Nina suddenly realised that her desire to discover the ancient artefact’s secrets had indeed overcome the need to delay doing so. It was a trap she had fallen into before, but never had restraining her archaeological urges been so crucial. ‘Although yeah, we do need to be accurate,’ she added quickly. ‘We’ll take measurements for eighty-three and eighty-four degrees as well. And we should double check that we’ve got the sun’s absolute highest position in the sky — it isn’t always exactly at noon.’
Rasche spoke to Kroll, suspicious, but the leader shook his head. ‘We must be precise. But,’ he went on, with a stern glare at the three archaeologists, ‘if I think you are deliberately slowing the work, you will be punished.’
‘Yeah, we got it,’ said Nina. That meant that they had some leeway to hold things up; the question was how far Kroll’s patience would stretch. ‘Okay, let’s get the other measurements.’
The trio did so, Macy taking notes. Once they had an average result, Banna turned the bronze dial to move the pointer to the indicated position. ‘All right,’ Nina said, ‘we know from Andreas’ text that the spring’s latitude is five ticks from the pointer. So now we work backwards; we measure the angle where the sun would have to be to cast a shadow on that point, and then,’ she indicated the laptop, ‘we keep the same longitude, but keep entering latitude coordinates moving northwards by steps until the sun’s height there matches what we’ve got. That’ll tell us how much farther north the spring is from the tomb.’
Kroll nodded. ‘And then we retrace Alexander’s route until we reach the correct area.’
‘Yes,’ said Banna. ‘The text describes Alexander going north through mountains to reach a sea. Based on the historical accounts of his travels, that must be the Alborz range in Iran.’
‘So when his route gets to the right latitude,’ Nina continued, ‘there’s the spring.’
‘Then find it,’ said Rasche, unimpressed.
Nina and Banna repeated the process of calculating the sun’s position, this time placing the tip of the imaginary shadow on the fifth marker along the slot from the pointer. ‘The sun would be one-point-eight degrees lower in the sky than at Alexandria,’ she finally reported, having slowed things for as long as she could. ‘So now, start putting in more northerly coordinates until we get a match.’
Kroll, still in charge of the laptop, began the laborious procedure. He entered a new position one degree north of the original, scrolled through the results to find the angle of the sun at midday, then recited it to the trio. The process was repeated with gradually increasing precision until eventually a match was found. ‘Thirty-seven degrees, thirty-seven minutes north!’ Nina announced, despite everything still feeling a thrill of discovery. ‘That makes a difference of just over six and a half degrees of latitude between Alexander’s tomb and the spring.’
Kroll went to one of the maps. ‘Show me!’
She exchanged a concerned look with Macy. ‘We don’t know exactly where Alexander crossed the mountain—’
‘That does not matter for now,’ said Kroll. ‘Show me the general area — that will be enough to start making plans.’
‘Okay, then.’ Nina put her finger on Alexandria, at the map’s bottom left. ‘So here’s the tomb. We go north to thirty-seven degrees and thirty-seven minutes,’ she moved her hand upwards, ‘and then east until we’re above the Alborz mountains.’ She sidestepped, sliding her fingertip over the paper. ‘So through Turkey, above Syria and Iraq, across northern Iran to… oh.’
Rasche whirled to face Kroll. ‘I knew she was wasting our time!’
The Nazi leader’s flabby jaw trembled with fury. ‘I warned you what would happen if you tried to deceive us!’
‘I wasn’t!’ Nina protested.
‘Then explain this!’ He stabbed his forefinger at the map. Her path across it had trailed to a stop in the Caspian Sea, many miles off shore.
‘I can’t! You saw the numbers — you read them out to us! That’s the result we got.’
‘Then your work was wrong,’ said Rasche. ‘We do not tolerate mistakes!’ He addressed Kroll again. ‘I should kill one of them as a warning.’
The obese Nazi glared at Nina, considering his subordinate’s suggestion… then shook his head. ‘No. They would not dare give us false results — it would be too easy for us to check their calculations.’
‘The numbers were right,’ Nina insisted. ‘Which means something else is wrong. We need to go through the Greek text on the fish again, see if there’s something we missed.’
‘The Arab had a translation when we captured him,’ said Rasche.
‘Bring it; it will save time,’ Kroll said. ‘No, wait. It is late — take them to the prison,’ he decided instead. ‘Dr Banna will read the text during the night. We shall begin again in the morning.’
Rasche’s reply in German was disapproving. ‘Even prisoners need food,’ Kroll snapped. ‘Take them away.’
Rasche issued orders, and the guards escorted Nina, Macy and Banna from the room. As they left, Kroll spoke. ‘Dr Wilde? I do not make empty threats. You will locate the Spring of Immortality… or you will suffer extreme consequences. Do you understand?’
‘Yeah, I do,’ said Nina, trying to conceal her fear.
‘Gross,’ said Macy, pushing away the metal tray containing the half-eaten remains of her meal. ‘This stuff tastes like it came from World War Two.’
‘At least they gave us something,’ Nina replied. She had been hungry enough to eat the whole of the unappetising mash of boiled potatoes, shredded cabbage and grey mystery meat.
‘Yeah, it’ll help us keep up our strength so we can bust out. Oh no, wait, we’re in frickin’ Alcatraz!’ The young woman swept a hand around their cell. The door was a heavy slab of metal with a small peephole, while the only opening in the concrete walls was a ventilation slot high on one wall, too narrow to fit even an arm through. ‘And they’re not going to let us go — whatever deal you made with them,’ she added sharply. ‘You really think they’ll give you a lifelong supply of magic water? They’re using you, Nina! Kroll wants you to believe you’ve got a chance of being cured so you’ll find the spring!’
‘You think I don’t know that?’
Macy blinked. ‘Wait, you do?’
‘Of course I do! I don’t trust him any farther than I could throw him, and… well, the guy’s a frickin’ blimp!’
‘So you do not want to find the water?’ Banna asked, looking up from his translation notes.
‘Are you kidding? Obviously I want to find it, if there’s any chance at all that it might help me. Right now, though, I’m just trying to keep us all alive. The longer we can string them along, the more chance we have of getting out of this.’
‘So you weren’t really going to cooperate with these Nazis?’ Macy asked, now considerably happier. ‘I knew it!’ Nina gave her a questioning glance. ‘Well, I was fairly sure. Pretty much.’
‘Thanks for your confidence,’ said the redhead with light sarcasm.
Macy blushed. ‘Well, you did sound convincing.’
‘The hard part was trying not to convince myself. I mean, he was offering me a possible cure. I can’t deny that I considered it.’
The admission caught the young woman by surprise. ‘Oh, wow. God, yeah; it must have been hard for you. I’m sorry.’ She took Nina’s hand in sympathy.
Nina smiled, grateful. ‘Thanks.’
‘Okay, so… what the hell do we do now?’
‘All we can do is delay locating the spring for as long as possible and hope someone finds us.’
Banna shook his head miserably. ‘What chance is there of that? We are not even on the same continent any more!’