AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Mr Ritter,” I offered, still smiling.
And just like that, he went as white as his Lord Kitchener. “What do you want?”
“Now, no need to be like that. I’m just here to talk,” I put in quickly, hands raised with palms out in my best non-threatening pose.
“I… see,” he nodded, yet even as he said it, his eyes were side-lining towards the wall of rifles. His lips quivered nervously. “I was just about to lock up for the night, so maybe we should take this somewhere more private.”
Dropping my hand, I feigned ignorance of the idea forming in his head.
“What a good idea. You go lock up. Don’t want anyone sneaking in and stealing anything now, do you?” At my agreeing to his plan, his face all but lit up, so it was with no small amount of amusement I added, “I’ll just wait here.”
He nodded and quickly did an about turn, fishing out a big ring of keys from his pocket that jingled merrily as he went to the door. He didn’t strike me as the type to throw down, but if he was as desperate as I thought, I had better not take the chance of leaving him alone with all this firepower. Desperate men were capable of desperate acts. Which was also why I kept a close eye on him as he thrust a key into the lock. I didn’t blink until I was certain he’d locked it and was on his way back.
He’d of had to be the worst kind of fool to run now, but the line between desperate and foolhardy could be perilously fine at times.
When he came scurrying back, his moustache still quivering, I half expected him to start flapping. Instead, he just came up to me and stood stoic, waiting for my next instruction. I motioned for him to lead on. “After you.”
“Oh…” He looked surprised and then realised I would obviously not know the way. “Of-of course, err… this way.”
He led me down the wall of rifles to a backdoor nestled between boxes of arrow shafts and a stack of discounted camping gear, through into what must have been a combination of storage space and a loading bay. Huge loading doors made up most of the left side wall. They had converted the rest of the space into aisles, three shelves high and just wide enough in between each for a set of aircraft steps. They’d loaded each shelf high and tight, with packing cases of every shape and size.
Just to the right of the door we’d come through, there was a spiralling wrought iron staircase up to an above catwalk and a suspended complex of rooms. I followed Professor Riley up into one that I guessed he’d made into an office. There was a large wooden desk with a computer monitor on top and a big chair behind it along one wall, a matching-style filing cabinet and a bookcase on either side. One corner made up a kitchenette, and another had a small sofa and chair around a coffee table to make up a sitting area.
Professor Riley went straight for the kitchenette. “Coffee?”
I shook my head. “Tea please, milk and two sugars.”
He looked up at me, surprised. “English Breakfast or Earl Grey?”
“I’d prefer PG Tips.” PG was a popular tea brand in the United Kingdom, but by the look on Riley’s face, they’d never made it into his morning brew. “English Breakfast will be fine, thank you.”
He nodded and turned back into the kitchen, filling up a small portable kettle from the sink and setting it to the boil. Letting him get on with it, I walked to the desk and gave it a quick once over. The computer was asleep, but there was paperwork scattered across it, bills and invoices, order summaries and what must have been official letters stamped with red. There was no order to it, unless the pieces of pottery and masonry that sat here and there held some significance I’d missed. Chipped and aged, they’d all seen better days, so maybe it was some sort of record of dates. Terracotta for still due, ivory might be first notice, the polished stone for final notice and an implement to break thumbs, maybe.
A photo stood in one corner in a wood frame. It was a family portrait of a man, a woman, and their daughter. The man was obviously Professor Riley, back when his Lord Kitchener was a rich teak and he had a head of hair, sitting straight and poised in his Sunday best. A woman who I guessed was his wife had an arm around him and smiled broadly while a girl, a skinny, gangly little thing just entering her teens, nestled between them with her arms wrapped protectively around a retriever puppy. She had her mother’s dark hair and wide smile, but her father’s blue eyes and a slightly paler complexion than her mother’s bronzed native American heritage.
They looked so happy, happier than any family I’d ever seen. And like I found myself so often doing in these moments, I tried to remember my own parents, and if we’d ever been so happy. Those memories were masked behind a veil of blood and fire, and the sound of my mother’s dying screams as she tried to shield me.
“Are you alright?” Professor Riley’s voice asked with a hint of concern, jarring me from my reflections. I glanced back to see him placing two steaming mugs down on the coffee table, half watching me with a look that mixed concern and suspicion.
Forcing down the icy, roiling feeling that had frozen my guts, I forced my easy, ‘it’s all good,’ grin into place. “Of course, sorry, I tuned out there for a moment.” I was about to join him but then remembered he’d caught me looking at the photo on his desk and added, “You have a beautiful family, Professor Riley.”
“Err… thank you.” His eyes flickered downward, a dark, almost haunted look flashing across to the surface. A look I knew all too well. It vanished quickly though, when I sunk into the vacant chair. He sat on the opposite end of the sofa and, ignoring his coffee, said. “Please, let me just say how-”
“Well, that’s very good of you to offer, Doc, but maybe I better go first,” I cut in, knowing what he was about to say, and I was not in the mood to hear it. It was the same every time, the same old lines about best intentions and hard times. It was as if every guy that got caught up in bad debts had watched that scene in Pulp Fiction one too many times and had somehow forgotten how the lines provoked Johnny T and SL Jackson to blow people away.
Just the thought of hearing it again got my fingers twitching to throttle something.
To resist the urge, I wrapped them around the teacup and took a long sip. It wasn’t bad, not enough milk, but at least he hadn’t made it with a damn microwave.
Putting the cup down, I then steepled my fingers and fixed him with a firm stare.
“Last year, you went to your university board with a proposed expedition to the Congo Rainforest. You’d found evidence of a previously lost city and wanted to hunt for it. Sounds a bit too much like a Michael Crichton novel for my liking, but whatever makes you happy. So, the board rejected your proposal, but rather than accept their decision and call it a day, you attempted to fund the expedition yourself, with little success. After exhausting all other options, you approached our mutual friend, who, after looking over the evidence and being given your professional reassurance that the trip was feasible, wrote you a blank cheque. Hmm… can’t say anyone’s ever given me one of those. That was some story you must have told him, Doc. Have you ever considered a career in the church?”
“It’s all true. The city exists,” Professor Riley promised, his voice rising a tad more defensive than I’m sure he meant it to sound.
“If you say so,” I shrugged, passing it off. “So, with sufficient funds for your expedition, you chartered a flight to the DRC. You were there a few weeks before returning to Washington on an economy flight. The recent coup d’état in the area had forced you to abandon your expedition, along with all your supplies and equipment.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Professor Riley protested. “The Government troops seized me at a roadblock, arrested me for espionage and threw me into a cell. They confiscated everything I had, the funds, my passport, even the clothes off my back. There was nothing I could do.”
