Purdue held tightly to the scallop where his fingers were about to fail his weight, but he mustered the strength to keep his sister from plummeting to her death. He looked down at her. Her complexion was ashen and her eyes wide as she stared back up and nodded in thanks. But Purdue looked past her. Frozen in his spot, his eyes moved cautiously along with something underneath her. Quizzical, her frown asked for information, but he shook his head slowly and mouthed for her to keep quiet. Over the communication device Nina could hear Purdue whispering, “Don’t move, Agatha. Don’t make a sound.”
“Oh, my God!” Nina exclaimed from the home base. “What’s going on there?”
“Nina, quiet. Please,” was all she heard Purdue say in the interference of the speaker.
Agatha’s nerves were tormenting her, not for the distance at which she was dangling from the south face of the Cologne Cathedral, but for not knowing what her brother was gaping at behind her back.
Where did Sam go? Did they get him too? Purdue wondered, scanning the area below for Sam’s shadow, but he found no trace of the journalist.
Below Agatha, on the street, Purdue watched three police officers patrolling. In the strong wind he could not hear what they were saying. They might as well have discussed pizza toppings for all he knew, but he imagined that their presence was provoked by Sam, otherwise they would have looked up by now. He had to leave his sister swaying dangerously in the gust while he waited for them to turn the corner, but they remained in sight.
Purdue observed their discussion keenly.
Suddenly Sam came stumbling from the direction of the station, looking decidedly drunk. The officers went straight for him, but before they could seize him two black shadows moved rapidly from the dark shelter of the trees. Purdue gasped as he watched two Rottweilers come at the police, scattering the men from their huddle.
“What the…?” he whispered to himself. Both Nina and Agatha, one shouting and the other mouthing, responded, “WHAT?”
Sam vanished into the shadows on the curvature of the street and waited there. He had been chased by dogs before and it was not one of his fondest memories at all. Both Purdue and Sam watched from their respective vigils how the police pulled their firearms and shot up in the air to scare off the vicious black animals.
Both Purdue and Agatha winced, pinching their eyes shut for the tear of those stray bullets aimed right up toward them. Fortunately neither shot found the stone or their tender flesh. Both dogs barked, but did not advance. It was as if they were being controlled, thought Purdue. Slowly the police officers withdrew toward their vehicle to put the wire out to Animal Control.
Quickly, Purdue pulled his sister toward the wall so that she could find a steady ledge and he motioned to her to maintain silence with his index finger on his lips. Once she had found her footing she dared to look down. Her heart raced at the height and the view of the cops walking across the street.
“Let’s move!” Purdue whispered.
Nina was frantic.
“I heard gunshots! Can anyone just tell me what the fuck is happening over there?” she shrieked.
“Nina, we’re okay. Just a small obstacle. Now please, let us do this,” Purdue explained.
Sam realized at once that the animals had disappeared without a trace.
He could not let them know not to speak over the coms, should the gang of juvenile criminals hear them, neither could he converse with Nina. None of the three had their cell phones on them to prevent signal interference, so he could not notify Nina that he was all right.
“Oh, now I’m in deep shit,” he sighed, and watched the two climbers reach the ridge of the adjoining roofs.
Chapter 21
“Anything else before I leave, Dr. Gould?” the night hostess asked from the other side of the door. Her calm tone was in stark contrast to the nail-biting radio drama Nina was listening to and it jerked Nina into another state of mind.
“No, thank you, that’ll be all,” she called back, trying to sound as un-hysterical as she could.
“When Mr. Purdue returns, please do let him know that Miss Maisy left a phone message. She said to relay to him that she had fed the dog,” the plump servant requested.
“Um… aye, I’ll do that. Good night!” Nina feigned a cheery disposition and bit her nails.
Like he’d give a shit about anyone feeding the dog after what just went down in the city. Idiot, Nina growled in her mind.
She had not heard from Sam since he shouted about the watch, but she dared not interrupt the other two while they were already using every sense to keep from falling. Nina was livid that she could not warn them about the police, but she was not to blame. There were no radio reports sending them to the church and their random appearance there was not her error. But surely Agatha was going to give her the sermon of a lifetime about it.
“Fuck this,” Nina decided, going to the chair to get her windbreaker. From the cookie jar in the lobby she delved in to retrieve the keys to the E-type Jag in the garage that belonged to Peter, the homeowner who accommodated the Purdue party. Abandoning her post, she locked the house and drove out to the cathedral to be of more help.
Atop the ridge, Agatha held on to the slanting sides of the roof that she crossed on all fours. Purdue was slightly ahead of her, moving toward the turret where the Angelus Bell and its friends hung in silence. Weighing almost a ton, the bell was unlikely to be moved by the tempestuous winds, which changed direction rapidly, erratically, corralled by the complex architecture of the monumental church. Both of them were utterly exhausted, as fit as they were, from the climbing glitch and the adrenaline of nearly being discovered… or shot.
Like sliding shadows they both slipped into the turret, grateful for the steady floor beneath and the momentary safety of the little tower’s dome and pillars.
Purdue undid the zipper on his trouser leg and pulled out his spyglass. On it was a button that would link up the coordinates he had recorded previously with the GPS on Nina’s screen. But she had to activate the GPS from her side to make sure that the exact point on the bell was marked, where the book was hidden.
“Nina, I’m sending the GPS coordinates to link with yours,” Purdue reported on his com device. No answer. Again, he tried to make contact with Nina, but there was no answer.
“Now what? I told you she lacked the mind for this type of excursion, David,” Agatha bitched under her breath as she waited.
“She does not. She is not an idiot, Agatha. Something is amiss, or she would have answered and you know it,” Purdue insisted, while inside he feared that something had befallen his beautiful Nina. He tried the penetrative view on the spyglass to see where the object was, manually.
“We don’t have time to bemoan the problems we are having, so let’s just get on with it, shall we?” he told Agatha.
“Old school?” Agatha asked.
“Old school,” he smiled, and switched on his laser for cutting around where the texture differentiation anomaly displayed in his scope. “Let’s deliver this baby and get the hell out of here.”
No sooner had Purdue and his sister started, before Animal Control showed up below to assist the police officers with the search for the rogue dogs. Unaware of this new development, Purdue had successfully removed the rectangular iron strongbox from the side of the clapper where it was placed before casting the metal.
“Quite ingenious, eh?” Agatha remarked with a lolling head that processed the engineering that must have gone into the initial casting. “Whoever presided over the making of this clapper was involved with Klaus Werner.”