The Medusa Stone

Chapter 19

“Hello Dave, I’m so sorry to bother you,” Prof. Helen Barry apologized from her locked office. “But I simply had to inform you of recent developments here in London.”

“Of course,” Dave replied. “No need to apologize if you think it important, Helen.”

Helen felt reluctant to rock the boat, should it just be a random attempted kidnapping, but she still felt compelled to inform Purdue in case something happened to her. After all, even with all her colleagues and the respect of a myriad of philanthropists Helen was very much alone and friendless. She thought to just put it out there to the most genial of those she knew, Dave Purdue that she might be in peril.

“Look, over the weekend, some strange things occurred. Soula and her husband were leaving for Greece the next day, so she invited me to have dinner with them, right?” she stammered, wringing the electrical cord of the phone around her finger.

“Alright…,” he urged her to continue.

Helen checked one last time for eavesdroppers before cautiously telling him about the close call she and the Greek millionaires had suffered in the streets of Stoke Newington. He listened ardently to the whole story after which Helen paused for his response.

“You are right, Helen,” Purdue agreed. “It sounds like an attempted abduction. Who do you think would be behind it? It is hardly feasible for an enemy in her homeland to venture all the way to London to kidnap her for ransom. Suffice it to say that I think it must be a local entity out to seize her.”

“That is precisely what I reckoned,” she murmured. “But I have no idea who here would know about her wealth apart from…” she hesitated, desperately trying to avoid speculating, should she be accusing someone wrongfully, “…Dr. Heidmann.”

“Funny you should say that,” Purdue told her while keeping his voice down. “We, Dr. Gould, Dr. Graham and I, have been having the same thoughts on the man’s questionable intentions over here.”

“So what do you suggest I do? Soula treats this as if it happens to her all the time. I think she is in denial, David. Either that or she has something to do with it. How, I do not know, though,” she frowned, feeling utterly alone and scared.

“Has she returned to her homeland?” Purdue asked.

“She has, but…” Helen faltered. She did not want to make assumptions and sound paranoid.

“What is the matter, dear? Come now, spit it out,” Purdue coaxed.

Helen took a deep breath and sighed, “I think those men are still skulking around here in London, Dave. I saw them again not four blocks from my bloody home!” Her voice began to fail her as she held back her tears. “They have been here at the museum too.”

Purdue sounded alarmed, “When?”

“This morning,” she replied. “They were pretending to be patrons, prowling the hallways and all the different displays. I watched them from a distance. Whoever they are working for knows me, who I am, who Soula is and probably what we had here on exhibit.”

Both Purdue and Helen knew that this pointed to Dr. Heidmann.

“Alright, listen,” he said, “stay at my estate until we get back from the Czech Republic. I will contact my security people and let them know you are coming, but don’t tell them — or anyone else for that matter — what you suspect or why you are staying there, understand?”

Helen felt an enormous weight lift from her shoulders.

“Thank you! Thank you, Dave,” she gasped in relief.

“Be careful, dear Helen,” he urged. “I don’t want to have to worry about your safety.”

“No worries, Dave. I would suggest you look out for your own over there in the company of that man. You don’t know where he could be leading you,” she warned. “And thank you again.”

“You are most welcome, Helen,” Purdue replied. “Take care of yourself. I’ll see you soon, alright? Bye-bye.”

Helen was elated. She instantly felt safer. Someone tried to come in, fiddling with her office doorknob. It startled the curator so soon after speaking her mind about being stalked. From the other side of the door, Claire’s muffled voice relaxed her completely.

“Professor Barry? Are you alright? I can’t get in.”

“No, I’m okay, thanks, Claire,” Helen giggled nervously and opened the door. She did not even look at Claire after unlocking and immediately turned to return to her desk. Because of this, she did not see the two men standing in the door with her assistant.

“I just had a chat with a friend and needed some privacy, that’s all,” she explained absent-mindedly while opening her e-mails.

“Log off from your laptop and bring it with you,” a man’s voice ordered her. Helen looked up to see who was addressing her, but her heart dropped to the floor when she saw the very two men she recognized from Stoke Newington standing behind Claire. The assistant’s frozen eyes stared ahead at her boss, expressionless in shock. Her lip quivered as she mouthed, ‘They have a gun.’

“W-where are w—,” she tried, but Claire gasped in fright as her body was nudged forward by force.

“I have a gun in your assistant’s back, Prof. Barry,” the other man said. “It has a silencer fitted to its barrel, so if you utter one more word, I will send a bullet into her spine right here.”

“Okay! Okay!” she beckoned, packing up her laptop and sliding it into its bag. “Let me just get my power supply under the desk. Please don’t shoot Claire.”

Prof. Helen Barry may have been a stern teacher, firm manager of her division and hardened academic, but her compassion for others was a weakness. Like a mother she begged for Claire’s release and for the men not to harm her.

“Hurry, Professor. We are running out of patience.”

The captors had a strong Eastern European intonation, but she could not place the dialect to a particular country. On all fours under her desk, she collected the plugs she needed for her computer.

‘My God, I have to do something quickly,’ she thought to herself, but her heart’s maniacal throbbing scrambled her thoughts and ideas, rendering her brain almost useless to her. ‘They are going to catch you trying something, and they will shoot Claire. Are you willing to put her life on the line to facilitate your little plan?’ argued her common sense.

‘What plan? Christ, I cannot even remember my own name right now!’ her other inner voice countered.

Loudly she fumbled about with the plugs and electrical cords to give the illusion that she was very busy rummaging.

“Professor,” the gun-toting bastard said plainly.

“Almost done,” she called out from under the desk. “This double adaptor is too far back against the wall to reach. Just give me a second to get that one out.”

‘That sounded convincing enough, I think.’

The two men exchanged a quick few words during Helen was convinced she heard the word ‘Renatus’ being said. Other than that, she had no idea what they were talking about. She knew that she had heard the term before, many years before when Dave Purdue came to take refuge at her ancestral home in Cardiff. He claimed that he had been kidnapped and manipulated by a secret organization that referred to their leader as Renatus. For fear of her being mistaken with being involved by his pursuers, Purdue refused to share any more information with Helen.

He stayed under the radar with her as his sole sentinel for two years while his lover and consort, Nina Gould, thought him dead. The historian whom he was then romantically involved with remained resident at Wrichtishousis while he was missing, something of which Helen was well aware, yet she was not allowed to bring Dr. Nina Gould any consolation by revealing that Purdue was in hiding, alive and safe. It had always tormented Helen that the poor Nina spent every day in suspense, waiting to get tidings of the worst while her man was but a few kilometers from her all the time. Helen always protested, thinking him immensely cruel for it, yet Purdue had begged her to keep his secret, reasoning that it would jeopardize Nina’s safety if she ever knew.

Following Purdue’s explanation, Helen had subsequently made work of seeking which organization he was fleeing from. Through some studying through clandestine channels, she had learned about their secret existence even in modern times which was in no way anything less than terrifying. And now they were here!

Briskly, she etched into her wooden desk patrician with a pen, holding no regard for the ball point of the instrument, but rather using it to penetrate the surface of the wood. Roughly, she scratched a circle within a circle. From the center of the inner circle, Helen carved as many sharp edged S’s as she could in such a short time. On the symbol, they served as rays of lightning and anyone who knew this organization would recognize it as their primary symbol.

A hard grip fell on her ankle and violently pulled her out from under the desk, evoking a scream from her that was promptly silence with a firm gun hand over her mouth. From above her, the beady-eyed man leered at her with no sign of humanity in his dark brown eyes. Luckily Helen had released the pen before she was pulled out into the bright light of her small office. Fortunately for her, her paranoid sense of what if catered for her to have prepared for this scenario and she still held a piece of the power cable in her other hand, convincing him that she was really having trouble with the cabling.

“Thanks!” she said. “I’d have never been able to pull this bloody thing free if you did not pull me that hard.”

The kidnapper had shown no reaction to her excuse, which was a win for Helen. He only pulled her up to her feet and said, “Finish up. We are behind schedule. You will pretend we are delegates from the Ukraine, Prof. Barry. Take us to the security section and insist on the footage from the night of the earthquake. And then to the lockers.”

Satisfied that she had left a solid lead where she ripped the electrical wires from the wall to lead investigators to the symbol, Helen felt almost calm. If she died, she knew that the sharper people of law enforcement, and her friend Dave Purdue, would know exactly what fate had befallen her.