The Atlantis Scrolls

Chapter 7

Bern watched the small historian glare at him from her seat. She enticed him in more than a petty sexual manner. Much as he preferred stereotypical Nordic featured women — tall, thin, blue eyes, fair hair — this one appealed to him in ways he could not fathom.

“Dr. Gould, I cannot express enough how appalled I am by how my colleague treated you and I promise you, I will make sure he gets justly punished for it,” he said with gentle authority. “We are a bunch of rough men, but we do not hit women. And we do not condone the mistreatment of feminine captives by any means! Are we clear, Monsieur Baudaux?” he asked the tall Frenchman with the bruised cheek. Baudaux nodded passively, to Nina’s surprise.

She had been accommodated in a proper room with all the necessary amenities. But she heard nothing about Sam from what she deduced eavesdropping on the small talk between the cooks who brought her meals the previous day while she waited to see the leader who had ordered to bring the two of them here.

“I realize that our methods must be a shock to you…” he started coyly, but Nina was fed-up listening to all these self-righteous types apologize obligingly. To her they were all just terrorists with manners, thugs with big bank accounts and, on all accounts, just political bullies like the rest of the rotten hierarchy.

“No, actually. I’m used to being treated like shit by people who have bigger guns,” she retorted harshly. Her face was a mess, but Bern could see that she was a great beauty. He watched her baleful glance at the Frenchman, but he ignored it. After all, she had reason to hate Baudaux.

“Your boyfriend is in the infirmary. He suffered a mild concussion, but he will be okay,” Bern reported, hoping that the good news would please her. But he did not know Dr. Nina Gould.

“He is not my boyfriend. I’m just fucking him,” she said coldly. “Jesus, I’d kill for a cigarette.”

The captain was visibly shocked by her reaction, but he attempted a weak smile and immediately offered her one of his cigarettes. By her base response Nina had hoped to distance herself from Sam so that they would not bother to use them against each other. If she could persuade them that she was in no way emotionally attached to Sam they could not hurt him to sway her, should that be their agenda.

“Oh, good, then,” Bern said as he lit Nina’s fag, “Baudaux, kill the journalist.”

“Oui,” Baudaux barked, and promptly left the office.

Nina’s heart stopped. Were they testing her? Or did she just compose Sam’s funeral dirge? She played it cool, dragging hard on her cigarette.

“Now, if you please, doctor, I would like to know why you and your colleagues traveled all this way to come and see us if you were not sent?” he asked her. He lit his own smoke and waited calmly for her reply. Nina could not help but contemplate Sam’s fate, but she could not lead on that they were close at any costs.

“Listen, Captain Bern, we are fugitives. Like you, we had a nasty brush with the Order of the Black Sun and it kind of left a shitty taste in our mouths. They frowned on our choice not to affiliate with them or become pets. In fact, we had a very close call very recently and we were forced to seek you out, because you were the only alternative to a slow death,” she hissed. Her face was still swollen and the awful welt on her right cheek was turning yellow at the edges. The whites of Nina’s eyes were a map of red veins and the bags under her eyes attested to her lack of sleep.

Bern nodded contemplatively and took time to suck at his cigarette before speaking again.

“Mr. Arichenkov tells us that you were going to bring us Renata, but… you… lost her?”

“So to speak,” Nina inadvertently scoffed, thinking of how Purdue betrayed their trust and threw in his lot with the council by spiriting Renata away at the last minute.

“How do you mean, ‘so to speak,’ Dr. Gould?” the stern leader asked in a calm tone that carried some serious malice in it. She knew she would have to present them with something without giving away her closeness with Sam or Purdue — a most trying navigation, even for a sharp girl like her.

“Um, well, we were on our way — Mr. Arichenkov, Mr. Cleave, and me…” she said, omitting Purdue deliberately, “to deliver Renata to you in exchange for joining you in our fight to bring the Black Sun down once and for all.”

“Now get to the place where you lost Renata. Please,” Bern coaxed, but she detected a brooding impatience in his soft tone, the tranquility of which would not last much longer.

“In the mad chase, pursued by her peers, of course, we were involved in a car accident, Captain Bern,” she recounted thoughtfully, hoping the simplicity of the incident would be sufficient reason for them to have lost Renata.

He raised one eyebrow, almost looking amused.

“And when we came to, she was gone. We supposed that her people — those who pursued us, reclaimed her,” she added, thinking of Sam and if he was at that moment being killed.

“And they just did not put a bullet in each of your heads to make sure? They did not recapture those of you still alive?” he asked with a certain trait of military trained cynicism. He leaned forward on the desk and cocked his head with a malicious bob, “That is precisely what I would have done. And I was part of the Black Sun once. I know full well how they operate, Dr. Gould, and I know they would not have swooped up Renata and left you breathing.”

For once, Nina was speechless. Even her cunning could not save her with a plausible alternative to the story.

Is Sam still alive? she thought, wishing desperately that she did not call the wrong man’s bluff.

“Dr. Gould, please don’t test my civility. I have a talent for detecting bullshit and you are feeding me bullshit,” he said in a cold politeness that made Nina’s skin crawl under her oversized sweater. “Now, one last time, how is it that you and your friends came out alive?”

“We had help from an inside man,” she said quickly, meaning Purdue, but she stopped short of identifying him. This Bern was, from what she could gather as far as sizing people up, not an unreasonable man, but in his eyes she could tell that he was of the species “not-to-be-fucked-with”; genus ”bad death” and only a fool would wiggle that thorn. She was remarkably quick with her answer, and hoped she could utter other helpful sentences off the bat without fucking up or getting herself killed. As far as she knew, Alexandr, and now Sam, might well already be dead, so she would benefit from being forthcoming to the only allies they still had.

“An inside man?” Bern asked. “Anyone I know?”

“We didn’t even know,” she answered. Technically I am not lying, baby Jesus. We did not know he was in league with the council until then, she prayed in her mind, hoping she would be favored by whatever god could hear her thoughts. Nina had not reverted back to her Sunday school thoughts since she defected from the church crowd as a teenager, but until now she had no need to pray for her life. She could almost hear Sam chuckling at her pathetic attempts at pleasing some deity and mocking her all the way home for it.

“Hmm,” the robust leader sat thinking, running her story through his cerebral fact-checking system. “And this… unknown… man snuck away Renata while making sure the pursuers did not come to your vehicle to check if you were dead?”

“Aye,” she said, still covering all bases in her head as she replied.

He smiled in amusement and flattered her, “It’s a stretch, Dr. Gould. It’s spread very thinly, that one. But I’ll buy it… for now.”

Nina visibly sighed in relief. Suddenly the large commandant lunged over the table and shoved his hand hard into Nina’s hair, clenching hard and pulling her violently forward to him. She shrieked in panic and he pushed his face painfully against her sore cheek.

“But if I find out you fucking lied to me, I’ll feed your leftovers to my men, after I personally fuck you raw. Are we clear, Dr. Gould?” Bern hissed against her face. Nina felt her heart stop and she almost collapsed in fear. All she could do was nod.

She never saw that coming. Now she was certain Sam was dead. If the Brigade Apostate were such psychotic beasts, they would definitely not be acquainted with mercy or restraint. For a while she sat, dumbfounded. So much for the ill treatment of female captives, she thought, and she hoped to God she did not accidentally say it out loud.

“Tell Baudaux to bring in the other two!” he shouted to the post at the gate. He stood on the far side of the room, looking out at the horizon again. Nina’s head was bowed, but her eyes shot up to look at him. Bern seemed contrite when he turned around, “I… apologies would be redundant, I suppose. It is too late to try and be nice, but… I do feel bad about that, so… sorry.”

“That’s okay,” she forced out, her words almost inaudible.

“No, really. I have…” he had difficulty in speaking, humiliated by his own conduct, “I have an anger problem. I get frustrated when people lie to me. Truly, Dr. Gould, I do not normally hurt women. That is a special sin I am saving for someone special.”

Nina wanted to hate him as much as she hated Baudaux, but she simply could not. In a strange way she knew he was sincere and instead found that she understood his frustration all too well. As a matter of fact, this was precisely her predicament with Purdue. Much as she wanted to love him, no matter how she understood that he was flamboyant and loved danger, she just felt like kicking him in the bollocks most of the time. Her furious temper had been known to erupt senselessly too, when she was lied to, and Purdue was the man who detonated that bomb without fail.

“I understand. Really, I do,” she said plainly, numb with shock. Bern noted the change in her voice. It was crude and real this time. When she said she understood his rage, she was being dead honest.

“Now, that I believe, Dr. Gould. I will try to be as fair as possible in my judgment,” he assured her. Like the shadows retreated from the rising sun, his demeanor switched back to the evenhanded commander she had been introduced to. Before Nina could figure out what he meant by “judgment” the gates opened and she saw Sam and Alexandr.

They were a little roughed up, but over all they looked all right. Alexandr looked weary and absent. Sam was still suffering from the blow he got on the forehead and his right hand was bandaged. Both men looked solemn at the sight of Nina’s injuries. Anger hid behind submission, but she knew that it was only for the greater good that they did not lash out at the thug who hurt her.

Bern gestured for the two men to take a seat. They were both restrained by PlastiCuffs behind their backs, unlike Nina, who was free.

“Now that I have had a word with all three of you, I have decided not to kill you. But—”

“There is a catch,” Alexandr sighed without looking at Bern. His head hung despairingly, his yellow-gray hair a mess.

“Of course there is a catch, Mr. Arichenkov,” Bern replied, sounding almost surprised at Alexandr’s obvious remark. “You want refuge. I want Renata.”

All three looked at him in disbelief.

“Captain, there is no way we can arrest her again,” Alexandr started.

“Without your inside man, yes, I know,” Bern said.

Sam and Alexandr stared at Nina, but she shrugged and shook her head.

“Therefore I am keeping someone here for surety,” Bern added. “The others, to prove their loyalty, will have to bring me Renata, alive. To show you what a gracious host I am, I will allow you to choose who stays behind with the Strenkovs.”

Sam, Alexandr, and Nina gasped.

“Oh, relax!” Bern threw his head back dramatically as he paced. “They don’t know they are targets. Safely in their cottage! My men are on point, ready to strike at my order. You have exactly one month to be back here with what I want.”

Sam looked at Nina. She mouthed, “We’re fucked.”

Alexandr nodded in agreement.