Purdue was soaked, his clear blue eyes bloodshot, and his face twisted in panic. From the floor of the lake the twisting water had brought up two old corpses that had been lost to the bottom of the depths since 1942. Still dressed in Hitler's uniforms, they floated around the lake like flies in a bathtub.
Purdue barely mustered enough breath to answer Rita. “Underwater turbines, I think!” Gradually, as they struggled in the furious maelstrom, the current grew more aggressive, igniting the electrical circuits tacked along the cave wall. For the first time the expedition party realized that the cavern was lined with electrical light, as the old Second World War lamps buzzed and sparks clapped into life.
Still, with the primitive electrical system driven by the power of the water, the group was still struggling not to drown. Below them in the water, the monstrous device generated an undertow to feed nine churning water turbines coupled to a large tube-like hose. Rita pinched her eyes shut as she realized what it was representing. “Of course!” she sighed. “The Hydra. Nine-headed water snake. Thank God this one does not spit venom.”
One by one the turbines slowed down, taking with them the meager zeal the old, must-covered lights still exhibited. John Armstrong was under the water, literally ripping the turbine heads off the tubing that drove them. It was quite amazing to behold, but Sam, Purdue, and Nina would not look a gift ‘Hercules’ in the mouth at this time. When John had beheaded seven of the nine turbines the water began to even out and calm. Purdue jetted up from below to catch his breath after the sixth turbine had pulled him under.
“I hate Greek Mythology,” he spat, choking.
“Worse than that fucking Medusa Stone business!” Sam concurred. “Where is Nina?”
The historian was on her way to the vast, stretching wall where the symbols were almost disappearing under the water level. They had less time than they’d believed. Purdue joined her at the wall that stood smooth and upright out of the deep lake water. “Come on, Sam!” Purdue shouted. “Rita!”
Rita braved the pain in her leg to immerse herself in the wondrous buoyancy of the lake. “Are you coming?” she asked Sam in passing.
“Be there soon,” Sam replied.
The chamber, known as the Vault of Hercules, would be completely submerged soon. If they were to gather anything from inside it, they’d have to do it very soon. Sam and John had a brief conversation as the ex-SAS soldier joined him.
“So, you were looking for me?” Sam asked John.
“I was. I believe we have a mutual dislike in one Valdi, as much as we share a mutual friend, Bad Norris,” John informed Sam. The investigative journalist instantly felt at home with the bald man. It appeared that he was here in the gut of a sleeping rock in Greece for the same reason as what had prompted Sam to come along.
“Ah, I see!” Sam said.
“I heard you were looking for Valdi, for the abduction of those girls. That agent's daughter too…,” John pried.
“Aye,” Sam said eagerly, “do you know anything about it?”
The bald man drew nearer to Sam. “Shh, Mr. Cleave. I believe the kidnapper — and his booty — is with us by the command of that Sicilian pig, Bruno. He can't get out, though, so we can take our time once he shows himself.”
Sam smiled. “I like the way you think, sir. How do you know he can't get out.”
“Don't stress, but I collapsed the entrance,” John confessed quietly. At Sam's clear alarm, he went on soothingly, “Don't worry, there’s another way out.”
“So you’re not here for the Vault of Hercules? You just want Bruno?”
The bald man nodded. “I couldn’t give two shits about treasure or old gold. Hell, according to my aunt who raised me, I’ve already been inside the Vault. She is a crazy, old Greek woman, me mum's sister. Me dad raised me in Belfast, but me mum was from Camden.”
“You were inside the Vault of Hercules?”
“So I was told, but my auntie died of dementia in 2005. So who knows, hey?” John laughed. However, Sam's people skills told him that John was playing down something obvious and he believed that this man could very well have been in the Vault of Hercules as a child.
“How old were you?” Sam inquired matter-of-factly, trying to keep things casual while he knew full well that John possessed unnatural strength. “When you were supposedly inside the Vault.”
“Oh, I was about ten years old. I was a chubby little bastard, you know? So on holiday me aunt and her boyfriend took me and my older brother swimming… here,” John recounted. “Summer of 1969, it was. But now, I just want that traitor who turned on me and his sicko minion, you know?”
“I get it, believe me,” Sam agreed. But when he glanced toward where he’d last seen Guido, the Mafioso was gone. “Oh shit.”
John looked surprised at first, but then he realized that the entrance to the cave system was closed, preventing any escape. “Leave him. He has nowhere to go.”
“What about his men outside? Can they help him?” Sam asked, but John looked perfectly relaxed about it.
“They can't help anyone, my friend,” he told Sam. “They’re compost.”
“Sam! Are you coming to help?” Nina cried from over at the wall.
“Coming!” Sam said, before turning to John. “Listen, do you know if the kidnapped girls are still alive?”
“No, Mr. Cleave, I have no idea. All I know is that I’m going to extinguish those two pigs for leaving me to rot in prison,” John admitted. “I hope those young ladies are alright, though. Knowing Bruno's obsession with becoming made in the Cosa Nostra, and his need to get into the Vault, he would not want those girls to be touched until he lines them in the Vault. So for all we know, Valdi has not even laid a hand on them.”
“That makes me feel a whole lot better, Mr. Armstrong,” Sam sighed in relief. “You have no idea.”
Chapter 31
Rita was doing her best to manage with her painful leg in the water. A large, submerged rock served as a temporary seat for her as she helped Nina figure out what the symbols were for. The pictographs were aligned in a circle around another, smaller circle.
“I've got it,” Rita said to Nina. “The labors of Hercules are on the inside circle, right?”
“Aye, true that,” Nina affirmed.
Rita pointed at each symbol on the outside circle, explaining, “We have to turn the inner circle to match the outer circle — the labors and their solutions.”
“Okay, that makes sense,” Nina said, “but they’re not all in the right place at the right time.”
“Easy,” Purdue chimed in. “You see that these inner circle symbols are marked upon loose stones inserted into the wall? Well, I think this is like a safe cracking method. You turn it until the top symbol of the outside circle coincides with the mutable symbol of the inside circle.”
Rita was shrieking with excitement, slapping Purdue's shoulder lightly in praise. “That makes perfect sense!”
“Right,” Nina announced. “Here goes.”
The top middle of the inside circle was a lion.
“The Nemean Lion,” Rita and Nina said simultaneously.
Rita turned the dial while Purdue watched in admiration. Impressed by the engineering skills of the ancient Greeks who’d constructed this antique combination safe, Purdue could not help but wish his Egyptian guide, Adjo, was here to behold the system. Adjo Kira, after all, was an accomplished engineer and this device would have fascinated him. It posed the question of whether the brilliant man from Cairo was even still alive.