Secret of the Loch Read online

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  As often seems to be the case in my misadventures, the first day of a quest usually arrives before I’m ready to rise up and face it. In the past it’s often been due to a booze binge, or overdoing it with a certain species of leaves and seeds that I no longer smoke. However this morning, Tuesday, was actually worse in terms of lingering exhaustion than any I could recall since arriving in Europe this past summer.

  Not a promising sign for a productive day.

  “Nick, you’re going to have to get on the stick! Chop-chop!” Marie urged me, when I let my head fall back on the pillow after my eyes failed to open fully without the painful dryness that announced I needed a few hours longer to rest. She was already dressed in a sweatshirt and blue jeans she purchased the night before from a clothing store located near the restaurant where we ate dinner. “I’m serious… unless you want to hang around here for the day and risk something else going wrong.”

  Actually, it sounded like an attractive proposition, and I was sorely tempted to accept the offer of a day’s delay, if it were truly on the table….

  “You sound like my mother,” I told her, rising to a sitting position. “I haven’t heard ‘chop chop’ since I was a kid.”

  I stood and staggered to the bathroom, and where I normally wouldn’t have needed it, I intended to take another shower—this one to help me wake up. Thankfully Marie didn’t stop me, likely since I’d still be ready and out the door in under twenty minutes, and the shower helped… at least a little.

  “What’s with you?” she chided, when I dragged my ass behind her on the way to the elevator where Ishi waited. Unlike me, he was the poster child for ‘bright-eyed and bushy tailed.’ I grimaced at the thought.

  “You look rode hard and put up wet,” he jested, wearing a wide grin. Definitely right about the wet part, a stream of cool water coursed down the side of my face. Hopefully, my hair would dry before we stepped outside the hotel and into another blustery day.

  “Very good,” I replied. “I’m proud of the fact that in less than a year you have finally mastered that saying.”

  The smile faded, and he wore a slightly pained look as we rode the elevator to the ground floor. Then his expression brightened again.

  “So I got it right?”

  “Yes… you are now the Jedi master of American southern slang.” He laughed while Marie regarded me suspiciously. “Private joke and long story, babe.”

  To her credit, she kept us on point and on schedule. Within an hour we were fed, situated in our rental car, and had picked up enough supplies to get us through the day. Most importantly, we were on the way to Loch Ness.

  “It is beautiful country… but cold,” said Ishi, from the back seat of the Volkswagen, a Jetta SportWagen that hopefully would prove large enough to transport anything of significance we found during our quest for druid treasure. Since this was Marie’s baby, I decided to let her figure out what we would need to present before the Cabinet Secretary for Culture and External Affairs, or whoever else handled antiquity discoveries in Scotland. “I heard other people in the restaurant saying the weather is like this a lot.”

  “Most of the year,” I said. “Or, maybe it just feels that way since the worst months are October through March, and then it warms up enough to where there are a few days when you might not need a coat, in the summer months.”

  “Ahh… nothing like Honduras, eh?”

  “Scotland is never like Honduras,” I said, wishing I were the one driving, instead of Marie. She won the privilege to drive to the loch, despite my finally waking up after two cups of the blackest coffee I can remember ever drinking. I would have to wait until it was time to head back to Glasgow, likely tonight unless we hit pay dirt that afternoon. “Just be glad we didn’t wait to do this trip in January or February, little buddy. They say it gets colder than the Straits of Hell that time of year.”

  He nodded thoughtfully, as if he could picture life in Scotland significantly colder than it was that day.

  “Am I the only one who’s wondering what became of our taxi driver yesterday?” Marie asked, out of the blue. “I’ve been waiting since last night for one of you guys to bring it up.”

  Honestly, I had chalked it up to being tired as hell, and hadn’t thought of the driver named Brodie MacFarlane since.

  “I assume we just missed him driving away, is all,” I said. Ishi shrugged to concur with this idea… but Marie shook her head.

  “Don’t you remember how noisy his taxi sounded?” she said, eyeing me as if I were indeed the ‘big lug’ Mr. MacFarlane had less-than-affectionately labeled me last evening. “We would’ve heard something… and the kid who came outside to check on our luggage acted like we had just magically appeared on the walkway to the main entrance.”

  Forgot about that, too… I remember it struck me as odd for a moment, although that thought proved to be a fleeting one.

  “So what are you saying, darlin’?” I asked. “That maybe our driver is a leprechaun of some sort, and just disappeared into thin air, taxi and all?”

  “Wrong country, Nick,” she replied, perturbed.

  “Ahh, so it’s faeries then, eh?”

  “Why does it have to be some traditional folklore imp from either Celtic country?”

  “Well, if not a leprechaun, fairie, or elf of some sort, what else could it be?”

  I hoped we were just pulling each other’s chains, and she wasn’t seriously assuming some supernatural being was involved…. Then again, we were already dealing with a relic bearing supernatural properties and unusual powers.

  “Maybe this guy named Brodie was something like an angel,” she suggested, and I tried desperately not to laugh, proud that only a brief chuckle escaped my throat. “Seriously, Nick… it’s not that uncommon to believe in such things in this part of the world. In fact, I recently read about the Angel of Mons that saved a troop of British soldiers in World War I. There are dozens of eyewitness accounts for that event. Who’s to say something like an angel isn’t involved with our quest, since this treasure could prove to be something significant to the people of Scotland and the entire UK?”

  I had no answer for her, since I had thought she wanted to find the treasure to exclusively fulfill her father’s wishes. Not to mention, Marie had more than once suggested we’d be keeping some of the fabled loot for ourselves…. I was beginning to think something more altruistic had trumped her earlier offering to Ishi and me.

  Perhaps Brodie the Angel sprinkled pixie dust on her pillow last night.

  “Well, regardless of what you think, Nick, I believe it was fortuitous for us to find his cab—the only one on the street at that moment—and for Brodie MacFarlane to get us safely to Glasgow, where we could be closer to the lochs,” she said, her tone bearing finality. The debate was over… or was it?

  “Umm, Marie, and Nick… I just found out something you’re not going to like,” Ishi advised from the back seat. He leaned toward us, and he had his laptop open with a small cell phone he purchased when we first arrived in London operating as an Internet modem. “If the driver yesterday was an angel… then how come he didn’t stop us from taking the longer route to reach Loch Ness?”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?” I asked, guardedly. Marie’s look matched my distrusting tone.

  “Well… according to all the hits on here, it will take us three hours and thirty-eight minutes to reach the loch from Glasgow, while it would’ve taken ten minutes less to travel almost the same route from Edinburgh.”

  “Let me see that,” I said. Ishi turned the laptop toward me and toggled between the two ‘trip routes’ on the screen.

  “Well, I’ll be damned… he’s right,” I told Marie, who shrugged as if the information were irrelevant. “Ten minutes ain’t the end of the world, but we could’ve just stayed where we were—”

  “And maybe have been torn to pieces last night by machine gun fire!” she countered. “Besides, since we will only have time to visit Loc
h Ness by itself today, if… or when it comes time to visit the other lochs in search of the treasure, we will have a much shorter trek starting in Glasgow than returning to Edinburgh each time….”

  Surely we could’ve found a suitable hotel to stay near Loch Ness and resumed the rest of our loch explorations from there… but who’d like to split hairs with a superstitious woman? Yes, I have my hang-ups and superstitions, too. But you won’t find me casually bringing up the subject of angels pretending to be ornery taxi drivers any time soon.

  “Well, maybe I shouldn’t have said anything… right?” said Ishi, sheepishly. “Maybe it’s best to leave well enough alone—another southern saying from you, Nick—and then see what we find out today. Except that we are traveling back toward Edinburgh right now, and nobody seems to have noticed but me.” He laughed.

  Really, my Tawankan pal was correct: He should’ve kept his fun little fact to himself this time, especially since in the end it would likely have very little effect on how things turned out. Not to mention, maybe Marie was right, too. Maybe we would be dead today if we had lingered any longer in Edinburgh, instead of allowing the jovial Scotsman to drive us to Glasgow. I doubt Ishi caught her glaring at him through the rearview mirror.

  Fortunately, the matter was soon forgotten, and while Ishi uncovered other harmless fun facts for us about the Scots and their amazing and entertaining history, we arrived at Loch Ness just before noon.

  Why I ever thought the Loch and its fabled star named Nessie would be less commercialized than it was, I can’t honestly say. Just goes to show I was ill prepared for this jaunt from the get-go. For us to have any shot of success with this excursion, I needed to start taking it all much more seriously than I had. The first thing, though, was getting Marie to admit that Loch Ness was likely not the right location for the treasure she sought—despite the fact the secret passageway to the treasure could be in any loch bordering a cliff face or hillside in Scotland—regardless of each location’s local popularity.

  It was just a hunch, and maybe it was influenced by the fact quite a few boats—including some yachts—were out on the water. A partially cloudy sky must’ve been a good enough invitation for the hearty locals, and as far as the naked eye could see, both banks were dotted with what I would soon learn were hotels and restaurants.

  Ishi wanted to spend time exploring Fort Augustus, Drumnadrochit, and Invermoriston—all famous monuments and certainly worthy destinations if we had the time to spare. But realizing we would need every spare moment to canvass both sides of the enormous freshwater lake that was thirty-seven kilometers in length would take several hours at least. All we had time for was a quick bite at one of the less crowded restaurants, and then we began the arduous task of driving along the southwestern shore first, with the hope of either finding the spot or finishing our exploration of the northwestern shore before dark.

  “It won’t take as long as you fear, Nick,” Marie advised, taking out a handful of handwritten notes from her purse. She had relinquished the driving privileges to me in order to focus on matching up the coordinates and landmarks her father had told her to look for, and I recalled watching her scribble these details down the other night on the Cricket Field stationery sheets she now held. “From the satellite images I looked at during our stay in Salisbury, there are at most a dozen possibilities in this loch. I hope it’s here, but if not, we should know before too long.”

  She removed the Ambrosius Amulet from her purse, as well, and laid it on her lap. The brilliant sapphire held in the grasp of a dragon forged from ancient pure gold glistened naturally, despite the limited sunlight pouring in through the Volkswagen’s windows. Of course, this was nothing like the incredible blue glow that emanated from the amulet when worn by Marie in England, or even when we first discovered it lying upon a stone slab inside the burial mound along the River Avon. It was almost as if the damned thing understood what we were trying to do that day, and had reserved its energy until we found the right location.

  We spent the next hour and a half driving alongside the shore until we reached the southern end of the Loch. But after each stop we made, calculating the coordinates and pointing the amulet toward the hillsides that came closest to matching Marie’s father’s description, the amulet remained dormant. By the time we headed back to our original starting point along the northwest shoreline, it was already after three o’clock. Dusk would soon be on its way. Marie became less precise and she hurried the process as compared to her patience earlier in the day, despite my assurances to her that it was okay to take more time if she needed it.

  “You’re probably right, Nick,” she finally conceded, just after we reached the halfway point back to the northernmost edge of the loch. “The landmarks here look a lot alike, and all are missing the finger and thumb rock formation Papa mentioned most often. We need to look for that instead…. And I don’t think it’s here, since I don’t see anything like it.”

  She was right. We hadn’t seen any rock formations that were matches for what she described, although some were close. The key thing, though, was the dormancy of the amulet.

  “How is the amulet supposed to work again?” I asked.

  “Do you mean when revealing the treasure room?” she replied.

  “Yes,” I told her. “I assume it won’t be quite the same as the behavior we witnessed when it cloaked our presence in London and in the tomb.”

  “That’s correct,” she said absently, while looking out the window. She shook her head in disappointment. “It’s not here. I’m sure of it…. Let’s go back to the hotel.”

  “You sure you don’t want to stay someplace close to Loch Lomond, since it’s right up the road from here?”

  We had passed signs for the deeper loch on the way to Loch Ness.

  “No… or maybe. I guess we can check out the hotels near Loch Lomond and see if they have a vacancy.” She glanced at Ishi sitting behind her, who once again looked longingly at the ancient castle monuments that we were about to leave behind. “I’m sorry, Ishi. I tell you what… we’ll make an effort to come back here once we find the treasure. I promise.”

  He nodded in response, though the look on his face betrayed his disbelief. At least it did to me, since fifteen years is plenty of time to learn the subtle signals from even the most reserved individual.

  We left Loch Ness just before dusk, and after driving a few miles along the mostly deserted highway, I noticed a dark sedan following us. Call it superstition or the self-preservation instincts that have kept me alive longer than I deserve. Either way, something was off about the Toyota station wagon. I sped up, and so did the Toyota.

  I decided to try and lose it for good, and when I gunned the Volkswagen’s engine, Marie and Ishi sat up with a start.

  “What in the hell was that about?” she asked, glancing nervously behind her.

  “Nothing… nothing serious. Just a precaution,” I assured her, despite presently driving thirty kilometers above the posted speed advisement. But the Toyota kept pace and suddenly gained on us. “Hold on!”

  I gunned the engine, and by then Ishi and Marie understood we were being chased. Worse, we were losing ground. Once the Toyota caught up to within ten feet of us, several automatic rifle barrels emerged through our pursuers’ windows.

  “Oh shit!” I hissed

  There was no time left to react, as a volley of bullets pelted our car, focused mostly on the back tires and gas tank.

  “They’re trying to kill us!” shrieked Marie. “Nick watch out!”

  Too late, a hairpin turn in the road ahead proved too difficult to navigate, and the Volkswagen spun out of control, careening off the road.

  “Hold on!” I shouted, while trying to keep the car from tipping over….

  But I couldn’t stop it.

  The Volkswagen flipped and landed on its side. It skidded toward a dangerous precipice, while a storm of bullets pelted the underside of the car. Marie’s and Ishi’s terrified screams filled my ears as I s
truggled to not lose consciousness from a blow to my head….

  Chapter Four

  Flames engulfed the car’s underside, and the blaze spread quickly. At least this was what it felt like, as the heat and crackle from flames trying to invade the interior was all I could sense as my eyes refused to fully open, and the rest of my senses were out of sync with my awareness. I was only slightly aware of my seatbelt being disengaged and someone lifting and pushing me out through an upside-down passenger door. My shoulder burned for a moment… but from a different kind of heat, and the recollection of being slammed into the steering column awkwardly appeared in my mind.

  Soon coolness embraced me, followed by a wave of heated air that was much more intense than what I felt inside the car. Then a chilled breeze prevailed as four hands dragged me away from the burning vehicle.

  “Nick… Nick! …I think he’s coming to,” whispered Marie, from somewhere close by and above my head. I managed to open my eyes, though at first I didn’t see anything. But in the light from the nearby flames, images began to creep into my line of sight. Shadows flitted and danced to my left, and frigid, damp darkness hovered to my right…. Ishi’s and Marie’s faces suddenly formed above me. “Look, he’s blinking…. Don’t let him rise up—not yet.”

  The air filled with pops in rapid succession to my left, in the direction of the fire that was growing brighter, along with the sound of pings against metal. This was followed by Marie’s perfume and Ishi’s cologne wafting toward me as I realized they were dragging me…. They picked up their pace, speaking to each other in hushed tones that became louder when they bent down to check on my condition.

  Then I heard it.

  The biggest damned explosion I believe I have ever witnessed, aside from dynamiting stubborn tomb entrances in the Amazon jungles with Ishi.

  The car? Something just blew the sucker to Kingdom Come!….