Deep Sea One (27 page)

"Look at this! Clear skies for the first time in a week," Liam reported to the boys of the new shift who stood around drinking tea before commencing work.

"Oh, I see, you are waiting for the storm to rise out of nowhere, aren't ya?" Tommy grinned behind the rim of his mug and a few lads sniggered at the remark. They all knew the mechanic was awfully superstitious. It made him a good source of entertainment and none of them would admit to feeling just a little vulnerable, recalling his tales of angry sea gods and such, when the heavy storms battered the lone oil platform out in international waters where no rescue organization would take note.

"Aye, great to see you again too, Tommy. Hope the shits didn't dry up your brain completely," Liam snapped and reveled in a roar of laughter from the lads before the siren sounded to summon them to their stations.

"I'll give you that one, geezer," Tommy laughed. "Now fuck off. Darwin and I have work to do."

"You're in high spirits, Tommy," Darwin noted.

"The rest did me well, the rest away from here, I mean. The illness was a bitch, though," Tommy replied. "Anything exciting happen here?" He laughed loudly. "Like I can say that with a straight face."

"You know, there was a strange thing or two happening here, but not the kind of crap you'd be interested in," Darwin said, as he scrutinized the horizon, much like Liam always did before he believed him.

"Like what? I might be amused, you never know," Tommy smiled.

Darwin gave it some thought at first, fearing that his words would give life to the absurdity of it all if he came out and said it. Tommy waited with bated breath.

"Do you know if Peter employed a new subsea engineer?" Darwin spoke softly out of reluctance. Tommy raised his eyebrow.

"What the hell are we, then?"

"Precisely what I said."

"God, I hope they are not thinking of letting me go behind my back . . ." Tommy started, but Darwin lifted a hand to stop him.

"I don't think Purdue knows about this new guy. We never saw him come here in the first place," Darwin continued.

"What do you mean?"

"Me and Liam, catching a smoke or two outside, saw this bloke strolling like a lost fart in the middle of the night. Weird-looking fucker, way tall, looks like Mr. Barbie. We don't know him, right? So we ask him, right? And he says he works here, but the idiot is walking around in a hard hat, looking for the docking area! How daft is that?" Darwin spilled the entire chain of events and mentioned how Peter came to collect the stranger and took him down the steps to God knows where.

"Have you seen him again?" Tommy asked, astonished.

"Man, he came from nowhere. Disappeared to nowhere. And nowhere is nowhere other than this fucking oil rig, you savvy?" Darwin whispered loudly with eyes wide and wild.

"That is interesting. I wonder what Purdue knows," Tommy pondered out loud.

"Yah, and that too. But do you see the level of fucking weird in this tale? It is like an old-time horror mystery," Darwin whined, while his colleague sank into deep thought about the whole matter.

"Where did they go, then? Peter and this bloke?" Tommy asked with a deep frown.

"Down the second reds, the same stairs Purdue always uses to his special elevator," Darwin said, but he was satisfied that someone else was listening to him and Liam. He expected Tommy to laugh it off, but he did not. For once, instead of ridiculing them, he displayed some interest.

He was about to ask more questions when a distinct presence made itself known in the doorway. Both men turned and found the female bodyguard standing there, leaning against the side.

"So, you boys are smelling a rat on this oil rig?" she said in her low husky voice.

"What's it to you, sergeant?" Tommy retorted defensively, but she ignored him and laid her eyes on Darwin.

"I think there is something amiss too, but being so close to the boss, I am not supposed to make observations, you know? I must just shut my mouth and cover his back," she sighed, working her voodoo on the smitten engineer. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

Darwin swallowed hard as heat flooded his skin.

"What is it that you think you know? If you know anything, if anything bad is going down here like drugs or lay-offs, I wanta know about it," Tommy urged.

"Drugs or lay-offs. Really?" she smiled sarcastically, again aiming for Darwin.

"We have been seeing people we don't know, sergeant, and we are worried about them taking our jobs. Call it vocational paranoia," Darwin explained, composing himself and trying to keep his eyes from the dent between her breasts showing just above the zipper of her hoodie.

"Your jobs, your jobs," she chanted plainly. "Honey, there is something so much bigger going on here that you will ever understand." Her eyes narrowed seductively as her confidence flooded their resistance.

"What do you mean?" Tommy asked.

"I'm not sure I wanna hear this," Darwin said reluctantly.

"Well, ignorance is a wonderful thing," she started, and put her hand on Darwin's heaving chest, "if you're on land."

"She's right, Darwin," Liam said from the doorway. He stood in the door, looking out down the corridor every now and then to make sure their discussion was as private as they could keep it.

"You see, out here in the middle of Poseidon's trap we are at the mercy of two things—the gods and the boss. Without helicopters or boats we are fucked, gentlemen. Right now, as we speak, there is a hidden laboratory compound beneath us."

The three men stood astounded, silent and waited eagerly for more.

"Apparently Purdue is keeping something special down there, guarded by special people," she sang softly, hypnotizing the men with her efficient guile, "special people like the stranger you say you saw up here."

"What are they guarding?" Liam asked, but Tommy pressed his hand on his colleague, pushing him aside.

"Wait a minute, how do you know?" he asked Calisto.

"You're an engineer?" she asked. "With
that
level of intellect? I was down there, you imbecile."

"What is down there? Is it dangerous, like, can bombs go off and kill us all?" Darwin asked, mostly kidding, but curious nonetheless.

"See?" Calisto told Tommy, "a man with common sense. Yes, my friend, there are things down there that could flatten this place." She was not certain of that fact, of course, but they knew less about the labs than she did. This would be a perfect opportunity for a bit of a mutiny. They had to be warned about possible disaster. And there would be disaster. Of that she would make sure. In fact, it was imperative to her end. After some snooping through Purdue's office and with a little help from his predictable password software she had the codes to the labs.

Nina and Sam had begun their work there and Purdue was furiously busy contacting various organizations as if he was a wedding planner. She had no idea who he considered so special that he would tell them about the relic, which she was almost certain was the real deal. But somewhere something would go wrong. Breeding a master race, immoral scientific experiments and relic hunting could never end well. And Calisto had a knack for smelling tragedy. She deliberately came on to Sam to drive Nina away and it almost worked. She almost saved the historian from what was coming, but failed in getting her to return to the mainland. Now she could only hope that Dr. Gould would survive whatever was boiling toward the brim of the stewing pot Purdue had foolishly cooking on high. It was a bad recipe of boast and greed and reckless ambition.

☼

Chapter 35

"Where's Purdue?" Sam asked, as he unpacked his laptop and his camera components.

"I don't know. He has not left his damn office for God knows how long now. Maybe he sleeps there too. I'll have you know, I still have a bad feeling about all of this, Sam," Nina answered, as she carefully placed the ancient wooden chest on the granite countertop.

"I know. Just get your work done, I'll take pictures and write up all your findings to be published, we both get out of here and collect our historical glory. Simple. The less you bitch about it, the less flack you will get, trust me," he replied, without looking up at her. Fiddling with his gear, he could feel her gaze pierce him. Finally he looked up when he heard no reply.

"If looks could kill I'd be on the floor," he remarked boyishly, but Nina was not amused.

"Do you not get the vibe that this is a very fucked-up situation? Think about it, Sam. The things we know now, the stuff we'd seen . . . you think they are going to let us get away with our lives?" she whispered anxiously. He had not thought of that in such a serious light. It was not in Sam's nature to be scared off by politics or bad guys and he figured Nina just did not have the stomach for the accompanying stress.

"Relax, Purdue has a thing for you. He won't kill you," Sam teased. "Fuck, he'd probably kill me to get out of his way to get you."

"That's not remotely amusing," she jousted, but then she realized what he inadvertently revealed. "Wait, he'd kill you to get to me?"

Sam looked up innocently.

"In other words, for him to win my affections you assume you would have to be eradicated?" she wanted to smile, but she did not. Sam wore a look of absentminded oblivion to the implication, but of course he knew what he had said and he knew that she was sharp enough to catch on.

"You think you are in my sweet spot until someone punches you out of it?" she gasped deliberately. Now she laughed.

"Who is in your . . . sweet spot, dearest?" Sam flirted, his brown eyes smoldering into hers with an underlying honesty, which stripped her masquerade down to the bone and demanded attention.

"Nobody," she smiled coyly and pretended to know how to assemble the spectroanalysis machine. All she really did was rearrange the components and felt stupid. Her heart pounded like a schoolgirl's at the thought of Sam's eyes on her and she recalled his scent and the feeling of his body in her embrace when she hugged him a few months before. It made her tingle and she liked it under her cold exterior that he so easily thawed with one remark. She remembered how devastated he was when that Nordic ape was about to put a bullet in her skull, how he reacted at the thought of losing her. Maybe he really was in her sweet spot. She was just too much of a bitch to admit it.

"Do you need help with that machine?" Sam asked, as he sauntered over to her side. For once Nina allowed herself to be a helpless maiden and stood back for him to have a look. Sam was technically orientated and he quickly figured out how to rig up the machine to her computers.

"Thank you!" she exclaimed, and she did not care that she sounded excited by the assembly of a machine. He took a bow and smiled.

She opened the chest carefully and took out the wrapped artifact, placing it on the granite surface. He joined her with his long lens high-def camera.

"No flashes," she said.

"I know."

"You know," she said, as she revealed the metallic weapon by peeling off the wrapping, "there are many spears all over the world, claiming to be the actual weapon that pierced the side of Christ."

"I know. I researched some of them when I had to do a piece on religious icons a few years back. What I want to know is, if this is just another one, what is the big deal?" Sam said, as his eyes combed the rough smithing of the iron, the gold and silver inlay.

"The middle part of the spear is undoubtedly gold. See how pallid the metal looks?" Nina said as she put the leather wrapping aside. Sam nodded and took a few snapshots of it. He zoomed in on what looked like winding thread, which held the gold fast to the weapon and took a picture of the detail.

"This has a remarkable resemblance to the spear in Vienna, but, of course, it isn't the same one," Nina mentioned, as she watched Sam work.

"Perhaps a replica?" he asked.

"No way."

"You sound awfully certain," Sam said, as he sank the camera to look at Nina.

She was certain that it was not a replica, but she never said it was the actual Spear. What she based her certainty on she was reluctant to share, because she had no concrete proof. All she had was the distinct feeling of warning every time she handled it. It was unkind. It was maleficent and aware, which was not the quality of an inanimate object of metals.

"I just have a hunch that it is something far more infectious than we might believe, Sam. Don't ask me to explain it. Call it woman's intuition, if that would serve its purpose," she said evenly.

"If it is not a replica, then what is it, in your professional opinion?" Sam asked, without his usual taunting. He wanted to know what she thought. He trusted her deductions as she was, after all, a master in the field. Nina stood very close to him, so close he could smell her breath when she spoke. Her head tilted back to look at him, "I think it is the only real relic of them all! There is something to it that frightens me to my core," she whispered, as if she did not want the piece of metal to hear her words.

"You don't think this has anything to do with the historical accounts of the US general who claimed the spear after Hitler had hidden it in Nuremberg?" he asked, hoping his facts were accurate.

"George S. Patton? No, I think that piece was another part of history, but not the one used at the crucifixion," she shook her head.

"You said it had malevolence to it, right? After Hitler lost the Spear he committed suicide. Then General Patton returned the relic to Austria and he died shortly afterward. The legend holds that the Spear brings unequalled power to the one who owns it, but is always soon lost and the owner left dead," Sam reasoned. "That means this
is
the right spear, right?"

"No, I don't believe that. I think that was just a fabrication to strike fear into those who would try to steal it. I think Hitler's suicide was something completely different and Patton's death was coincidence," she explained. She turned back to the artifact on the table and looked at it with great veneration, tinged by fear. "I believe the true spear that injured Jesus is far more sinister, as if its insolent act had cursed it, imbued it with everything that hated Jesus—immersed in evil, destructive iniquity!" Nina's voice shivered uncontrollably and became louder as she spoke, unaware of her terror being voiced so harshly.