Purdue laughed, “Almost right, I suppose. No, the renovations are complete and it has a new, shall we say, image. Come and join us, will you?”
“Is Nina coming?” Sam asked inadvertently, keeping Bruich away from his beer.
“Already confirmed,” Purdue answered.
“Who else is going to be there? The rich and ridiculous, I presume. Do I have to dress like a penguin again?” Sam babbled, watching the first goal miss by his team as he spoke. He heard Purdue laughing.
“Nah, old cock. Just smart casual, nothing fancy. I am having some new acquaintances over in the antiques business, so we will be no more than a handful of people,” Purdue informed him. Bought this amazing antique table from them at an auction hosted by the Euphrates Society. Nina is going to be so jealous, but do not tell her anything if she calls you, okay?”
“‘Course not,” Sam agreed blindly, not really listening anyway. He just wanted to get back to the game. “Listen, I will see you then tomorrow night, Purdue?”
“Yes, yes, go on. Go watch your team losing again,” Purdue chuckled.
Only a while after the phone call did Sam realize that something was off about the information Purdue gave him about the table. During a momentary lapse of concentration on the fieldwork, the phone conversation came back to him like a bad burrito.
“Euphrates Society,” he said to himself. “I know that name. Don’t I know that name?”
Throughout the entire first half, Sam tried to recall the significance of the organization Purdue spoke about, but his memory eluded him. Frustrated, he looked up the name on the internet while keeping his eye on the game, but it yielded nothing suspicious. What he could find was a website that included a link for donations from private collections and funding of museums. For good measure to ease his mind, Sam followed the private collections link to find a list of previous donations. Not really focusing, Sam’s sharp mind had a tendency to record information, even when he was not really trying to memorize details.
The list read as long as the rest of the page down, citing different names from throughout the world. From military veteran officers to archeologists, Hollywood celebrities and Arabian Emirs, all merited a place on the ladder of esteemed members due to their generosity toward the society and its beneficiaries.
“Hmm,” Sam scoffed, impressed. It was no small organization trying to get rich people to appease their charity efforts, nor was it a small-fry company trying to trick people like Purdue into funding it. No, from what Sam read on the website, the Euphrates Society was so legit, that he was surprised it was not better known.
Then again, in his profession he had previously learned that the big knobs usually do not have to brag about it. Most legitimately powerful publishing houses and antique dealers moved under the radar, simply because they had the clientele and the reputation already. These companies did not need to advertise or acquire new blood — ever. Intrigued, Sam bookmarked the website for further study later, as he had five hundred quid on this game.
Since his last assignment for Channel 8, covering a human trafficking scam masked as a talent agency, Sam had spent a blissful three weeks doing nothing, in other words ‘important guy stuff’. The pub grew tiresome, as did the gym sessions with Tara, the Olympian nymphomaniac. He knew that, eventually, he would have to beg Purdue for something more adventurous than a house-warming party for the new dining hall. Soliciting Nina had become predictable and futile, so he hoped that she would indulge too much tomorrow night.
Other than that, he watched the footie like a drone, his shouts of fouls and blind referees coming with intervals. Bruich curled up lazily on the carpet, having accepted that he would not be getting his stick snacks while the humans on the square ran frantically chasing the black and white dot on the green.
17
Court’s Intuition
Court could hardly breathe, but he tried to straighten his legs to get his diaphragm to open a bit. His skin burned from the cold, but it was the biting restraints that chewed into his wrists that really brought the hell. Dressed in only his underpants and socks, he shivered wildly in the darkness. Outside the wall he was tied to, his car was waiting, he thought. What a terrible thought, that freedom, that the road home, was just about twelve inches of wall away. Yet, here he was, trapped alone in the storeroom of a cheap, shitty pawnshop in Gorbals.
Pain shot through every inch of his battered body. He wondered what Sue and the children were thinking. Surely they would know by now that he had to be in trouble, that he was not just out on some underhanded spree, or so he hoped. Barely escaping with his life, he now knew that he had to keep the location of the scabbard secret. However, time was running out faster than free minutes in a whorehouse and he had to get free before Silver and his associates found out where the scabbard was. It was the only leverage he still had that kept him breathing.
On the other hand, he was perplexed and heavily concerned about the supposed picture someone had sent of the sheath. It was under the floor of his home, as far as he recalled, so the prospect of how someone else could have discovered it was the first worry. Someone was inside his home? The second jabbing panic was that said person had not only managed to obtain the sheath, but took pictures and spread it around for any police organization or cartel to find.
Court had so many questions about his own secrets. Tomorrow night the German and his minion would be back to ask him about that secret, and with him having no idea how the item was found or where it was now, he would be as good as dead. If only they would allow him to go and retrieve it, he wished, but he soon realized that such an undertaking would lead them straight to his family.
He wept bitterly in the merciless dark. “I am so fucked.”
Only a lonely streetlight peeked into the storeroom where he was crying like a child, lost and afraid for his family. A few hours before he was convinced that their struggles were over when he came to sell the items for the reward of financial freedom. Now the money that drove all his actions was the last thing he could hope for. Now, he had to be grateful that he was still sucking air. How things could go bad if he only resorted to another form of conducting his business. Had he not taken this route of deception, he would have been in his bed right now, with his family safe. Yes, he would be poor, but poor is a cheaper price than dead.
Major Johannes Rian had questioned him about the new information obtained by that wretched phone call. From what he heard while the bodyguard, Yiannis, was beating the shit out of him, the scabbard was photographed and sent to some woman. Even now, Court could not figure out how this could happen, since the scabbard was safely lost under his house. Therefore, he was certainly in no position to even begin trying to articulate the conundrum while under the spell of agony.
In any event, the problem was now growing two heads for the poor mechanic who meant well. On one hand, he had tried to sell stolen goods that held the attention of the worst kind of people. One the other, he now had to explain how the woman who sent the pictures got her hands on the scabbard, if Court did not sell it to her. The entire thing was a huge misunderstanding, of course, but for him to argue the contrary of what looked like obvious treachery was a nightmare.
Parched and cold, Court tried in vain to reach a bottle of liquor that sat on a small chair near him. With his hands tied behind his back, around the plumbing, it was practically impossible to reach. The clear vodka would serve him in so many ways if he could only get it down his gullet. Surely it would warm his innards and inebriate him enough to reason with reckless liberty. This kind of logic usually got drunk men to do absurd things and survive. Why would it not work for his escape plan?