"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.