The Atlantis Scrolls

Chapter 26

Purdue said nothing about the car following them. He needed to first figure out if he was paranoid, or if the two were simply two civilians going to see the Wewelsburg Castle. This was not a time to draw attention to the three of them, especially with the fact that they were specifically doing reconnaissance to engage in some illegal activity to find whatever Werner was referring to in the castle. The building, which had been visited by all three of them previously on their own occasions, was far too vast for them to go on luck or guessing games.

Nina sat staring at the poem, suddenly consulting her cell phone Internet for something she thought might pertain. But a few moments later she shook her head with a disappointed grunt.

“Nothing?” Purdue asked.

“Nope. ‘Where the gods send fire, where prayers rise’ makes me think of a church. Does Wewelsburg have a chapel?” she frowned.

“Not as far as I know, but then I have only been to the SS Generals Hall. Didn’t really take in much of anything else under those circumstances,” Sam recounted one of his more dangerous covers a few years prior to his latest visit.

“No chapel, no. Not unless they’ve made changes of late, so where would the gods send fire?” Purdue asked, still keeping his eye on the gaining car behind them. The last time he was in a car with Nina and Sam, they almost got killed in a chase, something he did not want to repeat.

“What is the fire of gods?” Sam pondered for a second. Then he looked up and suggested, “Lightning! Could it be lightning? What would Wewelsburg have to do with lightning?”

“Hell, yes, that could well be the fire the gods would send, Sam. You are a godsend… sometimes,” she smiled at him. Sam was taken off guard by her sweetness, but he welcomed it. Nina researched any past instances of lightning near the village of Wewelsburg. The beige 1978 BMW moved in uncomfortably close to them, so near that Purdue could see the faces of the occupants. He figured they were odd characters to be used as spies or assassins by anyone who hired professionals, but maybe their unlikely image served that very purpose.

The driver had a short mohican and heavy eyeliner, while his associate had a Hitler hairstyle with black braces over his shoulders. Purdue did not recognize either of them, but they were clearly still in their early twenties.

“Nina. Sam. Seatbelts,” Purdue ordered.

“Why?” Sam asked, and instinctively looked out the back window. He looked right into the barrel of a Mauser with a psychotic Fuhrer-lookalike laughing behind it.

“Jesus Christ, we’re being shot at by Rammstein! Nina, on your knees on the floor. Now!” Sam shouted as the blunt clap of the bullet slugs embedded themselves into the body of their vehicle. Nina curled up under the glove compartment in her foot space and bent her head down while the bullets rained down on them.

“Sam! Friends of yours?” Purdue yelled as he sank deeper into his seat and threw the transmission into a higher gear.

“No! They look more like your type of friends, Nazi relic hunter! For fuck’s sake, can’t we ever just be left alone?” Sam growled.

Nina just closed her eyes and hoped not to die, clutching her phone.

“Sam, grab the spyglass! Press the red button twice and point it at Mohawk behind the wheel,” Purdue bellowed, passing the long pen object between the seats.

“Hey, careful where you point that bloody thing!” Sam cried. He quickly placed his thumb on the red button and waited for a pause between bullet clanks. While laying low, he moved right to the side of the seat, against the door, so that they would not anticipate his position. Instantly Sam and the spyglass appeared in the corner of the back window. He pressed the red button twice and watched as the red beam fell right where he pointed — on the driver’s forehead.

Again Hitler shot and the well-placed bullet shattered the glass in front of Sam’s face, assailing him with spattering glass. But his laser was already on the mohican long enough to penetrate his skull. The profuse heat of the beam fried the driver’s brain in his skull and in the rearview mirror Purdue briefly saw his face explode in a fleshy mess of snotty blood and bone fragments against the windshield.

“Well done, Sam!” Purdue cried as the BMW swerved violently off the road and disappeared behind the ridge of the elevation that slanted into a steep drop. Nina unfolded herself, hearing Sam’s gasps of shock turn to moans and shrieks.

“My God, Sam!” she screeched.

“What’s wrong?” Purdue asked. He perked up to see Sam in the mirror, holding his face with bloodied hands. “Oh, my God!”

“I can’t see! My face is on fire!” Sam screamed, as Nina slipped through between the seats to see to him.

“Let me see. Let me see!” she insisted, pulling his hands away. Nina tried not to yelp in panic for Sam’s sake. His face was riddled with small shards of glass cuts, some still protruding from his skin. All she could see of his eyes was blood.

“Can you open your eyes?”

“Are you daft? Christ, I have boulders of glass in my eyeballs!” he wailed. Sam was far from a squeamish person and his pain threshold was quite high. To hear him shriek and whine like a child had both Nina and Purdue thoroughly worried.

“Get him to a hospital, Purdue!” she said.

“Nina, they will want to know what happened and we can’t afford to be exposed. I mean, Sam just killed a man,” Purdue explained, but Nina would have none of it.

“David Purdue, you take us to a clinic as soon as we hit Wewelsburg or I swear to God…!” she hissed.

“It would impede our objective greatly to waste any time. You see that we are already being pursued. God knows how many more are following, thanks to Sam’s email to his Moroccan friend, no doubt,” Purdue protested.

“Hey, fuck you!” Sam roared into the nothingness before him. “I never sent him the picture. I never replied to that email! This is not coming from my contacts, pal!”

Purdue was perplexed. He was convinced that this was how it must have leaked out.

“Then who, Sam? Who else could know about this?” Purdue asked as the village of Wewelsburg came into view a mile or two ahead.

“Agatha’s client,” Nina said. “Has to be. The only person who knows…”

“No, her client has no idea that anyone but my sister alone operated in this assignment,” Purdue quickly stomped out Nina’s theory.

Nina was gently pinching the minute glass fragments out of Sam’s face while her other hand cupped his face. The warmth of her palm was the only soothing Sam could feel in the immense burn of the myriad of lacerations and his bloodstained hands rested on his knees.

“Oh, crud!” Nina suddenly gasped. “The graphologist! The woman who deciphered the handwriting for Agatha! No shit! She told us her husband was a landscaper, because he used to dig for a living.”

“So?” Purdue asked.

“Who digs for a living, Purdue? Archeologists. News of a legend actually having been discovered would certainly pique such a man’s interest, wouldn’t it?” she hypothesized.

“Great. A player we don’t know. Just what we need,” Purdue sighed, surveying the extent of Sam’s injuries. He knew there was no way around getting the wounded journalist medical care, but he had to press on or forfeit the chance to discover what Wewelsburg was hiding, not to mention others catching up to the three of them. In a moment of common sense above the thrill of the hunt Purdue checked for the nearest medical facility.

He pulled the car deep into the drive of a house within the vicinity of the castle, the practice of one Dr. Johann Kurtz. They randomly picked the name, but it was a fortunate hand of chance that brought them to the one doctor who had no appointments until 3 p.m. With a swift fib Nina told the doctor that Sam’s injury was due to a rock fall when they drove through one of the mountain passes on their way to Wewelsburg to sightsee. He bought it. How could he not? Nina’s beauty clearly stunned the awkward middle-aged father of three who ran his practice from his home.

While they waited for Sam, Purdue and Nina sat in the makeshift waiting room, which was a converted porch that was closed up with large screened open windows and wind chimes. A pleasant breeze passed through the place, a much-needed bit of tranquility for them. Nina continued to check what she suspected about the lightning simile.

Purdue held up the small tablet he often used to survey distances and areas, unfolding it with a sweep of his fingers until it could capture the Wewelsburg Castle outline. He stood staring at the castle from the window, seemingly studying the three-sided structure with his device, tracing the lines of the towers and mathematically comparing their height, just in case they needed to know.

“Purdue,” Nina whispered.

He looked at her with a still-distant stare. She gestured for him to sit down next to her.

“Look here, in 1815 the North Tower of the castle was set alight when it was struck by lightning and here, until 1934, a rectory existed in the south wing. I’m thinking, since it speaks of the North Tower and the prayers rising obviously in the south wing, one gives us the location, the other where to go. North Tower, upward.”

“What’s at the top of the North Tower?” Purdue asked.

“I know the SS planned to construct another hall, like the SS Generals Hall above it, but apparently it was never built,” Nina recalled from a dissertation she once wrote about mysticism practiced by the SS and unconfirmed plans to use the tower for rituals.

Purdue mulled it around in his head for a minute. As Sam emerged from the doctor’s office Purdue nodded. “Okay, I’ll bite. It’s the closest thing we have to a clue. The North Tower is definitely the place.”

Sam looked like a wounded soldier fresh out of Beirut. His head was bandaged to keep the antiseptic ointment on his face for the next hour. For the damage to his eyes the doctor gave him drops, but he would not be able to see properly for the next day or so.

“So, there goes my turn to drive,” he jested. “Vielen dank, herr doctor,” he said wearily in the worst German accent ever visited on a native of Germany. Nina giggled to herself, finding Sam utterly cute; so pathetic and displaced in his bandages. She wished she could kiss him, but not while he was obsessed with Trish, she promised herself. She left the smitten general practitioner with a kind farewell and a handshake and the three made their way to the car. Awaiting them in the near distance stood the ancient building, well-preserved and brimming with atrocious secrets.