They laughed at the misunderstanding and only after their merriment died down did they start digging shamelessly. More wine was poured on the stoep of Jari Koivusaari’s hidden house before Nina finally asked, “Did Josef ever tell you why he made the cross?”
Jari pondered a little. His face changed into contorted sorrow. There was no doubt that he knew the artist well and missed him in his absence. The old man composed himself and cleared his throat. “Pretty woman, why you want to know this? David Purdue, are you not satisfied with your purchase?”
“I am more than satisfied with it, Jari. That piece is very special to me and I just have a connection to it, for some reason,” Purdue explained to Jari, and every word he spoke was gospel truth. The cross held an appeal since the moment he laid eyes on it, long before he knew it contained a king’s ransom in gold. “Somehow I feel that it speaks to me, that it has a story to tell.” Purdue shrugged. “That was why what Sam said was so true. We… I… just needed to know more for no particular reason.”
Nina and Sam glared at him, both wondering if he was just a very good actor or if there was something about Purdue’s expedition he was too embarrassed to share with them. He was well-known as a materialistic hedonist who did not put much stock into the deeper meanings of the things he chased after, except maybe for Nina Gould. And here he was confessing to having an emotional attachment to something he purchased, worth no more than what he had on his credit card balance at any given time.
“Josef Palevski contacted me to ask if I could be a broker for his art. He said he heard I was good, honest man who did not cheat people out of their money. I liked his work very much, so I said yes,” Jari told them with a steady thread of emotion in his words. “We became very good friends, even if he was more than thirty years older than I was.”
“Wow,” Nina whispered, evoking a slight smile from Jari.
“So, then he starts telling me his past when we become better friends. He tells me he had a bad life. Not for years could he stop having nightmares of the Second World War,” the old man recounted. Nina and Sam perked up at the mention of the war. It was a sign that they were on the right track, finally. However, Purdue listened intently, uncharacteristically ignoring the facts for the sake of the tale.
“Was he a soldier?” Sam asked.
“He was a Polish prisoner of the Nazis, from Jugowice. They took him from Płaszów—”
“Płaszów?” Sam asked again.
“A concentration camp used for forced labor,” Nina told Sam.
“That is correct, Nina,” Jari said, very impressed at her knowledge. He had no idea she was a German history expert, one thing the wise old man did not shock them with. “They took him to build railroads under the Owl Mountains where many he knew as brothers and sisters, some children of ten, eleven years, died of hunger, disease, or their bodies just broke under the hard labor,” he narrated with his pipe firmly between his teeth. “You know about the Nazi gold trains they talk about?”
They nodded.
“Now, Josef told me he saw one full of gold on the railway he helped to build a year later in another location. I did not believe him, of course,” he chuckled sadly, “but he told me there were some things on that trains — they came from scientists who were so intelligent they made things no man could understand.”
“Hollow Earth theory,” Nina guessed.
“Is that the myth of a super race living inside the Earth?” Purdue asked. “I’ve heard that so many times from those political science academics at charity parties.”
“I told him is bullshit, right?” Jari laughed. “But then he showed me what he stole from that train after the war ended because he knew where it was. But he could not take much with him, only some gold, some things from the underground scientists and when I told him he lied, he gave me these mirror sheets that have no solid state inside the frame!”
“No fucking way!” Sam marveled, bowled over by the coincidence.
Purdue shook his head in wonder, his jaw buried between his hands as he listened.
“So the mirrors around this house are not actual mirrors?” Nina asked.
Jari shook his head. “It is made like fine embroidery, but with many metals they spin like spider webs to weave a floating reflect surface,” Jari described what he knew in his best rendition. “But it does not bond, so you can fold it like smoke. Only the edges are solid and hold the metal compounds in.”
“Did he say what it is?” Sam asked.
“Boron is the base element. Most of their work come from the stars,” Jari said, looking up at the sky.
“Boron is the lightest metalloid chemical on the periodic table,” Purdue chimed in out of nowhere, still locked in awe though. “It is produced by supernovae and cosmic ray spallation, mostly.”
“Ah-hah,” Sam murmured, mocking Purdue’s terminology by acting as if he knew exactly what the genius inventor was referring to. Nina laughed, slapping him on the upper arm again.
“It is a stone that comes from space, Sam,” Purdue patronized him. “It looks like silver, like a mirror, if a mirror was a rock.”
“All right, all right, you two!” Nina said. “Let Jari tell us the rest.”
The old man adjusted his seat. “It was only a year before he died that I finally learned why he contacted me, really. Josef was my father.”
His visitors sat in silent amazement, spellbound.
“He made the cross and said I must put it in my garden here for 19 years and two months,” he told them. “But me and my wife… the trade was bad for a few years and nobody was buying rare items to keep us with enough money. And now they want to take my property, so I sold my father’s cross to David Purdue. Now me and my wife can keep this house, this land another year or two! So, it was a good thing.”
“What happened after 19 years and two months?” Purdue asked.
“I don’t know,” replied Jari. I sold the cross to you a month before that time… a month ago.”
Collectively, the faces of his visitors went ashen.
Chapter 18
Neville Padayachee checked his travel documents. His clothing was laying around on his bed, along with an open suitcase. First he put his visas and passport in his laptop sling bag and then he hastily started roughly folding his clothes, just neatly enough to all fit into the suitcase. His train was due in less than 15 minutes and he was still at his hotel in Kolkata. Before he left, he shoved his plane ticket to Edinburgh in his jeans pocket and checked that he did not leave anything behind.
In his haste and, in this case, sheer anxiety for the importance of the job, he always forgot the simplest things, so this time he had made a list of things to get done once in Scotland, in order of urgency. On the small note he wrote things like—
get wheels
find Miss Nina
buy stuff
pick up components
contact Austin Powers
call HQ and arrange delivery
Visit mum
“Mr. Padayachee, a call for you, sir,” the reception desk clerk called out as the archeologist raced for the front doors.
“I can’t take that now. I’m late for my train,” he moaned in his stride.
“It’s Amsel,” the clerk exclaimed as Neville reached the door. The archeologist stopped in his tracks. With a troubled expression he said, “Where can I take the call privately?”
She showed him to a booth behind the counter where she directed the call. He could see her from the booth, where she had hung up the call, cutting it off from the switchboard to avoid any crossed lines or accidental eavesdropping.