He heard Eickhart speak to someone on the phone, but the ambience of the house made it difficult for him to hear everything. In the conversation he heard keywords he would research later. Words such as platform, contaminants, gathering, Lanze and Purdue stood out and with his training Patrick effortlessly memorized them all as Elsa appeared, impatient, in the doorway. As he came closer to her, he heard Eickhart use a name, but he was not sure if it was the person the old man was addressing on the phone or someone in the discussion, but he memorized that too — Calisto.
"Herr Braun, as an architect, I was wondering if you could give us some advice on the window frame of this room," she said. At first Patrick thought she was jesting, but then he noticed various sample drawings of windows on the coffee table of the room.
"Considering the height of your ceiling and the amount of light you want, I would have to go with this one," he said as he pointed to one of the samples depicting a tall, wooden-frame style.
"And I was thinking that watery-looking, obscured glass instead of typical window glass. What would you say? Would it spoil the view much? I don't want everyone down there just looking in, you see?" Elsa babbled, yet she stood on the other side of the room, nowhere near the window. Patrick felt something off about her performance. Did she want him to stand at the window for a reason? In his mind he imagined scenes from action movies where men like him would be thrashed through the glass and thrown from the window.
Now she was not smiling, which actually suited him better. He never trusted people who smiled all the time — like clowns. Torn between his suspicion and her intentions, Patrick elected to slowly make his way to the window while speaking to Elsa, so that he could keep an eye on her while fooling her into mundane conversation.
"You have interesting taste, Elsa," he said, moving toward the window. His distrust was dismissed as she nodded, "Please pick the one you think best before you go. I have to get to the dusting or else this mausoleum will grow cobwebs within the day. Please excuse me." With that she left the room and Patrick was alone, unharmed and feeling especially paranoid. Like the breakfast remark that morning he could not help but feel that she had invited him up here for a reason. Her striking blue eyes constantly pinned him as if subliminally sending him a message, something he noticed again a few minutes before.
Wavering slightly in his purpose he went to the window, which did not look like it needed remodeling at all. A scowl haunted his brow as he tried to decipher the woman's odd behavior and strange request. First he looked at the especially wide windowsill outside, not seeing anything wrong with any of the structural work. Then he saw it.
Patrick's mouth fell open as he looked down over the excavation area, cordoned off for his pending construction job. Fumbling roughly for his phone he heard Eickhart's voice fall silent after ending his call. Patrick felt his heart racing. He had to make haste as not to be discovered by the old man while snapping pictures of the area stretching out below. The house had wooden floors, yet it was difficult to hear footsteps on account of the plush carpeting. He had no way of knowing when someone was approaching. From the second-story window he could see the diagram, a large occult schematic encompassing the entire building site where the chamber was to be built to house the holy relic.
"No fucking way," he whispered. "This is incredible."
He snapped a few pictures of the motif on the ground, which reminded him of pagan burial grounds and lay-line markings.
"What the fuck is going on here? The next Stonehenge?" he marveled. Its precision was flawless and completely undetectable from the ground. In the room up the hallway he heard the robotic sound of Eickhart's wheelchair moving. Briskly he put the phone back in his pocket and sat down on the couch, immersing himself in the different samples Elsa had supplied him with.
"Oh, Herr Braun!" he heard the old man call from the hallway. Patrick looked up, surprised.
"I see you are perusing our interior decorator's choices. What do you think?" Eickhart asked, stretching his neck like a curious turtle.
I think you are a sick fuck, old boy, Patrick thought, as he smiled at the boss.
"I would not change a thing, personally. The place echoes your sublime taste perfectly, but I am just a glorified builder," he said, as he rose to his feet. "You should not trust me."
Chapter 37
"Should we leave, lads?" Darwin asked his colleagues after Calisto left the room.
"No, what for?" Tommy frowned. He was driven more by curiosity as to the location of this subsea laboratory complex. Liam, however, had his usual point of view and leaned on the console board to look out the wide window.
"The sergeant is not fibbing, my friends," he said from the window and as they turned to face him they were met with a terrifying sight. "Tiamat has risen once again."
From the horizon ahead of them, a growing storm crept. Over the waves it slid at an unusual speed while thunder rumbled in the distance.
"What the fuck is happening?" Tommy asked in astonishment.
"Remember the freak storms Liam kept going on about? Well, have a look, mate," Darwin answered, as he joined Liam at the window. Over the ocean the skied darkened and the silver glimmer of the sun on the water turned to an opaque fog, which quickly smothered all visibility. Tommy stood back. He stayed on the other side of the room, mesmerized by the rolling storm.
Purdue peeked in the door.
"Gentlemen, have you seen my bodyguard? She was supposed to bring my briefcase to me." he looked up and saw what they were staring at. His eyes widened with surprise.
At once the engineers got on the wire and the mechanic ran out to get his crew to secure everything in preparation for the storm.
"Haven't seen her, sir," Tommy said with a shrug, and Purdue immediately ran to his office to make sure he got everything he needed. Then he made his way to the emergency section while the sirens echoed the warning over the intercom. The waves rose frighteningly high and crashed hard against the platform, but the steel structure remained strong.
"Tommy! Where are you going?" Liam shouted, as the engineer sped from the control room into the gaining onslaught of the saline spray, but he was ignored. Chaos rode the entire platform as men rushed all over to pack up and run for cover from the unexpected freak storm.
Below, in the laboratory, Nina had finished analyzing the artifact. Sam was loading all his pictures onto his laptop and saved each copy to a drive for Purdue's records. Outside in the corridor the other scientists appeared to be sharing something secret, their faces contorted in concern.
"That looks serious," Sam said, as he motioned his head toward them. Nina was curious. She nodded and made her way to them as Sam watched. The Spear was back in its chest and the machine was off, but her computer still displayed the relic and its different metallurgic values next to a graph, which reported that it consisted mainly of iron, silver and gold.
When she returned, she looked perplexed.
"Remember the strange storms the mechanic and his one colleague reported as coming from nowhere?" she asked.
"No, I don't really recall…"
"They said that the weather satellite system would show the area as clear, but since the discovery of the Spear, these storms frequently battered Deep Sea One without warning. Maybe the relic is causing it?" she wondered.
"The weather is controlled by a religious icon brought up from the ocean floor?" Sam said in his most ridiculing tone. This was just all becoming too much for his logical deduction.