Deep Sea One (19 page)

"What the fuck is that about?" Sam gasped. He was violently upset by the prospect of Nina being hurt. And by the sound of her searing screech she was being assaulted. Just then their flares finally expired, leaving them in imperceptible conditions with Nina's cry still fresh in their ears. Calisto pulled Nina over the ledge, unceremoniously dropping her on the cold ground of the tunnel.

"You really should learn to curb that response," she told Nina, as she retrieved the last flares. She noticed that the light in the main chamber had died. Nina panted wildly, still reeling from the terrible fright she was dealt.

"Where were you?" she frowned, trying to keep her voice down while the men were speculating in the distant dark about the imminent penalty that Dr. Gould's cry might bring.

"I went to take a piss, Dr. Gould," Calisto replied casually. "And then I puked my lungs out for good measure." She dropped a flare on the hard wet ground next to Nina and started sliding down the rope with Gary's limp duffle bag and her own flare. When she got to the bottom of the rope she lit hers and went to the men to deliver theirs.

"Is Nina all right? What happened?" Sam pushed.

"She is fine, Mr. Cleave," Calisto replied coolly, "but that lady is way too jumpy."

They watched Nina's light travel from the rope back to them. She felt awfully ashamed at her inadvertent reaction, not to mention the dire consequence of her error if the mountain should collapse under the ensuing tremors. With her head slightly hung she asked no one in particular, "So what do you think it is?" hoping to bury the incident quickly. The group raised their eyes to the obscured depiction above them, which possessed a section made of what looked like pure sunlight.

"I don't know, but we have to move, everyone," Purdue said hastily. "As far as I know this is our last light."

"Apart from that flare gun in the bag," Gary added, looking up at the crude, ancient sketch.

"Maybe it is the sun coming through a crack in the mountain," Sam wondered out loud.

"Can't be," Nina argued, "The sun is on that side by now, right? Besides, it is raining."

"The sun should be almost right above this chamber, by directional timing," Calisto corrected her. Nina thought Calisto deserved a bitchy leer, but she knew it could prove fatal.

Purdue started fidgeting and smiled, "We have to get up there to see what it is, friends."

"I'll go," Sam offered, before Purdue even finished his sentence. He found the picture fascinating, not to mention that it could perhaps harbor the Spear of Destiny itself within the rock. This was more than enough incentive to risk his life climbing up there.

"Do you know how to climb?" Nina asked.

"Does dangling from my ex-girlfriend's balcony count?" he jested. Nina slapped him on the arm with a chuckle as Gary rigged him up for his ascent to the roof of the Godwomb. He tossed the rope over a sturdy horn of rock and tugged hard at it to test its tensile strength. Then he fixed the clasp to it and gave Sam an assuring tap on the shoulder.

"Ready?" he asked Sam. But Sam was occupied by second thoughts as he considered the distance he would fall if anything went wrong. He nodded, eyes still fixed on the target in the light of his flare.

Purdue and Gary hoisted Sam up slowly while Nina held her breath, her wide eyes staring nervously as his progress.

"He'll be fine, Dr. Gould," Calisto said next to her.

"I hope so. We don't have the medical fortitude to remedy a nasty plummet," Nina replied.

Sam had his digital camera strapped around his neck and a tool belt around his waist, comprised of a hammer, chisel, cloth and a bottle of water. He sported Gary's climbing gloves to avoid rope burn on his hands and as they hoisted him higher from the safety of the ground, his heart began to race. Only when he was suspended halfway up the chamber's height did he realize what a bad idea it was.

The landscape under him grew deeper as he ascended, while the occasional bat would dive over his head as he neared the ceiling of the cavern.

"I hope this flare holds out," he said to himself through perspiration and sheer terror. When he arrived at the section of rock that bore the drawing he waved his flare to signal them to hold. Briskly as he could, Sam roughly tossed the water over the thin layer of residue, revealing most of the full shape of the sketch. Outside the rain subsided again and the afternoon sun illuminated the freshly washed world below. The snow-capped mountain ranges circled the valley that looked visibly greener after the rain. Once more an inkling of sun streamed through the chimney of jagged rocks, lighting up the top part of the cavern. Sam was very relieved to have more light as he worked his way carefully around the picture. Purdue had anchored him tightly, but he still exercised caution in his movements, should his weight distribution aggravate the durability of the ropes.

"Look!" Nina exclaimed, "It is a diagram of the Holy Lance!"

Purdue, Gary and Calisto rushed over to her to view it from her perspective.

"By God, that is exactly what it is!" he gasped and stared for a long while at the dagger-shaped lines, which ended in a point crowned by the light. The entire blade of the Spear was gilded by the sun, its beams had now grown strong in the great stone hall.

"Is there anything up there, Mr. Cleave?" Purdue asked with a slight raise in his voice. He figured that, even at a louder volume, his voice could not provoke the damage already tested by Dr. Gould's scream. Sam shook his head. They could hear him say, "It is just a drawing and flat rock here."

"Would it not be a cruel joke of the Nazis to send us all the way here in a hunt for the Spear of Destiny, all the while withholding the information that the item in question is a mere depiction of the relic instead of the real thing?" Calisto smiled, amused thoroughly at the possibility. In truth, this was the first time such a possibility had even crossed Purdue's mind and it sent a dreadful jolt of shock through his entire body to imagine it true.

Nina afforded Calisto a look of warning and a very subtle shake of the head. Inside she hoped that the dark-eyed femme fatale would not take it as an insult, for fear of being stabbed by an animal bone or something. Calisto was sharp enough to recognize that Dr. Gould was trying to convey Purdue's upset at her remark. She promptly ceased her chuckling and went to get her water bottle for a drink and another dose of Diamox to aid her with the awful effects of the thin air. She was feeling a lot better after her last gullet purge.

More frustrated than before, Purdue looked up at Sam and did not seem to care as much about the volume of his voice anymore. "Sam, come on down, then. We have to get going," Purdue said, his voice cracking under the upset of it all. The entire atmosphere changed. Dave Purdue was always positive, always driven to find another way, but he looked utterly defeated. After being betrayed by Eickhart and his goons, after almost getting his party killed, and the loss of Jodh, he had come through all that only to find nothing to show for it. Something else, something far more pressing than his bruised ego, also bothered him. It was extremely important to him to find the Holy Lance, or something at least of equal significance, and now his bodyguard brought to his attention the most basic deduction for their predicament—and he overlooked it. His teeth ground together as he paced back to where Gary was preparing to bring Sam down while the women packed up the rest of the gear. Purdue was deeply disappointed and to a small measure, afraid.

☼

Chapter 25

With everyone below preoccupied with their respective duties, Sam took a moment to gander around the massive chamber one last time. He felt like Indiana Jones, being in such an exotic location and hunting an ancient relic. As a serious journalist he dared not reveal his whimsical side, but that did not mean he did not entertain it once in a while. His right hand pushed against the cluster of stalactites protruding from the side of the grotto as he gently turned in mid-air to face toward the interior.

Straining to balance himself, Sam positioned his camera in his hands while he rocked from side to side on the rope. The view from up there was stunning and he understood where the chamber got its regal name. Through the viewfinder of his camera he framed the best composition and snapped the picture. Sam wished he had his panoramic with him for the beauteous pan of visuals before him. But he only had his basic camera with him, which had to take quite a few pictures in succession to fully capture the scene.

The ceiling was unremarkable, save for the antiquated doodle that he would snap from the ground once he was back down there. However, the ornate stalagmites growing from the floor of the cavern were especially beautiful, towering at different heights as they reached for the meager light coming through the crack above. In the sunlight their moist surfaces glimmered like strewn stars left to sparkle on the extremities of the pointy shapes, presenting very subtle differences in bluish hues dictated by their individual ages. Sam did not even realize that he smiled. Another fantastical image appeared on his memory card. He zoomed out to get an overall picture of the chamber just before Purdue and Gary started loosening his cord and his eye caught something.

"Gentlemen!" he shouted, as softly as he could. "Wait. Hold the rope. Wait a second."

Purdue knew that expression. His face lit up immediately when Sam's eyes went stiff in their sockets and he eagerly honed his lens on something.

"What, Sam?" he pressed excitedly. Nina and Calisto stopped what they were doing and looked at the dangling journalist seven stories up. "Mr. Cleave. Report, please," Purdue reiterated with immeasurable curiosity.

"You know, I am no geography aficionado, but I think I am looking at a map!" he said absentmindedly as he moved the camera lens to view the floor of the cavern. "Move to the side, please."

The group moved against the walls. By the third shot Sam was convinced that he saw what he thought he did. More and more it became familiar, obvious. Purdue started getting fidgety, "I really must insist, Sam. What are you seeing?"

"I see a map," Sam smiled, arms outstretched like a game show host. His attractive smirk folded into dimples and his dark eyes came alive.

"A map of what?" asked Gary, not buying any of it. "I think you're just reaching now."

"Nope. From up here, at this angle in the Godwomb, I clearly discern the coastlines of England and Scotland, Norway, Germany . . . it's the North Sea!" Sam beamed.

"These are random stones and craters, Mr. Cleave," Calisto said, from where she sat on a rock with her jelly beans. "How do you know it is not just coincidence that your mind is associating the formations with something you have seen before. It is a known fact in neurology that the mind projects what it perceives on unrelated things with the correct stimuli."

"I have to concur, Sam," said Nina as she stepped forward to speak to play devil's advocate. "You are expected, stressed on, to find some association to the Spear, to uncover its location. So your mind grabs the closest thing to relate it to location. Of course your cognition will provide a map," Nina ranted on in her bossy lecture voice, but Sam became deaf to her psychoanalysis and gestured for the two men to bring him down. Dr. Gould soon realized that her theory was redundant at this point. Sam was still smiling as he was lowered and she gave him a look of thorough vexation, which completely failed to intimidate him.

"Let me see!" Calisto pounced on Sam to seize his camera. She grabbed his hands and maneuvered the camera to see. It was the first time the bodyguard had touched him and he found her surprisingly soft to the touch. But his smirk vanished in the lash of Nina's glare and he pretended not to enjoy Calisto's odd ways too much. Purdue lurched over her shoulder to see and for a moment they studied the images of the cave's terrain.

"I see it!" Purdue exclaimed, elated.

"Oh, you see it because you were told what it is, Dave," Nina snapped, remaining cynical.

"Come see, Nina," Calisto invited her and stepped out of Sam's forced grasp to make way for the petite academic with the feisty demeanor. Skeptically Nina leered at them all and took her place next to Sam. Her eyes scanned the image for but a moment before she had to admit irrefutably that the floor of the Godwomb matched the North Sea map of Deep Sea One's control room with uncanny accuracy.

Nina was at a loss for words. She simply nodded, "I see, yes."

"All right, so now we know it's a map, but what are we supposed to do with it?" Gary asked. The others mumbled and shrugged among themselves.

"Well, we have to find a pinpoint on the map," Purdue said, as he held the camera screen up to properly investigate it.

"And coordinates," Calisto chimed in, tossing her last jelly beans into her mouth. "The North Sea stretches a good 750,000 square kilometers. It'll be a hell of a search," she remarked in her dry way.

"There are no numbers or lines that I can make out here," Purdue noted and passed the camera to Gary, who nodded in agreement.

"There has to be a way to tell, but how?" Nina pondered out loud.

Sam wracked his brain as he combed the image for any crossing lines, but there was nothing that indicated a location. The map was blank, save for the shape of the landmasses. Purdue was getting nervous with the advent of dusk soon to come. Light was rapidly draining from the cavern, announcing the end of the day and the group agreed to stay after dark. Their consensus was that perhaps the phosphorus residue they had seen present on some of the formations could serve as markers that could only be seen in darkness. Nothing was too absurd to try when pursuing such a priceless relic. Nina and Purdue paged through the entire antique manuscript to look for clues to demarcate the location they needed to mark on the map.

Calisto went to where the last sunrays streaked into the chamber while the others discussed their plans and had something to eat. Nostalgia filled her as she stared up at the tunnel of light that ushered the sun into a place that would never be blessed with daylight. In her poetic mind it reminded her of a birth canal or possibly the portal of death, alight with blinding promise or a ruinous reckoning. Mesmerized by the column of light she closed her eyes to feel the warmth of it on her face before it had to retire for the night.