“I miss Bruich,” Sam pouted, lamenting his absence from his beloved cat, “and getting a pint on with Paddy every Friday night. God, those days feel a lifetime away, don’t they?”
“Aye. It is almost as if we are living two lifetimes in one, don’t you think? But on the other hand, we would not have known half as much or experienced even an ounce of the amazing things we have, had we not been flung into this life, eh?” she consoled him, while in truth she would take her boring teaching life back in a blink for the comfort of a secure existence.
Sam nodded, agreeing with it 100 percent. Unlike Nina, he figured that his old life would have had him hanging by a rope from the bathroom plumbing by now. The thoughts of his near-perfect life with his late fiancé, now deceased, would have caught up with him and haunted him with guilt every day if he still did freelance journalism for various publications in Great Britain, as he had once planned to do on the suggestion of his therapist.
There was no doubt that his flat, his frequent drunken escapades, and his past would have caught up to him by now, whereas now he had no time to think about things past. Now he had to watch his step, learned to judge people quickly, and stay alive at all costs. He hated to admit it, but Sam preferred being in the embrace of peril rather than sleeping in the fires of self-pity.
“We are going to need a linguist, a translator. Oh, my God, here we go again having to choose strangers we can trust,” she sighed with her hand tangled in her hair. It reminded Sam of Trish suddenly; how she often twisted a loose curl around her finger, letting it spring back in place after she pulled it taut.
“And you are sure these scrolls should tell us the location of Atlantis?” he frowned. The concept was just too far-fetched for Sam to grasp. Never a firm believer in conspiracy theories, he had to concede to many a discrepancy he had not believed in until he experienced it first-hand. But Atlantis? If anything it was a historical city of sorts that was flooded, Sam reckoned.
“Not just the location, but it is said that the Atlantis Scrolls recorded the secrets of an advanced civilization so far ahead in its time that it was inhabited by what mythology now offers as gods and goddesses. The people of Atlantis were said to have such superior intellect and methodology that they are credited with the construction of the Giza pyramids, Sam,” she rambled. He could see that Nina had invested much time in the legend of Atlantis.
“So where was it supposed to be located?” he asked. “And what the hell would the Nazis have done with a submerged landmass? Weren’t they already satisfied subduing all the cultures above water?”
Nina cocked her head and sighed at his cynicism, but it made her smile.
“No, Sam. I think what they were after was written somewhere in these scrolls. Many explorers and philosophers had speculated about the position of the island, and most agreed that it was located between northern Africa and the convergence of the Americas,” she lectured.
“That’s really large,” he mentioned, thinking about the vast part of the Atlantic Ocean occupied by one landmass.
“It was. According to Plato’s writings and subsequently other more modern theories, Atlantis is the reason why so many different continents share similar building styles and animal life. It all came from the Atlantean civilization that connected the other continents, so to speak,” she explained.
Sam gave it some thought. “So what would Himmler have wanted, do you think?”
“Knowledge. Advanced knowledge. It wasn’t enough that Hitler and his dogs thought that the master race was descendant of some otherworldly breed. Perhaps they thought that was precisely what the inhabitants of Atlantis were and that they would have secrets harbored as to advanced technology and such,” she speculated.
“That would be a palpable theory,” Sam agreed.
A long silence followed with only the machine breaking the silence. They locked eyes. It was a rare moment alone where they were not being threatened or in mixed company. Nina could see that something was bothering Sam. No matter how she wanted to shrug it off to the recent shocking experiences they had, she could not contain her inquisitiveness.
“What is it, Sam?” she asked almost involuntarily.
“Did you think I was obsessed with Trish all over again?” he asked.
“I did,” Nina dropped her eyes to the floor, clasping her hands in front of her. “I saw those stacks of notes and fond memories and I… I thought…”
Sam approached her in the mild light of the otherwise depressing basement and took her in his arms. She let him. For the moment she did not care what he was involved in or how far she should believe that he had not in some deliberate way led the council to them in Wewelsburg. Now, here, he was just Sam—her Sam.
“The notes about us — Trish and I — it is not what you think,” he whispered as his fingers played in her hair, cradling the back of her head while his other arm was tightly wrapped around her petite waist. Nina did not want to spoil the moment by responding. She wanted him to continue. She wanted to know what it was about. And she wanted to hear it straight from Sam. Nina just kept quiet and let him speak, savoring every precious moment alone with him; breathing in the faint odor of his cologne and the fabric softener of his sweater, the warmth of his body against her and the faraway cadence of his heart inside him.
“It’s just a book,” he told her, and she could hear him smiling.
“How do you mean?” she asked, looking up at him with a scowl.
“I’m writing a book for a London publisher about the whole incident, from when I met Patricia until… well, you know,” he explained. His dark brown eyes looked black now, with the only white being the slight glint of the light that made him alive to her — alive and real.
“Oh, God, I feel so stupid,” she groaned and buried her forehead firmly in the muscular dent of his chest. “I was devastated. I thought… oh, shit, Sam, I’m sorry,” she whined in embarrassment. He sniggered at her response and lifted her face to his, planting a deep, sensual kiss on her lips. Nina could feel his heart quicken and it made her moan just a little.
Purdue cleared his throat. He stood at the top of the stairs, supported by a walking stick to keep most of his weight off his injured leg.
“We are back and patched up,” he announced with a slight smile of defeat at the sight of their romantic moment.
“Purdue!” Sam exclaimed. “That walking stick somehow gives you a sophisticated image, like a James Bond villain.”
“Thank you, Sam. I picked it out for that very reason. Inside is a concealed cutlass I’ll show you later,” Purdue winked without much humor.
Alexandr and Otto came up behind him.
“And are the documents authentic, Dr. Gould?” Otto asked Nina.
“Um, don’t know yet. The tests take a few hours before we will know definitively if they are the actual apocryphal and Alexandrian texts,” Nina explained. “So we should be able to tell by one scroll the approximate age of all the others written in the same ink and hand.”
“While we wait, I can give the others a read through, yes?” Otto suggested eagerly.
Nina looked at Alexandr. She did not know Otto Schmidt well enough to entrust her find to him, but, on the other hand, he was one of the heads of the Brigade Apostate and therefore could decide the fate of them all instantly. If they displeased him Nina feared he would have Katya and Sergei killed while he was playing darts with the Purdue party as if he was ordering a pizza.
Alexandr nodded his approval.