"Who the hell is Tiamat?" Darwin asked, if only to make conversation. He knew his colleague enjoyed spinning yarns about maritime superstitions and he allowed him his fabled therapy.
"The sea goddess of chaos, o' course!" came the answer from Liam, who still stared out as if he expected to see her.
"You are such a pirate, Liam."
"Pirate? I am a distant descendant of Boadicea, you know," he boasted and left his colleague with yet another anticipatory expression and a twinge of befuddlement. He was forced to explain.
"She was a feared seafaring warrior, she was. Foe of the Roman Empire and leader of the Iceni tribe who sailed from Wales to kick some Roman arse back in AD 61or somethin'," he bragged. Darwin did not have the heart to torment him with the question of how he could possibly have traced his lineage that far back, and he dare not mention that the woman in question was in fact Welsh and not Irish. He let Liam have his moment and simply nodded with an affirmative smile.
A while later they set out to facilitate the recovery of the minisub. Shivering from the sudden shock of cold sheets of salt water, the two cowered down in the booth to get the green bug up and stashed before the brunt of the storm hit the solitary tower. As they entered the booth Tommy, the assistant engineer, looked ashen.
"What? Tommy. What?" Liam asked, as he stood staring with a measure of devastation.
Looking helpless and nursing an impending breakdown of nerves, Tommy said, "The ROV is gone."
"Gone where?" Liam asked quickly, before he could fathom what Tommy really said.
"Gone. Vanished. Nowhere to be found. Fucking GONE!" he cried, in an unstable tone that compelled Darwin to calm him with a pat on the arm.
"Calm down, Tommy boy. Now, how do you know it's gone? Did the umbilicals detach? We could always make a plan to retrieve—"
"No, you're not listening, Darwin. The minisub disappeared without a trace. He is going to fire me for sure, but I swear to God, I have no idea how it happened. Everything was secured. You checked it yourself," Tommy wailed, seated on the control desk cradling one cheek in his hands.
"I did. We did. It was secure, so how the hell did it come loose?" he asked in astonishment, more to himself in contemplation.
"It could have been the undercurrents. The drift is monstrous today," Liam tried to sound logical and also calm his colleagues while inside he panicked about telling the boss about it.
The three men stood quietly in the din of the raging waves thrashing the booth, each trying to make sense of the mystery and each worrying about reporting it to the owner. Finally Darwin stepped up and decided that sooner was better than later.
"Give me the satellite phone. I'll tell Mr. Purdue."
Chapter 3
"How to get tenure," Nina dramatized the term, as if she was about to break into song. She stood in her office in the pale morning sun, dressed impeccably in her usual suit fetish, pinstriped grey for today, but her heels were cast aside carelessly. Between her teeth she had her pen horizontally lodged as she stared at the whiteboard she had been scribbling on since seven o'clock. After Professor Matlock screwed her out of credit for the Wolfenstein Ice Station discovery, of which he had no knowledge until she begged for emergency funding to explore the possibility, she had been setting aside her petty papers. Publishing was important, yes, but doing the work and not being more than a footnote in a hastily published book of stolen research rubbed sandpaper up her ass.
Wolfenstein — Secrets of the Lost Nazi Ice Station was a joke, a slap in the face of serious exploration of the so-called conspiracy theories surrounding the lost treasures of Hitler's Third Reich. That was meant to be her book, her victory. The expedition was going to be her passport to tenure, for sure, and Matlock wasted no time to nab it from her grasp using long talons grown by money she did not have. He was nothing more than a callous glory whore and she was done playing games. Nina had made up her mind the day she found Sam Cleave in Matlock's office to do an editorial feature for the Edinburgh Post, yet another feather in the department head's cap. Well done, she had thought, you even stole my friend, you self-righteous prick. She was not going to tell anyone anything anymore. Whatever research she found herself pursuing was going to be her own. They would know about it only when the papers were published and she had her own PR working the media.
No one could be trusted.
And here she stood, hung over and exhausted after a night of looking for subjects trending in the underworld of contemporary history. Even just one would do. One solid lead was all she needed on something so profound that in no time it would rocket her name onto every notable list of desirable tenure applicants. Then she would leave Braxfield Tower and its ridiculous mock functionality in her wake and not only match Matlock's position, but surpass his grandeur and fame.
"Okay, maybe I am getting ahead of myself here," she slurred over the pen as she regarded the whiteboard and its myriad research subjects. "But a girl has to see the big picture first and boy, once I get the right freaky thing to chase, you will all beg me for scraps, you bastards." Alas Nina had to admit that nothing on her board jumped out at her as a plausible pursuit to get grants for and her patience was running low.
Every now and then she relived the frozen hell she spent with Matlock, Purdue, Sam and the others in Antarctica. In her dreams she could still hear the gunshots in the dire enclosed spaces of the subterranean structure they were held in, the sobbing of her friend, Fatima, when she failed to save the sick soldiers they found at the station. Above all she relived the sound of her own heartbeat when she thought she was going to die in a confined space under the ice — the black hole of the submarine they escaped into open waters with and the way it invited her like the beckoning of a coffin.
Her skin crawled at the memory of the claustrophobic adventure and the bad company it came with. "Not again. Not this time. No, this time I am going to do it all by myself. I don't care how," she nodded. "God, I could use a cigarette now."
But she did not give in. It had been a month since she quit smoking. Subliminally she might have done so because of Sam's betrayal in helping Matlock to further his fame by writing that article about him. "Yeah, your editor sent you to do it. The devil made you do it. Your precious Patricia made you do it," she snarled in the reflection of the window as she looked over Salisbury Crags, lamenting her lost friendship with the journalist. It was outside this very building where they met, sharing a smoke break, and perhaps she thought that she could rid herself of Sam Cleave along with the killing sticks. After all, they were both carcinogens to her and she needed a fresh start.
It had been months since Matlock published his precious book and still everyone from faculty to journalists, bloggers and filmmakers asked her opinion of it, dismissing entirely the fact that she was, in fact, part of the undertaking. Maybe Matlock knew what torment it would be for her to be questioned about his bestseller while she knew the truth of it.
Nina sighed and pulled the pen from her mouth. Hopelessly she wiped the whiteboard clean as if it would give her some clarity, but it did not. She slipped on her high heels, fixed her bop-styled hair and pulled on her tapered blazer. It was time to teach her first class for the day and she thought it best to set aside for now the blazing trail she envisioned until she could get more information — until she could ensnare some fool to fund her exploits.