“Look!” Agatha said, pointing at a building on their left. “It’s the Biblioteca. Would it not be ironic if the Library of Forbidden Books was located just there, under the actual library,” she marveled. Purdue nodded in agreement. It would have been some kind of fluke had it been so, but his mapping system was almost a 100 percent correct and it did not direct them to the actual library at all. In fact, they were to pass it by quite a distance yet.
Eventually the Ca’Foscari University main seat entrance came into view. By way of the last astronomical mapping diagram, Purdue’s tablet had calculated they were to go below just off the Sestiere of Dorsoduro, an architecturally beautiful structure in white stone, mirroring the white university building in its close proximity.
“Just look out for prying eyes. This is the darkest part of the bridge I can find, but we have to slowly submerge and try not to make any noise,” Purdue whispered. His sister nodded, casting a look toward the still blackness of the channel that would soon engulf her. “Agatha,” his voice pierced her fears and she shot a fearful gaze at her brother.
“David, do you realize that in the near future Venice might be the modern Atlantis?” she asked in a robotic tone that hinted at her rising apprehension about the dive. “It is as if the Adriatic is just waiting for the opportune moment to swallow it up and hide it forever. And people like you and Nina and Sam will be looking for it in a few thousand years.”
He placed a gentle hand on his sister’s shaking shoulders, “There is nothing that is going to confront you down there, all right? Trust me, I have seen the channels under water. It is just murk and muck and ancient bulks of petrified wood lodged in the clay to hold up the buildings,” he smiled, keeping his tone as tranquil and nonchalant as possible. “Now, we have to find the Library of Forbidden Books, my dear sibling, or else the entire world as we know it will be destroyed.”
Under cover of the bridge she stood unmoved, her eyes frozen in contemplation. In the faint light of the buildings nearby, Agatha looked like a death omen, her tall and skinny frame streamlined by black PVC and rubber and her blonde hair radiating wildly like a halo of insanity around her pallid face. Doom-like, her words came to Purdue as he started into the channel, breaking the surface with his feet.
“What a queer notion you have, David. In fact, if we do not go ahead with this plan the world would be perfectly safe. Yet you think it the other way round? If we leave the library where it is in its watery grave, unknown and lost in myth, Meiner will never have his compound to kill the world,” she recited evenly. Her eyes suddenly darted to him, “Why do you always have to amass power just because it is within your reach, David? All your quests for dangerous things and the power they promised, things you had eventually claimed, where did they bring you?”
“Now is hardly the time, Agatha,” he urged with a deepening scowl, anxious to disappear from the surface, yet he knew that she had to be convinced, at least answered. He knew his sister. She would stay put, indifferent to the idea of being arrested or seized, until she had received a satisfactory reason. And he was at the receiving end of her tenacity at the worst time. “We have to go. I shall explain later.”
“You will explain now.”
“Christ, Agatha!”
“Now, David.”
“If I have the formula Meiner needs, I will have leverage,” he admitted, uncharacteristically frantic at being possibly discovered.
“Leverage for what?” she asked.
“Anything that might befall us that we need to get out of, of course. Nothing specific,” he hissed impatiently. “Now come, let’s go!”
“If you had not set off to unearth evil things that needed to remain entombed, David, you would not be needing leverage for the lives of your associates, do you realize?” she contested.
“I am aware of that! But arguing about damage already done during a few years of bad judgment is redundant. We have to deal with our situation in the here and now, first and foremost. Let the blaming and “I told you so” come later, after I have gotten us all out of the trouble my excursions had dumped us into!” he implored, looking around for any sign of detection. “In effect, I need to retrieve something evil to destroy the ultimate evil, and I cannot do it without you.”
It was the truth. He could not gain access to the hidden knowledge of centuries without the help of the woman he had rescued from the claws of the council and its sick, twisted old brotherhood. His research had exposed much to him since he had spoken to Meiner, much as it pained him. The lore about the Library of Forbidden Books told of a custodian who had to be ever-present, a guardian who would not allow the knowledge to be perused by threat of death.
Not two days before did he learn why the sister he had liberated from Izaak Geldenhuys was not herself. Genetically and biologically she was, but the Agatha Purdue he had spent his infancy and early childhood was gone. Brainwashed by the Order of the Black Sun on the order of the council, she was resuscitated from brain death in the cellar of Bloem’s chamber of horrors. Barely alive, she was immediately introduced to the same vaccine that Dr. Alfred Meiner had been administering to the members of the council for decades.
It was a wondrous substance, all medical and molecular details aside, that managed to maintain synapse function even after cellular deterioration would normally shut down neural activity. The comatose woman was treated with Meiner’s mock immortality juice, but with an added ingredient — psychological alteration. By means of subliminal programming she was subjected to Nazi doctrine twenty-four hours per day, apart from her behavioral adjustment training. The latter had induced a nifty byproduct of the SS and its charm.
Agatha Purdue was ultimately stripped of her homicidal inhibitions.
Chapter 33
Agatha just stared at Purdue with her big bulging eyes, her mind calculating the risks, the rewards, the timing, the outcomes. He was begging her with his eyes to trust him just one last time and she could discern his sincerity. Suddenly her legs moved. Purdue sighed in sheer relief as she joined him on the mossy ledge while he slowly dipped his body into the cold dark water. His body coursed with adrenaline as they prepared to go under. It seemed that he had not lost his old affinity for adventure after all, but he was not about to share this information with Agatha. She was still too reluctant to join in his pursuit to know that he was not doing it entirely out of necessity.
“Just hold on to the rope. The water is not deep enough for our light not to be seen, so as soon as we submerge, I will be moving in under the building,” he told her. Agatha listened, wide-eyed, and truthfully Purdue had no idea if her attention was on him or on the nightmarish thoughts she harbored about the dive.
“David, the bloody water doesn’t get deeper than five meters,” she reminded him with quite a load of annoyance in her hard whisper. “How the hell can the forbidden library be under the water? Look at this! I could probably see the channel’s floor if I shone my light straight down.”
“Just follow me, Agatha. I know what to do,” Purdue sighed. With reluctance, once more, Agatha dragged her shivering carcass after her brother, always the sidekick to his odd explorations. Hoping for the best and expecting the absolute worst, she followed the ripples where his head had just disappeared under the surface of the grimy water. Clutching the guide rope Purdue had latched to them both, Agatha started paddling through the dark, cold liquid. Like a ghastly womb it enfolded her and introduced her to the oblivion she suffered before birth, only this time she had a consciousness of it, and it was deeply unpleasant to her imagination and its suggestions.