Sam nudged Nina and whispered, “Agritek tractors. I once did a scoop on a wheat farmer who ran a drug cartel from his farm, so I learned a bit about farm machinery.”
“Fascinating, Sam,” Nina said, rolling her eyes while Gary was recounting how he had to struggle maintaining his footing on the loose black soil.
“It is just interesting,” Sam explained. “Those tractors were made in and imported from Argentina.”
Purdue and Nina took a moment to process the seemingly insignificant shard of information, but soon they snapped what Sam was drawing about. Of course, it was for Argentina being the Nazi sanctuary from where the twin ships would deploy the Inca operation and Operation Eden, respectively.
“I’m just saying. If they could import Argentinian farm equipment, they could have had other business ties between Argentina and New Zealand,” Sam remarked.
“That is a valid theory,” Purdue conceded, and with that recovered his attention on Gary Harding.
“We were up at the mouth, chopping through the brush, when I saw something move in the branches, making the stems of the weeds shake like this,” he described, gesturing wildly with his hands. “I thought it was someone squatting in the hill, you know, not wanting us to find him and I could not see him through the leaves. I figured he was leopard crawling towards Dad, so I froze, pissing Dad right off,” he snickered bitterly. “But the bushes started shaking like crazy, right, so I told Dad not to move. Being Dad, he did the opposite, charging at the bloke in the bushes without even knowing how big he was.”
“And they fought?” Cockran asked.
“Too right, they fought,” Gary affirmed. “Like two bloody wrestlers, I just saw them roll into the mouth of the mine. Just dust, man, everywhere. I heard Dad screaming, and I heard the other blokes screech like they got really hurt, right, and the dust choked me and burned my eyes, so I saw nothing else. But I swear to God, this part is true.” He waited, his chest heaving as the apprehension gripped him. Gary stared into space and whispered, “I swear to God I am not lying.”
“Yes, we gather that,” Cecil sighed. “Now, what is it you are not lying about?”
Gary’s countenance was laden with distress. “Under my hand I felt something slide, something massive, cool to the touch and scaly. My eyes were burning too much to open them properly, but I swear that it was a snake.”
“I thought that there were no snakes in New Zealand,” Nina said, perplexed.
Cecil nodded. “That is what makes my brother so adamant that we know he is dead serious, I suppose.”
“I am dead serious, mate,” his brother contested. “I know what I felt. I know what I saw.”
Playing the devil’s advocate, Sam asked, “Alright, what kind of snake do you think it was? It might explain the snake venom in the dead animals.”
Purdue’s face lit up at Sam’s suggestion. He could not agree more.
Gary shrugged. “An Anaconda or a Python.”
“Preposterous,” Cecil scoffed.
“Who the fuck are you to doubt me?” Gary growled at his brother.
“Um, I am a veterinarian,” Cecil bragged. To insult Gary even more, he blatantly laughed at him. “And I bet you a year’s worth of Lion Red that there is no such thing as an Anaconda on South Island, mate!”
From the pitch dark of the shadow cast by the trees around the back of the house, a voice of mature age spoke. “Then you had better start buying beer, mate.”
Nigel Cockran jumped up out of his chair, shotgun in hand and his eyes like saucers. “Who’s that? Who’s there? You come out or I’ll blow your bloody brains out!”
Everyone sat frozen, dead quiet and staring into the dark beyond the reach of the porch lights. They could hear the faint scuffle of feet, alarming them to seize whatever weapons they carried. After all, with the talk of poachers running amuck in the local area, they had every right to distrust the voices of strangers in the dark.
“Easy, mate, easy,” the voice urged calmly. “No trouble here. No trouble.”
From the shade stepped two Maori elders, hands up in the air in surrender. “We are here to help look for the Harding man. That is all. Put away the gun, Mr. Cockran.”
“Hope you don’t mind that we show up early,” the other elder man said, as Cockran lowered his barrel. “Quite a walk from our place, but we got here too early. Sgt. Anaru asked us to come back to join the search party.”
“You were here last time, when the thunderstorm came?” Sally asked. “The constable told me about only five men left after the rain started.”
“That’s us,” the one man said. “I’m Sully. This is Herman.”
“Well, come up and get some beer,” Farmer Cockran invited them. He went to look for more chairs, but found that all the chairs were already occupied.
“No worries,” Sully smiled. “I’ll perch. I’ll perch.” With a limber leap, he hopped up on the bannister and made himself comfortable. His friend, Herman, did the same.
“Are you blokes from the tribe at Brunner?” old Cockran asked.
“I am,” Herman said. “Sully is from Christchurch’s Samoan community, but he moved here few months back.”
“Ah, so you are Samoan?” Purdue asked.
“Nah,” Eddie Olden objected. “He is Maori, clearly. Right, Herman?”
“Correct,” Herman affirmed happily, to which Eddie introduced himself and Louisa Palumbo to identify with the wildlife claim the two native men made inadvertently. “By your response to Dr. Harding’s bet with his brother, I deduce that you insinuate that there are Anacondas in New Zealand?” Eddie inquired.
Both Herman and Sully nodded, evoking a buzz of negation from the group present, but among all of them, David Purdue was the only one who believed them out of hand.
29 Secret of Snakes
The two elders shook their heads at the collective protest. Purdue rose from his chair and smiled, “Come now, everyone, let us not just dismiss this claim. I, for one, prefer to play audience to explanation before I deny something.”
“Look, Mr. Purdue, as a veterinarian I can assure you that it is a ludicrous claim,” Cecil countered.
“Jesus, alright, we get it. You’re a vet,” Nina muttered, evoking a giggle from Louisa.
“Gentlemen, would you mind if my colleague, Sam Cleave here, filmed you explaining this statement for our documentary?” Purdue asked tactfully.
“No, no problem, but you don’t show our faces or mention our names,” Sully clarified.
“Yeah, we don’t need more crap from the other tribesmen for letting this get out,” Herman agreed.
“Letting what crap out?” Nina asked with no small amount of intrigue. “That there are snakes in this country or that you knew about it?”
“Lady, we all knew, but the problem was solved in 1970, when we caved in the mine. It was not until that nosy Scotsman Williams went looking for the Lost City that all hell broke loose. They came back up to the surface, the bastards!” Sully rambled. As he went along, Sam was having a time of it to try and ready his camera in time before the man divulged all the information. At the mention of Dr. Williams, Purdue and his friends stiffened up and glared at one another.
“You all knew?” Eddie asked old Cockran.
“Knew what?” the old farmer mumbled, drunk enough to be of no use, but Sally shook her head and said, “We knew about the rumors and the legends, but not about… snakes? No, not snakes.”
“Wait, now, friends,” Purdue said. He looked at Sam to confirm that the journalist was ready this time. When Sam nodded, Purdue asked, “Tell us about the Lost City.”
Louisa came to sit down next to Nina, still a bit wary of the small-framed historian with the furious powers of assertion. She was smoking a cigarette, which got Nina’s instant attention. When the dark-eyed beauty locked eyes with Louisa, she prepared herself for another attack, but instead Nina asked, “Bum me a smoke?”