Hunt for the Lost Treasure

Chapter 31 — Rush for Venom

“You have to go back and finish this before we miss out on it,” Sam insisted in slow deliberate words while the emergency room doctors administered antivenin to reverse the effects of the snakebites. “Remember this is the treasure he did not want the world to know about. You have to find out why!”

“Sir, you have to relax. Your heart rate elevates when you get excited and that spreads the venom faster,” the ER nursing sister advised urgently.

“Nina, take my gear and record everything,” he begged Nina through his rising fever.

“Do you think I am going back there again? No fucking way! What if we get bitten too? I don’t want to spend the rest of eternity with a bunch of Nazis in a glorified toilet bowl!” Nina protested.

Her exclamation was of such an amusing and peculiar nature that the staff and patients within earshot could not help but gawk, but Nina ignored them.

“Nina please,” Sam implored. “We have to know what was worth so much that Alexander the Great sent an armada to an unknown continent to bury his secret. Find a way to clear the snakes. Do what you have to do.”

“Just rest now, please, love. I don't want to lose you… again,” Nina answered. “We will go back — when you can accompany us.”

“I might not make it. Jesus, Nina, I am on fire here,” he moaned softly in her ear while she held his hand.

“Excuse me, Miss?” the attending doctor addressed Nina. “But you have to leave now. Mr. Cleave is in critical condition and we have to get him in.”

“Of course,” Nina sighed. Reluctantly she let go of his hand and settled in the waiting room with Joanne to wait out the rest of the nerve-wracking hours.

“How are you doing, Nina?” Joanne asked when Nina sat down. Joanne sounded absolutely bereft.

“You know, he’s not dead yet,” Nina told her friend, trying to keep it together.

“I know. But… had I not gotten this itch, if it had not been for me and my obsession with Alexander's treasure, Sam would never have come here. You would never have lost another friend so soon after the other,” Joanne lamented.

“Just stop it!” Nina snapped. “I have enough shit to deal with right now. I can’t stand for self-pity and uncalled for guilt trips right now!”

“Self pity?” Joanne asked, looking dumbstruck at Nina's assumption. “Wait, do you think I am feeling sorry for myself? I am truly sorry that I got you and your friend into this shit, Nina! I feel responsible for luring you out here. That’s all. And it is a fact that this expedition is precisely why Sam is heading for the ICU, and you think I am feeling sorry for myself?”

“Keep it down,” Nina said.

“No!” Joanne replied. “I will not keep it down. You know what, Nina. Thanks for all your help, but I don't need to be talked down to by some high school bully who grew up to be a celebrity academic. Once a bully, always a bully. And I have had it.”

She flicked the Alexandrian coin onto Nina's lap and with a bitter sneer she said, “For your trouble.”

Beyond words, Nina sat mute, still reeling from Joanne's rant. Usually she would fight back, but she was so shocked by her friend's reaction that she just started crying. She missed Purdue's fancy free influence, especially now. She worried for Sam's life, feeling as responsible for his condition as Joanne did. Now she may have lost Sam for good, and Purdue was God knows where. Nina punished herself that Joanne had just been a fleeting friend that gave the historian a second chance at having someone female to relate to and be silly with.

“Well done, Dr. Gould,” she sniffed under her hair as she folded forward on the chair. “Your enchanting personality has just fucked up yet another friendship.”

“Dr. Gould?” a man said.

Nina started and sat bolt upright. “Aye?” It was the doctor working on Sam. “Oh God, no!” she gasped.

“No, he is still with us,” he said quickly, “but he is deteriorating rapidly. We need to find out what kind of snake bit Mr. Cleave, because our serum is not working. We need antivenin from that particular snake.”

Nina buried her face in her hands before looking up at the doctor again. “This will sound crazy, but those snakes are exclusively found in Greece.”

“Then how did he get bitten in Newfoundland?” the doctor asked logically.

“You see, doctor, that is the crazy bit,” she winced, hoping he would not expect her to explain. Nina was in luck.

“I'm afraid we have limited time, so if you could help us obtain some of the venom from… Greece? That would be the only chance Mr. Cleave has. Until then, we can only manage his symptoms and keep him from going into cardiac arrest,” the doctor advised.

Wiping her tears, Nina agreed that she would try to get her hands on the poison from one of the snakes responsible for Sam's wounds. After the doctor left her alone in the empty waiting room, Nina broke down in tears again. “How am I going to do that? How am I going to do that all by myself?”

“Do what by yourself?” a familiar voice said, making Nina's heart jump.

Impossible, she thought. When she looked up she almost did not recognize Purdue. Nina, once more speechless, propelled herself at the emaciated frame of her close friend and confidant. She wrapped her arms around him and wept vigorously.

“Where have you been?” she sobbed. “God, I needed to see you so badly. You will not believe what happened while you were gone.”

Purdue could only smile at her ironic statement while he rubbed her back with his hands.

“Why are you so thin? Why are you limping?” she scowled when she gave him a good look. “What happened?”

“Long story,” he said. “I heard what Sam's doctor said. Where do we find these bloody vipers we need, then?”

It was typical of David Purdue, the arrival of whom always made everything seem probable, doable, and possible. He was the perpetual problem solver, creator of devices that made everything easier, and facilitator of that which seemed impossible to the average man.

“How did you know where to find me?” she asked.

“Friends of yours from church told me where you’d gone. From there I found out that you’d chartered a boat, so I contacted the boat owner and he told me which hospital you were at… in a nutshell,” Purdue accounted with a smile.

What he did not tell Nina was that, while she on her way to the weather station by sea, he’d been rescued from an oubliette, subsequently so sobered by his experience that he’d decided that he was tired of being dead. On Dr. Beach's phone Purdue had called Sam's friend, Patrick Smith at MI6, offering to give himself up conditionally. After his leg operation and days of recovery from malnutrition Purdue was discharged against medical advice to locate Nina.

“Wow!” Nina said. “I have other friends?”

“Father Harper, and Dr. Beach and his wife helped me — more than you realize. I could not call you. Your phone was off,” he said innocently, making Nina feel terrible all over again. “But now I have found you, finally, and you can catch me up on the flight back to… where do you need to be?”

“Newfoundland, please, Mr. Purdue,” Joanne said from the door. “I'm sorry Nina. I suck.”

“I suck too, Earle-girl. Purdue, this is Joanne Earle, expert on Alexander the Great and an old friend of mine,” Nina introduced them.

“Alexander the Great,” Purdue smiled. “Powerful king. Military genius.”

“I like him already,” Joanne winked at Nina.

“Aye, you seem to have a penchant for suave men with lots of money,” Nina joked, and dragged Joanne with her down the hallway. “We have to call Virgil.”

After Joanne called boat captain Virgil Hecklund to procure his services once more, Purdue offered to pick up the fee. Utterly relieved, after practically donating the medallion to Nina and being left penniless to settle with Virgil, Joanne accepted the offer gracefully.

“As if he would have allowed you to decline,” Nina smiled at her friend.

“Very nice of him,” Joanne agreed happily, as they took to their comfortable seats aboard the Scarlet again. In the cockpit Purdue and Virgil exchanged deep sea angling stories and laughed at marine puns for almost the entire distance back to Martin Bay.

Before they had departed the archipelago of Nunavut, Purdue asked Captain Hecklund to procure certain supplies for him, for which he would pay extra. It felt so good to have ready access to his own accounts again, Purdue thought, relishing the peace of mind to do so without fear of being tracked. In truth, he’d had access to his accounts while laying low, but they were being monitored.

“So, that’s what we were about to unearth, we believe,” Nina concluded, having told Purdue every detail that led to the awful attack on their colleague and friend, now leaving him fighting for his life.

“I have heard about the hidden treasure before, but I did not know about a letter from Olympias to her son,” Purdue admitted. “That is remarkable, something that has to be almost… godlike… in nature.”

“So do you think the hidden Treasure of Alexander the Great is something other than riches?” Joanne asked Purdue. He shrugged. “Being a scholar of his life, I’m surprised that his treasure would not be located in Iraq, Turkey, or Egypt, you know?”

“That was my initial thought when you told me about it on the phone,” Nina told Joanne. “Why would you have found a medallion like this on Canadian soil?”

“Look, there have been many archaeological theories from discoveries on a great many Inuit tribal lands. There have been European artifacts found that predate the Vikings, even,” Purdue informed them. “That makes it plausible that Alexander the Great would have had the wherewithal and the need to send an armada out here to make sure his enemies would never find it. The Persian Empires and Egypt were vastly wealthy, yet they would not have thought to send scouts or ships west, I would guess. Not for any reason but it was not necessitated. For Alexander, especially after his conquests and his army eventually becoming discontented with his greed, it was probably the most remote land he could have reached.”

“But Alexander was never reputed to have sailed this way,” Joanne challenged.

“No, he never did. But there is a very good chance, like the Mommy's Boy he was,” Nina teased again, “that members of his mother's order could have facilitated the mission, not his own army.”

“Ooh, that makes a lot of sense!” Joanne marveled. “She outlived him, after all. After his death she could have sent delegates from the Cult of Dionysus to stash the treasure here in what is now Canada.”

“That would explain the snakes,” Nina remarked. Her face fell into sadness again. “Sam.”

Joanne embraced her. “Don't worry, honey. We'll get those slimy bastards.”

“Oh!” Purdue exclaimed. “On that note…”

He limped away to the open cabin door and excused himself before disappearing below deck.

“Where is he going?” Nina asked.

Virgil smiled and dusted his hands as he sat down. “Only an hour before we reach Martin Bay. Mr. Purdue asked me to bring a few electronic wares so that he could fashion a device he jovially calls a Snake Charmer,” Virgil announced proudly.

“What does it do?” Joanne asked.

“Does it matter? If Purdue names anything it usually has a good reason,” Nina smiled as she tilted her beer.