Deep Sea One (12 page)

After dinner Nina opted for a shower while the men became acquainted in the bar. Purdue had Calisto by his side, and ordered a round of drinks for him, Sam and Jodh. Gary was a nondrinker, due to his profession. The lounge of the bar was warm and cozy with a fire in the hearth and soft traditional music playing from a damaged old speaker behind the counter of the bar. On the walls hung portraits of previous dignitaries and celebrities who paid a visit, including Dave Purdue's old friend and world-famous explorer Jefferson Daniels, who posed with a Nepali beauty who's swarthy skin challenged his overly done spray tan and ridiculously white teeth. Other black-and-white photos farther back in the room dated from a few decades before, fading behind the glass of their photo frames as if time had reached through the barrier and aged them.

Calisto's dark eyes gleamed in the yellow flicker of the fire and candlelight. She paid close attention to her surroundings as she followed close behind Purdue. Her feet fell inaudibly as she moved, even though her shoes were hard-soled.

Sam and Jodh ordered tongba, to take in the culture, while Purdue thought a vodka chaser suitable for the occasion.

"Where is Dr. Gould?" Calisto asked, surprised that Nina did not join them.

"Oh, she elected to spend the evening in her room to have another look at the artifact's contents for more clues. So far she had translated most of the texts to bring us here, but other than that she has not yet discovered any specific locations to what we are supposed to uncover," Purdue said with a hint of annoyance in his voice.

"Well,
sir
, that is why they call it an expedition, not a holiday," Calisto remarked. Purdue stared at her in amazement of her insubordination and she quickly cleared her voice and lifted her hand apologetically. Sam smirked to himself. He liked the woman's sharpness and her general disregard for hierarchy.

"Not drinking, sergeant?" Gary asked.

"I am on duty. No drinking, but I shall have whatever they have in the way of espresso," she replied with a smile. Calisto combed the room with her gaze. In particular two men at the back of the bar room, seated on a couch, leered at her. It was a strange interest somewhere between curiosity and lust that she was all too used to. They did not look local. They lacked the exotic traits of the Nepalese men and Calisto paid close attention to their looks. One was tall, blond and strongly built, while the other had grey hair in a ponytail.

She kept near her employer, watching the two men in the mirror behind the bar.

"Mr. Purdue, I have to know," started Jodh, "and I mean no disrespect toward the lady, but do you really think she is up to Blomstein's level?"

Purdue chugged back a shot and gestured for another. He caught his breath without looking at Jodh, gave it some thought, and then answered, "What about her tells you that she is not? I have never judged people, especially security, by stereotypes, Jodh. Ever. I look at training and efficiency under pressure."

"But, let's face facts—women are nowhere nearly as proficient in hand-to-hand combat. They simply do not have the strength of men," the guide retorted.

"Just like a man to match winning a battle with physical strength," Calisto spoke from his right ear, startling him so he jerked back. He had not heard her steal up on him and the other men sat watching in amusement while she did so. "Don't you know that cunning and misdirection is the essence of war? I have never seen muscle defeat a bullet, but I have seen powerful men fooled to their knees."

"Touché," he laughed, embarrassed and impressed. Purdue beamed with pride by association.

But not all in the Purdue party were having a night of relaxation.

Nina sat in the miserable light of a study lamp in the loneliness of a dreary single hotel room. She made sure to wear gloves as she paged carefully through the antique book they had recovered from the sunken German U-boat. Now that she had some privacy she could truly savor the substance in the pages. Lifting the book to her face, Nina breathed in the unique scent of the paper, imagining the age of it and what it had lived through. Most of all she imagined that it could have passed through the very hands of prominent Nazi authoritarians and chiefs, men only existent in the halls of history, who made themselves legends through terrible and magnificent deeds.

The musty smell of the paper contrasted the strange smell of the cover. It still perplexed her what the book was bound in. It was not any kind of leather she had ever seen and the thought of what it could be gave her chills. The Nazi regime and its scientists, historians and occultists spared no immorality or taboo in their pursuits of power, skinning some poor bastard to make a nice book cover would not be surprising at all. Nina looked closely at the German sections and matched all those paragraphs written in the same hand to manage some sort of consistency.

It looked fascinating, but in her mind she imagined it to be the script of insanity, the hand of a madman.

"Tic-tac-toe," she whispered as she paged.

On the next page she found what looked like a grid, containing letters and random dots in some of the sections. It made no sense, but she imagined it was there for a reason. However, that was not was she was looking for at the moment. She needed a route.

When she examined the map on the ninth page, its withered green lines and dots, names omitted and replaced by numbers or formulas, she realized that the winding thick black stripe that stretched from Lumbini to the far northern area of Nepal consisted of a grainy ink, which ate up the coloring of the other inks that crossed it.

She ran her glove over a part of the line and noticed that it crumbled from the page onto her finger in a solid substance that looked like sand.

"What the hell?" she whispered. The swastika on the map sat more to the left of Lumbini and from there the strange black meander followed to the border of Nepal and China. Nina frowned in the harsh light, trying to dissect the meanings of the strange grains. A knock on her door frightened her, her body jolting in her chair.

"Goddammit! What?" she cried to the unwelcome visitor.

"I thought you'd be hungry, Dr. Gould," she heard Calisto's voice muffled on the other side of the door.

"Oh, God, I'm sorry," she said and opened the door. The bodyguard's frame filled the door, looking awfully intimidating. In her hands she held a tray with two coffees and a bowl with a delicious rice dish that was covered in cellophane wrap.

"Are you still at the studying?" Calisto asked, as she placed the food and coffee carefully down on Nina's bedside table. Nina sighed, "Yes, I am trying to figure out what they mixed into this ink? The black ink absorbs all the other lines, do you see?" She did not expect the bodyguard to understand, but it was nice for someone to show interest in what she was doing.

"It absorbs the ink?"

"Yes. Rather odd for a map."

"Is it salt, by chance?" Calisto asked matter-of-factly as she sat down on Nina's bed.

Salt? Nina did not think about that at all. Of course, salt in the ink would absorb the wetness of the other lines. She flicked the point of her tongue over the glove's fingertip, tasting the saline contents of it. Her face lit up.

"It's salt!" she exclaimed.

"Great!" Calisto replied, having no idea what it was supposed to mean to Dr. Gould.

"Yes, it is, Calisto. Salt! The country used to have a lucrative salt trade and there was a route across the mountains to the Humla District, a salt-trading route to Tibet! The black line ends in the same area as the Himalayan trail to the border," Nina beamed with relief and excitement. "I could kiss you!"

"Please don't," Calisto rapped quickly, "I already have enough untrue rumors about my sexuality cock-blocking my love life, if you don't mind." Nina laughed. She suddenly had a bit of an appetite. Now she knew where the map led. In the mountains of Humla there was a shrine and the numbering at the end of the black line was not a date, but coordinates that would tell them exactly where the shrine was located. Her concerns could be laid to rest for the next few days.

☼

Chapter 16

On a crisp Tuesday morning in October the party set out for the Himalayan Trail, to commence from the city of Nepalgunj from which they would fly to the foothills near Simikot and walk the rest of the way.

"Thank God we have a helicopter at our disposal," Nina said, as the group headed for the helipad in Nepalgunj.

"I am not so geographically inclined, so tell me again why we don't just fly to the shrine?" Sam inquired. He was still zipping up one of his lenses in his backpack and fell slightly behind the others.

"The terrain is virtually inaccessible. Only by limb or yak can you get to the heights of the passes we need to traverse to reach the mountain range on the far northern side of the Humla District, Mr. Cleave," Purdue shouted through the noise of the Jet Ranger's rotors. He was his old over-zealous self once more, hasty to get to their destination. Sam did not look forward to the trek. Thanks to the Wolfenstein expedition he had quite enough of cold, tent shelter and close quarters with unbearable personalities. This time it would be Sam, Nina, Calisto and Purdue, Gary and Jodh—too many people for his liking. But again, as previously, the money was scandalously abundant, so much that he often wondered about his morality for the price.

It took them another strenuous flight full of boredom and noise to reach Simikot, the closest form of civilization before they would embark on a hike from hell, 3,000 meters above sea level and lasting for days in a godforsaken mountain range.

"Did you pack thermal clothing, Sam?" Nina asked, as they climbed out of the helicopter and checked their gear before departure. "The mountain air at this altitude is unforgiving."

"Yes, mother. And clean underwear too," the cocky journalist bit back with a sarcastic smile.

Nina mouthed the words "fuck you" and pulled her straps taut around her waist to secure her massive backpack to her body. The pack was almost larger than she was and when the wind came up with more aggression she imagined being lugged around by her collar.

The party walked through the narrow dirt roads of the villages they passed, but there was no time for play with the local children who swarmed around them and there was definitely no time to rest. They had to make it to the first 1,000 meters within the next three days. Purdue had a schedule in his mind, one he intended to keep to above all else. Sam could feel the alcohol of the previous night take its toll but wouldn't admit to it, especially after Purdue had warned him that the whisky was detrimental to his ability to function at optimal level.

Gary was not trekking with them solely as pilot, but he was also a trained EMT and his medical expertise would be pivotal to such an excruciating venture. He was versed in altitude sickness and similar conditions, so between his skill and Jodh's knowledge of the passes and the terrain, the party was safely covered for medical assistance.

The place was absolutely breathtaking. In the distance the ice-capped mountain ranges folded and bent. Like slumbering ice giants they peaked into heaven, piercing the cloud coverage above the crisp atmosphere and only exposed the brown rock faces beneath on lower altitudes. Majestic and leviathan they appeared, walling the Himalayan basin in their ancient silence where the only sound was a whispering wind and a heartbeat. Calisto relished the silence of Humla, her ears ringing from the deafening nothingness. From horizon to horizon the sky domed in a sharp blue sapphire of infinity, immeasurable by eye and unfathomable by heart.

Above them she noticed two large birds, circling. They looked like condors, massive wing spans that kept their strong feathered bodies afloat on the upper sweeping gusts.

"Wow," she whispered and stood still for a moment to shield her eyes with her hand against the sun.

"No time, sergeant," Purdue snapped from the front of the line. "We are racing against time here."

Nina found it peculiar that he would say that. Purdue and Gary walked in front with Jodh while Sam joined the two women right behind them. He had no idea how unfit he was and the alcohol had done him in too.

"Hey, Jodh, where did you get that smashing walking stick?" Sam called ahead. It looked like a valuable tool to have on the more steep slants of grass and gravel that took them higher with each step.

"Bought it from a villager two years ago!" Jodh shouted with a proud smile and tapped the stick twice on the hard earth. Completely surrounded by crinkled white snowcaps and protrusions, the sound of the howling wind accompanied the crunch of their hiking boots on the loose gravel and rocks. It was a pleasant day, at least, and they tried to make good time to make it through the salt trail on to the location where the book's coordinates would lead them.

Calisto stopped again. She waited for Nina and Sam to pass well ahead of her and looked back, running her eyes over the nearest rise of grass and rocks behind them.

"What is it?" Nina asked her.

"Keep going, Dr. Gould," Calisto said, without looking at Nina. She could tell by the bodyguard's voice that it was not a mere request and she quickly caught up with the men, constantly looking back at the stationary woman who faced away from them.

"I don't like this. Women's intuition never lies, you know," she told Sam in a hushed tone.

He looked back. "That's not women's intuition, Nina. That is a trained nose for trouble and I don't like it one bit. I hope to God she has a gun in that packet of jelly beans," he remarked.

Before long, they had reached the last small village. The frigid afternoon was gaining on them.

"We have to get to Base Camp A before dark or we are going to have trouble. There is some cold coming," Jodh told the party.

"Will we be at the mercy of the elements or are we staying in a village setting?" Gary asked Jodh.

"Camping. In tents. Sorry, Mr. Cleave, but we will be way past the village by nightfall," Jodh answered. The cold started to eat into their necks and burn their cheeks as the sun paled and dipped behind the edge of the tallest mountain. Sam preferred the company on this excursion far more than the previous one to Antarctica. The collection of people on this trek was less egotistical and a lot quieter and he was delighted, because he did not have the strength for in-fighting. Then again, he knew that the night could bring anything.