the dark brown book had been withered by time, peeling away like filo pastry dough and threatening to chip off in places.
This is not the behavior of leather, as far as I know, she thought to herself. From both the spine and the edge of the cover two separate steel clasps secured it, carved on them some medieval pattern or insignia that snaked along to the tiny hinges and they met in the center of the cover. No name graced the outside of the book, nor any mention of an author, as manuscripts of this age normally omitted them. Sam placed her steaming cup a distance away from her busy hands, just in case they would slip under the force of her efforts and wipe the desk of all its strewn objects and splatter the place with hint of chamomile and green tea.
"Thanks, love," Nina said through her focused exertion, not realizing the impact of her choice of words. Sam stood still for a second, thinking about her response and smiled just a little. He waited for Nina to realize, but she never did, to his dismay. There was too much zealous curiosity dictating her actions and he eventually stopped waiting to tease her for it. Frustration overwhelmed her so that Purdue looked up from his fascinating sketches and Sam quickly butted in to help her wedge the lock before she lost a finger or started speaking in tongues, provoked by her simmering rage.
"Step aside, madam," he insisted, and took the little silvery tool from her. Using the same technique as she had, he employed his masculine strength to snap open the little hinge of the clasp on the edge of the book with a ting that sent bolts of adrenaline through Nina's body. It was finally open! She did not mean to, but she lunged forward eagerly and grabbed the book from Sam.
"You're welcome, Dr. Gould," he said in surprise.
"I'm sorry, Sam. It's just . . . it's . . . I am dying to see what is written inside. This artifact is ancient, you see?" she huffed with an innocence he simply could not judge harshly. He nodded in affirmation and was quickly joined now by Purdue who had to see what the book held. On the second page, the first was blank, a symbol, like the one in the captain's closet, adorned the yellow paper that was infested with rust stains. It was drawn in newer ink than the writings in the rest of the book, implying that the symbol was from the Second World War era. Nina knew full well that the swastika in all its guises had been used by many cultures long before the rise of the Third Reich, but in this capacity it represented just that—the Nazi regime.
"What does it say?" Purdue pressed impatiently.
"I will need some time to read through it. Most of this is in Latin, but I see other languages here too," Nina noted slowly, as her index finger found the obscure words written in different hands and slants that made it difficult to read. "Old Germanic dialects, Nepali and Old English phrases come to the fore among the Latin scriptures. My God, how far back does this thing go?" The three of them stood in mute wonderment at the various entries and the detailed symbols which looked, even to the laymen, like occu
lt sigils.
"I see references to a supposed shrine built into a mountain," Nina reported in a low tone, her absolute attention arrested by the texts before them. She sat down without tearing her eyes from the pages. "Here, this says "Lumbini" a few times and then speaks of something holy. That's what I get from the shards of German here," she pointed to an old paragraph on the fifth page, dated 1709. "Then it is mentioned here in the Latin text too, where the date says '26 no . . . ' and continues with 'e83.' It is badly faded, see? Probably 26 November 1883? Then again it could be any century's eighty-third year, these pages are so old," she jousted wits with herself while the two men listened eagerly. Purdue smiled with every turn of the page, clamped his hands together excitedly with every revelation that Dr. Gould reported. Then Nina looked up at them with a questioning expression.
"Lumbini is where Buddha was born, right? Or I might have my wires crossed here," she said.
"In Nepal, yes," said Purdue. "I know, because a mistress I once doted on was Buddhist and spoke fondly of her pilgrimages there, among other holy places. But what the hell does this have to do with Nazi treasure?" Purdue asked. "What does it say about the place, Nina?"
Nina frowned as she tried to make sense of the myriad withered sentences and faded words in the light, which was brighter than the dark daylight that permeated the sea-sprayed window. Purdue tapped his finger on his folded arms, waiting for her to give him more information. He knew he had to be patient—she was his only interpreter—but he was positively idling like a dragster at the starting line as she took her time to read on.
"Holy place. That I've got, damn it!" she hissed to herself.
"Take your time, Nina," Sam calmed her, and shot a glance to the impatient look of their employer. A sly smile cracked on Sam's face at the amusing situation. He watched Purdue glare at him, shaking his head and pointing inconspicuously at his watch to make it clear to Sam that he was running out of time.
"Nepal is mentioned by a few other entries, so we seem to have a recurring location," she said again.
"Location of what?" Purdue asked.
Nina gasped. Slowly she tore her attention from the pages and stood frozen, lips ajar and eyes wide as she turned to her two companions.
"Location of what, Dr. Gould?" Purdue pushed again, his finger at rest now.
Astounded, Nina spoke with a whisper of awe in her words, "The Spear of Destiny!"
☼
Chapter 13
It was one of the most notorious myths of all time, the hunt for the Spear of Destiny, also called the Holy Lance. Purdue could not believe his fortune at finding a hidden guide to the possible location of the relic that had nations killing one another to possess its power. The very blade used to pierce the body of the dying Jesus during his crucifixion, blessed by the blood of Jesus himself and said to bestow unconquerable power on whoever owns it, was within Purdue's grasp. This would be a profound new level of renown for him. All these thoughts of what possibilities the attainment of this artifact would amass left him insatiable and restless. Purdue's heart did not cease in its incessant wildness and he found it impossible to sleep.
Hitler sought it, owned it, along with a network of royal bloodlines and warlords who wielded unmatched supremacy and exhibited unnatural invincibility, it was said. Now he had the chance to reach out and touch it, hold it, keep it.
Purdue had done extensive research on the relic, especially when he first learned about it during a lecture on the apocrypha that he attended in 2003 at Cambridge. But there were simply too many discrepancies as to the location of it, not to mention that most of the Spear of Destiny had been missing since its reported discovery.
Through his many resources the authenticity of most of the recorded lances found him befuddled and unconvinced. St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, then the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Echmiadzin in Armenia—so on and so forth, even accounts of replicas, such as the spear given to the Hungarian king, bloodlines of Odin and a dizzying number of other so-called true legends of where the Spear of Destiny had ended up. Their locations varied as much as the men who coveted the piece and ultimately it could very well be anywhere by now.
"Nepal."
He knew of it, but it was one of the few places on earth Purdue had not visited. It would be an amazing adventure, not to mention the most prosperous venture he had ever embarked on. As an insanely wealthy man he was not programmed to be greedy and he tried, in this instance, not to allow the possibilities to engulf his ego.
"I would need a special but small team. No more self-righteous academic professors, no celebrities, no bullshit," he muttered, as he paced in the pale white light of his lamp. His shadow stretched across the length of his chamber wall as he passed the beam and outside the voice of the storm acknowledged his ponderings. Contrary to his other expeditions this one had to be kept secret, so clandestine that not even his own staff could know about it. Nina Gould and Sam Cleave had already proven themselves as invaluable members of his team. All he needed now was a security expert, preferably a brave and deadly protector who knew what to do when danger loomed. That protector came in the shapely form of Calisto Fernandez.
Purdue would get his colleague, Walter Eickhart, from a prestigious and secret society to facilitate the seamless tour for them by paving the way past the nuisance of permits and visas. Walter could reach beyond the basic red tape of entering the holy landscape where Nina told him a shrine was built. They would find the entrance to a cave just below the altar located there. Dealing with covert operations all over the world for the past thirty years made Walter an expert on fashioning holes for little rats to find their way in without the knowledge of powerful governments.
Purdue had made up his mind. He was going to fund this expedition and get it off the ground as soon as possible.
Nina had her concerns, but she had to stick it out to see how far she could be privy to something this big. If it failed and they hit a dead end, she would have lost nothing but a few weeks, of which she would have spent most of her days battling Matlock and her own ideals anyway. If this turned out to be real, well, she did not even have to consider the magnitude of her career and bragging rights to leave Matlock as nothing but a smear under her boots.
It was late, but the sky was light above Deep Sea One and she could see the restless water offer threats in the dead of night with its foaming tongues and hissing whispers.
Nina was not superstitious and she was certainly far from psychic, but something about this place felt off to her. It truly felt as if the water here was darker than anywhere else in the world. Her skin crawled from more than the cold here. Something sinister lived in these waters, not the monstrous variety one reads about in classic science-fiction novels, but something human, humanly menacing. She felt as if every moment on Deep Sea One was like moving behind enemy lines and it gave her a foreboding sickness in her chest.
Out on the platform she noticed that the skeleton crew was absent entirely. Even though she did not know the precise workings of an oil rig, she reckoned that there should at least have been some men running the night shift.
Footsteps sounded from the corridor. It passed her door and piqued her curiosity. All this profound business of the Spear and its possible location had her adrenaline on overdrive and she was not about to sleep for a long while yet. The rhythm of the footfalls moved toward the north exit onto the platform. Nina pulled on her windbreaker and zipped it up tightly, opened her door and checked the left side of the corridor first, before slipping out of her room to trail the sound that went to the opposite side. The door had just clicked shut when she came out and she stole along the wall in the frail illumination from the security lights outside. They made everything yellow and gave Nina a horrible sense of dread, of abandonment. It reminded her of when she was a little girl and her father took her with him to check on the factory staff who worked nights. Outside the factory it was always empty and sallow with only the howl of the wind to accompany the crunch of their feet on the tarmac
gravel stones. The tall posts spat out the same miserable yellow light to expose the building as these on the deck of the platform now did.
Outside on the open platform the wind whipped the loose rubber flags, wailing through the steel poles and webbings of iron that erected the towers. For once the sky was clear and crisp, playing host to the full moon, which shed a lonely blue tinge on the deserted mechanical arms and steel beams. Nina slowly peeked around the doorway where she heard the footsteps leave and caught a glimpse of Purdue as he made his way to the southern building section where the stacked buildings plopped on one another like an overcrowded collection of post-war tenements. Under the silent leer of the small black square windows his frame melted into the shadows. Nina narrowed her eyes.
"Where the hell is he going?" she whispered to herself, pulling up her collar to fight the cold on her neck. Under the main drill tower Purdue stood still and looked about him, then he slipped into a section between two posts. Nina smelled smoke. She hated that smell, like the smell of an old, abusive lover beckoning. It had been too short a while since she quit and she still found it very enticing. Her eye caught billows of it pass by from behind her and she watched the blue smoke get swooped up in the currents of the gale.
"I think he is up to something too," a voice cut the silence behind her and Nina jumped with a little shriek. It was Sam, sucking on a fag while he leaned against the wall at her heel.
"Jesus Christ, Sam! Do you want to give me a fucking heart attack?" she hissed through clenched teeth, taking care not to speak too loudly. Sam smiled. It was that same smile he always gave her when she did something amusing. But he said nothing further and just motioned with his head for her to return her attention to Purdue. They watched him enter a lift, but it was not a typical platform elevator. It was a cocoon of what looked like fiberglass and a frame of some unknown silver metal, which could withstand pressure and corrosion.
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