"I trust you will keep this to yourself? For now," she finally said, as she adjusted her hood.
"Of course," Sam replied, "but I will not be sleeping too well from now on."
"Good," she said, as she rose to her feet and dusted her pants off. "While Samson slept he lost his power and was utterly defeated. Sleep is for babes, Mr. Cleave."
"Samson was defeated because he trusted a woman," Sam retorted, as she disappeared into the faint light where the fire could not reach.
"That is also true. Good night, Mr. Cleave."
The storm was not too aggressive and lasted fewer than two hours, but the Purdue party slept through it all. They were exhausted. Walking the steep and rocky trails of the Himalayan cliffs were proving some challenge and, after getting accustomed to the sharp tugging at the tent fabric under the force of the angry winds switching direction around the corners of the protruding rocks, they dozed off in the din.
Nina woke in the dead of night, suffering an unrelenting bladder. She tried her best not to drink too much, as she felt uncomfortable with the call of nature out here with all the men and goats traversing the mountain, but now she found that she could no longer postpone it.
"Shit," she whispered in her frustration. She was terribly cold and her back hurt from the hardness of her stretcher, a cradle too tight for her to move freely. Calisto was fast asleep in her sleeping bag and Nina wondered what she and Sam had been discussing at the fire. Nina was not sure what to make of the bodyguard, who did not wish to share much with her, but somehow found Sam a better confidant. Then again, she shared her sweets with her and brought her food in the hotel, so maybe she was more considerate than Nina wanted to admit.
Nina unzipped the tent, gathering her strength for the sudden freezing gusts about to pelt her. She elected not to switch on her flashlight yet, because she did not want to unnecessarily rouse her colleagues. The cold impaired the movement of her fingers as she closed the tent behind her, light in one hand and clutching the toilet paper under her arm.
Nina looked up at the solemn and brooding mountain lurching over her in the darkness as the overcast sky lightened the area enough for her to discern the pathway into a near clump of trees. Her skin crawled from the sinister loneliness of the ancient rock faces and silent trees, but she had to pee. Creeping stealthily along the small path next to their campsite she found a shallow natural ditch just behind the first line of trees. Feeling awfully vulnerable, she dropped her pants and looked around continuously as she relieved herself.
"Oh, God, I hope this wind does not get me spraying all over my shoes," she spoke under her breath, conversing with herself to alleviate the feeling of impending danger one only felt when alone in a strange and dark place.
Sam woke up from the crunching of twigs and shifting of gravel under someone's weight and immediately he perked up to listen. After what Calisto had told him about the two suspicious men he hardly managed to sleep as it was, his ears alert for any intrusion or threat. The wind wailed wildly over the campsite, but he could distinctly hear someone walking to the fringe of trees not ten meters from them. He quietly grasped his new walking stick and progressed on his knees toward the exit of his tent to investigate the source of the sound. As Sam opened the tent, wincing with every sound it made, his heart raced insanely at the prospect of the stalking hikers. Because Calisto urged him to keep her theory to himself, he dared not wake Jodh, for fear that he could be the one working with them.
Outside he felt free, even in his wariness. He breathed deeply and looked around the area before emerging from the safety of his tent. In the violent gale he tightened his grip on the cane, piquing his ears. From the trees came another rustle, dipping the branches as something emerged from the darkness. Sam sucked in his breath, his numb legs refusing to move until he knew what he was dealing with.
A yak appeared from the huddle of trees, clomping about slowly across the pathway. It was enormous and gave Sam quite the fright, but he was relieved that it was not human, branding a pistol or something. Sam sighed with relief and chuckled quietly at his ridiculous terror. The fire was now reduced to embers and flitting ash, but the ground in close proximity of where it had burned was still warm where he sat down to take a moment.
"What the fuck are you looking at?" he said to the animal that stared at him in the dark with its empty expression and shaggy hair. Sam realized how badly he needed a cigarette, but patting his chest pocket out of habit, yielded no rewards and he quickly regretted giving them to the village elder.
Calisto's head jutted out from the tent and looked around. She looked at Sam with the same perplexity as the yak did, which provoked him to shrug. He had no explanation for his sitting by the side of an extinguished fire in the middle of the stormy night. Calisto seemed to search for something as she approached him with a hunched-over frame, trying to escape the brunt of the wind as she moved.
"Hey. Where is Nina?" she asked him in a loud whisper.
"I don't know. Isn't she supposed to be sharing your tent?" Sam asked. He was astonished, a streak of forbidding tearing through his unwilling mind. How could she not know where Nina was?
"Yes, she went outside to take a leak, but then I noticed that she had not returned. And I heard the heavy steps outside. Was that you?" she asked. Sam pointed to the large herbivore tearing off some leaves in the underbrush to their right.
"Okay, so… Nina has not made an appearance?" she mouthed her words slowly as if she was afraid of his answer. Sam shook his head and immediately Calisto jumped up, "Well, then, let us go find her, damn it!"
Sam agreed. In this environment, dealing with a coveted artifact chased by countless generations, there was no place for reckless assumptions that steered toward ignorance. The two stepped into the dark bending tree line, away from the chewing yak, to look for their colleague. Behind them the unguarded campsite rattled in the onslaught of the wind, its occupants blissfully unaware of the missing historian.
Suddenly a cold barrel pressed against Sam's temple from the oblivion of the dark, stopping him in his tracks.
"Don't move," a man said, in a heavy accent. Sam flicked his eyes to find Calisto, but she was no longer behind him. He was alone, held up by a stranger with what felt like a rather large firearm.
"Oh, shit," Sam snapped. He could not ascertain the gravity of his situation and it frustrated him no end. "What do you want?" He spoke unusually loud, hoping to draw attention from his sleeping colleagues.
"Keep quiet or I will shoot you," the man said bluntly, cocking his gun. The eye of the barrel dug into the journalist's skin and drove his mind to retrieve the worst day of his life when his prying nature cost the love of his life hers. Not again, he thought. He swung his right arm violently and quickly to knock the man's arm away. Sam lunged to grab the gun from his extended arm, but a blinding blow fell against his cheek from the other side, knocking him to the ground with such force that he passed out.
His fading thoughts dwelled on the betrayal of Calisto, how she led him into the bushes to be ambushed while she went after Nina. The limp body of the journalist was tied and gagged while the older man with the ponytail pushed Nina's body back onto the rock where he had placed her. She looked at Sam through burning wet eyes, trying to see if he was still alive. Her only solace was his gagging, which implied that he would again wake up. She kicked at the old man who kept giving the tall blond man orders in what she construed as Norwegian. He ignored her efforts until he had Sam subdued and then turned to Nina with a brutal facial expression she had only seen in bloodthirsty hounds behind the fences of dog-fighting rings.