“I’ll see if Paddy can find her for us,” Sam suggested. His best friend and MI6 agent, Patrick Smith, had more resources than he did, so Nina would be easy to track by the British Secret Intelligence Service.
“All right, get hold of her and get to Wrichtishousis before Friday next. This one looks delicious, old boy! And I’ll give you an extra bonus just for covering that god-awful pasty torso of yours,” he told Sam in his best arrogant tone.
“Get off the satellite, Mr. Purdue. Use it to find some bloody sense, will you?” Sam advised with a smile and hung up the phone before Purdue could reply. “Thank you, miss.”
He gave the phone to the secretary who had been waiting a safe distance away. One last time he cast a look over the breathtaking scenery around him, scenery he had been taking for granted since he had checked in here, because he was so busy spying on his suspect. Now he regretted not getting in the water as much as he could have, but there would be more time after this expedition to come back and enjoy the beauty—if he survived.
Chapter 5
Nina’s grant was paid in full for her services to the late Herr Cammerbach and his project, but she was not prepared to leave the Himalayas yet. There were so many questions to both the covert task force that showed up from nowhere, as well as Neville, the supposed archeology expert who assisted Cammerbach.
Above that, she needed to know what was buried in the tunnel they discovered at the coordinates she calculated from old files Cammerbach gave her to decipher. According to her placement of its chronology and the relevant incidents of those dates, she was able to put together the exact location of the hole Neville’s people dug through for Cammerbach.
“Dr. Gould, it is too dangerous here,” Neville said. “Your work is done anyway. If I were you I would go home and enjoy my money.”
“But you’re not me, are you?” she winked, her hands hugging the mug of hot chocolate she got from the kitchen of their lodge. “I want to know what they were after in that tunnel. The documents said nothing to the effect, and it was enough to get your unfortunate friends killed.”
“Colleagues, not friends,” he said quickly. He sat across from Nina at the breakfast table in the lodge dining room. It was cold outside but there was no snow coming down.
“Still,” she replied, “doesn’t it bother you that those soldiers took over the scene? Do you even know who they are?”
“I believe they were hired by allies of yours,” he admitted to Nina. “And they can search that place all they like; they won’t find anything.”
“Apart from the enormous humanoid primates?” she pressed. “You don’t seem too curious about what they were, even less what they were there for, Neville.”
“I’m just glad that we survived, Dr. Gould,” he said, looking her in the eye with serious admonition. He lowered his voice. “For all we know those soldiers have already been killed by those… things. And call me squeamish, but as an archeology major, I prefer to work with dead things — things that are not out to rip my guts out in the snow.”
“So you’re afraid,” she answered. “Anyone in their right mind would be scared, Neville. It’s not a crime. All I’m saying is, let’s go back—”
“Are you out of your mind?” he gasped as quietly as he could.
Nina shook her head and continued, “and just see what is happening there. I have it on good authority that the organization these men work for is a very old society that dabbles in occult relics and Nazi treasures.”
“No, Miss Nina,” Neville negated her suggestion plainly. “No.”
“What are you going to do now? Are you going back to Calcutta and carrying on with your life?” she asked, taking a sip of the delicious hot beverage. Nina noticed that his reluctance was misread as hostility, so she let up a little in her urging and changed the conversation to something more casual.
“I am, yes,” he sighed, looking deep into his coffee. “What I saw back there was enough to haunt me forever, Miss Nina, and I do not intend to go looking for more of it. All I want to do is go home to my own city, attend my own university, and spend my time in lecture halls where the white devils of Tibet do not walk in broad daylight and devour others.”
Nina knew he could not be persuaded. It was a pity, because he was the only man she trusted and the best guide to the geography of the plains. It was a nightmare to find someone of his caliber at a reasonable price, but rather than risk his life at her own expense, she decided to let it go. For him. But that did not mean that she would let it go for her.
After lunch, she watched Neville go to his room and lock the door to get some shuteye. It was the opportune moment for her to get going. Most people were inside, playing pool or watching movies since the light flurries had started to come down again. She had to go back to the dig site in daylight to ascertain the true involvement of the Brigade Apostate and investigate the existence of the yeti, if what she saw was indeed that.
Nina slipped through the back door service entrance, lifting the key of one of the snowmobiles as she passed the manager’s office. He was in the bar chatting to a group of sexy Scandinavian tourists. When Neville and Nina were brought back by the medics of the military team, she saw where the utility vehicles and keys were kept. It was remarkably easy for her to find it again, and she stole along the side of the building to find a window for access. Everyone would be inside the lodge and if anyone was in the vehicle shed they certainly would not have locked the doors from the outside, where the handles were secured with a chain and padlock.
The veil of white impaired Nina’s vision, but her curiosity drove her onward. Her palm was against the wooden wall of the structure as she felt her way until she found a large window, but it had burglar bars fixed to its frames.
“Shit!” she spat. Frustrated, she took another way though the covered parking area where they kept the larger trucks and petrol pumps. “Workshop,” she whispered with a grin. It was the perfect place to gain access and she sank her small frame down to get in under the retractable aluminum door into the greasy dock area. The place smelled of gasoline and rubber, but it was freezing cold, contrary to what she had expected of an enclosed section. There they stood — the row of Arctic Cats with a lost-looking, older, 1990, dark blue Polaris hiding just beyond the others in the shadow.
“Hallo, mumsy,” Nina said cheerfully in her best Cockney, discovering the machine that fit her key. Swiftly she lifted the retractable door just enough to accommodate the height of the machine. She got it out and then closed the door behind her. She made sure to leave the door cracked a few inches above the concrete floor, just as she had found it.
By the guidance of her GPS, Nina located the dig site and, driven by adrenaline, fear, and curiosity, she navigated the route against her better judgment. Himalayan snowfall was dense this season and was beginning to really come down, erasing her surroundings entirely from sight as she pushed the machine to its ultimate ability. On the GPS her destination was a sharp red dot and her route, as she went, pulsed in red. This was her only system of navigation in the white-out conditions and with every mile she covered, Nina became more and more convinced that she was crazy to have taken on such an endeavor. But she was too far in to turn back now, lest she wished to perish of cold, buried under the ice.
To her surprise there were no vehicles or men stationed at the dig site. It was still cordoned off by markers, though, which was a welcome sight. Nina drove the snowmobile to the rocks at the foot of the towering mountain where the hole was dug. There the vehicle would not be damaged and it would be hidden well. Once Nina had switched off the engine, she realized just how terribly alone she was, and at the mercy of things bigger and meaner than she could ever be — the elements and the wildlife.