The Inca Prophecy

33 Edinburgh

“It’s so good to be back home,” Nina cried happily, relishing the delightful Edinburgh storm outside Purdue’s dining room window.

“This was one trip I could have done without,” Sam remarked from where he sat at the hearth. His cast had all kinds of doodles on it, evidence of his boredom, a boredom he confessed to enjoying thoroughly. “Nina, would you believe that that black circle with the edges of light that I saw under the water looked just like that goddamn eclipse we saw in the cavern.”

Purdue turned in astonishment, neglecting the papers of the logbooks he’d obtained courtesy of Hannah, the mole. “Um, excuse me? Did you also see that?” he asked Sam. “My God, Sam, I saw the exact same vision while we were being dragged along the hull of the Cóndor!”

“The circle that grew wider?” Sam asked.

“Correct! It grew wider and had shining edges and the inside fell in,” Purdue reported.

“You two saw the same thing at the same time?” Nina said, staring at them with a raised eyebrow. “And it was a portend of what was to come in Peru?”

They nodded together.

“Holy shit! Maybe there is really some esoteric basis to that area of the Alboran Sea,” she hypothesized. “That could explain the sinking of the twin Nazi ships at the same time.”

“Oh, I have one for you,” Purdue interrupted her, waving the logbook pages in the air. “The mummified bodies on the wreck? Hear this… Raul is not the first Red Messiah, Nina. Here is your answer.”

“Shoot,” she urged.

“His great grandfather was the previous Red Messiah of the Inca prophecy. According to these journals, he was abducted from his parents’ home by Nazi soldiers looking for gold to ransack for Hitler’s hoard. The Black Sun, of course, knew about his significance, so they had the same plans for him in Spain. But…”

“Here it comes,” Sam jested, twirling his glass of scotch.

Purdue smiled. “While the unmarked vessel sailed back towards Argentina, he had already mind-fucked the soldiers through suggestion while they were stationed at the convent. It says here, ‘We are so very cold. So cold. We feel the uncontrollable urge to crawl into the warmest areas of the ship and wait there. For what, we do not know yet.’

“Fuckin’ hell,” Sam said, looking at the amber liquid in his glass and remembering the traumatic experience against the hull of the Cóndor. He held up his glass against the cloudy gray daylight that filtered through the tall window and smiled timidly. Finally safe, Sam reveled in the amber whiskey that mimicked the sublime yellow glow of the golden woman in the corner. Vincent’s golden woman was safely in Purdue’s keep. Sam narrowed his eyes as he inspected her form. “I wonder what is hidden in that chest.”