“Not to kill you! God, no! I’m not a monster! The food does contain a sedative. After all, you are my prisoners until I get what I want. Come now, you know that I cannot have you running around by your full positives, ladies.”
“You are serious,” Helen remarked with genuine fear in her eyes.
“For what it is worth, the wine is perfectly safe. Go on, eat. You have already consumed enough to keep you nice and docile for the next two days. Look,” he smiled as he poured a third glass, “I’ll be delighted to join you in drink!”
When their glasses were filled the large, well-built Greek stood up and said, “A toast! To Claire, without whom my men would not have retrieved what she had kept in her locker at the museum!”
A brief uncomfortable pause followed. Helen looked very confused and Claire just looked terrified. They raised their glasses nonetheless, feeling very lethargic from whatever the food held.
“What was it that you had in your locker, Claire?” Helen asked just as they had drunk the first sip of wine. Claire was hesitant, unable to explain as she did not know what the purpose of the relic was.
“Something I kept for Dr. Heidmann,” she told her boss.
Deon looked down on the two women, his smile now void of any kindness or humor. In fact, he looked villainous and sadistic for a moment as he filled Helen in.
“In her locker, your assistant kept a very valuable ancient stone that I had been seeking for decades, Professor Barry,” he admitted. His voice was now softer, deprived of its flamboyant charm. Now he just spoke, delivering the exposition Helen craved from him. Claire nurtured a thousand thoughts all at once, wondering what Heidmann was going to do to her when he found out that the item he had entrusted to her care had been taken.
“What stone? Claire? You’ve been keeping relics in your locker?” Helen scowled.
“No, it’s not like that, Prof. Barry,” Claire defended.
“No it is not,” Deon concurred. “She was asked to hold on to it for the man who had been a festering boil on the ass of the Order of the Black Sun with his delusions of grandeur and severe misjudgment. Overestimating himself around every turn. I mean, the boy actually considered himself of the same thread as the most powerful of men in this world… of which I am one.”
Helen’s heart sank when she heard mention of that insidious organization, but she was relieved that the symbol she left under her desk was in fact the correct assumption.
“But then what do you want with me?” she asked in bewilderment. “If Claire gave your men the stone, why not let us go?”
“Because there are three stones, each named after one of the three Gorgons from Greek Mythology, my dear Helen. I now have one. The other,” he sighed laboriously, seeming truly burdened by the thought, “my beloved wife thought good to give to her lover after taking it from my collection. The poor clueless woman! For all the knowledge she held on relics and Greek Art History, she did not know what she had done, the magnitude of loss I suffered when she gave Professor Megalos that stone.”
“Professor Megalos!” Claire gasped. “Dr. Heidmann referred him to Mr. Purdue. I was the one who invited him, but I had no idea who he was! Professor Barry, I was only following orders, I swear to God!”
Helen just patted the young woman’s hand in consolation.
“Now, Megalos has the Stheno stone. Thanks to you, Claire, I am now in possession of the Euryale stone, and I must say, it has served me well,” Deon declared. “Now we must just find the last one, the Medusa stone.”
He walked over to one of the covered statues against the wall. “And that is why I cannot let you ladies go yet. I need Mr. Purdue to locate and bring me the Medusa stone, and you are my leverage,” Deon explained.
“You don’t know Dave Purdue, Mr. Fidikos,” Helen replied, withholding all threat in her voice. “He will never let the Black Sun get their way with him again.”
“You know, that is just what my wife told me,” Deon smirked. He tugged the silken cover from the tall, shapely shape of detailed stone.
“Oh, Jesus!” Helen screamed hysterically. “Oh, sweet Jesus! Soula! Soula!”
Claire was speechless, so spellbound by the grotesque remnant of Soula Fidikos, still in her long flowing black dress, that she could not move. Next to her, Helen Barry was screaming like a trussed sacrificial animal, unable to control her horror.
Her shrieks of madness only hushed when she passed out from shock, but Claire hushed once and for all. The trauma of what had befallen Soula Fidikos twisted her mind so that she remained quiet. She would never speak again.
Chapter 27
At the lodge, Purdue elicited the help of a local paramedic to remedy Don’s minor wounds, three bullets having grazed his upper arm and right oblique. Nina was quick to cover up their illegal doings as being victims of a failed hijacking while sightseeing. Her story was delivered so well that there was no doubt the visitors from Scotland were just shit out of luck while touring the small towns of Eastern Europe.
As soon as the young Ostrava inhabitant medic left, the three of them gathered in Don’s room this time, since he was resting and on his way to being high as a kite in a few minutes.
“Was it all for nothing? So we found the place, but did we find anything concrete?” Don asked, instantly bursting into a fit of laughter. “Excuse the pun!”
Purdue and Nina smiled at the word play Don probably genuinely employed by accident. Purdue looked exhausted, as they all were, but it weighed heavily on him that Nina was almost killed point blank today. She would never believe that her welfare was the most important thing to him, what with her always accusing him of dragging her into life-threatening circumstances. Her face and clothing was dirty, but she was unscathed.
“We did not leave empty handed,” Nina consoled Don and relished Purdue’s pleasantly surprised reaction.
“What do you mean?” he asked her.
She stuck her hand in her corduroy jacket pocket and brought out a handful of crumpled paper. “I have not had a look at these yet, but I am pretty sure they must be important,” she said, unfolding them and flattening each on top of the other on the corner of Don’s bed. With the rubbing of a flat hand, she smoothed them out, minding the writing so that she would not wipe the already fragile lettering on it.
“What are they?” Don asked.
“I got them off what looked like an SS officer, Don,” she revealed. “Just before the shit struck the fan too, so at least we may have gotten some clue as to the workings of this anomaly.”
“Or why we have determined how we think it works,” Purdue agreed. “ But I hope that will shed some light on what causes it.”
“Let me put this on the desk,” she decided and walked over to Don’s room desk. It had a study lamp, hotel stationery of the lodge and a pen. Purdue leaned over her to see the words on the paper.
“Oh, it is in German. Nina, you’re up,” he surrendered.
Carefully she read what she could make out in the disorganized and scratchy writing of the writer, which she guessed was the unfortunate proud Nazi himself. One line at a time she copied what she learned on the old document over onto the stationary pad in English.
When she had completed the first page, she tucked it under those she had not translated yet, snatching it from Purdue’s curious hand.
“No! You lads don’t get to read this until I am done. I want to be involved too!”
Purdue frowned, “But you already know what it says, madam! You translated it into English, after all. How can we have the information before you?”
Don snickered in the background.