Deep Sea One

Chapter 25

With everyone below preoccupied with their respective duties, Sam took a moment to gander around the massive chamber one last time. He felt like Indiana Jones, being in such an exotic location and hunting an ancient relic. As a serious journalist he dared not reveal his whimsical side, but that did not mean he did not entertain it once in a while. His right hand pushed against the cluster of stalactites protruding from the side of the grotto as he gently turned in mid-air to face toward the interior.

Straining to balance himself, Sam positioned his camera in his hands while he rocked from side to side on the rope. The view from up there was stunning and he understood where the chamber got its regal name. Through the viewfinder of his camera he framed the best composition and snapped the picture. Sam wished he had his panoramic with him for the beauteous pan of visuals before him. But he only had his basic camera with him, which had to take quite a few pictures in succession to fully capture the scene.

The ceiling was unremarkable, save for the antiquated doodle that he would snap from the ground once he was back down there. However, the ornate stalagmites growing from the floor of the cavern were especially beautiful, towering at different heights as they reached for the meager light coming through the crack above. In the sunlight their moist surfaces glimmered like strewn stars left to sparkle on the extremities of the pointy shapes, presenting very subtle differences in bluish hues dictated by their individual ages. Sam did not even realize that he smiled. Another fantastical image appeared on his memory card. He zoomed out to get an overall picture of the chamber just before Purdue and Gary started loosening his cord and his eye caught something.

"Gentlemen!" he shouted, as softly as he could. "Wait. Hold the rope. Wait a second."

Purdue knew that expression. His face lit up immediately when Sam's eyes went stiff in their sockets and he eagerly honed his lens on something.

"What, Sam?" he pressed excitedly. Nina and Calisto stopped what they were doing and looked at the dangling journalist seven stories up. "Mr. Cleave. Report, please," Purdue reiterated with immeasurable curiosity.

"You know, I am no geography aficionado, but I think I am looking at a map!" he said absentmindedly as he moved the camera lens to view the floor of the cavern. "Move to the side, please."

The group moved against the walls. By the third shot Sam was convinced that he saw what he thought he did. More and more it became familiar, obvious. Purdue started getting fidgety, "I really must insist, Sam. What are you seeing?"

"I see a map," Sam smiled, arms outstretched like a game show host. His attractive smirk folded into dimples and his dark eyes came alive.

"A map of what?" asked Gary, not buying any of it. "I think you're just reaching now."

"Nope. From up here, at this angle in the Godwomb, I clearly discern the coastlines of England and Scotland, Norway, Germany… it's the North Sea!" Sam beamed.

"These are random stones and craters, Mr. Cleave," Calisto said, from where she sat on a rock with her jelly beans. "How do you know it is not just coincidence that your mind is associating the formations with something you have seen before. It is a known fact in neurology that the mind projects what it perceives on unrelated things with the correct stimuli."

"I have to concur, Sam," said Nina as she stepped forward to speak to play devil's advocate. "You are expected, stressed on, to find some association to the Spear, to uncover its location. So your mind grabs the closest thing to relate it to location. Of course your cognition will provide a map," Nina ranted on in her bossy lecture voice, but Sam became deaf to her psychoanalysis and gestured for the two men to bring him down. Dr. Gould soon realized that her theory was redundant at this point. Sam was still smiling as he was lowered and she gave him a look of thorough vexation, which completely failed to intimidate him.

"Let me see!" Calisto pounced on Sam to seize his camera. She grabbed his hands and maneuvered the camera to see. It was the first time the bodyguard had touched him and he found her surprisingly soft to the touch. But his smirk vanished in the lash of Nina's glare and he pretended not to enjoy Calisto's odd ways too much. Purdue lurched over her shoulder to see and for a moment they studied the images of the cave's terrain.

"I see it!" Purdue exclaimed, elated.

"Oh, you see it because you were told what it is, Dave," Nina snapped, remaining cynical.

"Come see, Nina," Calisto invited her and stepped out of Sam's forced grasp to make way for the petite academic with the feisty demeanor. Skeptically Nina leered at them all and took her place next to Sam. Her eyes scanned the image for but a moment before she had to admit irrefutably that the floor of the Godwomb matched the North Sea map of Deep Sea One's control room with uncanny accuracy.

Nina was at a loss for words. She simply nodded, "I see, yes."

"All right, so now we know it's a map, but what are we supposed to do with it?" Gary asked. The others mumbled and shrugged among themselves.

"Well, we have to find a pinpoint on the map," Purdue said, as he held the camera screen up to properly investigate it.

"And coordinates," Calisto chimed in, tossing her last jelly beans into her mouth. "The North Sea stretches a good 750,000 square kilometers. It'll be a hell of a search," she remarked in her dry way.

"There are no numbers or lines that I can make out here," Purdue noted and passed the camera to Gary, who nodded in agreement.

"There has to be a way to tell, but how?" Nina pondered out loud.

Sam wracked his brain as he combed the image for any crossing lines, but there was nothing that indicated a location. The map was blank, save for the shape of the landmasses. Purdue was getting nervous with the advent of dusk soon to come. Light was rapidly draining from the cavern, announcing the end of the day and the group agreed to stay after dark. Their consensus was that perhaps the phosphorus residue they had seen present on some of the formations could serve as markers that could only be seen in darkness. Nothing was too absurd to try when pursuing such a priceless relic. Nina and Purdue paged through the entire antique manuscript to look for clues to demarcate the location they needed to mark on the map.

Calisto went to where the last sunrays streaked into the chamber while the others discussed their plans and had something to eat. Nostalgia filled her as she stared up at the tunnel of light that ushered the sun into a place that would never be blessed with daylight. In her poetic mind it reminded her of a birth canal or possibly the portal of death, alight with blinding promise or a ruinous reckoning. Mesmerized by the column of light she closed her eyes to feel the warmth of it on her face before it had to retire for the night.

"Look at that," Purdue pointed, shaking his head at his bodyguard's eccentricity. Nina smiled at the childlike act of the tough girl she knew nothing about and her catching eyes reveled in the surreal sight.

"It reminds me of a science-fiction poster where the ethereal ray beams on the mere mortal marked for anal probing," Nina said matter of factly, provoking a chuckle from the others.

"Wait, a ray that marks. A ray that marks?" Purdue's voice escalated to an excited huff. "My God! Are we morons?"

"Could very well be," Sam jested wryly, with a bit of a shrug which made Nina giggle.

"Sam, the indicator is right in front of us," Purdue smiled and motioned like a gleeful madman.

"Calisto?" Sam perpetuated his mock idiocy, which had Nina in stitches behind Purdue's back, prompting Gary to crack a smile too. Purdue sighed, aware of the journalist's teasing sense of humor. He merely pointed at Calisto and said, "The sunbeam marks the spot, people!"

Astonished at the positive development they quickly analyzed the positioning of the waning ray of light on the floor and placed a satchel where Calisto had stood. Following the contours of the adjacent jagged borders, they could ascertain the particular bay closest to the location point. Nina noted it. Now that they had the approximate site recorded it was still quite an area to cover without a precise orientation, but Sam had the solution in theory. If Purdue could obtain the software for it, it would improve their accuracy considerably.

"According to the rough chart we have, we can map the coordinates on the computer according to scale," Sam proposed.

"Done. That would be exceedingly simple to design and map out," Purdue bragged, once more restored to his confident presence. "Besides, from a rough estimation it looks very much like our vicinity, actually. It might be closer to us than we could have guessed. How convenient," he smiled.

"Where is Calisto?" Sam asked. Nina looked about but also found that she was missing.

Purdue and Gary were standing where the sunray had now abandoned its peephole, discussing the possibilities of obtaining a jet to get them back to the United Kingdom as soon as possible.

"Maybe she went to take a piss again," Nina remarked in her cattiest sneer. Sam found her bitchiness amusing, the way in which she occasionally felt threatened by Calisto, who could not care less what she thought. He found it endearing, but of course would never dare tell Nina this, for fear of being called a prick and banned from her life again.

"Seriously, though, she is nowhere to be found," Sam persisted.

Nina knew that Calisto had pulled her disappearing act at least three times already, yet another reason for her not to trust Purdue's voluptuous lapdog. Although her altitude sickness did have her by the balls, constantly plundering her body with nausea and pain, Calisto had recovered considerably since they entered the shrine. Nina found her constant vanishing act unnecessary for her level of resilience.

No more than a second after Nina finished talking, Calisto's powerful body glided through the dark toward her. She placed her hand over Nina's mouth, in case the historian had a reflex vocalization. Calisto looked at a shocked Sam and whispered urgently, "Sam, Nina, get your stuff NOW and move as quickly and quietly as you can."

Removing her hand from Nina's mouth, she stopped her from uttering anything with an index finger on her lips and proceeded, "See that hole between those two jutting rocks there?" she pointed swiftly, "Go through there. You'll come out just a few meters from the river down below. Wait there for us. I have to get Mr. Purdue out of here before they get here," she said in an even voice evident of her calm under fire.

"What's going on?" Sam asked quickly, as he took Nina by the arm and started toward the perilous little crevice that terrified the claustrophobic Nina instantly.

"Villagers and militia. Our presence was discovered when the portal opened, of course. I have been monitoring their progress all afternoon. Now GO!" she urged. Nina did not have time to take her foot out of her mouth for the second time misjudging Purdue's bodyguard.

"Sam," Nina's voice shivered, desperate for support in the insurmountable exercise she was forced to face again.

"No worries, love. I've got you," Sam reassured her, recalling her meltdown in the hatch of the ice-lodged submarine during the Wolfenstein expedition. As Sam and Nina started through the tunnel to their escape, Calisto drew her Makarov and came straight for her employer. At first glance the sight of her swiftly approaching frame and cold eyes threw the two men into a confused panic. Gun grasped tightly by her side, she quickly explained the situation as she locked her other hand over Purdue's vest and pulled him forcefully to safety. From the tunnel that led to the exit of the Godwomb they heard the sound of an approaching mob.

"Oh, my God, we're dead," Gary whined and pinched his eyes shut.

"Shut up and listen," Calisto snapped impatiently, "When I tell you to run, you head for that small crevice where Sam and Nina crawled through, all right?" Purdue and his pilot nodded in compliance. This was the second time his new bodyguard had effectively spirited him away from certain death. She was in her element now and they dared not question anything she said under the threat of violence while the voices and thumps of swift feet stole rapidly toward the grotto. Gary looked at her dirty fingernails tipping soiled fingers as her hands gripped the Russian firearm she branded.

Calisto's voice was steady, her words specific and disciplined while in contrast her body appeared exhausted. Perspiration stained her shirt and her skin was patched with dirt that they had not noticed until now in close quarters. Purdue wanted to ask, but it could wait. His heart thundered at the appearance of the furious village militia, branding AK47s, MG42s and various close-assault weapons.

"Go! Now!" Calisto shouted as she ran the other way, abandoning her shelter to serve as diversion from the fleeing men she was paid to protect. Like a sudden tap on a hornet's nest, the glimpse of the intruder set them off. At once the mob charged in fury, pointing toward the sprinting woman in muted gestures and whispers.

Before Purdue crept into the small hole in the rock face, he looked back at the attackers. They appeared to be Buddhist monks, but their behavior was decidedly heathen. Although their rage was well-founded as a pillaging of their deity's holy shrine, he did not think they had the right to resort to lynching explorers like swatting flies. For an instant he wanted to go back and help Calisto, but unfortunately she was expendable. It was what she was hired for. He, on the other hand, had a purpose to the world and the organizations and societies who benefitted from his reputation and connections. Purdue had once more survived his greed.