"Listen, since we took the Spear out of the chest, nothing but a bad smell and an eerie vibe has befallen us. Take note, oh great Sarcasmus, that since I put it back in the chest, all hell has supposedly broken loose upstairs," Nina announced with acres of confidence.
"Coincidence," he replied.
"Really? It will be lunchtime soon. Why don't you see if you can find the logs of the past few weeks and check the frequency of these anomalies, cupcake? You'll see that this object wanted to be found. It was unearthed by the currents and that must be when the storms started," she explained.
"Or it is a coincidence," he reiterated, infuriating Nina into a fever.
"Sam Cleave…"
"Prove it, doc," he said quickly, taunting her with his empty smile, which offered the challenge. "If you prove it, I'll believe it."
It was not a bad idea. She imagined that a little experiment of her own would suffice, not only to put Sam in his place, but to ascertain if her theory was correct.
"All right," she smiled, "shall we wager on it?"
"If I am right you owe me dinner," he announced, with a glint in his dark eyes.
"If I am right you give Matlock the finger. No assistance ever again," she challenged.
"Really? Work? You can have anything you want from me if you win and you choose work? You're no fun, Dr. Gould," he sighed, tapping his finger on the surface of the table. Nina scoffed at his refusal. While the scientists in the other areas checked on the security of their subjects, Nina wondered how she could extort Sam Cleave.
Doctors and professors in white coats ran madly up and down, unlocking cell doors and securing cupboards while the journalist and the historian busied themselves with intimate flirtation.
"Very well, if I win you make me breakfast," she mumbled speedily. As the words left her she could feel her face flushing from the possibly inappropriate offer she just made, but she had steadily grown tired of resisting him. He was everything that annoyed and attracted her and she wished to rekindle whatever started months before, before she stormed out on him.
Sam was stunned, but he could not let her notice. After all, he was not supposed to be surprised to hear a woman say that. Instead of mocking her about her admission of romantic interest, he merely said, "Done." And they shook on it.
Nina, relieved that he did not make anything of it, opened the chest and removed the Spear while Sam went to the master system on the main monitor to call up the current satellite view of Deep Sea One.
"Fucking hell," he gasped, "it's more like a damn tsunami than a storm! I had no idea it was that violent," he remarked, and stood aside so that Nina could also see the screen. She was equally taken aback by the diameter of the front, which seemed to concentrate only on a three-kilometer radius around the oil rig they were on. She unwrapped the relic and placed it on the table.
"Now we wait," she said, and leaned with her buttocks against the cupboards, folding her arms patiently. Nothing happened… yet. Sam kept an eye on the weather diagram, which remained as strong as it was, but a few seconds later already they could see the edges of the front fray and dissolve gradually. Nina hoped to be right, but she did not expect it. Her arms fell to her sides as they watched the white clump slowly wither, revealing the gradient markers, which before had vanished under the cloud cover.
"No way," Sam said under his breath, hands on his thighs. His eyes beheld a miracle for the first time in his life. Or was he witness to a heretic tool of destruction at play?
"Told you," she said. "Sam, admit it. This relic has powers. It has to be the one Hitler was seeking, perhaps the other one was a decoy while the sunken sub under Deep Sea One was smuggling it across the North Sea in secret."
Sam did not look at her. His eyes were still fixed on the screen, watching the storm dissipate before his eyes. Nina was right, he had to admit. His argument did not warrant coincidence as an excuse. The timing was simply too synchronized to be happenstance. All over the oil rig the staff members sighed with relief for the rapid passing of the storm, unaware of its origin or the fact that it was more than nature at work.
"Aye, that does make sense. But why did the boat perish, then?" he asked in slow-coming words, retarded by his lingering amazement as the screen cleared completely now.
"Look, the boat had the Spear onboard, right? How did it get outside the vessel?" Nina asked, still self-conscious deep inside about her suggestive wager. Sam looked at her.
"Someone tried to steal it? Someone tried to steal it before it could reach its destination. Look, there is no sign that the German submarine was torpedoed. The crew inside… most of those uniforms were riddled with holes," he revealed, and Nina remembered what she saw as she moved through the mummified remains of the men, some of their skulls shattered and their clothing with holes ripped in.
"Someone killed the crew, disabled the submarine and it sank here," she said.
"But why did they leave the chest here? Whoever stole it could not have made it out successfully…" Sam stopped, his eyes darting as he tried to decipher the circumstances.
"What, Sam?"
"Hang on."
"Sam! The suspense is killing me," she said.
"Don't you see the discrepancy here? Holy shit, it makes absolutely no sense," he spoke to himself. Nina laid her hand on his, pressing her delicate fingers on his skin to prompt him. He looked at Nina and said quietly, "If the U-boat was transporting the Spear from Germany, how come the book inside the submarine already had the clues to the Tibetan shrine?"
"I don't follow."
"We found the book on the sunken U-boat that pointed us to the Godwomb. When we went into the Godwomb the location of the Spear was already mapped here! If they had been on their way with the Spear, and it sank here, how did the location come to be in the Godwomb in Tibet?" Sam asked. He hoped that he conveyed the riddle properly to Nina, but from her expression she was thoroughly confused. "Do you get it?"
She frowned, "Give me a few minutes to wrap that around my brain, will you?"
"It means our theory of someone stealing the chest and accidentally losing it here is ludicrous. If it was an accident where the thief simply lost it after sinking the U-boat, how the fuck did it come to be inside a mountain shrine in Asia?" he tried once more. Nina listened, closed her eyes and motioned with her index finger in the air from one location to another, and then she opened her eyes, "And who scribbled the clues in the book?"
That was another thing he missed. "Oh shit, yes, you have a point there!"
"I guess some things stay unexplained," she lamented.
The two stood, utterly perplexed at the conundrum. Purdue came in, rubbing his hands together eagerly.
"Ah, bugger. Not now, for fuck's sake," Nina grunted through her teeth.
"Dr. Gould! My dear, what have you discovered?" he smiled as he approached them. His eyes fell on the artifact.
Nina was not sure she wanted to tell him everything she had discovered, but she had to tell him the truth at least. That is, after all, why he hired her. It was his money and he was the one who found the U-boat that gained them the Spear. She had to admit it was Purdue's party and she was merely a guest.
"We compared the piece to the photographs Sam took of the cavern roof," she said evenly, assuring that her assumptions and deeper concerns remained undetected. With a sure hand she placed the photographs next to one another to show Purdue the likeness.
"By God, it is the same, the middle piece without the blade, then!" he grinned. "Excellent."
"I found that as we expected the relic consists of various trace metals and the main components tied in, the gold, silver, and the notable iron nail. As you know…"
"Yes, the nail is reputed to be an iron nail from the cross," Purdue filled in her sentence, "although I think that is utter shite. It takes a huge iron spike to nail a man's wrists to wood and I venture to guess this is simply part of it."