“I see nothing either,” Sam noted. “Maybe you should whip out your seeker and see if there is another building in plain sight that we cannot see?”
Purdue shook his head and chuckled, “We don’t have to, Sam.”
“Guys, you mind making it snappy?” Nina asked from across the chamber, still staring out from the window panel.
“I think Purdue found something, Nina. Come see,” Sam invited, and took several shots of Purdue’s discovery. They did not have to look outside over the expanse of the island after all. The sign they sought was right in front of them — literally. Sam took pictures of the symbol that was carved into the thick layers of paint that had been added every few years over decades. Three drinking horns were entwined to form a three-pointed emblem.
“Nina, do you know this insignia? It looks so familiar,” Purdue asked her. Reluctantly she left the window to have a look, but she looked unwell.
“That is the Triple Horn, a symbol of poetry and wisdom… the Triple Horn of Odin,” she announced, bringing a smile to Purdue’s face. He rested his hand gently on her shoulder, “Nina, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said abruptly. “I just want to get out of here, please. Please.”
Her big, dark eyes pleaded with Purdue and only then did he realize that dark circles had formed under her eyes, betraying her troubled demeanor and loss of sleep.
“In a minute, I promise,” he vowed, as his fingers softly pressed her skin. “I am just recording what this Triple Horn is marked with and we will be off.”
When Nina returned to the window, the man below had disappeared, upsetting her sense of safety utterly. He was nowhere to be seen on a fairly flat island that did not take up a lot of ground and he could not have moved fast enough to have vanished into the distance, which left Nina with only one presumption. It was an assumption that terrified her, and once again the morose fear washed over her.
As Sam took the last shot of the symbol, Purdue checked the markings on his tablet. On each horn a character or word was inscribed crudely. “Hiid” was written on one. On the other, “46° SW” with the numbers scribbled on top of the letters. And finally a symbol Purdue could not place, but Sam had captured it, so he did not bother Nina with it again.
“Listen, we have to get out of here,” Nina said again, but this time she was taking on a considerably more assertive tone. “We can sort out the rest on the way back to Helsinki. Please, let’s just go.”
“You heard the lady,” Purdue told Sam. Sam turned to her and looked perplexed. He had been looking at the pictures he took on the approach to Jari’s house, when they were still marveling at the reflection of their vehicle.
“Nina,” he said inquisitively while looking down into the screen of his digital camera, “do you know this man?”
“What man?” she asked.
Sam looked up at her, “In every picture of you that I snapped, at the tree line back at Jari’s property, there is a man behind you in the bush. Look.”
He showed her and Purdue the screen and flicked past photo after photo where the image of a very large man loomed behind Nina, watching her intently. He moved precisely with her in every frame as if he was tracking her every move. She recognized the face and the hands clearly and with a gasp she grabbed Purdue’s arm. Her eyes filled with tears as she stared in disbelief at every frame.
“Oh, Jesus,” she cried, “that is Deiter!”
Chapter 22
Eventually Nina was forced to come clean about her impending flight impulse.
“I have bad news,” she told Purdue and Sam after explaining who the man in the picture was. “There has been someone following us, watching us, since we came onto this island, lads. And his presence is the very reason I have been so distant since we came up here.”
“I was wondering what you were so intrigued with outside,” Purdue said.
“I thought you were just admiring the view. For fuck’s sake, Nina, why did you not say something? Your silence has compromised our position here.”
“Oh, get sodded!” she snapped. “I’m sure both of you already thought I was being a hysterical bitch for what happened in the Himalayas. Did you think I would tell you that I saw one of the men I encountered, one of the men I thought were bona fide yeti? You’d have me fucking committed!”
“So you’ve seen this Deiter bloke on the island too?” Purdue asked with a great deal of concern. He was hoping to have a smooth-running operation this time around, but it looked like he had to be on his toes again after thinking he had escaped the clutches of the Black Sun.
“No, this time I saw Thomas. It was Thomas standing down in the field watching us, but I guarantee you, if Deiter was in Finland and Thomas is here, just a few miles away, chances are that all four of them are here for me!” Nina wailed. She was slowly falling back into a hopeless state of panic. Sam put his arms around her.
“I’m sorry, lass,” he said. “But let’s stop fucking about and get out of here, aye?”
“Seconded!” Purdue affirmed, and collected his coat and his sling bag.
They started down the winding stairwell where the ominous wail of the wind made their skins crawl. Cold air circled the confined tubular structure as they descended as quietly and swiftly as they could.
“Guten tag, Olga!” a deep voice possessed the atmosphere inside the lighthouse.
Purdue, Sam, and Nina stopped in their tracks and looked down. In the small circular landing of the stairs stood all four of the men Nina had been captured by in the tunnels under the snow. Her heart stopped and she fell back into Sam’s arms.
“Gentlemen, how are you?” Purdue addressed the oddly massive primates below them. “Fancy a beer to discuss this like civilized people?”
“We want the woman,” Thomas roared. When he scowled his mean, gray eyes almost disappeared under his brow. “She had something that belongs to us.”
“I don’t have it,” she told him.
“Then take us to where you left it,” Thomas suggested forcefully, “or we will snap your boyfriends’ spines right here.”
Sam pointed his camera down and started taking pictures of them.
“What are you doing?” Nina shrieked under her breath.
“I’m pissing them off,” he replied casually.
“Stop that!” one of the giants warned Sam.
“The fact that you are here pisses them off. Why would you exacerbate things?” she frowned, frantically trying to avert Sam from taking any more shots.
“Nina,” Purdue said, “just stay behind me.”
“You are trapped,” Deiter said. “You have nowhere to escape. So give us the woman so that she can tell us where the item is that she stole from us and we might let you live.”
“And we want that camera,” Thomas bellowed.
Their voices were even louder in the hollow structure, giving them a god-like quality.
“Look, lads, she does not have it. The police confiscated it. You would have to speak to them,” Purdue contended.
“Police? You think we would let the world see us? Don’t be stupid. Olga will retrieve the item for us and, until then, you will be in our custody,” Thomas asserted. “Now come down and don’t try anything stupid. You have no idea what you are fucking with.”
To Purdue and Sam, it was instantly clear that Thomas was the Alpha of the bunch. They had no idea who these men were, but by their slightly freakish features and their involvement in the archeological dig, it was a logical presumption that they were serious, let alone — German. Purdue especially saw Germans as an efficient, no-bullshit breed that would not be perturbed by negotiation once they had set their sights on something.