“No, I don't,” he smiled. “I'm not your type, but I am going to unite you with your type. I just feel too guilty wearing this when I’m about to do this.”
“Do what?” she snapped at him.
Moments later Maria Winslet broke both legs in her fall, screaming in pain. The shriek awakened Mother, daughter of Waffen-SS Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff. She saw the feisty little assassin discover her lover's ripe cadaver rotting in the corner. Then the two women met gazes, and Maria seethed in rage.
“You killed Jonathan, you bitch!” Maria growled.
“I did,” Mother smiled. “And I fucking loved watching him choke!”
As Father Harper closed the lid of the oubliette he was at least consoled by the fact that neither woman he put in there would die from starvation.
Chapter 31 — Rush for Venom
“You have to go back and finish this before we miss out on it,” Sam insisted in slow deliberate words while the emergency room doctors administered antivenin to reverse the effects of the snakebites. “Remember this is the treasure he did not want the world to know about. You have to find out why!”
“Sir, you have to relax. Your heart rate elevates when you get excited and that spreads the venom faster,” the ER nursing sister advised urgently.
“Nina, take my gear and record everything,” he begged Nina through his rising fever.
“Do you think I am going back there again? No fucking way! What if we get bitten too? I don’t want to spend the rest of eternity with a bunch of Nazis in a glorified toilet bowl!” Nina protested.
Her exclamation was of such an amusing and peculiar nature that the staff and patients within earshot could not help but gawk, but Nina ignored them.
“Nina please,” Sam implored. “We have to know what was worth so much that Alexander the Great sent an armada to an unknown continent to bury his secret. Find a way to clear the snakes. Do what you have to do.”
“Just rest now, please, love. I don't want to lose you… again,” Nina answered. “We will go back — when you can accompany us.”
“I might not make it. Jesus, Nina, I am on fire here,” he moaned softly in her ear while she held his hand.
“Excuse me, Miss?” the attending doctor addressed Nina. “But you have to leave now. Mr. Cleave is in critical condition and we have to get him in.”
“Of course,” Nina sighed. Reluctantly she let go of his hand and settled in the waiting room with Joanne to wait out the rest of the nerve-wracking hours.
“How are you doing, Nina?” Joanne asked when Nina sat down. Joanne sounded absolutely bereft.
“You know, he’s not dead yet,” Nina told her friend, trying to keep it together.
“I know. But… had I not gotten this itch, if it had not been for me and my obsession with Alexander's treasure, Sam would never have come here. You would never have lost another friend so soon after the other,” Joanne lamented.
“Just stop it!” Nina snapped. “I have enough shit to deal with right now. I can’t stand for self-pity and uncalled for guilt trips right now!”
“Self pity?” Joanne asked, looking dumbstruck at Nina's assumption. “Wait, do you think I am feeling sorry for myself? I am truly sorry that I got you and your friend into this shit, Nina! I feel responsible for luring you out here. That’s all. And it is a fact that this expedition is precisely why Sam is heading for the ICU, and you think I am feeling sorry for myself?”
“Keep it down,” Nina said.
“No!” Joanne replied. “I will not keep it down. You know what, Nina. Thanks for all your help, but I don't need to be talked down to by some high school bully who grew up to be a celebrity academic. Once a bully, always a bully. And I have had it.”
She flicked the Alexandrian coin onto Nina's lap and with a bitter sneer she said, “For your trouble.”
Beyond words, Nina sat mute, still reeling from Joanne's rant. Usually she would fight back, but she was so shocked by her friend's reaction that she just started crying. She missed Purdue's fancy free influence, especially now. She worried for Sam's life, feeling as responsible for his condition as Joanne did. Now she may have lost Sam for good, and Purdue was God knows where. Nina punished herself that Joanne had just been a fleeting friend that gave the historian a second chance at having someone female to relate to and be silly with.
“Well done, Dr. Gould,” she sniffed under her hair as she folded forward on the chair. “Your enchanting personality has just fucked up yet another friendship.”
“Dr. Gould?” a man said.
Nina started and sat bolt upright. “Aye?” It was the doctor working on Sam. “Oh God, no!” she gasped.
“No, he is still with us,” he said quickly, “but he is deteriorating rapidly. We need to find out what kind of snake bit Mr. Cleave, because our serum is not working. We need antivenin from that particular snake.”
Nina buried her face in her hands before looking up at the doctor again. “This will sound crazy, but those snakes are exclusively found in Greece.”
“Then how did he get bitten in Newfoundland?” the doctor asked logically.
“You see, doctor, that is the crazy bit,” she winced, hoping he would not expect her to explain. Nina was in luck.
“I'm afraid we have limited time, so if you could help us obtain some of the venom from… Greece? That would be the only chance Mr. Cleave has. Until then, we can only manage his symptoms and keep him from going into cardiac arrest,” the doctor advised.
Wiping her tears, Nina agreed that she would try to get her hands on the poison from one of the snakes responsible for Sam's wounds. After the doctor left her alone in the empty waiting room, Nina broke down in tears again. “How am I going to do that? How am I going to do that all by myself?”
“Do what by yourself?” a familiar voice said, making Nina's heart jump.
Impossible, she thought. When she looked up she almost did not recognize Purdue. Nina, once more speechless, propelled herself at the emaciated frame of her close friend and confidant. She wrapped her arms around him and wept vigorously.
“Where have you been?” she sobbed. “God, I needed to see you so badly. You will not believe what happened while you were gone.”
Purdue could only smile at her ironic statement while he rubbed her back with his hands.
“Why are you so thin? Why are you limping?” she scowled when she gave him a good look. “What happened?”
“Long story,” he said. “I heard what Sam's doctor said. Where do we find these bloody vipers we need, then?”
It was typical of David Purdue, the arrival of whom always made everything seem probable, doable, and possible. He was the perpetual problem solver, creator of devices that made everything easier, and facilitator of that which seemed impossible to the average man.
“How did you know where to find me?” she asked.
“Friends of yours from church told me where you’d gone. From there I found out that you’d chartered a boat, so I contacted the boat owner and he told me which hospital you were at… in a nutshell,” Purdue accounted with a smile.
What he did not tell Nina was that, while she on her way to the weather station by sea, he’d been rescued from an oubliette, subsequently so sobered by his experience that he’d decided that he was tired of being dead. On Dr. Beach's phone Purdue had called Sam's friend, Patrick Smith at MI6, offering to give himself up conditionally. After his leg operation and days of recovery from malnutrition Purdue was discharged against medical advice to locate Nina.
“Wow!” Nina said. “I have other friends?”
“Father Harper, and Dr. Beach and his wife helped me — more than you realize. I could not call you. Your phone was off,” he said innocently, making Nina feel terrible all over again. “But now I have found you, finally, and you can catch me up on the flight back to… where do you need to be?”