The Lost Crown of the Knights Templar

10 Nina Gets a New Gig

Nina tried calling Purdue, but his personal assistant told her that he was in the Netherlands for an exclusive meeting that she could not disclose. The information somewhat unsettled Nina, especially given that Purdue had previously stepped over very perilous borders during other similarly spun meetings. These gatherings usually involved shady dealings between high society members with agendas way beyond the next merger or lucrative proposition.

Purdue was, whether he liked it or not, a very prominent member of high society. Now that he had been absolved by most of the speculative types from his previous misdemeanors towards the Black Sun and other élite conglomerates, he was back in his old position as billionaire playboy. However, even with the political and business climate concerning his recent history settling, Purdue was far from the man they used to know.

With everything he had endured, learned, lost, and fought in the past five years or so, the jovial philanthropist and explorer had turned slightly. More cynical and apathetic these days, though equally fearless, he was now wary of those he used to charm into his business associations. Still, he was attending to assure those watching from the sinister shadows of the annually held private conference that he was back in charge of all his holdings and open for allegiances.

“Would you like me to ask him to call you back when he calls tonight, Dr. Gould?” Nora, Purdue’s new PA, asked Nina courteously. Nina liked Nora. She was Scottish, charming, and efficient.

“No worries, Nora,” Nina refrained. “I just wanted to say hello and catch up a bit. I’m on my way back to Oban tonight, so I will not be in Edinburgh by the time he gets back anyway.”

“Alright, Dr. Gould. Keep well and have a good trip home,” Nora beamed over the handset.

“Ta, will do,” Nina replied, ending the call shortly after. She shook her head and took a drag of her Marlboro. “Right back out of the frying pan, hey Purdue?” She sighed, surveying her clothing in piles on the bed, ready to be packed and lugged into the car. She knew which exclusive secret party Purdue was attending and it made something in the pit of her stomach stir. Like the punishment of a bad batch of seafood burritos and cheap wine, her stomach cramped at the thought of him plunging right back into the cesspool of super rich monsters and charlatans he had just managed to crawl free from. But like with Sam, she dared not say anything. She dared not pry, warn, or offer her help.

“Well done, Purdue. You just do what you do best, my darling. You just keep charming the the patrons at the Bilderberg Conference and see how quickly you end up in a fucking oubliette under the floor of some Nazi Mutti’s kitchen,” she grumbled as she tossed her once neatly folded garments carelessly into her suitcase. Nina was goddamn tired of trying to support Sam and Purdue, usually to her own detriment.

What did baffle her, though, was how emotional she was about both men and how she was unable to convince Sam to trust her enough. It was unlike her to give a damn about most things, especially the petty reactions of men, yet she felt uncomfortably unhappy about Sam’s rejection and Purdue’s unavailability. It was not so much that she felt locked out, but that she was weakened by loyalty and friendship, and Nina hated that.

For some reason her only consolatory thought was to see Father Harper. Nina, the heretic, the anti-Catholic, the shunner of religion, wished to see a Catholic priest to feel better? Nina scoffed at the travesty of her feelings, but she had to concede that it was her true desire to just speak to the giant in black robes at the St. Columbanus museum of historical repression.

“No absolution. Just talk,” she told herself as she closed the door of the Bed & Breakfast she’d stayed at.

When she arrived in Oban, the mid-afternoon sun was strong and unusually solitary in its presence above, with but a few clouds to populate the sky. The wind was mild, filling the town with the odor of the ocean and primrose flowers as she drove home. She decided to moor at her house first for a bit of a rest, unpacking and getting back into her domestic routine again before bothering the priest with her reluctant disclosure.

After all, she was a heathen, not quite an atheist, and generally just not a fan of organized religion. Still, she wished to speak to Father Harper in his capacity as counsellor, not for any spiritual assistance. Even though the esteemed Dr. Nina Gould was not a member of his congregation, Father Harper never turned her away. Perhaps he was of the opinion that he could eventually sway her to his god or even just to attend one service. On the other hand, he was far too intelligent to be that naïve. Anyone with a grain of perception of psychology could read that Dr. Gould was a resolute woman in all her opinions and beliefs, not that she could not admit when she was mistaken.

Her house on the steep slant from the street leered over her like a jilted lover. The porch light was burning, as she had left it on.

“Shit, electricity is going to be through the roof again,” she mumbled as she walked up the cement walkway, lamenting the lawn’s growth that she could simply not keep up with. Untidy stems reached across the cracked stone and concrete where she labored with every pace.

Getting old, Nina. Your temple at Ronnie’s Fitness down awaits. You didn’t even bother for a single workout at Masterton’s in Quartermile territory when you were in Edinburgh, you slothy bitch, she reprimanded herself. This is why you’re puffing like a locomotive up your own bloody walk!’

She finally reached the stair to the porch and flung her suitcase onto the top landing. The porch light was flickering ever so slightly, proof that her forgetting to set the timer while she was absent was taxing on the old bulb. Ignoring the burn in her legs and easing her breathing to dismiss the fact that she was a bit out of shape, she elected to skip the last three steps — successfully.

“That’s right, I still have what it takes,” she smiled through her gasps as she unlocked the front door. A frigid breath of air escaped the old stately home she’d purchased a few years before, overlooking Oban and its mostly serene blue waters.

It was dark inside, even in the pinnacle of the day’s brightness. Light was never a strong presence in her house, mostly due to the windows facing south and southwest. Their position evaded most of the sun’s course during the day, whereas those windows facing east and west had their light obscured by the large birches and rowans.

Nina liked the shadows. She worked much better in the dark, where her thoughts were contained in the musty confines of dimness, making her feel more distant from the true era she was living in. As a historian, she preferred to surround herself with old things: antiques, codices, and bureaus to store her academic notes, folders, and papers in. In fact, Nina only had a laptop because modern communication and the need for fast research merited the machine. She much preferred scribblings in her own hand and the typewriter to generate fact sheets.

As she stepped into the lobby, her inadvertent contemplation turned to the metaphors of her existence. Much as she hated that, she couldn’t stop it. The cold air in the house, along with the barren wooden floors, sporadically clothed with old Persian carpets, turned into a simile before she could direct her mind to other things. Loneliness, cold, and darkness permeated through the place she called home and Nina found herself wondering if solitude was really something she desired for the rest of her life.

Consciously, she did. There was no need or want for a partner or a pet. Freedom was pivotal, especially for someone as impulsive as she. But if she was alright with it, why did the thought even occur just because the quiet house that welcomed her felt more like Siberia than Shangri-La?

To facilitate the banishment of these morose notions, Nina happily switched on her iPod for some good and dirty hard rock while she woke up the kettle in the kitchen.

“No alcohol today. No alcohol today,” she repeated aloud as she fixed her coffee. Alcohol always made her emotional, and with the past day or two having been emotional pens of rejection and absence, it was unwise to drink at all. For the last two months, she had not done any concrete work; she’d written no dissertations nor lectured anywhere. In truth, Nina was tired. Not forever tired, but momentarily fed up with her vocation. She was worked to death on that which she hardly had to try to do well anymore, much as she loved what she did.

Black coffee and too much sugar substituted a good bourbon this time, as she dialed a number on her landline. Today, she thought, was not a good day to drink until she was useless, until she just called it a day after failing to try too many times over. It was rather demoralizing to know that one did not achieve anything the day before, especially because of one’s own timid resistance to the things that disabled productivity.

“Hello Benny? It’s Nina Gould,” she announced to the man on the phone. “Listen, not to be a pain or anything, but can I borrow your lawnmower again?”

As she bartered with the old fisherman about his lawnmower, a call waiting alert beeped in her ear.

“Benny…,” she she said, trying to ask if she could call him back. But the old man, who adored her, would not stop chatting. Nina could not afford to piss off the old Glasgow football hooligan of the 1960s or she would never get the grass cut.

Beep-beep

Beep-beep

“Listen Benny, let me call you back in a tick, okay?” she said quickly and ended the call promptly.

“Aye?” she said loudly as she took the waiting call.

“Hello? I am looking for Dr. Gould?” a man’s voice inquired.

“This is she,” Nina replied. “And you are?”

“My name is Dr. Barry Hooper and I hope you don’t mind me calling you at home, Dr. Gould, but I could not reach you on your cell phone,” the caller said.

“Oh shit!” Nina exclaimed, remembering that she had not yet switched on her phone after arriving home. Her purse was just out of reach from where her phone cord could manage.

“Excuse me?” he asked.

“No, Dr. Hooper, don’t fret. I just remembered something I forgot to do is all,” she explained cordially. “How can I help you?” she asked, stretching out her leg. With her toes, she tried to hook the sling of the purse and draw it closer as the man stated his business.

“My wife works for the London Archives and she referred me to you. My colleague and I have a bit of a conundrum on our hands and we need the expertise of a historian, I think,” Barry clarified.

Nina switched on her phone and set it down on the table, where, one by one the missed calls the doctor spoke of, came through. “And what is the nature of your predicament, doctor?”

“I would prefer if we spoke in person, Dr. Gould,” he insisted cautiously. “You see, I work for the city morgue in the Barking area in London and we may have… we think we may have stumbled on something… odd…”

Nina listened attentively, but when the missed calls on her phone yielded Sam’s number, she lost her focus.