Like Nina, Purdue could not see anything unusual.
“I think we have reached the end of the path here, guys,” he finally admitted. “We really tried, but this might well be a charade of sorts to throw off those who do not know what Werner knew.”
“Aye, I have to concur,” Nina said, looking at the valley below with no small measure of disappointment. “And I didn’t even want to do this. But now I feel like I failed.”
“Oh, come now,” Sam played, “we all know you suck at self-pity, eh?”
“Shut up, Sam,” she snapped, folding her arms across her chest so that he could not rely on her guidance. With a self-assured chuckle Sam stood up and forced himself to enjoy the view at least before they left. He didn’t sneak laboriously up here to leave without a panoramic view just because his eyes were sore.
“We still have to find out who those assholes were that shot at us, Purdue. I bet they had something to do with that Rachel woman in Halkirk,” Nina urged.
“Nina?” Sam called from behind them.
“Come on, Nina. Help the poor man before he falls to his death,” Purdue snickered at her apparent indifference.
“Nina!” Sam shouted.
“Oh, Jesus, mind your blood pressure, Sam. I’m coming,” she growled and rolled her eyes at Purdue.
“Nina! Look!” Sam kept on. He had his shades off, braving the agony of the whipping gust and sharp, late afternoon light in his aching eyes. She and Purdue flanked him as he stared out over the hinterland, repeatedly asking “Don’t you see that? Don’t you?”
“No,” they both replied.
Sam laughed maniacally and pointed with a steady hand that moved from right to left, closer to the castle walls as it stopped on the far left side. “How do you not see that?”
“See what?” Nina asked, slightly irritated by his insistence while she still could not see what he was pointing out. Purdue frowned and shrugged at her.
“There is a series of lines all around this vicinity,” Sam said, catching his breath in astonishment. “They could be overgrown gradient lines or maybe old concrete cascades developed for elevation to build on, but they are clearly outlining a vast network of wide circular borders. Some end shortly outside the castle perimeter and others disappear as if they fell deeper under the grass.”
“Hang on,” Purdue said. He adjusted the spyglass to be able to view through the superficial terrain of the area.
“Your X-ray vision?” Sam asked, glimpsing at Purdue’s shape with damaged vision that made everything seem distorted and yellow. “Hey, quickly point it at Nina’s bosom!”
Purdue laughed out loud and they both looked at the disgruntled historian’s pretty pouting.
“Nothing either of you have not seen before, so stop fucking around now,” she teased confidently, evoking a bit of boyish grinning from both men. Not that they were surprised that Nina would just come out and make such normally awkward remarks. She had slept with both of them a few times, so she failed to see why it would be inappropriate.
Purdue lifted the spyglass and started where Sam had begun his imaginary boundary. At first nothing seemed different, other than some underground sewer pipes adjacent to the first street past the border. Then he saw it.
“Oh, my God!” he gasped. Then he started laughing like a prospector who just struck gold.
“What! What!” Nina squealed in excitement. She ran up to Purdue and stood against him to sequester the device, but he knew better and held her at arm’s length while he surveyed the rest of the points at which the collection of subterranean edifices congregated and bent.
“Look, Nina,” he finally said, “I could be mistaken, but it looks like underground structures right beneath us.”
She grabbed the spyglass, delicately nonetheless, and put the scope to her eye. Like a faint hologram, everything under the ground exhibited a slight glimmer as the ultrasound permeating from the laser point produced a sonogram from otherwise invisible material. Nina’s eyes stretched in awe.
“Well done, Mr. Cleave,” Purdue congratulated Sam for discovering the amazing network. “And with the naked eye, no less!”
“Aye, good thing I got shot at and almost went blind, eh?” Sam laughed, slapping Purdue on the arm.
“Sam, that’s not funny” Nina said from her vantage point, still combing the length and unchallenged width of what seemed like a leviathan necropolis lying dormant under Wewelsburg.
“My handicap. Funny if I think so,” Sam retorted, now full of himself for saving the day.
“Nina, can you see where they begin, farthest from the castle, of course. We’d have to make our way in from a point that is not guarded by security cameras,” Purdue asked.
“Hang on,” she mumbled as she followed the only line that threaded through the entire network. “It stops under a cistern just on the inside of the first yard there. There must be a manhole we can climb down through.”
“Good!” Purdue exclaimed. “That is where we will start spelunking. Let’s go get some shuteye so that we can get here before dawn. I have to know what Wewelsburg is keeping secret from the modern world.”
Nina nodded in agreement, “And what makes it worth killing for.”
Chapter 28
Miss Maisy finished the elaborate dinner she had been preparing for the past two hours. It was part of her job at the manor to employ her qualification as a certified chef with every meal time. Now that the owner was absent, the house ran on skeleton staff, but she was still expected to do her full duties, as head housekeeper. It vexed Maisy no end, the behavior of the current occupant of the lower house, attached to the main residence, but she had to remain as professional as she could at all times. She hated having to serve the ungrateful witch temporarily residing there, although her employer made it clear that his guest would be staying indefinitely for now.
The guest was a rude woman with more than enough confidence to fill a boat of kings and her eating habits were as uncommon and fussy as expected. A vegan at first, she refused to eat the veal or pie dishes Maisy painstakingly prepared, opting instead for green salad and tofu. In all her years the fifty-year-old cook had never encounter such a mundane and downright silly ingredient and she made no secret of her disapproval. To her dismay, the guest she was serving reported her so-called insubordination to her employer and Maisy was quickly reprimanded, although amicably, by the homeowner.
When she finally versed herself in vegan cookery, the uncouth cow she cooked for had the audacity to inform her that vegan was no longer her desire, and that she wanted rare steak with her basmati rice. Maisy was furious for the unnecessary inconveniences of having to spend the house food budget on expensive vegan foods now wasted in storage because of the finicky consumer gone carnivore. Even the desserts were judged harshly, no matter how scrumptious. Maisy was one of Scotland’s foremost bakers and had even published three of her own cookbooks on desserts and preserves during her forties, therefore her guest’s dismissal of her best work had her mentally reaching for spice bottles containing more along the line of toxic substances.
Her guest was an imposing woman, a friend of the homeowner according to what she was told, but she was given specific instruction not to let Miss Mirela leave her granted abode at any cost. Maisy was aware that the condescending wench was not there of her own choosing and that she was involved in a global political mystery, the ambiguity of which was imperative, lest the world fall into some sort of catastrophe last brought by the Second World War. The housekeeper tolerated the verbal abuse and juvenile cruelty of her guest only to serve her employer, but otherwise she would have already made quick work of the bratty woman in her charge.