The Atlantis Scrolls

Chapter 10

“I don’t recommend you use that, dearest,” Sam jested, but he was quite sincere at the same time.

“Sam, I need new jeans. Look at this!” Nina argued, opening her oversized coat to show Sam the haggard condition of her dirty, now torn, denims. The coat came courtesy of her latest cold-blooded admirer, Ludwig Bern. It was one of his, lined with authentic fur on the inside of the roughly tanned garment that enveloped Nina’s small body like a cocoon.

“We shouldn’t use our money yet. I’m telling you. Something isn’t right. Suddenly our accounts are unfrozen and we have full access again? I bet you it’s a trap, so that they can locate us. The Black Sun froze our bank accounts; why on earth would it suddenly be nice enough to give us our lives back?” he asked.

“Maybe Purdue pulled some strings?” she hoped in reply, but Sam smiled and looked to the high ceiling of the airport building, where they were due to leave in under an hour.

“My God, you place so much faith in him, don’t ya?” he scoffed. “How many times has he dragged us through life-threatening situations? Don’t you think that he could be doing the ‘cry wolf’ trick, getting us used to his charity and goodwill to win our trust and then… then we suddenly realize that all this time he was out to use us as bait? Or scapegoats?”

“Would you listen to yourself?” she asked with true surprise playing on her face. “He has always gotten us out of what he got us into, has he not?”

Sam was in no mood to argue over Purdue, the most insanely fickle being he had ever encountered. He was cold, exhausted and fed-up with not being home. He missed his cat, Bruichladdich. He missed getting a pint on with his best friend, Patrick, and both had almost become strangers to him now. All he wanted to do was to return to his flat in Edinburgh, lie on the couch with Bruich purring on his stomach, and have good single malt while listening to the streets of good old Scotland under his window.

Another thing that needed completion was his memoirs about the whole incident with the arms ring he helped bring down when Trish was killed. The closure would do him well, and so would the publication of the resulting book that had been suggested by two different publishing houses in London and Berlin. It was not something he wanted to do for the sales that would obviously skyrocket in light of his subsequent Pulitzer fame and the fascinating story behind the entire operation. He needed to tell the world about his late fiancé and her invaluable involvement in the success of the arms ring’s demise. She paid the ultimate price for her bravery and her ambition and she deserved to be known for what she had accomplished in ridding the world of that insidious organization and its henchmen. After that was all done, he could fully close that chapter of his life and take some rest in a nice, mundane life — unless, of course, Purdue had other plans for him. He had to admire the tall genius for his insatiable zest for adventure, but as for Sam, he had mostly had his fill of it all.

Now he stood outside a store in the large terminals of Moscow Domodedovo International Airport, trying to talk sense into the stubborn Nina Gould. She insisted that they take a chance and draw some of their funds to acquire new clothes.

“Sam, I smell like a yak. I feel like an ice statue with hair! I look like a destitute drug addict who had the shit slapped out of her by her pimp!” she moaned, stepping closer to Sam and grabbing him by the collar. “I need new jeans and a nice ushanka hat to match, Sam. I need to feel like a human being again.”

“Aye, so do I. But can we wait until we get back to Edinburgh to feel human again? Please? I don’t trust this sudden change of our financial status, Nina. At least let’s get back to our own soil before we start taking any more chances with our safety,” Sam stated his case as gently as he could, without sounding like he was lecturing. He knew full well how Nina possessed a natural reaction to oppose anything that sounded like a reprimand or a sermon.

Her hair in a low, careless ponytail, she stared at the dark blue denims and the trooper hats in the small curio store that also stocked Russian apparel for those tourists who wanted to blend in with the cultural fashion of Moscow. Her eyes glimmered with promise, but when she looked at Sam she knew he was right. They would be taking a huge gamble using their debit cards or the ATM here. Common sense left her momentarily in her desperation, but she quickly recovered it against her will and yielded to his argument.

“Come on, Ninanovich,” Sam consoled her with an arm flung around her shoulder, “let us not reveal our position to our comrades in the Black Sun, eh?”

“Da, Cleavenikov.”

He laughed, pulling her by the hand as the announcement came for them to report to their gate. By habit, Nina was paying close attention to all the people congregating around them, checking each of their faces, their hands, and their luggage. Not that she knew what she was looking for, but she would quickly recognize any suspicious body language. By now she was well-trained to read people.

A coppery taste oozed down the back of her throat, followed by a faint headache right between her eyes, pulsing numbly through her eyeballs. Deep folds fell in her brow from the growing agony.

“What’s wrong?” Sam inquired.

“Fucking killer headache,” she muttered, holding the palm of her hand flat on her forehead. Suddenly a hot streak of blood ran from her left nostril and Sam jumped to tilt her head back before she even realized.

“I’m okay. I’m all right. Let me just pinch it and get to the restroom,” she gulped, blinking profusely from the aching in the front inside of her skull.

“Aye, come,” Sam said as he led her to the ladies toilet’s broad door. “Just make it quick. Plug it up, because I don’t want to miss this flight.”

“I know, Sam,” she snapped, and entered the cold restroom with its granite basins and silver fixtures. It was a very frigid environment, impersonal and super hygienic. Nina imagined it would have been a perfect operating room in a posh medical facility, but hardly made for a nice place to piss or apply blush.

Two ladies were speaking at the hand dryer and another was just coming out of a stall. Nina bolted into a cubicle to help herself to a handful of toilet paper and while she held it over her nose she tore a piece off to make a plug. Stuffing it up her nostril, she took more and folded it neatly to put in her yak jacket pocket. The two women chatted away in the harshly beautiful dialect when Nina came out to wash the drying blood stain from her face and chin, where the trickling droplets escaped Sam’s quick response.

From her left she caught sight of the lone woman who emerged from the stall next to the one she used. Nina did not want to look in her direction. Russian women, she realized soon after arriving with Sam and Alexandr, were quite chatty. Since she could not speak the language she wanted to avoid an awkward exchange of smiles, eye contact, and attempted conversation. In Nina’s peripheral she saw the woman glaring at her.

Oh, God, no. Don’t let them also be here.

With her face wiped with wet toilet paper, Nina took one last look at herself in the mirror just as the other two ladies took their leave. She knew she did not want to be alone in here with the stranger, so she hastened to the bin to dispose of her tissue and made for the door that slowly closed in the wake of the other two.

“Are you all right?” the stranger suddenly spoke.

Fuck.

Nina could not be rude, even if she was being pursued. She still headed for the door, calling back to the woman, “Yes, thank you. I’ll be fine.” With a modest smile Nina slipped out and found Sam waiting for her right there.

“Hey, let’s go,” she said, practically shoving Sam forward. They briskly walked down the terminal, flanked by the intimidating silver pillars that lined the length of the high building. Passing under the various flat screens with their flashing red, white, and green digital announcements and flight numbers, she dared not look back. Sam hardly noticed that she was a bit spooked.

“Good thing your boyfriend got us the best forged documents this side of the CIA,” Sam mentioned as he looked over the first-rate forgeries Bern had his notary produce to get the two safely back to the United Kingdom.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she contested, but the thought was not altogether unpleasing. “Besides, he only wants to make sure we get home swiftly so that we can get him what he wants. There is no courtesy in his actions, I assure you.”

She hoped she was wrong in her cynical assumption, used more to shut Sam up about her amicable relationship with Bern.

“About that,” Sam sighed, as they passed though the checkpoint and gathered up their light hand luggage.

“We have to find Purdue. If he won’t tell us where Renata is…”

“Which he won’t,” Sam chipped in.

“Then he’ll surely assist us in presenting the Brigade with an alternative,” she finished with an annoyed scowl.

“How are we going to find Purdue? Going to his mansion would be foolish,” Sam said, his eyes raising to the large Boeing in front of them.

“I know, but I don’t know what else to do. Everyone we knew mutually is either dead or proven to be enemies,” Nina lamented. “Hopefully we can figure out our next move on the way back home.”

“I know this is a terrible thing to even consider, Nina,” Sam said out of the blue once the both of them had settled into their seats. “But maybe we can just disappear. Alexandr is very adept at what he does.”

“How could you?” she whispered harshly. “He got us out of Bruges. His friends took us in and harbored us without question and they ended up getting marked for it — for us, Sam. Please don’t tell me you have lost your integrity along with your security, because then, honey, I am certainly all alone in this world.” Her tone was stern and angry at his notion and Sam thought it best to just leave it at that, at least until they had used the time in flight to see their way around it and find a solution.

The flight was not altogether bad, apart from an Australian celebrity getting witty with a gay mammoth who stole his armrest and a rowdy couple who appeared to have brought their tiff onboard and could not wait to get to Heathrow before continuing the martyrdom of marriage they both suffered. Sam was sleeping soundly in his window seat while Nina fought her impending nausea, an ailment she had been suffering since she left the ladies room at the airport. Now and then she would rush to the toilet to vomit, only to find that there was nothing to purge. It was becoming quite tedious and she started to worry about the worsening feeling that was pressing on her stomach.

It could not have been food poisoning. For one thing she had a cast-iron stomach, and second, Sam ate all the same meals that she had and he was unscathed. After another unsuccessful attempt at alleviation she looked in the mirror. She looked strangely healthy, not at all pallid or weak. Eventually Nina wrote off her ill feeling to the altitude or cabin pressure and decided to also get some sleep. Who knew what was waiting for them at Heathrow? She needed to rest.