Legend of the Gypsy Queen Skull: The Devil's Triangle - Book 1 (2 page)

“Help me!”

She was thrashing about trying to keep her
head above water.

Knowing she wouldn’t last long, Manny
released his grip on the netting and speedily swam over as a
surging wave washed over her.

Dipping his head beneath the surface he saw
a glimpse of her yellow track suit and reached out, grabbing ahold
of her collar. Pulling her head up out of the water, she coughed
out a mouthful of seawater right into his face.

“Sorry,” she chokingly said, gasping for
air.

“You okay?” he asked, wiping his face.

With one arm wrapped under her chest, he
used his other to tow her and Muenster over to the moving cargo
net.

“Hurry!” Heinz urged him, waving him over as
the mysterious ship was swiftly passing them by.

Quickening his strokes, Manny was huffing
and puffing, trying to catch up to the net, but it only seemed to
pass by them faster.

Seeing they weren’t going to make it, Heinz
released his grip on the netting, allowing it to pass behind him.
It would buy his siblings some time to swim closer to the hull,
where he could help them.

With seconds ticking by, Heinz treaded water
as he looked over his shoulder and saw the end of the net fastly
approaching.

“Now or never,” he said in a dire tone,
thrusting his hand toward Manny. Lurching forward, his older
brother seized it, just as Heinz snagged ahold of the last rung on
the net.

“Hurry, this is killing me!” his little
brother said, as his arm stretched out.

Climbing over Heinz, his siblings soon
grabbed ahold of the netting too. Shaking his throbbing arm, Heinz
then grabbed another roped rung, and pulled himself up and out of
the water.

Meanwhile, Muenster squirmed out of Tinnie’s
backpack and pounced on top of her head.

Sinking his sharp claws into her, he bounded
up the cargo net.

“Ouch!” she said.

Looking up at him, sitting perched on top
the railing, he glared down at her and scoldingly meowed.

“Uh huh, keep it up,” she said, with a
disapproving frown on her face.

~*~

Stepping down onto the deck, Tinnie was the
first to make it over the railing, when Muenster jumped down and
gave her a drive-by rubbing.

“Ahhhh, you’re forgiven,” she said with a
smile, scratching his arched up back as he purred. They could never
stay mad at each other for very long.

Stepping down on either side of their
sister, Manny and Heinz saw they weren’t alone. Across the deck,
emerging from the rolling fog was a small group of men walking
toward them. They were led by a tall, leaner man with broad
shoulders carrying a torch in his hand. Its flickering flame cast
an eerie shadow across his weathered face.

He was dressed in a tattered, colonial-style
jacket and wore a leather tricorn captain’s hat on his head.
Walking closer to the Bismarck teens, he drew a flintlock pistol
from his leather belt and lowered it down on them.

His four men, walking on either of his
flanks, were all dressed in similar attire. In their hands they
carried an assortment of antiquated weaponry: a cutlass sword, a
dagger and even a couple of shorter navel muskets.

~*~

Finally reaching them, the captain leaned
over and held his torch up to each of their faces.

“What’re you doing on me Raven?” he asked in
an English accent.

Tinnie and Manny immediately froze in place
but their bolder brother stepped up, extended his hand and
introduced himself.

“The name’s Heinz.”

Towering over the boy, ignoring his
handshake, the captain eyeballed him from head to toe when he heard
the deck creaking behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he saw one
of his pirates had taken a step back and was nervously stroking his
finger across his rifle’s trigger.

Turning back to Heinz, the tall man clenched
his lips together and then announced, “Captain William Darcy.”

Heinz, perhaps a little more comfortable
than he should have been, sarcastically asked, “Don’t you mean the
pirate, Gentleman Billy Darcy?”

Taking offense to the boy’s smart-alecky
tone, the captain quickly tucked his pistol away and then stepped
in and seized him by his throat. Lifting him high up into the air,
Heinz’s legs dangled below him as he wrapped his hands around the
captain’s wrist. For a leaner man, Darcy’s raw strength was truly
impressive.

Drawing the boy up to his face, he coldly
stared into his eyes for what seemed like an eternity.

“Excuse me sir… Um, please forgive him. He
can’t help it. We dropped him on his head when he was young,”
Tinnie explained in a nervous voice.

Breaking a sly grin across his face, the
pirate captain released his grip, dropping Heinz to the deck.

Rolling over, the boy gasped for air as
Darcy looked down at him.

“Pirate, aye. But gentleman remains to be
seen.”

Turning his head to the side, the captain
gave an order to his men.

“Lock ‘em in me lady’s room. I’ll ponder ’em
later.”

Stepping aside, his men moved in and took
custody of the kids.

Muenster, however, was another story. He
wasn’t going to go so quietly when one of the pirates reached for
him. Folding back his ears, he hissed and swatted him away.

Not heeding the black cat’s warning, the
young man reached again for him but he swiftly countered with his
fangs.

Sinking his teeth into the young man’s
flesh, the pirate squealed out in pain.

“Ouch!”

Flinching his bloodied hand back, Muenster
ran up the front of him and launched off his face.

“Run Muenster! Run!” Tinnie cried out.

“Curse-ed cat!” the pirate shouted, cradling
his injured hand. “You’ll get yours!”

“Now that’s how you fight,” Darcy said with
an amused grin. “That puss is all pirate.”

The wounded crewman licked the blood from
his hand and continued to swear, but Darcy was having none of
it.

“Let him be. He’s more pirate then half you
ladies.”

With that, Captain Darcy walked across the
deck, where he vanished into the fog.

Present Day ~ Mid July ~ Parking Garage
Structure ~ Washington, D.C.

Paul Bismarck checked his watch again. Its
digital display read 11:20 p.m. He’d been parked in the desolate
parking garage for 30 minutes but there was still no sign of his
secret contact, Deep Throat.

Paul’s nickname for him was a throwback to
the infamous informant in the Watergate scandal that brought down
the Nixon White House in the 1970s.

Sitting in his prized ’76 Vega, the
forty-something-year-old reached over, flipping down the
passenger-side sun visor. Dropping down from it was a bulging
envelope that he caught in his other hand. Opening it up, he
removed a thick stack of one hundred dollar bills and began
counting them.

“One hundred, two hundred–,” until he
reached five thousand. Satisfied, he slid the stack of bills back
into the envelope and replaced it above the visor.

Minutes later, checking his watch again, a
single bead of sweat ran down the side of his face.

Eleven thirty, where the hell is he?

Trying not to worry about it, Paul reclined
his head back, closed his eyes, and dialed up one of his favorite
daydreams.

He was at the opera house in Prague,
attending an award show for the world’s most elite historians. As
usual, he was a finalist for the Edgar Glas Chalice, the most
prestigious accolade a historical researcher like him could ever
hope to receive. In his business, it’s the equivalent of a Nobel
Peace Prize combined with an Oscar.

Tearing open the envelope, the host leans
into the microphone, “And the winner is… Paul Bismarck!”

With the audience cheering him on, Paul
files through the crowd to the stage, where he gives an impassioned
speech that ends in a standing ovation. Triumphantly raising his
prized golden chalice over his head, he waves to his adoring
crowd.

Soon agents are lining up to sign him to
lucrative book deals, lecture tours, and even recurring guest spots
on NPR.

The future, his future, seems limitless.

As the minutes passed, Paul continued to
daydream while the wrinkles on his forehead relaxed and a smile
came to his lips. He was beginning to imagine he was the host of
his own TV history series when a siren blared, jolting him back to
his senses.

Wide awake now, he jerked his head from left
to right, scanning the parking garage several times over, but saw
nothing. As the siren’s shrill continued to reverberate throughout
the parking structure, an unsettling thought entered Paul’s mind.
What if Deep Throat ratted me out?

“It’s the Feds,” he suspiciously whispered
as his eyes grew wide.

They must be coming up the garage ramp right
now!

“I was so close!” he shouted, pounding his
fist on the dashboard. His mind was racing.

Pressing his head into the steering wheel,
closing his eyes, Paul resigned himself to his fate.

Surely within seconds a convoy of black
Suburbans would come screeching around the corner, surround his car
and end his life as he knew it.

But that never happened.

Instead, a short, fat man appeared and
rapped his chubby knuckles on the Vega’s driver-side window.

When Paul didn’t immediately respond, the
man knocked more vigorously until Paul regained his senses and
looked over at him.

“Roll down your window,” the man said in a
muffled voice, getting annoyed.

But Paul couldn’t understand him through the
closed window.

“What?”

The one-sided conversation continued until
the impatient man made a circular motion with his hand, directing
Paul to roll down his window, which he did.

“You Paulie?” the fat man asked gruffly. He
was younger than Paul and spoke in a thick Jersey accent.

“Um, yes. Yeah, that’s me. And you?”

“And you what?” the man mocked.

Down below on the street, the police
cruiser’s siren that had sent Paul into such a panic fell silent.
The DC police were pulling someone over for running a red light.
Even so, Paul was still not totally trusting of who he was talking
to.

“You with the Feds?” he suspiciously
asked.

“No, you idiot,” the man answer with a
bemused smirk. “We gonna do this or not?”

Paul cleared his throat.

“You Deep Throat?”

“Well what do you think, Ace? See anybody
else beatin’ on your window?” he asked, looking around the parking
garage. “We’re the only two losers out here.”

Paul’s mind went blank. He was having
trouble processing the moment.

“You want the goods or not?”

“Yes of course … how silly of me… of course
you’re him. One sec,” Paul said, trying to unbuckle his seatbelt
but it wouldn’t release. Clicking down on its button a few more
times, nothing happened.

“Um, one sec,” he stammered, wrestling with
the stubborn buckle.

The man lit a cigarette and watched with
amusement as Paul struggled, fighting a losing battle.

Soon though, Deep Throat grew bored, and
with time wasting, decided to take mercy on his hapless client. In
one fast motion, he jerked open the car door and flipped up the
seat’s release lever, propelling Paul backwards.

“Thank you,” Paul blurted out, lying flat on
his back now.

With the extra wiggle room, he managed to
squirm out from under the seatbelt and oozed out onto the parking
garage floor, where he laid panting.

“Bravo. Nice job, Ace,” Deep Throat said,
hovering over him, slow-clapping.

“Now can we get down to business?” he
added.

~*~

Historically provocative nicknames aside,
Deep Throat was actually a twenty-something filing clerk at the
Library of Congress. There, he was basically a glorified gofer for
the many snooty executive librarians who were his higher-ups. His
thankless job was to be at their beck and call, to hunt down lost
documents in the library’s many cavernous basement levels.

Most of these darkened storage vaults were
stacked from floor to ceiling with documents long forgotten. Hence,
he and his fellow clerks were collectively referred to as
the
rat pack
, or simply as
rats
, since they spent their days
foraging through these filthy paper-filled catacombs.

Paul had found the clerk on an online
chatroom, where Deep Throat had offered to help him for a hefty
fee. Occasionally the clerk would supplement his meager income this
way. The majority of his clandestine dealings were usually with
archeologists or the occasional treasure hunter. His one rule
though was
no documents or books under 50 years old.
Older
documents were exceedingly less risky to deal in than the more
recent ones.

~*~

Standing up, Paul extended his hand to Deep
Throat, who shook it as he blew out a puff of smoke and asked, “You
got my dough?”

“I do,” Paul replied. “But first I need to
see the package.”

The clerk took another drag off his
cigarette and slapped the file folder into Paul’s chest.

“Knock yourself out, Ace.”

Doing a quick 360, Paul looked around to
make sure no one was watching them. The clerk could only stand
back, smirking and shaking his head at him.

After Paul felt the coast was clear, he
opened the dossier and began thumbing through it.

“Amazing, simply amazing,” he mumbled as he
went from page to page.

Then one document in particular caught his
attention. Scanning it with his eyes, he flicked the corner of it
with his fingertip.

“I knew it. I was right all along,” he said
with some vindication.

“We good then?” Deep Throat asked.

“Sure these are authentic?” Paul
countered.

“They’re legit,” the clerk said, obviously
getting annoyed.