Keepers of the Lost City

21 The Impromptu Interview

“Ah, Sam, please come in,” Purdue invited as Oleg opened the door for Sam. At the landing of the lobby staircase stood Purdue, towering over a petite older lady, even smaller in stature than Nina. “Sam Cleave, meet Mrs. Gloria Williams.”

Sam wiped his hair back to look a bit more decent before he gently shook the small lady’s hand. She was in her early 60s, by no means as old and decrepit as Sam had pictured her, and she sported short, gray hair which gave her an air of youthfulness. Like the interior of the mansion, she looked refined and wise and she moved. She spoke with sophistication that implied that she was not just the late academic’s wife, but also educated in her own right.

She led the two men into her small office off a greenhouse that filled half the length of that wing. Sam was in awe of the architecture and the antique restoration throughout the ground floor they traversed. Mrs. Williams addressed Sam directly, tearing his admiration from the carpentry detail to the matter at hand. “As you can understand, I feel immensely vulnerable of late, so I have asked Mr. Purdue to take note of what I tell you both today, just in case those demons get the better of us Williams’ women.”

Sam pressed ‘Record’ on his handheld, and they sat down in the well-lit office.

“Oh, don’t talk like that, Madam,” Purdue comforted her.

Her eyes suddenly turned to blazing coals as she scowled at Purdue. “And why shouldn’t I, David?” she hissed. “I have every reason to believe that the Black Sun is closing in on us. Look at what happened to my granddaughter. Look at what happened to the Spanish delegates who came to collect the remains of the German soldiers! It is not just about the book, David. That book is just one click on a safe dial. Just like being part of a combination lock, it is but one of several components needed to unlock one big secret held by the Order,” she preached with wide eyes full of fear. “And this time they are not trying to get at your treasures by infiltrating your expeditions, David. They are protecting a secret you accidentally discovered in the Mediterranean, and they are busy eradicating every trace of what could lead you to it.”

Purdue looked ashen. “What are you saying?”

She bit her lip, her eyes still fixed on Purdue. “I am saying that, if I were you, I would hire an army to watch Wrichtishousis as we speak.”

The thought of his own residence being under threat was not far-fetched, but still disturbing. Purdue knew that his call boxes were not the problem concerning the information about the cipher book coming out, but that did not change the fact that the source of the leak was still unsolved.

Sam, however, had the journalist’s edge. He had another angle on her statement. “Mrs. Williams, what are the other clicks in that combination lock?”

The tiny woman frowned. She had been so busy chastising Purdue about his reckless ways that Sam’s virtually whimsical question caught her completely off-guard.

“W-what?” she asked, trying to be less hostile toward the rugged handsome man with the puppy eyes.

“The cipher book is important to exposing this secret, correct?” he clarified. “And obviously the remains in the caskets were another factor, which is why they went to such lengths to destroy these calling cards, right? So, can you tell us what the other clicks in your combination lock theory would be?”

“Good one, Sam,” Purdue agreed. As Mrs. Williams had asked, he placed the dossier, containing the acceptance of liability he had Jane prepare for legal purposes, on her desk while Sam was interviewing her.

“I am not sure, Mr. Cleave,” she answered, “but my husband’s research on a particular campaign from the SS camp cost him his life. I firmly believe that his misinterpretation of the Inca prophecy was responsible for them exterminating him like some inconvenient house pest.”

“Misinterpretation of the Inca prophecy?” Sam asked. Purdue was leaning forward, immersed in the woman’s accounts.

“When I heard that you, Mr. Purdue, had assisted that Spanish police chief to find that child…” she paused, looking more emotional than before. “When I heard that you had led an expedition to recover those missing Nazi soldiers’ bodies from the ocean floor of the Alboran Sea, I knew that you had made the same mistake my husband did. You mistook two separate omens for one.”

“So, the Nazi remains and the relics recovered from that ship,” Sam deduced, taking care not to specify the relics he had kept off record, “had nothing to do with the fruition of the Inca prophecy of the 2017 solar eclipse?”

She shook her head.

“They had similar fields of command, High Command, if you catch my drift,” she continued, “but these ships were on different missions until they would meet in Argentina. From there, they would each embark on their own missions. One ship would be dispatched to fulfill the Inca prophecy with the child sacrifice to open El Dorado, while the other one would sail elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere? Where to?” Purdue chipped in.

She shrugged. “How should I know? My husband was the linguist and historian, not me. All I am telling you here are things he told me as matters transpired in his own work, based on the unmarked twin ships of the Kriegsmarine-Zwei — that is what he called it. I don’t know what that is so do not ask me,” she told the two astonished men. “Mind if I smoke?” she asked suddenly.

“No, it is your house,” Purdue smiled, scoffing amicably at her courtesy.

“Would you mind terribly if I joined you?” Sam asked her. “After all this I could do with a fag.”

“Certainly, care for a cigarillo?” she asked, holding out an immaculate looking cigar container that looked like an antique in its own right.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Sam smiled. He placed his handheld on the desk, slanting it at such an angle that Mrs. Williams’ face was perfectly framed by the lens. Purdue’s sense of propriety prevented him from slamming his hand on the desk and demanding she tell them more. While the widow Williams and Sam Cleave had a social puffing break, he was dying to know more.

“You see,” she continued through her impaired drags, “that location, those names of the covert operations? That exact information is hidden in what I suppose you got your hands on, Mr. Purdue, and can only be interpreted by means of the correct cipher.” Mrs. Williams took her time to smoke the small, brown cigarillo, while her memory and emotion ran with her to a time when her beloved husband was still alive and well.

“All I know is that my Kenneth was killed shortly after returning from the Southern Hemisphere, where he was trying to uncover the second operation that the Nazi’s were executing before the ships went under. When he left here, he told me that he could not tell me much, for fear that it would put me in danger, you see,” she explained.

“That is understandable,” Sam concurred. “I used to cut communications with my late fiancé when I went undercover to infiltrate dangerous corporations.”

“Precisely,” she said, pointing her cigarillo-pinching index finger at Sam.

Purdue still had questions. “Do you know where he went to do his research down there?”

“An old farm he bought in the late 1970’s. It was a worthless piece of ground, but he thought it would be a good place to conduct his clandestine investigations of documents by deciphering the codes of the SS.” She chuckled sweetly and added, “He said he liked it because it was abandoned, solitary and strategically placed. Oh, Kenneth, my eccentric.”

“Does the farm now belong to you, Mrs. Williams?” Sam asked.

She yelped in amusement. “God no! Ha! Kenneth knew I would never travel there, so he left it to a nephew or something in his will. If you ask me, he deserves the place. He’s had a hard life, you know?”

Sam and Purdue could not believe the treasure trove of information they were obtaining from Mrs. Williams. Between them, they were so excited they could burst. Finally, Sam asked her what he knew Purdue was aching to ask.

“And this nephew… do you have a name for us?” he asked the lady.

“Of course,” she smiled through a billow of smoke. “His name is Lewis Harding.”