Secret of the Loch Read online

  “What if they have your credit card information, too, Nick?” asked Marie, worriedly. She peered out into the alley from the dumpster we hid next to, behind a popular pub from the sound of the music and crowd gathered inside. “Remember how I worried about them getting our passport information from the rental agreement in the van that was stolen at Bluehenge? They would have your credit card information from the receipt, as well.”

  “It’s my alias card,” I told her.

  “And, what if they had some way of figuring that out, too?”

  There was likely no easy way to keep her dander down and not panic. But I sought to do it anyway.

  “We can play the guessing game as to how much they know, Marie,” I told her, making sure my tone was compassionate and not condescending. “But think of what we know so far. It seems safe to assume that Ali’s men still don’t know anything about the amulet, since the guy back there gave only a half-hearted attempt to take your purse. If they knew about it and understood what it could do, then the guy would’ve ripped the purse from your grasp and likely tried to finish us off right then…. Yet, they didn’t do it. Right?”

  Marie suddenly appeared panicked. She franticly sifted through her purse to unbury the amulet and its heavy gold chain lying hidden at the bottom. The weight alone should’ve confirmed for her that the prize was still there.

  “Okay…. So, you’re correct about that, and maybe we might be better off using one of my cards,” she said. “After all, I had them changed while we were in Paris, remember? Other than using one of the cards to buy this jacket and the shoes we left in Salisbury, I haven’t made any other purchases. I would bet everything I have secured in Geneva that we’ll be fine if I use one of the unused cards to bail us out of this shitty mess!”

  Hard to say if this was true, or a good bet, but she had a point about my alias possibly being compromised. It was likely that any and every persona Ishi and I had used in England until now carried a hot button attached to it by Yassir Ali or his unscrupulous business associates throughout Europe, and especially in the UK.

  “Let’s see where we end up first, and if we need to ditch my cards, then we’ll go with yours instead. Okay?” I said, allowing myself another look around us before continuing. From what I could tell, we remained safe, but for how much longer? Sooner or later the pub’s staff would be unloading that evening’s garbage—probably in shifts. We could be discovered at any time, and even though it was highly unlikely that anyone from the pub would do us harm, they could inadvertently draw unwanted attention to us, creating a deadly situation for all involved. “Since we need to get to the lochs to find your daddy’s treasure room, we should head for the side of Edinburgh that’s closest to them. Hopefully, they are all in one place and Loch Ness is the closest.”

  “That’s what I’ve been looking for,” said Ishi, shivering as if he were wearing a lighter jacket like Marie, instead of the down parka he had on. “Luckily, the lochs are not too far apart… maybe four to five hours driving between the farthest ones. But Loch Ness is not the closest one.”

  Marie shot him a disbelieving look, as if he had said something much direr than it was.

  “It’s true!” he said defensively. “Still, it might be best if we visit Loch Ness first, and work back to the others that look like they’re south and to the west from Loch Ness.”

  “Loch Lomond is actually southeast,” she replied, smugly. “And Loch Morar is located to the west of both Loch Lomond and Loch Ness, although it is more directly west of Loch Lomond.”

  Ishi shook his head politely, and this would normally be when he would defer to Marie’s bossy personality. Not this time.

  “You are correct, Marie… but why did you want us to take a train to Edinburgh, when Glasgow is much closer to all three lochs?” he said. If he wasn’t struggling with the cold as much as he was, I daresay his smug look would’ve gone toe-to-toe with hers. “The Scotland travel guide I found online says that Loch Lomond is just 40 kilometers away from Glasgow, to the west. That would save several hours to reach the lochs.”

  “That’s all fine and dandy, you two, but if we stay here arguing about this shit much longer, ‘us’ going anywhere will be a moot idea!” I hissed. Admittedly, I was miffed mostly at Marie for making our journey more complicated than necessary. Granted, visiting Edinburgh stirred something inside of me… but that discovery could’ve waited until a safer trip could be arranged down the road. We were in Scotland on business—specifically to secure a treasure on behalf of Marie’s misguided father—and then get the hell out of Dodge. “Let’s get moving… if we can make it out of this area without being seen by anyone, we’ll hail a taxi and head to the western side of Edinburgh.”

  Sounded simple, and in truth it turned out to be almost too easy, at least in terms of avoiding our pursuers. Scotland welcomes all nationalities, and despite our experiencing a few nervous moments with law-abiding citizens of Middle Eastern decent, we escaped the area undetected. Or, so we hoped.

  While doing my damnedest to shelter Marie from the bitter wind, the three of us walked several blocks further away from Picardy Place, wishing the glut of taxis near the train station would loosen up and send a cab our way. Fortunately, one finally ventured into our area. We ran after this taxi, waving and yelling for the driver to stop. He did stop, just before reaching a busy intersection.

  “Hurry—he won’t wait long!” I warned.

  Without waiting, I threw open the rear door to the car and motioned for Ishi and Marie to run and dive in. I followed and closed the door behind me. I suppose I should’ve anticipated an adverse reaction from our driver for being so bold. He put the taxi in park and glared at us from the driver’s seat.

  “And what in the hell do you three think you’re doing by commandeering my Joe Baxi?” he demanded.

  “Your what?” I asked, my tone more harsh than warranted.

  Before I could try to rebound with something kinder, Marie stepped in. Rather, she slammed her elbow into my side—much to the amusement of our driver. He chuckled, this older gentleman sporting a closely cropped snow-white beard that matched the thinning hairs atop his head. His square jaw made him look easily disagreeable, but his warm blue eyes spoke to high intelligence and, unfortunately for me, a cutting sense of humor.

  “Thank you for not kicking us out of your motor,” said Marie. “We are in your debt for that kindness, Mr. …Mr. MacFarlane.”

  It took me a moment to see his nametag atop the dash. ‘Brodie MacFarlane’.

  “And, you are?”

  “My name is Marie Da Vinci,” and—”

  “Like the painter, you mean?”

  “Yeah, I mean yes—like the painter,” she said, smiling shyly. He returned her smile and she blushed. Now the amusement was mine. “And these are my companions… Ishi Cyamel and Nick Caine.”

  He nodded thoughtfully while I grew irritated that we had yet to move. Then again, we had yet to tell him where we needed to go.

  “Kain is it, as in K-A-I-N?” He grinned impishly, and I found his probing gaze unsettling. This was not a man to be trifled with, and yet I had already bungled the opportunity to gain the upper hand.

  “It’s actually C-A-I-N-E,” I said. “Apparently there are different spellings of the same name.”

  “Indeed there are laddie,” he said. “But they all mean the same thing…. You have the unfortunate fate of being a Sassenach.”

  “Sassenach?”

  “It’s a Scottish word for Saxon, as in Anglo Saxon,” said Marie, stepping in to keep me from looking like a bigger idiot.

  “So, what’s a nice Italian lass doing with a big lug like this man named Nick Caine?”

  “He’s not so bad… really,” she said, smiling sweetly at us both. I happened to notice Ishi was grinning, perhaps delighted that for once he wasn’t the disdained foreigner in the mix. “But we need your help.”

  She looked out the rear window, and I followed her gaze like the lost puppy I had sudde
nly become. We were wasting precious time and at any moment I expected Yassir Ali’s henchmen to suddenly surround the taxi and send us all into the afterlife in a shower of bullets.

  “Oh?”

  “Can you take us to the western lip of the town? Better yet, can you drive us to Glasgow? I will pay you whatever you want.” Marie opened her purse and produced a wad of cash that was different than what we had used in London and Salisbury. She must’ve read my confused expression. “These are Scottish notes… pounds printed by the banks here in Scotland.”

  “How in the hell did you get this?” I asked, my voice hushed from surprise. Truly, I was stunned, and now I had a list of new questions for her. “And shit, it looks like you’ve got—”

  “Enough simoleons to consider either proposition,” said this precocious taxi driver named Brodie MacFarlane, interrupting me with flair and a brilliant smile. It was hard not to like this guy… at least a little. I would like him a helluva lot more if he got moving.

  “I’ll pay your normal fair plus ten pounds to take us to the western edge of Edinburgh,” said Marie. “Or, I’ll give you an extra one hundred pounds beyond your fee if you’ll take us to Glasgow.”

  “I accept your deal… to Glasgow,” he advised, and finally we started moving. A moment later he merged onto the avenue, trading horn blares with another motorist.

  For the next hour and a half, Brodie MacFarlane conversed with us about his beloved Scotland. As a proud member of one of its famous families, he gave us a brief overview of what we were missing by leaving Edinburgh, before moving on to answering Marie’s questions about Glasgow and, more importantly, visiting the three lochs on our agenda—which turned out to be the deepest natural waterways in all of Scotland. Mr. MacFarlane was a veritable encyclopedia about the historical aspects Marie broached him about, in regard to Scotland overall, and about the lochs and the druids and Picts of old. For that matter, his knowledge on those subjects amazed me as well… especially when she mentioned we had visited the ‘Henges’ in England. “They were just as prevalent up here, too, you know.”

  Needless to say, it intrigued our driver even more as to why we wanted to explore the lochs in the coldest season of the year. “You’re doolally as a flock of loons and will catch your death o’ cold,” he told us, laughing warmly.

  We arrived in Glasgow, finally, and after Marie placed phone calls to several posh hotels in the area, we found a pair of vacancies at the Crowne Plaza. Brodie MacFarlane complimented Marie’s choice, saying it was the ‘safest choice’. I found that assessment odd, but agreed it was best to spend the night in an expensive hotel.

  Should Yassir Ali’s assassins find us this time, and chose to attack us in such a swanky hotel, any violence would definitely not go unnoticed. Perhaps it was a fragile and foolish notion to assume our rooms inside the five-star resort would keep us safe and sound…. But after the day we had endured, we were left with very few options to trust.

  “Thank you for bringing us here,” Marie told the loquacious Mr. MacFarlane, and echoed by Ishi and me, when he dropped us off at the front entrance to the grand hotel. For the moment, there was no sign of the Egyptians or any other menace. She handed him a sizable chunk from the Scottish pound notes in her purse.

  “It appears that you’ve overpaid me for my services, Miss Da Vinci,” he said, and started to hand her a few bills until she stopped him.

  “Please keep it,” she said, motioning that she wouldn’t take the money back from him. “Who knows… maybe we will see you again someday, and you can make it up to us then.”

  “Maybe so…. Gilravage your research at the lochs, then… and aye, watch your back, my lassie,” he replied, tipping the bill of his cap to her before nodding to Ishi and me. “God bless!”

  A bellhop from the hotel suddenly startled us from behind, asking if we needed assistance with our bags despite the fact we carried only our backpacks. We turned our attention to him, and when I glanced back at the curb, the taxi and its driver had disappeared.

  “Where’d he go?” I wondered aloud.

  “Oh, shit,” whispered Marie, joining Ishi and me in craning our necks to view both sides of the hotel’s driveway. There was no sign of the gray sedan anywhere. It was as if the man named Brodie MacFarlane and his ‘Joe Baxi’ had vanished from the face of the earth… or at least Glasgow, Scotland.

  Chapter Three

  After getting settled in our rooms, we ate a late dinner at a casual restaurant off the main lobby of the Crowne Plaza. Wanting to get an early start on our journey to Loch Ness the next morning, we arranged for a rental car to be delivered to the hotel, ever vigilant for Yassir Ali’s men to suddenly show up. We used Marie’s untapped card with the higher credit line, and despite her confidence to the contrary, I still expected some unpleasant consequence to come back to us at some point. Maybe not that night, but soon enough.

  “We could use a good night’s rest, Nick, since we might well be ‘roughing it’ for the next few days, as you suggested this afternoon,” said Marie, after both of us had a chance to enjoy the spa-like shower, with its multiple jets. Clad only in the terry cloth bathrobes provided by the hotel, it was hard to resist the urge to take her in my arms and seduce her until the protests of needing sleep gave way to a few hours of just as badly needed passion.

  But Marie was right… with a potential cliff climbing, or another deadly escape from our Egyptian adversaries awaiting us, it would be foolish to not get as much sleep as possible while the opportunity was there. The plush comfort of the bed wasn’t helping matters, and the weariness I had kept at bay for much of the past week caught up to me in an instant. Surely it was the same for her…. Even so, I did nothing to hide my arousal as we snuggled close in the darkness.

  “I’m serious, Nick… we can’t…can’t do this and expect to be any good tomorrow,” she whispered huskily while I kissed her neck.

  “It might make it easier to get the sound sleep you’re hoping for,” I countered. “We can be quick—”

  “What if Ishi hears us?”

  Ishi occupied the room next to ours, and since he has often forgone sleep in favor of his video game addiction, it was possible that he was awake. But hanging around with his ear pressed to our wall? Highly unlikely—especially given his said gaming passion, which had begun soon after we let him cash in a smidgen of his gold for the computer and gaming systems he had long coveted. Besides, my Tawankan buddy would consider such voyeurism as extremely rude. And even if he was the kind of guy who got off on that sort of thing, he’d likely detect nothing beyond the alarm clock radio’s soft drone and the heater’s steady hum—ambient noises that aided Marie in falling asleep and had since become helpful to me in that regard as well.

  “That’s what pillows are for, darlin’.”

  “You’re terrible!”

  “No, just incredibly horny.” I laughed.

  “Nickkkk,” she said, with a ‘please don’t make me feel guilty tone’ that was almost endearing. “Please, baby… I promise to make it up to you…. Once we find Papa’s treasure.”

  It had better frigging be there, I thought to myself.

  “You swear?” I said, adding extra somberness to my disappointed tone.

  “Yes. Yes I do,” she assured me. “I promise.”

  “And, it will make up for tonight… and the last week?”

  The lights were out and I smiled in the dimness. By then I could make out our surroundings, though barely. She smiled in response, and nodded as fervently as an exhausted woman could.

  “Yes,” she said. “I promise… and it will be the best… sex….”

  That was it. Soft snores began and I didn’t have the heart to make her finish her promise. Life had taught me that an oath half-finished was often a vow not kept.

  “Oh well,” I whispered, to no one in particular, since I alone was fated to remain awake.

  It took me a while longer to fall asleep, and I laid awake listening to the artificial ambiance. Hard t
o trust that our enemies wouldn’t find us here in Glasgow. Yassir Ali’s men had pursued us across Western Europe, finding us again and again. Obviously, they had already figured out we were in Scotland. A betting man would say they would likely find us again while we remained in the United Kingdom, even if we hid in the most remote corners of the Scottish wilderness… and they would find us soon.

  “Quit thinking that shit… you’re inviting trouble, Nick,” I mumbled beneath my breath, rolling under the covers away from Marie to face the door… as if my own exhaustion wouldn’t prevent me from protecting us in the event some hostile person found their way into our eighth floor room.

  I wanted a cigarette right then. Something familiar to make the irrational musings go away. Most of my profound moments in memory have come with a ‘fag’ clinched between my teeth. For those unaware, that’s what they call cigarettes on this side of the Atlantic…. I laid there for more than an hour; listening to Marie’s soft snores that finally disappeared, leaving just the heater’s hum and a stream of barely audible pop tunes on the radio as my companions in the night.

  The last thing I thought of, before sleep came and stole my awareness, was the Ambrosius Amulet. The ancient and priceless relic was amazing in how it could cloak a person to where no physical aspect remained to an outsider. Yet those who were protected—like Marie, Ishi, and I had been—were very much still in the proximity, and often in the very spot that now appeared empty from outside the ‘veil’. It would soon take on a new characteristic, and be called upon to reveal a hidden treasure room within a hillside near one of the lochs….

  “Eenie meenie miney mo, I guess.” I chuckled briefly at the absurdity, until Marie stirred. Thankfully, she remained asleep.

  I sent a silent prayer for her sake that this thing worked out like it was supposed to… and finding Daddy Da Vinci’s hidden trove turned out to be a helluva lot easier than I feared.