The Vault of Hercules (Order of the Black Sun Book 16) Read online

  ORDER OF THE BLACK SUN - BOOK 16

  The Vault of Hercules

  Preston W. Child

  © 2016 by Preston William Child

  Publisher's Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author's imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Edited (USA) by Usnea Lebendig

  Chapter 1

  “You know, Nina, whoever created tight jeans had your ass in mind,” the grinning, red-haired trainer said to Dr. Gould. “If I may be so bold.”

  “You may not,” she bit back, although there was plenty of appreciative humor in her tone.

  Two young wrestlers smiled like fools from behind their coach, no more than twenty years of age and clearly not accustomed to such a forceful lass occupying such a delectable body. Coach Weland had told them in confidence that she was old enough to be their mother – just – only lending more to her appeal. Her dark eyes flashed rapidly into the glares of the young men, rendering them instantly impotent from her intimidation. With bowed heads they sauntered towards the changing rooms without looking back.

  “I see you still have that...that thing...you do,” Coach Weland chuckled.

  “What thing is that?” Nina asked as she grabbed her towel from the bench where she had just completed her last forced reps.

  “That death stare you were oh-so-generous with in high school. Remember? Geez, it was like a punch to the gut back then.” He cocked his head with attitude and sighed as he grazed his abdomen with a sliding hand. “But back then I didn’t have a washboard iron gut.”

  Nina giggled in amusement, raising an eyebrow. “Now, now, Weland. We both know I aim for the sweet spot,” she said in a husky drawl. The sexy historian came really close to the coach and placed the tip of her index finger right between his eyes. “Right...there.”

  He merely smiled, unable to think of a smooth retort. Nina Gould had never been easy to impress, and it seemed that the trait had only grown stronger with age. With a dumb grin he said, “Touché.”

  Nina almost felt sorry for him, but instead of saying so she only winked and walked across the floor of the free weight section of the gym to punish her glutes on the Smith machine, towel-over-shoulder. She could feel his stare burning into her. “And stop looking at my ass, Steven!” she said loudly without looking back.

  “What ever do you mean?” he asked.

  Nina pointed diagonally in front of her to her left, “I can see you in the wall of mirrors, Coach.”

  Her condescending manner was highly amusing to the body builders training around them, sending Steven Weland off the section with a light jog and a mute mouth. He descended the stairs to the cardio area where the whirring din of spinning stationary wheels serenaded the babbling of housewives and teenagers socializing. Above it all, the bad techno pulsed monotonously while patrons stared at overhead flat screens like comatose drones just beyond the cycles. It sporadically gave way to the sounds of the aqua trainer's whistles in the echoing cavern of the indoor pool.

  “Excuse me, but I haven’t seen you around here before,” a rather attractive, steroid fanatic announced.

  Really? Nina thought. Is that your opening line? Jesus, the single life is pitiful, especially around here.

  “No, you haven't,” she half-smiled, annoyed. Nina was trying to adjust the uncomfortable hooks of the bar onto a lower setting and did not need distraction.

  “Are you local?” he asked as he gripped the bar and pulled it off the hooks for her. “Where do you want it?”

  Nina bit her lip. “Um, two down. Thanks.”

  Seeing her expression, he quickly set the hooks and said, “Oh, please don't think I don't think you can do it yourself. It's out of chivalry, not to patronize you.”

  Good one, she thought.

  “Of course, these days most ladies see chivalry as some form of chauvinism. There is just no place for blokes who simply want to assist...” he continued.

  “Listen, I appreciate the help. Really, I do,” Nina said as amicably as she could during a brush-off. “But I’m here to train, contrary to what people think most lassies do with the weights up here. I really didn’t come here to chat. If you don't mind?”

  He stepped back, feeling a bit stumped. “Of course. Of course, I understand. Well,” he said sincerely as he started moving away, “if you need a spotter, just yell. I'm Colin.”

  “Will do,” she winced as she ducked under the parallel bar and pressed it up onto her shoulders. “Bye now, Colin.”

  “Bye,” he replied reluctantly, still considering just asking her name since his hint hadn’t received a reply. Nina smiled as she watched the bulky blond man join two others on the leg press machine. Their cackles betrayed his ridicule among his pals.

  As she completed her third repetition, her eyes wandered to the window to appreciate the cool rain over the Quartermile developments in Edinburgh. It had been only three months since she’d almost died while serving as guest lecturer at St. Vincent's Academy in Hook, a small town in northern Hampshire. Since then, she’d rejected medical treatment and elected to heal her body the way in which she did everything else – her way.

  She’d recovered remarkably, past her previous good health, to attain her current state of obsessive training. Feeling better and gaining weight to a healthy level was addictive. Nina could never be big, but her petite physique remained intimidating, especially since she discovered the glorious, yet painful pleasures of bodybuilding. She was not hell-bound on spiking her testosterone by using steroid stacks to imitate She-Hulk or anything, but Nina found that hitting the weights hard was a shortcut to feeling stronger than ever and enjoying the effects of a faster metabolism. Above all, this fitness regime offered her a challenge. There was, after all, only so much one could do with cardiovascular conditioning, and Nina had not been blessed with the virtue of patience.

  Her thighs burned under the intensity of her eleventh deep squat, and Nina dared not pay attention to the immense strain that had her knees buckling dangerously. Puffing unusually hard, she drew the short-lived attention of some of the males nearby, but fortunately managed to push her way up well enough to feign an effortless feat. As soon as they returned to their training, she hooked the bar for a break.

  Breathing deeply, Nina smelled the fresh scent of fabric softener on her towel as she buried her face in it. She stood for several seconds like that, just catching her breath. When she finally peeked over her towel, the world on the other side of the window seemed like another realm to her. She was certain by the looks of the gray buildings and wet droplets racing down the windows that everything was different out there. In contrast to the cold wind, pattering downpour and wetness outside, the interior of the health club had temperature control, vibrant colors and something some could construe as music.

  “How terribly apt,” Nina pondered softly, walking to the widow while sipping from her water bottle. The contrast of the two worlds occupying one space fascinated her. Nina had often wondered if anything was real anymore, for this very observation. Two people could occupy the same room of an establishment, she thought, and have completely different problems, lives, vocations, et cetera. She found it eternally intriguing, the way in which things could be great for one person and utterly horrendous for another, even while they were surrounded by the same things in the company of the same people.

  “Are you done with this machine?” a mature voice asked from the direction of the Smith
torture rack she’d been using. Nina swung around from the sudden address and found a man behind her with a most peculiar appearance. It almost had her dumbstruck, but she didn’t know why.

  “Aye,” she replied, trying to smile in order to conceal her shock. “Go ahead.”

  “Much obliged,” the man said, nodding and proceeding to set up the heavy discs on the sides of the machine. Although his response to her had been courteous, it had held no sign of congeniality. Not that it mattered much in this environment of mingling strangers, but Nina found his entire presence ice cold. He fascinated her. Towering at over 6'7”, his bald head only drew considerably more attention to his frigid eyes.

  His voice did not suit him. It was thin in tone and very raspy, reminiscent of an old narration from a 1940s film noir. Apart from his voice, the rest of him seemed like a three-dimensional replica of a villain from a science-fiction graphic novel, complete with a sick pinkish scar dripping jaggedly from his temple to his jaw. Elongated musculature erroneously marked him as stringy and weak. Nina was astounded at how easily he lifted the bar while it carried a dozen large steel discs on each side. She pretended to admire the streets below the second level window while her dark eyes haunted the mirror to observe him.

  Even the body builders and power-lifters present had wandering stares, some even ceasing their sets to make sure that they saw what they thought they saw as the tall man pumped out rep after rep until Nina had counted close to thirty. She looked at the other men and caught the eye of the chivalrous babbler she’d sent off earlier. He, too, vaguely shook his head at her to convey a similar disbelief and Nina gave him a widening eye to confirm that she agreed.

  As the strange man hooked the bar for a rest, all the people in the weights section snapped back into what they’d been doing. They didn’t want him to know that they’d been watching his unusual ability in awe and risk making the man so uncomfortable that he’d want to leave. He was simply too interesting, even to the coach and some of the other personal trainers leering from afar.

  “It could be Samson, you know, after his bint cut his locks, aye?” one of the overweight football bullies remarked quietly a few feet from Nina. She chewed her lips in an effort not to laugh and dropped her eyes to the floor as the man stepped under the bar once more. Once more the peculiar man punched out a full set without much effort as the others watched surreptitiously in the vast mirrors while continuing their own feeble attempts.

  Nina was impressed, but she would never show it. After all, her own recovery from a skeletal shadow to a staunch and symmetrical specimen was quite the feat as well. Considering the short frame of time it had taken her to build up her body to look like a minuscule Amazon, what she had accomplished had been nothing short of a miracle. But that was of no consequence here. She eventually tired of staring at the extraordinary man and made her way to the triceps machine. Gripping the handles, she pressed them down, going through the motions she’d been training so hard to do correctly these past months few months.

  Yet something urged her to look up at him again. Through the cables and the sliding of the flat weight slabs Nina noticed that the strange man's water bottle contained something milky, unlike most water bottles the gym rats filled with their water bottles with. It perplexed her. What could be inside? Could that be what made him unnaturally strong, defying all rules of physiology? The buff little historian had to investigate.

  How does one procure a bottle from under the nose of a patron at the gym without them realizing that it was missing? she wondered as she pushed the heavy weights downward, burning up her triceps. In fact, she was so distracted with this thought that she didn’t even notice when she exceeded her set. The bald man changed his weights again, leaving the peculiar liquid unattended. Nina had to act quickly, so she resorted to the prerogative of beautiful women – beguilement.

  She looked toward the group of young men she’d previously shrugged off and singled out the babbler. His eyes instantly found her glare and Nina smiled. “Hey, Colin, could you do me a huge favor?”

  Chapter 2

  “Get the pulleys up! Get the pulleys...no, the rope things above you, dammit!” Purdue hollered through the cloud of dust that engulfed him. His helpers, four Egyptian men, scurried to keep him from being eaten up by the tumbling mountain, on which he was hanging down the throat of a gaping mouth of rock and sand. Under him everything exploded in debris and the cracking of splitting rocks as he grasped the rope tied to his flimsy harness. As the mouth closed around his dwarfed frame, collapsing from a probe gone wrong, Purdue's men finally hoisted him up rapidly enough to escape the cave-in, but gracefully enough not to have the old rope snapping from the sudden upward jerk.

  Purdue's face was a plain canvas of powdery basalt of the earth upon which Aksum had been built thousands of years before, apparently angered by the disturbance of its sleep. His brown cargo pants and slightly over-sized shirt allowed for some free movement, but very little in the way of protection. Spitting profusely to expel the wetter bulk of the sand grains between his jaws, he dared to look through the obscured spectacles he’d miraculously kept on his nose during the ordeal. Peering from under the bottom frame of his glasses he could see that the wicked soil had swallowed the view.

  Beneath him, the cavern that his men had meticulously been digging for the past few weeks had been drowned in the basalt deposits of Ethiopia's ancient earth. “Shit,” Purdue said to himself as he watched the once majestic hole diminish like the iris of an eye before closing up into nothing more than a disheveled patch of ground. From the height he was dangling from, Dave Purdue surveyed the damage to his part-discovery. “What a bloody waste of time and blood and sweat.”

  “Yes - of others. Must be soul-consuming to lament the loss of labors performed by others so that you can just show up and bugger up the whole lot, hey?” someone yakked from somewhere behind the still floating fog of dust.

  “Oh God,” Purdue hissed through his clenched jaws, not from disdain or annoyance, but the familiar voice no doubt proved that a third degree in morality between archaeologists and historians and other such nonsense was now due. “What do you want, Medley?”

  Professor Medley was standing with her hands on her hips, waiting for the sweaty Egyptians to lower their temporary master safely. A dark-haired woman in her fifties, she had been a senior in the same league as Purdue while they were still fighting for a feature in the Scientific Journal of London and the infamous Metaphysics and Mythos Experiment, a tabloid for the snobs and lunatics of antique sciences.

  “Why don't you stick to your inventions, Q?” she scoffed in amused gloating.

  “Stout words coming from a Glasgow princess who cannot tell the difference between a mathematical model and a law,” Purdue snapped in between spits and moistening his lips with his tongue.

  “Semantics,” she replied. “Like monolith and megalith is to you, I suppose. This was such a promising archaeological site, Purdue, and now it’s been reduced to a mole’s heap. Well done.”

  “It was down there,” he argued as his feet lightly met the ground. As he fumbled with his harness, he gave her a steely eye. “The geo-sonar mapped it. I shall simply start over.”

  “You shouldn't,” she advised rather dismissively, perusing the chaos sewn by the billionaire explorer and his ideals. “Why can't you just leave history be, Purdue?”

  He dusted himself off. Purdue gawked at the thorn in his side with astonished perplexity. “Excuse me? You’re an archaeologist, Rita! Talk about leaving history be! Talk about letting sleeping dogs lie! You make a living unearthing history.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I was referring to a selective and informed choice of plundering,” she said, shrugging.

  Purdue was speechless. Her words bordered on lunacy.

  Then he laughed at her audacity. “So, now you’re selectively daft? You’re a hypocrite now too?”

  “Bigot,” she admitted.

  “Spot on, dear,” he remarked as he shook his r
ight leg to liberate it from the flaccid harness. “The Orthodox church proclaimed that the Ark of the Covenant was housed here in Aksum. All we have to do is extend the permits and try again. The megalith...”

  “Monolith, Purdue,” she sighed.

  “Whatever, Medley. It marked the location of the clandestine chapel reputed to hold the Ark,” he insisted, keeping his voice low. After all, if Medley was there, chances were that the vultures had begun to circle.

  “Then why don't they corroborate their claims?” she asked.

  “Because they will never relinquish it,” he replied. “But just to know that it is there...”

  She turned to him with an alarm that only showed in her eyes; her voice remained steady.

  “Listen, Purdue. What would happen if the Ark were discovered? What would happen if any of these powerful relics were to live up to their reputation?” she asked urgently.

  Purdue stepped closer to Medley and smiled. “I know for a fact that most of them do live up to their hype, my dear Rita. First hand. And I know this because I was tenacious enough to relentlessly pursue these items at all costs.”

  She shook her head with a wry smile. He had proven himself to be just as greedy as she’d reckoned before. “And tell me, Purdue...were all your losses financial?”

  The question slammed into him, but he refused to show it. “Losses were recovered, even though it took some time to remedy. All losses are recoverable if you have wealth.”

  Prof. Medley stared in silence at her old adversary. “I think,” she said softly, “not even you believe what you just said.”

  She was correct. Purdue did not mean what he said and his ploy to brush off the hurt of almost killing his beloved Dr. Nina Gould just cost him again. Medley was right. There were penalties far higher than that which could be sated by money or reputation, and he had certainly lost his fair share of both. However, losing his reputation as a carefree man-about-town was of little matter to him. Although he had gradually lost his credibility as a serious scientist and inventor along with many of his friends and colleagues from his inner sanctum, Purdue felt more fulfilled by chasing after dangerous artifacts and paying the price for his success than he ever did as a philanthropic bachelor at fund raisers and university board parties.