“I'm going to check out the place with the beds and lockers,” Sam announced. “You are welcome to follow your idea, but I am going there first. No use trudging about in one place for something that probably is not there while the other place has not even been investigated.”
With that Sam went on to the larger, neighboring structure while Nina climbed back up into the former office. The three-steps constructed of aluminum had been disassembled and chewed up by saline weather for ages. She found Joanne close at her heel. Looking astonished, but content, Nina asked Joanne, “Um, Jo? You are choosing to come with me instead of your crush? Wow, I’m flattered.”
“Oh shut up,” Joanne said as Nina pulled her up into the tiny place again. “You were right. He can be insufferable sometimes. Besides, I have to concur with you about that certain kind of logic for hiding things. Only thing is…”
“What?” Nina asked as she rubbed her hands together for some hopeless attempt at heat.
“What are we looking for?”
Nina had no idea how to explain the chance discoveries she had previously experienced just by accident. True, she did not know what she was looking for, but it did not matter because the decrepit weather station was empty enough to detect any object remotely worthy of treasure or ancient history. They were not exactly in the Palace of Versailles or the Taj Mahal right now. Anything in the line of what they were seeking would stand out here.
“Nina, shall we rip up the floor boards?” Joanne asked.
Nina smiled at Joanne's zest. “Honey, we don't have to go all Indiana Jones on this little outhouse. Just look around.”
Joanne's face contorted in a painful twist. “Nina!” she cried. “Nina!”
“Christ, what?” Nina shouted irately. “I am standing right here, for fuck's sake!”
Joanne stared into her friend's face, but not a word was uttered while her mind was computing whatever it was that just came to her. The teacher's eyes moved as she tried to mull around her intimation.
“I swear, Jo, if you don't tell me what you're on about I am going to slap you,” Nina threatened. It seemed to work, but not because of the historian's warning. Joanne had figured out what she thought was ludicrous, but worth mentioning.
“You know how you told me stories about how sometimes the dumbest stuff turned out to lead you guys somewhere?” she asked Nina.
“Aye?”
“Weather Station Kurt, was it an unmanned station or did the Germans have full-time staff manning it?” Joanne wanted to know.
“From the records the submarine crew and two scientists put the place up here, but other than that we don't know how many people stayed here. Wetter Funkgerät Land-26 was an automatic weather station, code-named 'Kurt' because of the scientist who brought it. Why is that important?” Nina inquired.
“You said 'outhouse.' They had to have bathrooms, right? Erich Bonn said that Johann and Yvetta caught Leslie crawling out of the toilet window,” Joanne recounted excitedly.
“Jo, I don't think I like where this is going,” Nina said plainly. Joanne just laughed when she realized that her friend knew what she was going to point to. “I really don't.”
Sam showed up outside the door, looking positively defeated. “Nothing there either. Even the lockers are empty.” He noticed that he had interrupted something and lifted his camera. “Shall I film this?”
The two girls smiled at one another. Keeping her gaze on Joanne, Nina told Sam, “I think you should, because it is going to be priceless footage, Sam.”
“That sounds sinister coming from the two of you,” he confessed reluctantly as he joined his two female companions on their way to the larger residential building. “Where are we going, then?”
When they reached the ruined ablution block of the sleep house used by the soldiers and staff throughout the years, Sam stopped in his tracks before they entered the open doorway. The ladies just sniggered and looked back at him. “You’re not serious,” he decided.
Nina pointed at her friend. “It was Jo's idea.”
“Hell no,” Sam protested.
“Oh come on, Sam,” Joanne said. “You have gone to great lengths to get a good story before. I am sure you've had to put up with a lot of shit before.”
Nina burst out laughing, her amusement echoing in the angry wind. Joanne could hardly finish her sentences too, especially at the expression on Sam's face. “We just have a mad hunch about where Leslie's coin could have surfaced, and besides, it has been over thirty years since anyone's been here.”
“What are you expecting to find?” he asked frantically.
“Something someone could not have hidden where anyone would want to look,” Joanne explained as she went ahead into the deserted ruin full of broken glass, cracked walls, and exposed electrical wires. Over shattered wooden beams that had broken from the ceiling, Joanne moved to the last toilet in the row to start her search.
“Let's just go. Your over-zealous friend has led us on a goose chase over a bloody coin,” Sam whined.
“You heard what Erich Bonn said. You know she is onto something,” Nina frowned at him.
“You know, you are rubbing off on her, Dr. Gould,” Sam whispered to Nina as they trailed the adventurous teacher.
“You should be so lucky,” Nina answered.
“Oh my God, guys!” Joanne hollered from the darkness ahead, her flashlight depicting a grotesque likeness of her crouched body against the whitewashed wall.
“Oh yeah, she is loose,” Sam affirmed.
“What did you get?” Nina called out.
“You will not believe this!” Joanne muttered as she trampled about on the debris.
“You found the treasure of Alexander the Great in a toilet in Canada?” Sam mocked happily, getting a solid elbow punch from Nina. “Shall I roll on the camera?”
Joanne stepped out from the cubicle, holding a huge, furry, awful thing in her hand. It was as big as she was, swinging from side to side in the gust.
“Jesus!” Sam screamed as Nina cringed with him. “What the hell is that?”
Joanne looked ecstatic as she approached them with what looked like a five-foot-tall bear skin.
“I got it!” she smiled at Nina and Sam.
“What, rabies?” Sam mumbled.
Ignoring Sam's taunt, she shook the furry thing and grinned, “It’s Leslie's parka!”
Chapter 24 — Maria's Mayhem
Maria was beginning to get worried. She hadn’t heard back from Beck in over three days. He was supposed to let her know when he had received their fee from Karsten and then returned to pick her up. She wasn’t supposed to kill Mrs. Beach until he’d secured the money for Purdue's trade. That way they would have another hostage to work with if things went south for their plans.
It was beginning to be very taxing on Maria's frail emotional state to take care of a hostage for this long. There was a reason why she did the technological spying and left the people skills to her boyfriend — Maria had spent much of her life in rehab facilities and nuthouses for being a bit on the reckless side when it came to the security of other human beings.
When she was twelve she’d spent a few months in juvenile detention for killing the neighbor's cats and hanging them from nooses in her mother's yard. When she was seventeen she’d slit a man's throat with a beer bottle at a bike rally, but got away with no witnesses. She was an avid admirer of hardcore pornography and snuff films and resorted to cutting when she became really unhappy.
Now she had to babysit a living thing she felt nothing for — Mrs. Sylvia Beach — the woman who begged her for all sorts of favors from the other side of the door all day. It drove the anti-social Maria insane to listen to Sylvia's incessant imploring and weeping.