The Vault of Hercules

Chapter 10

There was much tension in Djibouti, a country on the Gulf of Aden off the horn of Africa. Rita Medley and her husband, Guido Bruno, were waiting for an order they’d placed in Ethiopia to arrive, suffering the sweltering sun and dry air in their temporary chateau on the coastline just off of Fagal.

“Have you heard from our associates in Malta yet?” she asked her husband, who was buttering a croissant with cream cheese and cayenne pepper, as if the atmospheric heat was not torrid enough.

“Don't you worry about them. They’ll come through. Just give them two days to locate David Purdue, that's all they need to find that mook and get back our chest,” he said in his shrill voice. He took a bite of the croissant, crust spilling onto his brown, fine-silk shirt.

It made Rita cringe to watch the shirt exhibit dark, wet crescents of sweat. She couldn’t fathom why Guido would suffer like that just to dress upper class, as he put it. First, it was the Italian shoes at the desert dig site, and now it was a silk shirt in the fever of Djibouti's hot, sandy landscapes. Another thing that bugged her was how the snazzy dresser ate like an animal, making a mess everywhere. A self-professed perfectionist would hardly allow such a messy environment, but she knew by now not to inflame his temper with trivial points that negated his delusions of grandeur. In fact, she suspected that Guido only used the term to justify his unnecessary pedantic bullshit, which he utilized just to be difficult. To him, being an asshole was synonymous with being refined.

Their trips to support her excursions were always like taking a two-year-old to a classical concerto. Guido's tantrums and passive aggressive control was sickening, but she needed his money to obtain what she needed for her hunts. Everything has a price, and hers was that he would accompany her on expeditions that his family funded and test her passion for archaeology and cultural anthropology to its farthest limits. She never loved him. Medley found her convenient marriage bearable, considering the benefits included for her career. Sometimes she doubted that it was a cheap price to pay, especially in times like these.

“They're here,” his voice punished her peace. He was standing at the window, curtain carelessly drawn away in his rough hand.

“You should stop doing that, love,” she advised. “One of these days a goddamn bullet will come ripping through directed at your skull when you flare your position like that. Curtains are there to conceal our spying… and for a good reason.”

He sneered at her. “Like you know anything about spying. Like you know anything about bullets. Keep your dictation for the brainless mooks who dig in the ground for you on your treasure hunts, okay?”

“Don't forget how much money your family has made from my treasure hunts, my darling,” she snapped back. Usually Prof. Medley kept her tone docile, but this time she wanted to remind him that she was not some bimbo he’d rented for a twenty-minute pleasure trip. Before he could respond there was a knock at the door. “Boss, we brought him.”

“Bring him in,” Guido commanded, glancing back at Rita as if to assert his Alpha status in the most juvenile manner. Rita said nothing. She took up her glass of ice tea, gripping it properly so that the beads of water from the vapor would not make the smooth glass slip from her fingers. The icy water entwined with flavors of cinnamon and lemon was direly needed in the high temperature of the day for a woman like Rita, already not very tolerant of warm places.

A bloodied, but quiet man was dragged into the room. Face down, he could hardly use his feet under the rough handling of Guido's henchmen who threw him into a chair and cuffed him. Rita cocked her head to see who he was, but under the mess of bloody black locks of hair over his face it was difficult to ascertain. What disturbed her most, oddly, was his silence. Clearly he was in terrible agony from the gunshot wound that had grazed his neck and the other that had made a big hole in his chest, yet he did not cry out or moan.

Rita had unfortunately become accustomed to the hellish practices of her husband's family once she had wed him a few years before, but she found that unusual things bothered her more than the average beatings and threats she’d played witness to. This man's quiet suffering was one of those unsettling things, and it evoked her pity, something she’d worked very hard at repressing. In fact, that very repression was imperative to her survival in a family under the reins of Cosa Nostra.

The man looked incredibly familiar, but she couldn’t quite place him, so she stood there, drinking her ice tea calmly until his identity was revealed. Guido cocked his gun and shoved it against the man's head. Rita was alarmed that the only reaction her brain had was to hope that any shots to the head would not spoil her floor.

She sipped her tea more quickly. Christ, what kind of heartless bitch have I become? This isn’t right. I’m not handling this right. My God, I’m not even concerned about the man's life an ounce more than I am about the mess he would make!

With Guido's eyes constantly on her to show off how macho he was, Rita made sure that her secret moral chastisement did not show on her face. By now she could easily ace poker games, having graduated from the Sicilian Mafia Wives' Club of Indifferent Expressions. “You know where David Purdue went with the Ark. Now you will tell us and I might not kill you,” Guido grinned.

The man only shook his head. That was unacceptable. Guido raised his hand and brought down the butt of the weapon on the base of the man's neck, finally eliciting a shriek of pain from the captive. In anguish he threw back his head, revealing his face to Rita. She would have gasped, but it would only make her look weak. At once she recognized him as the man who had helped Purdue escape with the chest.

Adjo Kira? she thought in surprise. Didn’t we kill him on that ledge?

Obviously they hadn’t. Here he was in the flesh and alive, although not too well. And at the rate her husband was going, Adjo would not be well enough for much longer. Regrettably, even with his pathetic traits and childish attitude, her husband was well versed in torture techniques and his forte was the intricate art of maiming. In her corner of the room Rita hoped that Adjo would not get to see that side of Guido, but thus far it appeared as if he were teetering dangerously close to that discovery.

“The next time you don't give me an answer I will shoot you,” Guido threatened. Rita had finished her ice tea, but she dared not move now to put the glass in the sink. It would break her husband's thrall over the Egyptian, and that would spell a world of misery for her. Guido shouted, “Where did Purdue take the Ark?”

Adjo said nothing, because he did not know. With every second that passed without an answer, the silence became pregnant with rage and apprehension. Rita's knuckles ached from the tension in her hands as she waited for a response. Her eyes quietly darted from the Egyptian's inert lips to her husband's trigger finger. The latter was white against the side of the trigger of the gun, shivering slightly as the pressure on the steel pin mounted. She held her breath as she noticed Adjo's lips still not moving. A loud click ensued from Guido's gun, sending Adjo into a jerk of terror. Rita's eyes fell shut from shock and relief. The men in the room laughed with their boss, but their laughter was nothing but the cackle of wicked bullies that were running out of patience.

“Oh, for God's sake, just tell us where Purdue is!” she suddenly cried out. Luckily for Rita her exclamation came out as bossy and annoyed, which impressed her husband enough for him not to have an opinion, for a change. In truth, Rita had only let loose to break the momentum of the looming execution and slightly defuse the immediate trouble. It was her warning to Adjo to say something, anything, before he would die by their hands a second time.

Rolling her eyes noticeably, she slammed the glass down and exited the room. “Let me know when we have Purdue's location. I have better things to do.”

Guido had no problem with his wife's attitude, having no idea that, in the secret compartments of her heart, she was prating for the safety of the Egyptian guide at his mercy. Rita's heart raced as she waited for that killing shot to thunder in her trail, but it still did not come. Through the living room of the house she walked briskly, as if hearing that kill shot with more distance between her and the gun would somehow make the man's death less harsh. But she knew even at vague earshot it would affect her badly and there was nothing she could do to procrastinate the imminent murder.

Still, there was no gunshot, only the sound of shouting and the familiar sporadic scuffling as they slapped Adjo around. Rita turned at the end of the small hallway that led to her bedroom and bit her finger between her front teeth in deep pondering. Between what she wished she could do to keep Guido from killing Adjo, and presenting a solution for the location of Dave Purdue, she did not have much hope. Even if she could find the billionaire cheat who stole what they’d come to steal first, it would only guarantee Adjo's doom. If Guido had no use for him he was as good as dead anyway.

It was silent now. Rita felt a twinge of alarm at the silence. Again she was caught between the extremes of the situation — either she had to listen to the melody of torture and threats, or she had to worry about the devastating possibilities of peace and quiet. Her life sucked irreparably, she decided.

But ultimately, until she reached the Vault of Hercules she had no choice but to keep on keeping on, as they say. Until then she had to tolerate the condescension and emotional abuse, the perpetual fear of rival attacks and the tiptoe care with which she had to speak when in the company of the Familia. Even brothers killed each other without flinching, calling it honor or loyalty. They would not think twice about wasting a Celtic-blooded wife of a lesser-respected son if she put one foot wrong. For now, Prof. Rita Medley had to deal with the world of bullets and blood, where rules only mattered when employed for the cause.

A loud thump sounded from the kitchen area and more impish laughter confirmed that the captive had fallen from the chair. Rita felt sick. Ashamed for the path that she’d chosen to reach her career goal, she hated herself, questioning if it was worth all of the humiliation. To her astonishment, it was a question she could literally not answer. That was how far gone she was to reach the Vault of Hercules, how desperate she was that she would listen to a man being tortured for her endgame.

Rita heard footsteps approach her, the sound of Italian shoes clacking on the slash stone floor.

“Fuckin' imbecile passed out,” he mentioned nonchalantly as he whipped out his white handkerchief to dress his bleeding knuckles.

“Did he tell you were to find Purdue?” she asked, hoping that she sounded as stern as she tried to.

“Nah,” Guido replied. “I told the boys to take a lunch break. That Egyptian's wounds are making him weaker than I’d hoped, so he won't last long if I keep at him. As soon as he has had some recuperating time, I'll make him a proposition.”

“A proposition. You?” she scoffed with a wry smile. “I can’t imagine you paying him.”

“Who said anything about money?” he frowned, taking his place by her side at the window. His cold, black eyes looked over the sapphire waters of the bay of Bab al-Mandab Strait. Guido sighed, “If he does not comply, we’ll just kill his family.”