The Vault of Hercules

Chapter 3

“What are you doing here?” a loud voice with a heavy African accent asked behind Purdue. It startled him, but it was too late to react. A cold blade pressed against his throat, just under his jawline, and the man's large body weighed hard against Purdue's back. “Move.”

Purdue obeyed. He stumbled forward into plain sight, feeling the blade edge dangerously grazing his skin as he moved. Two of the men in the circle recognized him and jumped up. Another wild exchange of words ensued, now about the tall, white-haired stranger. Purdue assumed the two men who knew him were trying to relay to the others who he was, but he could not be sure. All stared at him with suspicion directed through bloodshot eyes. Raising his hands in surrender, Purdue waited for their verdict, but his only interest was in the wooden box on the floor.

He frowned. The detail on the box was carved in something he’d never seen before, yet what he discerned next shook him beyond comprehension. Symbols in antique languages had been carved into the side of the large wooden box. He recognized Sumerian, Babylonian, and Aramaic, among others. But right at the center of the motif, a Swastika ran his blood cold.

“Impossible,” he mentioned to himself.

“What?” the man behind him shouted, eliciting a chorus of subdued warnings from the others. From their body language and tone of voice, Purdue figured they were reprimanding the man for raising his voice due to the frail geological composition of the mountain over them. He pushed Purdue and breathed hard into his ear. “What is it, Intruder?”

“Nothing. Nothing, really,” Purdue answered as mildly as he could while he used his sharp brain's freakish ability to record information to memorize everything he observed on the trunk. The wooden box was about the size of a coffee table, but fashioned from crude wood. It was fixed together by what looked like tin or pewter clasps.

No. Could it really be that simply constructed? he wondered. If the Ark holds the power it is reputed to, there’s no way it could be contained by mere locks and hinges like those. Either this is a decoy, a sham, or the Power of God leaves much to be desired.

“Come, sit down, Effendi,” one of the two familiar men said to Purdue. He ordered the man behind Purdue to put away his weapon. Carefully, Purdue evaded the still static blade and joined the circle, taking his place beside one of the Egyptians he recognized — a man he’d hired to remove the so-called Holy Box from the now caved in chapel.

“They know you, but they do not trust you,” the man informed Purdue. “Also, they do not speak English, so I will have to translate for you.”

Purdue nodded gratefully, his light blue eyes following the knife wielding Ethiopian until the man sat down opposite him. With bloodshot eyes the big African leered at him, reminding Purdue much of the Somalian pirates he and his party had encountered while salvaging the DKM Geheimnis a few years back along the eastern coastline of Africa towards Egypt. The whites of the man's eyes accentuated the blackness of his irises and his teeth gleamed in the faint light, especially when his lips curled back in a victorious sneer. It gave Purdue chills to be surrounded by such barbaric men, but he had to remind himself that he was the intruder here. It was he who had entered their land and thus he had to obey their orders and traditions. Here, his money held practically no sway, apart from those few men who were on his payroll.

“Effendi, the men feel that the box must remain away from the Europeans,” his translator said. “You cannot have it. The men here,” he hesitated, but was egged on by his colleagues, “think that they would sooner skin you and feed your bones to the wild dogs than to allow you the Holy Box.”

Purdue's stomach knotted itself into a tiny ball at the thought, but he nodded sincerely to exhibit his concurrence in the matter. It pained him that he might have the legendary Ark of the Covenant right here in front of him, but he was not going to risk ending up on their plates for it. He would rather steal it than openly protest and meet a gruesome fate. The translator reaffirmed Purdue's agreement to the small council of locals, and after some debate and some truly frightening, prison-flavored stares, Purdue was allowed to stay without restraint.

“Effendi, I just have to remind you,” the Egyptian translator whispered to Purdue, “this is a secret council you are attending and nothing said in here is to be repeated outside.”

Purdue looked surprised. “What the hell am I going to do once I get outside? Tell everyone what I saw?”

The man shrugged. “You’re here, after all, to take our treasures away. Are you not? It is only by my intervention, Effendi, that you are still alive.”

“Noted,” Purdue whispered back to the man. “I won't tell a soul, I swear. It’s not worth my life.”

“That is the smart answer, Effendi,” the Egyptian smiled and went back to listening to the rest of the discussion.

“You, white man!” a speaker addressed Purdue suddenly. “I know some English from your television. Are you taking the Holy Box when you go? Are you telling your thieving friends?”

“They are not thieves,” Purdue tried to explain, but immediately realized that he was lying through his teeth. It was the second time today that this had happened and he hated it. He stopped and looked down for a moment. He tried to respond in a more truthful tone, although he had to admit that he wanted their Holy Box with all his heart. He cleared his throat. “They are thieves.”

A resounding chorus of approval rose up among those present.

“But I will not steal this… Holy Box… from you,” Purdue promised. “It is yours. Besides,” he laughed to himself, “what exactly are we going to do with the Power of God?”

“Destroy cultures for power and dominion over the world,” the man shouted.

Others agreed. Another leaned forward to look at Purdue. “The only white man you can trust is a corpse!” Once more the cheers sounded, and Purdue nervously looked to his only allies, the Egyptians. To his horror, they only shrugged at the truth spoken by the other men.

“Of all the times and places to confront one's errors…” Purdue muttered, but his Egyptian workman reassured him, “They value honesty over everything else, Effendi. Don't worry. They hate you. They do not trust you. But because you speak the truth, they might not kill you.”

“M-m-might?” Purdue gasped. “Wait, they might not kill me?”

“Hush, or they will think we are conspiring,” the Egyptian commanded.

“Oh sweet Jesus,” Purdue mumbled as the men continued their discussion. While their attention was off of him, he took the time to scrutinize the interesting box. It didn’t resemble the popular etchings and depictions he’d seen of the Ark, but it was in every other way an exact counterfeit of what centuries of texts had reported. The wood was of acacia, as far as his knowledge of wood served him, yet there were no gold inlays and no gilded adornments. Purdue did notice, however, the cherubim mentioned in the scriptures. How could this be? Was the Ark just another embellished image of God's glory meant to entice the faithful towards a glittery redemption, or was its rawness a testament to the true modesty of a relic that held immeasurable power?

Still, the signs that appeared in the wood — those that did not make it into the historical and Biblical texts — befuddled Purdue. Nina would know what this is, he thought. Nina would be able to tell me why that unholy sigil is part of the motif. If only she could see it.

As the discussion Purdue had no understanding of continued, he considered the possibilities of the box being a fraud. Perhaps the Nazis had claimed it, eventually losing it to another secret and baleful organization, before creating something similar to fool the people. No, that is too ludicrous.

The fact remained that Purdue was trapped among men who would not care to see him dead in a place where nobody would know to look for him. Of all the times he’d been imprisoned, kidnapped, and held up, this was the most threatening of all. After all, his only power was money and some technical wisdom. Neither of those appealed to these local people who only wanted to keep what was theirs. They could not be bought or convinced, nor could they be appeased or flattered. All he could do was hope that his Egyptian advocates would keep him from getting his throat slit in a godforsaken cave on the Dark Continent.

“You know, so you have to die,” one of the Ethiopians declared, looking straight at Purdue.

“What?” Purdue gasped, grasping the arm of one of the other Egyptians in panic. “No, let's talk about this. Look, I don't want your box.”

“You keep saying that, but you paid these men money to help you dig up the church where it had been resting. Now you’ve destroyed the church too. If we hadn’t kept the Holy Box in this cave from a long time back, so many of your kind would have stolen it already!” the Ethiopian shouted in broken phrases.

Purdue reached out his open hands in surrender to ease the excitement among them, but the Egyptian pushed his hands down rapidly. Through barely parted lips he advised, “Effendi, do not do that. Hold very still. Say nothing.”

One by one they started pulling out their weapons, all waiting for some sort of command to kill Purdue. His skin was still covered with sand, as pale as the rocks around them. Wide blue eyes darted between the men as Purdue readied himself for confrontation.

They might kill me today, but by God I will take a few of them with me before I go, he thought, his heart thundering in his ears. Purdue drew in a deep breath, vowing that, should he get out of this deadly predicament, he would arm himself with a long distance weapon in future. But for now he was unarmed and scared to death in a cave in Africa, outnumbered by a territorial band of men with no moral code.

“Purdue Effendi,” the Egyptian man whispered as the mob grew louder, “when I say, you run to the left as fast as you can.”

“Straight into the wall then?” Purdue asked, panting in terror. His white hair was drenched in sweat as he looked toward the dense wall of the cavern. “Are you daft?”

“Just do it. Run into the wall,” the Egyptian said.

“Why should I trust you?” Purdue wheezed nervously, as the last man drew his ivory dagger.

“My partners and me; we built this structure into the mountain. It is we who designed this place to trap any would-be thieves of the Holy Box, Effendi,” he explained in a steady tone so as not to arouse suspicion. “Ever heard of the terrible traps set in ancient pyramids to seal the fate of thieves?”

“Of course,” Purdue nodded.

“Who built those architectural traps?” he asked the terrified billionaire.

Purdue smiled, “Egyptians.”