Nina vomited into the dark as soon as she awoke. That same pungent stench she and Sam had smelled in the hidden passage was around her. Her left eye was swollen shut from the hail of fists Manni had dealt her when she had resisted capture. The other eye was alright, but she was too disorientated to pry her lids open. The bile burned in her throat, but she could not help throwing up with the stench of death and decay filling her lungs. Nina wanted to cry, but she couldn’t.
Finally, she opened her good eye to see where she was. She yelped in terror, unintentionally voicing her fright at the man staring at her from where he was hanging above her. Unlike the cadaver in the corner, the hanging man was not discolored yet. Mieke was lying in a pool of blood next to stacks of rope and tarp. She did not move. Nina could not see her breathing, and upon closer scrutiny Nina found that Mieke was naked from the waist down. Her bra was pulled taut and tied around her neck, partially covered by her bloodstained tresses.
The creak of the ropes behind her drew Nina's attention back to the hanging man. Suddenly he blinked. Nina screamed but immediately fell silent for fear of attracting unwanted attention. The man opened his mouth, but he could not speak.
“Are you still alive?” she whispered in amazement.
He nodded slowly, looking awful, a man on the brink of death. Nina’s hands were tied behind her back, but her legs were free. With great difficulty she stumbled to her feet, barely feeling her legs because she must have sat in the same position for so long. The only thing she could find to cut her restraints was the lid of an old can of beans lying in a heap of trash.
“Good God, I can’t believe this filth," she mumbled, aiming for the disgusting can and its slimy contents oozing over the hairs of mold. Nina gagged, but she managed to keep it in as she sank to her haunches in the dirty toilet paper, messy bandages, and broken bottles to free her hands. Carefully she sawed at the tight rope around her wrists with the jagged lid of the ghastly can. She nicked her skin a few times, but she didn’t care.
She had to find Purdue and Sam, but she did not know how to escape the room she was in. The tiny window was no bigger than her head and was way too high up for her to reach.
“Light?” she mumbled. “Light? Oh my God, what time is it?” She tiptoed toward Mieke’s corpse and checked her watch. “We have less than an hour left! Oh my God! We’re going to teleport with the ship!” She could not reach the hanging man above her, but he did not want to be released.
“Scream,” he uttered without a voice.
“What?” she yelped.
"Scream," he repeated. "Stand right next to the door. When they come in, I will distract them, and you run out." Nina shook her head. It was a long shot. If she could not get out, she was as good as dead.
“I’ll cut you loose,” she told him. “There is no way I’m letting you die here.”
“Leave me,” he implored. “I have no desire to live.”
Nina pulled a stack of pallets toward where the man was hanging from the ceiling and carefully climbed up. Using the filthy can, she cut through the plastic zip ties around his ankles. His hands were bound with steel cable, so there was nothing she could do to free his hands.
“My limbs are useless, lady,” he whispered through chapped dry lips.
“Well, now the blood will rush back into your legs,” she replied. “I promise I’ll get help if I can get out of here.”
Nina screamed as loud as she could, kicking against the door and making as much noise as she could. She was well aware that the ruckus of the sea and the walls between her and anyone else would muffle her screams, but she kept yelling. Finally, she heard scuffling outside the door. Nina crouched right next to the doorway, wrapping her hand with fabric from her shirt so that the jagged tin would not cut her when she used it as a weapon. Then she waited.
The door clattered under the force of someone’s hands, wiggling the dogged mechanism and finally dislodging the lock. Nina held her breath, mentally preparing to cut the ligaments at the back of the knee. With force the door swung open, but nobody entered. Still, Nina waited in silence.
"Nina," a voice whispered. "Nina, are you okay?"
It was Purdue. He knew how she could be when she was afraid and because of her penchant for violence he addressed her first. It was a wise choice.
“Purdue?” she asked. Peering around the door from her crouched position, she recognized him through the blurred vision of her one good eye.
"Oh my God, Nina!" he exclaimed, sinking to his haunches to wrap her up in his arms and help her up. "What did they do to you?" It was a rhetorical question, but he was still furious about it. He saw the man hanging from the ceiling, now outstretched with his feet almost touching the floor.
“Do you have something that can cut through steel cables?” she asked.
“Of course,” he smiled. “How do you think I opened this lock?”
"How come they did not capture you?" she asked while Purdue used a tiny blowtorch to cut the man’s restraints.
Purdue breathed out a long sigh at what he was about to reveal. He took a moment before he just came out and said it. “I knew that Crystal had set this whole charade up, Nina. She thinks that I drowned. When we surfaced, I saw Sam tied up at the top of the tug boat,"
“He’s what?” she shrieked.
“No worries. He is the next we are going to rescue,” Purdue consoled. “We have less than fifteen minutes before the Geheimnis pulls her disappearing act.”
Nina was livid. "Wait; you knew all this all along? Jesus Christ, Purdue! This is the last time you put my life in danger; I swear to God! I have had it with your shit. After this, I never want to see you again!"
Purdue swallowed hard at her words, but he finished freeing Fakur and kept his poise. But inside his heart was aching. Nina would never understand that he had had no choice and that the Order of the Black Sun had forced him to cooperate.
“I’ll explain later,” Purdue said. “Let’s go get Sam.”
“No more explanations, Purdue. I’ve had it,” she growled. “I don’t care what your reasons were or whatever bullshit excuse you cook up this time.” She followed Purdue to the opposite side of the red door, where he opened a bulkhead that led up to the next deck above them. They climbed the jack ladder, but when they reached the top of the superstructure, Sam was gone.
Chapter 33 — Too Many Secrets
Crystal was trapped. Manni and Benjamin had tied her up and locked her into a cargo crate. She could see the light shine through the tiny slits where the wood did not quite come together, but none of them was wide enough for her to see where the crate was kept. Her restraints were way too tight to get out of, and she had no idea how long it would be before the Geheimnis would disappear.
‘Don’t panic,’ she thought. ‘We don’t even know if the tug would actually teleport with the ship. For all you know, only the actual object would go through the process.’ Her inner voice turned on her. ‘You better hope so. This is all your doing. Hope you are satisfied.’
Ali had captured her after she had boarded the tug. She had assumed that Purdue had been with the six crew members who had surfaced with her. Only when they had taken her captive and the others had removed their diving masks she had noticed that the billionaire had been missing. She could not believe that she had been dumb enough to assume that Ali was employed by Fakur’s company, but then again she had been so focused on towing the Geheimnis to Yemen to notice anything else.
Her plan had been to tow the wreck to port and have her associates capture Purdue, Sam and Nina there. The Order of the Black Sun had been laying low concerning the journalist and the historian, but by no means were they going to let them get away for all they had done to inflict damage to the organization. She would have Mieke; she would have the ship’s intricate instruments isolated and then she would travel back to Germany with her prize. Her reputation with the high council of the organization would soar.